Pork Roast with Cranberry Sauce in the Crockpot

I had originally planned to do this delicious sounding recipe with a pork roast studded with 40 cloves of garlic or somesuch, then roasted in the oven with a few things. But life got in the way. I had errands to run one evening after work and didn’t get started soon enough. The next night I had neighbors coming over for dinner so I thought I’d do the pork roast then, but I had a full day of work and a 4:30 web meeting which I expected to last an hour or so.

So about 10am that morning I decided I should throw the roast in the crockpot. I remembered a favorite beef roast recipe with cranberry sauce and decided to do that. I put the roast in the crockpot (as an aside–the newer ones sure cook way hotter than the old ones!), sliced an onion and put it on top, then went to pantry for the cranberry sauce, which was fine, and then I went to the fridge for the Catalina dressing. Oops! Remember when the fridge broke and I threw everything out? I’m still not finding things I count on in the fridge! I debated running out to the store, but that somehow seemed like cheating. I decided to use the cranberry sauce and add a can of cream of mushroom soup I saw in the pantry. It must have been on sale because I usually just make my own for stuff like that, but in this case it came in handy. I mixed the cream of mushroom soup with the cranberry sauce, the jellied kind, and threw it over the pork roast and onion.

A bit later an email from the neighbor asked if I needed anything from the store, so I had him pick up the Catalina dressing for me. He dropped it off about 1:30 and I added it to the crockpot, stirring it all together. With the old crockpot I would have been worried about taking the lid off, but this one seems to simmer at a good clip even on low. In fact, about 5:30, after the web meeting, I turned it down to warm.

I made up some mashed potatoes and cooked carrots to go with this. About 20 minutes before dinner, the sauce for the roast looked a bit thin, although it would have been fine. I mixed together a couple of tablespoons of flour with the same amount of cold water. I took the roast out, stirred in the flour mix, and turned the slow cooker up to high. Mmmmmm! This was really good. The roast was not sliceable, instead being more like pulled pork since it just fell apart. But the flavor was excellent.