Pulled Pork, Using the Aldi Fresh Meat deal


Ingredients:
  • Pork Roast (I used a 10lb one)
  • 1 Jar Leftys, plus refill the bottle 3/4 full of water, shake well, and add it 

I set the crockpot to cook on high for 4 hours. Before I went to bed, I  switched the crockpot to cook on low for 10 hours. In the morning before I left, I switched it to warm.  At lunch time I shut it off completely, but let the roast sit.


At 4pm, roughly 24 hours after I started cooking the pork, I pulled the meat from the juices in the crockpot.  It looked a lot like soup- the liquid came almost to the top of the crock.  The meat fell apart as I pulled it from the crockpot into a large bowl.

The Longer Version - 

I'm transitioning to shopping more at Aldi, now that we don't always need the bulk amounts from Sam's club.  So of course I started this week by buying a 10lb pork roast.  Because everyone scaling back on the amount of groceries they buy should buy a 10lb pork roast....

But it was $1.49 a lb!  How can you pass that deal up?  I looked it up online to type up this post, and found this:


"Every Wednesday, look for our incredible Fresh Meat Special Buy* item. When you see the sign, you'll find an extra-low price on one of our very best cuts of meat. But hurry…because at these low prices, our weekly supply is extremely limited. "

I usually shop on Wednesdays, because I'm already in this area for BSF on Wednesday mornings.  I can't believe I've never noticed this before?  I really should be more observant.  :-)

A few months back I had made this recipe, from Kevin & Amanda.  It's called Perfect Roast Pork.  And it was good.  But I didn't think it was perfect, or really worth all of that effort. Ok, so it's really not THAT much effort, but it involved mixing spices, and brining the pork...  basically, more than 3 steps, so it exceeded my attention span. :-)  If it has truly been our idea of perfect (Did you know that 40 years ago students were taught never to use the word perfect when writing? Because nothing is truly perfect, therefor it was an improper use of the word.   some older women in my BSF group shared that they were taught never to use that word.  My, how times have changed...)  I'd have repeated the steps. But although it was good, we just weren't wowed by it.  (It's apparently one of the most popular recipes on their site, and they have a LOT of great recipes, so my opinion is obviously different than that of many others.  Nothing new there.


I put my 10lb pork roast in my crockpot, dumped in a jar of Lefty's BBQ sauce (I found it cheap at Wengers, but apparently Wal-mart carries it), refilled the bbq sauce bottle 3/4 full with water and shook it up good, then dumped that into the crockpot too.

I set the crockpot to cook on high for 4 hours. Before I went to bed, I  switched the crockpot to cook on low for 10 hours. In the morning before I left, I switched it to warm.  At lunch time I shut it off completely, but let the roast sit.

At 4pm, roughly 24 hours after I started cooking the pork, I pulled the meat from the juices in the crockpot.  It looked a lot like soup- the liquid came almost to the top of the crock.  The meat fell apart as I pulled it from the crockpot into a large bowl.

Using two forks, I "Pulled" the pork.  

It was so moist, so flavorful, and so good, that I really didn't have to do anything else.  For me, this came out SO much better than the brined recipe.  

It made a LOT of pork.  I filled one gallon bag, and one half gallon bag, for the freezer, and still had about half a gallon or more that I added Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce to to make Pulled BBQ Pork sandwiches for dinner.  (Served on Ciabatta rolls, also from Aldi)

This is really, really good. I won't call it perfect. But it will be my go to recipe for pulled pork from here on out.  :-)





How to Make a Chalkboard Graphic


I'm going to assume you already have a basic knowledge of some sort of graphics program.  Gimp is free.  I use Paint Shop Pro - because I have used it for many years, and I lack the attention span (& budget!) to keep up with photoshop.  

First, The Background.
  Thank you google image search....


These sites also offer free downloads - 


Next The Fonts:

This site has links to all of the fonts on the poster above
(most of my favorites are on her list, so I didn't see any sense in replicating it. Plus, she did it better than I would have.)

I personally recommend going to Dafont and downloading just about everything ever created by Kimberly Geiswein.  I can't believe all of these gorgeous fonts are free.  
http://www.dafont.com/kimberly-geswein.d1468
Some of my favorites:

Installing new fonts is super easy.  In most cases, you can unzip them, open 
Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Fonts 
or in your windows start menu, search "fonts"
Then copy the fonts and paste them in the font folder
If you have a graphics program open, you'll probably have to close it and restart it for the new fonts to appear.
If you need more detailed instructions:


Then, The Dingbats:
All those banners & frames?  Even mustaches and animals, or cars, or whatever... they can be found in dingbat fonts.
I'd start with:

KG Flavor & Frames
That will give you all sorts of banners and buntings to work with

But the options are pretty endless.  Use google and search for things like "snowman dingbat font", etc.  KG has several varieties of frames. I've downloaded them all.

