My Stove Died. My Whole Cooking World Opened Up.

A few days ago, we—by "we" I mean my dear husband— left an eye burning on our stove. This caused the stove to shut-off. Awesome safety feature, right?  However, after following all the troubleshooting instructions from the manual, we have not been able to get the stove to come back on. Since our service technicians don't work on weekends, I have had to dust off my crock pot and rice cooker and step my microwave game up.

I have managed to scramble eggs and make bacon in the microwave. I have boiled water for tea and even boiled my son's hot dogs in there. Full Disclosure: I boil his hot dogs in there everyday anyway. Don't judge me. The hot dogs are grass-fed and organic and…never mind, go ahead and judge me if that makes you feel good. I don't want to put you off or seem ungrateful as I am happy you are reading my blog. So yeah, hot dogs in the microwave.

For the first couple of days, I made the most obvious choice of seasoned chicken with vegetables in the crock pot and Basmati rice in the rice cooker. Then I found Pinterest. And my whole crock pot world opened up. I found recipes for crock pot meatballs, crock pot cookies, crock pot candy, and crock pot cake! There is a theme here. I don't have a crazy sweet-tooth, but I was surprised and impressed by what people are making with slow cookers. 

Amidst all the recipes, I saw this image of zip locked bags filled with ingredients for crock pot dishes.

Source: mamaandbabylove.com via Michelle on Pinterest 

This appealed to the part of me that enjoys organizing things  as well as the part of me that enjoys not having to be in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong, I love the process of preparing food, but I seriously have to be in the mood to do it. So when I saw this pin of bags, I knew that I must have somehow been led to Pinterest by my happy-stay-at-hom-mom-but-reluctant-housewife guardian angel. And, to quote Sofia from The Color Purple (Because how am I supposed to ever not quote somebody from The Color Purple?), "I knowed there is a gawd." 

Here are a few recipes (including lasagna, ribs and mac & cheese) that I will definitely be putting into heavy rotation, starting with oatmeal. Oatmeal. I'm going to buy a special little slow cooker just for this. To wake up in the mornings and not have to make breakfast? I'm verklempt...