Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook

I borrowed this from the library, renewed it three times, and then caved and bought it.

I was surprised to find such a large collection of slow cooker recipes where tinned or powdered soup is so rarely mentioned. And there are more bean recipes than I I can shake a stick at. I also appreciate the details given for how different foods cook in a crock pot - gives me enough confidence to adapt some of my own stove-top recipes to the slow cooker.

One warning - the, er, hints for non-slow cooked side dishes are terrible - but that's not why I bought the book

Yes, this was the slow cooker cookbook I was looking for. Real food. Most of the ingredients, I can get. (And the others are very California specific.) The authors treat their readers as other cooks - they encourage using the recipes creatively.

I love this book. With a larger than average family and busy life, I need the help of my slow-cooker. But I hate the expense & lack of nutritional value in the cream soup recipes that seems to dominate most slow cooker cookbooks. I paid full price for this book (a rarity, if you know me), and it was worth every penny!

Didn't get a chance to make too much from this. My one quibble just from skimming recipes is that most of them fall into 6 hours or so (many quite a bit less) of cooking, which doesn't work for me on weekdays. That, and if I'm using the slow cooker, it means I'm feeling LAZY (and/or are trying to cook before work), so I can't handle a whole lot of pre-prep.

All that said, I made chili, and it was DELICIOUS. Also appreciated the tip of "poaching" frozen chicken for use later. (Would cook a little less time (was almost overdone at 6 hours), maybe add some Johnny's Seasoning Salt to the broth.)

Definitely want to get my own copy to try out more recipes.

Not impressed. Had to fix every recipe I tried.

Great recipes!
I love slow cooker recipes being a working mom.

good recipes. not the usual stuff.