Quintessentially Quilly

I cook it, Amoeba eats it.  Lately I have been cooking two crock pots at a time!  That doesn’t mean we have been eating twice as much, but we have been eating twice as good!

When my schedule gets busy I’ve always relied on a a couple of favorite crock pot soup recipes.  I also have crock pot recipes I prefer for roasting beef, pork and chicken, but until I discovered Cheryl Moeller’s cookbook, Creative Slow-Cooker Meals: Use Two Slow Cookers for Tasty and Easy Dinners, I only used multiple crock pots on my holiday buffet table.

Many of the recipes in Moeller’s book are actually brilliant suggestions.  Do you have trouble keeping enough tortillas warm and at hand when you’re serving your favorite Mexican dish?  Then check out page 175 and marvel at how easy the solution is.  If  you’re like my sister-in-law and don’t care to eat food that’s been simmering in a pot all day, this cook book is still for you.  Many of the recipes have 2 to 4 hour cook times.  Some even cook in an hour or less.

And did you know you can bake homemade bread in your crock pot? This weekend I will be baking whole wheat bread using the recipe on page 180.   I’ll let Amoeba pick dessert, Apple Upside Down Cake (p. 246),  Caramel Baked Apples (p.224) or maybe the Molten Lava Pudding (p. 253) from the gluten free section.

My new favorite crock pot recipe can be found on page 228.  It is Hungarian Goulash, and we scarfed it down with crock pot baked biscuits.  I was also pleasantly surprised by the Spaghetti recipe on page 138.   I guess what I am trying to say is, this isn’t a recipe book that will spend a lot of time languishing on the shelf.  It’ll be working in the kitchen.

~*~

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

***Special thanks to Karri James, Marketing Assistant, Harvest House Publishers for sending me a review copy.***

Cheryl Moeller is a seasoned mother and a standup comic. She is also a syndicated columnist with her own blog (www.momlaughs.blogspot.com) and contributes monthly to several online parent websites. Cheryl has coauthored two books on marriage with her husband and has written for www.mops.org and Marriage Partnership. Cheryl does comedy for parenting classes, MOPS groups, wedding or baby showers, church retreats, women’s conferences, and those in line at the grocery store.

Visit the author’s website.

From the celebrated coauthor of The Marriage Miracle comes a new kind of cookbook and a new attitude toward planning meals. With an eye toward the whole menu, not just part of it, columnist Cheryl Moeller teaches cooks to use two crockpots to easily create healthy, homemade dinners.

Don’t worry about your dinner being reduced to a mushy stew. Each of the more than 200 recipes has been taste-tested at Cheryl’s table. Join the Moeller family as you dig into:

• Harvest-time Halibut Chowder
• Salmon and Gingered Carrots
• Mediterranean Rice Pilaf
• Indian Chicken Curry
• Apricot-Pistachio Bread
• Shrimp Creole
• Rhubarb Crisp

… and many more! Perfect for the frazzled mom who never has enough time in the day, Creative Slow-Cooker Meals gives readers more time around the table with delicious, healthy, frugal, and easy meals!

Product Details:

List Price: $14.99

Spiral-bound: 272 pages

Publisher: Harvest House Publishers; Spi edition (February 1, 2012)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0736944915

ISBN-13: 978-0736944915

AND NOW…THE FIFTH CHAPTER (click on pages to enlarge):