This presented the perfect opportunity for The Mister to try pulled pork. We’d got into a long conversation with a chef at Williams & Sonoma (kitchen store) a few weeks ago about it after going to the Madison Square BBQ Block Party and after that and the pulled pork he always orders at Morrell’s he was really wanting to try it.

So when Cousin Grant said he loved pulled pork there was no holding us back.

In a very cool cooking 2.0 experience, The Mister tweeted @EatMeaty – the butcher in Chelsea Market and asked if they had pork for making pulled pork and any advice. They responded and expected our visit on Sunday morning. Very cool.

It was great hanging out at Cousin Grant’s and using his kitchen – his place has central air (we were there one of the days of the heatwave when it was 39 degrees C outside), extremely sharp knives and a massive gas oven. Eventually we found the light switches, a casserole dish and some piggy salt & pepper shakers (felt kind of cruel putting them on the table but they were orange), and luckily we took a few other supplies of our own because everything I didn’t think he’d have, he didn’t!

We put the pork in the oven for 4 hours and enjoyed a nice cool quiet afternoon working.

The house smelled great! And Cousin Grant said so when he burst through the door right on dinner time. We toasted the family gathering with champagne, assembled the burgers with pulled pork and some caramelised onions I’d made the previous day and coleslaw I’d made that afternoon and sat down to an extremely delicious family dinner.

So now we have to set about finding BBQ sauce (not something you’d normally find in our pantry) and other tomato-based basting ingredients to try it at home ourselves. Perhaps our Thanksgiving Dinner this year will be a burger feast!

It’s been touch and go all week whether she’d be able to come because of the volcanic ash over Europe but the skies cleared enough for her to take off. Apparently some concern she might not be able to get back due to a second cloud heading for Switzerland so we’ll see. So a weekend of coffees, shops, Chelsea Market and wandering is coming up … yes everyone is shown the same things but we love it!

Update: thanks to The Mister’s comment when he saw this just now I feel that I should explain that the image is taken exactly as was from the Flight Tracker page on the JFK website. The flight path line is not stunted due to my below average Photoshop skills, it’s like that because “Flight Tracker cannot guarantee the path the aircraft took outside of US airspace” so I’m guessing where the line starts is about where she entered that airspace. Hrummph

Here he is looking pretty grown up in the orange vest I knitted him,

and even more grown up now sleeping in a big bed, vest and all!

In brief, and there are loads of photos on Flickr:

Day 1 – Soho, Chinatown, Financial District, Battery Park, Brooklyn Bridge, Madison Square Park, takeaways and first game for the Yankees on telly.

Day 2 – Chelsea Market, Central Park, 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Centre (including trip to the top), dinner at Morrell’s.

Day 3 – A wander over to Macy’s and back before they left for the airport at lunchtime.

We’ll miss you guys!

The boys also recreated a scene with the 3 of them wearing matching yellow t-shirts with their names on them when they were (as best we can work out) 10, 8 & 3 which was hilarious and went down well. Trying to get Craig to wear his t-shirt into work but he’s not keen, apparently yellow is not his colour!

Happy Birthday Pen! xo

My Mother the pyromaniac

The Mister is making raspberry jam

The niece is making jewellery under the supervision of Father