OMG deliciousness (and birthday presents)

I have a crock pot, and in the winter I tend to use it at least once a week. It cooks a lot of food so I can share meals with the girls, have meals for rushed dinner days (Tuesdays I have art class and Wednesday's are choir), and there's still some left over for lunches.

The most recent thing I made was sort of a roast in clear liquid with some veggies. The trick to a successful crock pot roast is to buy a fattier cut and then sear the hell out of the thing. NOTE: Searing meat does not "seal in" the juices. It does cause the Maillard reaction, though, which makes things damn tasty. Kitchen Myths has more info, if you're curious. (If you use a leaner cut of meat, you are going to end with with very dry icky meat and why the hell did you just spend good money on meat when you're going to ruin it?)

I used pork butt (it's OK to giggle, I do every time, too). It's nicely marbled with fat, and after it hangs out in the crock pot all day, when you take that first sip of broth and bite into the meat as it falls apart on your fork, it's kind of like heaven. Buttery, delicious pork heaven. No, I have no idea what the calorie count is, and I don't want to.

After searing the pork butt in oil, I threw it into the crock pot with a large can of diced tomatoes, baby carrots, celery chunks about the same size as the carrots, parsnips, a very large handful of fresh, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, 2 bay leaves, large chunks of onion and 5 cloves of garlic (halved). Threw in some water so that most everything is covered, and then I used low heat for 8 hours (I was sleeping) and then it sat on warm all day while I was at work.

And then we ate and ate and ate that delicious pork butt. OM NOM NOM. Aunties Heather and Michelle gave it their full approval while Parker looked on with jealousy as we munched away on Saturday night. (And then I spilled cherry wine all over Michelle's table linens and felt really bad. But apparently it wasn't too bad because she still give me my birthday present, which was an awesome Darth Vader pancake spatula, which matches the awesome Star Wars pancake molds that my dad got me for Christmas. Heather got me a neti pot, which I have already used twice and it is awesome.).