Tag Archives: recipe

Okay. I know I complained last post about having to get up early to not really cook.

I take it back though.

The Crock Pot is one of man’s (or woman’s) single greatest inventions. It allows the frazzled or not particularly skilled to throw everything into one pot, press a button, and have a dinner ready at the end of your and/or your husband’s workday. There’s some pretty simple stuff out there one can whip up the night before or morning of. Plus your home is perfumed with the delicious smells of slow cooked goodness and as Zak said tonight, “that smell is the best part of my day thus far.”

Then there’s my Nana’s BBQ “sweet Jesus I love this stuff, where are the leftovers” pulled pork. Yes, my friends, you can achieve spicy, melt in your mouth porky goodness in just about 8 hours with everyone’s trusty friend, the Crock Pot. But that’s not counting the other couple hours of prep work. I said, not everything in life is simple, but few things are this delicious. I’ll share the recipe at the end of the post; it’s a modified version of an Emeril Lagasse recipe (read: I think Nana’s holding out a secret ingredient or two out on me, but I’ll get it eventually).

At any rate, suffice it to say that the star of the show, besides the what feels like 8 billion spices, is the pork. God’s gift to people: the pig (and the Crock Pot. See a theme here?). At Walmart, a roughly 4lb Boston Butt pork shoulder runs us here about $17. SEVENTEEN BUCKS. No thanks. At the commissary, I picked up a prime, perfectly marbled and dying to be slow cooked shoulder for…UNDER FIVE DOLLARS. For a tax-free $4.96, I feed the husband and myself with plenty of leftovers for $5. I can’t believe it either.

The initial investment for this recipe is pretty heavy, especially if you’re like us and had nothing in your pantry to begin with or if you’re on a budget. The spices will run you anywhere from $3-$5 apiece (and there’s a lot of them), but you can still have a fabulous dinner that will feed up to 7 or so for under $30. Once you have all the spices and vinegar, it’s easy and cheap to make over and over again. If that’s your thing, of course. Obviously it’s mine.

This week, I’ll also be working through two more Pinterest recipes from my Food! board, Baked Chicken Fajitas and Chicken Parmesan Paninis (God’s other other gift, my Griddler. I’ll opine on that later).

Without further ado:

Posted by theoliverstwist in Daily Life, Food Tags: Barbecue, BBQ, Crock Pot, recipe