When I teach yoga after work, or take a class – which of
late is almost every night of the week, we do not get home till 8 o clock or
later. To be able to come home to dinner
already made, is gift, a blessing, a revolution.
Anyone without a garage plugs in their car overnight in
winter in Fairbanks. The energy-thrifty
among us buy this lovely little mechanical timer which functions similarly to
an egg timer (rather than a complex digital system) and is the conduit between
plug and socket. This allows you to
choose the hours the socket, and its electricity, is active. I recently came to the brilliant notion of
using this with our crockpot. Long slow
cooking is the name of the game of course, but not every vegetable stew needs
upwards of 12 hours of cooking. 4 or 6
usually suffices. It is marvelous.
Today we came home to potato leek soup – the leeks courtesy
of the CSA, the potatoes happened to be courtesy of our own garden, though we
are overrun with potatoes from the CSA as well.
A couple of long-frozen (a year or more of languishing in the freezer)
pork chops had been marinating in the freezer and were quickly braised in cast
iron. With red wine and an episode of a
trashy historical tv series? Delightful
Monday night.
Tomorrow, we have dal for dinner. The same crockpot holds more of this
weekend's chicken stock, red lentils, brown rice, carrots and leeks. Seasoned with curry, garam masala, cumin,
coriander and a hint of basil and oregano, I expect it to warm our bellies
after class tomorrow night.
It takes a bit of discipline, thinking a day – or two –
ahead this way. But the reward of
arriving home to an evocative aroma and a warm filling meal, make the somewhat
exhausted late-the-night-before stew prep so very very much worth it.
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