Summer roasting: slow-cooker eye of round roast

I hate using the oven in the summer because even with the air conditioning on, it simply gets too warm in here. So I’ve been learning to use my slow-cooker for more than just soups and stews. Throw some stock into  it, sear the meat in a pan with a rub, throw it into the stock and leave it alone for a few hours in the crockpot. And the kitchen doesn’t heat up in the process.

Here’s how I do up my eye of round roasts in the summertime:

Homemade roast rub

I like throwing an eye of round roast into the crockpot on weekends for hubby and I to eat throughout the week. Some people use steak seasoning to season roasts. Others make their own. I like to make my own. Since I make a roast every week or two, I tend to make up extra rub seasoning and put it into mini Mason jars. Here’s what I’ve been using as of late:

Satisfying Sides: Roasted garlic herb potatoes

Although I’ve cut right back on how many potatoes I eat these days, I still allow myself to have them from time to time — just in smaller portions. I’ve also been craving fries. So what a great way to get my potatoes and my fries craving taken care of than to roast some mini potatoes up in the  oven and have them as a side dish?

Here’s what I did:

Sandwiches for dinner: chicken panini!

Sometimes, you just want a sandwich for dinner. But you get bored with regular sandwiches or toasted sandwiches, so what do you do?

Panini!

When I made this for my hubby and I, he said, “Wow! That’s a hearty sandwich!” It was an instant hit. Feel free to use  the ingredients you have on hand and enjoy, but here’s what I did:

Chicken parmesan meatloaf muffins

I love chicken parmesan when I go out to eat, but I’ve been avoiding it due to the elevated sodium levels I know the sauce will undoubtedly have, the breading on the chicken, etc. I’ve been learning that some of my favourites from restaurants over the years are not the healthiest of choices and tend to have a million calories, two million grams of fat and an ungodly amount of sodium. Chicken parmesan is no exception, sadly.

But does this mean I have to swear off of it? No! Why not make my own and adjust things to fit my dietary needs? I’ll save my waistline from expanding (or my feet!) and save my pocketbook too!

I had a craving for it one night but didn’t have any chicken breasts to make it myself. What did I have? Ground chicken. What could I do with that? Well, I make beef meatloaf ‘muffins’ all the time, so why not do the same with the chicken? They’d have bread crumbs worked into them, using a similar theme to chicken parmesan. And heck, I have light parmesan in the fridge at all times! If I made up my own sauce, I could control the sodium considerably. So I went to work on it and here’s what I did:

Hearty turkey barley soup

Due to the summer heat, I’ve been using my crockpot a lot more than my oven, especially for cooking large quantities of meat. I recently threw two large turkey breasts into the crockpot with a seasoning rub (that I threw together) and some reduced sodium chicken broth.

From this, I decided to reserve some of the meat for a turkey-potato-veggie dinner, some for sandwiches (turkey club anyone??) and the rest, I threw into a stewpot on the stove with some barley and vegetables. Yes. Soup in the summer. I’m okay with eating soup in the summer. I like to freeze it into smaller portions and then pull it out on a rainy day! Here’s what I did:

Filling breakfasts: 2-egg omelet: onion, mushroom, turkey bacon

I love omelets. I’m not really a fan of scrambled eggs, but there’s something truly satisfying about a nice omelet, especially one that’s filled with good stuff.

Last week, there was one morning that I woke up feeling rotten. I don’t know if it was the beginning of the summer cold I appear to have now, or if it was just a bad case of combined sinus headache and allergy attack. Either way, I contacted my boss to say I wouldn’t be in, then went right back to bed. Sometime around lunch, I woke up and stumbled into the kitchen to see about food, before I had to go back to bed.

The omelet I made was just what the doctor ordered. Here’s what I did: