The Ultimate Collection of Slow Cooker Recipes

Hi!

It's been a week, and a hectic week it's been.  What with school, nursery and work starting afresh, my new 6am work-out routine, a new slow cooker to get to grips with and the second in the 50 Shades trilogy to read, I've been busy, busy, busy!

This month I decided to have a pause from the out of the mouths of babes monthly linky and have decided to take the opportunity to collect and share the best slow cooker recipes out there instead.  Yes, I know I have a vested interest now I have joined the slow cooker club.  But it's my website, so I get to pick!

How will it work?

Here's what to do.

If you are here looking for slow cooker recipes, enjoy!  The list below should continue to grow so please feel free to pop back another time too to find plenty of recipes for you to try.  
If you are here shortly after publication on 7^th September 2012, there may not be many links listed below yet.  DON'T FRET!  Folk will add their scrummy offerings – you are just a little early!  Please, please, please pop your email address in the box on the right to subscribe to this blog.  Future posts will pop into your inbox and not only will you find useful parenting and beauty information, you'll also be reminded to pop back to this post to find a growing list of brilliant recipes!

Alternatively you can subscribe to 'comments' over on the right and get an up-date every time a fellow blogger adds their slow cooker recipe here.

If you are a blogger with a slow cooker recipe post you'd like to share click on 'click here to enter' below and add your link.

 

• Please try and give the name of the dish as the title. 
• If you could also add a comment below this post that would be great as it will automatically let other reader subscribers know that a new recipe has been added. 
• Finally, you don't have to, but it would really help if you could add the link of this post to your recipe post so that readers can get back to the main list.  I've added a button below.  Simply copy and paste into your post and check the link remains intact.
• If you are here with a link to share and the list has closed, then please comment, or email me, (tweet/facebook, whatever) and let me know.  If there are enough people interested in joining in I will make the linky a regular one.

Thank you all lovely readers!  I'll look forward to discovering a host of new recipes and will be trying them out and reviewing them in later posts, so make them good!  I might even pick my favourite for a special mention next month.

Look out for another out of the mouths of babes linky next month.

Meal planning: the big reveal?

I promised a meal planning big reveal didn't I.

My post, about taking the stress out of meal times, has forced me to actually do it.  To actually plan.

Well it's not a whole month, but it is a week's worth and it did inform my shopping list this weekend, which interestingly led to my shopping bill being roughly 30 % cheaper than it has been.

I guess that's one of the advantages of planning.

So here's the plan and the list.  I apologise profusely for the writing quality.  I was unfortunately taught to write in a school that still felt that calligraphy was vital and the use of an italic pen was a necessity.  It means that I naturally want to make my 'o's look like upside down triangles.  Over the years it's evolved into, well, a scribble.  Sorry.

Essentially I have to plan for feed the two girls (Age 6 and 3 respectively).  In the week my hubby and I often don't eat the same meal as we take it in turn to go to the Gym, so if I'm going out, he will sort his own dinner out and vice versa.  It's a funny week this week too as we have a nursery trip on Thursday, so they'll be a picnic lunch required and I'll be home alot earlier than usual for a Thursday.  If I hadn't completed this plan I'd have forgotten that and arrived at Thursday night with no clue what to eat!

We are doing well so far.  The meal's aren't inspiring, but I know what we are having so it's taking the stress out of it all.  Baby steps.

And you know what.  There may just be something in this "forward-planning" lark!

Meal planners. Do you do them?

My attempts at meeting the 'Yummy Mummy' criteria I've set in my head tend to rely on getting the basics right.  You know, like getting enough sleep for instance.  Like smiling a lot as you are so organised and calm you have nothing to frown about.

Unfortunately I'm not the sort of person who can avoid frowning.  In fact my lips, unfortunately, sit at a naturally downturned angle even when I'm doing the screensaver face.  You know the one.  When you are sat staring at the TV or laptop and your face goes into it's screensaver mode; it's default setting.  Just be careful that it's not one with mouth slightly open.  I've found myself watching TV with mouth open before.  It's not a great look.

So; chocolates, beer & banoffee pie for tea!

My frowning would be dramatically reduced if I didn't create things to get stressed about.  Meal times for example.  If I planned out my meals for the week, or even month, knowing who would be in for tea and how much preparation and cooking time I'd have each day.  If I shopped accordingly and followed the plan, then meal times would be stress free occasions where the entire family received a balanced nutritious and tasty meal without fuss.

