2024-01-25: spices

i'm sitting upstairs and my stomach's rumbling. all i can smell are spices from the slow cooker. chicken with paprika, garlic, onion, chili powder, lime, salt and pepper, simmering slowly. later tonight we'll shred it for tacos.

winter's my favourite season, for a bunch of practical reasons: the snow (can't have water issues if the water stays outside your house), the cold (guilt-free staying inside!), no-expectations dressing in old jeans and rumpled, heavy shirts. but the real reason is because it's slow cooker season, and we use ours at least once a week. chicken for tacos; five-spice pork roast over sweet potatoes and rice; & stew, & chili, & ...

we picked up our slow cooker more than twenty years ago. it was practical: a way of saving money when we were broke students and had very little money to spend on foods. we got one of the smaller ones. it came with a cookbook. the cookbook was singularly awful. we made two things from it, and never touched it again.

but once october rolls around, i rummage through the pantry, move the slow cooker to the front, use it till spring. we're doing the tacos tonight with tomato, avocado, romaine, cheese, a bit of hot sauce (for me); some refried beans, too; i need to stop writing about this. i'm hungry already.

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