Cooking up dinner

For a rather simple dinner, I sure spent a lot of time in the kitchen today. The menu was a pork loin roast, escalloped potatoes, green beans, Ceasar salad and rolls.

First with the roast - the recipe came from Allrecipes and called for a sauce using applesauce, dijon mustard and honey, liberally slathered over the meat before baking. Two and a half hours later, that sauce had adhered nicely to the body of the meat, with the excess pooled to the sides, in a blackened burned blob. Dad thought it was chicken, but he gave it rave reviews. Tim and Brian also had good things to say about it (has Emily given them a tutorial on how not to hurt Mom's feelings by never trying anything new and being somewhat apathetic about the known?) and Martin said it tasted great. Whew, that makes this one a keeper. I'd review it myself, except I didn't eat any of it, concentrating instead on fruit, veggies and THE POTATOES!!!

Sometimes I have a hard time rating the foods I prepare...it's as though the very fact that I made a certain dish automatically makes it taste a little suspect. In my worry over how the family is going to perceive the new foods I've whipped up, I imagine every single issue they'll have with eating that particular food and, in so doing, wind up ruining the taste test for myself. Not so with the potatoes. I make Virginia's potato bake a lot, because it's easy and because my family likes it, but this was so much better. When I began eating it, I had an immediate and strong sense of the past, specifically eating my Aunt Els' escalloped potatoes. That's what these tasted like. Melt in your mouth good. I could have eaten the whole 9X5 dish full of them.

Overall, this meal appears to have been a success, based on good reviews from every one of the "boys".  Even my dad ate very bite. Later, seated back on the couch and watching the All-Star game, Dad remarked, completely out of the blue, "That was sure a good dinner." Hmmmm...regardless of any coaching that might have gone on with the Stoops men, there's no way you could prod ole' Daniel Boone into saying something he didn't heartily believe.