Easiest breakfast in the world. Just wake up and eat--
In crockpot before bedtime:
1 cup oatmeal
1-3/4 cup water
Low heat for 6-8 hours. After 8 hours, it starts to get crusty around the edges.
Scoop into a bowl, add a couple tbsp of almond slivers for some protein, maybe a little fruit, and some milk and sugar and you've got a completely nutritious breakfast that should keep you satisfied for several hours with virtually no effort required when you're feeling all groggy in the morning. If you want, you can add raisins into the crockpot before cooking and they will plump up and sweeten the oatmeal as it cooks, but my hubby doesn't like them, so I'm not allowed to do that.
If you have one of those smaller-diameter crockpots (like, say, 2-1/2 quarts or less) you may find the oatmeal loses all texture. The recipe seems to work best with a larger-diameter crockpot, like a 4-quart. It would probably dry out too much with a 6-quart unless you doubled up the recipe.
And since I'm the soup queen, here's a couple soup recipes.
Broccoli-Cheddar soup:
First use those "boxes"/cartons of Swanson chicken broth. They're easy to open and pour and store leftover broth in. I don't know how much they contain, but they're about 8 inches high or so, you really can't mistake them. This recipe is PER CARTON OF BROTH so adjust if you are going to use more than 1 carton (or less, for that matter.) If you want, you can boil a whole chicken and strain the stock and use that, but the Swanson broth is much easier to deal with. I tend to use organic butter and veggies cuz I live in the Pacific NW and that's what we do here.
Start broth simmering in stock pot
Chop half an onion, a couple carrots, and a couple sticks of celery into fairly fine 1/4-inch "cubes" for the carrot and 1/8 inch slices for the onion and celery. The finer you chop them, the less time it will take for them to cook down and become soft.
Sautee above veggies in frying pan with small amount of butter and add to simmering broth when they begin to soften
Add 1 cup fresh chopped broccoli per carton of broth -- you don't need to chop it too fine, as it will sorta disintegrate by itself as it cooks. Allow broth with veggies to come to a high simmer/low boil and cook down as you prepare the next step.
Make a generic thick white sauce. My recipe for it is as follows (1 of these recipes per carton of broth for a thin soup, 1-1/2 per carton of broth for a thicker, creamier soup--your choice.)
1 CUP OF WHITE SAUCE:
3 Tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
1/2 Tsp salt
1 cup milk
Bring butter to a light sizzle and then gradually add the flour, stirring constantly to dissolve flour. Once flour is dissolved, reduce heat WAY down (almost to nothing) and add milk all at once, stirring constantly. DO NOT let it boil. Just keep stirring CONSTANTLY until it thickens (should take about 10-15 minutes.)
Add 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese to the white sauce and stir until cheese is melted completely. Add cheese sauce to the broth and veggies, which by this time should be cooked down enough so that the veggies are soft enough for the soup to be edible unless you left them in big chunks. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook a couple more minutes to get everything nice and mixed up and again, depending on how well the veggies have cooked down, it should be ready to serve.
Chicken-Corn Chowder
This soup will start the same way the broccoli-cheddar soup did. Simmer a carton of broth, chop up some onions, carrots and celery, sautee the veggies in a slight amount of butter, and add them to the broth to cook down.
Then sautee 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (per carton of broth) cut into slices about 1/2 inch wide and 1 inch long until chicken is thoroughly cooked. Add that to the simmering broth and veggies.
Make the white sauce as directed above (don't add the cheddar cheese at the end.) Make TWO cups of white sauce per carton of broth. This is chowder, it needs to be thick.
Add white sauce to broth/chicken/veggie mixture once thickened. Then for each carton of broth, add 2 cans of whole-kernel corn (WITH liquid) and 2 cans of creamed corn. Season to taste with salt and pepper and cook until veggies are cooked down. If you want you can use frozen corn, but canned makes for a sweeter, more corny-tasting chowder mainly because of the liquid.
I have more, but I need to get to bed. Handy tip: the chicken-broth/white sauce foundation can be used for a LOT of different soups, including clam chowder and cream of potato soup.
What can I say? I REALLY love making soup.
Edited, Jul 12th 2006 at 3:06am EDT by Ambrya
