When we went to my aunt and uncle’s farm at the end of August they served a delicious pork roast for dinner that my uncle cooked on his barbeque rotisserie. Dave fell in love right then and there with that roast and with the idea of doing it on the rotisserie. When we got home, he made securing a rotisserie for our barbeque his top priority.
Almost immediately, to his sheer delight, he spotted a local ad online for a barbeque rotisserie. “Ten bucks, babe!” he shouted as he burst through the door, waving the box in my face. Imagine his disappointment when, upon opening the box, he discovered that what he had bought was not a rotisserie, but eight thin, rectangular slabs of metal instead.
Poor guy. He’d done got scammed.
The seller was quite apologetic and, I think, rather embarrassed; she was selling things her ex had left behind and, as the story goes, had no idea there wasn’t a rotisserie in the box. She gave Dave his ten bucks back, but his desire for a rotisserie hadn’t waned – in fact, it only grew stronger. He would not rest until he found one – and find one he did, at the beginning of this week. At last, he was triumphant!
But his enthusiasm had gotten the best of him. He never checked our barbeque to ensure that it could equip a rotisserie and alas, it couldn’t. There stood my poor, dejected husband, a pork roast in the fridge in the fridge and much sought-after rotisserie that he couldn’t use.
Come Wednesday night we HAD to cook the stinkin’ roast, lest it go bad, and come hell or high water, my husband was going to cook that motherfucker on the barbie. After a quick stop at Canadian Tire on his way home from work to pick up a battery for our lawnmower and – surprise! – a docking station for his iPod, something we’ve wanted for the house for a while now, he came home to his beloved pork roast to his family.
He went outside first to fiddle around with the lawnmower battery, then came back inside and pulled the roast – which was rather large – out of the fridge. He plopped it down on the cutting board with a thud, then turned to me and said, “I guess I’ll just cut this in quarters, eh?”
“Sure,” I said, and busied myself with snapping beans.
For the next hour, Dave cooked the quarters on the barbeque, and each time I saw him lift up the lid and flip the meat I thought that the pork quarters, which had kind of fallen apart into hunks, looked more an armadillo than a pork roast. I’ll spare you the details, because it truly erred on the gross side; suffice to say, when Dave piled the meat on a plate and carried it to the kitchen, neither of us were too anxious to dig in.
We stood in front of the plate, staring at the pile of armadillo meat. “Do you want to eat this?” He gestured to the big chunks of charred, sort of scaly-looking pork.
I looked from the plate to my husband and shook my head. “Not really,” I said. “I’m not all that down with the porkadillo.” The chicken dogs he’d grilled for the kids looked more appealing with each passing second.
Dave sighed. “Man, what is it with me and roasts? Do you remember The Sweat Roast?”
(Just after we’d gotten married and I was newly pregnant with Julia, Dave tried to cook an “apple roast” in the crockpot. The end result was a roast that looked – and smelled – like a boiled sock; our house smelled like a high school locker room for like, three days afterward. We affectionately dubbed it The Sweat Roast and it’s since become a running joke between us.)
“How could I forget The Sweat Roast?” I speared two chicken dogs with a fork and put one on each of our plates. “We can always order a pizza after the kids go to bed,” I suggested.
“We might have to.” He sighed again. “I’m going to plug this docking station in. At least we can have music with dinner.”
So we ate: chicken dogs and parmesan noodles, yellow beans and carrots with dill dip. We’d finished one Silversun Pickups song and were in the middle of The Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down when a rather alarming noise started to pulse through the speakers – it sounded like either a small plane was falling from the sky, or all the life was being slowly sucked out of Dave’s iPod.
Guess which it was? THREE FUCKING GUESSES!
(Do I even have to detail how mad Dave was? Not two hours after buying this fucking docking station, and not two songs in, it fried his iPod. FRIED. His thirty-gig iPod, completely dead. This mere minutes after we had a conversation with the kids about downloading kids’ music to the iPod now that we had a docking station, agreeing to call it The Family Pod from now on.)
(This might also be a good time to remind you all of how my iPod Shuffle met its end: remember when I washed and dried it? The whole It’s clean as a whistle and deader than a doornail thing? Oh, the times with electronics in this household, they are GOOD, GOOD TIMES!)
While I cleaned up the kitchen and disposed of the porkadillo (which the dog got in to later on, bestowing upon her first some KILLER gas and then the shits), Dave dealt with Canadian Tire at the corporate level, who have since handed our “case” over to their insurance company because it’s a “personal damage claim”.
So, to recap: Wednesday night’s dinner came out looking like a grilled armadillo and Dave’s iPod was fried by the new docking station within minutes of us opening it while we ate our totally budget dinner of wieners and noodles.
The upside to all of this? ‘Porkadillo’. I will never, ever look at another pork roast again without thinking of PORKADILLO!
33 Comments, Comment or Ping
(FWIW, I appreciate the move to full feeds.)
