Pork butt.

The other day, I was heading to the grocery store and asked Mike if he needed anything.

"Yeah, can you get me about 5 pounds of pork butt?" he said.

"For what?" I asked. And then I realized I should never question a man asking for pork butt because something delicious is going to come from it. So off to the store I went and found a nice hunk of pork butt for my man.

Mike's Miracle Hangover Cure

A couple days later, Mike put the pork butt in the oven and slow cooked it overnight. He's teaching an 8 am class so he's always up before me. So at 6:30 in the morning, half awake, I hear him stirring in the kitchen, and I smell the delicious pork he's taking out of the oven. I'm almost asleep again when he shows up with a piece of the pork in his fingers.

"Here, you want to try it?" Uh, of course. And it was wonderful and left me wanting to eat all 5 lbs.

So what did we do with 5 lbs of pork? What didn't we do! First Mike made a breakfast hash after a late Friday night out with friends with cubed potatoes, bacon, pork, scallions, and a poached egg, which we called "Mike's Miracle Hangover Cure".  Then that night we made bánh mì sandwiches, named after the Vietnamese word for bread. We filled the sandwiches with jalapeños, asian cabbage slaw, pickled carrots, and of course, pork. And last night, we made pork barbecue sandwiches with cole slaw.

bánh mì sandwich assembly

And we still have 3 pounds left. Anyone want to come over?

What's your favorite pork recipe?

P.S.

Chinese Oreos

Since I feel bad completely abandoning the reason I started the blog in the first place, here's something interesting I found out:

Oreos are the most popular cookie in China. No joke. It wasn't easy for Kraft to enter the Chinese cookie market. For one thing, Americans like their cookies super sweet and that just doesn't fly in China. They also had to repackage the cookies because the average Chinese person can't afford to buy three sleeves of Oreos at once. Kraft also changed the shape of the cookie (which seems like sacrilege to me) into a wafer stick that matched other popular cookies.

Sounds like I'll be writing more about food and culture... Have suggestions? Post a comment!

Back.

I have decided to start blogging again as a distraction from all the other things I'm supposed to do, like graduate, find a job, and doing dishes (I hate doing dishes!). Instead of blogging about the plight of Chinese workers, I'm going to write about something I actually know about: food! And not just any food - my husband's cooking. For those friends reading this and have enjoyed some of his cooking, you know that he's a damn fine cook and, in my opinion, a fine lookin' man.

What inspired my decision to blog again? While I was working on some lab stuff, I asked Mike what he was up to. He replied, "Making Oreos." That's right, he was making homemade Oreos. I asked him why and his answer was that he wanted cookies he could dunk in milk. If I had that urge, I would walk over to the 7-11 a block away and just buy cookies.


I hope this gives you an idea of the environment I live in, and why I will be 200 lbs in a few years... More culinary adventures on the way I'm sure.