Crocking Your Pot - OR - Why Dinner Smells Like Heart Attack
Is there a verb for crock pot cooking? Closest I can come up with is 'crocking one's pot', which sounds like a not-so-thinly-veiled drug reference. And I like my drug references thoroughly veiled, thank you.
Every so often, my sweet husband is possessed of a desire to cook up something tasty. And since I bleed
every time I cut a goddamn onion, I encourage him to embrace that desire. Plus, when he cooks, I can sit on my ass, study pictures of dead cat parts, and try not to smell the laboratory preservative that has permanently sunk into my skin. Mmm, Anatomy. Quelle delicieux.
Husband likes to actually
use the items from the Epic Pile O' Loot we received at our wedding, and tends to favor the crockpot. Crockpots cook things slowly, and the food's subsequent smell funks up our house for weeks after the cooking fun is done. The funk is twofold: the food brings the funk and then after eating the funky food, husband also brings the funk. These funk foods include, but are not limited to:
Sauerkraut
German potato salad
Mexican pickled onions and carrots
Uncle Bill's Five Alarm Chili
Now, our house doesn't smell like a rose garden (see dead cat statements above), but after the cooking/consumption of funk food it certainly doesn't smell good. I'd qualify it as 'really bad' for a day or two and then 'vaguely feety' for a week. I'm of the opinion my feet are smelly enough and don't need extra culinary support.
Our latest offender was German Potato Salad, which waged a bacon vs. vinegar war in my nostrils for a week post-cooking. I'm running out of nostril hair. I'm not sure whether I need nostril hair, but I'll be damned if anyone's going to take it away from me.
Something must be done. My latest idea is to have Mateo crock his pot outside, thus sparing me the pleasure of its stink (Especially since our new couch should be spared the slow, shameful fate of smelling like Uncle-Fred's-Smells-Like-An-Old-Man's-Ass-Recliner). However, I can only imagine the shitstorm our supremely bitchy condo neighbors will rain upon us if Mateo begins to cook
al fresco.
Them: "Something smells feety. We can smell
your feet outside! Outside!"
Me: "I guess this makes up for your dog shitting in the elevator*, doesn't it?"
*Ew. Actually happened._____________________________________________________
Random Fruit Fact: The Long Keeper Tomato"Plants produce an abundance of long trusses of 4 to 6 ounce fruit that is light orange-red when ripe with medium-red interiors. Fruit ripens late in the season, but has a good flavor, and once picked, does last a very long time."
Speaking of late, sorry I haven't been around...Learn more about the Long Keeper Tomato (an a whole booty-load of other late tomatoes),
here.
Posted by Spurious Nurse at 11/22/2005 03:51:00 PM
It's not easy, bein' Greene
Recently, Husband attended a local conference and got a spiffy tour of local
Greene & Greene homes as part of the bargain. There's a block near
old town Pasadena that's chock full of these architectural wonders. I had to work on the original tour date, but in an show of why he's the best husband I've ever had, Mateo took me on his personal tour the very next day.
Aw.
And we took pictures! Of garages!
Seriously, though. Have you ever seen a garage look this good?
A random Greene and Greene patio.
At the
Gamble House
Husband in the Garden of Eden.
I cropped the snake out of the picture.
Anyone know what these are? I mean, besides 'fantastic'?
Gamble House front door.
Mateo's a great tour giver (I'm ever-so-slightly biased). The whole experience was chock fulla planty Arts & Crafts architecture, which just mekes me feel quite peaceful. I really needed some peaceful. Thanks, husband!
Also.
Got a haircut. Kinda looks skunky, but...eh.
Please ignore the shifty eyes.
________________________________________________
Random Fruit Fact: The Trazel"Very tasty...The seed makes an excellent dessert nut, tasting just like the cob and filbert."
Tune in next week and find out what the hell "the cob and filbert" taste like! Learn a little bit about the trazel (but not much),
here.
Posted by Spurious Nurse at 11/21/2005 10:24:00 PM
Additionally
Posted by Spurious Nurse at 11/12/2005 12:11:00 PM
Yo Mama Jingles Keys Funny
Anyone else familiar with the embarrassed feeling you get when you describe a childhood event, something you never thought twice about, and people look at you like you’re batshit crazy? Usually coupled with responses like: “Oh my God, I’ve never heard anything like that” or “You poor child”? It’s not generally what you look for when you’re bringing up shit from your formative years.
