O.O Things I Never Would Have Guessed: The Food Edition
So last night I made a crock-pot pork roast. This is one of my very favorite fall foods. Despite being verbotten in at least one of my faith traditions (maybe two?), I am still descended from hog-farmers and pork is a staple food for me. (Most of my friends actually *don't* eat pork, alas. Oh well. More for me!)
My preferred way to do a pork roast is slow cooking it with winter squash (butternut, acorn, or kabocha), sweet potatoes, and apples. I use either apple juice or apple cider (hard or soft) for the liquid instead of water or broth, and season it with a combination of cinnamon, cumin, and ginger. The result is a very "fall" flavored meal, but you also have a lot of rich broth left over that would be a shame to waste, but at the same time is flavored in such a way as to be less useful in stew and soup.
So what to do with it?
Well, the first thing we did was take a cup or two and use it to make couscous for a side dish. (I threw in a handful of dried cranberries too!) That was good. But there were still about 4-5 quarts left, along with some of the pork we didn't manage to eat at dinner. And it was all still in the crock-pot, still simmering.
And I realized we had a bag of dried black-eyed peas.
Hmmmm...
Now, I have long had a love/hate relationship with black-eyed peas. Like most Southern children, I was forced strongly encouraged to eat at least a two or three peas on New Year's Day to help ensure prosperity in the coming year. (As a small child, I found ketchup helped, because I hated them. Hated.) My otherwise level-headed and logical mother let what little superstition she maintained run a bit wild in regards to New Year's food.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I started liking them (adding rice helped.) So we've made them occasionally, usually with bacon to season them and sometimes with some onion and/or greens cooked in.
But looking at them last night, I wondered what would happen if we chucked them into the pot? So we did, and are having them for dinner tonight. THEY ARE AMAZING. SO GOOD. The sweet flavors of the cider and seasonings do really amazing things for the peas. Really. I also made a pan of cornbread (I cribbed off of Alton's recipe, but subbed an extra egg for the vegetable oil since I'm trying to cut vegetable oil out as much as I can. It worked perfectly.) Then we steamed some of the Swiss Chard I'd picked up and added some butter and salt to it. So, it's kind of beans, greens, and cornbread, only not quite.
I love it when a wild experiment works. :)
My preferred way to do a pork roast is slow cooking it with winter squash (butternut, acorn, or kabocha), sweet potatoes, and apples. I use either apple juice or apple cider (hard or soft) for the liquid instead of water or broth, and season it with a combination of cinnamon, cumin, and ginger. The result is a very "fall" flavored meal, but you also have a lot of rich broth left over that would be a shame to waste, but at the same time is flavored in such a way as to be less useful in stew and soup.
So what to do with it?
Well, the first thing we did was take a cup or two and use it to make couscous for a side dish. (I threw in a handful of dried cranberries too!) That was good. But there were still about 4-5 quarts left, along with some of the pork we didn't manage to eat at dinner. And it was all still in the crock-pot, still simmering.
And I realized we had a bag of dried black-eyed peas.
Hmmmm...
Now, I have long had a love/hate relationship with black-eyed peas. Like most Southern children, I was forced strongly encouraged to eat at least a two or three peas on New Year's Day to help ensure prosperity in the coming year. (As a small child, I found ketchup helped, because I hated them. Hated.) My otherwise level-headed and logical mother let what little superstition she maintained run a bit wild in regards to New Year's food.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I started liking them (adding rice helped.) So we've made them occasionally, usually with bacon to season them and sometimes with some onion and/or greens cooked in.
But looking at them last night, I wondered what would happen if we chucked them into the pot? So we did, and are having them for dinner tonight. THEY ARE AMAZING. SO GOOD. The sweet flavors of the cider and seasonings do really amazing things for the peas. Really. I also made a pan of cornbread (I cribbed off of Alton's recipe, but subbed an extra egg for the vegetable oil since I'm trying to cut vegetable oil out as much as I can. It worked perfectly.) Then we steamed some of the Swiss Chard I'd picked up and added some butter and salt to it. So, it's kind of beans, greens, and cornbread, only not quite.
I love it when a wild experiment works. :)