Thanks, house. [RECIPE]

The crockpot totally makes me nervous now.

Like, even though it's supposed to be all SO easy just put meat in there in the morning and it will be ready when you get home, I still expect to come home to a house that smells like house rather than like dinner. Because of last time when my house smelled nothing like pot roast and a lot like plain old house and I became sad.

I want my house to smell like dinner when I get home. Is that too much to ask? To have my house cook my dinner?

Well, perhaps that IS too much to ask, but in my whimsical little imagination that's what's happened when I come home and the house smells like dinner. I might even think to myself, "Thanks for making dinner, house. You are the best! Let's have drinks!"

I said that I *might* think that. MIGHT.

Anyway.

Last night I came home and the house smelled like dinner! WOO! Thanks house!

I mean, nothing...

Admittedly, it didn't smell super good but it did smell like dinner. Which is what I've been asking for after all. Strangely though, while it did smell like dinner, it more specifically smelled like a dinner that had gone awry.

Like kinda too tangy or sour or something.

Turns out though, that's just how Spicy Pulled Pork smells when it's been hanging out in the crockpot with a ton of tomato sauce and onions and adobo sauce all day. Too tangy. But, thankfully, the closer you get to the pot, the better it starts to smell. And when you're face is IN the pot, searching desperately for a palatable smell (and confirmation that you will not have to search the dregs of the fridge to make Back Up Dinner), that's when it smells the best.

In fact, it smells downright delicious and just how you might hope for spicy pulled pork to smell. Like YUM.

By the way, this is another one of those things I'm learning about the crockpot: sometimes it doesn't smell super good when meat cooks for 8 hours in your house. In theory it should, but sometimes it really doesn't. Like the pot roast. It smelled like SUPAH pot roasty, which - not 100% yum. I'm just saying that's how I felt.

Here's another thing I've learned about the crockpot: Things never look good in there either.

Howdy, doody.

I mean, just try and tell me this doesn't look like a giant greasy dog log. Go on, try. I won't believe you. It looks downright NAST. (And no, I did not forget the "y". I say that - "nast". Because I don't have time for your fancy extra letters that are only sometimes vowels. Jerks.)

ANYWAY, if the food doesn't look good or sometimes smell so good, it should have to taste really good. Right? Yes, this is what I think.

And, in the case of this pork, it did. Taste ruuully good, that is. Phew.

And because it proved to be edible so I didn't have to go making the Mystery Back-up Dinner Casserole or whatever, I made some coleslaw to go with it, from all the many cabbages in the farm share.

(Sidenote: I didn't realize we'd be getting so much cabbage. What the F do you do with a lot of cabbage? Ideas? HELP.)

And because I like to share so that you too can enjoy a house that smells like a sour pork sock, here's how I bastardized the original recipe. Plus, the coleslaw recipe which I loved but Bubba said, "needed something."

Um, k.

Southern-Style (or so I'm told) Pulled Pork
Adapted from Canela & Comino's Spicy Pulled Pork
My changes in bold

Ingredients
1/2 medium onion, chopped
6 oz tomato paste
2 T adobo sauce
1 t ground oregano
2 t salt
1/2 t ground pepper
3 1/2 lb pork shoulder, tied
2 cups of water
2 T chipotle hot sauce

To make
In the crockpot pot, combine tomato paste and water until blended. Then add onion, adobo sauce, oregano, salt and pepper. Stir to combine.

Toss that big ol' piece of meat in there and turn to coat. Put the lid on and cook on 350 or "medium high" or whatever your crock associates with 350 degrees, for about 8 hours.

Transfer to a large bowl and, after removing ties, shred. Remove the fat between the sections as you go if that kind of stuff makes you want TO GAG as it does me. Then shred it up with a couple forks all SUPAH easy like Sunday morning. It's so easy, you'll laugh out loud. Set it aside while you continue laughing. It's good to laugh.

Seriously. I laughed as I conquered the pork. It was a big weird moment.

Grab a heat proof bowl and wire strainer and then pour the drippings through the strainer into the bowl. Discard the mess in your strainer and try not to barf the whole time it's pouring out. Gloop. Gloop. EW.

Pour your strained juicy bounty over your newly shredded pork and toss it up with the chipotle sauce.

Serve with warm tortillas (flour if you're Bubba or corn if you're me) and my Too Big Coleslaw (see recipe below).

Bubba said that if I served this to his mom (who is a Southern gal), she'd totally think it was Southern pulled pork rather than spicy Peruvian pulled pork, which is I believe, what this original recipe was going for.

This was my proper plate. With the corn tortillas and all.

Either way, very good.

Finny's Too Big Coleslaw
Adapted from Joy of Cooking's coleslaw

Ingredients
1/4 head of red cabbage, chopped wide
1/4 head of green cabbage, chopped wide
1 carrot, sliced wide
1/2 c cider vinegar
1 T celery seed
2 T mayo
1 T sugar
1/2 T fresh ground black pepper

I didn't set out to make this "Too Big" but, after Bubba spent some annoying minutes trying to spear the slaw to no avail, he became sad and felt that it was "too big" to get a proper forkful. I, however, found this helpful with the eating pace. Otherwise I would shove it in so fast I might not enjoy it.

And it was good.

Anyway, to make:

Mix this whole mess in a big bowl and let it sit for a while (10 mins?) while you get forks and drinks and things. Serve it up alongside your awesome pulled pork and feel free to jam some in the tortilla. It's best that way. And then you also don't mind the Too Bigness.

Immediately following this photograph, all that coleslaw went in with the pork, there.
Good times.