Thursday, March 20, 2014

Day 60: Zuppa Toscana (kind of)

Do I have to write about my failures?  I made a commitment, so I guess so.  Well, tonight I thought I'd repeat my recipe for zuppa toscana (day 1--wow!).  The recipe is great, the soup is great, but tonight's dinner was not great. 
I started that "Day 1" post by saying that I have a "love/hate" relationship with my crockpot.  Today there was emphasis on the "hate."  I would like a new one.  Here are my requirements: timer (or time setting), and lock for the cover (easy to transport), and LARGE (family size).  Gifts can be delivered to my home address.  ;)
Anyway, I usually only use my crockpot on days that I'm home, which I feel defeats the purpose.  In my mind, it's supposed to provide a meal for those "crazy" nights when there is no time to cook.  When I'm home all day, I have time to cook.  But when I'm at work, I'm out of my house for 9+ hours, which is just too long for a lot of slow-cooker recipes.  This soup cooks on "high" for 3-4 hours and "low" for 5-6 hours.  I've always thought the "low" setting on my crockpot was pretty hot.  So I didn't feel comfortable cooking it on "low" for so long.  I've come home to boiling dishes with burnt bottoms before while set on low.  So today, in a leap of faith, I kept the setting on "warm" all day.  And guess what, it didn't cook!  There are potatoes in this soup, and even though I diced them pretty small, they still didn't cook.  We have to eat early on Thursdays so we can get to lifegroup, but it wasn't ready in time, even though I turned it up to high when I got home.  So, Abby had a sandwich, Noah had sweet potatoes, corn, and green beans, and I had cereal.  Fail.
To add insult to injury, the recipe calls for heavy cream, which I had none.  How did I overlook that?  Note to anyone trying this recipe: 1% milk doesn't cut it!  The soup was kind of ready to be eaten for my "babysitters" (brother-in-law Eric and sister-in-law Christy) but it was too spicy for them--maybe because there was no heavy cream to help cancel some of the spice?  We like spicy things in this house, but I also want my food to be "user-friendly" if you know what I mean.
Oh well.  For now I'll stick to using my crockpot on days I'm home.  (While I wait for a special delivery, of course!) ;)

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