It was worth it.

Sorry for the lack of content yesterday...most of my time ended up being spoken for last evening.  It was all good stuff...it was just a hopping evening.

I came home to a kitchen in chaos, as my wife was busy canning the 30 pounds of peaches she had ran out and picked with the girls Monday morning.

14 quarts of peaches is a nice thing to come home too...not to mention the aroma.  Very nice.

Then I had to get busy in the kitchen.  We were planning on doing a lunch for a guy that was leaving today, and the main course was going to be pork loin on the Traegger. We have a guy that usually takes charge in these situations, but this time around he asked for my opinion on how I usually do pork.  He tends to prefer spicier, garlic centric seasonings, and I told him I usually prefer something sweeter and fruitier for my pork.  In the end, he ended up giving me some of the money that us managers kick in for the meat, and I picked up two whole loins to do my way.

Well, I didn't quite do them my usually way...but then again, I am used to playing with tenderloins, not loins.  To keep them moister, I went a little crazy.  To make them easier to work with, I cut them in half first, and then proceeded to 'unroll' each half...basically turning a round loin into a flat sheet of meat.  Next they went into a brown sugar, molasses, apple cider, apple cider vinegar brine for a few hours. 

While the pork brined, I prepared a dried fruit filling to put in each of the loins.  I put some apricots, apples, and raisins that we had dehydrated at home in sauce pot with some water, white wine, fireball, and chicken stock to rehydrate them.  After about 3 hours of soaking in the brine, I dried them off, and placed a nice amount of the fruit in each one before rerolling them and tying them up.

Folks...it was a pain in the rear.  Doing on normal size one for a nice family dinner...probably not bad.  Doing up 20 pounds of pork loin that way was a sticky, sticky endeavor.  Between the pork rolls and the peaches, the kitchen was pretty tore up. 

It was a good excuse to pick up a few pizzas for dinner, and since we were doing pizza, we decided to make it a family movie night.  The sappy guy in me picked Jumanji, to get my Robin Williams fix.

As for the pork loin...it went over pretty well at work...but then again, you can throw anything on the Traegger for 4 hours and it will taste pretty okay.