Another well orchestrated evening dinner thanks to my friend, Crockpot.

Wednesday night, I had to pick up my 1st grader from school at 4 pm, drag all of the kids to drop off dinner a a friend’s and attend a preschool open house. Once we got home I needed the 1st grader to complete his homework and dinner by 6:30 in order to get him to basketball on time. Millions of mothers, I am sure, have similar if not more hectic evenings on a regular basis. For my evening I planned on using my trusty crockpot to get me through. Fish packets is a regular meal in our house but I had never thought to cook them in the crockpot until I read a smiliar recipe on the Crockpot Lady’s Blog. When I first saw her recipe that takes 3-4 hours in the crock I thought how helpful is that? I am a crockpot purist who thinks of crockpot recipes as being convenient and delicious only if it cooks for 6-8 hours but I figured I would try this short-cook idea.

I thawed the fish for our fish packets at 3:00, in cold water and cut up the veggies, (onion, tomato, mushrooms, zucchini, peppers). Once thawed, I made the fish packets by placing each of the fish fillets on the bottom of a piece of foil and layering them with veggies, olive oil, minced garlic, basil, chopped rosemary and seasoned salt. I folded each of the layered piles up in individual foil packets and placed all the packets in the crockpot. The prep took less than 10 minutes. My husband doesn’t eat fish so I made a chicken packet for him. (So far, the kids haven’t noticed these replacements for daddy but he’ll have some explaining to do about a made-up allergy when they do figure it out). I placed them in the crockpot on high and they were warm when we rolled in the door at 5:20. Perfect! I cooked the tumeric rice in advance and warmed it in the microwave. Perfect. There was no rushing and dinner was delicious and ready to go. Thank you Crockpot!