7 Easy Slow Cooker Soup and Chili Recipes

For an easy to get ready meal using your slow cooker, try these tasty soup and chili recipes. They are quick to put together and can cook while you are away from home.

7 Easy Slow Cooker Soup and Chili Recipes

7 Easy Slow Cooker Soup and Chili Recipes

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7 Easy Slow Cooker Soup and Chili Recipes

7 Easy Slow Cooker Soup and Chili Recipes

Slow Cooker Chicken Stew

Ingredients:

4 to 5 cups cooked chicken, chopped
1 large can whole tomatoes, undrained
2 to 3 large potatoes, cut into 1" pieces
1 medium yellow squash or zucchini, thickly sliced
1 large onion, chopped
1 can creamed corn
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup barbeque sauce
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preperation:

Combine chicken, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, onion and pepper in cooker. Cover and cook on Low setting for 5 to 7 hours, until potatoes are tender.

Add ketchup, barbeque sauce and corn, mixing well until combined. Cover and cook on High setting for an additional one 30 minutes.

Slow Cooker Three-Bean Chili

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef or ground turkey
1 small onion, chopped
1 large can dices tomatoes, undrained
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can pinto beans
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
1 can chopped green chilies
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder

Preperation:

Cook ground beef and onion in a skillet until ground beef is browned and onion is tender. Drain well. Place beef compound in cooker.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Cover and cook on High setting 6 to 8 hours.

Slow Cooker Navy Bean with Ham Soup

Ingredients:

6 cups water
5 cups dried navy beans, soaked overnight and drained
1 pound ham, cubed
1 can corn
1 large onion, diced
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preperation:

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Cover and cook on Low setting 7 to 10 hours, or until beans are tender.

Slow Cooker Chicken Chowder

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 1/2 pounds chicken, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
2 cups fresh or frozen corn
2 cans cream of potato soup
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup cream

Preperation:

Melt butter or margarine in skillet. Add chicken and cook until browned.

Add chicken, onion, celery, carrots, cream of potato soup, chicken broth and pepper to slow cooker. Mix well. Cover and cook on Low setting 3 to 4 hours, or until chicken in cooked through and vegetables are tender.

Turn off heat. Stir in cream and allow to heat through, 5 to 10 minutes.

Slow Cooker Easy Turkey Soup

Ingredients:

2 pounds ground turkey, cooked and drained
1 large can whole tomatoes, undrained
2 cans beef broth
1 16 ounce bag frozen mixed vegetables
1/2 cup dry barley
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preperation:

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker and mix well. Add water to just cover ingredients. Cover and cook on High setting 3 to 4 hours or on Low setting 6 to 8 hours until vegetables are tender.

Best Bean Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

6 ounces bacon, diced
8 to 10 cups chicken broth
3 cans Great Northern beans or Navy beans, drained
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 large onion, chopped
1 package frozen carrots
2 teaspoons dried minced garlic
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preperation:

Cook bacon in skillet until just cooked. Drain and place in slow cooker.

Add remaining ingredients to slow cooker, mixing well.

Cover and cook on Low setting 6 to 8 hours, or until beans are tender.

Slow Cooker Chunky Chili

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 to 3 tablespoons chili powder
2 cans diced tomatoes, undrained
2 cans chili beans or kidney beans
1/2 cup salsa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Preperatiion:

In a skillet cook ground been and onion until beef is browned and onion is tender. Drain well. Add to slow cooker.

Add all remaining ingredients, and mixing well. Cover and cook on Low setting 5 to 6 hours.

Sprinkle with shredded cheese when serving, if desired.

7 Easy Slow Cooker Soup and Chili Recipes

Tax Benefits of Purchasing power efficient Appliances

Many people have heard of tax credits for energy productive purchases. The good news is they expand to appliances as well. You can get a tax rebate and save money on your utility bill.

Tax Benefits of Purchasing power efficient Appliances

Tax Benefits of Purchasing power efficient Appliances

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Tax Benefits of Purchasing power efficient Appliances

Tax Benefits of Purchasing power efficient Appliances

A tax credit is a very indispensable thing and is much good than a tax deduction. A tax credit comes directly off the amount of taxes due rather than reducing your taxable income. The United States has recently popular ,favorite some tax credits for the purchase of energy productive homes and products. For the most part, these products are Air conditioning and heating units and solar energy products. The tax credits for appliances are ready for the manufacturers of washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators.

