Pork and Potatoes

Along with yesterday's tomato bounty, I also picked up Brussel Sprouts and two kinds of potatoes at the farmer's market.  What I didn't anticipate was my husband coming home from the cabin with a ten pound bag of red potatoes.  And not just any potatoes, these were grown by a family friend who has a cabin two doors down from ours.

To add to the value of these potatoes, I have to tell a bit of a story.  Almost four years ago, we lost my Dad to colon cancer and while no one can replace my Dad, Gene has quickly become a good friend to my family and fishing buddy to my Brother and Nephew.  He and his wife have pitched in and helped my Mom with things she can't quite do on her own, and have just been already good neighbors.

Last year, Gene was diagnosed with lung cancer.  After many rounds of chemo, things looked good but this summer, it returned, and it has spread.  My family knows the battle with cancer well, and this damned disease is likely going to take another of our loved ones far too soon.

So these potatoes aren't just any potatoes.  These are Gene's potatoes.  And while his family may keep growing potatoes, they just won't quite be the same after he's gone.  Nothing will.  Nothing ever is.

Okay, so back to the kitchen.  

I have ten pounds of Gene's red potatoes, as well as the fingerlings and white potatoes I bought at the market.  That's a lot of potatoes and the two of us are unlikely to get through them fast enough.  So I did some Twittering and some Googling to find a solution.  Apparently, the moisture content of potatoes makes them hard to freeze at home.  (Big companies use flash freezing techniques.)  I did find a few suggestions for shredding or cutting the potatoes, blanching them, draining well, and then freezing.  

Not wanting to ruin ten pounds of potatoes, I decided to do a test run.  So I washed, shredded, blanched, shocked, and drained two potatoes.  This just about filled a quart sized freezer bag.  I'll try cooking them in a couple of days and then decide how to proceed.  

Before I tried my hand at shredding potatoes, I was busy playing with porn.  I mean pork.  Oh wait, same thing.

Brussel Sprouts are kind of the epitome of Eww Food.  Most people have had bitter and stinky sprouts and so they don't like them.  I was one of those people until a few years ago.  Then I had some sprouts that had been roasted to a caramel sweetness.  The bitterness was still there, but muted and balanced.  It's taken a while for me to finally have the courage to try cooking them myself but when I saw young little sprouts at the market yesterday, I knew it was time.  

So I decided on a vegetable, but what to serve as a main course?  It's fall, so roasting is just an easy answer.  Also an easy answer were the pork roasts on sale at the local grocery store.  Some more quick Googling found me a recipe for a Pork Roast with Apples and Onions.  Yes PLEASE!  Now I have this in my oven and the house is starting to smell amazing.  

Shortly before the roast is done, I'll cook the sprouts.  I'm also going to do the fingerling potatoes because OMG POTATOES EVERYWHERE.  (See Above.)  My sprout recipe/technique came from the friend I mentioned yesterday.  It involves bacon fat, so I'm pretty sure it will be awesome.  I'll let you know later!

Okay, I have an hour and a half to kill and have been awake since 4:30am.  I believe this is called "Nap timezzzzzzzzzzzzzz."