Primarily, my husband and I are vegetarian. Meaning, I plan our weekly menu and grocery purchases completely avoiding meat. However, we’ve been making the transition to adding small portions of meat to our weekly routine by choosing to buy high-quality, grass-fed and free-range options instead of the over processed cheap stuff. This not only satisfies the anti-industry issues we have with commercially processed meats, but also forces me to reinvent my menu planning to get the most bang-for-our-buck out of these pricier meats. For us, it’s totally worth the extra dough. Even when buying our other pantry staples, if the organic option is within a 10 cent difference, we’ll opt for the organic brand. You’d be surprised at just how many organic options are the same cost, and sometimes less than, the private-label grocery brand.

With that being said, realize that I don’t get “in and out” of a grocery all that quickly. We go to the store once per week, and only buy our groceries for that week. I’ll make my list ahead of time, and if I’ve got a few minutes of down-time at work, I’ll type it up and organize it by department. For just the husband and I, I typically plan three “dinners” and factor in a day for leftovers, and assume we’ll eat out/grill out on Fridays. Lunches are pretty simple because he basically just takes a sack full of raw vegetables and snacks, and I’ll eat fruit, yogurt, and some kind of grain. What I’m trying to get at is while I do prep and plan, I still take my time when at the store, to make the trip worth it so I don’t end up having to go back during the week. This also means taking my time in considering our choices, and feeling good about the ones I eventually purchase.

After a quick text to husband to see if he’d be ready for a whole week of meat-infused dinners, I went to Whole Foods to purchase “I feel better about this” meat. They were advertising a salmon sale that really caught my attention (Wild-caught Sockeye for $8.99/lb, normally selling for $24/lb) and my intention was to pick up 2-4 filets to keep in the freezer for future dinners. However, once I got to the butcher counter, I saw all kinds of delicious looking cuts of beef and pork. I had done a little bit of research before I went to Whole Foods, to learn more about their welfare policies regarding meat, and brushed up on their “5-Step Animal Welfare Rating” scale. I felt confident that I would be able to purchase a 4 or 5 step product, and shell out gobs of money for it, and be on my way. What surprised me was that I saw items that had no step rating at all, and so I asked the man behind the counter, “What gives?”

He explained that for sausages, once they add in the different spices and other ingredients, it’s hard to label it within a “step” because the meat has been mixed in with so many other things. Fair enough, I thought. But that made me wonder what type of meat they were using to start with? Surely they could at least say that much, right? With some sort of asterisk for the puritans? I shrugged and browsed the length of the case, saw the pork row, and looked for a cut that had a 4 or 5 rating. None did. What the… Only threes, and some twos. I did notice that the majority of the meats had little flags identifying them as “local”, and listing the name of the farm it came from. Sure, I think that’s important, too, and so I was glad to know that Whole Foods is transparent about it. But what I really wanted to accomplish in the last 20 minutes of my lunch hour, was finding a 4lb pork shoulder that I could say came from a pig that spent his entire life on the same farm.

No dice. I purchased the shoulder with a Step-3 rating, and started to make a mental google-search list of “tiny meat co-op kcmo.” I sure as hell don’t have a deep freezer to store an entire carcass, even if I wanted to consume that much meat. I really want options for buying high-quality and humanely sourced cuts of meat when I need them. (So, if anyone has any tips on where to go in KC to get this, I’d really appreciate the heads up.) But now that I had my meat, and 70% satisfied with the source, I had to plan out how I was going to get every last use out of it, and thus The Pork Threesome was born.

Foreplay

1. Marinate overnight in Mojo Criollo (Mojo core flavors are: oranges, garlic, onion and peppercorns)
2. Transfer to crockpot, add 1 bottle BBQ sauce (preferably sweet or sweet/smoky, no x-tra hot), about 14-16 oz Dr Pepper, and two roughly chopped white (or yellow) onions
3. Cook on low for 8 hours, spooning juice onto top of meat every 2 hours
4. Remove bone, and then remove meat from crockpot, keeping about 1-1/2 cups juice, and shred with two forks

Affair No. 1 – Pulled Pork Sliders

1. Serve pork on Kaiser rolls, or King’s Hawaiian Sweet rolls
2. Top with vinegar-based slaw
3. OR serve with BBQ sauce and pickles

Affair No. 2 – Pulled Pork Tacos

1. Tortillas
2. Diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, chopped jalapeños, cheese, sour cream, etc.

Affair No. 3 – Pork Stew

1. In a large stock pot, add 1 tbsp butter and saute one chopped onion
2. Add 3 peeled and diced (med.) red potatoes
3. Add 3 cups beef stock
4. Add the following canned items to pot (all are 1 can each):
   1. diced tomatoes, undrained
   2. lima beans, drained
   3. corn, drained
   4. green beans, drained
5. Add 3-4 cups shredded pork
6. Add a splash/dollop each of:
   1. Ketchup
   2. Brown sugar
   3. Apple cider vinegar (or any vinegar, excluding balsamic)
   4. Worcestershire sauce
   5. Cayenne pepper
   6. Cumin
   7. Salt & Pepper
7. Simmer for 30 minutes, until heated through and flavors combined