Since August of 2013 I’ve been cooking for a family of four just few miles around the corner. Every Monday morning I dodge their sprinkler system, arms and hands carefully balanced and loaded down with groceries and equipment (because I never want to make two trips from the car to the kitchen). Most mornings I refresh my memory on their correct alarm code BEFORE I’m standing in front of the beeping box freaking out that the alarm is going to engage (I have too many alarm codes floating around in the cluttered “code section” of my memory). I quickly make my way to the kitchen, unload everything and get started preparing their five meals for the week.
My weekly clients rarely get a repeated meal, not only because I’m trying to keep dinners new and exciting each week, but also because I don’t follow recipes exactly as written and I don’t record my own creations in writing. Clients I’ve cooked for repeatedly (especially my “Monday morning family”) know this about me and if they’ve really enjoyed a meal and might want it again, they send me a note immediately and ask me to write down the ingredients I used so I can attempt to duplicate the results in the future. Last night I received this text:
Of course, I had to post that exciting review on my business Facebook page (which if you aren’t following, go click the “like” button right now! Lavish to Lite Bites After posting the review, I received requests for the recipe.
My amazing “menu planning assistant” digs through cookbooks, magazines and the internet each month and sends my clients a list of entree options. After my clients have chosen their weekly menus for the month, I receive from her: the final menu for each client, copies of recipes and a shopping list. My Wednesday morning client last week and my Monday morning client this week both chose Slow Cooker Pork Tacos.
As I may have mentioned before, my cooking style follows the “A little bit of this, a little bit of that” Method. (You may now sing “Game of Love” by Michelle Branch, although in this case it didn’t start with a kiss; it started with a pork butt.) Just before I leave for the grocery store I look through all the recipes my assistant has sent me. As I’m browsing the produce section of the grocery store, I have the recipes in mind and usually end up editing the grocery list to suit my personal style of cooking. The pork taco recipe from Food Network that my assistant provided underwent editing both last week and yesterday, yielding drastically different results on both cooking days.
Yesterday I used the recipe below.
Feel free to change up the peppers you use and the seasonings. (My Monday morning family doesn’t like “spicy” so I chose the mixture of poblano peppers and Chipotle in Adobo for their tacos. The honey will also offset some of the spiciness.)
This basic outline will have you in and out of the kitchen in well under 30 minutes in the morning. Dinner will be ready when you come home to the FABULOUS aroma of pulled pork tacos.
