today: 1.07.00
every day

I crocked last night. I crocked out. I crocked the nation with salt and pepper integration. You see, I have a crockpot. I'm part of the club. But if the club knew what beastly things I'm doing with the crockpot, I would be kicked out and sent home without any supper. Because I am terrible at crockpot cooking.

Many people think they are terrible at cooking, and many more people think they are great at cooking but are, in fact, also terrible. And there are thousands more people who think they're great at cooking but are, in fact, also pedarasts. And they never boast of this; some of them are actually great at pedarasty, too. That aside, no matter how many people claim to be or prove to be terrible cooks, none of them would ever claim to be lousy crockpot cooks. And that is simply because crockpot cooking is supposed to turn even the most ardently retarded individual into a genius in the kitchen. Well, not this retard.

Crockpots require only that you chop up some stuff (although there are certainly times that even chopping would be considered wasteful labor in the world of crockpot cooking), throw it in the pot, plug the pot in, and leave the country for a couple of days while your "ingredients" become a "meal". Crockpots, despite their unparalleled simplicity (that is, if you don't count items like frozen meals and grape popsicles as proper dinner fare -- after all, crockpots have the advantage of accepting fresh ingredients), are not the most popular item in the modern kitchen. They sort of share a dusty waterbed in the back of people's cupboards, alongside that never-opened fondue set. In fact, when you buy a brand-new crockpot (as my sister did for me a couple years ago), they are generally only available in hideously dated designs. (Mine is decorated by an image of Mickey Mouse flipping the bird with the legend, "Hey Iran!" beneath it.) Another notorious crockpot accessory is the crockpot cookbook that ships with each new pot. This cookbook hasn't been updated since 1973, I think, as most of the recipes involve dropping a pig's ass and 30 American cheese slices in the pot. These recipes are disgusting and irresponsible, demanding vegetables get creamed, meat gets candied and sweets soak in a beef gravy. But no matter how closely I follow any of these recipes, I always fuck it up and wind up with 4 gallons of inedible "stew".

It drives me insane. I never cook with meat, mostly because it's more expensive than maple syrup sandwiches. But meat is also complicated. You can't do much to ruin an egg or some Fritos. But meat is tricky. And I only dare to approach meat when I'm armed with my crockpot, because you can essentially drop 2 pounds of unprepared meat in the pot, turn it on, and run away as fast as your legs will carry you. Which is exactly what I did last night. The recipe was for a Cuban Pot Roast. Ethnic, meaty, and potentially delicious. I love a slow-cooked meat -- I will never be a vegetarian again, if only for the existence of pulled Carolina pork and ropa vieja. So this was a lay-up. A huge slab of roast, some fresh stuff that is easily prepared with an aggressive knife, a bunch of olives, and 9 hours of slow heat leading up to a delicious, stringy Latin peasant meal.

But here's where I screw it up every single time. I see all those ingredients in the pot, swimming in crushed tomatoes and olive oil and it just seems too easy. I feel guilty. Cooking should be harder. So, before I engage the "low" heat switch, I sweat myself into a panic, looking for something appropriate to add. When I screwed up my black bean soup it was because I added some candy corn at the last minute, for color. When I ruined a 24-hour ropa it was because I insisted on pouring some HI-C Ecto-Cooler punch over the bottom round. This time I looked at the pot roast, floating ass-up in a sea of oregano and tomato, and locked into a nervous paralysis. That was it? It took me 3 minutes to assemble a meal that would take more than 8 hours to cook? It didn't seem fair, and it didn't seem like it would be very flavorful. The recipe promised a hot, smoky taste, but this flesh-lump didn't look like it would ever get smoky or delicious.

Looking back, I know I shouldn't have added a pack of cigarettes. Or, at the very least, I shouldn't have added the menthol kind, but I was out of unfiltered Camels. (I had used those in a casserole recipe a week earlier which was, incidentally, superb. Picking the cigarette papers out of the dish was a very small inconvenience in an otherwise perfect dish.) But I just don't have the instincts for crockpot cooking. I played Prometheus to my corningware crockpot and, even with its surprisingly low cooking temperature, I got burned.

I crocked and I lost.

I have been kept awake recently by a disturbing thought that gets tossed around in my brain while I fight it for sleep. I am afraid my whole life is leading up to one terrible ironic joke. I think there are coincidences in my life that are too small to notice, but will inevitably be played out in some kind of cosmic punchline, revealing at last how these details are all intricately related, and revealing how I've been ignoring them for so long. I have always thought that if there is a force controlling this universe, it must have a sense of humor and, if it does have a sense of humor; I just hope it doesn't share my sense of humor. Because, if it does, we're all fucked.