In order to qualify for tax credits, the constructor must be manufacture washing machines or dryers that conform to 2007 energy Star specifications. Refrigerators must exceed the 2001 energy conservation standards. This might come as a discontentMent to the individual tax payer, but it truly should not. The taxpayer stands to benefit from this tax break procedure to manufacturers in two separate ways.

First, by giving tax breaks to the manufacturers, it encourages them to meet energy Star standards in order to qualify for them. In the long run, the consumer is the one who is benefiting from the energy Star standards being met in major appliances. The rising cost of energy and the environMental concerns of high energy consumption are problems that touch every individual consumer. We truly should not need any tax credit to encourage us to save money and the more energy Star appliances on the market, the good for us.

The second way that individuals stand to benefit from tax breaks to the manufacturers is that by manufacture their profitability higher, it encourages them to produce good products and still have the potential to offer them at more competing prices. It is said that every appliance has two price TAGs. The first is the one we pay at the point of purchase and the second is the cost of operating the appliance while its lifetime. In a exquisite world, every person would understand this and refuse to resolve for an energy inefficient stock despite its lower introductory cost. We do not live in a exquisite world, however, and too many people make their buying decisions based only on that first price TAG.

Also, do not forget the individual tax credits on heating and Air conditioning units. These credits can be applied to individual tax returns and go up to 0 for determined popular ,favorite units. people may be disappointed that their new energy Star popular ,favorite washer and dryer does not help sacrifice their revenue tax when April rolls around, but this is an highly selFish point of view. The governMent sponsored energy Star agenda already is working to save us money on energy costs and each of us has a stake in the environMental concerns too. It should not be indispensable to bribe us via tax credits to make sound financial and environmental decisions when shopping for a major appliance.

Tax Benefits of Purchasing power efficient Appliances

Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

You've got your amps, you've been practising in a carport or small practice room and things sound pretty tight. Now you've got a chance to play down at the local pub/bar. How difficult could that be? Well, if you feel that all you have to do is set up and play just as you've been practising then there is a 99% chance of disaster. Many bands sound awful at their first gigs because their Pa isn't sorted; they find themselves playing out of time and out of tune.

Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

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Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

Why? It's monitoring - or to be accurate a lack of it! Your singer will only be able to sing in tune if he can hear what he is singing. Your guitarists will only bend notes accurately if they can hear their own guitars. Bass and drums will only lock in if they can hear each other, and each of you will only know where you are in a song if you can hear the rest of the band. It's thoroughly dissimilar to the confines of the carport or custom space and this can in effect throw you all. You will be struggling to hear the farranging sound and may even have problem in properly hearing your part of it. No matter how good you all are as musicians, no matter how much you've practised, without good monitoring you will end up out of time, out of tune and wishing you'd stayed at home. When the on-sTAGe sound is wrong, amplifying it will just tell the audience how wrong it is.

For bands of three to six people with galvanic guitars and bass, a drummer, a singer and maybe a keyboard, playing in small venues to audiences of less than 200 (a typical start up scenario) your amplification needs are threefold:

1) Back line - this includes your guitar and bass amps, your drummer

2) monitors - these are on-sTAGe Speakers relaying "fold-back" - your own sound

3) Pa - the front of house sound which the audience hears

Notice that 1) and 2) generate your on-sTAGe sound whilst 3) delivers the on-stage sound to the front of house. Lets take them one at a time:

Backline

You will need 30 to 50watts Rms for your guitar to match the drums. The bass will need 50 to100 watts. If you are using keyboards they will need 100 watts as a back-line instruMent but if you select to put the keyboards directly through the Pa to the front of house, bear in mind that without a mixer they will be a distraction for the vocalist. Those pieces of kit which do not have a volume operate - the drummer and the singer - now need to be considered. The vocals will absolutely need a law that delivers over guitars, bass and drums to a room full of noise enthralling people (and audiences suck up the higher frequencies more efficiently than the lower ones), so Pa's are first and prominent the province of the vocalist, but also for keyboards and, if you chose to microphone them, the drums.

monitors

You need stage monitors so the singer can hear themselves and the rest of the band can hear the singer. A monitor is a Speaker, often quite small and wedge shaped, which can be pointed at the singer without hiding him and ordinarily raised at the front edge by a stand (or propped up by an old brick) to scheme better. Add more monitors so the rest of the band can hear the singer and position one of these next to the drummer. You'll need a separate power amplifier to drive the monitors although it needn't be as qualified as a Pa power amp, and if you have extra acoustic instruMents you will need to put these through the monitors too. Look for monitors of 100W, you can get active ones with built in amps or go for a monitor amp with separate Speakers. Understand, too, that your guitar and bass amps are, on-stage, monitors. You need to set these so that you can hear yourself and the other band members, and that they can hear you as well as themselves. This is the trickiest part and when sound wars break out on stage, often a competition over being loudest, it's the audience that suffers. Don't make the mistake of turning up your amps to impress the audience as you will just be unbalancing the band's sound. In very small venues and for generally acoustic bands, the monitors can be angled to spill sound to the audience.

