A Week in the Life of a Caravan - Day Two

Whew! No Halloween vandalism to the Caravan, which is living in the driveway this week. A few years ago I wouldn't have even considered vandalism a possibility, but our town has seen a bit of trouble lately with bored teenagers, including car windows being shot out and silly spraypainting.

Anyway, I was happy to find all of the windows intact when I went out to make an early morning run to the grocery store for some chili cookoff supplies. The windshield was a little frosty, which had me stymied for a second because I didn't know all of the controls yet. Isn't that always how it is with new cars? New cars and rentals. Can't tell you how many times I have turned on windshield wipers when I meant to hit a turn signal. I did find the defrost, but didn't wait to see how long it took - just hit the windshield wipers with a squirt of washing fluid and off we went.

I suppose I should mention the rear view camera. I have a friend who has had this for a few years and it took her way longer than a week to get used to it, so I'm not even going to try. I'm OK with the trusty old "look in the mirror" or "turn your head around" method. I did notice the night before last that the car beeped when I was backing up in a parking lot, I think because I got close to a curb. That's great, but I didn't realize that's why the car beeped until I got home and read about the "rear park assist" feature that is supposed to warn you about hazards beyond your line of sight in the back. Since cars have so many beeps and blips nowadays, it might be nice for that particular one to be something more distinctive, like an enthusiastic "LOOK OUT!"

Back to the day ...

The Chili Cookoff for our local MOMS Club was a great success. We only had six entries, and it was hard to disguise which one was mine because I made green chile. If you've never spent a lot of time or just don't green chile often, here's a little tidbit of information - it's always a surprise to see how hot your particular batch of green chile stew has turned out. In this case, I tried it early in the morning and my lips almost melted off. I like spicy, but this was crazy. In an effort not to maim my friends, I drained all of the liquid off and poured in a fresh box of organic vegetable broth. In the two hours between the broth transfusion and the cookoff it still picked up plenty of heat, and was pretty much perfect. I didn't win, but that's OK - I think a few people got to try something they'd never had before, so that's great!

The recipe, you ask? Sure ... but it's an approximate recipe. If you don't want to roast, peel and chop your own green chiles (and I don't blame you) or are not in an area where green chiles are easy to find from local growers, check the freezer section of your grocery store. Go for medium heat, at least. The mild ones in the cans in the Mexican section of the store are pointlessly mild.

Slow Cooker Green Chile

1 pound pork, cut into small pieces
2 Tbsp vegetable oil, or enough to brown the pork
2 Tbsp flour
3 Russet potatoes, cubed
1 small onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
6 Anaheim chiles, roasted, peeled and chopped
Chicken or Vegetable Broth

Toss the pork with the flour and brown in oil in a heavy skillet. Transfer pork to crockpot, add potatoes, onion, garlic and chiles. Add enough broth to cover. Cook on high 4 hours or on low ... pretty much as long as you'd like.

Check for flavor and add salt or a boullion cube if you'd like.

If you would like to thicken your stew, mix a little cornstarch or arrowroot to a very little bit of cold water. Add to slow cooker, turn to high and cover - the stew will need to come to a boil to thicken.

That's it! HOW EASY can you get? Serve with shredded cheese, sour cream, and flour tortillas. I think the next time I make it, I'll toss in a bag of frozen corn just for some more texture.

I didn't have the Caravan for the rest of the day because my husband decided he wanted to take it in to work, mostly because he found a Sirius radio station that is all Grateful Dead, all of the time. Since I'm not a Deadhead and he's not going to get to listen to it when we're all out together this weekend, it was the least I could do for the guy, right? When he got to work, he mentioned the Dead channel to a fellow fan who said that he had been trying to decide whether to go with Sirius or XM radio, and that channel just made the decision for him. We might not help Dodge sell any Caravans, but we created a new Sirius customer!

As for today's thoughts on the vehicle in general, I have to say that I'm not fond of the key at all. It's not a key, it's more like a plug. In a way, it reminds me of the little keys you can get at some arcades instead of tokens, or a locker key. This is a completely irrational dislike, I'll freely admit - and it's partly because the key made me feel like an idiot on the first day.

You see, the rep had shown me the function that allowed you to start the car remotely, which I tried out later from the kitchen (in the back of the house) just to see if it would work and to startle my older boys, who were out waiting in the car for me to get my stuff together to run errands.

I go out, get in the car, and try to put the car in reverse. No go. I press the brake (which I have to do on my car to get out of park) - nope. I check the doors, thinking maybe there is some overzealous protection thingie - that's not it. It didn't occur to me for a few minutes to actually insert the key into the ignition since the car was running, but that was the problem.

In hindsight, this makes perfect sense - you wouldn't want to have your car out in the front driveway ready for anyone to come, bust out a window and drive off. Still, when a car is running, I expect all of the usual "car" functionality, including the ability to move. Call me crazy.

Two days down, five to go! We're having fun!