Let There Be Pork!

Saturday consisted of taking a bike ride around Orleans with Vero to pick up odds and ends. You just can’t ignore a beautiful day.

We also whipped out the Grilling Cookbook (a book my parents gave to me years ago and I never opened it until today) to find something good to make for supper. After Vero warned me to be prepared for the costs of trying new recipes (read: spices cost quite a bit!), we headed to the grocery store to stock up.

We ended up making some stuffed pork chops (with onions, apple and bread crumbs) and BBQed some corn with some coriander/butter sauce.

On The Corn: It was a waste. I couldn’t taste the butter and I had fear that this would happen considering I was applying it to the corn before BBQing. Wouldn’t try it again. What I would try is mixing the butter up with the spices and applying AFTER it’s done.

On The Pork Chops: We all know I’m not one with the kitchen. So I was amazed that I could actually slide open a pork chop and stuff items inside! It was like a giant pork pocket! I was impressed. These things were massive once Vero was done stuffing them. We marinated them, stuffed them, closed it with toothpicks and grilled them.

In the end, they were tasty but for future note – don’t put too many bread crumbs inside as it made it pretty pasty.

Regaling in our amazing culinary skills, we retired to the living room to watch Cinderella Man. Cinderella Man is based on a true story about James Braddock; a boxer during the Depression who makes a comeback which basically saves his family from starvation. It was a touching tale and you can’t go wrong with some boxing matches here and there. I really enjoyed Russell Crowe in this role, but Renee Zellwegger…meh, not so much. Highly entertaining film though and it gets the Palmer/Cantin stamp of approval.

After that we popped in an episode of Jekyll (which we love!). We started with Episode #4 and then onto #5 but I pretty well conked out as soon as #5 started up. I woke up to Vero screaming “I KNEW IT!” and here I am bewildered saying “Wha, what?”. Turns out I missed a big revelation of the series. With that knowledge in mind, we stopped the episode so we could watch it another day.

Sunday had me go around the house doing some chores such as washing the car. Boy, is it ever hard to get the bugs off the front of the car! I still have to go and attack them again with a good hard arm.

I then brought Vero and Chantal out to a wedding in Metcalfe and on the way I discovered the greatest back roads to traverse across the city. Never again will I travel the main streets if I can avoid them! I ended up using the same back roads to get to Maren and Allan-Paul’s place where I was kindly invited over to a family dinner along with guitar playing and some boccie ball. While Allan-Paul and I didn’t win at boccie ball, the dinner was marvelous. Maren doesn’t shy away from making extravagant meals – sausage, ribs, mac & cheese, coleslaw…was there salad? Probably. Corn on the cob, home made ice cream, cookies…it was indulgent! One day I shall invite the Danes over to dinner in Orleans but I must admit that I feel inadequate in my culinary skills department to match the sheer amazingness of these meals!

I jammed a bit with Mike and Johnny afterwards which was a good time. I then convinced Maren(or was it Maren convincing me?) to watch the Michael Jackson video ‘Moonwalker’ which documented his music videos and tours over the years. Maren is the biggest Michael Jackson fan there ever was and I must admit that you have to give him some credit for being a dominant force before the 90s hit and he just became weird in the public eye. 50 million albums sold is not an easy feat my friends.

On Monday, I started painting the garage door again (thanks to Mike for putting a few coats of paint on the door while I was away) and I think it only needs one more coat at this point. Mike also helped out with taping the front door and I primed it. Instead of letting my day waste away into a heap of painting, I decided to take the rest of the afternoon and relax. Mike and I ate an amazing meal that Maren prepared for us and then I spent the afternoon scanning a bunch of photos from my parents photo albums. Vero then came over that evening for a feed of pickerel and we watched the rest of the Jekyll mini-series.

The series is phenomenal and from what I can tell, it’s going to be continued. Very cool storyline and I have found the television format brings a lot more to film than actual 2 hour films do. You have to cram a lot of information into a two hour period and with that, you must sacrifice a lot…including character development. With a mini-series, you essentially get a six hour movie which is fantastiche!

iplaying: Gravedancer – Velvet Revolver (Libertad)