At this moment I am sitting in my apartment in my green and yellow Williams Sonoma apron, in between putting the dinner in the oven and rushing to pull it out before it burns. Robert is out for a run, which is a blessing because he is never here to see me as i try to perform my new-wife cooking routine. I just got off the phone with my mother, which has become a daily ritual this time of day because I can hardly make a meal without calling her or my sister or BOTH at least a time or two. I think this is the perfect time to share the Wife vs. Pork story...
So, it all began on Sunday of this week. Sundays are my days for menu planning and grocery shopping for the week. Thanks to my friend Taylor who suggested the system, things have been going pretty smoothly. Of course, I always have to call my mother, sister or BOTH when I am at the grocery store because I have no idea what marjoram is, where they keep the sesame seeds and what in the heck a pork tender-loin looks like raw. It is nice though, it keeps our phone calls consistent (hold that thought something smells like it is burning....ok, false alarm.)
Anyways, I had decided to make pork on Wednesday. That was my first mistake. And frankly, its my mother's fault. Of course I am going to come out of the gates and try something ambitious with an example like her. She never failed to put a beautiful and delicious meal on the table, and she always does pork so well. I thought to myself, "how hard can it be?" Ha.
So I finally identified the raw pork tender-loin (after taking a picture of the meat on my phone and sending it to my mother for confirmation) and put it in the cart. When I got home, i put it in the fridge and that is when the stare-down began. Every day, from Sunday till Wednesday, I would open the fridge, see that mysterious meat looking back at me, reminding me that Wednesday was coming and I had no idea what to do with that cut of meat.
The day arrived and I came home from work, dreading the task that lay before me. Thankfully, Robert had gone for a run and was not around to see me wrestle that thing into submission. (Let me pause to remind you that the pig was already dead, and I still had to wrestle with it.) So, the recipe calls for 1 lb, but the cut I bought is about three times that big. I just figured I would triple the recipe and make all of it because I have all these great memories of cold pork at my parents house the day after a great pork dinner. A great idea, until the recipe says to brown the pork on all sides. This results in a balancing act of me holding the pork on its smaller sides with various cooking utensils and my fingers, until all of it was cooked. Thank you Lord for not letting Robert come back home during that Kodak moment.
Eventually I got the pork seared, covered in the ingredients and in the oven. And, it turned out fantastically, despite my trepidation, acrobatics, and multiple phone calls to my mother. But it could have easily gone the other way. Thank goodness for Cooking Light's 5-ingredient recipes that even I can't mess up!
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1896177
I am off to get tonight's Sweet and Sour Chicken (courtesy of Melissa R.), rice and veggies on the table!
Till next time!
Mrs. A
So, it all began on Sunday of this week. Sundays are my days for menu planning and grocery shopping for the week. Thanks to my friend Taylor who suggested the system, things have been going pretty smoothly. Of course, I always have to call my mother, sister or BOTH when I am at the grocery store because I have no idea what marjoram is, where they keep the sesame seeds and what in the heck a pork tender-loin looks like raw. It is nice though, it keeps our phone calls consistent (hold that thought something smells like it is burning....ok, false alarm.)
Anyways, I had decided to make pork on Wednesday. That was my first mistake. And frankly, its my mother's fault. Of course I am going to come out of the gates and try something ambitious with an example like her. She never failed to put a beautiful and delicious meal on the table, and she always does pork so well. I thought to myself, "how hard can it be?" Ha.
So I finally identified the raw pork tender-loin (after taking a picture of the meat on my phone and sending it to my mother for confirmation) and put it in the cart. When I got home, i put it in the fridge and that is when the stare-down began. Every day, from Sunday till Wednesday, I would open the fridge, see that mysterious meat looking back at me, reminding me that Wednesday was coming and I had no idea what to do with that cut of meat.
The day arrived and I came home from work, dreading the task that lay before me. Thankfully, Robert had gone for a run and was not around to see me wrestle that thing into submission. (Let me pause to remind you that the pig was already dead, and I still had to wrestle with it.) So, the recipe calls for 1 lb, but the cut I bought is about three times that big. I just figured I would triple the recipe and make all of it because I have all these great memories of cold pork at my parents house the day after a great pork dinner. A great idea, until the recipe says to brown the pork on all sides. This results in a balancing act of me holding the pork on its smaller sides with various cooking utensils and my fingers, until all of it was cooked. Thank you Lord for not letting Robert come back home during that Kodak moment.
Eventually I got the pork seared, covered in the ingredients and in the oven. And, it turned out fantastically, despite my trepidation, acrobatics, and multiple phone calls to my mother. But it could have easily gone the other way. Thank goodness for Cooking Light's 5-ingredient recipes that even I can't mess up!
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1896177
I am off to get tonight's Sweet and Sour Chicken (courtesy of Melissa R.), rice and veggies on the table!
Till next time!
Mrs. A
What a beautiful picture you describe! Finding the humor in cooking a pork tenderloin (which I have never done btw...cooking the tenderloin that is) but being so transparent as to let everyone know that you can't do it perfectly without your Mom! I love that! I wanna eat at your Mom's house on Pork day! I wanna eat at YOUR house on pork day!!! :-D
ReplyDeleteHow funny. Reading this brought me back to my first days of cooking and how I didn't know what any of the ingredients were or what they looked like or where to find them in the store... I was always calling my mom or asking a neighbor for an ingredient I didn't have. Too funny. You'll get the hang of it in no time. :) Let me know how the chicken goes! I made it the other night without the onion soup mix (I didn't have any), and it was still very good!
ReplyDeleteOH my gosh, I'm dying right now. I can totally picture you doing all of this. When we first got married, I was always frantic in the kitchen. I would be scrambling around, stressed out that everything wouldn't finish on time. Now, I actually love cooking, and have become pretty decent, if I do say so myself :). Taylor was right on with the menu planning-- makes it so much easier, and you also save so much money! We have to have a good "wife" chat soon, I'll share with you some other things I've learned!
ReplyDeleteI love it! Cute story. Yay for moms and yay for good friends giving great tips (I have always done the same when it comes to meal planning...)
ReplyDeleteI can feel your angst from across the pond - but also share how funny it all is. Let me know if you would like some easy stuff to try - from across the pond!
ReplyDelete