Wrangler Dani

Adam and I regularly have a freezer-full of assorted grass-fed beef, recently hunted elk and amazingly tasty wild boar, thanks to the generosity of our hunting and ranching relatives.

Said hunks of meat will beat any sad grocery store cut on first taste, especially if said hunks of meat are cooked slowly in a Crock-Pot, with various secret seasonings and the soothing sounds of a capella grooves played over them, which is how the Nichols house rolls. So you can understand why it was a very serious situation when my Crock-Pot started giving out. First, the handle came off the lid.  Adam gamely glued it back on, but after a few more roastings, it came off again and refused all treatment. Then the cooking started acting a little funky and I realized, in horror, that replacing my Crock-Pot was a task of vital importance. Chloe, upload the schematics to my PDA! Costco, here I come!

I went to Costco with my poor decrepit Crock-Pot on the seat next me, bolt sticking out of the lid like a broken arm. I hoped that his obvious need for treatment would woo the hardened Costco employees into replacing him for free. Alas, even injuries don’t grant us a free lunch, my friends, even if that lunch is slow roasted in a dying Crock-Pot. (Foreshadowing!)

Never a girl to only do one thing at a time, I checked Rocky into the tire center to get rotated and balanced and patched through the trunk-line and what-not. The tire guy laughed at me as I hoofed over to Costco with my broken Crock-Pot, but agreed that roasted meat is worth looking silly across the parking lot for.

OK. So I finally got to the returns counter, and a stern little woman informed me that I need a little Crock-Pot also, in order to return my big broken one. “What?!” I cried. “I don’t have a little one!”

She didn’t care.

She insisted that I carry my broken Crock-Pot around Costco with me while I shop. “I can’t keep it for you,” she said. “I don’t have a car to put it back in right now,” I replied, “Please?”

She didn’t care.

My hopes of slow-roasts are growing dim, but I thought about what Jack would do. He would go AWOL. He would get a Crock-Pot through the terrorists in a stolen car. So I hijacked a cart (almost the same thing) and bought a new big Crock-Pot with a little one in the box, and headed back to talk to my stern, uncaring nemisis.

“I’m going to give you my broken Crock-Pot and this little one that I just bought, and I’ll keep the big, new one,” I explained. “THEN cane I get my money back?”

YES.

However, Crock-Pots are not designed to come out of their packaging.  I don’t know if you know this, but Crock-Pots need to stay in their boxes indefinitely and thus should be packed very tightly. I was struggling on the Costco floor, trying to force the box open and the Crock-Pot out. “Stand on the box!” offered a little Asian lady in line behind me. “Give it a shake!” offfered an older fella eating a Costco hot dog. “Here,” said the guy directly behind me. He walked up, grabbed the box and shook it out on the counter like it was easy, or something. I felt weak.

BUT.

I walked away with a new Crock-Pot for FREE… and he (the Crock-Pot) and I sat and chatted amiably about roasting and his improvements over my old, broken one while waiting for my tires to be rotated, so the caricature of me as a crazy lady in a parking lot with a Crock-Pot abide.

Also, the wonders of slow-roasting have returned to the Nichols abode, hallelujah.