Tonights dinner in the slow cooker. More pictures in comments. Orginal recipe on Hamilton Beach site; I'v e changed it around considerably: * 3 lbs. boneless beef stewing cubes (I don't buy the most expensive - an economical pack will do just fine - it's really tender after all this cooking!) * 1 bottle (12 oz.) beer * 2 tablespoons soy sauce * 2 tablespoons chopped garlic * 1 cup frozen chopped onion * 1 can (14 oz.) beef broth, or 2 cups beef stock * 1/4 cup vinegar * 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed * 2 envelopes (0.87 oz.) brown gravy mix *1/2 pound chopped celery *1/2 pound carrots (I used baby carrots from the bag - no need to clean and chop!) * 1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes, halved. Combine all in slow cooker, cook on low 10 hours, or on high 5-6 hours. This is a lot of stew, but I currently have 4 of my sons living back home, so it will be gone quickly. This recipe can be halved easily, and ingredients can be changed as you wish. The original recipe had no veggies (!) and 6 pounds of stew meat, so I made it more to my liking. I have 2 heaping tablespoons of garlic in here, but we like garlic, but if you don't you can omit it, or use less. The first time I made it, I tasted it after about an hour of cooking, and tasted awful (to me, at least!), but after a couple of hours, it was much better. This got rave reviews from my sons. Served with crusty bread, and a bottle of beer! BTW, this slow cooker was one of the best buys I ever made. $29.00 on sale, and it gets used a lot (my oven needs to be replaced). I also have a recipe for White Chicken Chili, which also got rave reviews, and last week I made lasagna in here, which came out surprisingly good!

Here's our li'l red, twenty-buck, four-quarter, crockpot from Best Buy. The idea for our crockpotluck came about a few weeks ago, sitting around the table at TIm/Agnes home playing poker. I had just bought this little guy after talking about, dreaming of, and envisioning meals that cooked themselves for *so* long [as k can attest], and I happened to ask Tim/Agnes if they'd been using the one on their kitchen counter. Fortunately, James chimed in with his crockpot expertise, and testified that it did indeed make one's culinary life that much easier - well, that and baby carrots. Agnes and I decided to live the dream for ourselves and vowed to reconvene in a few weeks for the potluck. Since then, k and I have cooked stews and ribs, next...soup!