What do you think actually happens in our house?

Yep.  Unorganised last minute chaos because I don't plan meals.

What does happen is that Hubby goes off at the weekend to do the grocery shopping with the girls leaving me time to get the chores done.  If there are offers on, then great, he buys things with the intention of freezing them thinking we're getting a great deal.  He buys a few bits and pieces for sandwiches (Bread, cucumber, cooked ham - you know the sort of thing).  And we'll probably get a roast, with potatoes and vegetables to go with it.

So that covers maybe three days, realistically.  Because for the rest of the week, though we have cupboards full of tins and packets and a freezer full to bursting, we don't have the fresh food we need to cook with.  So there's me, not even thinking about tea time until I've picked up the girls from school and nursery on my way home from work, arriving home at 4pm and not having a clue what to make for dinner.

Any meat we have is in the freezer and don't even get me started on using a microwave for that!  I don't trust it for defrosting.  Never have. So, as a consequence of this, and the fact that I don't think to take any meat out of the freezer to defrost naturally overnight, then food has a tendency to go to our freezer to die.

What do the girls end up with for tea? Beans on Toast, Sandwiches or Fish fingers, steamed (frozen) vegetables and rice.  It's not inspiring, but I don't worry much on the days they've been to school and nursery as they have hot dinners there, so it's only really a light tea I need to give them.  This is what I tell myself to feel better.  Funnily enough it doesn't work.

It's my husband I feel most sorry for.  He's not exactly getting a lovingly made pie on his return from work at 8pm.  In fact often I've eaten sandwiches with the girls and he is left to fend for himself.  I am such a poor wife when it comes to feeding my man!  And on the basis that I'm home, with the time to cook it, I feel I should be doing so.

Recipe Junkie shared her monthly meal planner on her blog the other day.  I was astounded.  I didn't realise people actually planned meals like that.  It looks fabulous.  There are meals on there I can't even pronounce.

And so she inspired me to have a go.  I am going to set a plan for the next month.  The only tricky thing is; I don't actually know how to cook much!?  Help!  If you have any ideas for quick and easy nutritious meals, feel free to share your recipes. Please!

Stay tuned for the meal planner big reveal next time.

Eat your way to healthy hair!

It's often been said that the appearance of your hair has the most impact on your overall look.  You've only got to watch a couple of make-over shows to notice that no amount of make-up will compensate for a poor, unhealthy looking barnet.

So what can you do to maximise your chances of having healthy, glossy hair?

Look to your diet and eat your way to healthy hair.  All you mummies out there will know that the body is very good at getting nutrients to the important places first.  When you are pregnant, and so nauseous you can barely eat, it's easy to worry about the baby getting the nutrients it needs.  But it's likely they are getting plenty - it's just you, your poor body, that is usually second in the pecking order.  Your body is pretty clever at prioritising!

Similarly the nutrients you take in will go first and foremost to the vital organs.  And unfortunately for our appearance, our hair is a long way down the list.  So if your diet is lacking, your hair will certainly be loosing out.  It'll be dry and slow to grow, just like a plant starved of water and food.

If you are eating a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables - come on, you know the score - then you are giving your hair the best chance to grow at it's maximum speed, and be strong and healthy.

And what if you are doing all that, and still have problems?  Maybe these tips will help.

Dull hair?

If your hair is really dull it is most likely to be caused by chemical processes like bleaching.  The dullness is a result of the cuticle on the hair lifting, instead of lying flat.  However, if you haven't processed your hair, you may have a lack of protein in your diet.  Try gradually increasing the level of protein you eat (lean meat, poultry, fish, seeds, pulses, nuts and dairy products).  Don't do it too fast though.  Hair only grows at around 14mm a month (when supplied with appropriate nutrients) and so any changes due to dietary changes won't be noticeable for a good three months.

Thinning hair?
This can be caused by an iron deficiency.  Iron is found primarily in red meat and green vegetables and you need roughly 14mg per day.

Also, be aware of any supplements you are taking.  If they cumulatively result in a high Vitamin A intake, this can also cause thinning hair and too much Vitamin A is toxic.  Try and achieve the nutrients required through an increase in fruit and vegetable intake rather than via supplements if you can.

