My crock pot has been nothing but a warming vessel. At Christmas, I’ll pull it out and keep meatballs warm. That’s it. I probably never would have owned one but then Stephen saw an amazing deal on an All Clad beauty and he couldn’t resist… Especially since others had their eye on it, that day. He wasn’t going to walk away and give up his title as the saviest Marshalls shopper, EVER.

So now I have this crock pot. There are so many recipes for this contraption but none appealed to me quite like this one.
Sweet Baby Ray’s Crock Pot Chicken.

Five simple ingredients:

4-6 chicken breasts
A bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s
2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup vinegar
Red hot pepper flakes (as much or as little as you’d like)

Mix the above ingredients together.

Pour it over the chicken and cook on low for 4-6 hours. I let mine go for the full 6 hours and it was still juicy… And fork tender. I’d imagine shredding it for a sandwich would be pretty amazing (if I ate leftovers).

Sounds nice and easy, right? Well that thoroughly pissed me off because what was I supposed to do the rest of the day?? Watch this cook? There had to be a way to make this meal complicated (OK, not complicated but time-consuming). Well my family came to my rescue.

Mum: Hiiiiii AME! What’s the plan? Want to meet your brothers and sisters for lunch?

Me: Nah, I’m thinking of making this a day of cooking so if you guys want to do lunch, count me out.

….. Ten minutes later

James: Well I’m playing event coordinator and trying to organize lunch but word on the street is you’re cooking dinner so we’ll all see you there at 6.

GAME ON!!

Appetizer: I pulled out of the freezer the chicken I’d made a few weeks ago for the lettuce cups. Thawed it and heated it up in a skillet. Made the dipping sauce and instructed someone to please bring me some Boston Bib lettuce. Done.

Dessert: Instructed Lara to bring ice cream from Picco (www.piccorestaurant.com), made profiteroles and hot fudge. Done.

Side dishes: So I spent a good hour searching the interweb for a good green bean recipe. Stephen is a purists and just wants them steamed but that’s a two minute activity and I had a whole day to fill.

I settled on pioneer woman’s recipe. Pretty straight forward. Saute an onion in 2 Tbl of bacon grease (I opted for butter), add the washed and trimmed beans to the skillet and stir until the beans turn bright green (2 minutes).

Add a half cup of chicken broth, a diced red bell pepper, turn the gas down to a simmer, partially cover and let them go for 20 minutes. Done

Now for the potatoes.

Boil small red potatoes until you can pierce them with a fork.

Lay them out on a cookie sheet and gently mash each one, individually.

Salt and pepper them. Drizzle olive oil over the batch and add some diced chives and grated parm.

Bake for 20 minutes at 425. Next time I’ll experiment with crumbled bacon and a bit of sour cream.

OK, last but not least, this meal needed bread. To remedy that problem, I turned to Ina Garten’s popover recipe. I didn’t get a chance to snap pix but they’re damn good and very easy to make.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/popovers-recipe.html

OK, think that covers it!! I gleefully spent 5 hours in the kitchen and couldn’t have been happier.