The Crock Pot Cometh

What you missed yesterday: Due to Husbandrinka's cruelty, I was unable to purchase a crock pot naturally in the store, and instead had to adopt one online. Every day I monitored its shipping progress, dreaming of the day that it would be in my arms. Finally that day arrived.

The crock pot arrived and I was totally ready. I had all the ingredients purchased in advance so as soon as the box was opened and the introductions were out of the way, I got right to work. The recipe (below!) was super easy, although by the time I finished opening all the cans I was totally drained and deprived of the will to live. So, I put it all in, set the slow cooker to "low" and sat back. I was cooking without gas. Perfect.

Husbandrinka got home an hour later and as I fetched him his pipe and slippers he glanced at the slow cooker, lifted the lid and said, "that looks pretty good! Is it ready?" and I said, "Almost! In six to seven hours."
Which for some reason confused him. "In 7 hours, it'll be 3 am," he told me. Okay. And in eight hours, it will be 4 am, what are we learning to tell time or something?

"Yes, it will be ready at 3 am. Dinner will be late tonight. But we have lots of fresh water."
Husbandrinka looks at me like I am deranged, but I don't see what the big deal is. It's a slow cooker. And it's not my fault that I started dinner at 8 pm.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that you're supposed to load it up in the morning so that the dinner is ready in the evening. Which is an excellent point, except UPS delivered the slow cooker in the evening and since I am not adept in time travel, how was I supposed to go back to the morning and prepare it?

So after that, Husbandrinka ate an egg sandwich and everything went smoothly. Except for the part where I had to set my alarm for 3 am in order to turn off the slow cooker. And then I had to taste the chicken taco soup, because it was just sitting there, looking all ready and lonely. And then after I tasted it, I had to drink eight bladdersfull of water because it was pretty salty. And then I spent the rest of the night peeing. And worrying if it was so salty that I developed instant hypertension. And asking everyone in my family to try it in the morning to see if they thought it was salty or it was just me.

But other than that, a great success! Really, I don't know why everyone doesn't get a crock pot.
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Secret Crock pot recipe for Chicken Taco Soup, that I got from an online friend:

Chicken Taco Soup

3 FROZEN boneless, skinless chicken breasts (they have to be frozen, doesn't work if they are thawed. So be sure to take them out of the Styrofoam tray and bag them three to a bag before freezing)
1 Packet ranch dressing mix
1 Packet taco seasoning mix
2 Cups jarred salsa
1-15 oz. can black beans
1-15 oz. can canelli beans
1-15 oz. can kidney beans
1-15 oz. can pinto beans
1-15 oz. can vegetarian baked beans
1-15 oz. can corn

Put everything in the crock pot IN THE ORDER listed.

Next: The crock pot is ruining John's life.

The Cabbage Patch

Last weekend I decided that I was going to emulate one of my favorite bloggers, OHMommy of Classy Chaos. Not in a Single White Female way, but in the I am starving and I'm going to make the stuffed cabbage that she blogged about way. (By the way, I really hope that "emulate" means "copy" and not "vivisect" or something weird. Because I didn't mean anything weird by it. Hey, have you ever noticed that the more you explain how you didn't mean anything weird, the weirder it sounds?)

I quickly reviewed the recipe and emailed her a few million questions about it, hoping that she'd say "oh, it'll be easier for me to make it for you. And an honor, to boot," but she was completely insensitive about that and just answered my questions. Polish people, what are you going to do?

So I put on a leotard and got to work.

Fortunately, I had some rice in the house already, in a container whose size suggested that I was directly responsible for the rice shortage worldwide.

I just had to get some meat and tomato sauce and cabbage.

Trip to the store, part one revealed that when I told the meat hacking guy that I needed 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef, half a pound of ground swine and quarter pound of ground veal, and gave him my blessing to put it all together, he would put it all together and charge me the price for the ground beef for everything. Now, normally this is ok with me if the ground beef is the cheapest of the three, but what if it isn't? What if they were having a special on Mexican swine and I could have gotten the whole thing for like $1? There was just absolutely no way that I could get to the bottom of this international math conundrum, so I didn't even try, but rest assured that this will bother me for the rest of my life.

Then, came the tomato sauce dilemma. In the future, food bloggers, I would appreciate it if all recipes had instructions like:

Go to the store, to aisle 3, and on the third shelf from the bottom, about three inches to the right, there's a can of tomato sauce. Buy it and take it to your leader.

Because in my store, there are ten million cans of tomato sauce. How can a mere mortal decide? Fortunately, Young Ladrinka was with me and said "Just take ANY ONE. Who cares?!" so I grabbed three different ones and we left.

Sadly, we left without the cabbage, which, and I'm no Julia Child, but appears to be an Ingredient of Importance in the stuffed cabbage preparation.

So I had to go back to the store and I hope that I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining how draining that is. Also, and feel free to try this out, if you go to a supermarket and the only thing you're buying is a head of cabbage, people will comment. "Ooh, a cabbage patch!" Yes, I am making a cabbage patch in the NYC apartment. But I don't want anyone to know, so I buy only one cabbage at a time, going to different stores for more single cabbage heads. Because I will build that cabbage patch if it's the last thing I do!

