Like, seriously, people. I am begging, here!

So I’m house-sitting. It’s not too strenuous, asking nothing more of me than checking the mail, cleaning the litterbox, and making sure the cats don’t starve (by the look of them it would take a couple of weeks at minimum). Okay, so the litterbox thing doesn’t thrill me, but it’s better than staying in my own hovel, scraping mushrooms out of the carpet and moss off the interior walls and eating my own crappy food for a week. Hmmm, chocolate pudding and steak versus brown rice and marked-down veggie slaw? That’s a tough call…

But suddenly, there is so very much more on the line.

Yesterday I reached into the freezer, as I had done each of the days of my occupation. And, as I had done each of those days, I pulled out something meat-oriented. Meaty. Meatful. Something of meatification.

No, I did not know what it was. I’m single; I’m undomesticated; I’m “poverty vegetarian.” I mean, I’m sitting here at two-bloody-thirty in the morning, snacking on green salad! I’ve never seen a piece of meat that big outside of those decorative and charming Christmas displays of skinned sheep’s head. Had I known, I’d have returned it to the freezer unthawed, unseen, untouched. Ignorance, truly, is bliss.

It was a four-pound, Grade A dilemma.

Thinking, perhaps, that steaks looked like that when they huddled together in the freezer for warmth, I blithely plopped the meatastic mass into a bowl and put it on a shelf in the fridge, as I remember from my distant, wholesome Ontarian past that you’re supposed to do when you thaw meat. I took it out this morning to take a look at it.

Pot roast.

What the hell do you do with pot roast, people???? I have no Joy of Cooking here to instruct me in the esoteric ways of the oven. I have no Urban Peasant, leaning benevolently over my shoulder and croaking, “Browning, the secret it is.”

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You’re my only remaining hope.

Does anyone out there know how to cook pot roast?