You now have operate and equilibrium issues to consider. Decision one: whether you equilibrium the back line to the drummer or you microphone the drums and equilibrium through the Pa. There are compromises inherent when playing small venues where it may be productive to naturally microphone the kick drum.

Pa

To the singer, the Pa is what an amplifier is to a guitarist, but it's much more besides. What goes to the Pa goes through a mixer. These days a mixing desk capable of handling the whole band can be picked up for the price of a low mid-range guitar. Given that many venues, even smaller ones, now have their own Pa systems, along with a mixing desk, you will need to come to terms with these whether way. At the basic level if you only have vocals going through the Pa you will only need 100W per channel and a incorporate of full range speakers with stands. The speakers will have a ten, twelve or fifteen inch bass speaker and a horn to deal with the high notes. You'll need to raise the horns above the audience or the people at the front will suck up all of the treble and the rest of the room will get mush. This is why most Pa systems feature stands, so use them! Make sure the cabinets are well to the front of the vocalist or your back-line sound could overpower the vocal mike and set up a howling feedback loop. If you've got your on-stage sound right then you won't get this qoute from the back-line but if you do then you now know the answer. Turn down the back-line!

Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

How to Make a Pizza - Step by Step Instructions

For anything who loves pizza, learning to make their own at home is a major step forward. While bistro pizza may be good, homemade pizza can be great! Moreover, despite what you may believe, making your own pizza is easy.

How to Make a Pizza - Step by Step Instructions

How to Make a Pizza - Step by Step Instructions

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How to Make a Pizza - Step by Step Instructions

How to Make a Pizza - Step by Step Instructions

Not only can you originate the epicurean pizza of your dreams at home, it will save you a lot of money. Think of the cost of getting takeout pizza over the course of a year... Most pizza restaurants payMent nearby for a hot, fresh pizza. If you had pizza twice a month for a year (assuming you only need one pizza each time), you would still be spending 4 per year on pizza alone. Duplicate that if you have kids and need a minimum of two pizzas each time. Why not make them at home and save money?

Recipe for Homemade Pizza

What You Need

• 1-1/2 cups warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
• 1 container active dry yeast
• 3-1/2 cups bread flour
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Olive oil
• Cornmeal
• Tomato sauce
• Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, shredded
• Mushrooms, thinly sliced
• Bell peppers, seeded and sliced
• Pepperoni, thinly sliced

How to Make It

To make the dough, put the warm water in the bowl of an galvanic mixer. Sprinkle the yeast into the water and let it sit for a few minutes so the yeast dissolves. Stir if needed.

Mix in the olive oil, salt, sugar, and flour on low for about a minute. Knead the dough by hand or with a dough hook on the mixer until the dough is elastic and smooth. This takes about 10 minutes. Add more flour if the dough is too wet.

Place your dough into a lightly oiled bowl, turning the dough so it gets coated in oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place until it doubles in size. This may take about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. After rising, you can use the dough or ice it for future use.

If you have a pizza stone, warm it in the oven as it preheats to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Remove the plastic cover from the pizza dough and punch it down so it deflates. Divide the dough ball in half, forming two round balls. Place each ball in its own oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let them sit for 10 minutes.

Get your toppings ready. Try not to overdo your toppings or your crust will end up soft.

Take one ball of dough and flatten it with your hands on a floured surface. Begin in the center and work out towards the edges. You want the dough to end up about 1/2 inch thick. Turn the dough and stretch it until it will not stretch any more. Let the dough relax for 5 minutes, then continue until your pizza dough is the size you want. Pinch the edges if you want a lip to form on the crust.

Brush the top with olive oil. Make dents with your fingers along the outside to preclude bubbling while Cooking. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Repeat dough making ready with the second dough ball.

Sprinkle cornmeal on your pizza stone. Lay out your pizza dough and quickly cover the pizza with a miniature tomato sauce. Add your toppings and bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Let the pizza rest for a integrate of minutes after baking before you slice it. Enjoy!

How to Make a Pizza - Step by Step Instructions