slowlane, I make brownie mix from the King Arthur Flour recipe on their website, as well as this whole grain pancake "mix". I just use regular whole wheat flour. They also have recipes for biscuit mix and a quick mix that can be used to make muffins. Homemade Whole-Grain Pancake Mix These pancakes are just shy of 90% whole-grain; and they're absolutely delicious, featuring the sweet-nutty taste of oats and wheat. This recipe comes courtesy of Susan Reid and Susan Miller, two of the authors of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. Thanks, ladies! 4 cups King Arthur white whole wheat flour 1 cup King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 3 1/2 cups old-fashioned or rolled oats 3 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons baking powder 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon baking soda 1 cup vegetable oil Pancakes 1 cup homemade mix 1 cup buttermilk, or a combination of plain yogurt and milk; or 3/4 cup liquid whey 1 large egg 1) To make the mix: Grind the oats in a food processor until they're chopped fine, but not a powder. 2) Put the flour, oats, and all other dry ingredients into a mixer with a paddle. Mix on slow speed, and drizzle the vegetable oil into the bowl slowly while the mixer is running. 3) Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks at room temperature, or indefinitely in the refrigerator or freezer. To make pancakes: Whisk together 1 cup of mix, 1 cup of buttermilk (or a combination of half plain yogurt and half milk; or 3/4 cup liquid whey), and 1 large egg. Don't worry if it seems thin at first: the oats will soak up the milk, and the mix will thicken a bit as it stands. 5) Let the batter stand for at least 20 minutes before cooking. Heat a lightly greased griddle to 350�F (if you've got a griddle with a temperature setting; if not, medium-hot will do). 7) Drop the batter onto it in 1/4-cupfuls (a jumbo cookie scoop works well here) to make a 4" diameter pancake. If you have English muffin rings, use them; they make a perfectly round, evenly thick pancake. 8) When the edges look dry and bubbles come to the surface without breaking (after about 2 minutes, if your griddle is the correct temperature), turn the pancake over to finish cooking on the second side, which will take about 2 minutes. 9) Serve pancakes immediately, or stack and hold in a warm oven. Yield: a batch using 1 cup of the mix will make about 5 to 8 pancakes, depending on size. Recipe summary Hands-on time: 20 mins. Baking time: 4 mins. to 8 mins. Total time: 60 mins. Yield: 10 cups dry mix; enough for 50 to 80 pancakes Tips from our bakers ◦If you're not in the habit of having buttermilk around, reconsider: you can freeze leftover buttermilk, in 1-cup portions, for future batches of pancakes. And if you don't have buttermilk, but do have buttermilk powder, add 1/4 cup buttermilk powder to the dry mix along with 1 large egg and 1 cup water or milk. ◦These pancakes hold in a low oven for half an hour without getting tough or rubbery, and they're more than willing to act as a vehicle for any kind of fruit addition. A partial list of combinations that have made successful appearances so far: peach, raspberry, banana-walnut, cheddar-apple, blueberry, and cranberry-apricot. ◦Do you enjoy making your own Greek-style, thick yogurt by draining plain yogurt through a strainer? If so, don't discard the drained-off whey; it's a great stand-in for buttermilk in this recipe. Since it's thinner than buttermilk, you'll want to use 3/4 cup whey in place of the 1 cup buttermilk called for. ◦Variation: Add 1 tablespoon orange juice to the dry mix along with the buttermilk. We've found that the acidity and sweetness of the orange juice helps mellow the tannic taste some people perceive in whole wheat flour; while the pancakes won't have any orange flavor, they may taste slightly milder to you, if you're not a fan of whole wheat flour (but still want to get more whole grains into your diet). I agree about the soup base/bouillion/etc in most of the dry soup "recipes", the sodium level is astonishing. I think some people here found a lower sodium alternative "base" but I don't much like any of them, they taste fake to me. Good luck. Annie

