Off My Noodle

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Have Crock-Pot, Will Travel

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I am always in awe of families who spontaneously decide to head off for a weekend away. No sooner does the idea sieze them then whoosh! Off they go. In contrast, my own planning and procurement process for short sprints out of town may rival the Pentagon’s for needless complexity, not to mention cost overruns. This is due to the fact that we keep kosher, and therefore bring our eats with us, unless we are going to a kosher-friendly place, like New York. 
On a recent weekend jaunt to Palm Springs, our van was so jammed with luggage, 12-packs of soda, and ice coolers that I feared we’d have to pull over to a roadside weigh station, and possibly even cited for traveling under the influence of herring snacks in wine sauce. Still, despite my overpacking, I had a sinking feeling that I was forgetting something critical to the mission.
To avoid having to straddle a Crock-Pot, I insisted on driving. While my husband made business calls and the teens were furiously texting friends, I was multitasking behind the wheel: driving defensively, calculating how many calories I could still eat that day on my current weight-loss program, and also flogging my brain cells to remember the urgent thing I had forgotten. But, much like commercial success as an author and permanent weight loss, the goal eluded me.
I remained haunted by the question of what I had forgotten throughout much of the Inland Empire. When we reached Moreno Valley, I suddenly gripped the steering wheel and shouted, “The warming tray! I forgot the warming tray!” While a warming tray should have been hard to miss, given its size, it was now an impossible 75 miles away, on a lonely kitchen counter.
“So what? We don’t need it,” said one callous teen. 
“Now we can’t warm the chicken for Saturday lunch,” I said, vexed. I dared not suggest stopping at a mall to get another one, since cold chicken was not, technically,  an emergency, but a family riot would be. Unfortunately, I could not shake the nagging feeling that something else was missing. Something big. Something urgent.
As we approached Hemet, it hit me like a bad weigh-in at Weight Watchers. “I forgot the second Crock-Pot!” I shouted, realizing that my conversational contributions to this road trip were embarrassingly mundane. Just as I expected, the kids claimed that we didn’t need it, didn’t have room for it in the car anyway, and if we bought a new one now, we’d be a three Crock-Pot family. Who needed three Crock-Pots? People who separate not only dairy and meat but also dairy, meat, and gluten-free?
By any Jewish mother’s standards, this was an emergency. I explained that the Crock-Pot we had brought was for the stew, but what was I supposed to do with my fully cooked vegetable soup, tightly sealed in Ziploc bags, without a second Crock-Pot? 
Fortunately, God provides help in moments of crisis, if we are attuned to receive His help. Sure enough, two exits later, I lifted my eyes and saw from on high: a huge red dot in a large red circle. A Target! I signaled to exit, whistling a happy tune, while my son began to grouse about making another stop. My husband put a gentle hand on the kid’s shoulder and said, “There are some things you just don’t argue about with Mom.”
This happened to be December 26, the busiest shopping day of the year. And if I thought the minivan was crowded, the Target in Hemet was a teeming mass of bargain-hunting humanity, and, based on some aggressive moves I saw in the sports equipment department, some bargain-hunting inhumanity as well. I raced through the aisles, a woman on a mission, until I found the Crock-Pots. I didn’t like the knobs on some of them, and found fault with most of the others, too, but desperate times call for desperate measures, so I picked the least offensive of the bunch. Our Sabbath soup was saved! (Now I could junk the Crock-Pot left at home, which had been missing its matching lid for about three years.)
I hoisted the big box aloft as I raced to the check stands, thankful that I always worked hard on the pectoral exercises in Pilates. These were really coming in handy at that moment. “Coming through!” I shouted, jockeying my way into the 37-items or less line. 
I returned to the car, triumphant as a big game hunter with an elk ready for the taxidermist. I ignored more family complaints as I cheerfully repacked the entire trunk to make room for the second Crock-Pot.
You won’t be surprised to discover that by the end of the weekend, my friend and I were sheepishly packing up nearly as much food as we had brought, neither of us genetically capable of bringing “just enough.” But if we are ever destined to wander again for years till we get back to our promised land, I’ll be on the packing committee. We may not travel light, but no one will go hungry.

(Adapted from an article that originally appeared in Jewish Life magazine.)

Posted by judy @ 04:55 PM • (50) Comments