Two Months and the Pulled Pork Obsession

Lucy had her two month appointment on Monday. She weighs 13lbs and is 22 and a half inches tall. I started her in her 6 month size clothes last week. Additionally, Lucy's sleep patterns continue to amaze me. She slept for nine hours Tuesday into Wednesday, from 10:30 until 7:30 when I woke her up so she could eat. Last night she slept from 10:30 until 5:30 then went back to sleep around 6, and hasn't woken back up yet. She's such a good little sleeper. I feel entirely blessed that God gave me such a great sleeper, who continues to grow without needing to eat during the night.

On an entirely different note, I've been almost obsessive with making pulled pork over the past month. My first attempt was on Holy Thursday, when I realized pulled pork was fairly easy and freezes well. Since I've been motivated to cook more and accepted that I need to do so, I realized that pork shoulder/butt is fairly inexpensive for meat; it's 2.49/lb typically, but this past week I saw it for 1.99/lb at Giant and then yesterday, 1.49/lb at Safeway so I bought it three times in a week and a half and am currently making it for the third time in a week. My first recent batch was entirely a freezer meal. The second batch was dinner for two night's this week (with guests at both dinners). The third batch will also be going into the freezer.

At this point, I've tried a few pulled pork recipes and have improvised. I found a few through Food Network including a shredded beef recipe that tasted great on the beef, but didn't shine through for the pork. This current batch, I'm going to be taking a bottled barbecue sauce for barbecued pulled pork instead of a seasoned sauce pulled pork or a sweeter mango barbecue sauce. I also found a really good slaw receipe for the pork.

My other cooking obsession over the past week has been chicken wings and drumsticks. At .99/lb (and maybe 1.49/lb yesterday), they are also inexpensive for meat. Chris reexplained to me how to use our gas grill and so I've cooked them three times as well. I did a simple salt and pepper seasoning for the first round and then put barbecue sauce on half (s&p tasted better than the barbecued ones). For the second round, I used salt and pepper on half and then the other half got a Melting Pot garlic and wine seasoning which has turned out to be quite tasty (we got the seasoning for free and I figured I might as well use it more often). The third round, I did the garlic and wine seasoning with a little extra salt and pepper.

Besides the fact I haven't really been interested in cooking vegetables recently, the meat end has been good. I've also been watching a lot of The Next Food Network Star and MasterChef, which have increased my desire to cook more and better. I still feel the need to use recipes, but I think I'm getting a little better at knowing what to use to get a particular desired flavor profile. I still have a long way to go, but I have become better at working around Lucy and Andrew's naps and playtime (though maybe it's just that I don't have to go into work during the summer). We'll see how it goes in a little over a month when I return to work for the start of the school year.