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!

Happy Birthday!

Today is J's 10th birthday. I can't believe my baby, my first-born, has reached double digits. It's amazing to look at pictures of him from when he was born and look at him now and see how he's grown. He's become a wonderful young man, and I hope that continues as he grows older.

He got to stay home for his birthday. Yes, there wasn't any school today. The buses still can't fit down some of the roads. So the school board took today and planned out how they were going to get the kids to school tomorrow because YES! they will have school tomorrow. Excuse me while I do my happy dance. I will have to drive them to school (that's okay with me) and pick them up (again, I'm fine with that) because they will be in school!

I did get a chance to get out without the kids today so I could get J's birthday presents. He got the MineCraft books he's been begging for, a Halo MegaBloks figure set (no huge Harrier type jet to put together), and a new hockey gear back. He wanted a tower bag as opposed to a duffle bag style, so we got him one. His Grandma and Grandpa sent him a crystal growing set, a flip puzzle thing, a shirt, and a sweatshirt. His Nana and PopPop as well as his aunt sent him cash. He's got quite the stash of money these days. S has even more because she's hasn't spent as much as he has. S's goal is to buy herself an iPod. She'll be able to get one soon. Or possibly a tablet, like a Kindle Fire.

I made J his favourite supper tonight - tacos and then for his birthday treat he asked for donuts in place of cake. I'm not one to complain about donuts, so I agreed. I tried one place but they were out of Boston Creme donuts (how? how can that happen?) so went to the competitor's place and was able to get them without a problem. The donuts were tasty!

It was once again a beautiful day here on the island. When I was out running errands today, I didn't even bother with a coat, just my sweater and scarf. It was 0C (32F) and it felt nice! Back in Virginia, I would have been running around in a heavy coat with my hat and mitts, but here in Canada 0C feels warm these days. There was lots of melting going on which is good, and only a little water came into the garage. As long as the thawing goes slow, we shouldn't have a flood in the garage. Of course tomorrow into Friday there is suppose to be snow flurries and rain. As long as it's just flurries, that's okay. I can handle flurries.

I can tell that spring is really on the way. The house has been getting downright hot during the day with all the sunlight coming in the windows, even with the curtains. We had to crack a window in the kitchen because it was close to 75F in the house! And I saw a fly today. I haven't seen one in a long time. The ice in the harbour looks like it's starting to crack and I've noticed the section of the harbour where the current is the strongest has melted. And when I was out walking earlier today I saw some grass peeking out from the edge of the 10 foot high snow banks. We're taking baby steps towards spring but we will get there soon. Let's hope we keep going forward and don't fall back!