Cooking Show: Slow Cooker Ribs & Chili, Wedge Salad and Roasted Potatoes

We're still waiting here in New England for this seemingly endless winter to end.

Snow in April? Check.

Comfort food still on the menu? Check.

I've been looking forward to spring for months (since the first week of January), but until warmer temperatures actually arrive I'm still cooking comfort food and our latest cooking show menu featured a few favorites!

Slow Cooker Baby Back Ribs

Fall-off-the-bone perfection.  When they're done, throw them onto your grill or stick them under the broiler for a minute or two to crisp them up!

Click here for the printable recipe.

Slow Cooker White Chili.   Perfect chili for a chilly day!

Roasted Parmesan Potatoes.  

My friend, Amy, cooked with me and she has informed me that these are "Everyone's new favorite potato!"

They are so quick and easy to prepare.  No special skills required!

And finally....

Wedge Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

I admit that this was my favorite recipe of the night.  Try this and you will agree that salad can be a comfort food!  Crunchy lettuce, creamy dressing and sweet tomatoes topped with crunchy pancetta.  What's not to love?

Cooking Show: Crock Pot Favorites, and Baileys® Irish Creme Parfaits

Last week's cooking show featured an eclectic assortment of recipes.

I started planning a theme featuring favorite recipes for the slow cooker.

Crock Pot Chili

This is my personal favorite, as far as slow cooker recipes go.  The only prep is chopping a few ingredients and opening a few cans, then mixing it all in your crock pot and forgetting about it for 8 hours.  No additional steps, just add a few toppings at the end.  Truly a one-pot meal! 

And it's not a grease-laden chili, as you will use steak instead of traditional hamburger.  Here's the printable recipe.

Crock Pot Boneless Country-Style Ribs

With over 800,000 page views and 30K+ pins on Pinterest, this is by far the most popular recipe on this blog.

 Here is the printable recipe.

Green Beans with toasted slivered almonds and chopped bacon, not a crock pot recipe but I thought it was important to prepare a vegetable on the side! Click here for the printable recipe.

 And finally, Baileys® Irish Creme Parfaits.

Seriously good.

So good that everybody licked their spoon clean.

Really incredible, as in so incredible that they deserve their own blogpost with step-by-step instructions...but until I create that future blogpost, I won't leave you hanging.  Here's the printable recipe!

2015 Top 3 Most-Viewed Recipes

Today is going to be a soup day.

It's 38 degrees out as I am typing this.  The Patriots game is at 1 p.m. so we are going to light a big fire in the fireplace, hunker down, slurp some soup and watch our favorite team (hopefully) pull off a win and get themselves home-field advantage for the playoffs.  What team will you be rooting for?

Although there are five of us, I'm lucky that Broccoli Cheddar is the favorite soup of both my girls, because I only have four burners on my stove and all of those burners will be fired up as I prepare all of our favorites!

I scrolled through my blogposts to check the recipes and make sure I had all of the ingredients on hand, and as usual I got sidetracked.  I thought it would be fun to see which recipes from 2015 were the most popular!

Third Most-Popular:

Slow-Cooker Baby Back Ribs.  I admit, when I saw this it gave me pause and I momentarily rethought today's soup agenda!

I decided that I'll make these for the divisional playoff game instead.

Second Most-Popular:

Southwestern Chicken Soup  This is my favorite soup!  I'll be making it today!

Most Popular Recipe, 2015:

Cashew Chicken!  We made this during our "Cooking With Kids" show and it was a big hit.  It tastes fresher and better than any takeout chicken!

The best part: since it only takes about fifteen minutes to prep, cook and serve, it's at the top of my go-to list for those nights when I don't have a lot of time to spend preparing dinner.


Happy 2016!

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

It just doesn't get any easier than this.

Three ingredients!

Throw it into your crock pot, forget about it for 12 hours while you go about your day.

As usual, I had to dress it up a bit by adding some spice; but if you want to keep it simple and omit that step I promise you that your pulled pork will still be out-of-this-world yummy!

Slow Cooker Baby Back Ribs

Finally.

I made a batch of baby back ribs in my crock pot that I think are blogworthy!!!

I won't go into how picky I am about slow cooker recipes.  About how I refuse to sacrifice taste for convenience;  to sacrifice texture for the supposed ease of throwing everything into one pot and hoping that it's edible.  

No, I won't go into how I have a love/hate relationship with my crock pot.

I'm just going to say that these ribs have earned a permanent spot in my dinner rotation.

Slow Cooker Pot Roast

Every time I use my crockpot, I can't help but wonder why don't I use this more often?

Is there anything better than doing a little bit of prep work in the morning, throwing it all into the slow cooker and having it ready at dinner time?

This recipe is a bit of a riff on the Maple-Mustard Pork Chops that I've made in the past.  I like the combo of sweet maple syrup and the savoriness of dijon mustard, and I couldn't help but wonder how it would work with a pot roast.

I'm happy to say that it worked out just fine!

Lobster Phyllo Cups

If only I could just get through a blogpost without having a recipe-name dilemma.

Lobster Bites.  Sounds too painful.

Lobster Tid-Bits.  Huh?

Lobster Appetizers.  Generic, much?

I settled on Lobster Phyllo Cups.  Eh...but at least it's straightforward.

If I didn't use these phyllo cups, I would have served this cheesy concoction with pita chips or water crackers and simply called it Lobster Dip and avoided the whole what-should-I call-this-recipe dilemma.

Holy cow, I just looked at the picture I posted above and noticed that the box says FILLO shells!!! What kind of cockamamie spelling is that?

I am not going to change my recipe name.  I am not going to change it.

And I'm not going to waste any more of your time throwing a recipe-naming tantrum, not when you could be spending your time filling these phyllo/filo/fillo cups with a mixture of yummy, cheesy. lobster!

Crock Pot Boneless Beef Short Ribs

The inspiration for this recipe came about as I was wandering through Whole Foods.  It was Friday afternoon, just as the snow from our latest storm was starting to fall, and I was making one last trip to the market before I got snowed in.

Yeah, THAT storm.  Here's a picture of my dogs on Saturday morning, as they woke up to more snow than they have ever seen before.  We dug tunnels across the deck and through the yard so they could get around.

Gus was having a good gosh-darn time for himself.  He stuck to the pathways.  Clyde, not so much.  He started to leap through uncharted territories........

...and ended up "swimming" through the snow.

He was happy to come back in, dry off and warm up.

We were snowed in for a couple of days, which was not a problem at all since I had bought enough food for a week's worth of snowed-in meals.  First on the list were the boneless beef ribs in today's post--boy did my house smell good with these ribs simmering in the slow cooker while the snow was falling!