Cranberry Roast

Remember that copybook where I write down all my recipes? I kind of abandoned it ever since I started up with Pinterest. I have found so many recipes on that site that I can save to my boards and revisit over and over again. This is lovely since saves my hand from writing out any recipe I find before they wind up lost to the deep sea that is the Internet. The only pitfall I see is now I must bring my laptop into the kitchen and work from the website (I do not own a printer and if I did, why would I want to waste that paper?). While I am grateful I have a laptop and not a desktop which allows this to be possible, I'm completely paranoid that I will get food and water all over the laptop and ruin it. I don't mind getting splatters on the copybook. In fact, I kinda like it. I think it gives the book character. Anyway, since Ive been on Pinterest, the copybook has found a home buried in a drawer. This weekend I decided to make banana bread so I had to pull it out to get the exact recipe. I am so glad I did, because in doing so I started browsing through recipes I have forgotten about over the past few months. I found the simplest recipe for a pork roast. Growing up, my mothers crock pot was use mainly for cooking a roast. I thought the main way you could do this was to toss some carrots, onions, and celery in with the meat and let it cook. While this is a delicious method of cooking meat, there are many more options.

• 2-3 lb pork roast
• 2 cans cranberry sauce
• 1 packet onion soup mix

In a bowl, stir the onion soup mix and cranberry sauce together. Place roast in crock pot and pour mixture on top. Cook on low for approximately 8 hours.

So, my roast cooked for a little longer than 8 hours. Probably closer to 9 since I set it up before work to have ready when I got home. As soon as Sophia and I walked in, we could smell something delicious was happening. She was cracking me up! "Mommy! Something smells soooo good!" Then kept taking deep breaths in through her nose and said, "Oh man, I can't stop smelling it!" and continued to take big deep breaths. She really is too cute sometimes!

I didn't know what I should expect with the cranberry/onion mix. The flavor wound up being close to a BBQ taste, but with texture. The natural juices from the roast mixed with the sauce and gave it a very yummy flavor. I used the "whole cranberry" can, not the gel, so I don't know if the sauce would be too thin if you only used the gel. I am excited to try this with some fresh cranberry sauce. Hopefully I will remember at Thanksgiving time so I can make extra cranberry sauce specifically for this.

Its a good thing we liked this roast recipe. I made this on Tuesday and we have been eating it ever since. I think tonight we will finish the last of the pork and make sandwiches to eat in the car on the way to dance. Dance days are so hard on our diet. I am so bad at planning properly in order to avoid the drive thru. I don't know what I will do next year when Sophia's schedule gets busier with an extra night of dance and hopefully starting Girl Scouts. There has to be a way to keep the sanctity of family dinner and healthy eating while having the kids active and involved. It would really probably help if I had a two parent household...