What's got me up and chopping at 7 a.m.?

don't you just hate it when you've spent almost an hour meandering around grocery aisles, briefly inspecting strange, expensive produce before chucking it in your cart, racking up about $50 worth of groceries for the week, only to realize that you don't have your food stamp card?

yeah.......

What I wanted to announce is, as of Martin Luther King Day, when I stole away from the Americorps "mandatory day of service" (i.e. parade) to go shopping*, there is a new addition to our household!!!
*aside: the parade was actually the shit, minus the self-important OWS protesters trying to make it about them. luckily my mother ingrained in me a love of gospel music, so i didn't even mind the 2-hour tribute to Mahelia Jackson. i clapped my hands like everyone else in there. i freakin love the Doctor.

ANY-WAY... the new addition...
(drumroll please.)

i got a crock pot!

yes, gentlemen and ladies, i became the proud owner of a $10, baby [1.5 qt] slow cooker, which I have contracted to do my bidding for the rest of winter.

YES!!!
Minimal heating /burning yourself; maximum tender, fatty meats to insulate my arteries for the hibernating season.

a-like so.

There it is, already doing all the work for me! (it's so obedient!)

This pork with salt, oil, vinegar, and herbs will have greeted me from work, just in time for me to slip into my sweats and drown my tiny collection of sweet and spicy things with its rendered fat.

this will become delicious bbq sauce in 8 1/2 hours.

Serve along with Kale greens (for heart health).

don't slow cook me! I'm tender and green and the only thing left standing between you and terminal disease!

Note: there is no "After" shot, because I ate it all.
Remind me to make a separate post about my Korean short ribs, because I ate those, too, in about half as much time. Crock on!