Anything in a slow cooker or oven on low all day. Stew,chili, Casseroles that you can make ahead of time and pop in the oven when you have 5 minutes of feeling better! LOL REMEMBER not to over do things cause you will pay for it! I just made this last night. I used a fresh chicken breast cut into cubes and did the evaporated milk instead of the half and half. I also instead of cooking on low all day, made it about 12-12:30 and cooked it on high til 5:30, added the evap milk and ate. It was still just a little thick for my taste so I poured regular milk in it to thin it down a bit. It was easy and pretty good. > Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup > Take 15 minutes to toss 7 easy ingredients into a slow cooker, and > you'll have a warm and delicious soup to satisfy hungry appetites. > > Prep Time:15 min > Start to Finish:7 hr 45 min > Makes:8 servings > > > > > Rate/Review Recipe > > 1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs (5 thighs), cut into 1-inch > pieces > 1/2 cup uncooked wild rice > 1/4 cup fresh or frozen chopped onions > 2 cans (10 3/4 oz each) condensed cream of potato soup > 1 can (14 oz) roasted garlic-seasoned chicken broth > 2 cups frozen sliced carrots > 1 cup half-and-half > > > 1. Place chicken in 3 1/2- to 4-quart slow cooker. In large bowl, mix > wild rice, onions, soup, broth and carrots; pour over chicken. > 2. Cover; cook on Low heat setting 7 to 8 hours. > 3. Stir in half-and-half. Increase heat setting to High. Cover; cook > 15 to 30 minutes longer or until hot. > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Nutrition Information > > > 1 Serving: Calories 250 (Calories from Fat 90); Total Fat 10g (Saturated > Fat > 4 1/2g, Trans Fat 0g); Cholesterol 50mg; Sodium 820mg; Total Carbohydrate > 23g (Dietary Fiber 2g, Sugars 4g); Protein 17g Percent Daily Value*: > Vitamin > A 110%; Vitamin C 4%; Calcium 10%; Iron 10% Exchanges: 1 Starch; 0 Other > Carbohydrate; 1 Vegetable; 2 Medium-Fat Meat Carbohydrate Choices: 1 1/2 > *Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. > > > > Health Twist > Love this soup but want to trim the fat and calories? Reduce the > calories to 230 and the fat to 7 grams per serving by using a 12-ounce can > of evaporated fat-free milk instead of the half-and-half. > Substitution > If you prefer, use 1 pound of boneless skinless chicken breasts for > the thighs. And if your chicken broth doesn't have roasted garlic, just > stir > 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder into regular chicken broth. Now for tonight I am making a HALF batch of this: (but I will let ya know if its any good, its new recipe) Slow Cooker Cheesy Ravioli Casserole (Crowd Size) Come home to a ready-to-serve casserole just right for toting to an evening potluck. Prep Time:15 min Start to Finish:5 hr 15 min Makes:12 servings 22 Ratings 10 Reviews Read Reviews Rate/Review Recipe 1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil 1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup) 1 large clove garlic, finely chopped 1 can (26 ounces) four cheese-flavored spaghetti sauce 1 can (15 ounces) tomato sauce 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning 2 packages (25 ounces each) frozen beef-filled ravioli 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (8 ounces) 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley In 10-inch skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Cook onion and garlic in oil about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onion is tender. Stir in spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce and Italian seasoning. Place 1 cup of the sauce mixture in bottom of 5- to 6-quart slow cooker. Add 1 package frozen ravioli; top with 1 cup of the cheese. Top with remaining package of ravioli; top with remaining 1 cup cheese. Pour remaining sauce mixture over top. Cover and cook on low heat setting 5 to 7 hours or until ravioli are tender. Sprinkle with parsley Wish I was closer, I'd fix you a meal and bring it over Stace!

