I broke my slow cooker...

It was a Sunday morning, the family was already full from breakfast, and I had a skillet of homemade green chili enchilada sauce simmering on the stove, and a pressure cooker full of chicken breasts cooking on the counter.

I had an ambitious Sunday planned for myself. A double batch of Chicken Enchilada Soup for the freezer, cooked chicken for lunches for the week, and a goal to get it all done before church started.

We have "late" church this year. Since we are Latter Day Saints (AKA Mormons), we alternate church meeting times with other wards each year so no one gets stuck with a bad slot forever. Last year we had 9:00 a.m. church, so this year we have 1:00 p.m. church.

Since I won't have afternoon naps to meal prep and get things done, I need to make the most of my mornings.

I popped the chicken seal on the pressure cooker to vent the steam and turned off the heat on the skillet of the worlds best green chili enchilada sauce. 

I walked over to our wire rack to grab my 7 quart slow cooker when i dropped it on the floor, shattering the inside container...

It wasn't even on a high shelf...

After a few minutes spent sweeping and mourning the loss of my slow cooker, we hit amazon to brain storm how we were going to fix dinner, still make our soup (since I had all the ingredients prepped), and do it from an economical stand point since we hadn't planned to buy a slow cooker this month. We checked amazon and were reminded that my slow cooker about $32 on Amazon... but that wouldn't get to us today, even if we purchased it again.

We have a smaller electronic pressure cooker that we were gifted from my mom, and since acquiring that, I have been using my slow cooker less and less since the pressure cooker is faster and doesn't heat up our house as much as the slow cooker does. I used to just use it to cook my dried beans, but last year we expanded and have used it for several different dishes.

So, I knew I could get half the soup into the pressure cooker and use the "slow cooker" setting. I just wasn't sure how much soup would fit in the pot since it's not 7 quarts like my slow cooker.

Instead of doubling the recipe like I normally do, I made a single batch, which meant I had extra enchilada sauce and chicken... so after verifying hubs liked the sauce all on its own, I just mixed the two together. We had impromptu green chili chicken tacos for Sunday dinner and I got about 9 containers of chicken enchilada soup for the freezer.

 and it was a VERY tasty accident.

As for replacing the slow cooker, I think we are going to wait and see if we can just live without it. I've been able to use the pressure cooker for a lot more and one less appliance in the kitchen would be nice, so we are going to give it a whirl.

What we do know, is chicken green chili tacos are sooooo happening again.

We are trying really hard not to over spend...

We are trying really hard not to overspend this month.

REALLY HARD

That over there is our computer.

The only computer we have...

and it doesn't look pretty.

The other day the computer started to randomly shut off on us. There was no rhyme or reason to it. One minute i'd be blogging, the next the screen would turn off and i'd hear the horrible sounds of work being automatically lost as the CPU shutdown.

Since South County Boy is somewhat computer savvy, he built the computer from scratch a few years ago with his brother who is even more tech savvy then he is.... So since he knew what he was doing, he went ahead and took the thing apart. After a bit of cleaning he figured out why it kept shutting off on us. The fan blew out and was no longer cooling the system.

What irks me the most is just last year in February of 2013 we spent $300 on new computer parts... including a new LARGE fan for the computer... and now its broken.... 1 year later.

So for the time being, SCB took the cover off it and we are putting our large and in charge house fan right up against the computer. If the computer is on, so is the HUGE fan. Now considering how the computer is how we watch TV, Blog, and practically do everything, this you would say is kind of a fix it priority.

The only problem is we have already spend our discretionary money for the month because $92 went to paying for our taxes to get done and earlier this month I finally told SCB that he could get a pair of Sunday Church sandals (he hates shoes), a few odds and ends and Valentines day.... its basically gone.

So the computer will have to wait until next month along with running shoes for SCB. As I sit here typing this i'm covered with goosebumps because its cold out this morning and I wasn't thinking when I decided I wanted to have a smoothie for breakfast.

So here's to crossing our fingers that our makeshift solution will keep it running until next month.

Oh the things we do to keep our budget in tact...