Back in the day when I was an itty bitty plum, I was possessed of certain wandering tendencies. Mama Spurious would turn her back on me for ONE SECOND and I’d be in another time zone by the time she found me. The reason I have no siblings is in large part due to the fact that I was, in the words of my Mama Spurious, “a little twit on the move”.
Fortunately, Mama had a secret weapon. The bigass keychain.
It was a brass ring, big as a saucer, with a Virginia Slims ‘You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby’ keychain on it. Mama never smoked, and I‘ve never asked her where she got it. Some things should just remain a mystery. We’ve never even discussed the keychain, and she's probably forgotten all about it, knowing her sensible tendency to forget unimportant crap that makes me all emo.
Anyway, Mama would slip the keys around her wrist and they’d lightly ring against the keychain as she walked. Somehow her keys sounded utterly different than the keys of all the other Mama’s, and I always knew exactly where she was. Sometimes, when I was off hiding under the clothing racks at Gemco, she’d shake her arm to ring those keys and I’d come a-runnin’.
When I described the above incident to a co-worker (I must’ve been high to have discussed this with anyone outside my house), he freeeeeeeaked.
“Dude, did she shout ‘come here girl’, or what?
“Well, she didn’t mean it like
that.”
“Ha! You were like her little dog-child.”
“Jesus, it’s not like she fed me Milkbones and shit.”
“Would you have cared? Hiding under stuff at Gemco makes me think you weren’t that picky.”
“No, I was more of a fish food eater actually…”
“WHAT??? This shit gets better and better!”
“Fuck.”
And then that feeling. Is there a name for that? The you’re-a-weirdass-and
-you’ve-just-given-me-damning-evidence-for-how-you-became-one feeling?
There SHOULD be a word for that, if there isn’t one.
And for the record, fish food is salty as fuck.
____________________________________________
Random Fruit Fact: The Pineapple Guava“The thick, white, granular, watery flesh and the translucent central pulp enclosing the seeds are sweet or subacid, suggesting a combination of pineapple and guava or pineapple and strawberry, often with overtones of winter green or spearmint. There are usually 20 - 40, occasionally more, very small, oblong seeds hardly noticeable when the fruit is eaten.”
Spearmint? WTF?
Learn more about the pineapple guava,
here.
Posted by Spurious Nurse at 11/12/2005 08:54:00 AM
A Speedy, Apple-Filled Post
Ah, there's nothing like having 10 minutes to type...Hello all! Sorry for the hiatus!
So, last weekend my family took a trip to Oak Glen, a apple orchard/rural community/back-in-the-olden-days kinda place, with barns. Barns!
There's fresh apple cider, homemade donuts and tasty homemade pie with cinnamon sauce. Mmm, cinnamon sauce...
If you live in LA, you usually have to travel to get your nature on, so we took lots of pictures of planty things, too.
There are several family-run orchards in Oak Glen, but my family's been visiting
Snow Line Orchards for 60 years. They have the oldest chestnut tree west of the Mississippi on the premises. I think it's the prettiest too.
While snapping all these pics, I took a super hot picture of Mateo with the sun behind his head looking all pissed and beatific at the same time. Sadly, his 'don't-show-the-blog-people-my-face' policy means I can't share him without some serious photo editing, so I'll have get back to you.
In other news, I was Satan for Halloween.
What were you?
_________________________________________________
Random Fruit Fact: The Winter Banana Apple
This is absolutely, without question, my favorite apple EVER. I can hardly ever find it, since it's only available for about 7 seconds in October at Oak Glen. Sometimes the trees get pissed and decide not to give up any Winter Bananas at all...Fuckers.
" An heirloom apple, the Winter Banana originated in Cass County, Indiana in 1876. Its popularity is due to its large size, firm flesh, sweet aroma and excellent cooking quality. This fine dessert apple has a yellow skin with a natural waxy coating. The Winter Banana is modest, in light of all this praise, it blushes reddish-pink. Keeps well in cool temperatures. "
Learn more about the Winter Banana Apple,
here.
Posted by Spurious Nurse at 11/08/2005 10:24:00 PM
