International Double Date!

You remember Jenn, right? Our fabulous friend (and author of this equally fabulous blog) who we visited in Canada this summer? Well, Jenn had a goal this year to try 10 new recipes this year. When she set that goal, I suggested that we try one of those new recipes "together"--meaning we'd make it on the same night and have a long-distance "double date." It took us a little while to get it together, but we finally did!

Since Jenn is both gluten-free and dairy-free, the recipe selection was up to her, but Jeff and I had no complaints when she sent us the link to this Paleo Pulled Pork. (Alright... well, living in the South now, we were a little skeptical--particularly of the pineapple included in the ingredient list--but we were still game!)

Since the recipe is a crock pot one, we started by gathering the ingredients for the sauce the night before (Wednesday).

Don't be fooled--neither one of these sous-chefs was any help at all! :-)

The next step was putting together the sauce in our Cuisinart, which actually turned out to be incredibly easy.

One of my supposed sous-chefs is still clowning around!

In just ten minutes, my jars were sealed! I'd been sending texts to Jenn throughout the process (the poor girl was knocked down with a cold and not ready to start the cooking process yet!), and she approved our product.

By this time, Rosie had grown tired of the process, but Jeff was still enjoying photo-bombing!

Before going to bed that night, Jeff helped me cut our massive pork shoulder into two parts (we actually used a bone-in cut of meat for more flavor) so it would fit in our not-so-big Crock-Pot. The next step came at 6AM the next morning (Thursday)--but I spared you the photo. At that point, I took the ceramic Crock-Pot out of the fridge, put it in the metal holder, added some salt, pepper, and garlic plus the broth, and turned it on low for the next eight hours. 

When I got home at 2:00PM that afternoon, I discovered two things: 1) our house smelled amazing, and 2) the small portion of pork that hadn't been covered by broth was impossible to shred. So, since I only had 30 minutes before leaving for a doctor's appointment, I made do by shredding everything that would, removing the bone, adding the sauce and onions, putting the "roasted" part (that hadn't softened in the broth) in whole, and letting it go for another 5 hours.

And what deliciousness awaited that night (when even the "roasted" pork was so simple to shred)! Even Jeff was impressed by the time he got home, and he was more than ready to dig in by 7:30pm. We roasted some sweet potatoes to put on the side (just sliced sweet potatoes, salt, pepper, and olive oil in the oven at about 425 degrees for 45 minutes or so), which we thought would be a perfect compliment.

At that point, in spite of reminding Jeff this was supposed to be a double date and Jenn's pork wasn't quite yet ready, there was no holding him back. Thankfully, Jenn and Dan were awfully understanding and let us dive in first!

And dive in we did! (There's no telling how fast Button will get ravenous on any given night--and this night, once she smelled the pork, she went from zero to sixty in no time at all.)

Was it pulled pork like we traditionally think of pulled pork? Not exactly. Was it still delicious? Totally! Did it make enough to feed us for the rest of that week plus portions to freeze? Definitely! And was it awesome to have our first international double date? Absolutely! :-)

To read Jenn's account of our double date, check out her post here.