Rainy Days and Tuesdays…

I woke up on Tuesday to light rain. They had heavy fog advisories posted for all of southern Michigan, but I didn’t see any fog whatsoever.

Before I left for work, I took out my round slow cooker. If you are wondering why I always identify which slow cooker I am using, it’s so you will know the size I am talking about. The round one is classified as a medium-sized one and the oval slow cooker would be considered a large one. In most real slow cooker recipes, they do call out the sizes needed.

I lightly sprayed the inside with canola oil (I always do that for easier cleanup) and put in two whole (but peeled) small yellow onions, two large Yukon Gold potatoes cut into chunks, a bag of sauerkraut and a link of Polish kielbasa, cut into two inch pieces. I added about a quarter cup of water (just to make sure the potatoes didn’t burn, although I suspected the juice from the sauerkraut would be enough). Then I turned it on low and went to work.

Please note: This will result in about a 10 hour cook time on low. Since I was just making this recipe up for a slow cooker, at that point of the day I could not guarantee whether the potatoes and onions would be over- or under-cooked. I would just have to wait and see.

On the way to work, it dawned on me I also could have added a carrot or two, but it was too late by then.

Fortunately, the rain had let off enough for me to take my morning walk outside.

I went home at lunchtime, again in light rain. I had to stop at CVS for more vitamins, so I picked up some chicken fried rice for my lunch (its kind of a tradition by now). I was disappointed that, when I came in from the garage, I could not smell my supper cooking.

Again, the rain backed off enough to allow for my outside afternoon walk. But, I drove home after work (on the expressway, no less) in a heavy rain.

I retrieved my now-empty garbage can and noticed the culvert had clogged on the drainage side of the driveway, causing a mini-lake on the higher side. So, I got out my shovel and cleaned it out until the water flowed freely.

This time, I could smell supper from the garage. Inside, I treated the impatient cats and then immediately turned the slow cooker to “warm.”

I watched the weather while changing clothes. We hit 57 degrees F. today (just one degrees less than the record high set in 1914), but with more rain predicted to come tonight, flooding is a real concern. Not here, of course. If there’s a flood, it’s always in the middle of my back yard, not near the house. But, we are supposed to head back to winter tomorrow night with temps falling throughout the day. The predicted high on Thursday is only in the teens!

I used my exercise machine for the first time in over a year. I only did it slowly and for just 10 minutes, as I was not too sure what it might do to my back. But, I feel it’s time to get some muscle tone back.

Then I went and watched the end of the NBC Nightly News.

I dished up my dinner. My fears about burnt or falling apart potatoes were groundless and I had an excellent meal. The whole onion was really a nice flavor touch!

I took the rest of the kielbasa, sauerkraut, potatoes and the other onion out and put it all in a big Tupperware bowl to cool. I put it in the fridge about an hour later and filled the inside of the slow cooker with soapy water to soak overnight.

I watched the Detroit Red Wings hockey game. We won for a change (4 to 1)! I still wasn’t tired so, after it ended, I watched the new NCIS show that had taped while the game was on.  Then I went to bed.

[Sidebar: One of the main “characters” in the NCIS show was a teddy bear. Now, when I was a kid, I loved teddy bears and had three of them. One was a small brown bear (who met with an untimely death in the oven when my brother George was married), another was bigger and black and white one and the last was an over-sized blue one I got for my birthday or Christmas when I was four or five. Now, I can picture each one clearly in my mind, but for the life of me, I can’t remember any of their names. Knowing my propensity for order and organization, though, they were probably called Bear #1, Bear #2 and Bear #3. Come to think of it, I probably labeled each one, as well.]