By
Elizabeth Redhead Kriston
In our home we love to cook. I spend many Sundays in the
kitchen making broths and stews and other yummy treats to eat throughout the week.
On week nights, we often spend an hour or more preparing home cooked and
healthy meals whenever possible.
Sitting on the low shelf of a rarely visited kitchen cabinet
lives an under-used, off-brand Crock Pot. The once gleaming stainless-steel
exterior is dulled with a fine coating of dust. I often think of it when my
feet and back ache from standing on our tile kitchen floor as I ponder the
thought of set it and forget it. Okay,
maybe that genius tag line refers to a Ron Popeil’s Showtime Rotisserie, but it
applies for the beloved Crock Pot too.
I have perused many a slow cooker recipe over the years. My
Facebook friends often post recipes and photos of scrumptious looking creations
they have prepared for their families. These friends boast how they spend a few
minutes in the morning rough chopping meat and veggies then adding some sort of
canned soup or jarred sauce then simply placing the cover on the ceramic
insert, turning the knob to the appropriate temperature, and going on with their
day.
Set it
and forget.
In the evening when my friends’ families gather for supper,
they simply dish out heaping servings of some tasty creation and spend sometime
with the family around the dinner table recapping their days and connecting. Afterwards,
bellies full, they scrape their dishes and place them in the dishwasher along
with the ceramic pot from the slow cooker and get on with their evening of homework,
TV, or other endeavors.
This sounds like bliss.
Two things have kept me from using my non-Crock Pot slow
cooker more often. First, most of the recipes are filled with the fatty, salty,
processed, pre-prepared foods I try to avoid. Fortunately, there currently
exists and abundance slow cooker recipes made with fresh and healthy
ingredients. Second, I have an irrational fear that leaving food cooking while
I am away from the house will inevitable lead to fire. By trying to take a
shortcut to meal making, I will doom my family to homelessness and inevitably
cause my pets to perish all in the name of convenience.
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| Click here for healthy recipe ideas |
Despite my reservations, I began to use my non-Crock Pot
slow cooker this year. I have experimented with making bone broth and a few
chicken dishes. The only requirement for me to do so, is that someone is home
while the pot simmers the delicacies within. After several successful
experiences where the food turned out delicious and the pot did not
spontaneously combust, I allowed myself to let the electric pot cook while I
stepped out of the house for a quick errand.
No fire. Tasty food.
These successes finally provided me with peace of mind I
needed to let the pot cook while I was at work. It took years but, Yeah, I can
finally simmer our dinner while I am at work so I can enjoy my evenings. Rather
than spend all day Sunday making meals, I can have an adventure or catch-up on
all the episodes of This is Us I missed.
Spoiler Alert!!!
Oh, crap. I just caught-up on all my missed episodes of my
favorite tear jerking, heart wrenching show. As I watched Jack turn the knob to
“off” it was clear that my days of slow cooking were over. If only he had
thought to just unplug the hinky old thing!
As the sparks flew and the fire grew, I mourned less for Jack’s
imminent death and the little dog who I suppose perishes in the smoke just as I
feared my own pups would, and mourned more for my lost Sunday’s of relaxing and
my easy evenings where I would not be forced to stand on the hard tile floor
and prepare nightly meals for my family.
Then I had a and Ah-Hah moment, Jim cooks, not me. Problem
solved!
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