Winning Habits | Strength Crushers | Smart Cooking | SCORE Team | Healthy Connections | Fueling Greatness
Crockpot Meals Aren’t Just for Your Moms
Sydney Hubbard
Senior Dietetics Student
April 2019
At the end of the day, all I want to come home to is my mother’s cooking, even more so since I’ve become an actual grown-up with my own busy schedule. Luckily I’ve discovered that there is a solution to this oxymoron: crockpots! Chuck everything in, turn a knob, hours later awaits a mother approved, nutritious, home-cooked meal.
I was recently able to share this genius with the Idaho States men’s basketball team with the help of SCORE Sports Dietitian Natalie Christensen, RDN, LD, CSSD. It opened my eyes to how busy these guys must be, not to mention how big they were, seriously there arm spans were impressive! For sure athletes are in need of moms good cooking just as much as a busy college student like me.
.png)
On the day of our crockpot cooking class, I got to help these athletes in a bit of “home ec” such as instructing them on proper chef knife skills and what spices to use. Both the recipes we used were pretty simple and easy to follow.
My favorite was the Chicken Fiesta where you add chicken breasts, tomatoes, beans and corn and let it simmer for 5 or so hours. What made it extra good was after it was hot and the juicy chicken pulled apart, we added a whole block of cream cheese!
Not only was it delicious but Natalie told me it added more calories, a much-needed boost for these hard-working athletes.
After the bustling of assembling crockpot meals, we all got to sit down and eat samples of these recipes that had already been cooking throughout the day. I think everyone got really excited when we told the guys we had parmesan cheese to put on their minestrone soup.
I remember Natalie telling me she had put on the crockpots earlier that morning and without any attendance, we were able to feed a whole basketball team later that day. I was re-affirmed that night that nutritious meals aren’t hard to come by, just throw some veggies and spices in a crockpot, top it off with some delicious cheese, and wah-lah!
All of our moms would be so proud!
