I would like to begin this post with an argument. The title of carrot cake is really a misnomer. This shouldn’t be considered a dessert. It is based foremost on a VEGETABLE for goodness sake! It is a carbohydrate next and then a treat after that. It is vegetarian, kosher, can be low fat and I’d almost put the gold sticker of “healthy” on it!

Based on these clear and evident facts, I would like to share with you my recipe for crock pot carrot cake. Serve it for breakfast, after lunch, for an afternoon or evening snack or just about any point of the day. Chalk it up as doing a good deed for yourself. And trust me, this tastes soooo much better than drinking v8!

1 c. flour

1 c. oatmeal

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. applesauce

2 t. potato starch

1/4 c. apple juice

1/4 c. vegetable oil

1 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1 t. cinnamon

1 c. grated carrots

1 t. vanilla

1/2 c. raisins

1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Mix all ingredients in a separate mixing bowl by hand. Coat a loaf pan with non-stick spray and then pour batter in. Place entire loaf pan in crock pot (use oval shaped crock pot to make it fit). Cook on high until center of cake is no longer jiggly– about 2-2.5 hours. Let cool and then shmear with whipped cream cheese or cream cheese frosting.

Due to popular request, here is my recipe for Passover Puffs. These are great for making sandwiches. Yes they are made with matzah meal, but no– they don’t taste like Passover food.

If you want to add some variety, try adding more or less sugar, depending if you are serving them with sweet or savory foods. Also, you can add cheese into them before cooking or seasonings to spice them up. I like them plain, with some cream cheese and jam.

Seriously, you can live on these for the next week. Enjoy!

1 c. boiling water

1/2 c. vegetable oil

1/2 t. salt

2 t. sugar

1  c. matzah meal

1/2 c. cake meal

4 eggs

Boil water, oil and salt. Add dry ingredients, remove from heat and mix. Add eggs, mix.  Drop in big scoops (or use a muffin pan to make them pretty) onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes and then 325 for 30 minutes.

If you could smell my house right now, it is sweet and a little spicy with a creaminess swirling around with every breath. Somehow, it is like a combination of slow Sunday mornings and early weekday diner breakfasts. If you are preparing your house for the Jewish holiday of Passover– this is the ultimate way of using up the last of your chametz (leavened bread). You can use any combination of plain breads, but I’d recommend using white, wheat, french, italian… even leftover hamburger or hot dog buns if you’ve got them. Honestly, this might be for dessert, but if I had more bread to use, I would totally make it again for breakfast.

As this time of year seems to fill with baby and wedding showers in preparation for summer celebrations, I would also absolutely recommend making this to share at a brunch. Since it only takes three hours, you can start it when you wake up and be ready to entertain guests with ease.  For my male readers and/or sports fanatics– you might be spending too many nights staying up and watching March Madness basketball games; start the following day with this hearty dish to help wake you up and fill you up (and maybe even absorb that last bit of “adult beverage” festering in your belly).

So no matter what catagory you might fit into from this post, I think you all will fall in love with this sweet dish. Enjoy!

6 c. cubed bread

8 eggs, beaten

4 cups milk

1/4 c. sugar

1 t. cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

1 t. vanilla

2 T. maple syrup

1/2 c. raisins

Throw all the bread cubes into the crock pot first. Then, in a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Pour mixture onto the bread crumbs and make sure all pieces are coated. In another separate (small) bowl, mix together the raisins and maple syrup and then sprinkle the coated fruit on top of the swelling bread in the crock pot. Cook on high for 2.5 to 3 hours. You want to make sure the eggs are cooked through and there isn’t any liquid left.

Anytime I make shrimp, I always feel the need to call everyone “Bubba” and watch a repeat of Forrest Gump. I love the scene where Bubba lists off  “shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.” But Bubba forgot about one of my favorites– shrimp and grits.

Living in the South, recipes for grits are as common as dinner rolls– you can have traditional ones, flavorful ones, different recipes for breakfast, lunch or dinner and no matter how you fix it, it’s good.  Depending where you go in the South, grits take on different traditions. In Charleston, the beginning of the grits is a few pieces of bacon and that has become a common trend across the country; the smokiness of the bacon is a nice balance against the other flavors. I’ve read that grits is actually the official state food of South Carolina. Maybe we should petition to make it an official food of our whole country!

I prefer this recipe because it’s not too spicy and has a lot of flavor without being overwhelming. Keeping it simple makes it easy to serve for any meal of the day or as a special side dish. If you’d like to spice it up, add a few drops of Tobasco to the whole mix or to your own bowl.