I'll be the odd (wo)man out here. I love to cook, but I've been doing since I was 11 yrs old, and frankly cooking 7 days a week is drudgery. Add in breakfast and/or lunch and it's a pain. I loved my career and it wasn't unusual to be gone 12-13 hrs, 5 days/wk. Weekends were crammed with errands and family/friends. We are fortunate to live in one of the greatest restaurant areas in the world: the San Francisco Bay Area. There is great food at all price points. You can eat for $5 or $500, but either way you could eat well -- check out NYTimes' Seth Kugel's visit last month to Portland, where he gave himself an $8/meal budget and was wowed by the amazing meals he got from the local food trucks. When I worked it wasn't unusual for us to go out 4-5x/wk. The question was, "What country do you want to eat today?" We could do Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cal-Mex, American, Moroccan, Korean, French, Italian, Burmese, Greek, and more - all within 1 mile walk, and usually several iterations of each one (you couldn't even count how many Chinese restaurants of various regionalities there were). Now we're retired. We have both money and time. When I feel like cooking, I make the dishes that took too much time when I was working - long slow braises or slow-roasting, or dishes that just require an enormous amount of prep. But we still go out 3-5x/wk, When we travel around the area as we like to do (we just got back from Napa last week and will be in Sonoma next month), we travel specifically to eat. In Napa, we had amazing, elegant, fabulous Cal-French food that I would never bother cooking in a million years. There were brilliant combinations, such as the black cod served with a seafood sabayon, roasted matsutake mushrooms, and the tiniest perfect baby turnips that had no bitterness at all. Or an amazing carpaccio, dressed with nothing but a touch of Meyer lemon EVOO. I cook when I want to, but dining out is simply more fun. No shopping, no prep, no dirty dishes, no leftovers, no fuss. Yes, I could grow my own piquillo peppers and buy Ceylon cinnamon -- but why? I'd rather go to the great Spanish tapas restaurant a few minutes away and have them roast, skin and stuff the peppers with fresh chevre; roast, skin and sprinkle the cinnamon on fresh beets; and make that perfect paella 'tradicionale" for my spouse and the dreamy Fideua Negre, noodle paella with squid ink, for me. I mean, do I seriously want to buy a pressure cooker just for my octopus? Why should I bother cleaning and skinning a cephalopod when there's at least a dozen restaurants that make fabulous smoke-grilled octopus within 5 miles of our house? Should I want to soak the bacalhau in 8 changes of water over two days? It would just be so much easier to go to the Cuban or Portuguese or Italian restaurants, and have a couple of orders of really amazing salt cod fritters or roasted salt cod with polenta, instead! The take-out food these days is so much better quality than before. One place offers a marvelous frozen (bake it at home) chicken pot pie - perfect butter pastry, organic chicken breast and organic vegetables - all they offer is either a fried chicken sandwich on artisanal roll with housemade slaw, or the pot pie. That's it; they open 4 days/wk for 3 hrs a day and then go home to raise their baby daughter. Lines out the door every day. One specialty market with various food sellers (we lust after their pork tomahawk chop - wowie! What a hunk of meat!) has lovely little frittatas with artichoke, red pepper and Gruyere. My DH hates frittatas, so I buy one for myself while he gets the penne with San Marco marinara and Kurobuta pork meatballs; that way we both win. I loathe Food Network. When I write up reviews on the restaurants we've eaten at (I do it for my own archives, not to publish them), I often refer negatively to "Food Network chefs" - cooks who slop the food out as fast as possible, in ridiculous combinations of too many ingredients. They don't know the difference between a sauce Amoricaine and a Bordelaise. Bleh. It's taken me decades to get my DH off the crappy food he grew up with. But he's finally come around, so that when we drop $$$$ on the perfect dinner at Etoile or Spoonbar or La Folie, he says, "That was absolutely worth every penny." And you know, it is. Here is a link that might be useful: NYTimes Frugal Traveler does Portland on the cheap This post was edited by jkom51 on Wed, Sep 10, 14 at 0:17

Quick report. Meal was a big hit. But, after the day we'd had, so was bed. Ride started at Welches OR and ended at Government Camp OR, which is about 15 miles east along Hwy 26 if you are sensible, but instead we went in the other direction, north into the National Forest on logging roads, and proceeded to ride all the way around Mount Hood, a sort of clockwise circuit, and reach Government Camp from the opposite side. The 42 miles of twisting roads through the forest were gorgeous, with remarkable views, thankfully much shade, generally decent road surface, and we saw two cars in 8 hours. I enjoyed seeing Mount Hood from the back side, a view that not that many people see. But there was also no potable water, no cellphone coverage, several miles of gravel road, and what seemed like endless climbing. There were short steep descents but you couldn't really bomb down them, because the road did have the occasional monster hole or collapsed area, which might be hidden in a patch of deep shadow. And it