With the shopping taken care of, the rest of the preparations went smoothly. Well, except for the part where I didn't read the part of the recipe that the cabbage that is stuffed had to be in the oven for two hours, so that dinner was ready at approximately 2 a.m. Apparently, I thought that cabbage leaves, when wrapped around raw meat, had magical powers to cook the meat instantaneously. Which is why people really like cabbage patches.

Thanks, OHMommy, for broadening my culinary horizons!

It was super yummy (as a midnight snack).

The Turnip Point

Nothing makes me happier than making beef stew on an autumn day. Well, except having someone else make it, of course. Or ordering a pizza to be delivered. Or heating up leftovers. But other than that, really, beef stew is it. So a few Saturdays ago when I woke up and announced that it was going to be a beef stew day to my husband, I was not prepared for his response.

"Make sure to put turnips in," he said. And then went back to sleep.

Now, I don't know what it says about a man who can practically sleep through an earth shattering announcement of beef stew preparation. And I'm afraid to know what it says about a woman who was unprepared for the turnip request, since my husband's turniphilia is well known. He practically worked in the devotion to turnips into our vows. "I, Husbandrinka, promise to love and honor you above all others, with the exception of turnips, so long as we both shall live. With turnips."

The problem is that I don't love turnips. And more than not love them, I despise them with an intensity that most people reserve for tyrants and despots and Paris Hilton. The taste gags me and their similarity to my favorite potatoes enrages me. How many times have I bitten with anticipation into what I suspected was a beloved potato only to discover that it was a turnip? Well, maybe only once, but it wasn't pretty.

Every time I make beef stew, we have the turnip vs. potato debate. It never ends well.

"I can't take it anymore!" I sobbed on the phone to my friend John. Yes, of the clitoris fame. Suddenly, he became a marriage counselor. "Just put in both potatoes and turnips, but cut them in different shapes," he suggested.

Great. Now I had to cook and become a geometry expert.

"What different shapes? Like crucifix turnips for him and Star of David potatoes for me?" I blew my nose.

"I was thinking more circles and squares, but that could work too," John said. "Weren't your ancestors turnip pickers in the Old Country? You should be more respectful of your heritage."

So, I was going to do it. I was going to make stupid circles of disgusting turnips and beautiful squares of scrumptious potatoes, but then it seemed like too much work, so I chopped everything and threw it in.

And had a slice of leftover pizza for dinner.

Pesto Not So Presto

My husband is generally a soft spoken, mild mannered person, so all our domestic disturbances tend to be very even keeled. There are exceptions, and those come when he makes pesto. That’s when we have screaming matches that rival some scenes of Sid and Nancy.

And not just any pesto. Pesto at other people’s houses. Because my husband uses a Cuisinart to make pesto and not everybody has one at home, so he has to adapt. He is not a big adapter. This is the third year in a row, that I can remember (reminder—I drink heavily and my memory isn’t great, so this has probably been going on for like a million years, at least) that he starts to make pesto at someone else’s house (that we are either visiting or renting, I don’t mean to imply that he breaks in to do this, although you never know what the future holds!), realizes that there is no Cuisinart to blend the oil, basil leaves, and garlic into a deliciousness and has to resort to using the blender. Using a blender, apparently, is an attack on his dignity and way of life. The garlic just bounces around, unminced, the basil leaves don’t bend to his will, everything is fucking wrong and he doesn’t understand how some people can be so ignorant and live without a Cuisinart in the house. If you can call that living.

He has to push the basil leaves down, but because there are sharp blades involved, he uses a wooden spoon to do it. Can you guess what has been happening to wooden spoons for three years in a row now? That’s right, it’s like feeding it through a wood chipper. And do you know what he said to me? Well, two things, first, he doesn’t understand why I have to say “fuck” so much. And then, wait for it—a little wood in the pesto doesn’t ruin it. What the? But still. The basil still needs to be pushed down. Or depressed, like me. So this summer, he branched out and used a plastic spoon to do it. Can you guess what happened to the plastic spoon? Hey, you’re getting good at this guessing game! Fortunately, there were no other instruments around so I can’t report on how other materials fare against the blender blade. But stay tuned for next summer’s hijinx! And let me know if you’d like to hire him to cater your next luncheon.

Roar

Last Saturday, I decided to make Roast Pork Loin. I do not cook often, or well, so when I commit to it, it's a production where I am secluded in the kitchen and my family has to tiptoe around me because The Artist Is Working and one wrong move can set me off, and I will fly into an alcoholic rage, or chop off my ear or something equally cinematic.

A friend called to ask what we were doing for dinner and I said "Pork roast for the Shabbat." Ok, so a friend didn't call, but how else was I going to work in the "Pork for Shabbat" joke into my post? Why must you constantly undermine my humor?!

Anyway, after I was in pork roast preparation for a while, my daughter walked through the kitchen, glanced at the recipe (you know, the one that said "Roast Pork Loin") and said, "Oh my GOD! EWWW! We're having LION?" Yes, she is the one who doesn't like to read for pleasure. Why do you ask?