My Second Favorite Thing

My favorite thing about not working during December is an obvious and required answer.

Some of you might be able to guess my Second Favorite Thing about being home all day...

I can cook more!  What's more I get to decide what we are eating, pick something that takes a bunch of effort and time, start working on it early and have it almost ready by the time Paige and Dana get home.

Last night we had an excellent Italian Pork Stew the fennel jumped out and the red pepper flakes added a slight bite.  I started cooking in the morning at around 10am with Reid in the moby wrap.  After cutting 2 onions into quarters and slicing up 2 bell peppers, I tossed them into our slow cooker.  Then I minced 2 cloves of garlic and cut 3 pounds of pork shoulder into 1.5 inch cubes.  Part way through the prep I noticed that she was getting hungry.  So, I started warming up a bottle and kept cooking.  Then I gave her a bottle in the wrap.  That was going pretty well so I started gathering a couple teaspoons of fennel, and a pinch of red pepper flakes spices with my other hand.  Reid kept eating so I started another bottle warming and began breaking up 2 teaspoons of rosemary from our backyard.  

Well, eventually I realized that she had fallen asleep without actually eating anything.  So I got her out of the wrap, woke her up and she ate about an ounce.  (She isn't eating much with me, but that's another story.)  She conked out in my arms and moved her upstairs and daryingly placed her in the crib - which she doesn't like nearly as much as the swing.   

I came back down and started browning the pork.  After the first batch of browning, she woke up.  I brought her down, browned the rest of the pork and added it to the slow cooker on top of the onions and bell pepper.  Into the pan went a 16 oz can of diced tomatoes, the spices, garlic, and zest from an orange.  That deglazed the pan and I poured it all on top of the pork.  After 7 hours in the slow cooker we just added a slurry of flour and water to thicken the sauce, cooked for 15 minutes and it was done.

Meanwhile, Reid and I went to the Italian Store and tried to get some fresh pasta, but they don't have it there anymore.  We settled for some bread and polenta - which we had a lot of fun making later in the evening.  I'm not a big fan of polenta.  We made it on the stove before dinner and baked another batch after dinner to see how it tasted (and to go with the leftovers.)

Anyway, thanks for indulging urge to talk about food.  The recipe that I almost described can be found here.  It's in one of Paige's favorite cookbooks: "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook."