Monday, April 19, 2010

Pulled Pork and Homemade Milkshakes

We had a crazy, crazy busy weekend approaching and like I always do when I have a crazy, crazy busy weekend coming up, I panicked about what to feed my kids.

How would we eat? I wondered, with all this coming and going that we had to do?

How the heck am I going to find time to cook? I wondered, because in between the laundry and - well, let's just be honest here - the laundry, I wouldn't have a whole heckuva lot of time.

So I sat down with my pencil and began to jot down ideas.

Spaghetti?

Too messy.

Chicken?

Oh my heck - if I feed them chicken again I just might push them all over the edge, especially my 11 year-old who warned me, just last week, that if we were having chicken again he would run away from home.

Seafood?

Who has time for that????

That leaves...pork.

(Unless we were going to be vegetarians for the weekend, which we were not)

Now, although I do love me a good pork roast and ham is never a horrible thing - but we just had Easter, serving ham would be like cooking a turkey the day after Thanksgiving...you just don't do that. To be perfectly honest, I'm not a big pork fan. Probably because I have no idea (or inkling to learn) how to cook a pork chop. So, when I say pork, I'm talking the pulled kind. The kind you cook in a crock pot because let's face it, is there any other way?

Alright, I have to share a little secret with you - because nobody told me this until I was 36 years-old and now I'm 37 and I just don't think that it would be fair to keep all of this knowledge to myself a day longer.

We use the pulled pork for TWO DINNERS!

That's right, two, count 'em, two dinners.

And although this seems fairly obvious to me (now that someone shared the secret) it occurred to me that there are a lot of people who don't know this and so - I'm sharing. No, I don't have pictures - because 1) this isn't a cooking blog and 2) it's really hard to take photos with your fingers covered in BBQ sauce. So you will just have to imagine the beauty of these 2 meals. Trust me, it won't be hard.

What you do is you take a huge (as big as will fit in your large crock pot, I think ours was 5 lbs) pork shoulder or butt roast and cut it into about 3 chunks so that you can fit the lid on the pot. Then you pour a can of beer (any old beer will do) on top of the pork. Slice an onion thinly and throw it in there with about 4-5 cloves of garlic. Don't forget to turn the crock pot on high or none of this will work.

Now...the magic.

You walk away for 4 hours.

After 4 hours come back, grab 2 forks and shred away at the pork in the crock pot - which will be falling apart at this time. Remove the shredded pork and as many onions as you can to a large bowl or pan and save the juice to pour on your dog's food little by little when he's been especially good. Or, not. It's your call.

Then, now this is the tricky part, you get yourself a bun and some BBQ sauce (maybe a little coleslaw if you are feeling fancy) and you assemble your sandwich. Because you didn't mix the pork with the BBQ sauce before serving, you will have about half of it leftover to put in the fridge for tomorrow's meal: pork tacos.

For the tacos, just reheat the pork and serve in a tortilla alongside your favorite taco toppings: salsa, avocados, onion, shredded lettuce, radish, lime, sour cream, cheese, beans, Pacifico...

You get the picture.

Point is, this pork saved my life this weekend. With a houseful of kids, 2 baseball games, opening ceremonies and a raging Nerf gun war that just would not relent, I needed dinner to be easy.

Even better?

We made homemade milkshakes.

Pauline asked me how this was done so I'm going to tell you - but make sure you pay careful attention because this one, oh, it is really hard.

Blender + vanilla ice cream + Trader Joe's chocolate syrup + 1 banana + milk = delicious.

That's it.

So go forth. Enjoy your busy weekends, live your life and relax with your family because you've got dinner covered!

5 comments:

tricia honea said...

Yum!, i love pulled pork sandwiches with a little bit of coleslaw. Now that chicken I got out too roast doesn't look so great.

flutter said...

*drooooool*

michelle from six in the city said...

Just found your blog. Love me some pulled pork sandwiches! Thanks for the recipe!

OHmommy said...

That pulled pork would work well in quesodillas too! Yummo. Thanks for the easy milkshake. I am so making those as a treat this weekend.

Anonymous said...

You may now have to start a cooking blog separate from the mommy blog because I think your passion for writing about food might become epic...