Cowboy Beans
bag of 15 bean soup
1 large (22oz?) can crushed tomatoes
1lb hamburger
1 kielbasa sausage
I usually put the bag of beans (after sorting and without the ham flavoring) in the crockpot with salt and pepper to taste in the morning before work on high. I go home for lunch, so at lunch I'll add the crushed tomatoes, browned hamburger and cut kielbasa (slice into bite-sized pieces) and turn down to low. You can also add this right after you get home from work - I will often brown the hamburger and slice the kielbasa the night before so all I have to do it throw it in. In 30 minute to an hour it should be warmed through enough to eat. Sometimes we'll bake cornbread to eat with it, and that gives us plenty of time while the cornbread is baking to allow the additional ingredients to heat up. For such limited ingredients, it's surprisingly tasty!
Roast
Peel enough carrots and potatoes to cover the bottom of the crockpot, or more if you wish. I usually leave potatoes whole, unless they are huge, and I usually cut carrots into 2-inch sticks. Cover vegetables with water. Place a roast on top of the vegetables (do not cover with water, or it will not be tender... juices will collect as it cooks). Slice an onion or two and place on top of the meat, then salt and pepper to taset (I coat the top with pepper!). I put this on before work... I usually put it on high and turn it to low when I get home, but it is usually about done in the early afternoon. You can probably cook it all day on low and it should be fine.
Soup
Cook any meat you add to soup the night before. In the morning, just put in all ingredients (probably don't fill it completely full of water... leave an inch or so space at the top), cook all day and come home to yummy goodness without spending your evening over a stove!
I've never done it, but some people cook pork barbeque in a crockpot, and it's really good. You can put a ham and some water in a crock pot and have it ready when you get home. You can make chili in a crockpot. And there's the usual beans and cornbread (cornbread not made in crockpot! haha...), beans and ham, etc. Nearly anything you make normally can probably be made in the crockpot, sometimes with slight alterations, and save you cooking time later! Experiment! I've taken broccoli casserole, "baked" spaghetti (or crockpot spaghetti =), numerous soups, made baked potatoes, and other things I can't think of in a crockpot. Sometimes there's no stove or oven available for use or, like at Thanksgiving, that's just one less thing to have to put in the oven. Let us know what you discover!
