Betty Crocker More Slow Cooker Recipes

I think I may have found my first book that I'm willing to give up! Did my standard five recipes out of this book, and I made a variety of things, from a Mexican Beef Stew, to Sherry Buttered Mushrooms, to Cauliflower Curry, but few of the recipes were really spectacular. With the exception of the mushroom recipe, which was fantastic, none of these really knocked my socks off. The Cauliflower Curry was rather bland, and honestly, how do you make bland curry?? I also made Southwestern Pinto Beans, mainly because I have three one-pound bags of raw pinto beans in my pantry (don't ask), and they were decent, but really kind of dry in the end. They were cooked in a bit of water, chipotles in adobo, and tomato paste, and the sauce turned out kind of, well, paste-y in the end. The flavor was good, but I guess I really like my beans to have a little more juice to them. I also had a total disaster of a recipe, but I'm not sure if I can really blame the book on that one, as it was for corn bread in the oven. Hard to screw up, I know, but this is a crockpot book, not a bread/baking book, so I guess I have to take this one with a grain of salt. But good god was it awful. The bread turned out utterly bland unappealingly moist...like...wet bread. Ug. My notes in the margin say:

I would only make this again if I added more salt, sugar, cheese, jalapeno, paprika, etc. 

I do have to admit though, that the beef stew was successful and did taste good. Maybe I just need to give up trying to cook anything but meat in the crockpot, as it seems like every meat recipe I make in the slowcooker turns out magnificent, while every other recipe is better suited for the trashcan. Hmm. There are a couple of other recipes I want to try out of this book, but in honor of its mediocrity, I've created a new tag, burn, for my burn list of books that are on their way out the door.