Wild Mushroom Polenta

This is another recipe I found in my buddy Chris's Cooking Light Slow Cooker book. I was wanting to make something to go along with our frittata and thought this mushroom polenta looked quite tasty. We'd never cooked with polenta before, and what do you know, it's just yellow corn meal! We had lots of that leftover from some cornbread, so I decided to try it out. It was very tasty, but took longer than the time it stated. After 3 hours, it was still a bit soupy, so I cranked the heat up to high for another 35 minutes. I'd say just watch it and if you're in a time crunch, you could probably cook it on high for about 1.5-2 hours. We slightly modified the recipe (ours is below). Oh, and it is supposed to serve 6, but we ate nearly all of it between the 2 of us. Maybe we eat more than the average Joe, but I would still recommend doubling it if you're serving more than two. I'd say the recipe below is more like 3 servings. We found the dried mushrooms in along with the regular mushrooms in the produce section at Harris Teeter - I'm not sure if they are normally hard to find or not.

Ingredients

• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1 tablespoon butter
• cooking spray
• 3 cups water
• 1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup dried porcini mushrooms, chopped
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• Fresh (or dried) rosemary, to garnish

Directions

1. Heat water in microwave (or stove) until bowling. Spray slow cooker with cooking spray.
2. Put cornmeal and butter into slow cooker. Gradually add the water, stirring constantly with a whisk until well blended.
3. Stir in cheese, mushrooms, thyme, salt and pepper.
4. Cover and cook on low for 3 hours or until thick (plus 35 minutes on high for us).
5. Garnish with rosemary and serve.