Wednesday's Crock-Pot Creation?

Is that catchy? Hmm. Sounds a little cheesy and pathetic to me. Wednesday's are going to be a little different for awhile. Abigail's ballet class is from 5-6 in the evening. We usually eat dinner around 6, and with her school being a 25 minute drive away, I really can't rush home and make dinner then. Especially on school nights, it simply doesn't work to eat so late. If I were to take the kids out for dinner it would definitely be a budgetary blow over time, plus they'd miss dinner time with Daddy, and family dinner time is one that is very important to us. So the answer lies in the humble crock-pot.

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the crock-pot. There's usually an issue of quality when the crock-pot is involved. And so often the food cooked up starts to all taste the same. However, there are so many crock pot recipes out there. Surely one a week won't kill me. And who knows, over time, we may actually find one or two that we really enjoy. I happen to have two crock-pot cookbooks. One is published by Pillsbury, and the other is the Fix It and Forget It book. I haven't had a whole lot of success with the Fix It and Forget it book. All the recipes there are from home cooks- and some of them just aren't so good. But there are a few gems- one in particular is a cranberry pork roast that I remember. Lst night, though, I turned to Pillsbury. I have had success with this book before. There's a Smothered Buttermilk Chicken that tastes like a wonderful pot pie filling, and I really like that one. So last night, Pillsbury it was.

My number one criteria was that the recipe be with on-hand ingredients. Fortunately for me, my pantry is fairly well stocked. Mys econd criteria was that it had to be a one-step recipe. I couldn't get home at 6:45 and have to make a gravy yet or finish a sauce. The recipe I ended up choosing actually helped me out, as I've been whacking away at a jumbo cabbage all week, and this used up another 2 cups of cabbage. Chicken, Sausage, and Cabbage Stew with Wild Rice actually turned out pretty good. I did need to run to the store to pick up wild rice and Italian sausage, but I thought the end results would be worth it. It wasn't bad. The kids actually picked at it a bit and ate some of it. My only problem with it was that I had used chicken breasts, and of course, those dried out a bit, despite being put in frozen. And it wasn't really stew like. More brothy than stewish. I am still thinking on this one. It was good, and worth it to repeat it sometime, but I am wondering about the cream of mushroom soup. I couldn't identify it in the final dish flvaor wise, so there's go to be a substitution.

And like many crock-pot creations are going to be, this one was not very photogenic. So I won't share a picture. However, you can find the recipe here in the Recipe Trove.