A new way to bake a potato.

I love baked potatoes.  Ever since I can remember.  I'll eat them with butter and sour cream, but they're even better with a little cheese, some green onion, even some broccoli.

A good baked potato is hard to accomplish, however, without heating up your whole entire kitchen.  In the summertime, anyway.  Microwaved baked potatoes are just not the same, and with temperatures near 90, I just didn't want to use the oven for hours.  I didn't want a baked potato that badly.

I found this recipe on the Crockin' Girls'  website.  I was skeptical.  So was Chris.  In fact, his very words were, "Huh.  I've never known anyone else to cook potatoes in the Crock Pot."  He doesn't like baked potatoes as much as I do.  

I followed the Crockin' Girls' directions exactly, and we came home from the YMCA and piano lessons, the house smelled heavenly.  I was so nervous that the potatoes wouldn't be cooked all the way through since I had bought the big baking potatoes.  I tentatively poked one with a fork and it was perfect.  I made up Violet's potato first... a little butter, some sour cream, cheese, and her favorite, broccoli.  I tasted it and almost fell over, it was so good. My potato was even better since I added some sautéed red onion to mine.  Oh, and salt, of course.   

Everybody loved their potatoes that night.  Even Chris.  There were hardly any leftovers.  

The calories weren't that bad and stuffed baked potatoes are so filling.  We had one extra potato, so I saved it for my lunch the next day.  Instead of heating it in the microwaved, I made a sort of twice-baked potato and heated it up in the oven.  It was as good, if not better, than the original!

I'll never make baked potatoes the "old way" again!

I was so thrilled with my discovery that I posted it on Facebook.  Most people that replied had never heard of such a thing.  I was still talking about our potatoes the next day, too, at my Granny's house.  She told me that she'd been cooking her baked potatoes in the Crock Pot for years.  Ha ha!  I wonder why she never felt led to share this little tidbit with me before?