Discolor Online

Dinner last night came out alright, despite a few kitchen mishaps. I cooked about three pounds of my nine pound pork loin, and that was about right. Whole pork loins were on sale at Safeway for $1.99 a pound last week and I was just thrilled to pick up such a good-looking swath of meat. I've saved two other three-pound-ish chunks for other purposes. Last night it was Maple-and-Herb-Brined pork. Sadly, I over cooked the damn thing because my digital thermometer fried itself and was insisting that the uncooked pork had an internal temperature of 160 degrees (or that my freezer was a balmy 130, when I tried putting it in there for comparison). I had to guess at the doneness of my pork, and then it sat too long while I whipped up some potatoes and stuffed squash to go along with it. Still, it was a dead easy recipe and with the jus to go over it, it was still pretty tasty. I'd just have preferred to have cooked it less well-done.

As for my last-minute addition of Baked Butternut Squash Stuffed with Sausage and Apples, that was the best thing I served all evening! Mmmm, mmmm. I didn't bake the squash to initially prepare it, since I was boiling some tri-colored baby potatoes anyway (a collection of blue, red and white spuds), I steamed the squash until soft, and mixed up the stuffing from there. I also didn't bother to bake the whole thing until "piping hot" as called for in the recipe, since I was well aware my pork was sitting waiting to be eaten. Instead, I just stuck the stuffed squash under the broiler until the brown sugar was nicely melted and bubbly. I used some of the Apple Rosemary Chicken sausages I got from Uli's booth at the Seattle's Cookin' expo on Sunday in the stuffing and it was outstanding.

The guys helped me finish off a whole pan of Orange Rolls as well, which were just as yummy rewarmed as they were fresh out of the oven yesterday.