More Fun with The Husband Experiment

Remember The Great Husband Experiment of 2008? That was some good, clean fun. Well The Husband Experiment is baaAAaack, compliments of our latest kitchen appliance: The Slow Cooker.

Here's the synopsis: I purchased a slow cooker earlier this year and have been really enjoying the fact that I can cook more meals for Zach that include meat (in our otherwise vegetarian household) without me actually having to handle it. The deal is that I do most of the cooking of it, but if there's any sort of action that included prolonged handling of the rotting animal flesh, Zach has to take care of that. I'd cooked these chicken parts that had bones in them, not sure what kind, I tried not to look. Zach ate them for dinner and the rest stayed in there while he went to watch Game 4 of the World Series.

I am not a Yankees fan, as are the boys of the house, so I decided I was too tired to make it through the whole game awake. I cleaned up the kitchen and told Zach that I was going to bed so could he please remember to strip the chicken off the bones per our agreement? I'd told him earlier that I'd like him to strip the bones so that I could freeze the chicken bits and later make chicken pot pie from scratch for him. I left a container out for him to put the chicken in and went to bed.

The next morning I was pleased to find that Zach had remembered to take care of the chicken and did not let it sit out all night to rot. However, the 'juices' were still sitting in the slow cooker. This is not out of the ordinary. Often times Zach will leave the juices of something cooked to solidify in order to more easily clean it up later on. He also has more energy for tasks like this in the morning. I assumed that after the coffee was brewed and he was fully awake, he'd probably get rid of the now-hardened chicken slime.

Funny, after Zach left for work and I was back downstairs getting everyone breakfast, I noticed the slow cooker was still as I had previously seen it. Hm. This is the first indication of trouble. We'll call this day 2.

Later that night Zach remarked that we should have dumped the chicken juices over the dogs' food when we fed them the night prior. "Oh yeah, they would have loved that last night. Too bad it's infested with bacteria by now," I remarked. I didn't give the stuff anymore thought that night. Again, the Yankees were playing and everyone was distracted, our routine still being messed up because of the World Series.

When I got up to run pre-dawn the next morning, I couldn't believe my eyes that the stuff was still there. I was all bleary-eyed though, so I rubbed them a little and tried to refocus. Nope. Well, the Yankees had lost the night before so maybe that was Zach's excuse for not cleaning up. But if that's so, they'd won the night before so common sense would dictate that he would have cleaned it up the night he was in a good mood, right? So begins Day 3.

Later on that day while I was making lunch I had to clear some space so I took the inner crock out of the clow cooker and put the larger electrical parts back in the box and onto the shelf where they are stored. I was going to clean up the chicken mess, but upon further investigation I just decided my stomach couldn't take it. The kids and I left the house after lunch for Jacob's gym class.

I expected Zach to be working late so Jacob, Sabine and I went to my mom's house to hang out for a while. Zach actually beat us home so on the phone we talked about him cleaning out the rabbit cages and getting other stuff done around the house while waiting for me and the kids to pick him up to go vote.

Back at home after a quick trip to the polling place, I started dinner. Funny, the crock pot was still there. Oh well, it will get taken care of after dinner because there's no Yankees game on, I thought to myself.

After a late dinner when Zach had started talking 'going to bed early', I was about to ask him to clean up the chicken stuff before he retired for the night. But instead of doing so, I saw an opportunity and grabbed my camera:

This is the scene of the investigation.
The sink is just to the right, you know,
the place where someone might clean out
something like this. The coffee maker (i.e, the
thing Zach and I both use a couple times a day,
is just to the left.

Exhibit A: You can see from that upper film,
which is separated from the hardened juice by
black (we'll call this the line of delineation), where
the stuff once came to. Over the course of 48
hours much of it has evaporated.

Exhibit B: This picture is shown to demonstrate
the detail and texture of the stuff.

Now here we are beginning Day 4. I think it is time to give the 'stuff' an official name. I'll think on that today and get back to you. Feel free to leave your suggestions. As for my prediction: Tonight is game 6...if the Yankees win, there's actually a good chance Zach may clean this thing up. Part of me will be disappointed, but then again, I'll be able to use the slow cooker at long last so there's an up side either way. If the Yankees lose, there's no chance of it being cleaned up.