Evil Piece of Meat

For a change of pace, we decided on an old-fashioned corned beef for dinner this week. On Tuesday night, I got the crockpot out, as a reminder to myself to get the meat started prior to leaving for work. And it was a good reminder, too. Plopped the slab in, turned the crockpot on high, and plugged the whole shebang in.

Fast forward 8 hours, I return home from work, check on the corned beef and find…..cold meat floating in water. My investigation revealed a faulty outlet. So, no corned beef tonite. I reset the outlet, turn the crockpot on low and let it do its thing all night long. Sure enough, when I get up and head for the treadmill, the aroma of cooked meat hits me in the face. I turn it off, pull the meat out and let it cool. Before going to work, I put it in the fridge.

5pm – day 2: I call my daughter to peel some potatoes and put the meat, carrots, and potatoes in the crockpot to finish cooking. She is willing to do it, but being the good daughter that she is, she has already washed the crockpot, not knowing that I would want to reuse the broth. So we go to Plan B. I drive home and turn on the oven to heat the meat. Throw it in the oven, move on to other chores. Daughter goes to peel the potatoes and cook them in plain water to go with meat. Potatoes are soft, starting to rot. No potatoes. Corned beef and carrots? It’ll have to do. Except…I’ve turned on the wrong oven. The goddamned piece of meat is cold after 45 minutes in the oven, the cold oven.

We give up. We throw the meat the garbage, feeling that the universe is trying to tell us something. We open a bottle of champagne, celebrating our near miss from some sort of terrible food poisoning, and drink our dinner instead…..

Maybe I need to stick to what I know, and give up on the typical American food!