Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee!

Have you ever attempted to cube pork with a [really] dull meat cleaver? I have just done this, and I have advice for anyone who considers this course of action in the future. First of all, it's good to have some way of keeping your imagination occupied. Your mind can only wander so far into unsavory territory before trauma sets in. I'd been peeling and cleaving vegetables in the well-lit comfort of our living room, but for this particular activity, I chose to relocate to the darkened kitchen, and I gotta say that it did me good. Also, be aware that the probability of your face getting splattered with raw pork water increases dramatically.

I mean, I hate raw meat. I hate dealing with it in any capacity, including defrosting, cleaning, and cutting. Anything that takes place before the butchered corpse hits a hot surface and thereby becomes food is wholly unappealing to me. Therefore, the fewer visible muscle striations (+10 life points for the broken light), the better, though it doesn't help that you can still feel them. By the way, not many things are as repulsive as the slippery stubbly skin that comes with some cuts of pork shoulder. Oy. Being able to see the mottled coloring much more clearly than I could would have been worse.

Anyways, this was all part of my attempt to make a filling for mini pork pot empanada-ish thingummies. Tomorrow I tackle the crust and the baking, and I'm really prepared to fail altogether. The stuff I made tonight tastes all right, but it smells really weird. And I don't know where the smell comes from. It's unappetizing and smells a little like... burning. Not the cozy smell of a campfire or burning paper... it's something a bit more... undigestable. It's a common smell, just not a delicious one.

Also, everything somehow ended up coming out a little sweet. Now, I know that I added some brown sugar at the beginning, but like... it's kind of a porky carrot-like sweetness that follows a lot of stews I've experienced. Argh!

Oh, so I'm doing this because tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I wanted to have something a little surprising to present to my adult class tomorrow night. I mean, I don't know if many of them get a chance to have dinner before class (I know I don't, short of mantou with peanut butter some nights, or a partial package of noodle snacks), so it might be a nice gesture if I can produce something tasty for this holiday. Or... the alternative is to have a good story to tell them as we all starve together for two hours (unless they already eat, in which case it'll just be me). It doesn't really resemble the look or flavor of what I originally had in mind, but I'll follow through and see how it ends up. And gee, I had no idea that pork like... expands. The little bits I thought I cut are now much larger and... formidable. I also really don't want to try the meat itself to see how it turned out. You try taking a look at a pile of pork chunks under fluorescent lighting (think autopsy room) and see how eager you are to put any derivative thereof in your mouth. It's like the salmon fiasco revisited in pork.

Oh, that salmon. It still makes me pretty ill.

It's not as though I'm going on any real recipe here. It's sort of an amalgamation of recipes I've found and wild claims by forum members as to what substitutes for what. I shall post results as soon as I have them, though the potatoes taste all right so far!

Meanwhile, I washed my hands a multitude of times during the entire project. Did you know that I am totally paranoid when it comes to raw meat and the pathogens it carries? It's one of my "tendencies." I found myself in an awkward position this evening after water had pooled all over the countertop and floor and I had a wet plate of wet meat and nowhere quite sterile enough to put it down. Actually, that was less awkward than me rinsing the plate and the pork together, unable to turn the water off without contaminating everything and then having to turn the water back on again.

Fortunately, I brought disenfecting wipes!