• I got pregnant
• Had a baby boy via c-section
• Found out a month later that I had a benign brain tumor (my second!)
• Weaned my 6-week-old in a week
• Underwent brain surgery that lasted 14 hours
• Woke up from surgery and couldn’t move my left arm
• Spent two weeks in a rehabilitation hospital
• Had another operation in early November to figure out why my arm still doesn’t work
• Have double vision

My body is scarred and weary. My spirit is drained. I am physically and mentally worn out. But I’m still here, plugging away. I’m still here because, as a mom, what choice do I have? My kids’ lives go on; there is still laundry to do, dinners to be made, stories to be read, potting training, diapers, bottles… the list is endless.

When I got home from rehab, I had a new baby that I needed to bond with and a 3-year-old that I needed to reassure after so much time away. I also was desperate to ease the burden my amazing husband had been carrying while I was sick. This has been my focus for the past (almost) five months and this will be the focus of my blog for a while.

But don’t worry – a woman’s still gotta eat! I’ll be posting recipes and sharing cooking tips but I might also be posting advice for putting on a bra, picking up a baby and doing your hair one-handed. Exciting, I know. But this is my life now, as shitty as it is. Oh, I might be bitching as well. After all, my personality hasn’t changed!

After receiving a slow cooker for my birthday (thanks, Dad!), I’ve experimented twice now with making pulled pork. Both ventures were highly successful, according to my husband (who probably would have eaten it even if it had sucked) and everyone else who scarfed it down, including myself. Considering the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, I’m pretty impressed with myself. I like to think of preparing this meal as “beer-drinkin” cooking because all you do is sit around waiting for it to do its thing. It’s a multi-step, all-day process, but thanks to the slow cooker, you aren’t tied to the kitchen all day. The first time I made it, I went to the movies.

Step 1 -Rub Yer Butt

I bought a 10-pound, bone-in pork butt. I thought that was a lot of meat but it ended up only feeding 6 adults for dinner and 4 for leftovers the next day. My husband thought we’d be swimming in pulled pork for days. Much to his dismay, it was gone in less than 24 hours.

I mixed together a rub of:
2 tablespoons paprika (smoked if you can find it but it doesn’t really matter)
1 – 2 tablespoons garlic salt
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 – 2 tablespoons brown sugar
(just eyeball the amounts, this is a spice rub not a spice cake)

Wrap yer butt in plastic and stick it in the fridge overnight. At the same time, soak some wood chips in water so they’re ready for smokin’ the next day.

Step 2 – Smoke the Shit Outta Yer Butt

Because I get up at the ass-crack of dawn now that I own a toddler, I have a lot of time on my hands. What else is there to do but smoke a butt? I woke up at 7:30 (as frigging usual, thanks, kid), took the meat out to bring it up to room temp and set up the grill. This is all about old-school, hardcore charcoal grilling, people. None of that pussy gas grill shit for me.

Once the coals were ready, I set them up on one side of the kettle. On the other, I laid a piece of tin foil. Over the tin foil, I placed my butt and then I threw a handful of water-logged wood chips over the hot coals. I put the lid on the grill, with the vents open and over the meat to draw up the smoke (thanks for the tip, Dad!). Every so often, I dumped more wood chips on the coals when I saw the smoke start to wane. I left it there for two hours. When it came out, it looked like this:

Step 3 – Kiss Yer Butt Goodbye

Here comes the hard part: I dumped it in the slow cooker, added a juice box-ful of apple juice (give me a break, I’m a mom!) and set for 8 hours or so. Then I left the house and went to a movie. Buh-bye, butt!

Step 4 – Pull yer Butt (Or Not)

About 10 minutes before you’re ready to eat, take yer butt out of the slow cooker. By this point, the thing should be falling off the bone.

Season with salt, to taste and serve with sauce. My fave is a combination of Carolina-style (vinegar-based) with just a dash of Stubb’s original. I served it with coleslaw (I dressed shredded cabbage with mayo, vinegar, salt and pepper) and baked beans. Now that’s some nice butt!

Pyrat XO Reserve dark rum
Club soda
Lime wedge

It’s essentially dark rum on the rocks with a splash of soda and lime wedge. Perfect for sipping on summer evenings.

