New Cast Iron Pot

Cooked my last meal of the year and first in my new cast iron pot -- Man Breakfast!

Pulled Pork and Barbecue Sauce

A few years ago on January 1st I resolved to eat more pulled pork. As tends to happen with most New Year's resolutions, I failed. I did start well -- I probably had pulled pork half a dozen times the first few months of 2012, but have since faltered. So with the new year 2014 > 2015 right around the corner, I thought I'd re-up a little. I had never made pulled pork before although it seemed pretty easy. And I did, in fact, find it quite simple. I even think my sauce turned out pretty well, which I made right in the crock pot mostly with the liquids from cooking the pork, plus a little starch to thicken it.

Start with about a 4 pound pork shoulder or pork loin -- with or without the bone. Rub it all over with a hot-and-sweet spice rub and brown the meat on all sides in some oil with onions and garlic. Then cook the pork (plus onions and garlic) in a crock pot in a tomato-and-vinegar based liquid. Shred the pork and there you have it. Use store bought sauce or the sauce from the crock pot and serve on sandwich rolls with cole slaw or other accoutrements. I'll list my precise ingredients and measurements below for posterity.

   Ingredients

• 1 T butter or oil

• 5 T brown sugar
• 1 T cayenne or paprika
• 1 T cumin

• 4 pound pork shoulder or loin
• 2 medium onions 
• 5 cloves of garlic

• 1/2 C apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 C taco sauce
• 1/4 C soy sauce
• 1/2 C ketchup
• 1 T worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 C honey

Heat oil or butter in a pan. Mix the next 3 ingredients to make the spice rub, and rub it all over the pork. Chop the onions and garlic and add to the pan. Add the pork to the pan and brown on all sides. This whole process should take about 10-15 minutes total. I did mine by sliding the onions over to one side of the pan and browning the meat in the other side.

Next add the onions and garlic to the crock pot and put the meat on top of them. Mix the liquid ingredients together and pour over the meat. It should cover or nearly cover the meat. If the top of the meat sticks out an inch or more, add more liquid.

Cook for about 6-8 hours (on low, or maybe just 4-6 on high) in the crock pot. Once it gets fall-right-off-the-bone tender, remove the meat to a large bowl or plate. Give the liquid a good stir and taste it. Decide if you want to use this liquid as your barbecue sauce. 

If you do, adjust taste by adding a bit more of one ingredient or another. Add more brown sugar or corn syrup if you want it to taste sweeter. Try adding artificial smoke flavor if you want that. Add more soy sauce if it doesn't taste salty/savory/umami enough. If you want to thicken it, mix a tablespoon of corn starch with a tablespoon or two of water (put it in a small container with a lid and shake it up). Turn the crock pot up so the liquid starts to boil, and gradually pour in the corn starch. Stir and let it simmer until it reaches desired consistency. I think I left my liquid in the crock pot for almost an hour after removing the pork since I added some more ketchup and the corn starch.

shredded pork after removal from crock pot -- before mixing with sauce

Shred the pork -- it should fall apart easily. If it doesn't fall apart then it needs to cool longer. Let the sauce finish, or use store bought sauce, and mix with pork. Serve on a sandwich roll with pickles or other desired extras.

New Classic Soup Recipe

I've started making a new -- new to me -- soup recipe since it started getting cold and rainy. Just a basic chicken and vegetable soup -- but I've started adding quick cooking barley at the end to make it a more filling meal. I use the Dutch oven to make it and whatever chicken I have on hand, preferably boneless thighs. I use whole pieces of boneless chicken and shred it right in the soup after it has cooked for a while. Use two forks to sort of stab and shred the larger pieces of chicken after they cook. I prefer mine to cook whole in its own juices before getting separated, but you can always cut up the chicken before adding it. And I prefer a more shredded chicken rather than squarely cut pieces. Also, you can use orzo, egg noodles, macaroni or maybe even rice instead of the barley, or just omit it altogether. The grocery store had canned vegetables on sale before Thanksgiving so I stocked up. You can obviously use fresh veggies rather than canned, though. I would say replace 1 can of veggies with about 2 cups of fresh chopped. When I use canned vegetables I include the juice from the can and then end up using a little less broth. When I use fresh vegetables I tend to add about 2 more cups of broth.

Ingredients & Directions

• 3-4 T. butter
• 1 chopped onion (1-1.5 C.)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1.5 pounds chicken
• 4 T. soy sauce

Heat butter in Dutch oven and saute onion, garlic, chicken, and soy sauce for 10 minutes. Add the following ingredients:

• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped (about 2 C.) or 1 can mixed vegetables
• 1 can green beans (with juice) or 1-2 C. fresh
• 1 can corn (with juice)
• 1 can peas (with juice)
• 1 can diced tomato or 1-2 C. fresh
• 6 to 8 C. of broth

Add those ingredients and bring to a boil. Simmer for an hour or longer. Use forks to shred the chicken if necessary. Add:

• 8 oz. quick cooking barley

Bring to a boil after adding the barley and then simmer for 15 minutes (according to directions on barley package). 

Yields 6-8 pints.

Stevia Harvest!

I recently harvested, dried, and ground my stevia plants. Now I can make sugar free cookies. Or something...

Broccoli Still!

Mid October and still getting significant broccoli harvest!

