My road trips the past few weeks have been so much fun. The spontaneous and the planned out. Trying new places to eat has been amazing, I’m 2 for 2 there. Today I looked at my list of possible things and nothing sounded good. Did I mention that it’s a “blah” kind of day? I have a couple auto-immune things that like to throw ragers occasionally and this week it’s a Vegas bachelor party in my body. So, that makes it a blah kind of day and week but I’m trying to be positive. I just didn’t feel like changing into outside, people might see me, presentable clothes, hair, and makeup. I wanted my yoga pants that are too big for me (I lost 75 pounds in the past year,< humble brag inserted >) that have a hole in the knee from moving to Colorado; I wanted my oversized t-shirt that is so soft and says “WKRP First Annual Thanksgiving Turkey Drop 1979” (IYKYK).

So this morning when I succumbed to the realization that “honoring my body” was the best choice for me, I decided I would try a new recipe.

I love to cook. I love to bake. I love to make candy. I am pretty good at baking a box mix cake but they don’t look pretty because of all the crumbs in the icing. I know there are various ways around this but they don’t work right for me, so I bake “crumb cakes” usually. Doesn’t matter if it’s chocolate, funfetti, or red velvet, there will be crumbs in the icing.

There are lots of things I have never attempted to cook or bake. There are a lot of things that I have not made simply because someone else in the family did that dish and that was their gift, their ministry. So I just never tried to do it. For example: deviled eggs. Growing up, my mom made deviled eggs, she took them and potato salad to most church functions. I watched her make them about a million times, but it never occurred to me to ask how she made them. When I got married, it never crossed my mind to make them and my ex-husband never asked for them. When he got out of the military and we moved back to. Missouri, his mom made them every once in a while, but they were awful and had too much black pepper and too much paprika on top. When I got divorced and I moved to Texas, my mom’s sister made them. That was her signature dish for every family function. She would bring in like 4 trays of them and never took any back home. So this past Thanksgiving I called and asked how she made them, and I wrote it all down and surprised my daughter and son in love with a tray of them. They were all gone by the time we sat down to eat!

Same thing with banana bread. I had never made it from scratch. I had made pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, cranberry walnut bread – all from scratch. Never banana bread. Since I’m at a higher elevation, I am always searching for tweaks to recipes that I know by heart and came across a banana bread recipe. My granddaughter and I made some and it was really good. It just didn’t fill up the loaf pan, but I have found other methods and got better.

I have even taught myself how to make croissants using puff pastry sheets!

So yesterday, I had this idea that I would make a roast and and the fixing this week and take some to my daughter. It’s hard being a both parent is working household and then scrambling for the whole homework, dinner prep and cooking, eat dinner, bathe kiddo, bedtime for kiddo dram, toss in gymnastics and it throws a monkey wrench into your week. I sometimes make something bigger than what I need and take some to them to help cut down on the dinner time part of the evening routine.

I don’t know about you, but the grocery prices are just crazy and beef roasts were off the charts. So I moved over to pork roasts, and it was then I realized, I had never made one. Ever. I’ve eaten plenty of them. Just never made one. Growing up, we were too poor to have roasts, unless someone in the church butchered a cow or pig and tithed some to the church. that happens in rural churches. Tithes came in the form of produce, eggs, gallon jars of milk, and meat from slaughtered cow or pig. Farming families give what they have, my dad always worked a couple of jobs as a minister, and we had our own little garden, and we purchased meat at the market. So I didn’t learn to make a roast until I was married and had kids. And that was a beef roast.

So I bought a 1/2 pork tenderloin, boneless roast. The cut looked good, and the price was right, so I brought it home.

I looked up recipes for making a pork roast. Most recommended the crock pot, others mentioned pepperoncinis and apples, others carrots and apple cider vinegar. I went with a basic onions, potatoes, celery and carrots recipe. I didn’t do a dry rub that some recipes suggested.

I’m not good at touching meat. It just gives me the creeps. I start thinking about what the meat was and then I can’t eat it. So dry rubs are out. I mixed a couple of different recipes together because if my body is recovering from a rager that was thrown without my consent, and using the least amount of dishes possible is the best method.

All of the recipes said the same thing tho, the layering of ingredients. First, onions, then potatoes (which I did not peel), then carrots and celery. I had chopped a whole large onion a couple of weeks ago and the rest was in the freezer. Extra points for no onion chopping today! I cubed up about 2 pounds of potatoes, maybe a little more, the I rough cut the celery and added baby carrots. I seasoned them with kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder, Sazon Goya, and Accent. All of the recipes said to put the roast in with the fat side up, so I did that with minimal touching of the meat by fingers. While typing that I had a full body shiver of ick.

To the meat, I added about a teaspoon of olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, kosher salt, the rest of the Sazon Goya packet, and, minced garlic. that’s when I remembered I was supposed to add chicken broth! I added half a carton and it knocked off the seasonings, so I put a little more minced garlic, Worcestershire sauce and Accent on it.

I tried to punch in the time and temperature on the front of the crockpot, and it wasn’t working. So I moved to another section of the counter and when I stretched up to my tippy toes to plug it in, I realized, it was not plugged in before. So I moved back down to the original spot and then laughed at myself because I had pushed that crock pot and whatever was in its way all over the counter and for someone who wanted less mess, I was for sure making a big one.

I have it on low for 8 hours, for now. As the day goes along, and the smells fill up the house, I may kick it up so I could eat a little sooner.

I did bump up the temp. But because I was starving from the aroma in my house. The roast looked so good and it was it was tender and juicy.

In re-reading what I had typed so far, it reminded me of a story that my daughter told me. A food blogger confessed to being a serial murder over several posts on their blog, detailing stalking murdering and disposing of the bodies. And no one caught on to the confession, because they were always scrolling to the end of the post for the recipe part.
I know this wasn’t exactly through my dirty windshield, but my counter is messy, so that kind of counts. And it was a new thing, and kind of an adventure with forgetting to plug in the crockpot and touching raw meat. It was a good day to make a good meal with love.

The goal is 60 new things before I turn 60 and I have 52 more to go and I can’t wait!