The smokey meaty taste of the bacon that was thrown in raw and discarded at the end added wonderful flavor without tasteless bits of meat floating around in the soup. Dried and fresh mushrooms added to the complexity of flavor. The addition of canned tomatoes and greens at the end (I substituted Mustard greens for Swiss chard) gave this bean soup a surprising fresh flavor making it more suitable for year-around dining. I used 19-bean mix as that was what I had on hand. The only change I would make next time is to cut the white mushrooms into spoon-size pieces. The quartered mushrooms were ridicuously large. Definately the best bean soup I have ever had.

The drumsticks cook perfectly and the broiling makes the additional sauce thick and sticky. Be sure you like the barbecue sauce you use as the flavor gets quite concentrated. The next time I will try their barbecue sauce recipe. This is as good as chicken wings as it makes a big batch and is more economical.

This was a well flavored meaty black bean soup. Watch the black bean recipes, I meant to make just the black beans, but ending up making the soup by accident. This is not the usual black bean soup with lemon juice, garnished with egg that I am used to. I could not see buying a ham hock when I already had a meaty ham bone in the freezer. The soup was well flavored and I like the celery and carrots. I finally have a decent chili powder, so could use the full amount. Don’t do what I did and use a meaty ham bone, I could have done with a lot less meat.

I love this dairy-free, delicious rice pudding made with light coconut milk. I leave out the garam masala. It is important to use medium rice. I had been using arborio rice, but it tasted too starchy. A real comfort food!

I loved the idea of this recipe as I hate stirring polenta for 30 minutes. It is a good recipe to use if you are around the house as it cooks from 4 to 6 hours. It seemed a little watery to me so next time I would try 7 cups of water. I used my slow cooker than runs on the cooler side and it took the longer amount of time. The next time I will try my slow cooker that runs on the hot side. I usually think that there isn't enough cheese, but I thought the 2 cups here was too much. I poured it into tupperware type containers and it has been great to have ready to go. It may sound strange, but i liked it in the Roasted Tomato Soup (The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook] and also for breakfast with a boiled egg.

This does give one a bit of a heart attack, just thinking of frying some of the packaged fried onions in butter! But it is a smallish amount of butter and you are also browning bread crumbs and you can control how much of this is put on each portion later. I love that this starts with 2 pounds of green beans and 10 ounces of fresh mushrooms. I had desperately wanted a healthier and fresher tasting alternative to the 2 cans of green beans and one can of mushroom soup recipe. But part of the packaged fried onions goes into making the mushroom gravy. Oh my but that tasted delicious as it went into the Crockpot. My green beans were very skinny and it took a long time to cut them all into 1 inch lengths, in the future I would do this preparation the day before. The preparation took me a long time; I would recommend recruiting a helper if you don’t want dinner to be delayed. I tried cooking this in my slow cooker that runs hot for the lesser amount of time in the range given. I checked the beans so often that that probably contributed to slowing down the cooking process. My husband likes crunchy green beans, but the kids are used to the mushiness of canned beans in this type of recipe and would have like them to have been cooked longer. A much superior green bean casserole overall and well worth the extra effort for a holiday meal. I like that this makes such a large amount and since the topping is applied to each portion, it is easy to preserve it for leftovers.

These were amazingly delicious. The honey mustard sticky glaze is broiled so it is thick and sticky. These disappeared with no small amount of fighting. With the price of chicken wings, these are an excellent alternative. My suggestion is to get out two crock pots and make a double batch. They are that good; otherwise you may be disappointed to have no leftovers.

An easy short time cooking (4-6 hour) potato soup. Some of the potato is mashed to increase the potato flavor. Instead I used my immersion blender in one corner of the slow cooker. Grated cheddar cheese, scallions and bacon are added on top. We thought sour cream made another nice choice.

Other than light coconut milk there is not a lot of fat and sugar added. This recipe can be made ahead and sit in the crock pot for an hour or so if you are busy. I was hoping for more intense flavors and I am not sure if I prefer it over baked sweet potatoes. I did the mashing by hand as suggested and think the lumpy texture could be improved with a food processor. If you are looking for an alternative sweet potato recipe that is not all butter, sugar, pecans, etc., then this is a good one to try. It was a very pretty dark orange contrasting nicely with the dark cilantro.

This dal dish had a lot of components including many spices. It made for a great vegetarian meal served over brown rice. I loved the color splashes from the frozen peas, tomatoes and carrots interspersed between the split-pea colored cooked lentils. The addition of coconut milk gave it some depth. Unfortunately, not a great dish to serve the unadventurous.

This unique and flavorful pasta sauce has no tomatoes, but plenty of vegetables and the lentils and Italian sausage give it a hearty delicious flavor. I choose this slow cooker recipe for the ingredients and was thinking it would make a soup. I served it over a funny big bubbly shaped pasta, and it caught a lot of the sauce and worked well. It would be great for cold weather.

The flavor is ginger-sweet tomato with a touch of heat. My boys say 10 points on a 5 point scale. You know we will be making these again. One teenage son was left alone to place all the wing parts on a rack prior to broiling. He said that was very dangerous as the chicken already tasted so great. The recipe takes 4 lb of chicken wings, I bought two 3 lb packages, which I cooked in each of 2 slow cookers, and broiled each batch separately as well. This may be the first time we have followed the broiling distance (10”) exactly according to the directions and that part worked perfectly. I suddenly realized that I could make this now that I have a soy sauce substitute. I haven’t tasted wings quite like this before, but we all agreed that they are perfect and even more delicious than the wonderful two chicken leg recipes.

A nice and simple variation on the standard recipe. The grains fluffed nicely after sitting. This is a companion recipe to the Lamb Vindaloo from the same cookbook. It served as a nice base to soak up all the liquid from the Vindaloo but would also be good as a side dish.

I made this on the occasion of a vegetarian guest. All diners, vegetarian or not seemed to really enjoy it. The fresh mushroom turned completely black in the presence of the black beans which was a little strange, but the flavor had a nice depth to it, and I loved the freshness the last minute addition of tomatoes added. I had previously tried to make a vegetarian black bean chili by leaving out the ham hock and adding liquid smoke. Needless to say, it wasn’t very good. We served the leftovers as a bean dip with melted cheddar and lots of fresh salsa on top and that was also very popular.