Homemade Phillies Blunt Costume

"I'm a blunt gettin' smoked and I can't wake up, I'm a blunt gettin' smoked and I can't wake up, I'm dreamiiiinnn' about being a blunt!" -- KRS-One

not fond of my 2010 hair, hence the crop

Did you ever want to be a blunt? Well I did. About 10 years ago I traveled to the Pacific NW to catch a few Disco Biscuits shows in Eugene, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver for a Halloween run. At the last minute I had the idea to throw together a simple blunt costume. I figured, you know, some fabric, a few safety pins, maybe some green felt ... simple, right? Well I made one of the worst costumes ever. I give myself credit for the idea, but the execution fell terribly flat. I bought a piece of brown fabric and concocted a way to wrap it around my waist, then up over my head from behind, and down in front of my face (with a hole cut out) and then secured with the safety pins. I think I looked like poop. Literally. 

Fast forward to 2010. I had just started dating a girl I wanted to impress. I mean, just being myself is quite impressive, but this particular young lady really loved Halloween -- zombies, costumes, scary movies, etc. So I had always had this blunt costume idea in the back of mind. Someday, I thought, I can be the blunt I always wanted to be... Well that day was upon me, Halloween 2010. I did a quick search and found amazing instructions for how to make a blunt costume. This dude, in 2007, had come up with this idea (or borrowed it from somewhere else), written out instructions, took great pictures, suggested where to buy the materials, and posted it on instructables. Unfortunately, I can no longer find his instructable for the costume. I might guess they removed it for having marijuana content, but I would doubt that, with the prevailing cultural winds these days billowing with ganja smoke, but hey, who knows...

Anyway, ever since I started this blog a couple years ago I wanted to get my Phillies Blunt Costume pictures up, and now that I can no longer find the actual instructable that I used, the internet is sorely lacking in Halloween blunt costume instructions! I do like to contribute to society, so here you go...

Materials

• 1 small brown comforter (e.g., for a twin bed) to make the body of the blunt
• brown thread
• needle(s) (to sew seam and arm holes of the blunt body
• scissors
• tape measure
• large Phillies Blunt logo print out (or White Owl if you're old school)
• poster board or something to mount the logo
• clear tape
• marijuana leaf (or other green leafed) lei

Instructions

You'll only need to cut one side of the comforter if the length is already appropriate for your height. So, assuming one side is about 5 to 6 feet long, you will use that for the height of the costume and cut the other side. Cut the width about 6 inches wider than your waist size. If you wear a 32 inch waist, cut the width to about 38 inches. (Or, if you imagine wanting to wear the costume in ten years and you think you will get fatter, go ahead and leave a few more inches on there.) So you'll now have a brown comforter measuring about 5 or 6 feet by 3 feet. 

Use safety pins, needle, and thread to sew up the side you cut. I sewed mine by hand and it didn't take too too long. Remember your 7th grade home economics class skills...

Then you need to make it into a tube shape by sewing the two longer edges together. Do the sewing "inside out" so the thread will end up on the inside and you have a nice smooth seam showing on the outside. Don't sew it together all the way down or you'll never get it one and off. Leave about 18 inches to duck tail on the bottom so you can walk somewhat comfortably.

This is upside down (since the fully sewn end is down).

This will be the top end sitting on your shoulders.

Cut two arms holes about 3 to 6 inches from the top. You can put it on at this point and figure out where you want your arm holes to go. Remember, though, however much you leave at the top will sit between your shoulders and chin. Don't leave too much that it will bunch up and get in your way. The top of my arms holes are about 5 or 6 inches down and I would recommend shortening that to 3 or 4 inches. 

Sew up the arm hole edges like you did along the length of the comforter to prevent fraying. There you have it! But right now you only have a cigar. At this point, play Redman's classic "How to Roll a Blunt" while you proceed to the next step.

Find a high quality Phillies logo image online (such as a desktop wallpaper) and print it out. Use clear packing tape to mount it to poster board in a belt shape. Cut two slits on the back (like a Burger King crown you could get in the restaurant in the 80's) so you can fasten the belt. (Sorry, no picture of the belt slits, but I think you can figure it out.)

Now, as it turned out back in 2010 the young lady in question did invite me to a Halloween party (albeit a redneck zombie Halloween party, but I'll save that for another day), and the costume was a hit. Subsequently that weekend I ran into a fine gentleman who had used a very similar technique in creating his costume -- a penis (including balls). I mention this only because he had used a brown comforter and the exact same technique to create the shaft for his costume as I had for my blunt. Twins! Everyone in Dee's that night wanted a picture with the Blunt and the Penis.

I wore brown t-shirt and green shoes :-)

Pasta, Red Peppers, Sausage and Sauce

As you may already know I have 1 single tomato plant and 1 single green pepper plant in my garden this year. They have each produced a massive amount of vegetables. So one unseasonably cool day recently I thought I would make a nice hearty tomato sauce and grill some Italian sausage and sweet red peppers from Donatelli's. What a delight! I grilled the sausage and peppers while the sauce cooked in the dutch oven on the stove. I tossed the sauce with some bow tie pasta and then topped it with the sliced red peppers and sausages. I ate one serving and froze the rest in mason jars! Next time I would mix the meat in with the pasta and sauce rather than layer it on top, so it doesn't dry out when reheating. I did keep one sausage aside and grilled it another day with a green pepper from the garden. I used some of my homemade sauce and provolone cheese with them and made a hoagie.

 

Harvesting Continues

I just harvested my stevia plants and hung them up to dry this past weekend. And even into October I've continued to reap green peppers (just from 1 single plant), tomatoes, carrots, and the broccoli has kept on keeping on. One of my green peppers had a little tiny hole in it and I thought someone had moved in. I didn't find any critters inside, though, just clean fresh seeds and fruit.