My Crock Pots

Oh my, this is going to be a long one. But it's going to be FUN, too! Ok, a little known fact about moi: I own three crock pots. Yep, three. Here's the story. I wanted a crock pot...oh I don't know, a few years back. When I want something, Jason usually makes sure I end up getting it during the holidays or for my birthday or something. So, when I said I wanted a crock pot, he got me one. I LOVE this crock pot. It's enormous (I think it's the largest size you can find). (I'll add in pics later on in this post...you're going to see two out of the three crock pots today anyway.)

Then, when it looked like my first crock pot's crock was cracking (say that 10 times fast), I asked for a replacement crock. Jason couldn't find one, so he got me a new crock pot like this one (this would be the one I'm not using today).

THEN, I decided I wanted a smaller crock pot because, my goodness, there's only two of us. I love cooking extra and freezing, but it's not always necessary. So, he got me a smaller one.

Now for the real meat of this post. I'm in a very crock-potty mood today, so I decided to throw out some recipes. The first one, Cabbage Steup, is a recipe my bff gave me. She has since found a similar recipe online, but this is her own creation. The second one is a Chili recipe that I kind of mixed and matched from two recipes I found online (years ago...I have no clue where I found them), so it's kinda my own recipe.

Alrighty then, without further ado:
Cabbage Steup (btw, it's kinda like stew, and kinda like soup...)

32 oz. vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
1 medium or large cabbage, chopped
2 - 28 oz cans or 1 - 56 oz can of chunky tomato sauce
28 oz water
14 oz can kidney beans, drained
1 can sliced carrots, drained
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 can cut green beans, drained
1 6 oz. can tomato paste

Optional ingredients:
3-4 chicken breasts
3-4 medium/large potatoes

Add broth, cabbage, tomato sauce, and water to a large crock pot (you need the biggest crock pot possible, or two smaller crock pots) (add potatoes and chicken at this time, too). Cook in crock pot until cabbage is 3.4 cooked (looks somewhat transparent). Add remaining ingredients and salt, pepper, garlic, and bay leaves and cook for another 1-2 hours or until cabbage is soft (and chicken and potatoes are cooked).

Now, I personally do it a little differently. I apologize that I didn't get pictures from the beginning, but I didn't think about it until I already had a few ingredients in the pot. So, here's what I did. First, I prefer to not use canned stuff if I don't have to, so I soaked some dry kidney beans over night, and put a couple cups (give or take) in the crock pot. I also have this enormous stockpile of dried vegetables that I like to throw in everything so that I can use it up. I also add an onion. So, here's the cabbage steup that far, along with the first half of the cabbage:
Now it may not look like there's a lot of cabbage in there, but when you add in the second half, it nearly fills up the crock:
I also add raw carrots at the beginning instead of canned (and I'd put in raw corn and green beans, too, if I had them):
And of course, I didn't have tomato sauce (I could have sworn we had a couple cans, but whatever), so I just used 2 cans of diced tomatoes and 2 cans of tomato paste:
I also didn't have any broth, so I used vegetable boillion cubes and added some water. So, once everything is in the crock, mix it up as well as you can without spilling stuff all over (because at this point, it's VERY full), and set it to cook:

Ok, now on to the chili. Since I messed around with this recipe so much, I'm not going to put the actual recipe up, I'm just going to explain what I did. I soaked enough beans last night to make both recipes, so I threw in the beans, dried veggies (the ones I'm using up), a packet of chili seasoning (or you can use cumin, pepper, chili powder, and salt), and one onion before my first picture was taken:
Then I added 2 cans of diced tomatoes:
And some water (about a cup, give or take), mixed it all up, and set it to cook, too:
This recipe could easily be doubled even in my little crock pot...I just keep forgetting to actually do it. Anyway, that's what I spent my morning on. Oh yeah, and making laundry soap (couldn't start the laundry until that was made because *ahem* Jason didn't tell me - again - that we were out of laundry soap *tapping my foot*). Now that dinner is cooking, I've got to get busy! Have a fabulous day!

ETA: I forgot to mention, we're "mostly" vegetarian, so instead of ground beef, I'll be adding TVP to the chili later on. You can add ground beef or whatever meat you want to this. The recipe I used that had ground beef in it was not for the crock pot, so I don't know whether you should add raw ground beef at the beginning, or cook it separately and add it at the end.