Weekend update

[fenchurch]

Well, we've spent most of the weekend cleaning... my mother-in-law is going to be arriving tomorrow to stay for a week, along with a friend of hers -- they're in town for a weaving conference. So, we've needed to make sure both the Island Room (aka the guest room) and the Space Room (aka the junk room) were cleared out and set up for guests... the latter, of course, being the worst, since we have a tendency to just dump things in there to get them out of the way.

On the cooking front, we've been having a lot of fun today. My dad raises hogs as a hobby (I know, go figure... he says it helps him relax), which means that ever few years we get the gift of homegrown pork (if you've never had it, you're really missing out).

So, on Friday we dug out one of the pork loin roasts and started it thawing... then this morning we stuck it in the brine rackham had made the day before (he basically used this recipe, including the seasoning rub, with a few alterations). Rackham took the lead on food prep, with me doing some of the chopping and stirring... the roast didn't take nearly as long as we thought it would to reach the right temperature, so we took it out of the pan to finish with carryover cooking and then loaded the roasting pan with cut red potatoes, carrots, onions and whole garlic cloves all mixed with olive oil, kosher salt and crushed dried rosemary, right on top of the drippings and bits leftover from the roast. After it had cooked for a bit, we added a little white wine¹ and some organic chicken broth. After the veggies were done, we added in the new drippings from the roast and whisked up a bit of gravy.

Oh. My. Word. That was so incredibly good! The sort of meal you find you have to put away as soon as you're done or you'll keep picking at it even after you're full. In fact, about two hours later we were both trying to decide if we should just have a little more. So, so yummy.

¹ I don't think I've mentioned it before, but you have no idea how daunting it can be to go wine-shopping when you don't drink alcohol, never have and have no clue what you're looking for. I just went to a local grocery store with a very large selection, stared around at the masses of bottles in confusion and ended up getting one of the four packs of little bottles. Yeah, I know... but it's still better than cooking wine and I wasn't feeling brave enough to explore any of the thousands of other choices. Plus, we don't actually cook with wine all that often, and I'm not sure how well the stuff keeps.

So, the house is nearly ready for visitors and we've got some absolutely scrumptious leftovers in the fridge. Now if I can just keep this cold from actually developing into something worse (I discovered, this evening, that I'm running a bit of a fever. Blech), it looks to be a good week!

Comments

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

Yep! There are actually a few of them every year, scattered around the country and the world. My MIL has her degrees in mathematics, but took up weaving as a hobby back in the '80s... eventually she wrote and co-wrote a couple of books on the subject and, until recently, taught weaving at a local university. Her first job right out of college in the '60s was programming mainframes and she says weaving is very similar (and having tried a bit of weaving, myself, I have to agree).