I Also Love Dim Sum

After reading this post, Jason wrote:

I’ve been following your food travails with intrigue and interest. I think this post answered the big question that I have had: Why does he eat so badly? A: You’re addicted to junk food.

It’s really too bad that you are so resistant to cooking and/or eating healthy food. There is a vast, and I mean VAST world of amazing flavor and satisfaction out there that crushes your pathetic grocery store 7 layer dip and M&M’s into the dust.

I’m sure that you have heard all this ad nauseum but I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents. Kudos to you on the crockpottery experimentation!! Might I suggest cruising the used bookstores …for things like [The Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes]:

I will not deny that I am addicted to junk food, but I would go farther and say that I have an addiction to rich foods. How many of the following would you consider ‘junk food’: chicken shawarma, dolmathes, pita & houmous, fresh pineapple, grapes & cherry tomatoes, butter chicken, chicken korma, thin crust feta-only kalamata olive & sundried tomato pizza, Max’s turkey stuffing, goat cheese on whole wheat crackers, mixed nuts (heavy on the cashews), and anything that’s on the menu at a Mexican restaurant.

Tell me about this vast world of amazing flavour that is also healthy! I have no aversion to eating healthy as long as it satisfies my sweet tooth. I have cooked before. I used to own a few cookbooks and tried making various Indian recipes. I would make pasta with different kinds of sauces. I would make nice soft boiled potatoes with a moderate amount of butter and parmesan cheese. This was all before I found out that carbs were making me fat. I would even boil up corn on the cob – with nothing on it – pretty much until I moved. And even when I order Chinese food, it’s never sweet & sour pork, it’s always chicken with vegetables and cashew nuts. The problem is that I’ll eat several plates of the stuff and then I’ll still want a baklava or ice cream, and I won’t be satisfied with a small portion of that either. It’s not like I haven’t eaten salads and broccoli – I enjoy them greatly and would eat until I can’t eat any more. And then I want a butter tart. I remember two Christmases ago I ate about a dozen mandarin oranges and subsequently refamiliarized myself with the reading material in the bathroom.
The problem is that I’m a glutton. I need a long term gluttony-management strategy.

I left my cookbooks at the old place because they just didn’t get used. There’s a wealth of recipes on the web, and that’s what I’ve been using for my crockery. I saved 17 crock recipes to my computer, and I’ve adapted 4 of them.

Crock Experiment #4 Orange ginger pumpkin spice chicken, merging this recipe with this recipe.

As ushered by Jess and Geisel, I changed the temperature and duration of cooking for this one. I cooked this dish on high but only for the first three hours, because then I went to bed and didn’t want to leave it on high overnight. So total cooking time was 12 hours, 3 of which was on high, the rest on low. And it’s true, the yams definitely are crumbling at the touch of a fork. So – success in that regard!

The contents:

chicken, obviously
butternut squash
yams
onions
yellow bell peppers
can of concentrated orange juice
pumpkin spice
ginger
salt
coconut extract
cumin
pepper

I toned down slightly the amount of ingredients I’ve been putting in. Nevertheless, this was sadly too disgusting to eat, and it got flushed (except for the chicken itself). I think next time I’m going to keep it to the bare essentials.

Day 24: Crockery 150 orange 100 granoli 110 ice cream 25 crockery 100 tomatoes 35 crockery 175 ice cream 25 granoli 220 = 950