The basic formula for this is chicken + leek + dried fruit. Why dried fruit, because obviously it's dried and not watery. It plumps up in the chicken and aromatic cooking juices and makes a nice thick sauce for the chicken. Any dried fruit, I can think of a dozen off the top of my head: apple, apricot, cherry, cranberry, date, fig, mango, papaya, pear, persimmon, prune, raisin. Why leek, dunno. No reason, just mixing up my aromatics.
4-5 chicken thighs
2-3 leeks
1/2 lb dried apriocts
Skin or don't skin the chicken thighs.
Trim, then halve and rinse the white part of the leeks. Then pull out and trim the light green part and halve and rinse that, too. Shockingly, I know, all the dark green parts get thrown away, or you could save them in the freezer for stock. Slice the rinsed leeks, and layer the sliced leeks and dried fruit in the cooker with the chicken: bottom layer of veggies, layer of chicken, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, another layer of veggies, another layer of chicken, and another sprinkle of salt and pepper.
Set the slow cooker on low, and then go away for four hours. When the chicken is done, take it out of the cooker, and at this point you can turn the cooker up to high to reduce the vegetables a bit, and the chicken can cool in a bowl. Take the meat off the bones if you want and portion out the chicken and sauce between your containers.
To eat later: steam frozen vegetables on the stove, reheat chicken in the microwave, and plate them together. Or cook veggies in a casserole in the microwave on high for four minutes, add the chicken, and finish cooking the veggies with the chicken for another 3-4 minutes.
