Comfort food, eh?
We're moving to a new office on Monday. It's going to be an interesting process: I'm going from a cubicle with two cloth walls covered with notes and art and a calendar to a shared table with no walls, where I'll be looking across a divider at a co-worker all day. I'm going from an L-shaped desk with a lot of space to sort and store the 20 or so books I get in the mail every day to a table section where, as far as I can tell, I'll basically have enough desk space for my computer, my monitor, and my elbows. It'll certainly be good in terms of pushing me to be more organized and sort things more quickly and efficiently, but I do worry about just plain not having the space to fulfill my job functions. On the other hand, the new office has giant walls of windows (I'm currently in a space where like most of us, I get no natural light) and much more space, and significantly better facilities in many different ways. So we'll see.
Monday night, once we've moved in, we're supposed to have a "comfort-food Crock Pot cook-off" in the new space to celebrate the move, and I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to make. I've been making chili since winter kicked in - black bean mushroom chili, beef burgundy chili, chili verde until I finally ran out of tomatillos - and I'm a little tired of soups. And I'm not sure soup qualifies for me as comfort food anyway. I'm leaning toward just searing a roast and making beef barbacoa. Though our outgoing former production designer who used to win all the office cook-offs wryly said that whoever just threw a couple of blocks of Velveeta in their slow cooker, melted them, and provided chips was automatically going to win.
Anyway, I'm curious whether any of you have a slow-cooker recipe you swear by and identify as comfort food. The problem is that I really don't have that comfort-food vibe so many people seem to have: I don't like mac-and-cheese (I'm not the world's biggest fan of cheese in general), and I don't have warm childhood associations about mashed potatoes or pasta or other starchy foods. To me, comfort food is something I don't have to cook, meaning I can curl up with a book or a good movie and eat dinner without a bunch of prep time. Alas, there is no recipe for that for slow cookers, unless I buy a bunch of Campbell's and empty it into a cooker and spend the day reheating it. (Popcorn is also a big comfort food for me, which is the secret real reason I became a film critic, but it's also hard to do that in a slow cooker.)
So I'm fine with the barbacoa plan, but I'd also be fine with someone giving me a brilliant idea I'd entirely overlooked until now. Any can't-miss recipes out there?
Monday night, once we've moved in, we're supposed to have a "comfort-food Crock Pot cook-off" in the new space to celebrate the move, and I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to make. I've been making chili since winter kicked in - black bean mushroom chili, beef burgundy chili, chili verde until I finally ran out of tomatillos - and I'm a little tired of soups. And I'm not sure soup qualifies for me as comfort food anyway. I'm leaning toward just searing a roast and making beef barbacoa. Though our outgoing former production designer who used to win all the office cook-offs wryly said that whoever just threw a couple of blocks of Velveeta in their slow cooker, melted them, and provided chips was automatically going to win.
Anyway, I'm curious whether any of you have a slow-cooker recipe you swear by and identify as comfort food. The problem is that I really don't have that comfort-food vibe so many people seem to have: I don't like mac-and-cheese (I'm not the world's biggest fan of cheese in general), and I don't have warm childhood associations about mashed potatoes or pasta or other starchy foods. To me, comfort food is something I don't have to cook, meaning I can curl up with a book or a good movie and eat dinner without a bunch of prep time. Alas, there is no recipe for that for slow cookers, unless I buy a bunch of Campbell's and empty it into a cooker and spend the day reheating it. (Popcorn is also a big comfort food for me, which is the secret real reason I became a film critic, but it's also hard to do that in a slow cooker.)
So I'm fine with the barbacoa plan, but I'd also be fine with someone giving me a brilliant idea I'd entirely overlooked until now. Any can't-miss recipes out there?