Last Night's Dinner: Pig Three Ways

Daryl got back in the kitchen and did some real cooking this weekend for the first time in a few weeks. Since she started working again most dinners have simply been what she & I can get on the table in between the time when we both get home & the time the kids go to bed, and I know she's felt like it's just been "preparing food" instead of actually "cooking."

So yesterday she put her considerable talents to work and ended up with:

* Pork roast with (global flavor blast alert!) cumin & bottarga salt dry rub
* Savory grits with bacon
* Brussels sprout hash

Unsurprisingly, it was fantastic. The pork roast came from M&B Fairview Farm, a central PA farm that raises and butchers heritage pigs (among lots of other tasty animals), and we could taste the difference. Daryl said, "this tastes like the pork I ate when I was a kid," and she was right. It was intensely flavorful, and very juicy, even after being cooked to nearly 170 degrees.

The grits were a perfect complement to the pork. I actually had grits for the first time ever this summer, and my opinion of them (that they're awesome) has not yet changed. The hash of Brussels sprouts and sweet onion was cooked in a bit of the BACON fat, making this a pork-three-ways dinner. It was a perfect meal for a cold, gray, sliding-into-winter day and it made Daryl happy, which is an excellent bonus.