It all began with the shortribs.
A few days ago, I was cruising through the grocery store and saw beef shortribs on sale, and I was reminded of a recipe for curried short ribs that I’d seen in a recent issue of Cooking Light, the only cooking magazine that I actually subscribe to. In addition to liking spicy food, I remembered the recipe because it involved a crock pot, and I also enjoy the concept of having dinner waiting when I get home.
I bought some of the shortribs and, Wednesday night, I diligently went through the steps to get them ready so that when Ray left the next morning, all he’d need to do is take the crock pot insert out of the fridge and push “start.”
I remembered thinking when I put everything together that it didn’t seem like there was that much liquid in the basin, but … well, the people that do these things have to know what they’re talking about, right? After all, one of the final steps in the process involved creating a serving sauce out of the cooking liquid. I assumed/hoped that the remaining liquid was supposed to come out of the meat itself and took that leap of faith.
This was my first mistake.
I came home yesterday hoping to smell the pleasant odor of succulent shortribs that had been slow cooking all day. Instead, I smelled charred meat. I casually went through the motions of taking off my jacket, putting my phone on to charge, and emptying out my backpack before venturing over to the crockpot — after all, if the meat really was charred, another minute wasn’t going to make a difference after six hours in the crockpot, now, was it?
I was half right: the sauce had congealed and was now a black, crusty, burned mess all over the base of the crock pot. The meat, however, past a crunchy outer shell was still pretty tender and moist. This isn’t to say that I didn’t have a moment where I considered tossing the whole thing out and texting Ray to pick up something from Taco Bueno on the way home from class.
However, I perservered, shredding the beef and cobbling together a red curry and vegetable sauce to go with it. Fortunately, Ray actually enjoys cremated beef, and I’m not enough of a connoisseur to know the difference (I’ve only recently, tentatively, re-introduced dead cow into my diet after years of avoiding it).
The crock pot, by the by, is still soaking in the sink — I haven’t managed to get all of the black stuff off yet.
So I came into work this morning and realized that my desk was beyond messy and that it was finally time for me to do something about it. While in the midst of clearing off paperwork dating to the late Neolithic period from my desk, I heard a thunk behind me. I turned around to discover that my bookcase, which I wasn’t working with … or touching … had chosen that exact moment to collapse downward: the textbook-laden top shelf had given way downward, thus causing the shelf below to collapse onto the shelf below it, and so on. Given that the whole thing looked like it was about to pitch forward, I immediately turned my attention to that situation immediately, discovering after repeated trial and error that the force of the downward pressure was pushing the sides of the bookcase out, meaning that the shelves weren’t reaching their mounts.
At one point, there were papers strewn all over the desk and chair, books on the floor and loveseat, and me looking like I wanted to cry in the middle. When I vented about this to Ray later, he asked, “Did you take a photo? Sounds like good blog material.”
Which it was, but let me assure you, dear readers, that the presence of mind I would have needed to think of that at the time was far, far away.
When I finally managed to get it all cleaned up–and I did manage to get it all cleaned up, I sat down at my desk, whereupon the speakers that I have mounted to the underside of the hutch that runs over my computer speakers promptly fell off with a loud clatter.
And so, speakers remounted, bookcase put back together, desk now clean and presentable, I am doing the only thing that I can think to do next: whine about it to as many people as possible.
Don’tcha feel lucky?
