Hello Crock Pot

True story. This morning at 8:30 am I said hello to my crock pot for the first time. The first time in 2 1/2 years. Ryan and I had received this as a wedding gift and it's been sitting at the bottom of our pantry in the box for over 2 1/2 years. I even registered for this and I have been yet to actually use it, let alone take it out of the box. Embarrassing? Mmm slightly.

Let's rewind - this past Thanksgiving my Mom and I got to talking about my lack of culinary skills. She started to take the blame for never teaching me but honestly I don't think I had every really taken an interest in cooking while growing up. Almost every evening we had a home cooked meal and I think I always avoided the cooking part and always helped with the cleaning part. Fast forward 10 years and I still have never learned to really cook anything. Anyways, my mom and I decided that I should take baby steps and start with the crock pot. This was something that I could turn on in the morning before work and come home to a wonderful supper! I was also guaranteed that I could get more than one meal out of this. Score! So as Ryan and I were leaving my parents house that night my Mom handed me all the ingredients for two dinners. All I had to do was put a pork roast in the crock pot and let it cook all day. Sounds simple....right?!?

Back to Sunday morning - At this point I am admiring my beautiful stainless steel crock pot and imagining all the yummy dinners I am going to make in this fabulous appliance. I also decided that I am going to document my first crock pot experience with pictures so my Mom will be proud :)

As I am taking everything out of the box I find a coupon at the bottom that guaranteed an even easier meal using a crock pot. Sweet!

Unfortunately, the coupon had already expired. 12/31/06. Yikes! I really should have opened this before now.

So at this point I have taken everything out of the box and I have taken the sirloin pork roast out of the freezer. Failure #1 - the roast should have been thawed out. Oops. I pick up the phone and call my mother. She assures me I will be fine as I can let it soak in hot water first but that it may take longer to cook. As we are talking we realize that my crock pot is probably too big for the size of my roast and she asks if I have some sort of dutch oven I could use instead. Thankfully I had actually received one of those as a wedding gift as well so I was set. I was a little bummed that I would not be using the crock pot for the first time today but I was relieved that I could still make the pork roast. After I hung up the phone I packed everything back up in the box and headed to the pantry to put the crock pot back where it belonged. Failure # 2 - The crock pot falls through the bottom of the box as I am walking to the pantry...

All the pieces go flying thus making a really loud noise. Next thing I know, Ryan has stumbled out of bed to make sure everything is OK. He thought the kitchen had fallen with all the racket I had made. Hmm doesn't really make sense but I guess I won't give him a hard time since I woke him up bright and early on this Sunday morning. At this point, I am giggling (even though the crock pot landed on my foot and ruined my recent pedicure) and I had to snap a pic. I thought I was going to be documenting my first fabulous meal in a crock pot but I was wrong...

Long story short, the crock pot survived with only one minor dent and my pork roast turned out super yummy in the dutch oven! I am even going to attempt to make enchiladas tomorrow with the leftovers so I will let you know how that goes as well.

Hopefully the crock pot will make another appearance in the next 2 1/2 years but no guarantees!