Many of us have heard the saying (Don’t cry over spilled milk).  When I was breast feeding our babies and freezing breast milk, I would cry over spilled milk.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a great and busy weekend.  I was at an incredible Women’s conference (IF Gathering) at our church Friday night and all day on Saturday.  We had our wonderful friends spend the night with us on that Saturday night.  Sunday we had a regular church service, congregational meeting following service and a soup & chili lunch where most people were to bring a crockpot full of soup or chili to church.  I had committed to bringing a soup.  Leading up to the weekend, I forgot about my soup commitment and remembered on Friday afternoon that I needed to make soup.  I looked at our pantry, refrigerator and freezer to determine I had the ingredients to make Chicken Enchilada Soup.  Sunday morning I woke up and made a breakfast for our family and our friends staying with us and I started making the soup.  By 8 a.m. I had all those things knocked out and I was feeling like I had pulled off a great feat.

Our friends needed to head out at 9 a.m. and we leave for church at 9:30.  I married an Anderson.  What that means is, if you aren’t 15 minutes early than you’re late.  I’m fine with it on most days.

On this particular Sunday I was trying to carry way too much out to the car and the carrier I had on my left arm with the crockpot full of soup inside shifted and started to lean to the side.  I quickly dropped the other things in my hands to sit the crockpot filled carrier down on the steps to the garage.  David is a sweet man who also likes to solve problems.  He came out to solve my problem.  I went inside the house and he lifted the carrier up, inverting it to be sure to support it well on the bottom.  Our crockpot doesn’t have a locking, sealing lid.  He was frustrated that leakage occurred, I was frustrated that he inverted the carrier and it was a bit of a fiasco.  It was back in the house we go.  When I unzipped the carrier, it was a mess!  I felt like crying over spilled soup, but I didn’t have time to.

Chicken Enchilada Soup is very yummy – it’s thick, has cheese and sticks to your ribs.  Well it also can be a tough soup to clean up.  The soup was coating the outside of the crock, the crockpot base, the inside of the carrier, the countertop and so on.

There was about half the soup still in the crockpot.  Back in the fall, the Catholic church in town had a big rummage sale.  I pass the Catholic church when I take and pick-up Jonah from school.  The day after the sale, all the items that didn’t sell were on the curb with a big free sign.  (I am DeAnna and I’m a dumpster diver  – there’s my confession)  Jonah also loves to dig for treasures, so he and I stopped and started digging.  We left with many treasures and one of them was an old crockpot.  The older kind that is brown with the thin power cord.  My thought when I picked it from the pile was that it could be my crafting crock – melting down wax, crayons, etc…, so I wouldn’t ruin a saucepan or similar.  I placed it in our garage and had yet to use it.  Looking at the half filled crockpot, the ticking clock and the mess of soup – ah ha!  Get the other crockpot off the shelf, clean it up and use it to salvage the half of unspilled soup.  That’s what we did – leaving the soup spillage mess for after church.  On the way to church I started thinking, what if the wiring is compromised on that crock and it catches fire (my sister’s crock did that), what if the crockpot doesn’t work and that’s why it was free, what if…..

We arrived at church only 3 minutes late.  (Our church never starts on time anyway)  Others were carrying their filled crockpots in their carriers into church and I was lugging a half filled vintage crockpot hoping it wouldn’t burn down the church.  I plugged it in – no sparks – good start.  I went into church service and I finally could calm down from the frazzled morning and I refused to think about what was awaiting me at home.  By the way, the vintage crockpot worked fine.