Is there ever enough comfort?

The snow is coming down and temperatures are dropping. I drove home from a work meeting at 6:30. The meeting was in the cafe of a local market and I picked up some supplies for a few dinners. When it's cold I want heat. I usually like something hot in temperature but I adore something spicy. My ability to tolerate heat has grown living with a Texan. I still do not add chopped, fresh habaneros to everything but I will eat jalapeno's and add Tabasco as a condiment.

One of my favorite things make is a crock pot dish. It's sounds so 70's doesn't it. Well it can be updated and made contemporary. This dish is one of them. We love tacos and burritos. The joy of this recipe is that it produces enough for several meals unless you're feeding the masses. So leftovers can be bagged and frozen. You can also adjust the heat while staying true to the recipe.

Mexican Pork

In a crock pot put:

4-5 lb. pork shoulder (I trim a lot of excess fat)
1 large onion chopped
1 4 oz. can chopped chiles (mild or hot it's your choice)
4 cloves of garlic minced
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 T. chile powder (for the faint of heart ancho chile powder, for the adventuresome chipotle)
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper (leave it out if you are very afraid at this point)
1 15 oz. can diced fire roasted tomatoes
1 bottle of a beer you love(not some cherry, pumpkin thing)

Turn the crock pot on high and let it cook about 6 hours. It should be falling apart tender. Take out the bone and shred the meat. I have a wonderful crock pot that switches the temp to warm at the end of the timed cooking cycle.

As I wrote before you can use this for tacos or burritos with the usual suspects to add to your filling. I love this over steamed brown rice with black beans, raw chopped onion, lettuce and some cheese.

Note to the truly lazy who are willing to throw caution to the wind and eat chemicals - You can omit the garlic, cayenne, cumin and chile powder and use an envelope of taco seasoning. They have mild, spicy and chipotle flavored taco seasoning. Don't come crying to me when you blow up from salt.