Saying Hello to Slow Cooker Season and Goodbye to Summer with Yogurt-Based Key Lime Pie
Saying Hello to Slow Cooker Season and Goodbye to Summer with Yogurt-Based Key Lime Pie
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Slow cooker season is coming in hot so we’re talking recipes and the slow cookers we’ve got our eyes on. We’re also sharing our Healthier Key Lime (or just basic lime) Pie that uses plain greek yogurt as the base—resulting in a slightly tart spin on the traditional flavor. It’s full of probiotics, comes together quickly and is perfect for hot weather.
Let’s Talk Crock-Pots & Slow Cooker Season
Some of our favorite weekday recipes start in the morning and are ready to eat for dinner. But before I get into that, I want to share my favorite healthier key lime pie recipe. I love key lime pie: It’s creamy, cool, and perfect for a labor day picnic.
My sister got tired of my constant search for key lime pie (which is hard to find in San Diego) and created her own recipe. It’s so simple, and I made it for the first time this summer. It got lots of compliments.
While it is still high in sugar (I mean, it is a pie), the pie is loaded with plain greek yogurt, lime juice, and is set with gelatin. You can make your own graham cracker crust (baked quickly in a toaster oven so you don’t heat up the house) or buy one pre-made.
Only the crust is briefly cooked, the rest is no cook. It is tart and tangy, I think you will love it. I’ve been pining over this Le Cruset heritage 9”pie pan, and I think it’s going to be the fall kitchen purchase I make this year.
Ok, back to the best kind of meals that start in the morning before work, and are ready by dinnertime. They all start with dumping a bunch of ingredients into a slow cooker, and then leaving the house for the day.
I used to do this back when I lived in NYC all the time—bone broth was also on heavy rotation. When bone broth had just emerged on the wellness/foodie scene, there was a period of time in winter, when I bought excess bones from a butcher in the East Village every week, and made bone broth in my instant pot on slow cooker mode.
There was, and still is, a window selling broth nearby my apt, Brodo in the East Village that inspired my bone broth slow cooking addiction, and it was like a siren call in wintertime when I wanted to warm up, but not with a sweet drink. The broth came in a takeaway coffee cup, and you could add all kinds of things to the base broth like ginger and even bone marrow. Brodo is still open, to my delight, and now sells broth online too. A montage:
Sidenote: Goop wrote a post on exactly how to make Brodo’s broth in case you’re inspired to make your own. They call it the best bone broth on the planet. You can also ship it premade to your house on their website.
Anyway I decided to make my own, and hence my love for the slow cooker was born. It’s easily my favorite appliance, and I would really like to upgrade to The Dream Cooker from my old Instant Pot, not because anything is wrong with it, but because I simply like the sleek aesthetics of it, and because I could use another one in the kitchen. I make my dog’s food in it every two weeks, and I could get the job done much quicker with two pots going at once. That’s how much use it gets.
There are a lot of slow cooking options these days including a casserole dish that’s also a slow cooker. It can literally go from baking dish to table. Browse them all and find your favorite style.
In the spirit of fall and back to school and work, I’m sharing some favorite weeknight meals in the slow cooker to make dinner planning easier.
Some Weeknight Slow Cooker Favorite Recipes:
Slow Cooker Quinoa Curry (veg) by Simple Quinoa
6-Ingredient Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada by real Food Whole Life
Crockpot White Chicken Chili by Well Plated (coming next week to the blog, we’re sharing all of our favorite slow cooker soups. This on is on the list!)
Small Bites
Three things to know now. Grow your own, our favorite cold lentil salad, and the dreamiest “garden cakes”.
1. Grow From Seed to Plant in Two Weeks Flat In Your Kitchen
Melissa’s been working on her how-to series on growing your own microgreens. Imagine always having a little bit of freshness on hand to finish off a meal and bring it instantly from lackluster to luxurious (and nutrient dense).
Start with a sunflower shoot growing guide, or the new arugula microgreen growing guide, which is new this week.
2. What We’re Eating Now: Cold Lentil Salads
A Note From Melissa: Lentils can be so boring. There, I said it. The first time heard of lentils was after I graduated from college. Can you believe it? I was working at a science museum, right after college with a bunch of other recent grads(all of us wondering why our college education focused so little on actual adulting). We all realized that we had to make our own lunches because our salaries did not support regular take-out.
It was Roberto, who brought lentils to work in a thermos. He looked at me sideways when I asked what he was eating. It looked plain gross. Mushy, ashy-brown, and lumpy. I tried the lentils and dismissed them as too funky. First impressions are hard to overcome, but I have adopted lentils into my diet.
Lentils are so good for you, and so inexpensive, figuring out how to cook them is a must. My favorite way to eat lentils (aside from soup), is as a cold salad. Perfect for toting to the office for lunch. Most of the time I sprout lentils for a grassy-fresh crunchy taste, but I’ve been on the hunt for finding great cold lentil salads, and curated a bunch cold lentil salads to try this fall. Check out all the yummy recipes I’ve collected. - M
3. Trending: Unusual Plant Decorated Cakes
I've had cake on my mind because it’s my son’s bday this week, and have been draw in by these wonderful surreal & whimsical cakes online that are decorated with fruit and flowers.
I’m calling them sculpture garden cakes, and I love how freeform, surreal, and fun they are, like anyone could attempt to decorate a basic frosted cake (even a sheet cake from the store) themselves. As with anything I’m 100% sure there’s artistry involved in, but I think everyone is an artist. I’ve been collecting some amazing photos of some gorgeous Sculpture Garden Cakes™ and will post about garden cakes on the blog next week so stay tuned. I generally love the wild and unusual, so I’m very excited about this trend.
Speaking of fruit cake…
Melissa sent me a video of a gorilla eating a cake for its birthday. She happened to be at the zoo, and saw this cake feeding live and in person. Here’s the video:
I love that the zoo serves ice fruit cakes for the gorillas. Enjoy the last weekend of summer.
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