Stephanie ODea - 365 slow cooker suppers

I received my first slow cooker as a birthday present when I turned twenty-one. I asked for this gift, along with a food dehydrator and a pasta machine I saw advertised on late-night TV. I was newly engaged and determined to learn how to cook. I only used the food dehydrator twice and the pasta machine a handful of times before giving them away. I just wasnt thrilled with the amount of time and energy needed to achieve halfway decent results.

But the slow cooker? I still have it, and continue to use it quite often. I loved the ease of plugging it in, loading it up, and walking away. I became fascinated at how this simple appliance could bring a forgotten and frostbitten roast back to life or transform a ninety-nine-cent bag of lentils into an amazing meal with very little effort or kitchen know-how.

In 2008, I took my love of the slow cooker to the Internet. I decided to make a New Years resolution to use my slow cooker every day for a year and document the results on a personal website. My first two cookbooks, Make It Fast, Cook It Slow and More Make It Fast, Cook It Slow, document the many different uses of this amazing machineIve used it to make everything from a fabulous pumpkin spice latt to playdough and candles.

But at the end of the day? The most dreaded question will always be, Whats for dinner? This book will help. It contains 365 new slow cooker dinners selected and tested in my own home kitchen by my family: my husband Adam, and my three children, who were ten, seven, and two years of age at the time. There are meals for all types of foodincluding meatless mains, pastas and casseroles, hot sandwiches, hearty soups and stews, and mouthwatering meat dishes.

One of my favorite things about cooking this way is that you dont need to cook nightly if you dont want to. Slow cooking lends itself to leftovers, which can be eaten the next night, repurposed into a new meal, or frozen for future meals. Although you can certainly use this book to cook a brand-new dinner each and every night for a whole year, you can also choose to cook three or four times a week and stretch the leftovers for subsequent mealssaving time and money.

I began using my slow cooker faithfully as a newlywed, but fell head over heels in love with it when I became a mother. I quickly learned that one of the best ways to ensure a healthy and hot dinner at six p.m. was to load the cooker up early in the morning while I was still wide awake and heavily caffeinated. It just wasnt safe to be chopping onions or standing over a stovetop in the late afternoon with tired and cranky kids hanging off my ankles. Now that my older two are school-aged, our afternoons are even more jam-packed with sports practice, music lessons, and homework. Theres nothing better than coming home after a long day to a fully cooked meal. Youll love it.

I dont consider myself a very good traditional cook. I regularly walk away from the stove when things are cooking and come back to an overboiled pot or scorched food. Im currently sporting a two-inch scar on my right wrist from baking cookies last week in the oven. I have little-to-no knife skills, and prefer to use my Pampered Chef handheld chopper to dice onions.

But I can slow cook. And so can you.

Cooking doesnt need to be scary. Theres truly no easier way to cook than to dump in a bunch of ingredients, push a button, and walk away. I like that I can plug in the machine early in the morning while Im packing school lunches and finishing breakfast instead of worrying about dinner in the late afternoon when my stomach is growling and the kids are getting cranky.

As I shared in my housekeeping shortcut book, Totally Together: Shortcuts to an Organized Life, Im a meal planner. This doesnt mean that Im an obsessive controller as much as it means that I am aware that our family runs better and sticks to our monthly budget when I take the time to plan our weekly meals in advance. It also keeps me from wasting valuable time and energy thinking up meal and snack ideas five to six times a day, every day.