Last night we ate dinner at 10 pm because I refuse to cook before the sun goes down if it is in the mid 80s or better. I need to cook without actually cooking, if you know what I mean. So I need recipes. Summer recipes. They don’t necessarily have to be crock pot recipes but that’s the only thing I could think of that won’t heat up the whole house.
Difficulty: No stews! It is too damn hot for stew!
I’ve been on a salad pita wrap kick lately. Some groceries around here have these big, floppy pita lovaes. They’re about 12 inches across and very thin. I do heat them right on the gas burner for about 10-15 seconds per side which paradoxically softens yet toasts the bread. My go-to greens have been a pile of very coarse chopped romaine with parsley and cilantro mixed in. From there, whatever your heart desires. Favorites here have been a generous smear of sour cream, some feta cheese, spicy & chunky salsa botanera, onion, grilled meat of some kind. I’ve used thin pork chops & bratwurst and tonight will be a hamburger I grilled last night. Your favorite salad dressing works fine, too.
All my one-pot meals are seasonal vegetables, tossed with some olive oil, salt, pepper, etc. and sausage…but I use a pressure cooker. Today was carrots, swiss chard, green onion, patty pan/zephyr squash and cocktail wieners I’ve been wanting to get rid of. It was good. 
Two absolutely wonderful ideas. Maybe I’ll put the sausage and veggies in the pita wrap.
Well, we don’t actually crock pot, what we do is sous vide stuff:
*Steaks - to medium rare interior temp, then flip onto the grill outside for the mailllard browning on the outside.
*Chicken - I love to keep shredded chicken around for salad, pulled chicken bbq sandwiches, or stuff like that - sous vide til done, pull out and chunk or shred breasts and thighs together or separate and freeze in half cup and one cup chinese takeout soup containers we get by the case on Amazon.
Pork - we buy the country style rib sections that come in the heavy plastic shrink wrap, not the plastic trays, peel off the stickers and sous vide til done, freeze complete with the ‘drippings’ in. Thaw, drain off the drippings and you have cooked pork for grillng as fake ribbs, or shred for pulled pork. We do similar treatment for bacon - but we drain the fat, then lay out the individual strips on cooking parchement and lay flat on a cookie sheet til frozen, then roll with the strips still in place, and freeze in zippy bags. When you go to fry it up it takes a lot less time and there is less fat to render out, and we have the bacon fat already drained into the can. We precook pork tenderloins and cut into medallions and freeze to be used - they cook up seriously fast in something like a dijon cream with caper sauce.
We air fryer a lot of stuff, brocolli and cauliflower tots are better than tater tots! FOund some air fryer croquette recipes and have been working through them - the corn and chicken and the corn and broccoli/ccheddar ones are good done air fryer.
We nuke tons of veggies - the nuke steam in bag or whatever they are called are great, and we can keep a heck of a selection in the deep freeze.
Head to foodgawker dot com and go nuts searching under crock pot, sous vide, and air fryer for recipes. It is my go to place for searching for something new and intresting - better than all recipes or epicurious were, ,havent gone there in a few years.
Super easy chicken chipotle tacos:
Chicken breast in the pot.
In a blender combine one can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, a can off tomatoes, clove of garlic.
Blend well then pour into crock pot and let everything simmer until the breast are tender enough to shred with a fork.
Great to use for tacos or burritos.
In case you didn’t know, this is called tinga de pollo in Spanish. A lot of recipes call for sliced onion.