Slow Cooker Brunswick Stew

Slow Cooker Brunswick Stew

I’d be lying if I didn’t say the past two weeks have been a bit of a challenge. It all started out with me taking a spill while ice skating with my daughter. I truly thought I just jammed my shoulder, but an x-ray two days later confirmed a break. Broke the neck of the humerus clean through, I did. The next day, my husband went in for hernia surgery (a double!) then a week after that Mohs surgery to remove cancer from his nose. Thank God for generous friends to donate their time (and cooking!) while we got back on our feet, so to speak.

I’m just in a sling (no surgery required) but I’m basically one-armed (again). Once I felt stable enough to heft out the crock pot with one hand, I was able to throw this meal together. Many thanks to my friend Mollie at The Frugal Hausfrau for the inspiration! Since I have no ability to chop anything fresh, much of this came from cans or frozen bags, but feel free to substitute with fresh. The Trader Joe’s potatoes were seasoned with oregano and thyme, so if you add fresh potatoes, add in about a 1/2 teaspoon of each of those with them.

Slow Cooker Brunswick Stew

1 pound boneless skinless chicken (breast or thighs)
1 14.5 ounce can stewed tomatoes with liquid
1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes with liquid
1 cup frozen lima beans
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 cup frozen roasted potatoes with bell pepper and onion (I used Trader Joe’s)
2 cups homemade or low sodium chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 or 4 shakes Tobasco sauce
Ground black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons spicy barbecue sauce (I used Stubb’s Spicy)

Add all ingredients to a slow cooker, and stir to combine. Cook on low 8 hours or high 4 to 6, depending on your cooker. When done, shred chicken with a fork in the pot, then serve.

p.s. This is my third fracture of the body in as many years. My friends are recommending a body bubble wrap. 😉

p.s.s. We are headed to Austin and thereabouts for a 10-day vacation for a visit with family and friends, and heading smack dab into South by Southwest (SXSW), the county’s largest film and music festival. What better way to spend time while recuperating?

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Summer Summer Summertime Fun! (and a Seafood/BBQ Fest!)

My friend caught this snap of me casting a Kwik-Fish for salmon.

Hoo Boy! Where do you start when you had a 9-day camping vacation, get thrown back into work full-time, then have so many blogs to read and laundry and housework to do? I’m slowly catching up on my social networking. I don’t have much for a recipe, per se, rather than a compilation of photos and a few tidbits of what we ate and/or caught to eat at the river on the coast. We had so much fun that I can’t even describe it! I’ll let the photos help tell the story. Enjoy!

Taco Fixin’s ~ First things first! We had an easy meal of tacos our first full day camping.

My husband flipped the other half of our dock over that’s been sitting around upside-down for six years and extended our patio. Our dock is now a deck! (The other half is still serving as a dock in the river.) Here he is screwing in the last of the railings. It made our entertaining space so much bigger!

Finishing the Deck

It made a great place to store firewood for the weekend.

Firewood Storage Place

Between us and our neighbor friends who also traveled from our home town, we caught over 50 crawdads off our docks. It made for a grand feast along with ribs, oysters, and clams that were bought at the store!

Crawdads Caught Off Our Docks

Nom nom! Here we are enjoying fresh barbecued oysters!

Enjoying and Spicing up Fresh BBQ’d Oysters!

And these were just the appetizers!

Seafood Appetizers

Here we are enjoying the feast on our new deck!

Feast on the Deck

Here my husband is pointing out the final details of how to smoke some ribs for one of our meals.

Smoking Ribs with Some Stubb’s BBQ Sauce ~ Oh Yeah!

Of course we had to bring our lovable fur-kids with us to enjoy the life on the river!

Bohdi and Hannah Banana

Rocky and Friend

The evening of 4th of July we had cheese-stuffed cheeseburgers and hot dogs.  You have to have some burgers and dogs on 4th of July! Lip-smacking good!

Cheeseburger Fixin’s

Cheese-Stuffed Cheeseburger

Here is my friend “boasting” how he slayed the Dungeness Crab we caught out in the Siletz Bay for our final dinner. That’s some good eating!

Slaying the Dungeness Crab

I had to make a much-needed pit-stop during our 5-hour crabbing trip on the bay. It was a tad windy out there but we had a grand time!

On the Siletz Bay ~ Our boat needs a new coat of paint, ya’ think?

