Crock pot ideas/Recipie

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Well, the sweetpotato/butternut soup was a big hit. Everyone loved it. The immersion blender stick worked GREAT, and I stopped blending just at the point where there wer a few nice little chunks of potato still here and there in the soup. A few chunks are nice. I had plenty left over after 6 people ate it as a dinner. I love sweet potatoes too.

I just threw some stuff in at noon today to start a lentil soup dinner.
First I cooked a few cut up bacon strips in a pan until crisp, and then added some leftover chopped ham and 1/2 chopped onion and 1/2 chopped red pepper and some garlic to the bacon- I browned this mess all together, then threw it in the crockpot along with:
1 pound of cleaned dry lentils
1 large carrot chopped
6 cups water
3 chicken bouillion cubes
salt & pepper
a few shakes of cumin (sorry Suzie!)

I'll leave it on low for about 6 hours and check after about 4 hours to see if it needs more water.
This was a really easy one for me, because the ham was from someones potluck a few nights ago that I took home, and the chopped onion and red pepper were already chopped as previous topping for the sweet potato soup, and I always keep some cut pieces of bacon in the freezer to use like this, and then toss in a pan frozen and the bacon separates and cooks up quickly. What I do is i'll buy a package of sliced bacon and with a big knife just cut it into thirds or fourths right without even taking it out of the package. Then I put each 3rd or 4th into a small ziplock bag (don't bother separating the strips at all). Then I put the smaller bags into one larger ziplock bage and keep it in the freezer for when I need some bacon pieces in beans or something but don't need a whole package of bacon. It's very handy, you just put the frozen chunk in your skillet and it starts cooking and separating into little mini bacon strips.

I guess I'm really lucky in that my DH loves having soup or stew for dinner as often as possible! Salad gives me indigestion, so this is such a good way for me to get my vegetables.

[Brandi]

I am glad my dh likes soup too. If you are on a budget you can stretch soup a long way. And it is such a great thing when you have left overs. I have a rotissari on my bbq. I like to do my chicken on that have it for dinner one night make soup out of it the next night. For some reason rotissari chicken is really good in soup.