My Special Needs Friend: My Crockpot

I have an older version of this crock.  It's the Smartpot but my timer thingee doesn't work anymore.  My lid gave up a long time ago and I ordered a new one.  That one gave up, too.  Now, they don't make the lids anymore and I refuse to buy the same style crockpots in the store that I know that they are not gonna have replacement lids for!!!  So, until I find a big crockpot with a glass lid, I am not buying a new one.   Period.  So, I improvise.  Been doing it this way for a while.....like more than a year.

I love my crock pot.  I really, really love it.  It is faithful.  It no longer has a lid but it never stops cooking.  I even used it to make homemade yogurt in  yesterday...but I will write up a separate post for that, as it wasn't the way crockpot365's blog says to use it.  I sorta did my own thing.

Yes, I said that it doesn't have a lid and I use it almost daily for a variety of things.  I use it for anything I would use an oven for.  Anything....well almost.  I don't bake bread in it, although I know some do.  But I have made desserts, baked potatoes, breakfasts...really almost everything. 

Here's how I used it for my meatballs this past week:

First I made up my meat mixture, with seasonings and whatever you add-I added onions, green peppers, eggs to hold it together, a few bread crumbs and some seasonings.  After I used my mixer to mix it all up, I scooped out meat with my ice cream scoop to form balls and placed them into the bottom of the pot. 

 Then, as you can see below, I layered with aluminum foil and repeated the same thing.

 Here's my crock just cookin' up a storm:

I wrote up one of my meatball recipes here.  But on this day, I was making meatballs in sauce for meatball subs.

A word of warning (or a tip, whichever way you see it)  :  if you cook with foil instead of a lid, it cooks much, much faster than with the lid.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  I only cooked these meatballs 2 hrs and waited to warm them until 2 hrs before I was going to serve them and they were steaming hot when we ate!