Thursday, February 4, 2010

I'm Pretty Sure I'd Rather be Fighting Forest Fires. Or Battling Zombies. (Now with Updates)

So, today's kind of a big day.  I'm using the crockpot for the first time.  


The large, lovely crockpot we received for our wedding. The one only my darling husband has used to prepare meals.


And I feel like a little part of me died.


No offense to all those ladies who are actually GOOD at cooking and LIKE it, but I have never been a Becky Home-Ecky and have always known I never would be.  Why is it that being a good wife and mom requires terrible, awful things, like TOUCHING RAW MEAT and SMELLING IT COOK ALL DAY?  I seriously have a headache from the ... odor in my house.


I have always had an aversion to cooking.  Always.  I take no pleasure in it AT ALL.  And if it were any other task in the world, like, pole vaulting, and I was terrible at it and hated it, no one would care if I stopped doing it.  They would likely encourage me to quit.  But cooking?  Wives and mothers are supposed to care enough about their loved ones to put healthy delicious foods on their plates. So why don't I?


I got this horrible feeling the other day that I better start caring, what with this little baby baking away inside of me and taunting me with the reality that it will pop out in a few months and once it is sick of milk it will demand FOOD, and I realized that the "food lifestyle" Jeremy and I currently entertain is not conducive to children.  And I panicked.  Jeremy likes meat and I like vegetables. Some nights I come home from work at 7 and and make myself a bowl of asparagus and suggest he heat himself up a chicken pot pie.  I am pretty sure children will not benefit from this menu.


So I found a recipe for a crockpot pork roast and went and bought all the ingredients.  Then ... I had to actually USE the pork ... and look at it.  Have you ever really LOOKED at raw meat?  If you haven't, I suggest you do.  It isn't pretty.


Seriously?  People touch and cook and eat this every day??
{source}


I used to work as a cashier, and there was NOTHING worse than when people would just drop their barely-wrapped chunks of raw meat on my belt.  Like they really didn't notice that it was oozing blood and juices full of food-borne-illness-causing monsters all over the counter and their other groceries and my HANDS? My LOVELY hands??  Or, if they don't care about strangers, can't they at least imagine those little bloody particles traveling from their hands to their MOUTHS and EYES and CHILDREN'S FOOD AND FACES???  GAH!!!!!  


And now, here I am.  One of them.  And even though the damn pork loin has been in the damn crockpot for 4 hours already, it still looks terrifying.  


Does that look like a corpse that the flesh is rotting off of to anyone else?  
Because that's what it looks like to me. 


I know, there is an option of being a vegetarian.  That is all lovely in theory, but I am LAZY when it comes to food.  I hate cooking.  I think TOAST takes a long time to make.  And vegetarian cooking takes WAY more thought and planning and shopping and kitchen time.  I've tried it.  And then, of course, Jeremy would die of starvation and that would be on my conscience for the rest of my life, and that would be a dreadful burden.


So how the bloody heck am I supposed to start liking this crap?  Is there a secret?  And is it possible to re-program Jeremy's brain so he thinks he likes to cook and wants to take over the job?  Any ideas?


UPDATE:  Now I can smell the carrots cooking, so my headache is easing up. But I'm still mad at the crockpot.


UPDATE 2:  The meat-eater said it was "AWESOME!  Really, really good!"



I think it was the smell of the mustard that gave me a headache all day.  I was not a fan of the mustard "coating."  If I do it again, I will just rub the spices on without the mustard.


UPDATE 3:  Due to requests (probably because the first picture looked so weird), here is the recipe I used:






Crockpot Pork Roast Dinner

You can use any kind of mustard in this delicious, homey recipe. You can also thicken the juices if you wish after removing the roast and vegetables. Just pour the juice into a saucepan and add 2 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water, then bring to a boil.

Prep Time: 25 minutes
Cook Time: 8 hours, 0 minute

Ingredients:
1 lb. small red potatoes, cut in half
16 oz. pkg. baby cut carrots
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 lb. boneless pork loin roast, trimmed of fat
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 tsp. dried tarragon leaves or 1 tablespoon fresh chopped tarragon
1 tsp. dried thyme leaves or 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1-1/2 cups beef broth

Preparation:
Place potatoes and baby carrots around bottom edge of 4-6 quart crockpot. Place onion and garlic in bottom of crockpot. In small bowl, combine mustard, tarragon, thyme, salt and pepper and spread over pork roast. Place roast in crockpot and pour beef broth over all. Cover crockpot and cook on low for 8-9 hours until pork is 150 degrees F and vegetables are tender.

7 comments:

  1. I really love reading your blog. Every post makes me laugh out loud and cheers me up for the rest of the day. So....Thank you :)

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  2. As someone who absolutely hates red meat, touching meat, and smelling cooking meat, I can understand your frustration. Our solution is eating A LOT of fish and substituting soy "meat" or Quorn ("chicken" made from some kind of mushroom). Alan likes meat, but he doesn't love it to the point where he needs to eat it. He's perfectly fine with the substitutes. :)

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  3. www.allrecipes.com. Won't help with the touching of raw meat, but will help with what to cook. Most of them are designed for people who don't have much time(or desire) to cook. And there's EVERYTHING on there. And even a way to search by ingredients. I have, many a night, punched in what was in my fridge, and it told me what to make. Cool, huh? And as for the whole touching of raw meat thing, buy latex gloves. Then your skin won't make contact. I paid $3.50 for 25 or 50 pairs(can't remember if it says 50 PAIRS, or 50 GLOVES on the box...lol) at Big Lots. And, I have to tell you, the slow cooker will probably be your new best friend. I know mine is. I cried when I realized mine was destroyed. I know, dork, right?

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  4. I'm so sad that my Becky Homecky-ness didn't rub off on you... I have failed Motherhood 101!!!!

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  5. I hate cooking, which is why I love the crock pot. You can just throw all kinds of shit in there, put on the lid, and voila-- pot roast. Even if you put in a chicken. The only part is remembering at NINE IN THE MORNING to start dinner.

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  6. I love meat. Love love love. In all its forms.

    Maybe I could share a little of that with you... no? Doesn't work that way? Well shucks.

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  7. As someone who absolutely hates red meat, touching meat, and smelling cooking meat, I can understand your frustration. Our solution is eating A LOT of fish and substituting soy "meat" or Quorn ("chicken" made from some kind of mushroom). Alan likes meat, but he doesn't love it to the point where he needs to eat it. He's perfectly fine with the substitutes. :)

    ReplyDelete

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