It’s all a crock
Saturday April 25th 2015, 10:27 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Life

We’re selling everything, she said, we’re not taking anything with us. We’ll start over after we get there.

When she told me their travel plans, that made more sense. Her husband’s about to start his medical residency in Boston. They aren’t going straight there, though; they’re going to Massachusetts from California by way of Alaska, driving, so as to let the grandparents see their little ones. Road trip!

She sent out a note last night of a few things that hadn’t sold at their garage sale, saying, please, come, take, free now, it’s all going to charity in the morning, if you want it it’s yours.

I told her I’d bought my crockpot at eighteen–nineteen, though, come to think of it, it was after I’d moved out of the dorms. Crockpots were a new thing and a huge fad and not cheap and given that I was paying my college tuition for the year out of my summer job money, it was quite the splurge.

It has, though, one can definitely say at this point, seen better days. It had a teflon surface and if you ever want to see what those look like this many years later, well, as Richard finalized it this morning, “We’re not cooking in that” (this would not be a change) and I said it needs to no longer be taking up space in our house. An easy agreement.

Sentimental value object upstaged by actually useful sentimental value object: I am badly going to miss Heather and Jared when they’re gone and I will think of them when I slow-cook apple butter. Or take a pot of soup to the Ronald McDonald House at Children’s Hospital (and not have to borrow a safe crockpot for it. They then have you transfer the food from yours to theirs when you get there.)

Heather’s little cooker will help take care of patients and their families here while Jared’s taking care of patients there. I like that.

She almost didn’t tell me what the price tag had been at the yard sale and she almost didn’t let me pay it but she relented.

And so I finally have a big crockpot again that I would actually be willing to put food into. My late ’70’s sunflower-orange-and-brown one (I kid you not) is hereby utterly evicted.

I love most that I now have a memento of a young couple I adore and whose kids I hope someday will go to Stanford so I can get to see who they grow up to be. Because I know they’ll be adults to look forward to.

Meantime, got any favorite recipes?


6 Comments so far
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Yeah. When first husband was on the road and working this is what he would ask to come home to. Enchilada sauce in the bottom, just a layer (this was before cooker liners, the best thing ever invented. You had to kinda of grease it with the sauce.) A round corn tortilla. Has to be corn, the flour don’t do right in this. Layer of canned beans. Layer of browned ground hamburger. Layer of canned corn. Repeat until you hit the lid of the round crock pot. Pour the rest of the sauce on top to percolate down. Cheap, I’m still in college and we are surviving on the one salary of a young man way down the call list of the union kinds of cheap. Sometimes I would do a layer of salsa in there too. Just end with s corn tortilla. He would come home and carefully cut down the layers and plop out a good quarter of half of the crock pot layered fakey Mexican dinner. Second act won’t eat anything spicy so I haven’t made it in years.

Comment by Afton 04.26.15 @ 5:30 am

Today was roast beef, in the crockpot, with brown gravy mix poured over the top, mashed potatoes with gravy from the roast, green beans and cold pickled beets. I use the crockpot at least once a week so I have a lot of crockpot recipes but my favorite is still taco soup.

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 04.26.15 @ 12:55 pm

I cook something in a slow cooker nearly every day. It is the only way to survive twin preschoolers…. Stephanie O’Dea’s recipes are stellar. She has a blog but I ended up buying a couple of her cookbooks and they have been great.

Things that are easy and surprising:
Baked pasta
Ground beef browned
Fish in packets
Beans cooked overnight
Lots of other ideas. I have cooked a lot in my two crockpots!

Comment by joanne 04.26.15 @ 4:28 pm

My early 80’s crockpot is also sunflower yellow and brown – but ceramic inside and still going strong. I love to toss chopped celery, onions, washed lentils and brown rice in for an easy lentil casserole. You could add some browned meat, but I like the vegetarian approach.

Comment by twinsetellen 04.26.15 @ 7:19 pm

I saw a recipe for crockpot bread pudding on FB recently. I’ll see if I can find it for you!

Comment by Shelly H 05.06.15 @ 11:09 pm




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