Somehow, I Managed

About the crock pot...

Somehow, I managed to ruin a rather large and expensive crock pot stew. It was basically a bunch of fresh vegetables, a grain, some mushrooms, chicken broth, water, salt, and a bit of garlic. It tastes... bad. Bitter, and somewhat like warm moldy bread smells. If you ever have such a thing in your kitchen. Happens to me all the time.

... uhh... totally distracted by my cat. She is on top of a box (an empty box) that has a handle hole in the top, and puts her a good two feet closer to the dangling branch of one of my hanging plants. She has so far nearly biffed it by trying to reach up to the plant and play with it, by leaning WAAAAAY over the edge of the empty box to observe her domain from this new height, and by reaching one paw as far down INTO THE BOX (through the handle hole) as she possibly could, just to see what she ran into. Last but not least, she just now nearly biffed it by jumping down off the top of the two-foot-tall-but-one-foot-wide empty box. And she loved every little trouble-making minute of it.

I think I need more glee in my life. That sort of "I know I probably shouldn't be doing this but it is SO MUCH FUN!" gleeful feeling, mixed with a healthy dose of dangerous curiosity.
...sigh...
Yet again, I find myself envious of my cat.

Anyway, the lesson I'd like to share with any other hopeless cookers out there is to BELIEVE THE LABEL on the dried shitaki mushrooms. You want to soak them in water for at least 30 minutes, and then put them into DIFFERENT WATER to cook. And, I also suggest putting them in at the very end of the crock pot cycle, with your herbs. Also, if you try to use barley as your grain, put in something really sweet like ginger or sweet potato or something to help things along. And, most important of all, don't put in more than ONE ingredient you don't usually cook with per crock pot challenge. Or follow a tried and true recipe-- someone else's recipe.

This is actually the secret behind my insistence on cooking very simple foods with only a few ingredients. Fewer things can go horribly wrong. Including my spelling of the word "rescipee."

And if I ever catch the guy writing the script for this, I'm inviting him over for one of my "tasty" home-cooked meals, and I'm going to force him to eat seconds. In fact, there are actually two more helpings of this horrible goo sitting in my fridge right now. And I have no idea what to do with them.