Tell us what you have cooked lately (that's interesting)

Better late than never.


There were some blowouts. I think next time I’ll fry the meatballs instead of bake them to monitor progress. Still very tasty.

An air fryer would probably do some good work with those.

Regardless, I want to rub them all over my body.

This person has my full attention. Limoncello in 2 hours? Why not?

For some reason, when I open that page, it keeps loading crap and then runs out of memory.

That’s pretty cool, actually. I’ve messed around with making low-carb margaritas from scratch but I think I could make a better end product with that kind of technique.

Sorry. It works fine for me.

I just hit the stop button after it had loaded some… I dunno what the deal was.

The idea is brilliant though. I know a guy who just made some home made Amaretto… I presume that you could do this with the same recipe, and get it done in hours.

The site worked for me as well. No issues at all.

So. A slow cooker pork roast. On low. 10 hours, while we did other stuff.

The meat.

The veg.

That being potatoes, carrots, onions and palm hearts.

And the juice. I like the juice. You like the juice?

The juice will be refrigerated so that the fat can be peeled off. Then it will be made into a gravy. The meat will be eaten with the veg and some will be shredded and made into… well… shredded pork.

The seasoning? I don’t recall. I started real early. Mostly asleep. I recall various herbs and spices. Vegetable broth. Balsamic and apple cider vinegar. Other stuff.

I make slow cooked pulled pork and pot roast all the time, delicious. Yours is looking great, Rich.

Variations I love are lazy carnitas, where I shred the pork into larger chunks and crisp them in the oven, with a little of the juices poured over it.

Also Mississippi roast. So good. Look it up, as I’ve really not made a more flavorful roast.

I was pretty low over New Year’s this year. Just on the slow road down from being very sick. On Saturday, my kid declared he wanted to cook dinner for us for New Year’s Eve. He’s thirteen, and he’s never really cooked for me before. He’s cooked with me, but never for me. His mom had taught him how to make pork chops–sort of a home-done shake-and-bake thing in the oven–and he was keen to show off his skills. He said I could be his assistant, which meant I’d do the icky stuff like trimming the fat off of the chops, but he was going to do everything else.

He basically did it all. Thin lean pork chops. Saffron rice (really just yellow rice). And some fresh vegetables.

It was great. And I was really, really proud of him.

Today, by way of thanks and celebration for our final gifts of the Christmas holidays (now that our loved ones are back in town), I’ve made his favorite pie.

As I said in our Qt3 slack channel…I keep forgetting the egg wash.

-xtien

That all looks awesome to me, Christien! And that first plate is a hell of a lot better than anything I could have assembled at 13. Or 18. Or maybe 21. So props to the kid :)

Well done kid

It was hard not to give pointers, adjustments to technique, that sort of thing. But he wanted to teach me, so I kept my mouth shut. Plus, his mom had told me from afar to let him do it all. And she was right.

I love cooking on my own, but there is a particular joy to sharing the experience with someone else. I loved cooking next to him as his assistant for once. It was lovely. The times I’ve cooked side-by-side with my girlfriend are similarly joyful. I prefer to do it all myself, or have heretofore, but sharing it with someone is rewarding in its own way.

I don’t do that enough. I mean to do that more this year.

-xtien

You are building a fine future adult there, Christien. That makes you a fine daddy.

Damn right Rich.

That’s really awesome. Not just that he did it, but that you shared the experience.

Reminds me of something from New Year’s Eve. Both kids were home. Each had a friend over. Then there were three other friends there. So, in total, 9 of us. I had smoked a pork shoulder and was trying to get it up to temp and my wife was working on finishing up various things.

So, there we were, in the kitchen, with seven others gathered around, snacking on chips, guacamole, cheese, etc. there were several conversations taking place at any one time for the most part.

I think for most people, the guests would probably be sitting in the family room on the sofa or something, rather than standing around the kitchen. Certainly it would never have been like that in my parents’ home. But this was so US. It felt so natural and we loved it.

Hell yeah, man. @ChristienMurawski is awesome, and I’m really glad that he got to do that with his kid :-D

I’ve found my best friend and I here in Raleigh work very well together in the kitchen. For her recent Three Kings Day Party, we went completely nuts and produced a ton of food. To be fair, she did most of the work on that one, but I did a few things all myself and chipped in with the rest wherever I could. It was a crazy day, but we were never really in each other’s way or causing each other problems. It was very zen and deeply pleasant. Made an already awesome party even better.





Grand total, we put together:

  • Roasted Pork Pernil (100% her)
  • Arroz con Gandules (Vegan and Meat-based variants) (90% me)
  • Habichuelas (Stewed Pink Beans with Pumpkin) (Vegan and Meat-based variants) (90% her)
  • 7-Cheese Mac n Cheese (with bacon on the side) (100% me)
  • Mixed Salad with spinach, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados, and 3 dressings (50/50 split)
  • Bacalaitos (fried codfish fritters) (90% her)
  • Tostones (fried plantains) (50/50 split)
  • Rum Cake (100% her)
  • Flan (100% her)

There was also a gigantic king cake at some point with no fewer than three baby Jesuses in it. That party was awesome.

Huh. Never seen a flan cooked in a bundt pan before. Crazy.

I can’t think of a single gathering I’ve ever been to where people didn’t cluster around the food. Even if the living room would be way more capacious and comfortable.