Suddenly oily hair?
If you have always had slightly oily hair, then it is genetically determined and you can't do much about it.  But if it suddenly turns oily check your spice intake.  Foods that make you sweat, like hot curries, similarly cause increases in oil levels on your scalp - which sweats too!

Dry hair?
Is your hair normally flyaway and frizzy?  This is often due to an essential fatty acid deficiency.  Eating nuts, seeds and, of course, oily fish, will help.  These foods will also provide the proteins needed to keep the hair glossy. 

I hope those tips help.  But don't forget the all important cut.  A good cut can camouflage a multitude of sins!


For 5 quick beauty tips for busy women click here.
For our quick 'jargon' buster - what ingredients are in my skin care products and what do they do? click here.

How to encourage healthy eating....

My children will try pretty much any type of food.

I count this as a blessing.  Particularly since I didn't even eat Pizza until I was 20 years old.

I was bought up in a typical English environment, where the meals consisted of 'meat, potato and veg' or were children's meals like 'beans on toast', 'dippy egg' or 'tomato soup with soldiers'.  To this day my parents don't eat rice, or pasta, or anything that hints at a herb other than mint (only with lamb).  Whilst you can quite happily eat traditional English food in a healthy way, I'm pleased that I have a wider variety of foods with which to now tempt my children, which I gained purely as a result of spending 3 years at university and 'experimenting'.  With food, obviously.  My girls are now; helpfully; big fans of pasta (even cold in salads; which I hate).  They love rice (quick and easy, and they'll even help sweep up the mess afterwards).  And we've recently introduced them to poppadoms and chicken bhuna, with great success.

It's not been easy though.  Our youngest, now 30 months old, continues to go through stages of 'pickiness'.  And I refuse to rise to it.  I continue to offer a selection of foods, and the availability of pudding is directly related to how much main course she's eaten.  A small amount of main course equates to a small amount of pudding.  And we have, whilst out at a restaurant, allowed her older sister to eat ice cream for pudding, even though the youngest hadn't eaten mains and was therefore not allowed any.  She whined.  But we stuck to our guns, and she now always eats at least some of her main course.

And I think that's the trick.  When you realise that they will never starve themselves at this age.  That they'll eat when they are hungry.  And that rising to it only makes it into a game that you really don't want to be playing. And when you realise that children's potion sizes are so much smaller than ours, and that a tiny plate of pasta and meatballs is actually quite filling, and that a single 'dippy egg' with one slice of bread to dip can keep them going for ages.

These days we would probably be considered old fashioned for our approach.  Which consists of this: make dinner, place dinner in front of children, allow them appropriate time to eat dinner, call end to dinner and remove remaining food.  If they choose not to eat it, well they'll need to wait until the next snack time (for fruit) or for the next meal (where they inevitably eat a whole lot better.) 

Sometimes you just need to remember who's in charge!

Disney Princesses, Woody, Buzz, Eeyore, not forgetting Mickey and Minnie..... It's EuroDisney and how to survive it!!

We've just got back from four days at Disneyland Paris and am in desperate need of four days in a very dark, quiet, warm place where there's wine and pillows.

It was brilliant.  Our cheeky monkeys, are now 2yrs and nearly 5yrs respectively, are very different.  The eldest Cheeky Monkey No.1 was dead keen on meeting as many Princesses as possible.  We managed Ariel (twice), Tiana (twice), Snow White (twice), Cinderella and Wendy (does she count?).  The youngest (CM2) was more interested in Buzz Lightyear and shaking hands with Captain Hook.  I think we've inadvertently turned her into a tomboy.  She did indeed meet both, along with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Eeyore, Peter Pan, Woody, Jessie and Suzy and Perla (the mice that help Cinderella!).  And I saw Mary Poppins.... Is it pathetic to be a grown woman, and to be excited about that?

They came home with an autograph book full of signatures and had a brilliant time, including being chosen to dance with the Princesses in the Parade on our last night (just before we jumped on Eurostar to return home!)  It couldn't have been a more perfect end to the trip.

It's a place, though, that's full of potential pitfalls for the innocent traveller.  I'm going to try and post some tips over the next few weeks, to hopefully help make it the best holiday you've ever had too!

