by Andrea
(Brighton, Sussex)
I love my slow cooker! I couldn't cook without it.
It was given to us by some dear friends when we got married in 1981 and it's still going strong. I've used it to make all kinds of tasty things.
I love to use it to make what I call double dinners. Here's one of my favourites.
1 pound of stewing beef
3 carrots roughly chopped into cubes
2 sticks of celery chopped into small slices
3 large onions chopped fairly finely
4 ounces of roughly chopped mushrooms
1 tin of tomatoes. I buy the whole ones and cut them up because it's cheaper that way.
1 beef stock cube
1 dessert spoon of oregano
1 dessert spoon of basil
1/2 dessert spoon of parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix everything together in the crock pot and put the dish into the microwave for 5 minutes to get it heated up. Once it's hot, put the dish into the slow cooker. Set the temperature to high for about 45 minutes so that the mixture starts to bubble.
Turn it down to low for about 7 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes and peas.
I put this on in the morning before I start work and by the time I get home again the main part of my dinner is ready.
I have 4 people in my family, so we eat half of it on the first day.
Then I drain off the excess liquid and make the remainder into either a pie or a cottage pie. This gives me another really easy dinner for four people. If we don't want to have the same thing twice in two days then I put the pie or cottage pie into the freezer for a day when I'm too busy to cook from scratch.