Weight Loss Wednesday: Two Ingredient Dinner

Back On The Trail - Lunch Spot of the Day

West Prong Trail - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

February 5, 2013

It is high time that I just came right out and admitted it!  I just don't like to cook.  There's a certain element of humor to the fact that I have more cooking blogs in my reader than any other single category and I read them all faithfully.  I have hundreds of recipes bookmarked neatly in all sorts of folders and am just certain that one of these days I'll get around to making them all.  And yes, every once in awhile, the mood strikes and I'll spend two or three days in a kitchen flurry whipping up all sorts of interesting things.  But the mood goes as quickly as it came.  It isn't that I CAN'T do it.  Or that everything I attempt to cook is a disaster.  Truthfully, I can't remember many complete failures at all.  It just isn't something I've been able to develop a desire to remain enthusiastic about on a daily basis.  Probably a good thing we didn't have kids and an even better thing that Bill loves to cook almost as much as I hate to cook.  He also is very simple in the things he likes so even when he doesn't want to cook, finding something for dinner isn't complicated.

Having said all that, it is important to me that we eat healthily and as much as possible, we eat food that is natural, fresh and unprocessed.   Since I am at my best early in the morning, I've learned that my slow cooker is my best friend if I want us to enjoy a good meal together that evening.  If I can plan ahead, come back from our morning walk and get something started in the slow cooker, we are good to go for a meal that just needs the addition of a salad or vegetable.

 As I mentioned, Bill does not care for heavy entrees, gloppy type dishes or he really isn't even a casserole type person.  He's fine with meat, potato and something green!! 

A few weeks ago, I came across a blog post entitled, "Two Ingredient Slow Cooker Meals." I had seen Andie's blog, Can You Stay For Dinner before.   She is a 135-pound loser who has maintained her weight loss for more than six years.  But I had never seen this particular post or seen this slow cooker idea before.

Here's the premise according to Andie..... you can combine any meat (chicken, beef, pork) with any pre-made bottled sauce (marinades, salsa, marinara, you name it), and set it to cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, and what you will be left with is nothing short of marvelous.  You use just enough of the sauce to cover the meat.  That would normally be 1.5 to 2 cups and supposedly the sauce flavors mix with the meat and it turns out delicious.

She gives examples of chicken and salsa, pork and honey barbeque sauce, ground beef and marinara sauce.   And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the combinations here are endless.

So I thought it would be fun to see what ideas you could come up with.   For some of you, I know that idea is probably unthinkable, but for others like me, I'm hoping to get lots of good ideas. 

Put your thinking caps on, be creative and tell me what two ingredients you'd put in your slow cooker to come up with a delicious dinner.   She doesn't mention fish, but I wonder if this would work with salmon or another thick filet of fish and what would be your choice for a second ingredient?

I'm hoping for enough ideas to use my slow cooker and have two-ingredient dinners for a long, long time.

One meat, one sauce, eight hours in the slow cooker.

What combination will you contribute?