4 cups water or chicken broth

1 c. quick-cooking grits, uncooked

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1  lb small shrimp, peeled and cleaned, vein removed

2 T. butter

1 c. shredded cheddar cheese

1 can diced tomatoes, drained

1 t. Worchestershire sauce

1/2 t. red pepper flakes (optional)

Start by putting the broth, salt and grits in the pot. Most of the cooking needs to happen to these three ingredients. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Saute the onion and garlic in the 2 tablespoons butter until it’s all tender and cooked through, then add the shrimp for another 4-5 minutes of sauteing or until the shrimp are no longer pink. Add this mixture to the grits along with the cheese, red pepper flakes and can of diced tomatoes. Cook for another hour on low.

A friend of mine wants to use her crock pot more, but has an allergy to tomatoes. After doing a little research, I agreed with her– most crock pot recipes seem to have some sort of tomato or tomato-based product in them! It is an injustice that my friend should not be able to embrace easy crock pot cooking more often. So, my next few recipes will definitely not be red.  And if it’s just that you don’t like tomatoes, these might just become some of your new favorites too.

This is an easy potato casserole that gets jazzed up by the cheese and chips.  Since the french word for potato is “pomme de terre”, I am honoring my friend Tara with this recipe for “Pomme de Tara”.   Enjoy! 🙂

(Is there a recipe you’d like to see or an ingredient you’d like to avoid?? Click on my contact page and send me a note– I’m happy to post something just for YOU!)

6-8 potatoes, diced

1 onion, chopped

4 T. butter, melted

1 c.  milk

1 c. sour cream

1-2 garlic cloves, chopped fine

1 t. parsley

salt and pepper

1 cup Cool Ranch Doritos– crunched up into little bitty pieces

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Put potatoes and onions in the crockpot first. In a separate bowl, mix together melted butter, milk,  sour cream and seasonings. Pour mixture over potatoes and onions and stir. Cook on low for 6 hours. Turn pot off and mix shredded cheese and Doritos into pot, but don’t overstir– you don’t want your soft potatoes to turn into mashed potatoes.  Feel free to top this with crumbled bacon, chives or green onions. Makes a great side dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

Growing up, my dad really liked tapioca pudding and I could never understand why he enjoyed eating eyeballs. They looks gooey and slimey and smelled like playdough.  I also remember seeing vats of it at chinese buffet restaurants and was again reminded of things like eyeballs and fish eggs.

Then I discovered that with a little love, it could actually be a delicious treat. The addition of vanilla and cinnamon make this more of a dessert, but I wouldn’t be opposed to eating it for breakfast. As an additional note—tapioca pearls are also a great way to thicken up desserts, stews and sauces, but use the small pearls in those instances.

Try serving this dish with vanilla wafers or a few little chocolate cookies that might be “thin” and “minty”. If you eat it warm, you might also like it with some pound cake and fresh fruit.

4 cups milk

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. tapioca

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 t. vanilla

1/2 t. cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

Mix everything together in the crock pot and then cook on low for 4 hours or on high for about 2 hours. Can be served warm or cold.

Good morning, friends! While this is technically breakfast and not dinner, I figured a nice, warm meal would be a good way to start Monday morning.  After reading pages of posts online, I decided that the only way to figure this recipe out would just be to avoid all the major complaints that people had about the other recipes. So, to save you the time of researching everyone else’s negativity, here is the insight and recipe that I have to share with you.

1. Cook time: I suggest 8 hours on the “keep warm” setting. Everyone else said to cook the oatmeal for 4 hours on low, but who wants to get up in the middle of the night to start breakfast?! Cooking on “keep warm” means you can wake up looking rested, too.

2. Burnt edges: The downside of crockpot cooking is the clean up. I’ve been known to let a burnt pot sit for a couple days. My mother-in-law and I used to joke that we were just letting the dirty ones soak in hopes that someone else would scrub them clean. You can buy crockpot liners which makes clean up super easy and keeps complaining and procrastination to a minimum.

3.  Oats: There areusually three types of oats at the grocery store– quick oats, regular oats and steel-cut oats. If you vary the recipe, you can use any of these, but since I have quick oats in the pantry at all times, that is what I use. Steel cut oats are probably best for crockpotting because of their tough exterior. And yes, I might have just made up that word– crockpotting does look pretty funny, but it’s grammatically correct if “to crockpot” was an actual verb.

2 c. quick oats

2 cups water

1 cup milk

1 apple, peeled, cored and diced

1/2 c. dried cranberries

1/2 c. applesauce

1/2 t. cinnamon

1 t. vanilla

1/4 c. brown sugar

Add everything to the pot and give it a stir. Set crockpot to “keep warm” setting for 8 hours or to low for 4 hours. Cook overnight for breakfast in the morning, then reheat leftovers with a little bit of water and half and half for breakfast the following day.