Oh Food, I Love You {Wednesday Wins}

So I've just spent the last hour on Pinterest and blogs looking up slow cooker recipes.  And now, my brain is starving!  Notice that I say "my brain" because my stomach is still perfectly satisfied with the lunch I ate a while ago.  But my brain, oh no, it wants to eat.  Bad.

Anyway, the reason I've been looking up slow cooker recipes is comprised of several parts:

1. Several days a week, I have band practice from 4-6:30 in the afternoon.  So that means that I don't get home until after 7pm.  Which means that there is absolutely no time for me to cook dinner when I get home.  (I am generally a pretty early dinner-eater, thus even eating at 7 is pushing it for me.)  So, I need a meal to be mostly ready to eat when I get home.
2. With Thomas' job, he usually doesn't take leftovers for lunch anymore because he's not in an office to be able to warm them up.  Which leaves me to eat all the leftovers... and we all know how much I *love* leftovers.  (Please catch the sarcasm!!!)  So, we can't have meals that make too many leftovers or I might as well go ahead and throw it right from the cooking pot into the trash.  Which brings me to:
3. I just got a new slow cooker!!!!  The problem with cooking for two people in a slow cooker is that they are usually made for large meals.  3-5 pounds of meat, several pounds of potatoes, etc.  And if you cook less than that in a normal-sized crock pot, it will turn out miserably since they're made to be filled a certain way.  So, without further ado, here is my new baby!

 

It's a 3.5 quart Cuisinart slow cooker.  So, it's the perfect size for fixing meals for two with just a few leftovers.  And the feature that I am ecstatic about is the timer.  It allows me to set the amount of time I want the meal to cook for, and then when the time's up, it automatically switches over to the "Warm" setting until I turn it off!  Woohoo!  So, if I don't get home right on time to turn the heat down, it will do it for me!  (Hey, it's the little things in life, right?!)

I just used it for the first time last night, and it worked like a charm.  So now I can't wait to keep trying out all those easy slow cooker meals I've seen on Pinterest!

That's my wonderful little win for today!  Happy Hump Day!