My Old Crock

I just have to say I love my crockpot. I don't believe I've ever used my crock is much as I've used it since I've moved into this apartment complex. It's not that I'm a lazy cooker is just that having a functioning crockpot is just so much easier especially when you're cooking things like roasts, soups and more recently I've really began to cook beans and other dry products that take a long time to soften up and cook right. I tried something new the other day just to see if it might fly. I've gotten all these cans of what are called “vegetarian beans”. They look to me like maybe beings, or white beans and their canned in a light tomato sauce with very little salt. I've gathered these beings from the sharing shelf where they've got them from USDA food surplus for low income folks. I guess nobody really likes these beans or the people just become inundated with too many cans. Anyway, I opened a can and found they wash off quite easily put in a strainer. So I opened up three cans of beans Ford experiment.

I put the beans in my crockpot with the remainder of the bacon I purchased a couple weeks ago, onion, celery and celery nubs I found working from items sent home with me from the last family function here at the facility. If you're in a couple spices IE, pepper, salt and some other things which I thought might jazz up the flavor a little and then cooked for hours and hours. I didn't need to, the beans are already cooked when I took him out of the can. Surprisingly, the results were pretty good. The only drawback of using canned beans over dried beans is that when they sit for a couple of days in the refrigerator they don't break down into the delightful bean sauce/soup that you get with reconstituted beans setting for an extended period of time. However is quite pleased and will definitely try the experiment again because I have more cans of beans to consider. Next time I believe I will throw in more vegetables. I have a couple of bags of Asian mushrooms I've held onto for years that I believe and work quite well in garbanzo beans, black beans, white beans, pinto beans etc. etc.

Like I said I was quite pleased with the way this “bean soup” turned out. This was on Sunday I did not get around to washing the crock until Wednesday morning. It was early, I was trying to get a leg on my day before my morning staff showed up so as washing up some dishes. My hands were soapy and friend lifting the crock to rinse the receptacle slipped from my hands and edge caught on the stone masonry of the sink breaking the edge off completely making the crock useless. I thought about replacing the crock but cost to be $15 and then when I researched the heating unit I found out there was a recall other had been a recall for years on this heating unit! I figure it's just as easy to buy a new crockpot/slow cooker system. And really some are priced lower than the cost replacing the crock. I possibly could pick one up at Deseret industries or other secondhand store very inexpensive but I don't know the effort would be worth the end result. I did put a small notice on the Facebook by an off that will produce anything we'll see. I will probably just order the device off Amazon and get it over with.

It's kind of funny I still have quite a bit of beans left over but not having the ability to crockpot anymore beans right now I suddenly want to. There's nothing like a crock of beans.