was 102F up there, according to someone's fancy bike computer. I ran out of water about fifteen miles from the first civilization in Parkdale, got dehydrated, and despite drinking a ton of water and Gatorade at the little grocery store there, my thighs and calves started cramping up on the next stretch, which was a 10 mile climb to reach Hwy 35. I was in my very lowest gear, trying to turn the pedals with as little force as possible, feeling the muscles get tight. Sometimes I had charley horses that I had to pedal through. A couple times I had to get off the bike and sit down until my muscles stopped seizing up. We got to Hwy 35 with another 20 miles of climbing ahead. This is a pretty desolate two lane highway, with no cellphone coverage for most of the way and, on Saturday around 6 pm, maybe one car every 5 or 10 minutes. Several miles down the highway, one of our group had her rear tire blow out. Not the tube, but the tire casing itself. It had been sliced open on a gravel stretch, back in the forest. Our patch held for 50 miles but now the tire had a pencil sized hole worn in the casing, Mary Jean's bike was unrideable, and the sun was getting low. The other three rode ahead to find a cellphone signal and call AAA to retrieve her, and also call her husband to see if he was close enough to come get her. Rick had ferried our clothes and food to the condo that morning, then returned to Portland, due to return late that night. I stayed with Mary Jean, for entirely selfish motives - I figured that the AAA driver who picked her up would surely give me a ride too. With nothing to do, we tried patching the tire casing again, rode half a mile, blew out the re-patch, and started walking, wondering how many hours the others would have to ride to find cell coverage and how busy AAA was on a Saturday night and when the sun would set. It was getting dusk now. A pickup truck approached and slowed, the driver peered at us, and drove on. Several minutes later the truck returned from the other direction, and he was one of the local AAA drivers, off duty, looking for us on his way home. We arrived at the cabin right when our companions rode up. They had ridden to an area with a single cellphone "bar" about forty minutes after leaving us, spent another 15 minutes trying to explain the situation to AAA over a garbled connection, and the closest AAA truck on duty was busy in Sandy, over an hour away. We'd have been out there after dark. Our driver told us that the area where we had been walking was a sort of local Bermuda Triangle, populated with bear and cougar, where people disappeared mysteriously. Most recently, a father and his adult son, hiking, had never been seen again. The thing is, all the locals agree, a cougar wouldn't take on two adult men. So, as you can see, the dinner that night didn't have to be good to be good, if you see what I mean. But it was good too. No-one was awake enough for the swimming pool or hot tub. The next morning I left the others - they were staying in the condo all weekend - and rode the 15 miles down Hwy 26 to my car in Welches. That was a great descent, curvy two lane highway, all downhill, good pavement. Get in a low tuck and you can hit 60 mph on a road like that, in spots you can actually keep up with cars. I didn't, because I was carrying a bag of clothes over my shoulder. I was dehydrated for a day afterwards and my legs still feel heavy. I have a list of precautions to take if I ever ride in the backcountry again. And I made some new friends. So it was a nice day after all.

I agree. When I didn't have a freezer, I had a roommate who would eat everything up before we got tired of it. Freezers, especially ones that don't self defrost or top of the line ones that have evaporators rather than defrosting, are fantastic. Vacuum sealers help keep the food nice (less water migration) longer, especially when there's an evaporator. There are some dishes that still have to be engineered. Any meat/poultry that has a goopy sauce freezes better more towards the naked, with the sauce frozen separately, or made fresh the day of heating. Some proteins that were meant originally to be sauce free, heat after freezing better with a sauce added. This is a rewarming issue, rather than a freezer issue, however, so the same could be said for your batch cooking in general. Change it up and add a sauce and it may warm up better and will taste different. Cooked proteins freeze well, especially when vacuum sealed, or wrapped well in freezer paper. Less well when just shoved in a zipper bag. Cheese freezes very well, as do most breads and grains. Soup freezes well. Stew freezes, but the vegetables go mushy, so if you're making a big pot of stew, you can pull the meat and some juice out when the meat is cooked but not fully tender yet, before you put in the vegetables that are meant to be seen (not part of the gravy), and freeze that. Finish it cooking after you thaw and add vegetables then. As to keeping batch cooking going all week, rather than freezing, plan ahead what it's going to be. Summer is easier because you can do cold as well as hot. So a couple of chickens can be roast chicken one night, chicken parts with a sauce the next night, chicken salad the night after that, and the scraps can be thrown into an omelette. But you still have to do some work. If you want it to be just grab and go, perhaps vary the condiments, and accompaniments, but that's about all you can do on the fly.