Slow Cook Gooey Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding

So, this is one I tried last week, but haven't had the time to post! 

I was a little skeptical. Having never used my slow cooker for anything other than stews and soups, I was unsure about the idea of cooking a cake/pudding/dessert type dish in it. 

Turns out, it is a fabulous idea! It was delicious, moist, and as promised Gooey. And for this pregnant lady who LOVES chocolate...it completely hit the spot. The only reason it hasn't been cooked again is time and a lack of slow cookers. I used to think having more than 1 cooker that slow cooks a meal was crazy....I now understand why people not only WANT, but NEED more than one in their kitchen!!

Slow Cooked Gooey Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding

1 Cup Self Raising Flour

1/3 cup caster sugar

2 tbs cocoa

1/2 cup milk

2 tbs butter melted

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

sauce 

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup cocoa

1 1/2 cups boiling water

lightly grease and preheat slow cooker

Combine flour, cocoa and sugar in a bowl. Add milk, butter and vanilla essence and stir to combine. Add nuts and choc chips and mix.

Pour into slow cooker and spread evenly.

In a separate heatproof container, combine boiling water, cocoa and sugar and until dissolved and completely combined. Very carefully pour slowly and evenly over the top of the cake mix in the slow cooker. Cake mix will likely rise as you add liquid, just continue to add slowly.

Cook on high for 2-3 hours. Then turn off and leave in cooker with lid on until ready to serve. 

Serve with ice cream or fresh whipped cream.

Once again, this recipe was tweaked from a recipe at Slow Cooker Recipes 4 Families.

This recipe is NOT healthy, but it is DELICIOUS! 

And honestly, we all deserve to live a little once in a while!!

Slow Cook Sweet and Sour Pork

So, after a crazy hectic week of accidents, miserable toddlers and organising and running the worst garage sale in history (thanks ever so much RAIN!) it was finally time to pull out the slow cooker again. 

A spur of the moment decision saw me throwing pork into the microwave to defrost while i searched for a good recipe the whole family would enjoy. I don't like cooking frozen meat in the slow cooker, although I have been assured it is fine to do, I feel more comfortable, and find its a much better flavour if I brown meat first.

Jumping onto my favourite Facebook group Slow Cooker Recipes 4 Families, I searched the Pork section and stopped as soon as i saw Sweet and Sour Pork. This is one of Muddled Hubby's favourites. Could I slow cook it? Could I cook it from scratch, having never tried before? Only one way to find out! 

On checking the recipe I was short on the amount of meat, and didn't have the vegetables recommended, but that didn't stop me! I used mushrooms to fill out the meat portion of the meal, and just what vegetables I had in the fridge. Having never attempted this before from scratch, I stuck to the basic sauce recipe.

So, without further ado, here it is!

Sweet and Sour Pork

500 grams pork (I used diced heart smart pork)

10-12 mushrooms

2 carrots

1 zucchini

1 tin corn

1 tin unsweetened pineapple pieces, or crushed pineapple, with the juice.

3 tbs brown sugar

1 tsp crushed ginger

1 tsp crushed garlic

1/4 cup white vinegar

3 tbs Soy Sauce

200 grams raw cashews

1 tbs corn flour

2-3 tsp herbs for flavour (I used garlic and herb salt & mixed herbs)

Turn slow cooker on high to preheat.

In a bag mix corn flour and dry herbs and coat pork pieces. Use a small amount of oil (olive oil for us, but you could also use Sesame Oil) to brown meat lightly. 

Put meat and veg in pan, add vegetables and then corn, pineapple, sugar, ginger, garlic, vinegar and soy sauce and stir to combine. 

Cook on high for 1-2 hours, and then on low for a further 4-5 hours. I put cashews in in the last hour of cooking and left the lid off to reduce liquid and let sauce thicken a little.

Serve with rice.

Easy and delicious!! 

If you have Facebook, head over and like my Page.

Also, if you love a good slow cooker meal, check out the Slow Cooker Recipes 4 Families group. So many good recipes in there worth trying!! 

Please note: no one is paying or asking me to promote this group or any of the recipes. These are just my own experiences of what I have found to be a valuable resource for our family, that I thought I would share. Over coming weeks you will also get to see recipes from Taste.com and the Bikini Cookbook range that I tweak to suit our family.

Mini Miss's Accident - Keeping It Real - Mummy Guilt

So I am not the worlds best parent. I know this, I am fine with this. I love my children more than anything in the world and I do the absolute best I can to love them, provide for them....and keep them safe. 

Sadly though, kids will be kids, and sometimes they have accidents. While our attention is elsewhere, even if just for a minute, they do something silly, and it results in a trip to emergency.

Last night I was focused on getting dinner served. Mini Miss was tired, beyond tired. Muddled Hubby was out, and so I was doing the evening routine by myself, and to be honest, I was feeling pretty cocky. I was feeling pretty good. Mini Miss was bathed, pj's on, housework all done, dinner was ready. I was in control. I was trying to take photos for my latest Slow Cooker meal and get dinner served, so I could put a VERY tired Mini Miss to bed.

