New Crock*Pot!

Due to a birthday wish that was lovingly fulfilled, Mike (and I) are the proud new owners of a brand new slow cooker. We’ve always had one, but Mike decided we need one larger than our current 3.5 quarts. His mom bought him a 6-quart, programmable Crock-Pot for his birthday, and we finally broke it in yesterday with Sandra Lee’s recipe for Zesty Turkey.


Both he and I were pleased with the results, and there is something so very satisfying about coming home after working all day and being welcomed by the smells of a tasty dinner that’s already cooked and ready to eat. And let me tell you, this did smell delicious! The recipe didn’t say how to serve this, and we thought about making rice, but it ended up being very tasty all on its own. We served it in bowls, as is.

A few recipe notes:
*We could only find frozen turkey breasts, which we subsequently forgot to thaw the night before. This ended up working out just fine, because the recipe calls for cooking on Low for 4 to 5 hours, and due to work and sleep schedules, ours cooked for 8 hours. The turkey was completely cooked through after this longer time, but still had a nice texture instead of falling apart to mush.
*Also about the turkey breast…when we found these in our freezer section, they looked very tiny to us, so we decided to buy 2. After combining everything else in the slow cooker, this proved unnecessary, and the 2nd turkey breast is currently in our freezer to use at a later date.
*The recipe calls for some odd sausage we had never heard of, but we just used smoked sausage (the kind sold by the hot dogs.)
*Due to our need for a longer cooking time, we decided next time we’ll put the artichokes in closer to the end of cooking time. Ours were on the soft side; still tasty, but the texture could have been better. (We’ll probably also use 2 cans next time. We really like artichokes!)
*Make sure you use frozen carrots. Using “fresh” will result in a mushy mess. If you don’t want to buy prepackaged carrots, I think that would be fine…just slice them up the night before and freeze them.

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