the Jackson 2: crock pot fail #1, grad school, crock pot success!

Maybe since I've started blogging about meals I've gotten nervous or cocky or something... I don't know! I guess I've officially joined the new-wife burned dinner club though now. Anyway, I just tried something Tuesday and burned it. I just had it going for too long. I didn't really have any idea about how long it would take to cook what I had put in there. I'm sure that if it was going for a shorter amount of time that it would have been tasty. I had a cut of london broil and rice and a new teriyaki sauce that I bought in there with water. The little bit that I tried in the center (un-burnt) was potentially tasty - similar to a teriyaki stir fry that we have had before. I'll tweak this in the future and try it again and hope for better results!

School is so tiring for me right now - on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm gone from 7-something until 7-something. Thankfully I have Mondays and Fridays free, and Wednesdays I just have class from 3:30-6, so I have a much shorter day. This weekend we'll be relaxing and cleaning up and organizing around the apartment so life won't feel so stressful during the week!

This weekend I also have a new project to work on - my first paid cake making job! I'm making petit fours for my professor's mini baby shower following the faculty meeting on Monday. So, that's what I'll be doing this weekend. I'm hoping they'll turn out something like this:

I'm planning to make them as ~~square~~ cubical as possible so that they will resemble blocks. I'll spell out "welcome baby sam," but that only gets me 14 blocks! I'm making like 40, so the rest I'm not too concerned with the rest looking too much like blocks. I'm thinking of doing booties, safety pins, and yellow duckies. I'll post pics of the process as I make them. If you know anything about me, you can imagine how much I've been planning this out meticulously in my mind for the past week. I've laid awake at night not able to sleep because I've been thinking of all of the things I could do on this cake project! Sigh, pathetic. :-)

So dinner tonight was amazing. It was a great weekend meal and reminds me of the beef pot roast my mom would frequently make for Sunday lunch. It actually tasted very similar to Lizard Thicket's beef stew roast stuff that they have - and it's so easy to make! I had a London broil that was still very large, probably about 2lbs. I know it's not the typical cut to use, but it's what I had and I figured it would get fairly tender in the crock pot and I know how to slice it diagonally against the grain so it's in manageable pieces. I peeled about five white potatoes and chopped them into large pieces and quartered a vidalia onion. If I had carrots, I would have put them in there, too. You could put a can of green peas if you wanted, but Carlyle & I wouldn't touch it. I mixed together a packet of Lipton onion soup mix, about 1/4 cup of water, and a can of cream of mushroom soup. If you aren't familiar with onion soup mix, here's what it looks like.

Be prepared to make it your best friend in the pantry. It's so versatile! (i.e. see the recipes below)

This is sort of what I went by - especially for slow cooker details

These are very tasty, although it's just a great idea and you could easily adapt it with your own favorite seasonings.

You can make this with fat-free sour cream and change the dip mix to a ranch packet instead - you're in total control of the calories and contents of your chip/veggie dip now! So empowering! :)

So anyway, I digress. Here's dinner: