Life and Times of a Crockpot

I started to write about my extraordinarily busy day -- I took over a class for another instructor, I had a hair appointment I had already canceled twice and really needed, I told a student I would meet with her before my other (evening) class, and to top it off, I ran out of cat food and had to go to the grocery store after work. There's more, but just thinking about it wears me out all over again; however, to be honest, at some point during the day I realized I like being very busy. I seem to do better with everything, or maybe it's that my Vitamin D levels are coming up and I don't feel (as much) like a zombie.

Anyway, today also saw the demise of my VersaWare crockpot. I had been planning on tossing it for quite some time -- one handle had broken off recently and the lid cracked years ago -- but today when I tried my "tricky-turkey-in-a-crockpot" recipe (to the extent it was a recipe), I discovered that the beanpot shape of it wouldn't accommodate even a small turkey breast. So off I went to Kohl's, where I also bought three shirts and let myself be talked into getting a credit card. The new crockpot is quite spiffy, and is shaped to better fit my (and the turkey's) needs.

I never thought I'd use a crockpot, and for many years I didn't. It was just last year I dug it out of the back of a cabinet. When I started teaching late classes, I often threw something together, and it's so nice to come home to a hot meal, ready and waiting. The only reason I had the crockpot was that I'd given it to my mother as a gift ten or fifteen years ago, and she said, "That's nice, but I won't use it. You can take it back and get me something else." So instead, I kept it. Today when I returned from Kohl's, I washed the new one and transferred the contents of the old one (yes, I'd tried to cram the turkey breast in there and started to cook it) into the new one, turned it to the high setting until I had to leave for work, threw away the parts of the old one that weren't hot, and left the rest on my counter. All of it is in the trash. It did a good job, even with one fewer handle than is really necessary and a super-glued lid. Thank you and RIP, VersaWare.