4 Easy Slow-Cooker Recipes to Warm You Up Before Winter Ends

Winter can be tolerable if you’re dealing with the excitement of pre-holidays, when the crisp chill in the air is still a novelty and you don’t feel like you're trapped indoors like the Torrance family in "The Shining." RECIPE: Beat the Winter Blues With 30-Minute BBQ Sauce That all changes this time of year, when the reality sets in that we’ve still got more than a month of this to go, which makes meal planning and shopping feel like a Herculean task. Fear not! Thanks to the handy little invention known as the slow cooker (or Crockpot, depending on what part of the country you’re in), you can literally dump a bunch of ingredients in it, set it, and come back hours later to a delicious, warming meal that helps you counter the chill. RECIPE: 70-Calorie French Onion Soup While this doesn’t make winter any shorter, it certainly makes it more delicious. We’ve rounded up four easy, hearty recipes that anyone can master: