my arms hurt. so naturally i'll cook a shoulder.

good, glorious afternoon my spicy dumplings. (don't inquire. i just felt like you might be dumplings tonight.) do you know why i'm excited? well i'll tell you: i'm no longer stuck living as a phone solicitor (hoorah!), i have new dish towels in distinctly autumnal colors, and most awesomely of all, i'm not playing hostess to heat and humidity anymore. that's right, i done kicked those jerks to the curb. ousted! banished! ...okay fine so perhaps mother nature and an unseasonably cool streak thanks to hurricane leftovers did it for me, but i don't really care. it's legally autumn, the air is crisp and decidedly less soggy, and i no longer have to write this basking in the wheezing chug of the window AC unit. hoorah!

eeee! autumn! autumn in towel form!

so as it stands, i am now wiling away my days in a pet store which sells no actual pets but does pride itself upon providing plenty of organic, wholesome, natural dog and cat food. it's a pretty sweet gig, i enjoy it so far, and i can't complain that in this sheisty, grapple-if-you-can economy i've managed to snag a job where i get to play with puppies all day when folks bring them in to get fitted for a collar or try a new treat. (hint: dogs love freeze-dried livers. you heard it here first. or not. whichever. shut up.)

anyhoo, one of the caveats of providing exceptional customer service when one wishes to switch their dog or cat to a grain-free diet and then outfit their housy habitat with better beds, maybe natural clay litter or possibly a drinking fountain to recycle the microbetacular water is the ability to lift. and i mean, like, a lot. like, stacks of 35-pound bags of dog food that stretch eight feet tall lurking in the back of the store just waiting for stocking and restacking and buckets of bulk litter that say they weigh 40 pounds but honestly pull on my every sinew like lugging one of nibbler's anti-matter poo piles. i am basically gaining more muscle than my plus-size frame is comfortable with, and i still have yet to master that whole 'lift with the knees' thing to a point wherein i'm not falling over like a scuttling crab in tap shoes when i try to replenish the shelves.

point being: after a month and a half-ish of carrying dog and cat food across the parking lot to many a waiting minivan, my arms and shoulders and back and lower back and all the things that involve muscle, bone, or general nerve endings are sore. i love dogs and cats, truly i do- but lately i've been having a torrid love affair with bed and a bottle of ibuprofen to the point where i think the pilot is a bit disconcerted with my unwillingness to get out of bed. so naturally, to make myself feel better on a blessed day off, i spent it in the kitchen making pulled pork because goshbedangit if there's one thing i love more than loafing, it's spicy sauce on delicious meat. plus it seemed kind of randomly cathartic to slow-cook a shoulder and know it wasn't mine. and seeing as it's now cool out and i can turn on my oven without fear of melting like so many wicked witches and/or dumbasses who open temples of doom, as a bonus i made this with no slow cooker. mostly this is so that those of us out there without crock pots can have delightful cool weather noms too. and so without further ado:

pulled pork sammiches with habanero-pineapple barbeque sauce

for the pig:
one bone-in pork shoulder roast
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup broth (i use beef, but, to each his or her own)
3 cloves of garlic, cut into large slivers
hot sauce of your choosing
1 tsp each salt, pepper, chili powder
1 heavy pot, all-clad or simliar- or a crock pot if you're so lucky. if you lack either, use a regular roasting pan with some aluminum foil to cover it. if you lack all of those, then you'll probably just have to go buy your pulled pork cause really, i can only do so much!

alright. this is so easy, it's ridiculous. seriously. first, preheat your oven to 300 degrees and heat your pot on medium-high and add the olive oil. while that's all heating up, mix together the salt, pepper, and chili powder. you can use crushed red pepper or cayenne if you want, it doesn't really matter. point is, mix it together and then rub it over all sides of the pork shoulder. make like it needs a massage (i am writing this on pain killers after all) and rub it allll in the muscle so it gets teh flavors. then simply add it to the pot and braise it on all sides. use a heavy meat fork or thongs to turn it over and make sure all the sides are braised- it should take less than ten minutes overall.

mmmm...stabby pig shoulder.

remove the pot from heat and transfer the pork to a cutting board. now, if you have any aggression or wish you could get jabby with your neighbors or that jerk who shoved you on the street or your bank or the fact that professional athletes make more than anybody reading this ever will, take your trustiest kitchen knife and stab a good dozen or more holes in the pork. make sure they're deep holes, and then into each one stuff one or two of your slivered garlic. add the broth to the pot, put the pork back in it, and top it with a healthy splash of whatever hot sauce you wish. (i used frank's red hot and a little bit of red hot buffalo.) put the top on your pot and put it in the oven. now while that's starting to do its thing, go ahead and corral your ingredients for the barbeque sauce, because i promise it's even more delicious if you let it chill in the fridge for a couple hours.

for the habanero-pineapple barbeque that will kick your ass while stealing your stomach's heart:

there's no beer in this sauce...it's just there
cause i'm a classy lady in the kitchen.

