Recommended Reference

This morning I had the relative luxury of coming to work an hour later than usual (the result of staying late on Monday). In my extra time, I pulled out my favorite slow cooker reference book - Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson - and put together some "Hungarian Goulash" (p. 86) for tonight's dinner. Made with tempeh (a fermented block of soy beans) and served mixed into noodles, this very thick stew has sauerkraut, a tomato base, and provides a truly hearty meal that does not lack for flavor or texture. 

The cool thing about this book is that it has over 200 recipe ideas which, though I doubt they were written with preserver-cooks in mind, lend themselves incredibly well to substitution, replacing store-bought canned ingredients with homemade equivalents.  Below I've included an example below of an original recipe from the book. In orange are my changes which allowed me to use mostly home-preserved ingredients, making it necessary to buy only a couple of non-local items (e.g. bouillon for vegetable stock, tempeh, and salt).

Hungarian Goulash with Tempeh

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil Enough butter to coat the pan (about 1/2 tablespoon)
• 1 pound tempeh, cut into small cubes
• 1 small yellow onion, halved and sliced thinly into half moons (2-3 small onions, can find local ones almost year round)
• 2 cups sauerkraut, drained and rinsed (more like 3 cups and I don't drain or rinse... that's all the flavor!)
• 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes, drained (about 8-10 whole frozen paste tomatoes, skins removed if desired, thawed and diced)
• 1 tablespoon sweet Hungarian paprika 
• 1/4 cup dry white wine (red also works, depending on what you have open, and you can use more for more intense flavor)
• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste (3-4 tablespoons crushed dried tomatoes)
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup sour cream or tofu sour cream

Instructions

• Saute tempeh in olive oil for about 10 minutes. Put in slow cooker.
• Saute onions in olive oil until soft. Put in slow cooker.
• Put everything else in slow cooker. Cover. Cook on low 6-8 hours.
• Serve over wide noodles (mixed into whole wheat macaroni).

This type of substitution definitely takes some practice because, as far as I know, there's no one reference for converting canned tomato units to whole frozen ones. But rest assured: because most slow cookers dishes are stew-like, it's pretty difficult to make something inedible (just be sure that in anything including uncooked grains, you don't skimp on the liquid since the grains need to absorb this liquid in the cooking process). Plus, Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker is a great reference and a good inspiration so experiment away (and let me know if you find conversion rates from standard quantities to home-preserved quantities that you can rely on)!