Those who are pretty serious about this stuff use software to organize their fonts, or they print them into a binder. Me? I google the dingbat font I'm using to remember which letter/number = which graphic.  Probably not the best way, but it really is the easiest.  :-)

Organize with Software:
http://fudgeandjoy.com/crafting-2/how-do-you-organize-your-fonts-download-available/

Organize In a Binder:
https://thefrugalcrafter.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/dingbats-for-dummies/

The graphic above, for KG Flavor & frames, does not show all of the options - just a good sampling of them.  


Some Examples:

(Have I gone 10 minutes without mentioning that I have a gorgeous new grandson?  Let's rectify that quickly!!)





Not A Pinterest Baker Makes Lemon Blueberry Cake


Working from the recipe found here:
http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/02/09/lemon-blueberry-layer-cake/

Isn't it beautiful?? And it's lemon and blueberries, two of my favorite things!
 Lets be clear - that's the picture from the original recipe.  Not my photo.
But surely someone with a limited attention span  and complete disregard for exact recipes can make this, right?  Uhm..  kind of.  

Step 1 - Check the Ingredients

1 cup (240ml) buttermilk.  Check.  Well, kind of.  I don't actually have buttermilk, but that's easy to make.  I do have fresh from the dairy milk, and a bag of lemons.  

1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature. Who buys unsalted butter?  Not me.  But I pulled the salted butter from the fridge, optomistic that it will be at room temperature by the time I need it.  (No.  Not it will not be.  Do that sooner.)


4 large eggs, at room temperature.  This is when I remember that we just gave away all the eggs.  Go out to the hen house to collect the eggs (by the way, there's 3 inches of snow on the ground.  April 9th, 2016, in Central PA.)  Feed the chickens & peacocks while I'm out there, throw some scratch grain for the ducks and guineas.  So the eggs are "fresh from the henhouse" temperature.  Which since there is 3 inches of snow on the ground, might be slightly colder than "room" temperature...




1 and 1/4 cups (250g) granulated sugar.  I come back inside from collecting the henhouse temperature eggs,  &find that both the sugar and flour canisters are empty.  Refill them from the huge sam's club bags of sugar and flour that I keep in the pantry.  I wonder if I could start buying smaller bags now that the kids are pretty much grown?  How much money am I saving, especially when you calculate how much I spill all over the counter while refilling the canisters from these huge bags?  Thoughts for another day.

The oven was preheating, I set the plastic lid to the flour canister near the back burner of the stove while refilling the canister, and melted the lid. Just a little.

This cake is TIME consuming. And I don' t even have all of the ingredients together yet.

1/2 cup  packed light brown sugar - Yes, I have this!

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract - The good stuff, from Sam's club.  I buy the big bottle, we're all set!

3 cups  sifted all-purpose flour, (spoon & leveled)  - I may have completely ignored the part about "spoon and leveled".  It's possible I'm not completely sure exactly what that means.  But I have a good guess, so it will be fine.

1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons lemon zest I have a bag of lemons! & a pampered chef zester.  This makes me very happy.

1/2 cup lemon juice (3 medium lemons)  - I appreciate the amount of lemons being given. I suspect that I will need 4 minimum, I am probably not doing the "squeeze lemons" thing quite right.

1 and 1/2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen (do not thaw)

1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour

Check the pan cabinet.  I own a collection of stack able wedding cake pans that I bought for $1.50 at a yard sale.  I have never used them.   None of them are the same size.   I have two wilson cake pans from a cake decorating class my daughter and I took for fun 7 years ago.  I know it was 7 years ago, because facebook just showed me the reminder photo this week.  I didn't need facebook to remind me that we really, really sucked at cake decorating.  And that these pans probably have not been used in the 7 years since we took this class, because I really didn't like them.  And yes, I bought a set of stack able wedding cake pans AFTER learning I suck at cake decorating.  They were $1.50.

It may be time to re-evaluate my idea that I am not a hoarder, and that I'm really good about getting rid of things we do not use.  Another day.  Today I am thankful for the pans, and that my cheesecake pan is roughly the same size.


I wonder if pie pans would work in a pinch? Do normal people have 3 cake pans? 


Step 2 - Mix the ingredients

Zest the lemons.  I like zesting lemons.  I don't like squeezing the juice from lemons.  Especially when I don't think this through, and attempt to squeeze the juice right on top of the zest.  Its harder to find the seeds in the zest.

