relo: Valentine to Ash Fork AZ

There were small moves in the interim, but the Big Move down the road happened yesterday. Temps were forecast into the low 80s so it was time to attain a bit more elevation.

broken crockpot (user error)

I was doing some back-to-back dishes in the crock and broke the nonremovable liner. I only had about 10mins turnaround time between the bread (2 hours cook time) and pinto bears (5 hours).

Because of the fast turnaround I had the ingredients for the bean dinner already measured out and ready to go. I pulled the hot loaf out and got it onto a cooling rack. I dumped the dry ingredients and dried rinsed beans into the crock. I started pouring in the water and thought “…this might not be a great idea…”. I heard a click and hoped it was expansion/contraction noise. It was holding water.

About an hour into it I started seeing steam. The crock had indeed cracked and took a while top open up wide enough to the liquid to leak out. By the time I got it unplugged most of the liquid was inside the crock heating element and empty base.

hotplate pressure cooker

I decanted the beans into my 4qt pressure cooker, replaced the water and brought it to pressure. Normally I pressure-cook beans for ~30mins but these already had an hour under their belt.

I’d been curious to know if the mini-hotplate coul hold the cooker at pressure; it could.

I gave the beans about 20mins at 10lbs and let it depressurize naturally. They were close to done so I set them aside until about 4:30p and reheated them for a 5pm sinner; that worked well.

I disassembled the crock and cleaned/dried it out. It still works well but is unsuitable for liquid dishes. I will continue to use it for dry baking until I can source a replacement.

Provisioning on Route 66

The area between Kingman and Flagstaff is quaint but supplies are rare and extremely expensive. Seeing $5.50 loaves of plain white bread redoubled my willingness to bake my own bread.

Luckily the larder has lots of staples; I was able to supplement it with a few items from a Family Dollar along the way.

a site off Old Route 66

There’s a large dispersed area but it was pretty crowded. I poked around in the area and found a secluded area with good Tmo and Verizon. There is some noise from I40 about a mile away when the wind is right/wrong, but it’s droney and not distracting.

The site is about 100yds off an abandoned section of Old Route 66; the pic above shows this stretch of road.

Looks like the weather will hold here for at least a week.

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