Best $17 ever

A couple of weeks ago our rice cooker bit the dust. It was a sad day at our house. Not only because our rice cooking would become more labor intensive but also because this particular rice cooker was symbolic in our marriage. The rice cooker almost caused our engagement to be broken off. I wanted to register for it, Blaine thought it was a useless gadget. Fine, it's okay to disagree, I still wanted to register for it. He wouldn't have it. Boy was I ever mad. In the end he wound up surrendering and as a peace offering bought the rice cooker as a birthday gift. Which in turn launched the whole scenario from Father of the Bride when her fiance gets her a blender. So, as you can tell, we had a lot of history with this particular rice cooker; and over the years it has come to symbolize our ability, as a couple, to compromise and work things out. Now flash forward five years to the very anniversary of me getting the rice cooker on my birthday...

Blaine got me three stepping stools for my birthday this year. "Ask and ye shall receive", that's his motto. I wanted a little step so Gwen could wash her hands by herself, and I wound up with three stepping stools of varying heights and sturdidity (I made that word up, sorry). So with the money I got from returning the said stools, I decided to replace the recently departed rice cooker (may it rest in peace).

Buying appliances with my birthday money (or with any money for that matter) is not my favorite thing, so I found the cheapest rice cooker available and was on my way. Well let me just say....LOVE the rice cooker, mostly because not only is it a rice cooker, but it is also a vegetable steamer, awesome.

As it so happened I had recently checked out these two books from the library:



The books instruct you to steam veggies, puree them and freeze them for later use by sneaking them in to your meals. I was so excited. We need to eat more vegetables. I went and bought tons of fresh veggies and spent an entire day washing, peeling, steaming, pureeing, baggie-ing, labeling, freezing---rinsing--- and repeating. It was very chaotic tending to the children while pureeing vegetables. At one point Bentley was screaming, so I turned to look at him and meanwhile dropped my spoon into the blender which was pureeing cauliflower, bad idea. The spoon-turned-weapon shot up out of the blender, nearly sliced off my head and splattered pureed cauliflower all over my cupboards and floor. I am still finding it everywhere.

"It's okay" I thought as I cleaned it all up. This is a labor of love. I LOVE my family and I will do all of this to make them healthy.

So after a whole day of this torture in attempt to prolong the life of my loved ones, what is the first thing Blaine says when he walks in the door?

"Wow, what did you do all this for? Gwen and I eat our vegetables anyway, you don't need to hide them."

It was true. It is true, but dang it, I was deceptively delicious, if only for a little while.