October 12, 2007

While shopping last weekend with my husband at Costco, I spied a crockpot. I looked at it and it says you can cook a meal in 3 easy steps. Sounds like my kind of contraption.

Honey, look at this. It’s a crockpot. I could make fabulous meals for us, you know, without sending any one of us to the emergency room with severe diarreah.

Ya. I don’t think so. Crockpots are for chefs. And you, are certainly no chef.

For chefs? Are you insane? What would be the point in making something like that for chefs? They all ready know how to cook.

It’s for people who know how to cook. So I don’t think we should waste the money.

Are you even listening to yourself? That makes no sense. If someone is a great cook why would they need a device that you throw food into and turn on? I mean how much easier could it be? Toss some meat in there, throw a few veggies and a bit of water and boom, gourmet meal!

You just throw bloody meat in with raw vegetables and it just cooks? Wouldn’t we get some kind of poisoning from the blood touching the veggies?

Ummm so? I mean that would be better than getting the trots that I may give you if I just winged it and cooked in a regular oven.

I guess so.

So we now have a crockpot, which I later learned is actually the brand name and it’s technically a slowcooker. I prefer to call it my new best friend. I prepared my first meal in it a couple of days ago. That bitch made a stupid old round roast into a tender, yummy piece of meat. Now if I could get it to do the laundry, I’d have sex with it. Did I say that out loud? I meant, I’d hug it. Yes, I’d hug my Crockpot slowcooker.

I did want to mention to anyone who is thinking about purchasing a Crockpot/slowcooker/miracle worker/best friend that it comes with some warnings, which I thought we should discuss, you know, so you can be protected. I’m nothing if at least not helpful.

1. Do not touch hot surfaces. I’m not sure if they are only referring to the slowcooker or just any hot surface in general. Either way, excellent advice.

2. Use an oven mitt when handling hot surfaces. Another piece of information that I never would have thought of all on my own. I normally just put my bare skin on extremely hot surfaces and see if I can withstand the heat. I sometimes get third degree burns but that’s the price you pay to learn your lesson.

3. To prevent electric shock, do not plug the slowcooker in water or any other liquid. I normally plug things in an outlet designed for plugs and thankfully they wrote this warning because I was going to bring the slowcooker in the shower with me. Cook and clean all at once.

4. Do not use outdoors. I was a bit upset about this one because I was going to bring it with me next time we go on a family hike and plug it in a big, sturdy tree and let our meal cook while we’re hoofin’ it up a mountain. Kinda spoiled the fun there but oh well, such is life.

5. Do not let children play in the CrockPot slowcooker. Right. I know my children were counting on getting in there and whoppin’ it up but mommy is gonna have to be mean and just put her foot down. Such a drag. I guess they’ll have to stick with their, umm, playroom.

There you have it. Solid, informative advice when cooking with a slowcooker. Don’t say I never gave you anything.

October 8, 2007

It’s Thanksgiving here in Canada. Get with it mmkay? We had our turkey dinner at the wench’s house and she cooks a mean bird. Everyone ate too much but that didn’t stop us from eating more later with several desserts to choose from. People never learn. Anyway, on the topic of dead meat and other such things, let me tell you what I found on Saturday.

My husband brought home a big freezer, which was given to him and all that was needed, was for it to be cleaned up. So he begged me to clean the filthy thing I graciously offered to clean it so he could put his meat in it. See? Told you this was going to be about all sorts of meat stories.

As I’m cleaning the free deep freezer, I could smell something weird. We have 2 kitchens in our house because who doesn’t need two kitchens to clean? I mean, sweet right? Butter my ass and call me Judy. No wait, that’s not right. Smack my loaf and butter my bisquit? I forget. Whatever. I’m downstairs in our other kitchen, cleaning this freezer and this smell keeps assaulting my sense of well being, making me slightly nauseous. I stick my head way into the deep freeze and while it’s a bit musty smelling, it’s not rank. I’m thinking perhaps my kids spilled something in the garbage can and it’s a bit smelly. But there’s nothing in the garbage can except some stale chips and a couple of paper towels. Hmmm.

I get back to cleaning the freezer and there a few icepacks in there, so I wash them off and since they were in perfect condition, decided I’d keep them and walked over to the fridge, open the top freezer and was about to put them in when the horrendous smell smacked me upside the head. I pick up an open box of Mr Freezies. Remember, this is in the FREEZER. Where things are supposed to be FROZEN. As in not thawed. I peeked into the box of Mr Freezies and sorry to say Mr Freezie ain’t frozen, he’s quite limp. The whole box is liquid. I scan over to the huge box of chicken fingers and reach inside to pull them out and they aren’t frozen. They’re soggy. Not good. As I’m trying not to pass out from the smell, I reach in and grab a bag. Not sure what’s in it, however, it was not pretty in either looks or odor. It was our pork ribs. Another bag held what was once fairly expensive pork loin. Yet another bag yielded a huge tray of chicken wings. Oh and let’s not forget the $30 worth of strawberries we picked, that I was planning on making jam with seriously, you think I was going to get around to making homemade jam? Sure.. There are piles of sticky Mr. Freezie, ah, juice, ahem, and the icecube trays no longer hold ice. Oh I had cookie dough in there that is able to be thawed and then refrozen but it was now tainted with rotten pork/chicken smell. Yum.

I opened the fridge to see what the freezer control was set at, and low and behold, instead of 8, where it’s recommended, it was at 2. I stood there scratching my head, wondering just who might have messed with the controls. Probably not my husband since he rarely goes down there and I’m pretty certain he’s busy, oh, running his own business, that he’s not got the time to ruin the meat he forked money out for. Oh, oh, oh, see that? See? ‘Meat’ he ‘forked’ money out for. You eat ‘meat’ with a ‘fork’. There’s that amazing word magic I have going on. Revel in it. Basque in it. Deep breath. I know it’s hard being around such word greatness. Snap out of it now, you’ve got more reading to do.

I am quite sure it wasn’t me who turned down the freezer because as appealing as cleaning smelly, rotting meat sounds, I just have other things I’d rather clean. That leaves a 7 year old who could care less about frigging with controls on motorized/mechanical things and an eleven year old, who loves seeing just how things work and playing with buttons, moving them, seeing what button does what when turned this way or that way. Hard to decide isn’t it? Right. Needless to say I had to clean up all that disgusting, rotting meat and sanitize the whole refriderator. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon? Ya, Happy Thanksgiving.