Crock Pot Heaven!

Oh my gosh.  My good friend Teresa told me awhile back about an easy way to make pulled pork, and I finally decided to try it yesterday.  I have to say it's the best pulled pork I've ever eaten, and this will definitely be a staple in my house from now on.  It's so delicious, and so easy that it's almost unbelievable.

Simply take a pork loin or two, cut off all the fat you can (especially the silver), and toss it in the crock pot.  Add a bottle or two of your favourite barbecue sauce, cook on low for about eight hours, then take the meat out, pull apart (I like to chop it into smaller pieces first), put in a serving or storage bowl, add as much of the sauce as you want/need, mix well, and serve.

I used Kraft's Hickory barbecue sauce, and added some Dole Pina Colada juice (a mix of pineapple and coconut juices - yum!).  I could have gotten away with one bottle of barbecue sauce, but since I have a huge crock pot, I had to have a certain level of food and liquid.  I am definitely going to be buying a smaller crock pot, though.  However, it's not a big deal - I just saved some of the sauce to freeze for use in the next batch. :)

You can sear the pork loins first if you want, but it's not necessary, and frankly I find it better not to - more of the sauce soaks into the meat as it cooks when it's not seared.  I'm thinking that next time I will cut the loins into smaller pieces before cooking, so that more sauce is absorbed into more of the meat.

At any rate, I highly recommend this method.  It truly is fabulously easy - not to mention fabulously declicious - and I suspect it will become a family favourite from the first bite.

Something New

Since I'm sick and can't do much of anything, I've been checking out apps for the new phone. I have to say, so far I'm really pleased with the phone, and I've certainly gotten more use out of it than I got out of all of my previous phones combined. But back to the apps.

I've downloaded quite a few wallpapers that I enjoy, and I've ended up trying several that I didn't like. They're easy to uninstall, so it's fun to be able to test them out. I finally started trying out some other apps, one of which is the Blogger app. I just downloaded it and figured I'd give it a test run. There were seriously mixed reviews, with many people seeming very unhappy with the app. There were enough good reviews to tempt me, so here we are, testing the waters.

I've just tried adding a picture, but it's not really showing me if it's going to work, or where it's going to insert it. It will be a mystery until I've published the entry!

I don't really have too much else to say at the moment, as my intent was mainly to test out this app. Perhaps I'll do another entry later talking about my favourite apps to date. Now I am going to see how well this posts. Have an awesome night, everyone!

EDIT:

It was not being friendly about editing once I had published the post. I can't find a way to view and edit code either. For now, I'm just testing to see if the edit works.

EDIT #2:

The first edit worked, but I'm not thrilled with the app. I don't have the option to see or edit HTML code, and I cannot choose the picture placement. I guess the application could be somewhat useful for a quick post, but I don't see why anyone would want to bother with it when they could just go to their blog on their browser, and post with full functionality. I'll be uninstalling the app right away - it's definitely not for me.

EDIT #3:

Okay, I'm laughing at myself now. I should have tried going through the browswer before shooting my mouth off! It's WAY too tiny on the phone screen to be able to edit - at least it was when I went in just now. I'll have to play around some more, but if I can't get the pages to be significantly larger, then I can see where I would need a blogger application to blog from the phone. Mind you, I probably would never bother with that - I'd just wait and do it when I got home and could use the computer. :)

And yes, I did the last two edits (and moved the picture) on my computer. I also noticed one other thing I'm not thrilled with - the formatting from the app is atrocious. It put a lot of extra spaces in between paragraphs, and even though I remove them with each edit, it doesn't take them out. I've tried again one last time here, so I'll see what happens. But that's enough for me tonight - sleep well, everyone!

Things You See When You Don't Have A Gun

I've been thinking lately about the irritating things that I see on my television set. There are truly horrible commercials that make me wonder who on earth authorizes and pays for them, hideous fashion trends, and copycat shows, to name a few things. It would take me a week to type out an entry about all of the things on television that drive me nuts, but there are a few things that truly make me grit my teeth.

