Taco Tuesday!

It is Tuesday and that means tacos! I tried a new taco recipe tonight - the link to the recipe is below. It will take to you Craftsy website. It may ask you to subscribe and join Craftsy, but you totally don't have to go get the recipe. The recipe is free on their blog.

I get emails from and follow a website called Craftsy on both Facebook and Twitter. I'm not even sure how I discovered Craftsy, but I'm sure it was through knitting. They have a plethora of knitting patterns (both free and for sale) as well as yarn. They also cover other crafting areas like quilting and sewing, crochet, jewelry making, art and photos, home and garden type things, and cakes and cooking.

So the other day I saw Craftsy had tweeted about their latest cooking blog - slow cooker carnitas. Now, we love carnitas as well as other kinds of Mexican food. When we first moved to our little island, there wasn't a single Mexican restaurant on the island. So thanks to the internet I was able to find a carnitas recipe that is really good but it takes a long time to make on the stove. That means that someone has to be home to keep an eye on it to make sure we don't burn the house down. So when Craftsy said they had a slow-cooker recipe of course I had to take a look.

By the way, if you don't have a slow-cooker, get one. They are a fantastic way to prepare food. On Easter I used my slow-cooker to heat up the ham so my oven was free to make scalloped potatoes. My sister used her slow-cooker to make macaroni and cheese. I remember one year my brother used my mom's to make hot spiced apple cider. I use my slow-cooker for so many recipes. And they are great because you can fix it and forget it until it's time to eat.

After looking at the Carnitas recipe, I decided to give it a try. I am very lucky to have an excellent butcher shop near us. All of their meat is local and they make the best bacon I've ever had there...mmmm bacon. When I saw I needed a bone-in pork shoulder, I immediately went there to get it. The butcher shop also shares space with a farm market, so I was able to get a lot of the other things I needed for the recipe there. I did my part to support local businesses. :-)

Making this recipe was so easy. I mixed up my spices and rubbed them on the meat. I put it in the crock pot, drizzled it with the olive oil, sprinkled it with onions, garlic, and jalapenos, then squeezed the lime and orange juice over it, tossing the fruit in with the meat. I popped the cover on and turned it on low for the recommended 8 hours. It turned out perfect! The meat was tender and didn't dry out. After shredding it we threw it in the cast iron skillet and crisped it up as recommended in the recipe. It was delicious!

I served it with tortillas, lettuce, shredded cheese, rice, and salsa. If I had been thinking I would have grabbed an avocado or two and made some guacamole to go with it. According to C and J, this recipe is a keeper. I think it's a keeper because it is so easy to make. I think my prep time was all of 15 minutes and most of that was chopping up the onion, garlic, and jalapeno. And the post-cook time for crisping up the pork was maybe 5 minutes (a hot pan really helps with that). All in all, it was a very tasty meal. So go try it!