-2 tablespoons of butter
-a smallish to medium onion, or half a large one, finely chopped
-a cup of smushed pineapple with the juice
-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
-2 tablespoons white vinegar
-1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
-1 cup chili sauce (i prefer rooster sauce, but use what you want, obviously)
-1/3 cup brown sugar
-2 1/2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
-3 tablespoons lemon juice
-1 to 2 tablespoons mustard
-1/4 cup ketchup
-1 wee but powerful habanero pepper, chopped and seeded
-pepper and hot sauce to taste

pineapple makes everything better! except syphillis.

so it's like this: on medium heat, melt the butter and sautee the onion until it's translucent- ya know, like most recipes start. then add the garlic and the pineapple, and stir that goodness together. then add your chili sauce, vinegar, and brown sugar. cook until the brown sugar is melted and fully incorporated, and then mix in the worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and the ketchup and mustard. stir in the chopped habanero, and cook it together for a few minutes to make sure it's all incorporated. go ahead and taste it, and then adjust the seasonings to your liking- add however much pepper and hot sauce your little heart desires, and then bring that bad boy up to a boil.

warning: this *will* be spicy. and not, like, 'i'm wearing a
naughty nurse outfit' spicy, i mean possibly singeing your
tastebuds bc it is not fucking around spicy. mmmm :D

follow suit by promptly taking said bad boy off a boil and reducing it to a simmer instead. cook it on low, stirring every now and again, for about a half an hour. after it's good and cooked together, go ahead and either put it in a container for storage in the fridge bc if you give the flavors a couple hours to mingle it'll be even better, or if you're lazy and lack appropriate storage containers like myself, just let the pot cool enough on a back burner before transferring to the fridge.

now that you've got your barbeque sauce taken care of, i highly recommend immediately washing all the equipment you handled the habaneros on, including the cutting board, knife, and any bowls or plates it may have come into contact with- and for the love of all that is holy or not, wash your own damn hands because you really, *really* don't want to have to suddenly find out you wipe your eye too much by way of the burning of corneas. also? that was a really long sentence and for that i apologize. but only because it's national punctuation day and as an english major working in a field that has absolutely nothing to do with my degree, i care about the treatment of our language, even if i am living with a pilot who insists that 'alot' is a viable word. *headdesk*



pork pull: phase one.







pork pull: phase two. (...okay that sounds vaguely dirty.)



ooookay. so now it's probably been about an hour or so, and it's time to check on your pork. hasn't it been smelling lovely? if not, i'm sorry you don't have a nose, but how could i know? it's the internet, not a video phone. go ahead and lift the pot out of the oven (USE POTHOLDERS, OH MY LORD, PLEASE TAKE HEED) and check on the pulliness of the meat. it should look a little something like this picture on the right. it ought to be easy to pull from the whole, but not completely stringey and separated. go ahead and ladle a bit of the broth over top and add more hot sauce if you want, and put it back in the oven for another hour and a half to two hours. after that, a test piece should pull really easily from the rest of the pork, and it should be completely cooked through. you can cook it for longer if you're worried about dying from improperly cooked pig, but after 3 hours at 300 degrees, your shoulder should be thoroughly cooked and delicious. go ahead and pull the bone out of the shoulder (it should slide out really easily) and then take two forks and pull that shoulder into sammich materials like so:

make sure you pull it as much as can be, and try to take down any larger chunks. go ahead and just tear and pull with the forks; the garlic that was cooked with it should be completely smushable and mixed in with the meat, and i like to incorporate the broth it's been cooking in with the meat so it's extra juicy and all that. let it sit to the side for a bit so it cools down, and while that's going on and the barbeque sauce is still chilling in the fridge, go ahead and whip up some mashed potatoes. (i prefer skin-still-on smashed with sandwiches. i have no idea why.)

toast some buns, and then just heap some meat and barbeque sauce on top and you've got a derlicious meal fit for watching a football game and making sure you get really messy. ommmmm nom nom nom. and apologies ahead of time for how spicy this is, but really, it's got habaneros in it. can't say you weren't warned. and now without further ado, i'm going to go and loaf some more because the painkillers are re-kicking in and there's futurama to watch. coming soon: something new. hopefully.

pickly porkchops and heat-pickled people. (hint: one is a recipe and one is not.)

