recipe reviews: slow cooker italian lamb stew, spinach and garlic mashed potatoes, country cabbage with smoked bacon, and sweet & spicy pork tenderloin

i'd worn myself out and was super excited about staying in this past saturday night so i could relax a bit. relax i did, in between doing laundry and washing my hair and working on meal prep and whatnot.

this batch of recipes was borne out of my desire to make chili, preferably in the crockpot. i looked through my recipes and didn't see any slow cooker chili recipes that jumped out at me, so i broadened my search to include soups or stews that i could make in the crockpot. in that search, i kept finding other recipes that i wanted to make even as i'd wanted to focus on crockpot stews/soups. when the search ended, i had more than a dozen recipes set aside. no way was i going to grocery shop for that many recipes at once, let alone try to cook that many in one weekend when i knew i had prior engagements.

slow cooker italian lamb stew: i rarely cook with lamb. it's not that i don't enjoy lamb (obviously, since i chose this recipe) - i just don't work with it that often. i decided to go to whole foods so i could ask the butcher for their input on buying stew meat vs. other lamb parts that they could cut up for me. whole foods was out of lamb, so i wound up buying a pre-wrapped package of "lamb stew" at mariano's. i had plenty of red wine on hand, and used pinot meunier because it was a screw top bottle and i knew i wouldn't drink any of it that night (because scotch). i cooked this on high for 4 hours and the lamb was fork-tender at the end of that cooking time. i bought basil pesto and kept forgetting to use it, so i guess that's a reason to make this again. i want to try it with maybe a different cut of lamb to see if there's a difference.

spinach and garlic mashed potatoes: red potatoes were on sale at jewel for 10 cents each. i was already buying spinach for the lamb stew, so this made sense to me. i make baked potatoes in the microwave, but had never considered prepping mashed potatoes in the microwave. the potatoes came out a bit gummier than i would have liked, but i can't really pinpoint why. i'd make these again, maybe adjusting the buttermilk or using regular milk.

country cabbage and smoked bacon: cabbage was on sale and i keep bacon on hand, so this was another easy decision. i used a whole red cabbage with about 5-6 slices of bacon. i eyeballed the salt and added pepper (not in the original recipe). i want to try it again with green cabbage.

sweet and spicy pork tenderloin: i had a pork tenderloin in the freezer and i liked the idea of making this in the crockpot. i used a 4-quart crockpot and the tenderloin came out fine. i used somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. i ate it with brown rice and was perfectly happy.

on: finding god in myself and loving her fiercely

the world continues to be a constant cycle of clusterfucks. i saw the news about the pittsburgh synagogue massacre as i was on my way to the northwestern game and had to make an active decision to not dwell on it because i knew i probably wouldn't be able to keep it together. i still haven't read more than a few brief pieces about it because, well, i know me and i know that i can't really process all of it yet. it still breaks my heart and my spirit when places of refuge are violated.

then i saw the news about ntozake shange's death. i'm not exaggerating when i say that "for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf" has had a tremendous impact on me. i think i first discovered "for colored girls" my freshman year at northwestern. by sophomore year, i'd auditioned for a role in a production being staged by the african-american theatre ensemble (aate) on campus. i didn't get it, but still managed to be involved by helping out with publicity. i can't remember if it was junior or senior year (or possibly both) when aate's coffeehouse/staged reading series included excerpts from "for colored girls." we didn't need scripts during rehearsals because we all had copies of the book.

what i do remember are some of the conversations i had with other black female undergrads as we red and re-read and memorized and identified with the words and themes in shange's work. it kinda knocked us out that something that was originally produced before many of us were born still resonated so deeply. that we could see ourselves so clearly. that we could, as shange's characters did, find god in ourselves and love her fiercely.

i can't tell you the number of times i've riffed on the title of "for colored girls." how many times i've gone back to read the choreopoem. how eager i was when shange released new work. hell, the only tyler perry movie i have ever watched was his adaptation of "for colored girls," because i was hoping that shange's words would transcend whatever trepidation i had about perry's artistic abilities. (narrator: this did not happen.)

suffice it to say that the news of shange's death hit me hard. i hope she knew how influential she was to oh so many of us.

thank you for singing a black girl's song, ntozake. we love you fiercely. rest well.

on: saying goodbye to the end of an era

bishop tears is dead. 1st c. will never be the same. carol and her sisters lost their father. carol has now lost her father and her husband in a nine-year span.

i tweeted a mini thread when bishop died. i don't think i can say it any better than i did there.

i still can't believe he's gone. i'm glad he's no longer suffering or in pain, but it's still kinda mind-boggling to me that i won't see or hear him live and in person again.

i don't know what's next for the church. i really don't know what's next for carol. i'm hoping to find a way to show my support for her based on what she wants/needs and not what i or anyone else might think is best. sometimes it's hard to get out of my own way and my own head.

if i haven't already thanked you for your condolences/thoughts/prayers/etc., please accept my thanks now. i appreciate it, and you, more than i can say.

recipe review: apples fried with bacon

i saw this recipe online last week and instantly decided to make it. it helped that i had a majority of the ingredients on hand already and only needed to pick up a lemon.

i used 4 fuji apples (the apples were on the small side) and 4 slices of bacon, along with a teaspoon of dried sage. i don't have an apple corer, so i quartered the apples first and then cut the core out of each piece. i had a couple of servings yesterday and tonight with dinner and there may be another serving left, so i'm not so sure about the "serves 4 to 6" part.

i'd try it again with gala apples and fresh sage if i happen to have some on hand.