the other white meat

The only good thing that happened today was that Natalie was kicked out of the Big Brother house. Yes, my life has sunk to the level that I'm paying attention to Big Brother. Bleh.

Actually, I lied -- several great things happened today. For starters, it was 74 degrees at one point today, which is awesome considering that it was snowing last week. And, my mother made tenderloins for dinner -- I never see proper tenderloins anywhere in California, so it's awesome when I get them here. Tammy will be happy to know that we had tater tots with them, which were also awesome, albeit not quite as awesome as the tenderloins.

For those of you who have never seen a real tenderloin, I found this site, which you can explore at your leisure. The best tenderloins are the ones so big that they cannot be contained by one bun; in fact, at the tavern in town, they actually serve them with two buns, but my mother's tenderloins are a million times better than those. For the curious, she breads hers with crushed saltines (none of them fancy panko breadcrumbs that you coast-dwellers are familiar with!), and if you like pork, tenderloin is second only to bacon in the vast pantheon of pork goodness.

Now that I've said that, though, I'm not sure that I can accurately rate the pork pantheon. My brother doesn't eat pork, because it was all we ate in Ukraine (other than chickens who had clearly starved to death), and he has a serious aversion to it. But I love the stuff, and often come to the startling realization that I rarely have it in California. In my mind, the top members of the pork pantheon are:

1) Bacon
2) Tenderloins (breaded and fried)
3) BBQ pork butt, shredded (I had this at my high school graduation party)
4) Ham (either whole hams baked for dinner, or leftover ham for sandwiches)
5) BBQ ribs
6) BBQ pork buns (dim sum)
7) Bologna
8) Hotdogs (plain, corndogs, or pigs-in-a-blanket style)
9) Pork sausage
10) Porkchop (baked)
11) Ham and bean soup
12) Pork roast (this is what we ate in Ukraine virtually every night -- and I have to admit that if the smell of boiling cabbage permeated the kitchen just like it did everything in Ukraine, I would probably be less thrilled)
13) Porkchop (grilled)
14) Ham balls (Gram Wampler makes these - ground ham, baked into ball form, with some syrupy sauce. Sounds gross, but they're delicious)
15) Bologna salad (only in v. small quantities, like on a cracker - grind up some bologna, mix with Miracle Whip and chopped sweet pickles, and serve on a Ritz cracker at your next fancy function)
16) Bac'o'bits (probably not real pork)

Do you agree or disagree with my pork pantheon? Did I miss anything? Do you find any of it to be an abomination? I'll admit that the ranking is pretty loose, since the top eleven, at least, could all be number one at some point depending on my mood. And 'bacon' probably shouldn't be number one -- but bacon is a number one condiment/sandwich topper, even if I don't usually eat it by itself.

Okay, I'm going to bed -- I skipped Craig tonight so that I could go to bed early, but thinking about the wonders of pork kept me awake later than planned. Goodnight!