Book Review: Easy Everyday Slow Cooker

Laughing Lemon Pie was recently offered the chance to review Easy Everyday Slow Cooker Recipes by Donna-Marie Pye. This book features 200 recipes! Including several in the breakfast and dessert category…a place I had not yet been in the realm of slow cookery.

I tried 4 recipes: Beer-Braised Beef, Braised Pot Roast with Caramelized Vegetables, 10-Alarm Turkey Chili, and Blueberry Orange Coffee Cake. All were very successful and now my freezer is happily stocked! These recipes kept my family going through many a ski-weekend this winter, and probably/hopefully some will come camping with us this summer as well.

Beer-Braised Beef had a perfectly unctuous and crave-able gravy – I used Left Hand Milk Stout for the beer…so it was basically divine. This is a new favorite. I added a on-its-last-legs red pepper from the crisper too which dissolved into the sum greater than its parts.

Braised Pot Roast with Caramelized Vegetables – I got a great cut of meat from Whole Foods Bradburn, so it was a good and good for you situation which is generally the goal around here. This was perfect over Creamy Quick Maple Polenta, what with all those juices swimming around begging to be sopped up. I also added a few oops-I-forgot-about-these potatoes that were attempting to take root in the bottom of my pantry. For me, polenta and potatoes is too much starch but I live with a neglected starchivore whose eyes lit up at the thought of potatoes AND polenta, and I generously transferred my potatoes over to his plate.

10-Alarm Turkey Chili – There were lots of great recipes in this book starring turkey, and this was one of them. A VERY family-friendly meal that elicited smiles all around the table. And as you can imagine, when they smile, I smile! This one was so good I kept forgetting to take photos of it! How’s that? By the time I’d remember to take a pic we were all staring at empty bowls!

Blueberry Orange Coffee Cake – When I run across recipes for breakfast or dessert that employ the slow cooker I usually scratch my head. I get the idea of loading up the slow cooker in the morning, working all day, and then returning home to find dinner both delicious and done. I’m there. But breakfast? Dessert? That took some pondering. I’m guessing slow cooker desserts are ideal in the case of you having too much going on in your oven? And breakfast slow cooker treats would be neat if you were going to church on Sunday morning and wanted something tasty to be done when you got home. Or in either case if you were having people over after going somewhere like church or a play or concert – you could get it all going before you left, then you and your guests would come back to a ready-made wonder!

If you like slow cookery, be sure to check out Lacy’s Budget Organic Meal Plan No. 2: Slow Cooker Pork which features not only the recipe for Easiest Slow Cooker Pork, but also 3 ideas of what to do with the lovely stuff! And Lacy’s coverage of NYT Magazine’s Mark Bittman Summertime Slow Cooker rubric is similarly awesome and inspiring.

So…What’s your favorite recipe or cookbook for this ab fab kitchen tool? What situations do you find slow cooker desserts or breakfast items ideal for? Let us know!