Crock Pot Cooking

Tonight's main dish is from this book (with a few subtle changes)

.

I won this a while ago on E-Bay and looked through it, but never did much cooking from it. I dug it out again, and there are so many things I want to try. Tonight, we're having stew.

.

Since I'll be adding some wine to the stew, I figured I'd better taste it first to make sure it was OK. A glass of wine did wonders when I made "fish sticks" so why not again?

.

I started with some rutabaga (or yellow turnip - what ever you want to call it), cut into chunks.

.

Then added some carrots.

.

Can't have a stew without lots of spuds! (remember, I'm of Irish descent). Add a couple of bay leaves.

Meanwhile, season and saute some seitan chunks until lightly browned. I had a few pieces in the freezer leftover from a batch I made using the recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance.

Dump that on top of the potatoes.

.

Saute some chopped onions, then when soft & transulcent and just slightly browned, add some minced garlic. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes.

Sprinkle that on top of the seitan. Pour on some vegetable broth, tamari, red wine, spices, salt & pepper. Put on the lid and let cook on high for about 4-6 hours.

Perfect timing!

Then I added some fresh green beans and stirred those in so they would get into the cooking broth. Cover and let cook for about an hour.

Next up, some frozen peas. I also stirred those in and let cook for 1/2 an hour. While that was doing it's thing, I made biscuits.

This is a tried & true recipe that I got out of my Betty Crocker cookbook. (I have the 1978 edition) I've had this cookbook for 20+ years and I use it A LOT. It's not veg*n by any means, but many of the recipes are easily adapted.

Here I've cut the shortening into the flour mixture with my wonderful, handy-dandy Pampered Chef pasty blender. Add some "milk", stir it all up and roll out the dough.

Cut out the biscuits. You can use a fancy cutter if you like, but I just used a regular drinking glass and made round ones.

Here they are all cut out and ready to go into the oven. I like baking with my wonderful, handy-dandy Pampered Chef baking stone.

Here they are just out of the oven. Biscuits are best when they are fresh, hot & slathered with margarine.

They went extremely well with the stew - which turned out delicious.

The slow cooking gives it such a wonderful flavour.

A nice hearty stew calls for a rather robust wine. One good thing about working at the LCBO is being able to grab wines you want as soon as they come in & before they're sold out. When I saw that this baby was coming in, I knew I had to try it.





Not only are Frey Wines organic, they are also vegan. We don't get these in often and they go pretty quick. This Petite Sirah was very dark, with an intense jammy quality and a bit of spice. It was very delicious and I was wishing I'd bought 2 bottles.

Dessert is brought to you by The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Jim bought me this book when I first switched my diet. I've made a few things out of it and while I was looking for this particular recipe, I found myself wondering why I don't use this book more often. Sure, it gets a bad rap for using eggs, cheese & too much fat, but it's easy to play around with that stuff and cut back on the bad things. Anyhow, I've made this before and I love it!

.

I present Apple Pie With Oatmeal Cookie Crust. This pie is so good. If you want the recipe, it can be found here.

Here's an inside shot. I served this plain, but it is scrumptious with vanilla ice cream.

Is that not a great winter meal?