I have faith in Dave… he’ll figure out how to use a Dremmel to make a couple of notches in your grill to accommodate a rotisserie.
And the fried iPod? Would piss me off to no end.
September 5th, 2008
YOWZA. Consumerist has some great tips for getting satisfaction from a company in situations like the fried ipod.
September 5th, 2008
OK first, I am totally stealing the word porkadillo.
Second, I feel Dave’s pain — I once tried a dish in the slowcooker “Devonshire Pork with Cider and Apples”. It all looked good going in, but the end result looked like regurgitated poutine (and don’t ask how I know what that looks like. University. That’s all I’m sayin’) and had absolutely no taste at all. It was so bland, it was like anti-taste, the dark matter of the culinary world.
Sucks about the iPod. I hope that gets fixed up soon and that he manages to rotisserie and non-armadillo pork roast.
September 5th, 2008
pork roasts always in the crock pot here. worcestershire, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, pepper, dry mustard, and garlic.
September 5th, 2008
porkadillo. love that.
hey…at least there was music! ;)
September 5th, 2008
Mmmm… Porkadillo roast and a side fried iPod. Sounds like a hipster restaurant! I can’t help but laugh out loud.
September 5th, 2008
Wow. You guys sure know how to throw a good party! Good luck with the iPod
September 5th, 2008
Having been through 5 – count em’ FIVE – ipods, I feel your pain. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reloaded the damn things with music.
Fortunately Apple has paid for each and every replacement. Thank GOD for extended product repair plans.
September 5th, 2008
(First, can I say how much I love you for switching to full feeds? You’re one of the only ones I was ever really willing to click through to despite the partial feed, cause your writing is so damned awesome. And full feeds won’t stop me from clicking over to comment in the future either.)
Hope Canadian Tire comes through with a satisfactory result on the iPod thing. I’m thinking a new iPod and 300-400 bucks in Canadian Tire money will suffice.
Do you have M&M Meats local to you? We just tried their Teriyaki pork loin (I typed lion! Yum) last week and it was so good that I’m actually craving it right now. $6.99, fed the five of us and all you had to do was put it on the barbeque for 20 minutes. No extra tools required.
September 5th, 2008
i am going to write an instrumental piece of music titled “Porkadillo” it will combine all the elements of this post.
September 5th, 2008
Same thing happened to me a month ago with my Ipod…I bought an adapter to listen to it in my car and 3 weeks later the Ipod didn’t work….someone told me to go online and reset the Ipod, dump all my songs (unfortunately) and it should come back to life…which it did…but now I have yet to put any songs on it again..
September 5th, 2008
oh boy.
sounds like a good day at your house
ha ha ha ha.
as for the roast, tell dave i feel him. i am learning how to cook and let’s just say it doesn’t always go according to plan. ha ha ha.
have a good weekend.
love youuuu.
September 5th, 2008
Is it so wrong of me to be laughing with/at Dave? It just feels right. Sorry Dave.
September 5th, 2008
Dave SO does not deserve tonight. Poor fucking guy.
I hope the pizza is delicious.
September 5th, 2008
I am PRETTY sure that the porkadillo is an endangered species. Maybe you are eligible for some type of government grant….
September 6th, 2008
Oh yum….. LOL
That really sucks. MOST OF ALL about the iPod!!!! Gah! I hope it gets figured out and replaced *VERY* soon.
September 6th, 2008
i think you may have just nudged me back to vegetarianism.
and the iPod? that sucks. totally.
September 7th, 2008
ah. but there is always beer. and humming.
September 7th, 2008
I’m so glad you can laugh MamaT.
I was hoping the porkadillo turned out tasty. so sad.
my husband would have eaten assuring me that it was delicious.
September 7th, 2008
Sounds too close to armadillo for my taste. Here in Texas we mostly see them after their unfortunate attempts to cross a busy street. Yech!
September 8th, 2008
Best. Blog. Title. Ever.
September 8th, 2008
jest lemme know if you ever need authentic southern bbq pork instructions…
September 8th, 2008
Shit about the iPod, but come on–who doesn’t love wieners and noodles?
September 9th, 2008
It seems that the iPod got rotisseried and the pork roast got played.
September 9th, 2008
That sounds just lovely. Sorry I missed it!
September 9th, 2008
HA!
This makes the ‘Pork Mout’ (mout = mouth) song I told you about even more relevant! I’m totally sending you the link. Listen and love it :)
September 10th, 2008
Awww that SUCKS!! That would make me crazy mad. Poor Dave.
Can I just tell you how much I love that you were listening to Don’t Let Me Down?? I fucking love that song.
:(
September 10th, 2008
fuck I love you guys.
September 11th, 2008
do you have an apple store? they are so good about repairs or just handing over a new one. come to the store at the galleria mall in cheektowaga. you can make an appointment online to see a “genius” at the store.
September 15th, 2008
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