Paulene Christie - Slow Cooker Central Super Savers

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First published in Australia in 2017 by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited ABN 36 009 913 517 harpercollins.com.au Introduction copyright Paulene Christie 2017 Compilation copyright HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited 2017 Copyright in the contributor recipes remains the property of the individual contributors. The right of Paulene Christie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000. This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. HarperCollinsPublishers Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom 2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA ISBN 978 0 7333 3512 9 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 4607 0655 8 (ebook) National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Christie, Paulene, author.

Christie, Paulene, author. Slow cooker central super savers / Paulene Christie. Electric cooking, Slow. Cookbooks 641.5884 Cover design by Hazel Lam, HarperCollins Design Studio Cover images by shutterstock.com Dedicated to my husband Simon and our childrenCaleb, Talyn and EllaMy everythingMy forever and alwaysxx It doesnt seem so long ago that I was writing an introduction for the first Slow Cooker Central book are we really here at book three already!? I was a busy mum of three, a wife, a nurse; and as a result I was also very time-poor when I first discovered slow cooking. I wanted an easy way to get dinner on the table every night, something that was affordable and achievable. From that first night, dinner time was a breeze and I was hooked! But I could never have imagined how drastically it would take over my life in just a few short years.

I initially created the Facebook group Slow Cooker Recipes 4 Families in December 2012 as a place to gather the recipes I was trying. I hoped to inspire a few of my friends to share theirs too, and to build a little community of people who enjoy slow cooking. I could never have imagined what it would grow to become! We are now the largest Facebook slow cooking group in the world! We have half a million members from all over the globe sharing our love of slow cooking and yet still we grow by hundreds every day. In August 2014 we launched our website www.slowcookercentral.com. To this day we continue to build our website, adding new recipes, blog articles and all manner of slow cooking tips, tricks, reviews and content. At the same time, we grow our group, share new recipes, inspire new people, make new friends and, in turn, are inspired by them.

Every day I feel so blessed to be a part of igniting a passion for slow cooking in so many people all over the world to see people excited to try new dishes, excited to share their own creations and to have others try them too. Together we are expanding our skills, tastes and knowledge in all things slow cooking. We are also real people. We are not fancy chefs in fancy kitchens, using exotic ingredients to cook fancy meals that most of us could never hope to replicate. We are real people, in real kitchens, cooking real food with real results. Because everyone has different levels of skills, time and resources, we make sure we cater to all needs.

This means some recipes are made completely from scratch, some are not. Some are focused on convenience and fast preparation, some are not. Some cost only a few dollars in total, some cost a bit more. But no matter what the recipe, we always give you everything you need to deliver a delicious meal to your table so you too can enjoy the success of slow cooking! When ABC Books approached us to release the first Slow Cooker Central book it was a shock to say the least. Id never even considered such an opportunity! What a fantastic way to share our passion with an even wider audience. In 2015 Slow Cooker Central was launched and rocketed right to the top of the Australian bestseller list and stayed there for many weeks.

In 2016 Slow Cooker Central 2 did exactly the same thing! To this day the books continue to appear on bookshelves and in kitchens all over the world. For book three we have decided to build on our first two books by focusing on an important aspect of slow cooking that everyone can relate to saving money! No matter your own personal situation, everyone wants to save money. Slow cooking is a great way to do this on so many levels as youll discover in this Slow Cooker Central Super Savers edition. Congratulations to everyone whose recipes feature in these pages. One of my favourite times of these past few years is the week the emails go out to those whose recipes have been selected for publication. The excitement and pride these people express is so contagious and thrilling! Its exciting to see your name in print for the first time or any time.

If you are reading this, then you have it in print, in your hands right now pretty exciting isnt it! :) To everyone who is reading this book, to all our Facebook group members, to all of those who visit our website, and my amazing admin team who help me run the group thank you for joining us once again on this amazing journey. I feel like the luckiest lady in the world most days. I began the group because I loved slow cooking. I built the website because I wanted to deliver a better user experience. I said yes to publishing our books because I wanted to share this joy with a wider audience. I log on every single day of every year since because its what I love doing.

I get to share my ideas, I get to share the ideas of others and I get to see those with no confidence in the kitchen discover the joys of slow cooking and blossom into confident chefs. So thank YOU! I hope you enjoy Slow Cooker Central Super Savers as much as we have enjoyed compiling it for you. May you discover a host of new family favourites within. Paulene Christie Money $ Money $ Money It makes the world go round they say. We all want more of it, or at least, we want to make better use of the money we already have. If you are looking to save, slow cooking saves you money in so many ways! Lets look at how...

Save money on cooking costs Slow cooking is certainly cheaper than running other appliances like ovens. Of course there are many variables to consider including the size and model of your slow cooker and size and efficiency of your conventional oven, but overall the stats are well in favour of your slow cooker being the cheaper way to cook even if it takes over eight hours instead of one hour! Energy provider Ergon Energy advises that a slow cooker costs 4 cents per hour to run, while an oven costs 60 cents per hour. So running your slow cooker for eight hours will cost 32 cents compared with 60 cents for just one hour of the oven (and that doesnt even account for oven pre-heating time). More money in your pocket right there! Save money on shopping costs at your butcher Slow cooking saves you money at the butcher. The very nature of long slow cooking means your meat will still be lovely and tender. So you can buy a much cheaper cut of meat rather than top-shelf cuts.