Gifts In a Jar - Slow Cooker Country Bean Soup Mix

Two of our Soup Mixes ready for their recipe cards and ribbons.

This soup is great!  It can start out its life in a jar after sitting in your pantry where it has rested since you got together with a group of friends to make up some freezer/pantry meals or it can all come together for the first time in your slow cooker.

This past Christmas, we needed gifts for teachers, bus drivers and mail delivery persons.  After preparing a few jars of this recipe, I still had enough of everything left over to make our own meal!

I was glad I did.  Everyone really liked it.  And you know me, I love the simple recipes best!

If making this in a jar for storage, just add all dry ingredients to a Quart Jar.  When ready to cook, add contents of a jar, 6-8 cups water, browned turkey sausage and a 26 oz can of crushed tomatoes to a 6 quart Slow Cooker.

Slow Cooker Country Bean Soup
3 cups dried beans, any combination (for a prettier gift, use 1/2 cups of 6 different beans or even layer two different types of beans 1/2 cup at a time)
2 T dried minced onion
1 T dried parsley flakes
2 tsp beef bouillon
1 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp dried basil leaves
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp pink Himalayan sea salt
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes

Layer beans in 1 quart jar.

In small baggie, mix onion, parsley, bouillon, garlic, basil, oregano, salt pepper and red pepper flakes.  Tie with twistie tie.  Place on top of beans in quart jar.  Seal jar with appropriate tight-fitting lid.

Include tag when gifting:

Slow Cooker Country Bean Soup
1 Jar Country Bean Soup Mix
6-8 cups water
1 26 oz can diced tomatoes
8 oz smoked sausage links, browned and sliced

Remove seasonings from jar and set aside.  Dump beans in large bowl and cover with water.  Soak overnight.  Drain beans in strainer and discard water.  Rinse beans until rinse water runs clear.

Brown sausage links in skillet, and slice.

Combine soaked beans, water, tomatoes, sausage and contents of seasoning packet in slow cooker. Cook on low 6-8 hours, until beans are tender.

Soup can be made thicker by using a potato masher to mash some of the beans and replacing mashed beans in slow cooker during last half hour of cooking.

Dill Oyster Crackers

I cannot recall the first time I had Dill Oyster Crackers.  I only know that it is a nice, simple recipe that is easily made and highly addictive.  Mom also would curse her coworker who gave her the recipe we would use.

I do remember Mom has a huge yellowish/gold Tupperware container that we'd dump the oyster crackers in before adding the dill mix.  We'd stir that goodness every half hour or so until all of the oil was soaked up by the crackers.

The crackers would never last for long, especially as we'd sample them each time they were being stirred - to ensure that they were tasting right, ya know!

Today, my girls helped with the tradition.  I'd been planning to make up some Christmas gifts in the weeks leading up to the Holiday, but I had a very insane last week at work as well as needing to finish up the knitted scarves we'd decided on for various teachers and friends, so the baking-type gifts didn't get made.  BUT - I have spare time this week, so we set to work making the Dill Oyster Crackers that will be late Christmas gifts!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are a bajillion recipes out there for this snack.  But guess what - I want to ensure that I have the one I like best where I can find it easily!

Dill Oyster Crackers
2 bags oyster crackers
3/4 - 1 cup oil
1 T dry dill
2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 to 1 tsp sea salt (to taste)
1 tsp dry ranch dressing mix (can leave this out, I did for the first batch, and it's just as yummy as with it)

Preheat oven to 250F.  In small bowl, mix oil, dill, garlic powder, sea salt and ranch dressing.  Pour in roasting pan.  Pour both bags of oyster crackers into roasting pan.  Stir until all crackers are coated with oil mixture. 

Place roasting pan of crackers in preheated oven.  Stir every 20 minutes to ensure oil, seasoning mix coats crackers.  After hour is up, remove from oven and let cool.  Store in airtight container.

- if desired, crackers do not need baked in oven.  Instead, simply use large bowl, dump in crackers and pour oil mixture over crackers.  Stir cracker mixture every half hour until oil has soaked into crackers.

Slow Cooker Picadillo

A few years ago, I tried a stove top Picadillo recipe.  It was the green olives that tempted me. 

I LOVED it!  Even if the green olives would not have been in the recipe, I would have still enjoyed the meal.  Sadly, like usual for me, I misplaced the recipe.

Today, I merged two different recipes to try to recreate the Picadillo taste.  Sadly, although it was an okay taste, it wasn't the "I CRAVE THIS!" recipe I'd been hoping to locate.  I felt this needed more seasoning, to include salt as it seemed to be missing something . . . . I might also decide, should I make this again, to increase the amount of chopped olives to closer to a full cup,

I am posting what I did now so that I can compare it as I continue my search for that crave-worthy winner of a recipe.

Slow Cooker Picadillo

1 lb ground beef
26 oz crushed tomatoes
10 oz tomato sauce
1 onion, finely chopped
16 green olives, finely chopped
1 tsp olive brine
1 green pepper, finely chopped
15 oz black beans (I used some I had soaked overnight)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano

In skillet, brown burger.  Place burger and all other ingredients in slow cooker.  Stir well.  Cook on low 6-8 hours.  Serve by itself or over brown rice.

Slow Cooker Chicken (and Alphabets) Soup

This is an old entry that I never put in "publish" status, so, don't mind the references to a much younger Miss Mia!

