I’d originally started this post two weeks ago, but for some reason the program wasn’t uploading any of my pictures. Once I did a system update things started to tick a little better in the old laptop. SO I’ll try this one again.
Two weeks ago we celebrated the end of classes for the semester and as a special treat I tried my hand at pulled pork sandwiches. We have a slow cooker that we’ve talked about trying for quite some time and pulled pork seemed worth hauling it out. Got up nice and early on Wednesday, as the 2 kilo pork shoulder I’d picked up would need about 6-8 hours of alone time once prepared. I melded together two recipes I’d found, picking and choosing the parts I liked best about them. I made a spice mixture that I rubbed into the meat and then browned the meat on all sides in a pan with 2 tsp of oil. While it was sizzling I chopped up two medium onions and mixed up the rest of my ingredients.
Mustard powder, chilli powder, brown sugar, cumin, paprika, s&p, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, thyme, tomato paste and water would all be added in. Once the meat was off the pan I poured in a cup of water and whisked it so as to extract the flavourful pan drippings. Mmmmm drippings. All of this went into the slow cooker for 6-8 hours (depending on the recipe), I was hoping for the longer eight-hour edition but since we like to eat early it was looking closer to six (and the torture of living in a house that smells of pulled pork for an extra two hours just wasn’t happening).Then I made the cole slaw, following a Martha Stewart recipe. Just shredded cabbage and carrots with a dressing of light mayo and low-fat sour cream, apple cider vinegar, s&p, and sugar.
With that in the fridge I got to work on some juicing. I’d juiced the remainder of a watermelon the other day as it was overripe and not being eaten. I’d put the juice in the freezer and took it out when it was half-frozen. This made a nice slushy drink, so I’d decided to try it again while adding some celebratory tequila. I juiced up a whole watermelon and 6 grapefruits. Stuck it all in the freezer and proceeded to clean up the incredible disaster that was the kitchen.
Moving back even further in time to one more juicer experience worth mentioning. I had put some frozen bananas to work in the hopes of creating an ice cream substitute. When I was a child my mother was also a juicer fanatic and this led to some horrifying experiences for me involving a certain concoction of beet, carrot and celery juice. YUCK. Thanks mom for looking after my health, it was awful. The worst part about this was since I would try to drink it as fast as possible, I would always end up with a red smile. I looked like the child version of Batman’s nemesis the Joker, since beet juice stains magnificently. Mom would tell me that as long as I drank the juice, then she wouldn’t care about me eating garbage (her word for any form of delicious sweets or junk food). This was a bold-faced lie since the only “junk food” I could ever get my hands on was her cooking chocolate. So I must apologize to my inner child, since she is horrified that I am now an avid juicer.
Back to the point of this. I’d frozen some ripe bananas a while back because I’d remembered another trick of my wily mothers, which was to juice frozen bananas to make a version of ice cream. It is pretty good and since it’s frozen, that sickly sweet banana flavour is toned down a lot. So this particular night I juiced two bananas and half a bag of frozen strawberries we had in the freezer. This created quite a delicious sorbet-type dish and was a nice substitute for ice cream. Fraser put some raw honey on his and I mixed in some cocoa powder for a bit of chocolatey vibe.
The cows have had winter calves recently and the other night they were up quite close to our yard. Unfortunately this was right at dusk, and though my camera did its best, I wasn’t able to get any super good shots of the babies. I ended up hanging out and watching them for quite a while and one of the older calves was quite interested in what the hell I was doing.
Oh, and my hens? They’re good. My girlfriend has started coming up on our back deck and actually pecking on the glass trying to find a way in. And they all like to spy on me through the windows.
Overall these chooks seem to have it pretty damn good.
georgiainoz 
I laughed out loud about the juicing “yuk”! Your Mom’s biggest fear for you back then was hot dogs and coca cola! Her good food plan worked ’cause the first time you had coke at a kids party, you did not like it.
Love the blog!
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