What’s The Number For 911?

I have been in such a mood lately to cook. I’m only home on the weekends right now, and I want to spend my time home in the kitchen making real meals. I think about it all week long; what am I going to cook on the weekend. I am just so tired of restaurant food. I want real food, even if it is only my cooking.

Last week, I knew one of the things I wanted to cook this past weekend was sauerkraut. What goes with sauerkraut? Pork. What a winning combination. I knew I had a pork loin in the freezer which is one of my favorite cuts of meat. I’ve made pork loin numerous times and it’s not often it comes out good. That’s a shame since it’s an expensive cut of meat. The meat is not the problem, it’s just that I’m a terrible cook, especially when it comes to pork.

Sunday afternoon I was scouring the internet looking for a good recipe for the pork loin. I found what I thought was a winner and it looked easy to do, as well as the fact that the ingredients were common, as in what I carry in my kitchen.

It called for an easy glaze with honey, orange juice and EVOO, then some broth in the baking pan and let it go. The bad part came in with the fact that I was to baste “often” over the hour cooking time. How often is often? I threw caution to the wind and set my timer for every 10 minutes. Hey, any time I have to get off my butt and “do” something every 10 minutes, to me that was pretty damn often.

The first two basting sessions went well. The third try, however, turned out to be disastrous. I opened the oven, pot holder in hand, I went to tilt the pan to bring all the juices to the corner and suddenly, the darn pork loin shifted. It was actually in two pieces! Yeah, who knew? Top part fell off the bottom part, splashed in the liquid, I jumped, yada yada yada. End result? All of the liquid from in the roasting pan was now on the bottom of my oven.

If you can picture this; between the honey and the EVOO, spilled all over the bottom of my oven. Yeah, what a winner. It immediately started to burn and of course, smoke. And I do mean smoke. Shortly thereafter, all of our smoke alarms were going off. Each of us with only two arms was not enough to fan the smoke away from all of the alarms. So, before the neighbors called the fire department, I turned off the furnace and Ron and I ran to open all of the doors and windows. Once the smoke billowed out of the house and no sirens came racing in, I thought we had the battle won. Wrong. I can’t believe how much smoke came out of that oven. The last recourse was to take all of the batteries out of the smoke alarms. I know, not a good idea. But that incessant alarm going off until the meat was done was just not bearable.

After all that, our house smelled like crap because of the remnants burning in the oven. And, now the last of what was in the pan is just burning to the bottom of the pan. At least Ron had the presence of mind to put some water in the baking pan to help alleviate that part of the problem. To top this fiasco off, the sauerkraut I bought said “Polish style”. Yeah, that was a new one on me. Too bad I didn’t notice that at the store before I bought it. Come to find out, “Polish style” means with little caraway seeds. Yeah, I could have done without that. So, the sauerkraut wasn’t perfect. The mashed potatoes came out good though! And the applesauce was yummy, especially when mixed with the mashed potatoes!

Actually, the pork came out better than I’ve done in a long time. It was still tasty, and moist, even if the glaze ended up on the bottom of the oven. So, it wasn’t what it was supposed to be, but it was good as what it was, whatever that was. We ate half of it and the other half is safely packed in the freezer. Perhaps I’ll make a nice gravy to warm it up in this weekend.

Oh, who am I kidding? After the trauma of that fiasco, I think this weekend is going to be calling the delivery guy to bring us pizza. The neighborhoods will definitely appreciate the peace and quiet.