St. Patrick's Day, Crock Pots, and the Kindness of Strangers

We got another 18" or so of snow this weekend. I've never seen our bird feeders as crowded as they were just as the storm was starting to hit. The kids spent a long happy time watching a brave red squirrel steal walnuts off of our porch. The walnuts were actually meant for us, but I'm willing to bet that he needed them more.

Earlier this week my faith in humanity was renewed with a random act of kindness by a complete stranger. I was having a last straw kind of day when I stopped at a message board to look up a crock pot recipe for dinner.

I do almost all of my cooking by crock pot. It's the only way to cook in our new house. I'll occasionally go down and do a bit of baking or something at the other house, but mostly it's the crock pot. I have three of them actually. A large one, that came with a mini, that Steve bought me and a medium size one that was a gift from my Mother-in-law. It's not odd for me to have two going at any given time.

So, I stop by too look up a recipe, only to find a thread on crock pots and lead. Turns out that certain brands of crock pots are a lead risk. After reading through the post it turns out that Rival is one of the brands that uses a glaze containing lead. ALL of my crock pots were made by Rival. There are so many things in our life that we are trying to find solutions for. This is one thing that I thought was taken care of and now it's been deemed 'unsafe', just like almost everything else in our life. I lost it. I'll admit it I did. The thought of my baby, who already has toxicity issues, being exposed to lead was just more then I could take on this given day. And I replied to the post saying as much. Shortly after replying I received a private message. A woman that I've never even spoken to before, wrote to me saying she had some extra paypal and wanted to buy me a new crock pot. I was floored! I explained that even though things had been tight lately that our children weren't starving or anything. She told me that she wanted to do this for us anyway. Wow. The capacity for compassion in people just amazes me sometimes.
This is not the first time I've been helped by someone I met on-line. In the past I've been resistant to receiving gifts and help from people even when we desperately needed it. It's just foolish pride I suppose. When I was pregnant with Galen and our lives were falling apart, two different women, who didn't even live in the same country as us, decided to try to ease our burden. One sent me a set of organic receiving blankets and the other provided us with ALL of our cloth diapers. I don't think I can ever express how touched I was by that. It really helped to get me through a time of deep depression and hardship. The same woman that sent the diapers, later sent us money so that we could keep working on the house, at a time when the children were so sick I was scared to death and there was simply no safe place for them to be. If I ever get down on life, this is all I need to remember to know that I have been truly, truly blessed.

On Saturday I used my new crock pot (it's a Hamilton Beach, by the way, the only brand that seems to be safe) to try my hand at corned beef and cabbage. Yes, yes I'm aware it's not actually a traditional Irish dish, but I can't remember ever having it before, much less making it myself, so St. Patrick's day seemed as good a day as any to try it! As it turns out I don't think I liked corned beef, and I know that my children don't. Ah well.

Our gluten-free Irish Soda bread turned out far better. We used this recipe; http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2006/03/finnegan-begin-again.html with a few alterations for dietary restrictions and taste preferences. I was delighted to find it comparable to the regular version, of which I'm a big fan.

We also made Irish Potatoes. They were way, way too sweet. The boys loved them of course. I was not so smitten and yet I decided the sneak some more after they went to bed. Why, you might ask? Well, because I'm a sugar addict I guess. Which is why I try not to keep that kind of thing around. So, I had far more then I should have, and certainly more then the 2 that I allowed each boy....BAD MOMMY! Then, since sugar doesn't really agree with me, next morning I woke with a feeling akin to a bad hangover....CRANKY MOMMY.... There will come a day when I will learn this lesson. Until then, with the exception of major (alright, and often times minor...) holidays, at least I'm being better about it.