St. Patrick's Day Irish Pound Pot

My son was asking about St. Patrick's Day and what traditional foods they ate in Ireland. It inspired me to do a pound pot. A pound pot is used for a lot of occasions. It can be for soups, stews, seafood boils, but I decided to do an Irish Pound Pot. These are fun because nothing is exact. It's all about, as the name implies, about a pound. For liquid measurements you will just use a pint because, as the old saying goes, "A Pint's a Pound the Whole World 'Round!" So this will be easy--I'll just give a list of ingredients and just assume it's all a pint or a pound of that ingredient. Only thing that won't be a pound are the seasonings. Now keep in mind that this ain't a pretty dish, but a hearty pot of delicious, heartwarming Irish goodness.

Ingredients

• Bacon or Pork Belly, chopped
• Sauerkraut
• Polish Sausage or your favorite cased sausage, whole or choped
• Potatoes, chopped 1'' cubes
• Carrots, chopped 1 1/4'' length
• Brussel Sprouts or Chopped Cabbage
• Pint of Guinness Beer (1 Bottle or 1 Can)
• 1/3 C White Vinegar
• 1T Granulated Garlic Powder
• 1.5T Kosher Salt
• 1t Ground Black Pepper

1. In a large pot, bring heat to high and cook bacon/pork belly until fat is rendered.
2. Place sauerkraut into pot and stir to mix.
3. Place sausage on top of sauerkraut and bacon/pork belly
4. Place all other ingredients into the pot.
5. Cover, bring to a boil, stir to incorporate all seasonings, reduce to a simmer and replace the cover.
6. Let simmer until all veggies are done and all sausage is cooked throughout (about 35 minutes)
7. Enjoy!

Eating the Yard

This tree puts out the biggest bunches
I've ever seen! 70lbs for the last bunch!

When the Air Force moved my family and I to a small base in Germany, I jokingly said to my wife that it would be really nice to have a cherry tree in the yard since I had one as a kid and always loved eating them by the handfull. Our realtor showed us some terrifying houses--one of which had hundreds of stuffed birds mounted on the walls (HUNDREDS!!!). But then she showed us one in the small, small town of Niederscheidweiler. The icing on the cake for us was the irony of the cherry tree in the yard.
So when the Air Force moved us to the beautiful island of Guam, we were shown many houses that were okay, but just not for us. Funny enough, one even had a dead bird in it (just one though, not hundreds). But finally, our realtor showed us an awesome house. There wasn't a cherry tree in the yard, but there were 3 banana trees, a papaya tree and a calamansi tree that hangs over the fence for sharing.
Our banana trees are currently producing about 150lbs of bananas each. Our papaya tree is producing the largest papayas I've ever seen and our newly found calamansi tree is giving us tons of of fruit that we know nothing about but are very excited to experiment with.

Calamansis hanging over the fence.

One problem--with my wife and 2/3 of our kids in Hawaii, it's just me and my oldest son, Jacob. We simply cannot eat 450lbs of bananas, we both hate the taste of papayas and there are so many calamanis that are completely new to us and we have no idea what to do with them.
Now at this point you might be wondering why I am complaining about the near orchard-like properties our yard offers. Well, I highlight these issues to showcase the attitude surplus that my son and I are about to attempt. It would be nice to be able to utilize all of this food, but I'm pretty sure banana-induced potassium poisoning isn't very pleasant. But we simply can't consume it all, so as soon as all these things are ripe and ready to come off the tree, we are going to start sharing within the community. 
When we were in Germany, I remember stopping at a bakery in Lutzerath on the way home from work and seeing a transaction between the butcher who worked across the street and the owner of the bakery. The butcher handed the baker a package of meats and the baker handed the baker an weeks worth of baked goods. It was a community exchange where no money was needed. It was amazing to me to see how even the owner of the town's hotel provided rooms for visiting family in exchange for breads and meats for the hotel restaurant. It was a completely self-reliant community. A self-licking ice cream cone, if you will. That moment will always stick with me. But how can we replicate this in our small community? That's the million-dollar question. Well, I'll keep you all updated as we try to figure out what to do with all of this fruit we have been blessed with this season.

Banana flowers peeking out.
They're great in salads.

Papayas as big as your head!

More bananas than we
know what to do with.

Coconuts!!!

Zorak stares at me every time I
photograph his fruit.

Haole Style Kalua Pork

***Disclaimer--This is not an authentic Kalua Pork recipe. This is a badly misinterpreted version of the recipe that I came up with. I appreciate the Hawaiian culture very much which is why I simply cannot try and pass this off as one of their recipes. I can say with 100% certainty that this is good food--out of a crock pot no less! I call it Haole-Style because "haole" is the slang term used for Caucasians on the Hawaiian Islands (it's not really a term of endearment, but it works, I guess). This is just a backwoods way to make something similar (and it is eerily similar in flavor).***
The Hawaiian dish really isn't difficult to make, but requires time and a lot of things that most of us don't have access to. Such as a fire pit, banana leaves, a whole pig, Hawaiian wood, lava stones, etc. But the pig really is just smoked pig, seasoned and wrapped in banana leaves and shredded. So what I've done is horribly misinterpreted the whole recipe for kicks. I've substituted things that are related, but are a far cry from the original ingredients, but they all serve a purpose to contribute to the mimicking of real Kalua Pork.

• Whole Pig is now a Pork Roast
• Apple in the pig's mouth is now cider vinegar and apple chunks
• Kalua is now Kahlua (or go cheap and get spiced rum and instant coffee)
• Smoke from the banana leaves is now banana slices and roasted flavor of the coffee
• Natural saltiness from island-grown pig is now sea salt
• Hawaiian Fire Pit is now a Crock Pot

Ingredients:

• 2.5lb Pork Roast
• 1c Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1.5c Spiced Rum (Capt. Morgan is fine, Black Heart or Sailor Jerry's is a bit more 'edgy' tasting)
• 2T Instant Coffee
• 1t Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 1T Sea Salt
• 1T Granulated Garlic
• 1T Fresh Ground Black Pepper
• 1 Granny Smith or Fuji Apple, cubed
• 2 Ripe Bananas, sliced 1.5" thick
• 1lb Dark Brown Sugar
• Unfiltered Apple Juice (amount needed depends on size of crock pot)

Method:

1. Place roast on cutting board and cut many 1/2'' slices diagonally across the top of the meat (scoring). Cut them the other way as well so it appears you have many diamonds across your roast. Flip the roast and repeat to the bottom. Set aside.
2. Place all prepared ingredients into crock pot and stir. Make sure all instant coffee grounds are dissolved. Place roast into mixture and use Unfiltered Apple Juice to bring liquid to the top of the roast.
3. Set Crock Pot on medium and let cook for 5 hours (this may vary depending on crock pot and size and weight of your roast). Low and slow is what we're going for here.
4. Check your roast by securing it with a carving fork then firmly dragging a dinner fork over the top of it. If the meat pulls away with little effort, you are done. Remove roast from crock pot and place in a large mixing bowl.
5. Either pull it apart with two forks, your hands or, as I do, with a hand mixer. All the chunks of banana and apple will be soft enough to simply mix in with the meat. if it seems a little dry to you, mix in some of the juices from the crock pot until it's the consistency you like.
6. Either serve by itself or on a kaiser roll. Top with pickled jalapenos or banana peppers for a tasty kick!

Enjoy! Let me know how it all turns out! Don't forget to 'Like' me on Facebook and 'Follow' me on Twitter and Pinterest!