What's For Dinner...

So, I don't really have anything else to blog about right now. Well...that's not entirely true, but I'm not really in the mood to be clever or witty (yes, I usually am trying to be clever and witty) right now, so thought I'd stick with something easy. I figured I might as well jump on the ol' recipe sharing bandwagon, since everyone else seems to share recipes on their blogs (and, no, I wouldn't jump off a bridge if they were all doing it too...well, unless I had a bungee cord attached to me, 'cause I think than it would be pretty darn fun).
So, I talked before about the eating habits of my kids, and how they eat pretty well. Oh, and update on that post; Miss Avalee has finally decided to start eating and has been sampling a pretty wide variety of fruits and veggies. Yay! So, I've been really trying to incorporate healthy meals, and in the last year have started doing a lot of Crock Pot cooking to help me out.
Since we've got the kids in swim lessons Tuesdays and Thursdays, we don't get home until after 7PM. Dinner has to be something that's quick to throw together, or even better, already cooked. That's where the Crock Pot comes in. I've been able to get our meals put together and slow cook away, until we get home, and then kit's ready to eat!
Today, I opted for 40 garlic clove chicken meal. Our family loves, like lu.huves, garlic! Zavion has actually been known to eat the pickled garlic from the bottom of our canned pickles (he loves pickles too). So, this recipe was perfect for us!
I got this recipe from, A Year of Slow Cooking, which is one of my favorite resources for Crock Pot recipes. This is the recipe from the site, although I didn't follow it exactly...

Ingredients
3-4 pounds chicken
1 large onion, sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon pepper
20-40 garlic cloves, peeled, but intact

Directions

Using a 6 quart oval slow cooker; Place onion slices on the bottom of the stoneware insert. In a large mixing bowl, toss chicken parts with olive oil, salt, paprika, pepper, and all of the garlic cloves. Pour into slow cooker, on top of the onion.

Do not add water.

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4-6.

So, three to four pounds of chicken is a lot. A lot. Even with my cyclist Hungry-Man hubby, three chicken breasts (usually a couple pounds) is enough for us (I buy packages of chicken on a good sale, then divide it up, usually into three breasts per baggie.) So, I just pulled out the frozen breasts I had and added the ingredients to the baggie, shook it up and plopped it in, on top of the onions.
We thought this was pretty tasty, although could use a bit more flavor. I think in addition to the paprika, I might add in some chili powder or maybe even sub the kosher salt for seasoned salt. I also used my smaller Crock Pot (I have the whole family; the 6quart, 4quart and Little Dipper. My ultimate goal is to one day have them all cooking something simultaneously.) to 'bake' some potatoes & they turned out very yummy (even the hubby ate two, and he's not big on baked potatoes). So, here's that 'recipe.'

Ingredients
3-4 potatoes (I just used regular russet potatoes; if you use the baking potatoes, you could do fewer)
Salt
Butter

Directions
Prick your potatoes all over with a fork (you don't want your lid to come flying off and exploding potatoes to shoot out).
Run generously with butter
Sprinkle with a little salt (probably don't let your four year old 'help' with the salt, otherwise you'll have to add another step of scraping off the excess salt).
In a 4quart slow cooker (yes, only because the big guy was in use...if you want to make baked potatoes for the entire neighborhood, by all means...go for the big Daddy) add your potatoes. I ended up with two layers, and tried to criss cross them; I don't know if that's necessary, but it made me feel like I knew what I was doing.
Cook on high for 4-5 hours.

We also added a yummy fresh-from-our-own-garden salad to the meal, which made it all perfect!