How not to make bone broth (Or, what just happened?)

Yesterday was a weird day. Mostly just the end of it, though.  Ethan decided he would not go to bed until all was right in his world and after much screaming, finally, finally fell asleep in Felicity’s bed with her around 10:45pm. I had holed myself up in our back bedroom with earphones in and cursed my lazy self for never sleep training him. (But he was such a fussy baby! It seemed like a good idea at the time!)

Anyway, now you know that I was in the back bedroom at 11 pm, almost ready to turn in for the night. Mr. French, was also there, studying at his makeshift standup desk/dresser. I’d just like to reiterate that it’s unusual for us to be in the back bedroom instead of the open living/kitchen/dining area, which has better lighting and is where we tend to hang out in the evening once the kids are in bed.

Suddenly, there was a loud Whoosh! sound. The kind that makes you imagine horrible things but nothing like what you’re about to discover.

So, we’re standing in the kitchen, that previously had been a 2 on a scale of 1-10, (1=bone dry and 10=covered in 1 foot of water) and was now easily a 7 on the same scale.

I just stood there for a minute because I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

“The dish washer…?” I said.

“Oh, it must be the dishwasher! There’s water everywhere.” said Mr. French.

Silence.

“It’s the crockpot.” I said, as the smell of beef and grease finally clued me in. And then I noticed little pieces of meat amongst the dripping drips. “But…why?…how? It’s everywhere. I mean everywhere.”

Mr. French starts getting rags out, cleaning up.

I just stood there. The crockpot was intact. The glass lid was still in one piece and firmly latched down. The crockpot was turned off. And yet, all that remained inside were the bones. A once full pot was almost completely emptied. And the entire kitchen was literally dripping in broth.

Imagine this all covered in broth. Tasty!

I’m still clueless. There’s a steam hole in the lid. But how the pressure built up enough to spout all the broth out but not blow the top, I can’t figure out. There was broth in the three drawers closest to the crockpot, all over the island and the counter next to it. All over the floor (which Mr. French cleaned up!), all over the sink and the clean dishes next to it. Of course the cabinets, the underside of the cabinets, were sprayed. Any paper I had sitting on the counter got completely ruined.

I’ve been making bone broth for the last year, in this crock pot. I’ll throw it all together and leave it for, literally, days. If I don’t want to deal with it, I just keep reprogramming it. (It has an automatic shutoff.) But this last batch I had only started one day earlier.

This was all that was left. Yes, I left it out all night.

Anyway, I’m glad I wasn’t in the kitchen at the time. I’m really glad that I didn’t find it the next morning (talk about a bad morning) and I’m especially glad that it was late at night and none of the kids were around or near it. When I told the boys about it the next morning they said they wished they had been around to see it. They were also sure that MacGyver could have figured out what had happened.