It's pretty amazing to come home to food that tastes like you've spent all day cooking it. With Crock-Pots (and yeah, that's what we call them in the Midwest, no matter what brand they are), that's because you HAVE spent all day cooking it. Such is the beauty of this small appliance. It seems, though, that there are people out there who make recipes for Crock-Pots who don't understand the point of them, and it pisses me off. The point is to dump in all the raw ingredients in the morning before you go to work and then arrive home 9-10ish hours later to a culinary masterpiece, albeit a sort of mushy one. For anyone who creates recipes for Crock-Pots that don't adhere to this tried and true formula, I have a few choice words. Namely: What the hell?!
(Children should stop reading at this point. Also, please note, I hate the whole F-word but like just "F" and hate any profane reference to a woman's private parts with the exception of "cooter." [Not that Crock-Pot recipes lend themselves to vagina references, but now you know my profanity preferences. Also that I'm a poet and didn't know it.])
Let's start with the recipes that want you to sear meat first. F no. Here's a brief list of what I'm trying to do on a given weekday morning:
* Get two small children prepared to leave the house, which includes dressing them, feeding them, ensuring they pee and making sure they have everything they need (the morning preparation of children is worth a blog unto itself).
* Get a husband out of bed who basically reverts to a somnolent adolescent in the mornings but still has to get to his grown-ass man job.
* Feeding and watering cats and giving one of them thyroid meds. (Cats LOVE taking pills.)
* Trying to make myself not look a hot mess
* Packing my lunch.
* Driving kids to school and/or sitter's
Do you people think I have time to sear a f-ing piece of beef in all that? To watch it and make sure it's just browned on the outside and doesn't start cooking any more than that? Hell no. I just found cat shit on the carpet and my toddler wants more milk. I have a meeting at 8:30, so I just need to dump the damn rump roast into the Crock-Pot, Diane! (I imagine most of the writers of inconvenient Crock-Pot recipes are named Diane, Brenda, Terri, Donna or Pat.) Make a f-ing recipe that accommodates that.
The second most inconvenient kind of Crock-Pot recipe is that one that tells you to cook it for three to four hours. Let's review the point of Crock-Pots again: you dump the stuff in when you leave for your full-time job and come home to a delicious and fully cooked meal. What the F am I supposed to do with something that's supposed to cook for four hours? Be like, "Sorry, bosses, just gonna' drive back to my home on the other side of the Missouri River from here because these tender vittles I'd like to eat tonight can only stand four hours of low-heat cooking." Pansy-ass chicken breasts.
So if I'm going to make a four-hour Crock-Pot recipe, I have to do it on the weekends. And on the weekends, I usually have time to cook a more involved meal without small appliances marketed at convenience, so what is even the point of that four-hour shit?
And the final type of inconvenient Crock-Pot recipe is the one that makes you do all this shit after it cooks. I reiterate: you're supposed to dump the stuff in the pot, leave for work, and come home to a magically prepared meal. Because my house is only about 10% less crazy in the evenings than it is in the mornings, I don't have time to skim fat or stir in additional shit that needs to cook for another hour. I'm not gonna whip up an additional sauce or thicken anything with f-ing corn starch.
So let's just move all these shitty Crock-Pot recipes to cookbooks, web sites and magazines accessible only to retirees and stay-at-home moms. Don't tease us 9-5 working folk with some delectable-sounding Crock-Pot entree for which we buy all the ingredients and then realize you have to sear it, cook it for three hours and then make a whole separate f-ing sauce. Dammit, Terri, I don't have time for that shit! What am I supposed to do with all these vegetables now?!
So much laughing!!
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