Cooking in Slow Motion

If you love cool, crisp autumn air, then you should be here in Chicago this week.  It might hit 60 degrees as a high on a couple days,  but it is going to get down into the 30's some nights.  I can already smell the Michigan birch logs in our fireplace and taste the hot spicy apple cider or dark hot chocolate.  While out enjoying the beautiful weather, throw something into the slow cooker and have dinner ready when you arrive home.  Did you know that over 80% of American households own a slow cooker?   And did you know that the slow cooker was originally designed to be a bean cooker and it was to be called "The Beanery?" 

This big, fat wonderful cookbook has over 500 pages of recipes using fresh, wholesome ingredients.  You won't find a dozen recipes for a meal dumped in the pot with a can of soup.  Instead, the authors collected and tested recipes over a two-year period, and came up with good-tasting meals from scratch, but without all the fuss.  The slow cooker is actually the modern way to prepare food in an enclosed method, such as the Spanish olla, the French daubiere, toup, and cassole; the Italian fagioliera, the Moroccan tagine, and the Chinese sandpot.  The slow simmering of food creates steam, and retains the food natural texture and flavor. 

For this cooler weather, use some of the late fall and early winter vegetables and squashes as they lend themselves well to slow cooking.  Stuffings for Thanksgiving work wonders in the cookers, and leave your stove top and oven for other dishes.  One of my favorite cold weather breakfasts is a bowl of steaming hot oatmeal made with steel-cut oats.  Instead of standing over the stove stirring it for an hour, I make a slow cooker version before going to bed and wake up to oatmeal ready for a healthy breakfast.  This reliable convenience product fits the culinary needs of many people - working parents, stay-at-home moms or dads, and anyone who leads a busy daily life, which is most everyone.  Just plug it in and walk away. 

Whether you are a dedicated slow cooker enthusiast or a beginner, there are a huge variety of recipe ideas for you in this cookbook.  In fact, I know you will love it so much that I am making this book my giveaway cookbook for the week.

If you would like to enter the random drawing to win this great cookbook, send me your name and email address to culinarycellar@aol.com by 11:59 PM this Friday, October 21st, and a name will be randomly drawn over the weekend.  Good luck!!