There are all sorts of fashion trends that make me raise my eyebrows, but one that I truly cannot stand is the trend of the last few years of women wearing clothing that is two sizes too small. I see this on most television shows and commercials, not to mention on a daily basis in real life. Ladies, no matter how tiny you are, if the clothing is too small, it makes you look fat. Honestly, it does. I personally know a couple of women who don't have an ounce of fat on their bodies - they are pretty much skin and bones. They have a penchant for wearing clothes that are too small, and they look like they have rolls of fat hanging out all over the place. Then there are all of the larger women I see following this dubious fashion trend. Ugh. Just ugh. And girls, when you are wearing blouses with buttons, it does NOT look good when the shirts are stretched every which way, with buttons threatening to pop off at any second, and there are gaps all the way down the front of the shirt. You might as well take the shirt off and just let the girls hang loose. It really would look better than us having to watch them struggle wildly to make the great escape. Just sayin'.

What is it with all of these paranormal shows doing their investigations at night? In my experience, there are just as many - often more - paranormal experiences during the daylight hours. I'd like to see a crew do an investigation during the day. Not only would they be more likely to have something happen, they'd have the added bonus of being able to see when something was going on.

I find all of the copycat shows very annoying. A unique show comes on television, and within a year or two there are a bunch more cropping up left, right, and centre. It gets boring after awhile, so I really do wish that people would be more original and come up with some different concepts when they decide they want to be on television. There's precious little on television that's half-decent to begin with - it would be so nice to have more original, well-done shows to choose from, instead of all of the hastily thrown together copycat programs.

There are some wonderful, creative commercials on television. IKEA, Volkswagen, Geico, and Telus have given us some fabulous ads to watch. But for every great commercial, there are many absolutely horrid ones. The first that springs to my mind is Always. "Have a happy period" my ass. I rarely let commercials influence my decisions in purchasing products, but I have to say that the Always commercials piss me off so badly that I refuse to purchase anything with that brand name on it. Their commercials are so condescending and demeaning - I don't understand why anyone thought they were a good idea to begin with. Obviously there are women who buy their products, but I am definitely never going to be one of them. I've talked to several other women over the years who also refuse to buy the Always brand because of those commercials. Mind you, I did try their products many years ago, and quite frankly I found them very inferior to other products on the market. So unless they've seriously improved over the years, I don't understand why anyone buys them anyhow.

The Toronto Blue Jays have a particular commercial on television that has my brain going in circles every time it comes on. Not to mention it has the hair on the back of my neck rising and my teeth grinding. I couldn't even tell you what the commercial is about - I hear Superbad start blaring out of the television and my brain scrambles from wanting to resurrect James Brown so I can throttle him, to smashing the television to bits with a baseball bat, to hitting the mute button on the remote control, then back to wanting to resurrect James Brown and throttle him again. Since I am not into playing with necromancy, and I don't own a baseball bat, James and the television set are on pretty safe ground. My most realistic option is hitting the mute button. But I have to say, that gives me NO measure of satisfaction once that horrible song has started up.

I usually enjoy the Geico commercials, and have to give them props for authorizing some very entertaining ads. However, the cavemen commercials totally sucked, in my opinion. I absolutely hated them, and honestly found them a bit offensive. I wasn't thrilled with the commercials with the older gentleman (seemingly a boss) either - the only thing that saved those was the gecko.

Oooh, back to fashion for a moment, then I'm done for now. Another trend that I hate the look of is the low-rider pants and jeans. I've never liked the look of them, and I've always thought that waistbands should be at the waist, not anywhere below it. It's much more flattering. The worst thing about the lower waistlines is more pronounced "plumber's cracks", on both women and men. Plus, I don't need to see what panties, or gods forbid, thongs that people are wearing. If you insist on wearing these pants, then for pity's sake make sure that you wear a top that is long enough to cover them, no matter what position you're in.

I don't know about you, but I certainly feel better for getting all that off my chest! There are certainly things on television that I do enjoy, and I will probably do up a blog entry about them one of these days. As for the stuff I don't like, for now I'll just keep crossing my fingers that we start getting more original shows, that fashion starts focusing on clothing that actual fits and is flattering, and that company owners start showing some intelligence when approving of the commercials that flog their products. I know, it's unrealstic, but a girl can dream, no?