Another awesome weekend in the books, minus the fact that it was nearly 100° the whole time. That’s rough for a girl who doesn’t like it to creep over 80°. Portland has generally mild summers, but there are always a handful of days that really tests my everyone’s patience. That’s a lot of heat and sun.

Andrew played a lot of soccer in it. How? I’ll never know. I hid from the sun and did a lot of necessary cleaning. Lots of food that doesn’t involve turning on the stove was eaten. We watched the Timbers draw. Watching that happen in the heat was like pouring salt over an open wound. We showed some friends from out of town some of the city. There is seriously nothing more fun than playing tourist in your own town [other than being a tourist in another town…]. It’s an excuse to see things and do things that you wouldn’t normally bother with. We ended up an a pod of food carts in N. Mississippi Ave., and I ate a most delicious Chinese flatbread sandwich with Szechuan red oil chicken, garlic ginger braised Chinese greens, and pickled vegetables from Prickly Ash, a Chinese street food cart. Good is an understatement. The chicken was piled high that it was hard to wrap up and eat. That’s my kind of sandwich. The rest of the day was seriously too hot to eat. I had some fro-yo and a few slices of cucumber and feta. My healthiness knows no bounds.

We even busted out the crock pot to beat the heat. We picked up a pork roast from the Mexican market, and I grabbed it purely to try this recipe from Eat, Live, Run for carnitas. There’s no marinade, just spices and fresh veggies and some time under low heat. The house smelled awesome when I got home, so Andrew working upstairs with it like that must have been brutal. The pork was fork tender and super juicy. Jalapeño was a must. It was nice and spicy. I could have easily added another. We killed off the entire roast in one sitting [shocking] taking liberties with lime and avocado. I put a bunch on top of some leftover Mayan quinoa. That was the best idea of all.

Inspiration: Eat, Live, Run

Ingredients

2lbs pork roast

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 jalapeño, diced [take out the seeds if you don’t want it too spicy]

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoons chili powder

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon salt

tortillas, avocado, cilantro, lime, etc for serving

Preparation

Mix all of the spices in a small bowl. Place the pork roast in the bottom of a crock pot. Cover with half of the spices. Flip the roast over and cover with the rest of the spices. Cover the roast with all of the onion and peppers. Turn the heat on low and leave for 8 hours. The meat should be fork tender. Shred and serve immediately or shred and let it soak up the juices for a bit before serving.