Adaptibility

At some point over the long holiday vacation we domestic engineers find ourselves deeply engrossed in our own spirituality. Across the wide spectrum of faith, every one of us whose job it is to hold together the fabric of reality for our spouses and off-spring reaches a place where we become consumed in prayer and reflection due to the nature of the holidays.

Our faiths may be different, but there is a universal nature to our collective prayers. They all sound something like this: “Dear Lord, please I beg of you, send them back to school. Send him back to work. For they all might suffer great bodily harm at my hands if they don’t get out of my house. Amen.”

Oh, we love them all. The fact that husbands and children everywhere make it back to classrooms and offices with their heads still attached to their necks after spending as much as two weeks doing salsa dances on our last nerve is proof that we love them.

All I’m saying is that this up coming week of return to normal life couldn’t come a minute sooner. I’ve never quite so looked forward to loading up backpacks for school or to handing a briefcase to my dear sweet husband.

I have an inkling that I am not alone in my gratitude in seeing the holidays come to a close. I can see Monday morning now: as school buses and carpools began rolling out of cul-de-sacs and life in general gets back on schedule, there will seem to be an inordinate amount of women waving from the ends of driveways all throughout the neighborhood. As soon as that last work bound car turns the corner we will all begin the “jig-of-joy”. Our prayers will have been answered.

I, for one, had my fill of family and holiday frivolity early on. Like all good tactical officers, I made my battle plan, long before the horde invaded. I studied years past and adapted. Since I spent last year in a perpetual state of sweeping up broken ornaments, I restocked with “shatter-proof” equipment. Which is just a fancy marketing way of saying “plastic.”

This would have been a brilliant strategy had not the children spent the year adapting as well and expanding their vocabulary. Turns out, they now know what “shatter-proof” means and once they became bored with their Christmas loot they decided to “test” the nature of the manufacturer’s guarantee.

This is when I discovered that while the ornaments are indeed shatter-proof, things that they are hurled into are not. Next year, new plan.

My plan to use those fleeting hours in which the children were still wrapped up in the video games that Santa brought to clean up Santa’s work shop, I mean my sewing room? That didn’t happen either. Somehow I became an indentured assistant in the semi-annual culling of the garage. The problem with husbands who are in charge at work is that when they come home they harbor the delusion that they are still in charge.

With all the monkey wrenches that my clan of gremlins launches into what is supposed to be the well oiled machine of holiday vacation, it’s a wonder that I bother making plans at all. However, occasionally their monkey wrenches yield some fairly tasty repercussions.

See, I had planned Christmas dinner. I drew up a list of all possible things that would be needed to pull of a flawless, on time, tasty holiday feast. Goodness knows there comes a time when last minute trips to the store are moot, because the store is closed on Christmas Day. Then I made the fatal mistake of letting the husband do the grocery shopping. I must have been bumped in the head.

Late on Christmas Eve he returned with all the fixings I had asked for, with one major exception. While he was out, and apparently unsupervised, he made the command decision to switch from a brown sugar and honey glazed ham to the massive “on sale” pork loin that caught his eye. He was very pleased with himself and just knew that I would be able to carve the 10 pound behemoth into several meals, beginning with an extra special pork loin roast for Christmas dinner.

My well oiled machine came to a grinding halt, some how it never occurred to him that if ham was off the menu there wasn’t much of a point to the vat of honey and 3 pounds of brown sugar he brought home with the pork loin. It was time to adapt. A quick inventory of the kitchen gave way to the concept of our new main course. Born completely out of what was on hand we managed to create the best pork roast we ever had, even if it was plan “B.”

The other half of the loin is safely ensconced in the freezer and now that I have my house back to myself, I’ll probably be making it again. Except this time it’ll be on purpose.



PLAN “B” PORK LOIN:

For the brine:
8 cups of cold water
1 cup of sugar
½ cup salt
10 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper

1 pork loin
4-5 pieces of bacon
Stone ground horseradish mustard
1 sweet onion
1/3 cup chardonnay


The night before you intend to cook the loin, mix the brine ingredients together in a large bowl. Place the loin in the brine, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
When you are ready, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking-dish with foil. Remove the loin from the brine, reserve the garlic cloves and discard the brine. Pat the loin dry with paper towels. Brush the mustard over the surface of the entire pork loin. Wrap the bacon around the pork loin and place “seam-side” down in the baking-dish.
Peel and slice the onion into thin rings. Place the reserved garlic in the dish around the pork loin and scatter the onions over the loin. Sprinkle the chardonnay over the loin.
Put the roast in the oven and cook until the thickest part of the loin registers 155 degrees on a meat thermometer. Remove the loin from the oven and allow to rest until the temperature rises to 160 degrees. Slice and serve.