Easy Recipe: Slow Cooker Beef Stew

No matter which name you use…Crockpot, Slow Cooker, Heavenly Delight….food made within it tastes….ooohhh so good! From meat that literally falls off the bone to rich and creamy sauces, slow cookers are a wonderful kitchen aid for all individuals, regardless of cuisine preference.

As a busy work at home wife and mom, I’m constantly searching for homemade meals ideas that are economical and flavorful.  I have two various sized slow cookers that are great for feeding my immediate family or to entertain guests.  My mother bought me a Rival Crockpot soon after I was married and I bought a large old-fashioned WestBend Crockery Slow Cooker from a church sale last year. I enjoy having two varying sized slow cookers because it gives me the flexibility to create different slow cooker recipes.

*FUNNY STORY* After the birth of my identical twin boys, my parents would come over to assist with their new twin grandboys.  At the time the boys were not sleeping through the night and although I had both of them on the same schedule, I was pretty much a walking zombie from the lack of sleep and double care of newborns. While my Mother and I were holding the twins in the living room, my Father goes to the kitchen to make something for me to eat.  He decides to make one of my favorites, his famous Cuban black beans, to get some iron and strength back in my deprived body. My Mother and I hear him taking out a pot from the cabinet and busily preparing the beans. After a while, we hear an EXPLOSIVE CRASH and the sound of what seemed like glass BREAKING. We run into the kitchen–twins in hand–to find black beans falling over the front of the oven door and dripping onto the white kitchen floor. On top of the stove there was the inside (stoneware) of my crockpot, completely broken and shattered with black beans oozing out of it. My crockpot was silver and the stoneware inside was black with black handles on the side. Now, because of my foggy condition, I had washed the crockpot’s stoneware and did not put it back inside the crockpot machine. I left it next to the other dark colored pots and pans in the cabinet. My Father reaches into the cabinet and grabs the stoneware thinking it was a pot. My Mother looked around incredulously and proceeds to exclaim in Spanglish (half Spanish & half English)–“What did you do? How could you not know that you were using the crockpot?…You used the crockpot on a stove to cook beans! The kitchen could have exploded!” My Father’s response was, “I didn’t know it was a crockpot! I thought somebody sent Joscelyn in the mail a new fancy pot from her computer things!” (blogging)  Needless to say, I was tired, sleepy, and hungry, and it was one of my favorite foods so I shrugged my shoulders, scooped up what was on the stove, and happily ate my black beans! 🙂