If you follow us on Facebook you probably saw this photograph I posted yesterday.
I took this photograph at 7am. Then I got this pork shoulder into my crock pot and a celebratory carnitas dinner was underway!
So can you spot the garden goodies?
I wish I could say the onion came from our garden but it didn’t. It came from Dumas Meats (which is also where I snagged the pork shoulder). We grew onions and we’ve been enjoying them but our onions were just little guys. And I didn’t feel like chopping 10 little guys so I bought 1 big guy.
Remember this pic from back in November?
The garden goodies I used for my carnitas were frozen jalapenos and dried oregano.
We grow lots of peppers. We are big pepper people. All summer (and fall) we roast them and pickle them and eat them in salads and I make loads and loads of fresh salsa. And who the heck doesn’t like cheesy bacon wrapped jalapenos? But we also grow lot of peppers – especially jalapenos – because I love to freeze them and use them all year long.
I core and seed my jalapenos, flash freeze them on cookie sheets, and then toss them into freezer bags. I use them all the time. I use them when I make winter salsa. I use them for tuna and chicken salad. I use them when I make black beans. I use them in soups and stews and carnitas and all kinds of crock pot meals. They’re awesome.
And dried oregano is awesome too. I like it better than the fresh stuff! Growing herbs is pretty easy and drying them for later use is really easy. I just clipped the oregano at the base of the stem, strung them up with some string, and let the stalks hang and air dry. Once they were nice and dry I pulled the tiny, dried leaves off their stems and plopped them in to a small mason jar.
I add the dried oregano to my pasta sauce. I add it to the occasional soup. And I use it for all kinds of marinades and meat rubs. Like this pork shoulder for example – I mixed together some dried oregano, cumin, and olive oil and rubbed it all over the meat before sticking it in the crock pot with chopped jalapenos, chopped onions, and fresh squeezed clementine juice. Delicious!
And all this reminds me that it’s time to start seriously getting down to business with my seed catalog. The can see the sun rising right now as I sip my coffee. One more sunrise closer to spring.
