Slow cooker heaven (courtesy of Littlewoods)

Many of my recent posts, tweets and facebook statuses have been fixated on one subject matter - my constant over-crammed schedule and lack of organisational skills.  Well folks, I hereby declare that I may just have found an answer to my problems (and perhaps yours too?).....a slow cooker!

I have been tempted to purchase a slow cooker for a while now, particularly as many friends have talked so much about it's merits. I have however, always been a slightly reluctant purchaser, due to the 1970s conotations that a slow cooker holds for me - images such as this 1970's housewife in floral print!

Image courtesy of LA Times

When Littlewoods offered me one of their slow cookers to review, I realised that this would be a golden opportunity to find out what all the fuss was about and hopefully dispel any myth that slow cookers should be kept firmly in the last century.

To my surprise, the blogging community appears to be awash with mouth-watering recipes. There was certainly no shortage of highly-recommended blogs to peruse.  The first recipe I tried out on my shiny new Morphy Richards slow cooker, came courtesy of Mediocre Mum - beef stew and dumplings - perfect winter fodder.  Historically, like most kids, mine have a love/hate relationship with casseroles of any description.  Ok, it's more of a 'hate' - only 1 of them likes it and that's mainly because the dumplings outweigh the nastiness of the rest of it!  Accusations such as 'chewy meat' 'tasteless' and 'too many vegetables' are frequently uttered from the lips of my fussy little diners....so this was going to be a big challenge!

I am pleased to announce that 4 out of the 5 diners were pretty impressed with it (one is probably never going to be won over by a casserole, even if served up by Jamie Oliver himself!).  Having been slowly cooking for 8 hours, the meat, as you can imagine, was so tender and the sauce was very tasty.  Although I did need to stir it a couple of times and obviously add the dumplings 2 hours before eating, it was incredibly easy and I enjoyed the added bonus of delicious smells wafting through the house all day! Beef stew and dumplings?  A resounding (well almost) success :)

On Sunday, we nearly always have a roast dinner.  Did you know that you could cook a whole chicken in a slow cooker?  Neither did I, but I was definitely willing to give it a try.  This recipe was stolen from the wonderul Mari's World and comes highly recommended - a light frying first with an incredibly simple paste spread on it and 6 hours later, you have one succulent and incredibly juicy chicken.  Seriously, it's so easy and didn't involve the setting of any complicated oven timers.

The upshot of this wonderful piece of equipment?  You guessed it......I am sold!  This particular Morphy Richards slow cooker is huge and would easily accommodate a casserole for 10 people (my kids will be pleased!).  It was sent to me by Littlewoods and can be purchased online, via their buy now pay later catalogue, at a very reasonable £37.00 (currently on a 50% off deal). What are you waiting for?!

*This product was sent to me for review.  All opinions remain my own.



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