ooph. it is hot out there, y'all. or to swap dialects or levels of urgency, it's wicked hot out there, and it's a freakin' swamp in here. it's so effing hot that my toilet seat burned my ass, and yes the overshare was necessary because it's hotter than a pepper-black cat covered in tabasco sauce wearing jalapeno-skin kitten mittens on an impractical tin roof at high noon. i'm sweating from my eyelashes, you guys. and that's just not right.

so naturally i thought 'oh hey, i'll do a bit of grilling and pair it with some potato salad for a nice summer in the city type of dinner,' right? i applaud my own idiocy sometimes, because i definitely gathered the necessary ingredients for a thick-of-the-summer pork chop marinade and went ahead and whipped up a batch of my granwin's potato salad- all while forgetting that in our paltry spaghetti noodle budget, the pilot and i lack a grill and probably won't have the expendable cash to get one til it's winter and we're counting icicles on the eves above our fire escape because of course that's what we'll be doing, i mean, haven't you seen those bailey's commercials? no? nevermind.

anyway- point is, i may have suffered a bit to cook these damn chops, and sure they may not be pretty, but they are at least tasty, and at the very least, sort of improvised on my part. i'm a fan of throwing stuff to the tile to see what sticks, and thankfully the pilot generally approves my kitchen deviations or spots from afar where i'm about to go horribly awry- like a failboat spidey sense, if you will. on this afternoon, however, he was in a class that keeps him on campus until early evening, and i was left to my own devices. but to myself i thought, hell. i can whip up a marinade that doesn't totally fail without supervision. i mean for pete (or whoever's) sake, i moved my ass (and its wardrobe, various books and shoes, and all the other effects it and the rest of its being requires) across the country without incident --this included lugging a cat in a carrier on three separate flights and fighting for six hours at the columbus regional airport to get a rental car (more on that story another day- perhaps when i'm sharing a recipe for something that takes six tries to succeed with)-- so surely i can craft a marinade of my own design and macguyver a way to grill some freakin chops in a kitchen that is, to say the least, eensy weensy schmeensy teensy, right?  (also? longest sentence ever. please accept my apologies.)

this would be my kitchen. no, really. that's the entire gosh-
bedanged thing. note the oh, what, 1 1/2 feet of counter space?
so  from hereon out, marvel at my ingenuity. marvel!

outcome: yes, yes i can. unfortunate lesson learned: when broiling things, it's best to save it for when you're, uh, not living in an un-airconditioned apartment in the middle of hades' summerfest of hellsweat featuring the heatstroke experience. a box fan is an awesome companion if you're into doing that whole 'luke, i am your faaaatherrrrr' thing when you're bored, but it's not the best way to cool down a kitchen with the broiler whirring full-tilt. but i recognize that if is my plight, i may as well suck it up and tell myself i'm doing culinary bikram, right? ...i tried for about three minutes just now to come up with a joke about my flexibility but i couldn't concoct one that didn't sound dirty and for all i know my mother is reading this, so, no dice on that particular tangent.

in any event, so, yeah. the midwest is boiling like the potatoes that make up the salad i'm about to divulge (and i'm not actually even sure i'm supposed to, being that it's a family recipe- but it's so perfect for summer and easy to make that i'd be remiss not to, and yes, i just love to use the word remiss and sound pretentious, what can i say). but hot as it may be, eat we must, and hence, i present pickly basil and garlic porkchops with ssssssssssssecret family potato salad. (extra s's for dramatic emphasisssss. yay!)

pickly basil and garlic porkchops
(this recipe cooks for two, so if you've got more mouths than i'm feeding, obviously multiply to your pantry's content)

you will need:
2 medium porkchops
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice (or lime, take your pick really.)
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup pickle brine (i promise. trust me.)(for the record, i use clausen. straight from the jar, i'll drink that stuff. what?)
2 cloves of garlic, minced/smashed/cut up into pieces of garlicy goodness
3-5 basil leaves, chopped (you can do more or less, i just love a lot of basil in summer. if a cannibal ate summer, it would request basil for garnish.) (that made no sense. i know.)
a dash of pepper (or however many you want)

this is super easy, i promise. basically, mix all the ingredients except for the pork chops together in a bowl, and then slather it over your chops. make sure to massage some of the basil and garlic into the meat to get some uber delicious flavor action going on, and, after covering, put that bad boy in the fridge for a couple hours- or overnight if you want.

mmm. raw naked meat action. i know it's why you
tuned in, right?


