Collected Wisdom......

 .....or not as the case maybe. Yesterday I spent the day cooking. I actually like cooking. I do it in Winter and garden in Summer. 

I didn't really intend to spend the entire day cooking, but it is better than cleaning and way more satisfying. In fact this cooking marathon actually started on the previous day, when I went grocery shopping for the food, that the stores, who deliver groceries, always screw up. It was there that I saw a pork loin roast for a little over $7.00. Now it had a bone in, but it was a substantial size and I thought - for the price I couldn't go wrong. Well, of course, I have and could go wrong with anything in my hands or my head. Here's what happened:

1. I bought the roast and made roast pork with roast potatoes and French green beans which were on special for $2.50 for a week's worth!!

2. After dinner, half the meat was still on the bone. We had the roast again with gravy and fried potatoes for lunch the next day.

3. I balked at having it again for dinner, so I made chicken pot pie.

4. My husband cut the pork off the bone and I decided to use the bone in a soup stock with dried white beans. However, we still had the rest of the cooked pork to use up. Google gave me more recipes than I could read in one sitting so I chose two that sounded interesting and left the rest for another marathon. I did, however, smile at the pork tagine recipe - whatever were they thinking?

5. The bone yielded masses of meat and the dried beans grew to almost fill the pot. I now have pork and bean soup to last me until the Spring.

6. One of the "use up pork" recipes was easy - a lot like turkey "a la king" only with pork. The other one needed "black eyed peas." I thought, I'll just pick up a can at the grocery store. Not that easy. We are obviously too far north for canned black eyed peas. I was frantic. I checked my phone for substitutes, while a line formed behind me. I was now one of those irritating people who spend too long in one area of the store. I was blocking all purchases of both tinned and dried beans. Wait, what's this? - dried black eyed peas. Extra work, but why not?

7. Hence, I added to my cooking day, the preparation of black eyed peas. Did you know that two cups of dried peas, when soaked overnight, will fill a 2 quart pot to the brim - neither did I? I now have black eyed peas ready for half a dozen "use up left over pork meals." Fortunately you can freeze them.

There, I have now passed on what I have learned from trying to use up leftover pork loin. I'll not go into details about the muffins I made to use up the apple sauce, that was bought for the roast pork...sigh.

Sorry, no pictures. I was too busy cooking.

Have an awesome day!