Crock pot cooking

I really do like to use my crock pot. I love coming home to the house smelling wonderful and having dinner ready to go. My usual crock pot meal is pot roast. The meat is tender and moist and the potatoes and carrots are tasty. I just use an envelope of onion soup mix and about a half-cup of water and voila!

Since going back to work and having to nurse Isaac as soon as I get home I have been searching for other crock pot recipes. I do have a few criteria for which recipes I will try: it has to tolerate cooking for at least 8 hours, has to use ingredients that are readily available, and it can't need additional steps and extra cooking time. I mean, the point of the crock pot is quick and easy, right?

Thanks to Pinterest I am armed with new recipes to try. The most recent trial was pork chops. Only 3 ingredients: pork chops, cream of chicken soup, and ranch dressing mix, oh yeah, and water. It was cheap, easy to prepare, and the house smelled great. For a side dish I prepared one of those frozen-vegetables-with-sauce-that-you-microwave-in-the-bag. The meat was so tender it was falling off the bone. The only problem was that despite being very moist, it tasted DRY. And I couldn't really taste the ranch seasoning. Once we added Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, it was great! So will I try it again? Maybe, but I'll save the money on the ranch dressing and skip it and I'll defintely make sure I have BBQ sauce handy. In the meantime, I'm going to try other recipes.