If you love bread pudding, this is the ultimate with chocolate chips and fresh raspberries. Don’t overdo the bread cubes or it will come out dry. It is best right out of the slowcooker and not as good the next day. The aromas of chocolate and raspberries as it gets to the end of cooking will almost make your knees buckle. Try to resist testing it until you are quite sure it is done, or it will take much longer to finish cooking.

This is quite a special pasta sauce. The 4 hours of cooking on low makes the meat very tender. When the kids first started table foods, this was great for that reason. The flavor is explosive with the Italian sausage and fresh basil; you can vary it by using hot or mild sausage. What I really love about it is when you add the fresh basil and cream at the end and it turns a very bright orange color.

I love this recipe with a finish of orange peel, brandy, mini marshmallows and chopped pecans. Roast the pecans first and you will like this even better. I like cooking the yams this way for thanksgiving as they are fancy for company and it gives you more room in the oven or microwave for something else.

The most difficult part of this recipe is finding the 3 packages of Hunter sauce mix (they suggest Knorr) which is the basis for the rich and distinctive gravy in this dish. It takes frozen baby onions, but I prefer the taste of onion chunks. It also takes ½ pound of fresh mushrooms and I have used 1 pound and it still tasted great. My family loves it served over a large mound of mashed potatoes as recommended.

I like this flexible recipe as it takes either lean ground beef or turkey. It calls for dried apricots, but also says you can substitute raisins. It is very flavorful and I have used it in empanadas, soft tacos, and burritos and other recipes that call for picadillo. All the preparation is done at the beginning, so it is a good choice when you do not want to be tied to the stove around dinner time, and it is easy to serve the leftovers in a different way.

A reasonable slowcooker rib recipe that uses a cheap cut of meat. I don’t find it possible to trim the fat as they suggest. Instead after cooking and before adding the remaining barbeque sauce, I pour off the accumulated liquid and fat which is considerable. I like to use different barbeque sauces for a variety in taste.

I usually cringe at the idea of cooking seafood in the slow cooker, but this is another recipe that has a short cook time. I used salmon for the fish and the shrimp and bay scallops as directed. I am not a fan of cooked green pepper and so substituted extra celery. It is in a tomato and wine based sauce and contains a lot of herbs. It was very good.

This is my favorite chili recipe. The red comes from small red beans, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and canned pimentos. It is different from the standard fare with pinto beans, meat and some tomatoes. The pimentos give it more vegetable in a subtle way. I like that it takes dried beans and that they are not soaked overnight. It is also delicious with pinto beans, but takes longer to cook. I feel there is not enough liquid in the recipe to cook the beans properly, so I add 2.5 cups of water. I do not like a lot of heat so I really cut down on the spices.

This seemed like a fairly straightforward beef stew recipe with 1 cup dry red wine and a can of tomatoes. But it turned out too sour. Next time I would either try a different recipe, a different type of wine, or perhaps a teaspoon of sugar would have helped.