Today's Disney Tip (no. 1) - Pop out of the gates of the Disneyland park, and into the mini supermarket just inside the train station for baguettes, wine, papers, snacks, all at reasonable (sensible) prices.  The prices for food inside the park gates are high (7 Euros for one hot dog) and it's difficult to find quick food that's not an  ice cream or waffle.  All the places that sell actual food; the sort that contains something other than sugar; are all restaurants that have large queues at meal times.  (Fine if you reserve your table in advance and are ready to pay over 100 Euros to feed a family of four.)  If you can't stretch to that kind of food budget, the 5 minute walk out to the station is your answer.  You pass it going back to the hotels at any rate!

If you go to work your children will be less healthy!?

I was told, ironically whilst taking my daughter to Tiny Tumblers (gymnastics for pre-schoolers), that there has been some research published this week that concludes that children of mums that stay at home are likely to be healthier than those of mums that go to work.

I'm a mum who has made a decision to return to work sooner than I had originally intended. The reasons for this are many and complex, but as you will note from my previous post, I've not managed to avoid a fair degree of guilt in coming to this decision. Ironic, as my girls already go to nursery two days a week; a move that we are very happy with having seen a huge improvement in my eldest daughters vocabulary and social skills in the first few months she went. So the girls won't be spending any less time with me. I then felt guilty that I won't be able to do the cleaning and laundry whilst they are out, but will have to do it in what it now their time with mummy. The guilt was short lived when I cottoned on to the fact that I could actually pay a cleaner to do all the chores (since I'd be earning) and therefore playtime isn't affected at all. Still felt guilty though. I think it's because I'm actually looking forward to working again, and almost feel that if I'm looking forward to doing something that's not with my girls I should feel guilty.

Knowing all this, you can perhaps imagine my response to this research report, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. It basically concluded that children of working mums were more likely to be fed junk food, and allowed to watch more telly and do less exercise.

As if I wasn't feeling guilty enough already! And then I got quite angry. As is the case with all research of this type, it's isolated. It doesn't measure how happy, contended or fulfilled the children, mums and dads in these families are. It doesn't account for mums that overcompensate and deny their children sweet snacks so vigorously that the children rebel as teens and end up even more likely to eat unhealthily as adults. It doesn't point out the other effect of mums going to work. The message it sends to the children that mum is a strong, independent woman, who works hard to provide for her family. Surely all positive?

As an accountant and statistician I felt compelled to look at this report more carefully. Typically I discovered that results had been 'adjusted' for confounding and mediating factors. In English, the results were originally the exact opposite. The unadjusted results show that children of mums who worked full or part time were more likely to eat fruit and veg between meals, eat three or more portions of fruit a day, participate in organised exercise three or more times a week, and eat fewer sweet snacks between meals.

These results were adjusted to take away the influence of the following factors; ethnicity, mum's job type, mum's marital status, mum's highest qualification, the number of other children and household income. This adjustment isolates the data to conclude that it was only the 'to work or not to work' status that affected health detrimentally.

The report did, to be fair, admit its limitations as all good reports do. (Pity the papers then reporting on them tend to pick out the sensationalistic bits only). It pointed out that results were based on answers to single questions, and that estimates were used where data was missing (for example assuming working hours continued at the same rate week after week).

Maybe the data would feel more helpful if they could somehow account for the mums (and dads!) values, beliefs, commitment and determination in these reports. When they find out who does the chores (maybe it's bought in, like my suggestion!), and measure the sizes of the food portions (one Jaffa cake for pudding is a bit different to large quantities of chocolate and ice cream. Half a packet of crisps after a large healthy meal isn't the same as half a packet of crisps when nothing else has been eaten.) Maybe then I could feel that it was a helpful report. But probably not. Afterall, I won't accept anyone telling me I'm a bad mother. I do the guilt thing quite happily on my own thank you.

I'd like to propose that all us mothers respond to this as follows. We take it with a pinch of salt.

We all have common sense, and we all know what we, and our children, should be eating. And to be fair I believe that there are a huge amount of people out there, parents or not, who already feel pressurised to be stick thin, tanned, gorgeous, successful, sexy... and calm, and despite all this ridiculous pressure, are living life the the best of their ability and doing a darn good job of it.
Give us all a break and let us figure it out ourselves. We know we could be healthier. There's unlikely to ever be a point when people tell us we're too healthy. So give it a rest!


Go to the guardian website just for the fun of reading the resulting comments that the press report obtained. Seems to be a general consensus that this scientific report will be, at best, ignored in the same way that the working dads were. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/29/working-mothers-child-health

View the actual report at http://press.psprings.co.uk/jech/september/ch84590.pdf