The Best Laid Plans

Well, my plans for Wednesday night's dinner didn't work out quite as I had planned...My dear sweet husband thought that he was being helpful by turning up the slow cooker a notch before leaving the house. He remembered that I had talked the night before about setting it at 3, so he looked at the dial before he left and thought that it needed to go up a notch to be at 3...I guess he didn't read the dial correctly or something, because it was set to 4 all day while we were gone.

But anyway, when I came home from work on Wednesday, instead of smelling perfectly done roast beef ready to carve with juices in the pan ready to make into gravy, I smelled something distinctly different. The overdone roast was crusted to the dry bottom of the slow cooker pot, and I had to use two wooden spatulas to pry it out of the pot. Then I used my electric knife to slice a good half inch of dry, crusty meat from the bottom of the roast and did my best to slice the rest. It was a bit dry, too, so I contemplated adding barbecue sauce or making it into hash while I worked on cleaning the pot.

I added hot water and soap to the pot and gave it a little time to soak before I started scrubbing. It took three soakings, a good sturdy plastic scraper, and a steel wool pad to get that pot clean again...And while I was scrubbing, I couldn't help but be frustrated. But I prayed about it and asked the Lord to help me to have a better attitude. My mother-in-law called while I was working, so I told her about what happened. Talking with her and laughing a bit about it, too, helped a great deal. And, by the Lord's grace, our meal wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I had a small amount of beef gravy in the freezer from a roast I made a while back. So I thawed that out and added to it by making a quick gravy with butter, flour, and some leftover chicken broth from the fridge. The meat was a little more dry than usual, but with the gravy, it wasn't bad. I also took time to boil some potatoes for mashing to make the meal a little more special. By the time my husband got home from his job, I had dinner ready...Thank the Lord!

We ended up eating the rest of it last night...I didn't want it to sit in the fridge or freezer any longer because it would probably only get more dry.

I debated talking with my husband about how this happened, especially when I found out that his day at work had been challenge. But I decided that it would be best to tell him so that we could avoid this happening again the future. I know that he meant well, and I'm very grateful that he's always so willing to help me out.