So I squeeze the rest of the lemons into a second bowl, separate from the zest.  Find cheesecloth, find the scissors that belong in the kitchen drawer, but are not in the kitchen drawer.  Attempt to strain lemon juice, with seeds, into the zest.  The cheesecloth slips, seeds go in the zest.  I kid you not, I'm that bad at this.  I think I got all the seeds out, but there's  possibility my version of this cake will include at least one lemon seed.

I do manage to mix all the rest of the ingredients without any real incident.  Although I should have softened the butter a bit more.

Toss the frozen blueberries in flour. Gently fold into the batter, using a spatula.  Huh.  She's right, my batter isn't blue.  (Don't worry, I'll screw that up later)

Step 3 - Prep the pans, Pour the Batter, Bake.

The instructions say to lightly grease and flour the pans with nonstick baking spray.  Huh?  Grease and flour OR baking spray, I understand..  is there a nonstick spray that comes with the flour in it?  Or do I grease the pans with the nonstick spray, then flour them?  That's the choice I went with.  It is easier, faster, and less messy then greasing them with crisco then flouring them.

Pouring the batter evenly into 3 pans was not fun for me.  It is really thick.  I find it highly unlikely I poured evenly.  And when shaking the pans to cover the bottoms with the batter didn't work, I used the spatula, and turned the batter blue.  (Told you I screwed that up later)




I put the pans in the oven, and then realize I should have taken a photo of the blue batter in the pans.  Take one back out to take a photo.

Spend the 21 Minute baking time typing this post.  How can it take that long to type this?  I haven't even added any photos  yet.

When the oven timer goes off, look for toothpicks. When did I buy these?  Never-mind, just be happy I have them.  They come out clean.  Cake is done.



Pull pans from the oven - this does NOT look right.  Tiny,super thin, dense layers. Read over instructions.  I obviously over mixed.  Apparently it does not take much to over mix.  I should have read this recipe with a little more care before beginning.  Especially the part at the end where she says this cake could be made in a 9x13 pan.  (Of course she's never made it that way - she always makes it in layers. But theoretically, people like me could learn to mix it a LOT less and pour it willy nilly in a 9x13 pan.  If we ever master the lemon juice straining through cheesecloth)

The Icing

8 ounces (224g) full-fat brick style cream cheese, softened to room temperature.  This is when I find that our daughter does not like the super cheap cherry cream cheese I bought for on her bagels, she she used some of the plain cream cheese I bought for the icing.  Eh.  There's close to 8 ounces.  We'll make it work.

1/2 cup (115g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature. Pull another stick of butter from the fridge.  This one also is salted.  And also not really room temperature.

3 and 1/2 cups (420g) confectioners’ sugar

1 – 2 Tablespoons (15-30ml) heavy cream.   1-2 T of heavy cream.  What would you do with the rest of the carton?  Heavy cream is expensive!  We have milk straight from the dairy, it's about 5% fat - and it will have to do. 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract


pinch salt

 Honestly, after seeing how the cake turned out, I wasn't going to stress over the icing.  Had the layers been all nice and fluffy, I may have pulled out the cake decorating supplies and piped the icing and made this pretty..  but today, a spatula was good enough.




The Verdict:
It has a good taste. The icing is a bit much, but that might be because my layers are so thin.  I've made crepes (poorly) that were almost this thick...

 If I make it again, I will not use the kitchenaid at all - and hopefully that will solve the texture issue.  Honestly, I'd be tempted to make this with a boxed cake mix.  And I'd definitely use a 9x13 pan.  


Footnotes:
1. I know it's terribly hard not to confuse us, especially after seeing this cake, but I am NOT the family member who is featured in wedding and cake magazines, and competes  on  (and WINS!) baking shows on tv.  That's my husband's cousins wife.  We don't share the same last name, but we're both married to descendents of the same set of grandparents..  so I don't know why I didn't inherit her cake decorating skills.  Life's just not fair.  :-)

2. My baking process does in no way reflect on the quality of the recipe.  It does however, accurately reflect my attention span and attention to detail.  Unfortunately.

3.  I'm really not completely incompetent in the kitchen.  I cook pretty well. I made things like pasta and pierogies from scratch. I even bake regularly. Really.  But I'm better with things that do not require precise measurements and exact detailed instructions.  See note 2 on my attention span.

4. Yes, I do know how footnotes are supposed to work.  No, I don't particularly care that I used them improperly here.  See Attention To Details under note 2.


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