Black Cormorant and Seagull ~ Common Seabirds Seen on the Bay

Last, one of my friends helped my husband get my owl box permanently installed in a tree on our property. I’ll have to put up a “for rent” sign to get a barn owl family to move in and rid the property of the pesky moles and mice.

Barn Owl Box in Permanent Position

Cheers to great friends, cheap beer, seafood fests and barbecues, and a good old-fashioned 4th of July! 😀

Cheers!

Seared/Baked Meatballs with Brown Gravy and Pasta

Seared/Baked Meatballs with Brown Gravy and Pasta

I saw this recipe just a couple of days ago that Pioneer Woman posted, and just drooled. I said right then and there, “I am SO making this!” The other great thing is if you go to her website and pin her post on Pinterest, Land O’ Lakes will donate 9 meals to Feeding America®, up to 2.7 million meals! I’ll give you the link down below.

My hubs helped with some of the prep, which was nice, but really there is not a lot to this. I adapted the recipe by halving it for our smaller family, and by baking the meatballs after browning them, not only because I’m terrible meatball maker, apparently, but because they were falling apart in the skillet. So what I did was after they were mostly browned on the outside, I took them out of the skillet to cool a bit, preheated the oven to 400 degrees, compacted them back into sort of round, then baked them for 15 minutes.

Meatballs and Seasonings

The plus about doing it that way is that you won’t have all that extra grease in the pan. I also omitted the beef bouillon and salt. Believe me there is enough flavor and salt in the rest of the ingredients that you will not miss it at all!

Changes I will make next time: I would use 2 1/2 cups of beef broth total. Hubby said he would have liked more gravy with it. Second would be to use flour instead of corn starch. Even though the gravy was “glossy” like the original recipe said it would be, I think the flour would make it all stick to the noodles better.

Even so, the fam ate it up and I’m good with that. The hubs called it a “glorified hamburger over noodles.” LOL! He said he would eat it again with those additional changes, though. Although the Pioneer Woman called this Salisbury Steak Meatballs, I didn’t find it to taste anything like that. Yep, a glorified hamburger. But if you want a fairly simple recipe to feed the family with ground beef and pasta, this is a great change of pace. 🙂

Seared/Baked Meatballs with Brown Gravy and Pasta
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman, Salisbury Steak Meatballs

SPECIAL NOTE: To help donate 9 meals to the hungry, click the following link and pin on Pinterest! http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2014/04/salisbury-steak-meatballs. Thank You!

1 pound ground beef
3/8 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
1/8 cup spicy brown mustard
1/8 cup ketchup
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon Mrs. Dash Table Blend (or salt)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper (or to taste)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1/2 large onion, sliced
1 tablespoon corn starch (or flour) mixed with 1/2 cup beef broth
1 1/2 to 2 cups homemade or low-sodium beef broth, divided
1/2 teaspoon additional Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons additional ketchup
1/4 teaspoon Liquid Smoke (I used Stubb’s)
8 ounces wide egg noodles
Dried minced parsley

In a medium bowl, combine the first seven ingredients and mix well with clean hands. Roll and compact into meatballs. I didn’t do such a great job of compacting them, maybe you are better. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to a large skillet, then sear over medium-high heat on all sides until browned. Remove to a plate to cool and meanwhile preheat your oven to 400 degrees. This is also a good time to put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta.

Seared Meatballs

Add one more tablespoon of butter to the skillet (with all the leftover browned burger bits) and add in the onions. Reduce heat to medium and saute them for about 10 minutes until fairly soft. While the onions are cooking, you can re-compact your meatballs up and place on a parchment or foil-lined pan in one layer and cook in oven for 15 minutes.

Baked Meatballs

Remove and set aside if your timing is off, like mine was. It’s choreography, I tell you!

Cooking the Onions with Browned Bits

Once the onions are softened, add the cornstarch or flour slurry to the skillet, scraping up all the yummy browned bits. Then add the rest of the beef broth, the additional Worcestershire and ketchup and the Liquid Smoke, then mix well, bringing up to a simmer (lower heat once it does).

Onions and Gravy

Now add your pasta to the boiling water. Cook pasta until al dente, drain, and pour onto a large plate or in bowl. The onions and  gravy should be nice and done now, so pour the mixture over the pasta, top with the meatballs, sprinkle some parsley over it, scoop into bowls, and chow down. Serve if you like with a side salad, French bread, and fruit.

Seared/Baked Meatballs with Brown Gravy and Pasta

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