The Pork Roast Remix

A Pork Roast was mentioned here recently, but unfortunately, the surrounding adventure kept getting interrupted.

Ladies and gentlemen, today, The Pork Roast Remix, live, with no interruptions.

(Clears throat.)

It was a dark and stormy night...(or an average autumnal day).

Battling hurricanes, wildebeests, and killer bees, our heroine travels to find sustenance...(I had to buy groceries).

She slogged her way through a death trap of dead animals and gleaming butcher knives...(Sometimes the meat department has great sales. I shop the sales.)

What's this? A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?...(Some kind of pork cut for a stellar buck-twenty-nine a pound.)

But what does fair lady do with a pot of gold? Ye Olde Stock Market is bad...(I'd never cooked this kind of pork before in my life.)

She worries not. She will Find A Way...(There were basic instructions on the back, which boosted my confidence that This Could Be Done.)

After lugging the pot of gold home on her burro through a bayou of rattlesnakes and Amway salesmen, she presents her treasure to her rugged husband...("Eat something light for supper, I just looked up a recipe online for this huge hunk of sales meat and it won't be

done 'til at least 9 or 10 this evening. In other interesting news, this is the kind of pork 'they' use for making pork barbecue. Now that I have a recipe, I have to go back out and get apple juice and barbecue sauce.")

Our brave heroine follows the ancient wisdom passed from woman to woman on what to do with a pot of gold, putting it in a roasting pan in a hot oven, drenched in apple juice and brown sugar, covering it with foil. She sits in a corner and braids her Rapunzel hair for the four-and-a-half to five hours it takes to roast, then tunes her harp. (I hadn't started watching the new season of "Project Runway," which is fascinating creatively and seamstress-ly, so I caught up on like six episodes.)

But what is this? Disaster! Neither dragons nor invading armies nor the plague can outwit this tragedy...(After following the direction not to open the oven the entire five hours, I opened it when it should be done - to find that not only had the roast failed to be fall-off-the-bone tender, but that it also...still bled when I poked it with a fork.)

Lament! Wail! Rend thou thy garments, woman, and roll around in the nonexistent ashes of thy pork roast. (This oven runs hot: could it be that setting it 50 degrees low like always was too low for a slow roast? It didn't help that I discovered the foil that covered it was wrapped the wrong way. And I don't have a meat thermometer.)

"Sweet husband, fetch thyself some dinner of substance. This pot of gold may be cursed. I have much watching and waiting to do...(From here on out, this Friday night turned into a regular checking of the pork roast every hour to hour and a half. At 1:30 in the morning,

I declared the end to be in sight - another hour should do it.)

After keeping watch over her errant treasure with much trepidation, yon heroine fights the temptation to succumb to despair and rest. She valiantly battles the cursed pot of gold, determined to wrest from it sustenance for her family.

At 2:30 in the morning, as darkness blanketed the heart of the Bluegrass, light shone on the heart of our heroine: 10 hours from starting time, the pork roast was done - tender, falling off the bone. As the heroine felt what little enthusiasm her exhausted heart could muster, she willed to taste the object of her fury.

It was worth it.

Especially since her hamlet grocer kept stores of Stubb's Bar-B-Q Sauce.

Our heroine and her valiant Knight husband consumed the pork roast with much merriment and joy. They ate it and ate it some more. The pork roast continued to give forth much bounty as they thawed what they had frozen and continued to sup on the riches of this mysterious pot of gold. Over a week passed before the entire pork roast had vanished into the valiant Knight's ravenous appetite.

In our next adventure, the heroine outsmarts the pot of gold, knowing it must take lo, many hours - but she chooses to best her enemy by means of a crock pot instead of her oven. Will it survive? Will Valiant Knight be fed again for many moons, or will the roast defeat the crock pot strategy?

Only time will tell.

About nine more hours of time.