I invented what became known as “Crockpot Tuesday,” making use of the 3-quart crockpot (or slow cooker if that’s what you know) I got a couple of years ago for $10 at Wal-mart on Black Friday. I was inspired by A Year of Slow Cooking, a blogger I saw on Rachel Ray’s talk show who took on a food challenge to eat all crockpot, all the time for 365 days. Surely, if she could do it for that long, we could make it work for the last dozen or so episodes of LOST!

And we did! I’ve discovered that the crockpot is a very forgiving cooking medium. Give it a little meat, some veggies, a bit of liquid and seasoning, let it go on low for 8 hours, and you’re in business. Just make some rice or pasta, and you have dinner in less time than it takes to figure out what The Island really was.

I’ve come up with deliciousness like this — Crockpot chicken, rice and veggie soup. The great thing is that I don’t have a recipe for this as much as I have a method that can be altered to your liking and needs.

I seasoned chicken breast w/ garlic powder and a greek seasoning blend, added to the crock pot, then dumped lots of veggies on top (zucchini, squash, carrots, onions, green beans…I think that’s it). I added a few cups of water and 4 beef bullion cubes and cooked in all on low overnight (so 7 or 8 hours). Then, when we got home, we steamed some basmati rice and warmed up the crockpot goodness to make the soup.

I honestly feel like I’m getting away with something when I cook with my crockpot! Really, that’s all the effort it takes to make something edible (and usually tasty) quickly for dinner? And it’s almost always super inexpensive because I’m using staple ingredients I already have!

Do you slow cook? What’s your favorite crockpot recipe?

My husband and I went on a summer vacation last week, spending a couple days in San Antonio, followed by the rest of the week in Austin. Not sure if you’ve been to either, but they’re great vacation spots, whether you like to have a really active vacation with site-seeing, museums, amusement/water parks, etc., or if you’re like us and just like to truly relax on your vaca by sleeping in, eating, drinking and shopping.

Seriously, I don’t think I’ve had a more relaxing vacation! Even during our honeymoon in December, we were sort of going by an itinerary, so we had to be in certain places at certain times. On this trip, we just went wherever, whenever, and did what looked good at the time. Wingin’ it is always risky on a vacation, but in this case, it all worked out.

And, I tried to remember to photograph our food, since we spent quite a bit of time last week at awesome local restaurants and trying regional cuisine. Here’s what we ate:

We ate here twice, the South Austin Trailer Park Eatery, featuring Torchy’s Tacos (and a couple other mobile food vendors, which I’ll get to later). They serve a variety of tacos (duh) and chips with guacamole, queso and salsa. They’ve got your traditional barbacoa taco (The Democrat), my husband’s favorite, lots of breakfast tacos, shrimp and fish tacos…basically, any kind of taco you’re looking for, you can probably find here and it definitely tastes good.

Here’s what I got — a breakfast taco on a flour tortilla (right) with potatoes, beans and cheese, and a fried avocado taco on a corn tortilla, described on the menu as “hand battered fresh avocadoes fried and served With vegetarian refried beans, lettuce, pico de gallo and Cheese served on a corn tortilla with our poblano ranch sauce.” I describe it as yummy.

Every time we go to Austin, we go to Flip Happy Crepes, another mobile food vendor that sells (another duh) crepes! And these are gourmet-quality crepes, let me tell you! They even defeated Bobby Flay on Throwdown!, so you know they know what they’re doing. If you don’t get there early, you probably have to stand in a super long line and wait for forever for your food (give ‘em a break, it’s two women making crepes in a trailer, for goodness sakes!), but it is so worth it! I usually get the roasted chicken crepe w/ caramelized onions and goat cheese. Delicious.

And did I mention they have DESSERT CREPES? That’s major. This one’s my favorite — it’s nutella and banana with a sprinkle of powdered sugar. Yum.

Now, going back to the South Austin Trailer Park Eatery, home of Torchy’s Tacos, and “other mobile food vendors,” as I mentioned above…

CAKE BALLS! Have you ever heard of such a genius thing? These are from Holy Cacao, located in the trailer park eatery, and they are the greatest dessert in the history of food. They have a ton of flavors, from red velvet to peanut butter to chocolate to wedding cake…ugh, drooling while I think about it! They even have a “Diablo Ball,” chocolate cake mixed with ancho/cayenne cream cheese frosting, dipped in dark chocolate and then topped with cayenne and cocoa toasted walnuts. SO GOOD!

That’s all I photographed, but trust me when I say we ate more — a ton more!

No recipes or reviews today. Just a rant! I needed some wheat bread for my lunch, so a couple of nights ago after work, I stopped by Target (my favorite store!) to grab a loaf and possibly look at shoes and sunglasses. Possibly.

I usually get my wheat bread at Kroger, the store brand. It’s low in calories (60ish a slice) and doesn’t have any weird ingredients. But, Target of course does not carry the Kroger brand of bread. So, I picked up every single wheat bread brand and read the ingredients list — partially hydrogenated oils, corn oils, and HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP abound!

Why the heck does my bread need anything more than yeast, flour, water, etc.? It turns out that bread is one of the products in the grocery store with the most hidden ingredients. I eventually did find an okay option from Nature’s Own, but sheesh.

I’ve discovered a way to combine those two hats, by making my own pizza dough from yeast and using the dough to make an at-home, no delivery or Digiorno required pizza! I invested in a $5ish jar of yeast, which will last me quite awhile in the fridge, and followed Budget Bytes‘ recipe for pizza dough. I didn’t take step-by-step photos because she did such an awesome job illustrating the recipe on her blog, so just check that out!

