Summary of the first week in my Season of Slow cooking:

Sunday’s multi-task:

• Eating the Opponent – Minnesota, Chili with elk meat
• New Crock Pot!

I learned how to set the new crock and found a valuable feature: when the time I’ve set for High or Low is done, the unit automatically switches to Warm. I know I’m going to like this.

Ground elk is easy to cook and resembles ground beef enough that it was a direct replacement in my chili recipe. My research showed that game meats are popular in Viking country, much like they are in Packerland. I wasn’t sure if Minnesot’ns add noodles to their chili the way we do in Wisconsin, so I stuck with basic chili instead of chili mac.

Results: Delicious. Game results: we won’t talk about it. Deep sigh.

During the first week back to school, I didn’t use the crock port very much. Instead, I put together suppers that were easy to make in the hour or two after I come home from school. In fact, on Friday I gave in to the exhaustion of the first week of January and went to a local pub for supper. Fish fry, lobster bisque soup (is that redundant?), and a tall margarita to quench my thirst – a perfect way to end the week. Next week, it’s back to normal mealtimes; the crock pot will be in the cooking cycle again.