The first weekend here Tanner and I went grocery shopping. We got bread, cheese, eggs….and 25 pounds of pork. Yes, this seems excessive, but it is also very economical to buy and absurd amount of meat, chop it up, freeze it, and then eat nothing but it for a month or more. This also has the potential to get very boring. Even though Tanner and I consider ourselves Pro Chefs, three consecutive days of pulled pork eventually got a little old.
So, in case you find yourself stuck eating pig for over four weeks, here’s some tips on how still like the stuff a month later.
Tips:
1. Go meatless. Even though this is frowned upon in most ‘MERican homes, we went without any meat whenever we made spaghetti, complete with LaRosa’s sauce. If you really can’t go a meal without an animal in it, get some dang meatballs.
2. Change your sides. Sometimes we would eat mashed potatoes, sometimes we wouldn’t eat any sides at all. Eventually I even put forth the effort to make my FAVORITE food of all time, POTATO SALAD. I guess I could recommend vegetables, but who really needs those when there’s ketchup?
3. Change your flavors. Tanner attempted to change up the flavors of the three times we had pulled pork, using chili powder, paprika instead of chili powder, and hot suace. Most likely you’ll find a flavor you like best, but it’s always fun to experiment!
4. Mooch off Mom and Dad. I came home for 48 hours this weekend and my parents gave me some delicious PRIME RIB STEAKS from LANGEN’s. It only could have gotten better if mustard potato salad was included. So call up the ‘rents and tell them you miss them. Most likely you can get a free meal out of it.
5. If all else fails, have a backup. Keep TWO kinds of main meat in the house or keep a record of take-out places nearby if you just CAN’T eat pork again tonight. We also sometimes used deli meats in our meals if we were just having grilled cheeses or calzones.
If you wanna know what we did with all that pork, here is one of our stand-bys, Pork Fried Rice:
Pork Fried Rice
This is pretty simple. All you need is:
1 1/2 cups rice
2 cups water
pork shoulder (enough for 2 people)
soy sauce
1 cup frozen veggies (we use corn and peas)
2 eggs
Directions:
1. Put rice and water in pot and bring to boil on stove. Lower heat and cook 20 minutes. Stir often.
2. Cut up pork into bite-size pieces and cook in frying pan with soy sauce until brown.
3. Warm veggies in pot or pan with water until not frozen.
4. Once the rice is cooked, dump in the pan with pork and mix well with plenty of soy sauce. Add veggies next.
5. Make room to crack two eggs in the pan. You can mix the yolk in the rice or scramble the egg to make chunks of egg. Either way, distribute the egg throughout your rice. Done!
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