I did feel like a scientist, though, as I was preparing the dough. Yeast starts out as sort of small granules that are activated with warm water. Before you know it, those little granules turned in to familiar-looking dough, and I kneaded and kneaded, then let it rise, until I had a ball ready to go.

That’s when I switched hats, from the scientist to the artist — don’t you love how you can do that with food? I rolled out my dough and took to topping it for my ultimate pizza. Here’s what I came up with:

I don’t remember the exact method of topping it, but I know that I started out with a reduced fat Boursin garlic cheese spread on half (my husband’s not keen on it, so that was for my side of the pie), followed by a canned tomato sauce all over, diced tomatoes, pepperoni, shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, fresh oregano, minced garlic…and I think that was all.

The results? Divine! Better than any pizza chain could have done, I think. And, I know exactly what went in to my dough and didn’t have to worry about any additives, preservatives or fillers. So simple and delicious.

What’s your favorite pizza topping?

It’s called What’s On My Face?, and it’s all about the latest, greatest (or maybe not so great) beauty products and tricks I’m trying. Over the past year, I’ve gotten really into makeup, hair care, etc., and love the YouTube beauty community, and since I don’t want to film videos, I thought I’d contribute by blogging. I’ve got my first giveaway going. This one is for my holy grail hair treatment products — CHI Silk Infusion and Argan Oil (check out my long hair post here) — and it’ll be open until July 30.

Check it out if you’re interested and keep watching this blog for food-related posts. I’ve got a few different ones in my head…a round up of our vacation last week to San Antonio and Austin (where we ate and shopped and ate some more) and my latest experiment with making my own dough.

But, I had a good excuse for being gone — I got married, went on my honeymoon (to DisneyWorld), and have just generally been busy. Plus, I don’t really have an easy way to snap photos of my food (I used to do it on my phone and send the images to Snapfish, but that isn’t working).

Just wanted to get a quick update out there, though. I’ve been feeling generally good about my food choices lately. I felt good about my weight for the wedding, probably 15-20 pounds lighter than the beginning of 2009. Here are a few products I haven’t been able to get enough of lately:

Pirate’s Booty in Aged White Cheddar
Kroger had a sale on this last week, and I’ve always heard a lot about it. Wow, this is like a healthier, better version of a Cheeto!

Smart Balance Omega Natural Peanut Butter
The omega-3′s in this peanut butter (and I’ve only tried the chunky) come from a blend of flaxseed and palm fruit oils. I’ve read other reviews online that the taste of this peanut butter is compromised by the additional ingredients, but I really don’t think so. This PB uses molasses for sweetness instead of artificial or refined sugar, and it just has a really fresh, peanutty taste to me. I’ve eaten a PB&J sandwich for lunch almost every day a work over the last week, and this PB is really satisfying, almost hearty.

ProBar
Some of these flavors are being discontinued, and Kroger had them on sale for $1.01 (instead of $3.xx) last week. I had been interested in trying them but could never justify the price. These aren’t designed as snacks; they’re meal replacement bars and have calorie counts that reflect that (300+). But, for me, these are great breakfasts. I rarely am in the mood for a bowl of cereal or oatmeal in the a.m., and it’s tough to juggle that kind of thing during my hour-long morning commute. But with 15 whole foods and no preservatives, I don’t feel like I’m shortchanging myself nutritionally with these bars. Plus, the taste is better than any bar I’ve tried.

That’s it for now, but I’ll really make an effort to blog on a more regular basis! Thanks for reading!

So, follow me — I’m @iamamayerfan. I added the Twitter widget to the right side of my blog, too, so if you’re visiting the site, you can see some of my latest tweets.

The lovely Stephanie at Dr. McDougall’s Right Foods was kind enough to send me a case of these awesome, tasty, healthy boxes of soups to try. I brought the Lentil one to work last week and had it for lunch and dinner (each box has about 2 servings).

So so so good! Dr. McDougall’s Ready to Serve Vegan Soups are the first carton soups with chunky ingredients, and it almost tasted homemade. Can’t wait to try the others — chunky tomato, black bean, vegetable, roasted pepper tomato, minestrone and split pea.

When I had the soup for dinner, I ate this alongside – bread with Athenos hummus and sliced tomatoes. So warm and delicious, really feels like “fall” food.

I think this was dinner a week or so ago…my fiance made a delicious pasta full of veggies, chicken, and tortellini, which I ate with bread and a salad of greens, tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar. Oh, and Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness.

And some more random eats…

Salad with pecans, cranberries, goat cheese, greens and creamy balsamic dressing.

I doctored up this Lean Cuisine Santa Fe Rice and Beans meal with some Wholly Salsa (Kroger had a great deal last week on these. They were buy one, get one free, and we found some on manager’s special for $1.49 each, so $1.49 for 2 salsas!) and tortilla chips.

Another great bargain at the grocery store is rotisserie chicken. I got a small one at Kroger for $4.99, and we ate off of it for a few days, plus I used the chicken carcass to make homemade stock (I took how to photos but will save that for another post). I ate the chicken here on bread with hummus, avocado, and tomato.

I ate some more of the chicken with avocado, tomatoes, greens and hummus as a salad.

Ate that with broccoli and carrots plus more hummus.

And I’ve also been eating a steady diet of apple sauce, raisin bread and Krema peanut butter.

So, that’s what I’ve been eating. I wish I had more time to post frequently, but like I said in my last post, my life is crazy busy with the wedding less than 30 days away!