Happy Drinking!

Currently taking suggestions for names…

I was rushed. I tried to do too much in too little time. The thing is, I knew there was no way I was going to wind up with tender pulled pork in 3 1/2 hours but… I was cocky. I thought I had a plan. I thought I could go against the laws of physics, the very laws of nature.

I had a tight schedule, one that got even more crunched due to events beyond my control. Yet I still thought I could pull it off. I had time, I told myself, to make lemon curd, make tart dough, let that rest, go shopping, marinate the pork, make the mac and cheese, blind-bake the tart dough, let that cool, get the pork in the oven and finish the tart. Sure, I could totally do all of that in 5 hours – with one oven. What the hell was I thinking?

I should’ve seen the signs. Pulled pork was, after all, not my first choice. If I had made spaghetti and meatballs like I had originally planned, I guarantee I wouldn’t have spent the night apologizing to my dinner guests while a hunk of pork jerky sat untouched on the cutting board. I couldn’t even bring myself to serve it. It tasted fine, once you gnawed through it, but I certainly didn’t have the jaw strength to eat more than a few pieces and I certainly couldn’t, in good conscience, send my guests home with TMJ issues.

It’s rare that I don’t deliver. So when I feel a meal is sub-par (or worse, inedible), it’s difficult to recover from. However, it happens to the best of us. Some days, no matter how hard you try, you’re just not on your game.

Fine, I said, once “dinner” was served. Folks seemed happy and OK with the pathetic offering of edible pieces of pork I served as an amuse bouche and a main course of mac and cheese. Salad and mac and cheese isn’t an awful dinner… it’s just not the one I had planned.  But at least there’s lemon tart, I consoled myself, halfway through the meal. Crap! I forgot to take it out of the fridge.

As I stood there trying to serve the tart that was so stuck to the pan I considered asking my husband to fetch me a hammer and chisel, I realized there was no way in hell I was going to salvage this meal. It was an unmitigated disaster. But as we all stood over the tart pan, forks in hand, trying desperately to hack bites off, I gave in to the absurdity of it all. I had tried… and isn’t that what matters? That, the company, the conversation and the opportunity to spend time with friends.

Pork jerky, anyone?

I think the best thing both of us realized this week was that we need to eat dinner earlier than we have been. Until now, although I was genuinely hungry around the time I fed the kid, it was just easier to make dinner for us after she went to bed, which meant we didn’t really end up eating our meal until 8:30/9:00 in the evening. By that time, I had polished off most of her leftovers in addition to snacking while I’m cooking. I still ate my entire dinner, mind you. How many “dinners” does that make in one night? I lost count.

This week, we’re going to experiment with eating early, with the kid. I’ll cook one meal, for all of us (Hopefully! You know how feeding a toddler can be). Then we can put her to bed and I can spend the rest of my evening parked on the couch watching bad TV instead of worrying about getting my husband and myself fed.

Hopefully, the kid won’t starve to death and/or we won’t end up eating scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese goldfish for dinner all week.

A few things I’ve learned over the past 24 hours:

1. Eating close to nothing (read: proper amounts) makes you pee a LOT.
2. Starving myself (read: not gorging myself) makes me very cranky.
3. Carrots and hummus do not a dinner make — but it did fill me up, now that I think about it. (OK, I also had a quesadilla. One cannot live on veggies alone!)
4. Fat doesn’t “melt away” overnight. (Grr!)
5. If I don’t make dinner, I’m bored out of my mind by 8.
6. Hunger pangs eventually subside.
7. Going to bed without feeling like I’ve got a bowling bowl in my belly is actually quite pleasant.

So far, so good. I haven’t eaten my face yet. Or my child. Or killed my husband. It’s only been a day though.

So this week, I’m not planning meals and I’m going to do as little cooking as possible. I suppose you could call this my version of a raw foods diet. I feel like I could use a little detox at the moment and the thought of eating clean, crisp, simple flavors really appeals to me.

