Lulu: I've changed my mind.

While the Deceptively Delicious cookbook is intriguing and full of nutritious recipes, I lost my enthusiasm to do a recipe from it when I realized that I didn't want to buy a million vegetables and fruits and spend one night puree-ing them, and I don't really feel like trying any of the recipes with canned pureed vegetables instead. (Something about the phrase "canned pureed vegetables" makes me feel a little queasy.) Another time. I decided on a different course, one that will still take a little bit of preparation, but ultimately, one that will save me some time in the evenings.

I have an awesome cookbook called Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with your Slow Cooker. (Dawn J. Ranck, Phyllis Pellman Good) I have a friend who is pregnant with her third and engaged to a man who already has a child. So she will very soon be a very busy mom of four. We got together and I helped her make a menu from several of the recipes in this cookbook--I think about twelve. Then I went with her to the store and did the running-around to get the ingredients while she pushed the cart (full of her two kids) and maneuvered her delightfully large 9-months-pregnant belly. We brought the food back, and I had to go home, but she prepared all the ingredients of the recipes and froze each meal in its own Ziploc bag, complete with a label describing its contents and how to cook it in the crock-pot. While the preparation was quite a bit of time (because we did twelve meals at once), it will make the first few postpartum weeks so much easier for her.

Although I'm not going to make myself twelve frozen crock-pot meals, I am going to prepare four to be used during the next two weeks, just to use on days when we have less time or will be out of the house until dinnertime. Phill's mom is coming to visit from England (YAY!!), and I've planned for most of the meals to be pretty low-maintenance so that we can relax together. The meals I will be trying in the crock-pot are: Rigatoni (I had no idea this could be made in a crock-pot, but there's even recipes for bread in this cookbook), Gravy roast with vegetables (a classic, but I've never made it in the crock-pot with gravy, just broth, and I think it will be better this way), Beans & Rice, and Chili.

I'll post again about how it goes, how everything tastes! Sorry, Lynness, that I won't be trying anything from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook (yet). I know you were interested to see how it would turn out!