Tag: kitchen

My Crockpot

23 January 2022

My Vintage Crockpot

How many electrical appliances in your kitchen are more than forty years old? Countless electric toasters, microwave ovens, waffle makers, popcorn poppers, hand-mixers, and coffee pots have come and gone in mine, along with an electric knife and a knife-sharpener-can-opener combination that I decided were not worth their counter or storage space.

I still occasionally use an electric frying pan that my brother and I bought as an anniversary present for our parents in the 1960s. It brings back memories of my college days in a first apartment shared by four of us who rotated cooking on a daily schedule. Jane owned the electric skillet, which we put to regular use, frying chicken, making stews, pot roasts, pork chops, hot dogs, and batches of chile (often using recipes from another cherished well-worn antique, the hilarious I Hate to Cook Cookbook by Peg Bracken that contained such memorable favorites as Chilly-Night Chili, Stayabed Stew, and Cockeyed Cake. I owned the cookbook, a gift from the irrepressible Gen Markle, one of my mother’s closest friends, who inscribed it (with my slightly misspelled name), “To Linnae with love, and best wishes for a happy and nutritious year.”

 I still occasionally still make Cockeyed Cake. But my usual stand-by these days is an Australian plain cake, which becomes dazzling with the addition of jam or jelly, fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, raspberries, or whatever is available). A few dollops of Grand Marnier or Amaretto and lots of freshly whipped cream hold the layers together and cover the whole thing. I call it Australian Cake, although there’s probably nothing Australian about it. It was inspired by my friend Jenny in Melbourne, who not only added all the extras to the “plain cake” recipe found in an Australian cookbook but often presented it with the flourish of a ribbon wrapped around it, a particularly clever trick if you don’t have enough whipped cream to cover the sides.

But, my prized long-running-hit kitchen appliance is a flaming orange Rival Crockpot, one of the first purchases I made in 1973 when after four years of living on savings and meager graduate-student fellowships, I finally could afford to buy some extras. I had a real job, teaching at the College of Ganado on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona, and there was a fairly new large FedMart store in Window Rock, a thirty-minute drive over the Defiance Plateau. The store was much like a modern Walmart or an old-fashioned general store, with almost anything one could possibly need or want, at a low price. 

I would fill my crockpot with stew meat, carrots, potatoes, onions, and maybe some celery, garlic, and tomato sauce or paste in the morning. Then, I would work all day, or spend a day exploring the countryside before coming home to a delicious hot dinner. As the ads for the crockpot said, “It cooks all day while the cook’s away.”

 I’ve never done any of the fancier things the crockpot is said to do, like make cakes or bread, but for years I’ve used it to make pot roasts, stew, and one-pot meals of various kinds. I also sometimes use it to cook dried beans, and in cold weather make hot spiced apple cider, or another old favorite from one of my mother’s close friends, “Hilma’s Holiday Glogg,” (pronounced gloog), a Swedish recipe that involves large quantities of burgundy, raisins, and cardamom seeds, served in teacups with a dollop of vodka or bourbon to top off the already-potent brew.

Over the years, I have relied on the crockpot, whether I’ve been dashing off to work or school, spending a day with guests, or hiking in the mountains. It is wonderful to come home to an aromatic hot dinner and is well worth the twenty minutes or so it takes to prepare the meat and vegetables or dried beans before rushing off in the morning, leaving the meal to cook safely for eight to twelve hours. The meat cooks first, the vegetables more slowly.

 I love the simplicity of this old pot, which unlike more recent and more popular incarnations with countless buttons to push for various settings, requires nothing more than an electrical outlet. Its three settings; off, low, and high, are operated by the turn of a dial. What could be simpler? I have looked at the new instant pots, but like my new-fangled oven, which requires an instruction book to operate all its bells and whistles, they seem unnecessarily complicated, although perhaps they can do more. Sometimes less is more, and after almost fifty years, this simple appliance still works perfectly. What more could I want?

Tattered book cover, illustrations by Hilary Knight
Inscription in the I Hate to Cook Book, 1964
Chilly-Night Chili Recipe from The I Hate to Cook Book

Reflections on Mortality: Happy Birthday to Me

The Kitchen

May 19:

I sit in the kitchen this morning, thinking it may be my favorite room in the house. After years of indecision, we finally remodeled it, with Kent doing all the work.

While seated at the little round table at its center, I look at the lovingly crafted and designed cupboards — the lazy susan in the corner, the pullout-bin for trash and recyclables, the handy open-fronted drawer containing the paper towel roller with space behind it for an extra roll and dish towels. The under-sink drawers can be removed to access the plumbing (eliminating that dank, dark, hard-to-reach hole found in most kitchens). Also, under the counter beside the sink is a tall, narrow pull-out on which sits an antique ivory and red tin box from my grandfather’s house that holds dishwasher detergent, and above that, a nifty trio of towel racks on which to hang dish towels and washed recycled plastic bags. Above the drawers beneath the counter are wooden cutting boards that can be pulled out as needed. There are also vertical pull-out cupboards above and beside the refrigerator. Above the sink and in front of the south-facing window that looks out on the bird feeders and the spacious backyard is a light operated by pulling on a frosted glass knob at the end of a chain, so easy to reach just where it is needed.

May 29

I started writing the reflection on my kitchen ten days ago. It was the day after I’d had an echo-stress test on a treadmill and learned there is an abnormality in the walls of the left ventricle of my heart. Thus, I set about to contemplate my mortality. Yesterday, the day before my birthday, I underwent a nervously anticipated heart catheterization. I dreaded not only the procedure (although that was worrisome, too) but what it might reveal. I hoped for a small blockage that could easily be removed, enabling me to immediately run up hills like a twenty-year-old without gasping to catch my breath. But I feared that my arteries could be a complete mess and that I’d need a quadruple by-pass or worse. Neither of those scenarios unfolded. Instead, some problems will be treated with medicine, exercise, and diet, requiring some work on my part but no surgical intervention. I am grateful.

Today is my birthday. It is hard to believe I have completed seventy-seven years. I look back at childhood, adolescence, the college and young adult years, then marriage (later than most), two children, several careers, widowhood, adventures as a single person, and a second joyful, unexpected late-life marriage. Today would also have been my dear Ed’s 95th birthday and our 44th wedding anniversary.  He died just days after our 30th.

Last week I happened upon a Mary Oliver poem embedded in a beautiful ceramic bench on the grounds of the Harwood Art School in Albuquerque. It was not the first time I’d read this poem, but its closing lines, especially, spoke to me and seemed appropriate for this birthday morning when I am glad to have my body back. Thank you, Mary Oliver, and all the artists, holy ones, and mystics who help us live more fully.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

—Mary Oliver, Poem 133: The Summer Day