Sunbeam Toaster

Once again I'm prepared to rant about green washing.

Our toaster was not cooperating so I got into it to see if I could help. Four screws, some scraping away of past toastage and a single screw adjustment did the deed for resurrection.

Twenty five years of service and I'm certain it's now ready to face another lengthy leg of action. Great value. Thank-you brother David for the wonderful wedding gift. I do so love a machine that just works.

Buy wisely people. It's what we can do when we can't reduce our consumption. An espresso machine and a slow cooker were added to our appliance count recently. I hope they can come close to competing with this toaster for service intervals. Fear not the screw drive.

Student of the month

What a kid. Taking two courses in the same time slot. She knows how to set goals, I'll give her that. Whoa.

Knitted socks

Twenty thousand stitches of love. Thanks Mum. Knitting is an act of love, unquestionably.

Pulled pork

The second attempt at making pulled pork went off very well.

I browned up the cheap roast ($3.98) quite hard. I packed it into the bottom of the slow cooker smelling like heaven after it was browned. Lightly cooked a couple chopped garlic cloves, the spices and a medium onion in the same pot I used to brown the meat, gathering up all that brown goodness.

I added a half teaspoon of dry mustard to help emulsify the sauce, as I usually do in similar circumstances. The spices were comprised of a half teaspoon of quatre épices, (my own mix), a half dozen whole all spice, pepper and some dried garden hot peppers. I didn't feel it needed salt. Your mileage may vary.

Once cooked, I removed the roast, strained the liquid and reduced it all to a thin gravy consistency and then added it back to the meat, tossed it up and served. One of the wonderful things about an over cooked bit of cheap meat like this is it's easy to drain away a lot of fat and separate out the naughty bits before consumption begins in earnest. Darn tough not to sample as I went along.

Adding a bit of vinegar to the meat adds just that extra something special.

I was really happy with my concoction. Lots of pork flavour. Now I don't think I can wait until next Christmas to make up big pot of petit cochon.