Monday...'Nuff Said

This morning while I was taking my beautiful wife to the train, the outdoor temp indicator in the car started at 1 degree...but soon fell to -1. Yeah, I guess it's COLD. And, hey, 3-5 inches of snow is expected later today. WHY did we leave Hawaii???

Tonight for dinner: Kalua and Cabbage. That's a "leftovers" dinner. The original was Oven Roasted Kalua Pork...mmmmm. Took me a while to get the recipe right.

3-3.5 lb pork shoulder or 'Boston Butt'
Kosher or Hawaiian salt
Liquid smoke...preferably mesquite "flavor"
Freshly ground pepper
Shoyu
'Black' Shoyu (has lots of molasses in it)
Granulated garlic (also known as garlic powder)
Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Unroll 4-5 pieces of the aluminum foil. Make sure it's large enough to wrap the roast completely and tightly. Stack the foil sheets.

Place the roast in the middle of the top sheet of foil.

Sprinkle salt over and under roast. Use 3-6 tablespoons of salt. Yes, that much IS necessary.

Sprinkle 4-6 teaspoons of liquid smoke. I generally 'eyeball' this.

Sprinkle shoyu and dark shoyu over roast. Maybe one tablespoon each

Sprinkle a couple of teaspoons of granulated garlic. Grind fresh pepper over roast.

Fold up foil around the roast and crimp first sheet to seal tightly. Rotate roast 90 degrees on second sheet and fold up foil and crimp to seal. Repeat with all sheets of foil.

Place foil-wrapped roast in roasting pan. Fill pan with water a couple of inches up the side of the foil-wrapped roast. Place in oven. Roast for 5 hours. Replenish water as necessary. Turn oven off and let roast sit in oven for another hour, for 6 hours total.

Remove from oven and let cool. Discard any water left in roasting pan.

I usually unwrap the roast as it sits in the roasting pan. There will be a LOT of liquid in the foil. SAVE THIS LIQUID!!! I usually pour off the liquid into a large measuring cup (4 cups).

SHRED the roast with two forks. Put the shredded meat into a storage container with a lid.

Degrease the liquid. There WILL be a lot of grease on the top of the liquid. You DON'T want the grease.

Pour the de-greased liquid over the shredded meat in the storage container. You can eat it now... jor refrigerate it and reheat later.

We had ours with some poi we got from Hawaii...a local restaurant chain named Zippys has a GREAT online shopping page on their website. I get the poi from them and also frozen fresh saimin. More on that later.

So...tonight, leftover kalua with cabbage and steamed rice. Now if I only had made some of my kimchee to go with...

NASCAR is back! Daytona 500 next week. HD on Fox...whoopeee!! SPEED-TV is SUPPOSED to be broadcasting in HD, but not on my cable system. Must call Comcast (ugh!) and find out why.

Am I the ONLY person who could care less if Roger Clemens actually used performance-enhancing drugs? I really can't get excited about yet ANOTHER privileged, rich professional athlete who may or may not have used some banned/controlled substance to 'enhance' his performance. Yeah, gotta tell the kids NOT to do it, as it could screw up your body/life, etc. But really...I just DON'T CARE anymore.

OK, gotta do some grocery shopping before the NEXT snowstorm hits this afternoon. Hope the snowblower starts up tomorrow morning.

A hui hou...GO HAWAII WARRIORS!