Freezing Root Veg Crock-Pot Mixtures

A while back, I picked up a ton of root vegetables and chopped them up.  I mixed them together and froze them in crock-pot sized increments.  Pretty straight forward set up.  Then I just add seasoning when I cook it.  I’ve done cranberry juice, rice vinegar, cream of mushroom soup, along with various herbs and seasonings.  Cranberry juice is amazing with sweet potatoes.  We’ve also added a ghost pepper once.  It make everything surprisingly spicy even though we didn’t eat the actual pepper.

Just put the veggies in the crock-pot, pour in your liquid of choice, add seasonings and then add water until everything is covered.  Put it on low for 8 or so hours.  You can also add in a bag of dried beans, just don’t use kidney beans, they require more prep.  This is a really laid back ‘recipe’, you just kind of throw stuff together.

Let me know what types of things you add for flavoring.

Cooking with Turnips Successfully

When I bought the turnip, the guy at the store was rather skeptical about me cooking it.  He told me he’d only heard of people shredding it and making slaw.  But I think doing it in the slow cooker was a total success.  I am also starting to fall in love with my slow cooker.

Turnip, Potato, and Carrot Stew

1 peeled turnip

4 carrots

3 russet potatoes

1 small red onion

1 tetrapack or can cream of mushroom soup

rosemary

parsley

water

green onions

Chop up the turnip, carrots, potatoes, and onion and throw them in the slow cooker.  Put the cream of mushroom soup in and then add water until you’ve basically covered all the vegetables.  Sprinkle in a bit of rosemary and parsley, I used dried, but if you have fresh, I’m sure that’s much better.  Cook on low for 6 hours.  Serve with chopped green onions on top.

If I made it again, I’d probably add more carrots, but it was pretty good.  It could’ve used a bit more flavor but I’m not sure what I should’ve added.  I would’ve liked more mushrooms than just the few in the soup, but the hero isn’t a huge mushroom fan.  Any suggestions on what I should add next time?

Multi-Bean Soup: Dried and Ready To Go

I’ve been wanting to make some convenience foods lately.  Something I can quickly throw together but is still healthy for my family.  I am also a bit limited on freezer space, so I’ve been looking into dried convenience foods.  So I made this multi-bean soup.

I know you’ve been saving all of your glass jars after you use up the products from the store.  We have a lot of them from nut butters and coconut oil.  Pro-tip, clean the labels off before you fill the jars.  You could package these in canning jars, but you might as well use these recycled jars and save the canning jars for actual canning.

Convenient Multi-Bean Soup

*makes aprox 7 jars

1 bag pinto beans

1 bag black beans

1 bag navy beans

1 bag split peas

1 bag other beans (lentils, garbanzo beans, black-eyed peas, ect.)

aprox 1/3 cup dried chopped carrots

aprox 1/3 cup dried celery

aprox 1 cup dried leeks

black pepper

Grind up the leeks and celery in a food processor.  Divide the ground leeks and celery and carrots evenly between jars.
On top of that, layer the beans in any order you like.  Pop the lid on and make a label with these instructions.

Soak overnight in 8 cups of water.  Simmer in 6 cups of water for 1 1/2 – 2 hours.

OR

Cook in slow cooker.  Cover with water and then an additional 2 inches.  Cook 8 – 10 hours on low.

My original plan with this was to use kidney beans as my fifth bean but at the last minute, learned that kidney beans have to be cooked differently than the others, so I had to fill it out with the various little bits of other beans we had.

This can be eaten as a soup as the recipe says.  You could also add meat into the slow cooker with them.  Or you could serve the whole thing over rice.  Or you could mix it with pasta sauce.  Can you think of any other ways to use this convenience food?

Veggie Spring Rolls

I was inspired to make spring rolls with edible flowers in them.  I wanted the brightly colored petals to show through the thin rice paper wrapping and look really cool.  But I have no patience and no edible flowers in bloom now.  So I made spring rolls anyways.

Spring Rolls

package of spring roll wrappers (these are made from rice paper and even though they seem intimidating, they are really easy to work with)

carrots

green onions

bell pepper

cucumber

cilantro flowers (or another edible flower if you have it!)

sriracha hot sauce

ground peanuts (unsalted)

warm water

.

Slice the vegetables into thin sticks.  I think it’s a julienne cut.

Next, you’re going to take a shallow dish (I used a frying pan) and fill about half way with warm water.  You want your dish to be large enough for the spring roll wrappers.  Take one of the spring roll wrappers and immerse it into the water.  it will take about 30 seconds and the texture with change significantly.  It will become much more flexible, almost like fabric.

When this has happened, remove the wrapper and place on top of one of your hands.  The wrapper will stick to itself, but you can gently unstick it if needed.  Place your flower(s) on the wrapper first so they will be seen best from the outside.  Then put the vegetables in a line in the middle of your palm (and the wrapper), sprinkle some ground peanuts and put a little hot sauce.  Now you’re ready to wrap it.  Fold in one side, then the other, then the bottom, then roll the whole thing up from the bottom.  This is much easier to keep in your hand and not on a plate, but I put it on a plate for the photos.

That’s it, all done.  Serve with more sriracha hot sauce for dipping.  You can use any number of things for filling.  Shredded meat, shrimp, noodles, leafy vegetables, really any vegetables, various herbs, sprouts.  Use your imagination.