Is there that one food dish you just can't seem to ever conquer. Probably that dish is rather difficult and most likely its not eaten often or at all - because quite frankly you just aren't very good. Unfortunately, my food dish is a common one. My food dish should be an easy one. Yet, it continues to elude me.
The 9 Hour: When Patrick and I were first married we lived in Orange City while I finished up my last year of college. Being the new housewife that I was - I wanted to have meals on the table every night by the time my new hubby got home from work. And thus my battle began. One day I was pretty busy with school and decided to do a nice easy - yet Betty Crocker-esk meal of pot roast. I started it at noon, but my paranoia of a fully cooked piece of meat over took me, so I would lift the lid (essentially letting all the heat and steam out) to check my raw piece of meat. I didn't dare stick it on high - the crock pot may have just completely burnt this ever so raw piece of meat in a manner of minutes. And so this continued almost every hour, until the hour before Patrick got home. I cranked that sucker up to high and thought surely it will be finished! In the mean time I got all the fixin's ready to go for that perfect meal. Well, Patrick came home and we dined on the fixin's, because of course I still had a raw piece of meat. My sweet husband explained how a crock pot worked and how I was not allowing it to cook by removing the lid. We left it at high and at 9:00pm that wonderful roast was done. Of course by this time, we were so tired of smelling roast that I don't think hardly any of it was eaten....at all. And thus, the 9 Hour Roast was born.
Now, understanding my issues - Patrick for the last pretty much 8 years (remember it happened early in the marriage) has taken it upon himself to prepare roasts in our house. Which I must say he can make a pretty mean roast (to which he would probably reply - it really isn't that hard. Oh contrare I say).
The 4 Hour: We have recently had some changes in our household and it was upon me just the other day to try and conquer my fear of the roast. "Don't touch it, Don't touch it" - is all I could think. This hunk of deeply frozen meat seemed quite intimidating, but with a can do attitude - I said to myself - "I can do this and don't mess with the crock pot". So I prepared away, potatoes, carrots, the hunk of meat. I seasoned with pretty much anything that said 'for beef'. The lid went on and I set the timer to 8 hours. Who wants roast at 9:00pm again - haha. So I walked away with thoughts of how easy this was going through my head. (Yay me - I never touched the crockpot once in those 8 hours) Time for Patrick to get home!!! Hmmm the wonderful aroma of a tasty roast waiting for our salivating mouths. Or so we thought. I went to get Amelia's serving so it could start to cool - and you know how roast is known for the fact that it kind of 'falls apart' - especially with a fork. Well, not so much in this case. In fact it took a serrated knife and many a saw action to get through that tough meat hunk. To which we did laugh. Luckily there were potatoes in there or so we thought. Amazingly, with 8 hours of cook time a potato can still be rather hard. Amazing, huh?! Our meal consisted of 50% overcooked meat and 50% undercooked potatoes. We still did laugh through supper - at which point Patrick pointed out this roast was like the 4 hour roast, because everyone knows if you cook a roast too fast, it will be tough as nails. And thus, the 4 Hour Roast goes down in the history books.
Chalk another point up to the pot roast - I definitely did not conquer it this time.
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