The Vegetarian Slow Cooker: It's Not Just For Cold Weather Anymore

Slow cookers are a great tool in the kitchen and they're easy on the planet as well. The slow cooker is one of the most energy efficient appliances in the kitchen. When compared to a conventional oven which uses 2.7 pounds of CO2 for one hour of use, a slow cooker uses .9 pounds of CO2 for seven hours of use. But so often we associate the slow cooker with winter. But not anymore. The folks over at The Lisa Ekus Group sent me the Vegetarian Slow Cooker By Judith Finlayson and I was pleasantly surprised by all the light recipes in the book.

I wanted to have some friends over for a few glasses of biodynamic white wine and some screen porch appetizers and I got some great ideas from the book. I decided to try out the mushroom and roasted garlic crostini with goat cheese. My husband made fresh baguettes last night and I had some great goat cheese from right up the road at Split Creek Farms in Andersen, SC. It's a really simple recipe but the end product is a pretty elegant little appetizer. The recipe calls for oil but I would use a nice olive oil for this. The balsamic is key to giving it that added acidity, so don't leave it out.