recipe reviews: slow cooker italian lamb stew, spinach and garlic mashed potatoes, country cabbage with smoked bacon, and sweet & spicy pork tenderloin

i'd worn myself out and was super excited about staying in this past saturday night so i could relax a bit. relax i did, in between doing laundry and washing my hair and working on meal prep and whatnot.

this batch of recipes was borne out of my desire to make chili, preferably in the crockpot. i looked through my recipes and didn't see any slow cooker chili recipes that jumped out at me, so i broadened my search to include soups or stews that i could make in the crockpot. in that search, i kept finding other recipes that i wanted to make even as i'd wanted to focus on crockpot stews/soups. when the search ended, i had more than a dozen recipes set aside. no way was i going to grocery shop for that many recipes at once, let alone try to cook that many in one weekend when i knew i had prior engagements.

slow cooker italian lamb stew: i rarely cook with lamb. it's not that i don't enjoy lamb (obviously, since i chose this recipe) - i just don't work with it that often. i decided to go to whole foods so i could ask the butcher for their input on buying stew meat vs. other lamb parts that they could cut up for me. whole foods was out of lamb, so i wound up buying a pre-wrapped package of "lamb stew" at mariano's. i had plenty of red wine on hand, and used pinot meunier because it was a screw top bottle and i knew i wouldn't drink any of it that night (because scotch). i cooked this on high for 4 hours and the lamb was fork-tender at the end of that cooking time. i bought basil pesto and kept forgetting to use it, so i guess that's a reason to make this again. i want to try it with maybe a different cut of lamb to see if there's a difference.

spinach and garlic mashed potatoes: red potatoes were on sale at jewel for 10 cents each. i was already buying spinach for the lamb stew, so this made sense to me. i make baked potatoes in the microwave, but had never considered prepping mashed potatoes in the microwave. the potatoes came out a bit gummier than i would have liked, but i can't really pinpoint why. i'd make these again, maybe adjusting the buttermilk or using regular milk.

country cabbage and smoked bacon: cabbage was on sale and i keep bacon on hand, so this was another easy decision. i used a whole red cabbage with about 5-6 slices of bacon. i eyeballed the salt and added pepper (not in the original recipe). i want to try it again with green cabbage.

sweet and spicy pork tenderloin: i had a pork tenderloin in the freezer and i liked the idea of making this in the crockpot. i used a 4-quart crockpot and the tenderloin came out fine. i used somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. i ate it with brown rice and was perfectly happy.