Yr Carnitas in the slow cooker. Started in the morning and it'll go all day. 3/4 can of Coke makes it just right. This was dinner last night. Sheaths on the counter above are drying.
So a few posts ago I posted some pics of our cantina in the house and realized they were pretty dated. So I took a few new ones. Funny thing was somebody kept dropping knives around about as I did so.
The left side of the bar. More or less Nichole's side and it houses her shot glass collection as well. That Pacifico poster on old barn wood was hanging in the bar of one of our local Mexican restaurants. We can be persuasive.
Top shelf:
Right side, more or less my side:
We have one son in the Army and we had a going away party for him when he headed to South Korea some time ago. Our daughter has gorgeous writing and so we just left the the drink menu on the chalkboard. The wine rack too. We're not big wine drinkers but keep a few bottles in.
Far wall behind the table are some Karen Timmel pencil drawings:
Look what I found on the table.
Couple of knives and a set of eight of our horseshoe coasters. These are a custom set with the brand tooled on each one.
Over in the corner are three hat racks:
Up on the bar one of my Cowboy knives in elk. The bottle on the right is Murrieta Chili beer. Simply the worst beer ever. Tyler the neighbor brought it over and we each had one. It was our manly duty to finish it no matter how lousy. He and his wife Cara make cool candles out of bottles and they had bought this beer just for the bottle. Great candle now, terrible beer then.
Look at whats at the other end of the bar, a far better elixir for sure. The bottle opener on the left is how Jack and I started first communicating. I was buying the openers (just the steel part) from a guy that lives next to Loch Ness and then putting handles on them. They were made in Sheffield. He couldn't get them anymore and I hadn't made any for a while. Sourcing here on this side of the pond I could find cheesey peasy cheap ass chrome plated cast metal junk but no decent ones like this out of solid stainless steel. So I contacted Jack knowing of his Sheffield connections and through his Herculean efforts these are now readily available again. Must of lit a candle somewhere. We've been email friends every since. A Poco model with stabilized Arizona Manzanita for the handle.
At the far end of the table and up above is a caribou rack. Not a lot of caribou in these parts, but a young cowboy that is a pretty well travelled hunter needed a knife and while I really didn't need a caribou rack, here we are. The black and white mane hair rope hanging there is kinda special to us. In our style of horsemanship the reins are never taken down over the horses neck once the horse is bridled. NEVER. So if you need to get down and lead your horse you use a..... wait for it...."get down rope" to do so. Thats what this is. They are about 16 ft long and can be made from several different things but this one is twisted from the mane hair of two special old retired horses of ours. We roached their manes and sent the hair to an old buckaroo up in OR. He made us two of these get down ropes out of their mane hair. First time I met him years ago, he tried to trade me out of Nichole.
Out in the hall someone droped a Stainless Gordo in bone next to another candle. This might be my favorite Single Malt these days. That coaster has our brand on it. Reverse D N connected over a quarter circle.
Hope you enjoyed the little tour of our cantina.
I knew the Frog & Parrot too of course (even remember the parrot), and the pub before, the Prince of Wales. It was actually set up by Whitbread, and the original brewer, Mr Munro, was the Head Brewer at the Exchange Brewery where I once worked. He was a nice old feller, when he retired from the Exchange Brewery, he set the brewery up for them there. I also knew Rodger the landlord a bit later, and Ernest, his manager, who had previously worked at Tinsley Wire (TWIL), where my granddad worked. Ernest was from Granada, but took great pride in being known locally as 'The African Queen'! After he left, he set up a good cafe down the East End, Ern's Cafe, did a great breakfast
So I'm spending the evening woith a Barossa Valley Shiraz
The pub is still there, but is now owned by an even worse brewery, Greene King 
We were just talking about meatballs, I haven't made them for a while, just did a rich ragu tonight 
you won't like this one.
