Tastes like pizza!

It is usually not in my character to plan ahead, but yesterday I had dinner ready by 9am! That’s right, I actually brought my crockpot down from the top shelf that it was hiding on, dusted it off and cranked it up. I actually had the foresight the night before to leave a beef roast out to defrost. My biggest obstacle in cooking is actually thinking ahead the night before about what I might cook the next day since I usually just cook whatever I’m feeling that day. So, I got home from taking the kids to school, seasoned the roast in the crockpot, chopped up an onion and some carrots and threw in a can of diced tomatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper and seasoning and ta-dahhh! Within an hour I could already start to smell the goodness I had thrown together. And by 3 o’clock that afternoon the whole house smelled like I had been slaving away all day! Even the Baron (my 7-year-old) commented how good the house smelled when he came home from school. That put a huge smile on my face! When I finally served it for dinner (I could hardly contain myself from the delicious smell all day long!), they still looked at it like it was roadkill, but once they tasted it the Baron said, “Mom! The meat is so… TENDER!” “mmmmm! The carrots taste like pizza! How did you get the carrots to taste like pizza, mom?” Well, that, I would call magic! Honestly, though, the meat really was melt-in-your-mouth delicious! Even Bam-Bam (our one-year-old) was saying “ummmmm-yyy!” I served the stew with a big chunk of bread to sop up the saucy goodness at the end. Big hit all around! I will be breaking out my neglected crockpot a lot more this season… what a timesaver!