shaun said, "You aren't cooking the ham, you're just heating it up." But I wasn't planning to buy an already-cooked ham -- I would like info on cooking a ham. Do you think it best to only heat a cooked ham in a slow cooker, rather than cooking an uncooked one? Though my friend's Coke idea really threw me, I was thinking perhaps it was somewhat similar to the pineapple juice in your recipe, for keeping the ham moist? I'm a bit confused. Tracey -- I'm almost speechless at the thought of boiling a ham in a 2-Liter bottle of Coke! LOL I can't quite wrap my mind around that; I was already having a hard time envisioning pouring 'only' a can of Coke over the ham. Also, the recipe calls for onion on the ham. Now, I love to use onion to flavor ribs or fresh pork (as a roast, or for pulled pork BBQ sandwiches) in the slow cooker, but somehow 'cured ham' and 'onion' don't seem to go together in my mind. My friend's suggestion of brown sugar does sound more appropriate to me than onion. Nigella Lawson cooks her ham in the oven, which I don't think I'll be able to do. But one thing is certain: You have really livened up my evening! The day had been rather humdrum 'til I read your post and then read that recipe. :-)

I don't use any actual "crock" pots I use slow cookers that use a regular pot. I have had my favorite one that I use quite often since shortly after we got married, so very very very long ago! I was hosting a Tupperware party and that was the hostess gift if you had enough sales, I did. What a fabulous work horse it has been. And my mom had one exactly like it but smaller so now I have hers too. This is the one that it is like West Bend 84905 5-Quart Oblong-Shaped Slow Cooker It sits on a burner unit so you can use the pot on the stove too. I have never used the burner unit as a griddle but you can do that. My pots that are for that unit have never lost a single spot of the non stick coating it is all fully as it came. A few years ago I decided I wanted to get their bigger one which has a stainless steel pot this one West Bend 84866 6-Quart Versatility Slow Cooker with Glass Cover, Stainless Many reviews warned that the coating inside would come off very quickly. Well they were right, I used it maybe 3 times and the non stick coating came off in big pieces. So now I have a pretty pot I can not use and a nice new heating base. I should have contacted them and had them replace it with another model but I didn't. What I do now is use the base with one of my oval enamel cast iron pots and it works very well. But I would absolutely get another one of the original kind if mine every died. It must be over a hundred in slow cooker years lol. I did find another of the pots that fit on the original one at a goodwill store and snatched it up with the lid included so now I have 2 pots and 2 lids for that base. I don't think I have any other kitchen appliance that I have used as much and has lasted so long and worked perfectly for so many years. I do have an Aroma cooker that I love but mine does not have the slow cooker feature, it does have the brown and saute feature. I would love it if mine had the slow cook on it but that feature started coming out on them just after I was given mine for a Christmas gift.

My crock pot does not hold very much water, and so covering the ingredients with water did not amount to very much. The broth came out fairly intense, and so it actually needed more water. I took the turkey thighs out after 3-1/2 hours (approximately) and let them cool enough to handle, removed the meat for later use, and returned the bones and skin back to the pot for another four hours or so. I whacked the thigh bones in half before returning them. I made the split pea soup with in my pressure cooker with some of the stock, half an onion, 1/2 pound of dried split peas, one clove of garlic, about a cup of chopped celery, a couple of cayenne chilies (from my yard), some of the small pieces of turkey meat, and some vegetable soup base. After 12 minutes, they were more than done. The cayenne from my yard this year is particularly hot - it is a volunteer plant growing in a pot that used to have a Habanero chili in it, and I think it must be a hybrid of cayenne and Habanero. The chilies look like cayenne, but they are hotter than Habanero, and so I have to be careful when I use them. They dry on the plant, and so I can just harvest all of them and store them inside for later use, but I will have to label them as extra spicy. The good thing about the crock pot is that I can store the pot in the fridge, and so the excess stock is still in the pot. I'll probably freeze it, since it takes me a while to get around to using it, and I need to wait for cooler weather, which is not due for a while.