Well, Ain’t This a Crock

Dearest Rachel –

Even before you had to go, I’d been known to say that misadventures make for the best stories. They aren’t fun when you’re in the middle of them, but some of the ‘best’ (if you can call them that) ones make for uproarious tales, at least in retrospect. Most of them have to do with travel, to be sure, since you’re in an unfamiliar place and situation, leading to the possibility of things going ‘hilariously’ wrong – but not always. Sometimes, they can happen right in your own home, in your own kitchen.

An example of this was when I was preparing dirty rice as a side dish for Thanksgiving. What I didn’t tell you at the time was that the box had two separate sets of instructions; one for microwave cooking on one side, and one for stovetop preparation on the opposite. For the microwave, one was instructed to mix everything together with water, and put the casserole dish in the oven on high for 25 minutes; on the stove, the water was to be brought to a boil before adding the mix of rice and seasonings and reduced to a simmer for those same 25 minutes. Somehow, I got halfway into the process of preparing the dish on the stove, at which point I found myself unwittingly reading the microwave instructions, and cooking everything on high, rather than simmering it. Needless to say, the water boiled off almost completely before even 15 minutes had elapsed, and while I added more in order to keep everything from burning, I kept looking at the microwave instructions which insisted that yes, I was supposed to be cooking this on high, regardless of the fact that the results before me were, let’s just say, less than optimal. It was only once I gave up after a second addition of water boiled away (with still at least five minutes left of cooking to go, according to the box) that I realized I was following the wrong set of cooking instructions, but there wasn’t much to be done about the thin crust of rice stuck to the bottom of the pan. We scooped everything else into a casserole dish, and it actually turned out quite tasty (and hey, now we have something we can do with the giblets going forward!), but yeah… it wasn’t exactly something Bob Cratchit would refer to as “a triumph.”

It seems that I have yet to learn my lesson about experimenting with recipes for big get-togethers. But then, when else would I have a chance to? Cooking for myself (or even me and Daniel) is hardly worth getting fancy (and honestly, most recipes are meant for four or more people, anyway); only a big occasion like the family Christmas party would allow for me to try to come up with something like what I tried to put together yesterday.

I just hope you can find something amusing about this debacle. Bad enough that I wrecked one of our old appliances and made a mess of the kitchen in the process; it would be a singular travesty if I couldn’t get at least a story that you could laugh about from it in the bargain.

In contrast to my Thanksgiving attempt at making dirty rice, neither the meatballs nor the curry came with preparation instructions for use with a crockpot – only (like with the dirty rice) for microwave and stove top cooking (and oven baking, for the meatballs, but that’s no more applicable). So basically, I was working without instructions at all this time around. An optimist might conclude that, therefore, there are no wrong methods to prepare this dish, then.

But as you know, I’m not much of an optimist, and events would soon prove why.

By the time I came home from church, the roux had melted into the water, but the resulting gravy hadn’t thickened up very well. I concluded that this was because I never brought the concoction up to a boil before letting it simmer. So, I decided to put the crockpot onto the stove, in order to heat up to the point of boiling.

You can probably see where this is going.

My unintelligible screeches of alarm and dismay brought both boys running; between the three of us, we managed to salvage the gravy that spilled onto the counter, at least. We also emptied out a roll of paper towels and a score of Clorox wipes in an effort to clean up what we couldn’t salvage.

And this is how we took everything over to Jenn’s place, honey. I don’t know how you would have reacted to all this chaos – you probably wouldn’t have tried such an experiment in the first place, so you wouldn’t have had this to deal with, to be honest – but I’m sure you would have been dismayed to have to throw out the slow-cooker. Don’t worry, though; I’m told that, if I really wanted to replace it (and given that I know we haven’t used it since you’ve left – and probably not for a number of years previous – I can’t see why), I could find one for between twenty and thirty dollars, easily. Barely the price of a nice dinner out, really.

So that’s how things went before the party last night, honey. Still, the family seemed to like everything well enough – although I still had a fair amount of leftovers once everything was said and done. I mentioned what I was planning in the green room between services yesterday morning, and Junior found the combination intriguing; maybe I’ll bring some with to church this evening when we show up for Sparks, just so he can taste it, and satisfy his curiosity.

In any event, I hope you found this little misadventure amusing, honey, even at the cost of the crockpot. Keep an eye on us, and wish us luck; clearly, we’re going to need it.