Slow down, you move too fast...

It was Christmas Eve and Shabbat this year, combining two of the oldest traditions in religion. In honor of the coziness of the winter, I decided to do a trial run of my new slow cooker Crock Pot with a delicious cut of Brisket I had ordered from my friends at Holton Farms this summer and frozen. I've never used a Crock Pot before but my friends all swear by them and recently I went to a meal where they'd used it to make a vegetarian Cholent, a stew traditionally made with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions and in Hungary and the "old country" they add whole eggs. I was enraptured by the stew and idea of it simmering all day and melding all the delicious flavors together, layering and deepening. I had to get a Crock Pot.

On my most recent trip to Costco, I picked one up for a job I was working on with the intention of making soup in it. I started making a sweet potato, butternut squash soup in it when I was working on set and got frustrated with the slowness of it. When I want to make soup to be made and eaten in an hour, I need speed. I put in butter, onions and garlic and expected them to sizzle and brown like I normally cook them, but no dice, this wasn't how it worked. In frustration, I put it in a regular soup pot and went on with my business, saving the Crock Pot for another time when I had more time.

I had the urge to give it another try last week and pulled my brisket out of the freezer to defrost. I picked up a bunch of carrots, a nice big onion and about 6 small Yukon Gold Potatoes and about 4 fat cloves of garlic that had been split from a head.

I chopped all my vegetables up and put them in the Crock Pot and browned the brisket which I had seasoned with coarse sea salt and ground pepper and then put that in on top of the veggies. I grabbed a partially empty bottle of Dijon mustard from the fridge and added some whole grain mustard, ground rosemary, oregano and apple cider vinegar and shook it up and then coated the brisket with it on top of the vegetables. Then I added about a half a bottle of Pinot Noir that had been sitting around for a while and smelled like it would lend itself to the cause quite nicely. I plugged in the unit, put the setting on Low for 10 hours and went and watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and had a glass of wine.

All night long as I slept the aroma of the brisket floated through my dreams. By the time I woke up, I was starving! In the morning I made Kasha according to the directions on the package and indulged in brisket and kasha for breakfast. It’s not traditional but this is my favorite meal of all time and as far as I’m concerned, can be eaten any time! Sorry there aren't any pictures but some things taste much better than they look!