if you have a grill, i'm really jealous of you and assume you already know how to grill a chop. if you are pan frying, fry 'em up over medium-high heat for about five minutes on each side, looking for crispy doneness, and use your tongs to feel for that satisfying cooked-through, won't-be-getting-trichinosis feeling. they should spring back a bit, but not squish too much. if you have a meat thermometer, make sure they read at least 150 degrees in the middle. and lastly, if you're an unlucky wench like me, preheat your broiler for about ten minutes, and put the chops on a broiler pan and let them sizzle near the back of the heating element for seven to eight minutes. look to make sure some fat is rendering and turning crispy and brown, and flip those bad boys over. let them broil for another six or seven minutes, and test for donenness like the above instructions for pan-frying. in any event, make sure the thickest part of the chop reads at least 150 degrees. if you've got any picky, panicky eaters like the pilot in my house, by all means cook it to 160 or 170 so they won't complain of pinkness and impending death by pig flank. (also, i'm going to go out on a limb here and say picky panicky pinkness of pig flank is going to be my band name if i ever decide to butcher people's ears for a living. i feel like it'd be an alt-rock fusion rockabilly bluegrass outfit with some electronica elements, no? okay maybe not.) and on that note...


om-nom-nom potato salad

6 white or red-skin potatoes
3 hard-boiled eggs
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
6 scallions/green onions, finely chopped bc they're totally copying the celery, those bitches.
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1 to 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1 to 2 tablespoons mustard
1/2 teaspoon pepper
dash of salt

standard procedure: in a pot with about three inches of water, boil the potatoes, fully skinned, for about 20 minutes until they're soft when you get all medeival and stab them with a fork. (i know they didn't technically have forks in medeival times, shut up.) while they're boiling, go ahead and hard-boil the eggs if you don't already have some on hand.

mini-recipe! if you've never learned the fine art of hardboiling eggs, have no fear. if i can do it, anybody can. hence: put your eggs in a small pot, fill it with just enough water to cover the eggs, and set to boiling. as soon as you get some roiling boiling madness, turn it down to simmer and keep covered for 15 minutes. after that point, take them off the heat and let them sit for a few minutes, and then transfer to the freezer or fridge to cool before peeling. also, if you have newer eggs, they might be more obnoxious to peel bc the shells are all clingey like that, so you can throw a tablespoon or so of vinegar into your water to help alleviate the i-don't-wanna-peel-itis that new eggs are oft so fond of.

(this is what you don't want. i'll be the first to admit i'm
tragically human. don't ignore your potatoes, or they'll
suck up all the water and get a little burninated. oops.)

so while all this boiling is taking up the stove's attention, go ahead and chop the celery and the green onions. also, in a small bowl, mix up the mayo, mustard, salt and pepper. you can adjust all those ingredients to your heart's content, but i find my favorite is about 1 1/4 cups mayo, 2 tablespoons of mustard, and a couple dashes of pepper and a teensy bit of salt.) once your potatoes and eggs are boiled, your greens are chopped, and your sauce is mixed, it's time for the assembly.

mmm. ingredients.

skin the potatoes, which, okay- i know what you're thinking, because yeah, they just came out of some boiling water and they're kind of hot. true story. but keeping the skin on traps all the heat in and allows for a better boiled consistency, and also, something about how you can't argue with tradition, or something. i like to cut across both hemispheres of the potato so i have four quadrants, and then peel the skins that way. it's a bit faster and you risk fewer burned fingertips that way. in any event, once you've got the potatoes peeled, go ahead and chop them up into bite-size pieces and throw them into a big bowl or pot, whichever you've got handy. sprinkle them with the three tablespoons of vinegar, and mix in the celery, green onions, and chopped hard-boiled eggs. on top of that, spoon the mayo and mustard mixture, and mix gently with a big spoon or spatula until everything is evenly covered in deliciousness. cover it with whatever you've got (in my kitchen it's usually a plate, because i lack saran wrap or aluminum foil) and refrigerate for four to six hours to let all the flavors mingle like a frat/sorority mixer.

okay, not the most attractive picture- but it is dinner, and
it's tasty. i promise!

et voila. i'd say make the potato salad first, and once that's done and chilling in the fridge, whip up the marinade and let the chops start resting in their acidic, garlic, basil bath of deliciousness. you can make this stuff the day before, or you can make it the afternoon of the day you want to please your tummy with summer fare- but regardless of when you make it, just make sure you have a good beer and an air conditioner with which to enjoy it. though if you don't, rest assured that you're at least probably not sweating into your corneas and burning your ass in the commode. and that, my friends, is probably worth all the potato salad in the world.


up next time: the original pizza of italy, and tales of being a telemarketer who interrupts your dinner but she totally doesn't mean it but she has to bc it's the only job she could get in this godforsaken town after applying for approximately 200 jobs in over a month. or not, but until then, that's the projected verbal menu. and also until then, goodnight, my gentle omelettes.