With the incredible cold spell we had going on during the early part of the week, I was ready for some warm soup.  Miss Mia and I decided a chicken noodle type soup would be perfect - especially if we used Alphabets instead of noodles.  This was also a good way to get some "school" in when I let her measure the various items for the soup . . . . It was nice having her home from school on those below 0F days, but at the same time, she was going a little stir crazy since she'd only just returned to classes after Christmas Break!

I actually made this recipe and split it in two so we could have a freezer meal for later this winter.  I'll give the measurements and you can dump 'em all in a 6 quart Slow Cooker - or be like me and split it between the slow cooker and a freezer bag.

Slow Cooker Chicken (and Alphabets) Soup

2 packages baby carrots, chopped bite size or smaller
1 head celery, chopped bite size or smaller
1 tsp minced garlic
2 onions, chopped
1 tsp rosemary
2-4 skinless boneless chicken breast (depending how chicken-y you want your soup)
2 32oz boxes chicken broth
2 cups water
2 tsp Italian Seasoning
1/2 of a small box Alphabets noodles (you could use more if you like lotsa noodles in your soup)

Dump everything but the Alphabets noodles in slow cooker.  Cook on low 6-8 hours (depending on which of my slow cookers I use, 6 hours might be long enough, but 8 hours might be better in the other, check your chicken to see . . . . Chicken should simply fall apart when poked with a fork).  Shred chicken using two forks (again, I am lazy and shred the chicken in the slow cooker.  My Hubster removes the chicken to a plate where he shreds it and then dumps it back in the slow cooker).  Dump in Alphabets noodles and cover.  Cook an additional 10 - 15 minutes, until noodles are cooked.

-frozen chicken can be use - the cooking time will be closer to the 8 hour time frame (again, depending on how hot your slow cooker cooks on Low).
- freeze soup in one gallon freezer bag.  lay flat in freezer.  when ready to cook, remove from freezer in am and place straight in slow cooker (take out of freezer bag), no need to thaw. 

Hubby's Favorite Crepes

I am afraid to say this because the All-American Police may come knocking at my door, but the Hubby does not like pancakes.  AT ALL.  He doesn't "get" that I would enjoy breakfast for dinner and cannot STAND my snack of pancakes smeared with Nutella.  I didn't know it was possible for someone to not like pancakes especially as much as he dislikes 'em!

So, when I decided on this recipe, I fully planned for a lot of leftovers to share with my Grams.

I was so wrong!

The Hubby LOVED this recipe and ate a good number of these yummy (and simple) treats!  I was amazed.  If only I would have known "flat cupcakes" would have been such a success! 

I will suggest making the Crepes ahead of time, especially if you have some bossy cooking judges who enjoy cooking contests on The Food Network a little too much and start counting down from 10 when you still have over half of the batter to cook . . .

Basic Crepes

~ adapted from Taste of Home April/May 2011

1 1/2 cups almond milk

4 eggs

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

8 tsp butter - I didn't do this, instead using cooking spray in my crepe pan

In a small bowl, whisk milk and eggs.  Combine the flour, sugar and salt; add to milk mixture and mix well.  Refrigerate for 1 hour.  (YAH, I'll admit I didn't do this.  Shame on me!  Seriously, it didn't really affect my crepes too much - although the batter did sit in the fridge for around a 1/2 hour or so . . . )

Spray 8 inch nonstick skillet (a crepe one is best, if you have a hubby who actually reads Christmas lists and purchased one, even when he thought crepes were just a fancy way of saying "pancake") which has been warmed over medium heat; pour 2 T batter into center of skillet. Lift and tilt pan to coat bottom evenly.  Cook until top appears dry; turn with non-metal spatula and cook 15-20 seconds longer.  The crepe may stick to pan, just use spatula and gently loosen crepe by working around the pan.  Remove to a wire rack - get all fancy and flip 'em out of the pan.

Repeat with remaining batter, spraying skillet as needed, if not using the 8 tsp butter.  When cool, stack crepes with waxed paper or paper towels in between.

~ Crepes can be frozen for up to 2 months.

Hubby's Favorite Crepes

~ adapted from Taste of Home April/May 2011

1 pound sliced, fresh mushrooms

1 medium to large yellow onion

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup flour

2 cups milk (I used almond)

4 tsp chicken bullion granules

1/2 tsp Italian Seasoning

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 cup sour cream (I used Greek yogurt)

3 T apple juice

2 cups cooked, chopped chicken

1/2 tsp Herbes de Provence (or additional Italian Seasoning if cannot find Herbes de Provence)

Cook mushrooms, onion and butter over medium heat until onion is translucent.  Stir in flour, milk, bouillon granules, Italian Seasoning and pepper.  Bring mixture to a boil.  Stir in sour cream and apple juice.  Set aside 1 cup of sauce.

To the sauce in pan, add the chicken and Herbes de Provence.  Stir occasionally until chicken is warmed through.  Spoon filling onto 15 prepared crepes.  Roll crepes up and drizzle with remaining 1 cup of sauce.

I think I will try this, next time, without chicken.  I'll double the mushrooms and onions as I LOVE them!  I was also thinking of throwing in some Fresh Basil and/or some spinach.  Overall, this recipe was enjoyed by all and considered a definite Keeper!