When Lee and I had the ‘how many children’ talk we both thought three. I was broody from a young age, mostly the fault of my mum and dad who had my littlest brother when I was 20. Rather than putting me off children it made me want one! Over the years our wishes came true and we have three delightful children. The age gaps are bigger than many have but have worked well for us.
However three children makes for busy times, especially with the after school activities. Recently the activities have overtaken dinner times. All too often on my working days dinner for Lee and I has resulted in egg on toast. The children have school dinners and Erin eats at nursery so they were catered for but not us! It wasn’t a good habit to have fallen into, however there was just no time to prepare a decent balanced meal.
Therefore when the chance to try a crock pot was given to me I wondered if this would be the way to get back to having a proper dinner. Whilst waiting for the crock pot to arrive I eagerly started meal planning (something I have never done before!) I found some great recipes to try. Meals that would cook whilst I was working, dinners ready to dish up before dashing out to drop off or pick up the children.
The first meal I tried was a chicken and mushroom pasta dish I found on the Slow Cooker Queens blog. The pasta was even added to the pot. Our verdict was that the chicken was really tasty, we were not overly keen on the pasta as we like it al dente. However the ease at preparing a meal and it cooking itself whilst we got on with family life was appreciated.
Yesterday was my busiest day of the week. Tuesday see’s me collecting three children from three different places across the city at 5pm. In busy traffic. I then need to get Dyl to Cubs for six. Last night was worse than most Tuesdays as Chloe was playing hockey away. I arrived to collect her at 5.15 but due to traffic and roadworks she was not back at school until 5.45. This usually means that I am stressing about dinner, I’m hungry tired and grumpy. However last night was different. I had put a gammon joint in the crock pot along with 2 litres of coke at 7.30 am. I then grabbed some chips from the chippy on the way home (as was running late) and walked into the aroma of cooked gammon. This was easily the best gammon we had ever had. The meat crumbled as it was so moist and delicious. Both Lee and Chloe loved it and although initially I had planned on cooking some vegetables and potatoes to go with it the chippy tea worked well.
Lee even saved the leftover meat for sandwiches today – this itself shows what he thought of it!
My verdict – the crock pot is here to stay. I will be looking for more recipes to use over the coming days and this may just be the answer for working mums who have three children!
I was gifted the crock-pot for the purpose of the review although the images and words are all my own.
