30,000 Firemen

When we arrived last night, our van driver told us that the Firemen's Convention was coming to a close today and that there are 30,000 firemen in town. I immediately got visions of various firemen calendars and my mind started racing. I watched out the windows as we drove the downtown streets - sure enough, Steak & Bake was packed with firemen! Groups more were heading in that direction...but seeing as how it was already after midnight AND that I'm a happily married woman, I decided to wait and do my sightseeing in the morning.

So this morning I headed out towards the Circle Centre mall. It's a beautiful, but windy, day here in Indianapolis, IN. Nice temps, just a few clouds, gorgeous. I walked all over trying to spy some firemen. Ah..there's a gaggle of them! But not quite calendar material. There's another school of them...but again, just ordinary kind of guys. So I went into the mall. Quite a few guys were at Cinnabon...but not the calendar-type. I know! How about Abercrombie & Fitch - I just saw a bunch of guys wearing firemen t-shirts walking into the store...finally, I was going to see some eye candy! I waited outside the store. A few minutes later, out they come in their blue t-shirts. But...they were heading to Cinnabon. Where the heck were all my firemen calendar guys?

Defeated, I decided to go back to my room and make lunch. Seeing as how there are 30,000 firemen in town, I figured it was safe to try out the new cooking tip that my brother, Larry, sent me via email this week. If anything went wrong, I knew help (preferably calendar-type guys) was nearby!

To do this, I needed my Flight Attendant Manual - which I opened up and then popped open the binder rings. Then I got the iron from my room and put it upside-down and wedged it into the binder rings. Then I turned the iron on.

I am currently on a "eating plan" that has all its food prepackaged. So I took my pork, veggies and BBQ sauce packets and lay them on the base of the iron. Then I covered the items with a towel. Every once in awhile I peeked to make sure that the iron wasn't melting the plastic (it wasn't). It was cool to see my pork heating through and its juices bubbling!

After several minutes of moving things around and heating through, I removed the packets, cut them open and there you have it, the perfect meal:

I'd like to thank my brother for sending me that idea. It's one that works really well. In the past, I've put my packets in the coffee pot and used its hot water but the pot is usually too small. So I sometimes use the bathroom sink and fill it with hot water and supplement with hot water from the coffee pot. And I've also used the ice bucket, filled with hot water. But none of these heated my food as nicely as the iron did!