Jan 5, 2018 4 min read

There’s been an extra “someone” here in the house this week. With the rest of the family away, I was expecting to be alone, but it turns out I have company.

It has taken up residence in the refrigerator, hogging the bottom shelf and announcing itself every time I go in there.

“Hogging” is the right word. This extra someone is the pork roast that refuses to go away. It’s been four days now, and I’ve had about enough of it.

This tiring ordeal started with New Year’s Day dinner. We always start the year with a good-luck pork roast and sauerkraut, made in the crock pot and joined at the supper table with mashed potatoes and applesauce. I tend to overdo it, in this case plopping not one but two pork roasts into the crock pot; after I’d added the sauerkraut, I had to jam the lid on.

It was delicious. The kids were away, so the farmer and I had the whole thing to ourselves. After my one helping and the farmer’s two, we’d barely made a dent in it. I put the whole pot in the fridge.

That stuff tastes even better the next day, and so on Jan. 2, I had pork and sauerkraut for breakfast, lunch and dinner. By then the sauerkraut had sort of melted into a tangy slush that, when topped with chunky applesauce, was the perfect combination of sweet and sour and hot and cold. I was whittling away at it, but I noticed when I carried the pot back to the fridge, it was still really heavy. This was the Everlasting Gobstopper of meat, refusing to get smaller no matter now many times I cut into it.

Jan. 3 dawned cold and snowy. When I opened the fridge to get my coffee cream, the pork pot stared out at me, daring me to make myself a plate for breakfast. I whipped myself up a green smoothie instead, and promised to eat the pork for lunch.

At noon, I pulled off strands of meat and then scooped the last of the sauerkraut from the edges, leaving a still-large lump of obstinate meat, stranded like a Rock of Gibraltar on the sea-blue ceramic.

Where were my people when I needed them, especially the farmer, who was absent at mealtime?

In the spirit of the cereal-milk-more cereal-more milk quandary, I thought about cracking open a new can of sauerkraut to even things out, but the empty cans from Monday’s batch were still in the recycling bin, and they were starting to smell.

I looked up recipes for pork fried rice and pork stir fry, but that would have required a trip to the store, and it was 4 below outside.

It was looking like it would be Bethie and Porky Pork Roast for the rest of the week. And then my son – my sweet, handsome and hungry son – stopped by around dinnertime. I dragged out the pot, made fresh mashed potatoes, opened a new jar of applesauce and fixed him a plate. And then another. Watching him enjoy that food was like watching someone else shovel my snowy sidewalk. He cleaned his plate. I tired to foist the rest of the meat onto him in a leftover container, but he said he’d had enough.

As have I. The roast is now the size of a pound of butter. I thought about having some of it with eggs for breakfast, but I just can’t face another bite. I think I’ll carve it up and give it to the dog. He deserves a lucky new year, too.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.