I told my husband of my plans to not have official dinners and he looked at me like I had told him I was leaving him. When I followed it up by telling him that we were not going to eat meat all week, he almost strangled me. But, he’s feeling just as tubby as I am so eventually he relented. (Note: My husband is one of those annoying people who are genetically thin and wired with a high metabolism. When he feels “tubby”, he’s referring to the 1/4 inch of fat he can pinch. If I wasn’t married to him, I’d hate him.)

I went to Whole Foods and I’m now stocked up on who knows what. I hate going “off script” there. When I don’t follow a strict list in that place I end up at the check-out line wondering what the hell I bought and what the hell was so expensive.

So we’re basically going to raid the fridge all week long. I stocked up on veggies and other stuff (but no meat!) like hummus and whole grains, and I’m giving myself the week off from cooking real meals. [What have I done?!]

I honestly don’t exactly know what’s in my fridge at the moment. And tomorrow I’ll probably be beating myself up over the fact that there are no plans for mac and cheese or burgers or pizza. But I’m just going to make do with what I have… and maybe I’ll even get rid of stuff I’ve had in the pantry. It’s like… spring cleaning! Get rid of some of this excess tonnage, get rid of stuff in the pantry and see where it goes.

I could see this going a few ways, most of which entail me trying not to eat the sofa cushions because I’m starving to death.

The panic is starting to settle in…

• Did I buy enough food?
• Will we just end up scarfing everything down in one night because we’re so hungry?
• Will we run out mid-week and (gasp!) have to go to the store before the weekend?
• Will we end up ordering in every night?
• Will I go crazy and try to eat my child?

These are questions that will soon have answers, be them good or bad. I know that tonight at around 6 or 7 in the evening, I’m going to be standing in front of the wide-open fridge saying “What the fuck? Where’s the food?!”

The reality of it all is starting to settle in. I’m not sure I can eat raw veggies all week. I might lose it. Who can live like this?! Cheeseburgers and fries were invented for a reason! God, I’m so hungry… already. Someone order me a pizza, stat!

Drizzle of olive oil
1/4 pound pancetta, diced
1 bag Brussels Sprouts, trimmed and sliced
2 cloves garlic
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 box orecchiette
Lemon zest

Get a pot of water going for the pasta. Meanwhile, brown the pancetta with a drizzle of olive oil and add Brussels sprouts. Give everything a toss, so the sprouts break up a bit and get coated with the pancetta grease (yum!).

Add the chicken stock and let everything simmer away. Let the liquid reduce a bit and wilt the sprouts.

When the pasta is ready, dump it directly into the skillet with the pancetta and sprouts. Give everything another toss to coat. Remove from heat, dump in a handful of Parm.

Serve topped with lemon zest, to taste.

Serves 2

I made this as a last-minute addition to the menu for a dinner party. I wanted a first course that was low-maintenance but not too heavy. Of course, I can spin this as a conscious effort to create a low-carb, vegetarian dinner or healthy version of eggplant parm but anyone that knows me knows that’s complete crap.

My thought process was: eggplant, cheese, tomato sauce and basil = yum. I wanted to re-create a timballo di melanzane without having to fuss over creating individual portions. So, I slummed it and threw it all in a lasagna pan.

2 eggplants, sliced lengthwise (skinned or partially skinned or skin-on, your preference)
Marinara sauce (I make mine using chopped garlic, olive oil, whole tomatoes and lots of basil or just use store-bought)
1/2 to 3/4 ball scamorza cheese*, grated
A couple handfuls of Pecorino Romano and Parm

* Scamorza is the cheese that hangs from strings in authentic Italian food stores. It melts beautifully and has more flavor than fresh mozzarella and less water content. You can also use smoked scamorza for this recipe if you want.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Brush both sides of eggplant slices with olive oil and season with just a little salt. Roast until tender and brown-ish on both sides.

Ladle some marinara into the bottom of a casserole dish, to prevent sticking. Lay down a layer of eggplant slices, as you would lasagna noodles. Top with scamorza and some Pecorino, and then with some sauce. Build another layer of eggplant and cheese, then more sauce. Top with Pecorino.

Bake in a 375°F – 400°F oven, until bubbling. Let stand a few minutes before serving.

Serve as a first course or with bread and salad as a main meal.