Valentine's Day Crockpot Extravaganza

I think that along the way I may have mentioned that Mark works nights at the Ford Assembly Plant in St. Paul. He goes to work at about 4:00 PM and doesn’t return home until about 4:00 AM. So, there are times and holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, that we must put off our celebration until the weekend, leaving me to fend for myself on the actual date. I’ve pretty much gotten used to this over the years, so it doesn’t bother me anymore. Now I just plan fun things to do instead.

This year for Hallmark holiday of love, I asked Julie to be my Valentine, and she gladly accepted. After some debate on whether we should dine out or make dinner, we decided to make a meal entirely in our crockpots. My sister and her family had bought a crockpot for me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and Julie’s mom bought her two crockpots for Christmas this year. We have been searching the Internet for good recipes for crokpots since New Year’s. We decided it was time to put our crockpots to the test.

Julie had the responsibility of dinner, and I was in charge of dessert (of course). After trying out a couple of different recipes, Julie landed on her mom’s chili recipe. I found a recipe for hot caramel apples and was set to go.

So, on Valentine’s Day morning, I woke up (late) and made the caramel apples in the crockpot, and brought it over to Julie’s. We were going to run to her house (she lives three blocks from work) over the lunch hour to turn on the chili, and then return to her house at around 2:00 to turn on the apples. That way the chili would be ready to go right after work and the apples would ready a while afterward.

We went to the video store to pick up Cinderella Man. We weren’t sure of what to get, but we’d both wanted to see it. It was so good! Really a wonderful story about love and family and working hard and it was just great. I recommend it!

When we got to Julie’s to finally start eating, her house smelled amazing, between the simmering chili and the baking apples!



We got out the wine,



filled our bowls up with Fritos and chili and cheese (all intricately layered, of course),




and sat down to enjoy the movie.



The chili was SO GOOD! Just the right amount of spice to make your nose run, but not too much that you couldn’t taste the chili goodness. After a heaping bowl of it, we were both way to full to even think about the apples!

So the apples simmered a while longer. That’s really the beauty with the crockpot – if you aren’t quite ready to eat, it doesn’t matter! It’s pretty hard to mess things up with a crockpot. When the movie ended, we turned on Sex and the City and decided we had just enough room for dessert.




I was rather pleased with myself at how the apples turned out. I put each apple in a bowl with a little of the juices it was baking in, and put Redi-whip along the outside rim of the apple. The apples were nice and soft, without being soggy and gross. The caramel and brown sugar was oozing out of the apple. (You make these caramel apples by coring the apples and sticking a bunch of stuff right inside if, so it cooks from the inside out.) As full as we were after the chili, the apples were just delectable! We didn’t speak the entire time we ate them.

After a clean up of the kitchen and pots, I headed home to my empty house. I did have a wonderful note from Mark to read. It was so great to spend V-Day hanging out with a good friend instead of moping about alone. And we had such a good time hanging with the crockpots, that we’re going to make it a regular thing. Keep watch for the next recipe postings…

Up Next: My V-Day celebration with Mark.