ksmith | Crock pottery

So two months ago, I ordered a Cuisinart slow cooker from ikitchen.com. I knew they were slow. I had already cancelled one order from them because a month had passed with no delivery--come to think, it was another slow cooker. But they answered emails, their prices were lower than average, and the model I first ordered was very popular and thus likely to be OOS. So I gave them another chance, and placed another order a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving.

Two months later, I finally gave up and cancelled it. I did receive part of the order a couple of days before Christmas, but no slow cooker. Finally, after a couple of more rounds of emailing, I gave up. Still bound and determined to shop online, I ordered this slow cooker from Overstock.com. It's a little bigger than I'd like, but it's attractive and programmable and shipping was only $1. Yes, I did find this same crockpot for $35 elsewhere, but shipping was $20. Funny how those low low prices can be wiped out by the shipping charges.

But after all this, I'm afraid ikitchen.com has lost a customer. Yes, they state on their website that products can take a while to arrive, but two months for a crockpot is a little ridiculous.

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Last year, my crock pot blew up just as we were starting to cook for a party we were holding later that day. (By "blew up," I mean, "it spit sparks and caused the circuit breaker to flip." The cord had gotten frayed near the base, and we hadn't noticed.)

I drove to Target, bought one, and drove home. We didn't have the option of waiting even a day. So yeah, two months seems just a hair excessive. There is very little I need enough to buy that I feel like I can wait two months to get. (Well, end-of-season overstocks from Land's End that my kids won't be wearing until next year. Those would be okay. But Land's End stuff usually arrives within 72 hours.)

I was in the midst of Book and wasn't all that interested at the time, but now I have a couple of slow cooker cookbooks on the way and a pot roast in the freezer and I would really like some decent soup. So. I think Overstocks.com is a little faster than the other place.

Go to Target, or if you can stand it, Wally-Mart. Get yer instant gratification.

I find it horribly funny that your slow cookers are so very, very, very slow to arrive. They're supposed to cook slow, not arrive slow!

I made kitchen-sink stew in mine the other day. Started with a bag of navy beans soaked overnight, and a leftover ham bone. Threw in chopped onion, garlic, chopped fresh herbs (flat parsley, thyme, basil), diced potatoes, sliced carrots and celery, and half a leftover Savoy cabbage sliced up. Topped off with 6 cups of water (that's for the 5qt. size). Cooked on High for a couple of hours, then on Low all day. Decided it needed something more, so added a can of Mexican stewed tomatoes and a can of diced tomatoes. Oh yeah baby. The result, two days later, is a thick, hearty, savory stew with zings of interesting flavor.

Next time I may get a ham hock and see how that tastes. I used the bone from a sugar-cured ham this time, which had been cooked with whole cloves and beer.

That stew sounds really good. I was rather disappointed in my turkey stock--I think I am a little too afraid of adding the salt, and that leaves me with flat stock. I added a can of black bean soup to goose it up, and it helped, but I'm still not happy.

Maybe I will try ham and bean next time.

Instead of salt, try fresh herbs. Flat-leaf parsley and thyme and basil will give you a nice clean flavor without the sodium. I don't care for fresh sage, but them as likes it say it's great in stock. I have a recipe for turkey soup that uses a splash of soy sauce--that is really good--and there's also the citrus option: squeeze in some lime or lemon. Then grind in some fresh black pepper.

The ham stew was a little too flat and oniony (I don't like onions all that well) until I added the tomatoes. That zinged it right up.

I will keep more fresh herbs on hand when the slow cooker shows up (Overstock.com just emailed me that shipment is pending). Since I usually don't cook during the week, any supply of fresh herbs that I have on hands tends to go off before I use them up.

I went a little nuts in the fall and bought some potted herbs and stuck them on the windowsill. Now I have a constant supply of rosemary, thyme, and basil. Otherwise I had the same problem--would buy them, not use them, and lose them.

Dried herbs work, too. Thyme is good as a salt substitute: it's got that sharp, almost salty flavor on its own. Ground cumin, if you like the taste, can do wonders for a turkey or chicken stock. Just a pinch will brighten it right up.

Dried herbs, I've got. I had an oregano plant that I harvested over the summer, which resulted in more dried oregano than I know what to do with. I didn't do anything with the thyme plant I had, which was a mistake. Then there was the rosemary shrub, which is on its last legs. The leaves/needles were falling off, and I was just vacuuming them up until I realized, idiot, just harvest them. So now I have more dried rosemary than I'll use in a year. I hope it keeps--the stuff you harvest yourself beats the pants off the bottled store stuff.

If I had better lighting, or a window box, I'd try to grow herbs year-round.

Dried herbs keep pretty much forever in the freezer.

I am having thoughts of window boxes myself. The kitchen is on the south side, so has optimal light for plants.

You are allowed to add salt to the bowl, you know. I often make soup with very little salt, because I'm going to reduce it and don't want it to be too salty, and then add salt in the bowl.

As mentioned below, diced tomatatoes & chilis help soups a lot, esp. bland ones. Rotel now makes a diced tomatoes & chilis with cilantro and lime juice that is really a zinger in soups.

I'm so leery of adding salt, which is dumb because sometimes you do need it. And I have begun keeping a stock of Rotel in the cupboard, because they do come in handy.

Maybe it was the fact that I used a turkey breast/carcass instead of chicken. Chicken has more flavor.

Crock pottery

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