Earlier yesterday, Mini Miss had had a complete meltdown. After swimming lessons, a trip to the library, coming home reading ALL the books we borrowed, and having lunch together, she had a tantrum about the fact that I wasn't paying enough attention to her! I wasn't playing with her. I told her, several times, that I love playing with her, but it was time for Mummy to do her jobs. I managed to involve her in getting dinner organised, and we baked together. Still, she was cranky that I wouldn't stop working on housework and just play with her. 

At the time I was annoyed. I felt like I had given her plenty of my precious time and she needed to accept that I had other things to do to....Little did I know that last night, this feeling, these encounters, would haunt me all night.

So, while trying to get dinner on the table, Mini Miss was again demanding my attention, but I brushed her off, only half listening to her request, which I now know was to watch a DVD. So, being 3 and determined to have her way, she climbed up on the arm of our lounge and reached over to the DVD cabinet to reach the DVD she so desperately wanted. 

Unfortunately, she can't really reach the DVD cabinet, and she fell. Face first, onto the tiles. Her tooth went through her lip. 



She is always climbing and standing on the arm of the lounge, so, although I could see in my peripheral that she was up there, my brain, focused on other things, ignored it. I didn't see her fall, I only heard the thump....followed by momentary silence, and then this awful wail. This was no ordinary Mini Miss cry, this was I am in serious pain cry. 

I dropped everything to go to her, and picked her up, and immediately got covered in blood. It was everywhere. Its amazing so much blood can come from one little lip. As I tried to clear my brain from the panic welling up inside, I carried her to the kitchen, grabbed a washer and started cleaning her up while cuddling and I think I was attempting to mutter some useless words of reassurance.

It stopped bleeding pretty quickly and initially I thought, "oh its not so bad", then she coughed and opened her mouth, and it too was full of blood. I realised the cut was a lot deeper than I first thought, as I could see it inside as well. 

Thankfully Miss Teen was home and held ice to her mouth and cuddled her while I shut up the house, got dressed (I had had my shower too, and therefore was wandering around with pants...what?! Pants are totally overrated if home alone!)

On our way to the hospital I let Muddled Hubby know what had happened and arranged to meet him at the hospital. We got there just after several (5!!) ambulances arrived within a few minutes of each other, all with accident victims and critically ill patients. I knew this wasn't going to be easy, but it was so much worse than anticipated.

On seeing the Doctor, it was ascertained she would need stitches to close and realign the 2 edges of her lip. In normal, situations they would sedate a toddler, give them a twilight anesthetic. Sadly though, ER was operating at a dangerous level, no staff, no beds, and it was going to be a VERY long wait. We were left with the option of wrapping our baby girl up, giving her several shots of local anesthetic around the wound (have you ever had a local?! They sting like crazy, and her mouth was already painful!) and then stitching it up while she was awake and aware of what was happening. 

To say she screamed through the whole ordeal would be an understatement. She was terrified, in pain and it hurt. And here we were, her parents, the Dr and nurse she trusted to help her, all holding her down and inflicting this horrible scary pain on her. I felt sick. I wanted to scream at everyone to let my baby go. To wrap her up and protect her. To turn back time and NOT let the accident happen in the first place. To cut my lip and have the stitches in her place....anything to stop what she was going through. Reality is it was over within 10 minutes, but it felt like hours. 

I felt guilty. Guilty that she had hurt herself so badly in her own Mothers care. Guilty that I hadn't been giving her the attention she had been demanding all day, and as a result, she was now in the worst pain she had ever experienced. Guilty that I had been feeling cocky, that I had been thinking I was the WORLDS BEST SUPERMUM for handling everything so well, when in fact THIS had happened.   

I was filled completely with Mummy Guilt. 

That guilt kept me awake all night. It made me kick Muddled Hubby out of our bed in favour of keeping my poor little baby beside me all night. It dug its claws in a little deeper every time she cried out in her sleep, having nightmares about what had happened. I was swimming in it. 

By this morning I was ready to be swept away. I wanted out. I couldn't handle all the feelings, the emotions, the pain and guilt I was feeling. It didn't matter that she woke up sore but happy. It was too late. I wanted out. But somehow, using the little control techniques I have, which includes hanging on tight mentally and emotionally to my husband, I avoided letting it overtake me.  

For someone with mental illness, for me, this is a MAJOR warning sign. I have already seen in the last month or so, the depression and anxiety growing, becoming overwhelming at times. I have been having whole days where I feel like I can't breathe from the anxiety. Days, where that little door to escape reality swings wide open and invites me in. Its the easy choice, to walk through that door. I don't feel anything when I walk through that door. Just calm and peace. It also means though, that I shut down. 

I know I will need to increase my medication as soon as this little man is born. I have made an appointment with the social worker at the hospital, and I will ensure I have a counsellor and or psychologist ready to go should it hit full force and the little mental techniques that I have learnt no longer work.

 

So this experience has been scary. Not only for Mini Miss, who for the record, is almost back to normal, just with a cute speech issue from her swollen lip, but otherwise is happy and full of beans. It was scary for me. It has made me face some things I have been avoiding. 

Its also been good. It made me realise this obsession I have had lately with having a clean and organised house, that level of perfection I expect from myself, is just adding to my stress, to my mental illness. Its time to let it go, and enjoy these last weeks with my little Miss, with my Miss Teen and with my Hubby, because in a few short weeks, our lives will be turned upside down in the most wonderful of ways!