The Slow Cooker: A Writer’s Best Friend Blog Hop: Aegean Lamb

Aegean Lamb

I originally found this recipe in the Cooking Light Slow Cooker Cookbook – one of those supermarket magazines that go out of print almost immediately. I’ve modified it a little to reduce the carbohydrates. I live alone, so I divide the recipe into serving-size portions and freeze them, and then just put the frozen portion in the microwave until it’s hot. If you get a ready-prepared boned leg of lamb, make sure you remove any pop-up timer!

Leg of lamb, boned and rolled, around 3 ½ lb
1 package fresh oregano, chopped (or at least with the leaves pulled off the stems.) If you grow your own oregano, 1/4 cup.
¼ t salt
2 teaspoons or more grated lemon rind (grated  rind of 2 lemons)
¼ c fresh lemon juice (or juice of the same 2 lemons)

Place leg of lamb in crock pot, put the other 4 ingredients over it. Cook on high for an hour, then reduce to low and cook another 7 hours or so. If your schedule requires it, you can cook a little longer. (Lamb should be very tender by now.)

Add 1 10-oz bag of fresh baby spinach, cover and leave on low for 15 minutes.

Remove lamb and spinach from cooker and pour liquid into a bowl. Remove twine or net and chop lamb. (I find it falls apart.) Meanwhile cook 4 cups orzo (2 c dry orzo) following package directions except don’t add salt. Skim as much fat as you can from cooking liquid; discard fat.

Combine chopped lamb and spinach, cooking liquid, 1 c feta cheese, ½ t salt. Mix in drained orzo, or if you’re feeding a large group you could serve the lamb mixture over the hot orzo.

Makes about 10 1-c servings.

Like more slow cooker recipes? Check out these blogs.

1. The Barenaked Critic
2. Rebekah Loper, Writer
3. The Merry Mennonite
4. Fairbetty’s World
5. Sue Ann Bowling (You’re already here.)
6. Thoughts of a Visual and Verbal Artist
7. Write Backwards – Jamie Dement (LadyJai)
8. Bonnie Rae, Just Words

(The bit of code we were all given didn’t work, but I’ve now gone through and corrected them all.)

Chocolate

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Why an Index?

With 550 posts as of today, I’ve started to have problems remembering what I’ve already put on here. This is particularly a problem with posting existing content such as poems, short pieces from the Summer Arts Festival, or science explanations originally written for the Alaska Science Forum. I can’t remember which books or DVDs I’ve posted reviews on. It also is starting to be a problem when I want to link to a previous post and can’t remember when it was put up or what the title was. And there are posts on this blog that have permanent information, like the series on planet building and the one on horse color genetics, or the book and DVD reviews. I want to make it easier for my readers as well as myself to find things.

I made a start some time ago by adding an index page, which can be accessed from the menu at the top of any page. Right now, the only links are to index pages on my author site. This takes you out of the site and sometimes back in, which is rather clumsy. The index list is also incomplete.

I’m going to start posting an occasional entry which is strictly an index of past posts on a particular topic. These posts will be linked from the index page, and will link forward to the individual blog posts. As it takes a while to find all the posts that belong together, this will be a slow process—probably extending over the next few months. The first in this series, on DVD reviews, is already queued for January 3. Others will follow, most on Thursdays.

I probably won’t be indexing every post. Some, like those early posts which were simply glossary entries for my books, are on the author site and really belong there. Others, like the regular Monday updates on North Pole weather starting in November 2010, can be found easily enough just by using the calendar on the site. But I hope that by the time I have finished this, older posts of interest will be easier to find.

Cranberry Recipes

The blade to my food processor. That black is supposed to be all one piece.

Disaster struck as I was preparing to start the salad for Thanksgiving dinner — the chopper blade on my food processor is broken. It was fine when I put it away, but now the plastic that holds the blade to the processor is shattered. Guess I’ll have to use the old mini-chopper for the cranberries and chop the rest of the stuff by hand.

Here’s a photojournal of the process of making the salad without a food processor. Turned out the mini-chopper did help with the oranges, too.

Ingredients and tools for the salad. (The paring knife didn't quite make the picture.)

Chopping celery's not that hard--just make a few cuts lengthwise before you start.

Yes, the whole naval orange is cut up. The mini-chopper took it down to small pieces.

Frozen cranberries and nuts help each other in the mini-chopper. It took three rounds, though.

The mini-chopper could not handle the apple wedges, so I had to chop them by hand. Apples were left to last, when I started heating the apple juice and water for the Jello.

What, all those solids for such a little bit of Jello? (I used orange, as I couldn't find lemon.)

The finished salad, ready for the refrigerator.

Recipes?

It’s anything-goes-day as well as Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d share a couple of my favorites. After all, they go well with turkey leftovers, too.

The first is my mother’s recipe for a Jello salad, modified to avoid added sugar and take advantage of a food processor. Note that while the usual Jello salad is Jello with fruit in it, this one is fruit, nuts and vegetables with a little Jello holding it together.

Cranberry-Orange Salad

2 4-serving or 1 8-serving packages of sugar-free lemon Jello
1 12 oz can frozen apple juice concentrate
1 c water
1 seedless orange, washed but unpeeled, cut into chunks
2 cups celery, cleaned and cut into pieces
2 washed apples (Granny Smith preferred), cores removed and cut in chunks
3 cups raw cranberries, washed and (preferably) frozen This is one 12 oz bag.
1 cup walnuts

Heat the water and apple juice concentrate together to boiling, and dissolve Jello. Meanwhile, use the food processor to chop (coarsely) the remaining ingredients. (It may take several batches.) Place the chopped ingredients in a 9” x 13” pan, level them, and pour the dissolved Jello over them. Mix and level to get all of the chopped ingredients below the liquid, and chill until set.

Makes 24 servings of 82 Calories each. For each 68-gram serving:
13 g carbohydrate
1 g protein
3 g fat (mostly from the nuts.)

Don’t laugh at the gram measurement – when I eat this I weigh the portion, and I use the carbohydrate and and half the protein to figure my insulin dosage. The recipe may have no added sugar, but with all the fruits and the apple juice concentrate, it’s far from sugar-free.

A half recipe would probably fit nicely into an 8” x 8” pan; I’ve just never tried it that way as this is my regular contribution to potlucks and Thanksgiving dinners.

The second recipe isn’t mine and is probably quite familiar to NPR listeners, but here is the link to Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish. It may sound strange and look like Pepto-Bismol, but it’s yummy. I freeze it in an ice cube tray.

Happy Thanksgiving!