{"id":139,"date":"2012-07-31T03:52:39","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T03:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/?p=139"},"modified":"2012-08-02T01:54:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T01:54:23","slug":"the-family-meal-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"The Family Meal Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We get together with my family quite a bit. \u00c2\u00a0In fact, a holiday or birthday without my niece and nephew would be a depressing excuse for a holiday, and I may not recover from the\u00c2\u00a0trauma. \u00c2\u00a0The problem is, there are three of us who are gluten free, one vegetarian, and one vegan. \u00c2\u00a0Oh and two of us that actually LIKE to cook, but only one of us who pays attention to cross contamination carefully. \u00c2\u00a0(Spoiler alert: It’s me)<\/p>\n

I love a new cooking challenge. \u00c2\u00a0That was the first thing I was excited about when I went gluten free. \u00c2\u00a0I was actually excited about the new parameters, I guess I was bored with regular old flour.<\/p>\n

This weekend was my son’s first birthday, and I took a social stand on the ‘having a big party for a one year old who thinks he’s a dog’ thing. \u00c2\u00a0We went to the lake to celebrate with my family. \u00c2\u00a0I promise, he didn’t miss anything. There were presents, cake, family, and of course, the dog.<\/p>\n

I was trying to figure out what to cook. I settled on\u00c2\u00a0gazpacho, but discovered my nephew was hoping for street tacos, so of course I caved and made them, I can’t tell that kid no, but don’t tell him. My version of a street taco is: meat (Usually pork, and I’ll show you how I make it) \u00c2\u00a0put into a lightly fried (to soften it up) corn tortilla, then topped with diced red onions, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. \u00c2\u00a0Deeelish.<\/p>\n

Here is what I do to the meat:<\/p>\n

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I get a beautiful pork butt ( I. Smoke. Pork. BUTTS and I cannot lie) from my butcher,<\/p>\n

Then I get out my dutch oven or any pot big enough that heats evenly, and I add<\/p>\n

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A couple onions, a few cloves of garlic and a jalapeno, just a rough chop on them the pork will sit on top.<\/p>\n

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Then you take the pork butt and cram it into the pot. \u00c2\u00a0I use a 10 lb with a bone in, and I don’t remove the fat, I just cant get it in fat side up. \u00c2\u00a0It\u00c2\u00a0cooks\u00c2\u00a0long enough, you don’t really need to worry about what side the fat is on. \u00c2\u00a0I season it with garlic powder, a very liberal amount of salt, and cayenne pepper. \u00c2\u00a0Also brown sugar, Don’t forget this part like I did last time. \u00c2\u00a0Its not as good. \u00c2\u00a0Its good, but not “slap yo mamma” good. Anyway, once everyone is in, you pour a\u00c2\u00a0Pepsi over the top.<\/p>\n

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This eats away at any connective tissue. \u00c2\u00a0Don’t forget this step either. \u00c2\u00a0I prefer the throwback, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. -A side note to any Chiarian out there, if you have a headache and you can catch it early enough, try drinking a\u00c2\u00a0Pepsi. \u00c2\u00a0It actually helps, I don’t know why, but it does. \u00c2\u00a0I remember when my dad would have headaches after a spinal tap, his Dr would tell him to drink a\u00c2\u00a0Pepsi. \u00c2\u00a0Not a coke, but a Pepsi.<\/p>\n

Back to the meat; stick it in a 300 degree oven for roughly 6-8 hours and when its done it will look something like this:<\/p>\n

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Pull it out and shred the meat. \u00c2\u00a0Take the juice (aka fat) it was cooking in, and strain out the chunks of fat, onion, etc… and put the shredded meat back into the pool<\/p>\n

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Let this simmer on the stove until you are ready to eat it. \u00c2\u00a0Now from here, you can use it for taco meat, put it on nachos, put it on a sandwich with some BBQ sauce, or just eat it plain. \u00c2\u00a0It also freezes well. \u00c2\u00a0When I make this, I will freeze half of it and have a whole week’s worth of dinners about three months later without all the effort.<\/p>\n

If you make this, let me know how it turns out for you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We get together with my family quite a bit. \u00c2\u00a0In fact, a holiday or birthday without my niece and nephew would be a depressing excuse for a holiday, and I may not recover from the\u00c2\u00a0trauma. \u00c2\u00a0The problem is, there are … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/IMG_41051.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetravelingzipperhead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}