Crockpot Projects and Wet and Wild Weather

When I finally defrosted my upright freezer on 6/7, after delaying over three years (maybe four), I had to fill it in order to avoid heavy built up before its time. Thus began "Crockpot Meal Mania" in my home. 

Over the past few months I have made lots of stuff but I also have eaten much of it. Crockpot meals can be very healthy and satisfying.

Tuesday, I made some pea soup with ham and today I made chicken veggie soup. 

In the past few months I have found that it tires and/or stresses me to finish the cooking at 6 or7 at night, fill 6 to 8 containers, and then label them and rearrange stuff in the freezer to make room for the new kids on the block. 

So, I have taken to filling the individual containers and placing them in the fridge overnight. In the morning I am fresh and labeling and freezing is a breeze - no stress.

I had run into great deals on both the ham for the pea soup and the chicken for that soup. I found that one of my local Honeybaked Ham shops cuts their ham bone prices in half when they have an excess of ham bones. I happened to run into one of those times. Those bones are loaded with meat. What a treat.

As for the chicken, Smith's had quarters for just $.49 a pound last week and I got two 10-pound bags so I will be making more of that soup, and doing other things as well.

Anyhow, I was lucky enough to have filled the crockpot and set its timer by 7:30 this morning. I turned it on high until Noon, then on low. By 3 it was done and I was just going to let it enjoy itself a while longer.

Then the storm hit, big time, over here on the east side of the Vegas valley. When there is a thunderstorm, I am in a long-time habit of turning off unnecessary electrical thingies. 

This is because I was a Philly girl until I was 21. In Philly, we called 'em "electric storms" and they could be wicked. One of the strikes took down our chimney one year and the bricks ended up on the pavement on the side of our home. Fortunately, no one was hurt. One of my dear friends, another Philly girl, remembers a time when a bolt came down their chimney and lit the logs in the fireplace - scared her for a long, long time.

So I have a healthy respect for thunder and lightning and their power. At 3, when the storm hit, I was well able to turn off the crockpot - the soup was done.

This was a wicked storm over here in the eastside neighborhoods. Just two miles from me, it struck the top of a palm tree and torched almost half a dozen homes! My senior mobile home community, to my knowledge, didn't have any severe damage but I suspect a few carport covers might be history, or porch tops.

Not a bad day, all in all. Hope you all fared as well.