What's for supper? Crockpot Cabbage Chicken

Tonight's dinner--a variation on Cabbage Roll Casserole--wasn't a complete leave-it-in-the-Crockpot recipe. Maybe you could figure out a way to do it all in one dish, but I liked the way ours turned out even if it was a little more complicated than dumping it all in and forgetting it. I wanted to be sure that both the rice and chicken were done properly, and I figured that baking them separately was the best way to do that.

P.S. For having cabbage cooking all day, this was surprisingly non-stinky. It smelled like cabbage rolls, not like CABBAGE, and there is a difference.

Crockpot Cabbage Chicken

In a 3 1/2 quart slow cooker I combined:

1 cup chicken broth (you could use water)
1 can tomato paste (you could use a small can of sauce)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced (I was out so I used some garlic powder)
2 tbsp. prepared mustard
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/4 cup liquid honey

On top of that, I added as much chopped Savoy cabbage as I could fit in the pot. Actually I didn't bother chopping it--I just tore it apart like lettuce for a salad. I cooked it on high until after lunch, then turned it down to low for awhile.

I let a package of chicken breasts partly thaw, and in the afternoon I put them in a casserole with a cup of brown rice (rinsed) and 2 cups water. I baked this at 350 degrees until the chicken and rice were both cooked through--about an hour and a half.

By this time it was about 4:00. The cabbage had cooked down quite a bit in the slow cooker, and I mixed the cooked rice into the cabbage and sauce. I cut the chicken into large chunks and put it on top of the cabbage-rice mixture, then turned the slow cooker back to high and cooked it for another hour.