My love/hate relationship with the crock-pot

I know this is shocking that I am posting two (2!!) fairly long posts in one day.
I felt like I owed you--having *not* blogged in like a week.

Plus, I had a couple of coherent trains of thought today, and when I actually have a blog idea that may be remotely interesting, I better write that baby down.

So here it is.
An ode to my crock-pot.

Let's back up a bit.
My mom never had a crock-pot, which is shocking to me, really, seeing how much I use mine, and knowing that my mom had as many kids as I do, I am not sure how she pulled off dinner every night---sans crock-pot. Also, that last sentence used a whole lot of commas.

My mom did, however, have a pressure cooker. I remember her cooking up mystery meat in that pressure cooker. Steaming away on the back burner of the stove, whistling and spewing splatters of high-pressure juices. I was so scared of that thing! It acted like it was going to voluntarily implode at any moment. I would envision it sailing toward the ceiling, in a fiery-hot ball of silver fury. And seasoned meat.

I hated mystery meat days.

The pressure cooker would fill the whole house with wafting meat scent. It cooked all day long. It was especially bad when I was a teenager, and had a dance to go to, or a hot date that night.

"Awwww, mom!!! Not MEAT! I just can't have beef whiff tonight!"

Beef whiff was the term we invented for the lingering aroma of dinner.

Inevitably, your clothes would be saturated with meat odor when mom had a roast in the pressure cooker. And other folks could smell it. I know they could. I could smell it, all night long. The desperate attempt to cover the smell with a splash of Charlie, only to leave sirloin/onion undertones that did not mix well in the nostril.

Now I have a crock-pot.

I love this thing!

I am a night person. Mornings are really sucky to me. In fact, I warm up and start actually living around noon. No matter when I wake up. I don't kick into gear until the afternoon. I feel sluggish and slow and unproductive. I am quite sure we have vampires in our lineage.

So here is the beauty of the crock-pot.

I can throw some junk in the pot, in the morning, when my life is tragically slow, turn it on low...and then, THEN! When my day really gets going, and I am booked/busy/working/ hopping right along in the afternoon, and early evening, the crock-pot produces dinner for me! Right when I am busiest. Beautiful.

The downfall?

Beef-whiff.

But this time, it's not about other people smelling ME. It's about ME smelling IT.

All day long.

By the time dinner rolls around, I am so sick of smelling beef, that I am craving chicken.

Or nothing.

Or anything but what is in the crock pot.

Maybe I should start cooking stuff in the garage where I don't smell it.