Mon Cheri

I recently decided to make use of crock pot cooking.  I've always sort of avoided this in the past because it makes a large quantity and I'm the only one eating it.  It has never occurred to me to freeze some of it prior to cooking.  People always talk about freezing leftovers and I think that is gross.  Anyway, I stumbled across some blog and the person wrote about assembling all the ingredients and freezing it and then dumping and cooking later.  It was a light bulb moment for me.  Alright, alright...I admit that I'm sometimes a little slow on the uptake.  Anyway, the point is that I eventually get there.  So, there I was in the midst of my light bulb moment when I took it a step further and and dazzled myself with a random act of brilliance.  I realized that I could split the ingredients in to small individual quart sized bags instead of putting it all in a family sized gallon bag.  I would no longer have to eat 6 to 8 meals of pot roast in a row!!  Queue the awe-inspiring music!  I bought a mini crock pot that has a high/low setting and I just pop the contents of a bag in there and ~6 hours later I've got dinner.  This has completely solved my non-cooking funk that I've been in.  Now I just have a few hours of prepping my quart bags with various meat/flavor combos and I'm done.  So simple. 

So here's my new best friend, mon cheri.....Number Two.

  Number Two as in....

 

because Number Two built Doctor Evil's two bit empire into a multinational corporation and I'm hoping my Number Two will help transform my two bit lifestyle into a paradigm of paleo awesomeness.

Last week was my first full week with Number Two and it went great!  Because I wasn't already strange to my coworkers, what with my crazy diet and all, I gave them more to scratch their heads about because I packed Number Two to work with me last week.  I plugged him into the wall in the break room and plopped my frozen baggie contents in (I work 12 hour shifts so it seemed reasonable) and stuck a note on top warning others that it was my food (I work with vultures).  This really made people curious and while I hate the thought of every Tom, Dick, and Harry lifting the lid on #2 and looking at my dinner, I sort of had to deal with it and just be thankful that no one stole it or taste tested it (I really, really hope not).

It was late in the week when I realized I should take a pic of my meal, even if it's an iPhone pic, to post here.  I'll add some more and post the super simple recipes most of which I just sort of wing together.  But here's a break room, paper plate, iPhone photo of my classic pot roast meal.  My carrots are a little dingy looking but that's due to the little splash of red wine that I used.

Classic Pot Roast

2 pounds beef roast, cut into 6 big hunks

small bag of baby carrots

2 onions, quartered

6-8 celery stalks

10-12 T. red wine

•  I split all the ingredients into 6 quart sized freezer bags but you could dump it all into your crockpot if you are serving a crowd or if you like to eat pot roast for 4 days in a row.
• I never seem to have as many carrots as I would like so I think I'll add another bag of carrots the next time.
• I just served it with some mixed greens.