what a crock

Many years ago, the wife saw this crock pot in a store. It wasn't like your ordinary crock pot. It was a hot plate (for lack of a better description) on which sat a very decorative pot. The function of the hot plate was to warm up and slow cook whatever was in the pot. The pot was pretty...pretty enough that you could serve whatever was in it to guests, without ever taking it out of the pot. The wife loved the crock pot, and bought it.

It was a great crock pot...for about a year, tops. Then it more or less stopped working. It'd work intermittently. We'd try to use it, and the little plate would get warm, and then go cold. We'd fiddle with the cord and maybe get it to work for a while longer, but had to constantly check it to see if it was still working. Most times it wasn't, and we'd resort to other measures to cook whatever it was we wanted to eat.

Still, the wife didn't want to get rid of it. She loved the crock pot. It was pretty...even if it didn't work. Parallels to a certain political party come to mind, but that's not our purpose today. The crock pot sat in a cupboard of conflict for years. It didn't get tossed because the wife liked it, yet it didn't work well enough to actually use without a high degree of anxiety and a good alternate plan.

Then came this past weekend. The wife found this recipe for pulled pork she wanted to try, but it called for slow cooking a pork roast for a lot of hours. Wincing, she pulled the crock pot from the cupboard of conflict and plugged it in...and nothing. We both messed with the cord....nothing. Finally, the crock pot met its death. We rushed to the store and bought a less decorative but far more functional model. We transferred the roast to the new model and, though an hour and a half late....had pulled pork. Delicious, by the way.

The old model hit the curb last night, for today is trash day. When I took the dog out this morning, it was gone. I guess someone else wants to play with the cord.