Shredding Meat

Remember yesterday when I was telling you about our delicious pulled pork sandwiches? Gamer was a good sport and let me take pics while he was shredding the meat because I got these awesome new claws and I wanted to show you how they work.

But first let me tell you what happened. In early January, Cave Tools asked me if I would like to try one of their products. That's when we got that amazing meat thermometer and I wrote a review for you. A couple of days later, they emailed me and said I "passed the test" and I could sample anything I wanted on their website (except the pricey cooker) as long as I would write another review.

It was like Christmas all over again! I pulled up their website and scrolled through the products and discussed them all with my sweetie and he reminded me what a pain it is to shred meat with forks. Since I'm a true fan of crockpot dinners, shredding meat is something I do at least every other week, but I don't love that part. It just takes forever! Or at least it did...

Yesterday I made two pork roasts, one in each of my large crockpots for our dinner with Twiz's family. You already know I was nervous about making everything just right. No kidding, I watched Gamer (even with me annoying him by taking pictures) shred an entire crockpot of bone in pork in less than two minutes. It was so easy. Then he used the claws to lift the meat back into the pot and I poured some Sweet Baby Ray's on it and that was it. I threw away a bit of fat and the small bones and Gamer took the big bone home for his dog.

Flashback to last week. This was the real test. I had a crockpot full of chicken breasts WITH bones. The kids had pulled it out accidentally instead of boneless so we could make Hawaiian Haystacks. That requires shredded chicken with gravy served with various toppings over rice. (I've heard it's mostly a Utah thing.) I was surprised how easily I was able to lift the breasts from the crockpot with the claws. I expected them to break up in the process because they were all ready to shred, but they didn't. I placed them on a cutting board to contain the juices and went to work.

The claws pulled the meat easily from the bones and I didn't even have to get my hands dirty. Then I was able to do the quick shred just like Gamer did with the pork. It was so much faster than the two-dinner fork method I have used in the past. Then when I was finished, the claws worked great for gathering the chicken and throwing it back in the pot to wait for the gravy. Cleaning them was a cinch in the dishwasher.

They are already pretty inexpensive, but our friends at Cave Tools wanted to make it even easier for you to buy them, so they gave me a coupon code to save you 15% at Amazon. Just enter MEOY47SI.

Amazon or at Cave Tools




***We were given free meatclaws for our open and honest review of the product.***

Meeting the In-laws

Twiz and his parents

I have to admit I was a little terrified by this meeting. Twiz's family has been in town since Monday night and the kids decided it would be easiest for us to plan a specific time and place to get together rather than just have us all show up on Friday to decorate for the reception like we did for Beauty and The Beast. That was a bit awkward.

So we invited them to come over for a casual evening of pulled pork sandwiches and picnic fare. The meal itself was simple, the preparation was not. Drama Queen mopped my floor and scrubbed cabinets while I finished the cookie order this morning. Then she ran errands while I folded a huge pile of laundry. We were a tag-team effort trying to get the house prepped and the food done between my cub scout den meeting and dance runs. Even Gamer got in on the work when he stopped by and the Drama Queen talked him into shredding all the pork and helping build a salad.

Twiz and his grandparents

Twiz's family showed up promptly at 7:00. Teach wasn't even here yet; she had parent/teacher conferences so she was working late. Drama Queen had set up a table with a sampling of our wedding plans and they were excited to see what we had in mind. Then we had dinner and we sat around and visited until nearly 11:00. It was fun to get to know them! They were down-to-earth and normal, easy to talk to and not at all judgmental. I just knew that Teach found the right man and knowing he comes from a good family just makes it that much better.

It's the perfect union.

And they brought treats. What more could we want?

Ready for the Wedding

OK, I'm ready for the wedding now.

I'm no good at selfies, it's much brighter in real life.

My fundraiser presentation at the high school went very well this morning. So well, in fact that they asked me for 5 more packets! Prima Donna said I didn't embarrass her too much, so that's a good thing.

After that I went over to SuperCuts so my dear friend, Melissa, could supervise the coloring of my hair. I've told you about the classes before, where we get free cuts and color while they are retraining their stylists. I called Melissa over the weekend and asked if she could include me in the class so I could look good for the wedding. She was happy to oblige.

When I first got there, we talked about what to do with my blue streak left over from football season. We decided to try to lift the dye out, but it didn't work very well and the color was a sickly green, so we decided to embrace the wedding colors and they dyed my blue streak purple.

The funny thing is that when I got home, none of the children even noticed for more than an hour. Does that mean they never look at me or they are just not very observant?

Tomorrow Twiz's family is coming for dinner. We haven't met them yet, so this is a pretty big deal. It will be his parents and grandparents as well as his little brothers and sister. Maybe I'll take some pics and share them with you tomorrow if his family doesn't mind.

Wedding Video Coming Right Up

At the risk of revealing names (it's not like you couldn't easily find them anyway...) I'm so excited to share the wedding video with you!

Drama Queen did such a great job. She is so talented with technology. If someone assigned this job to me, I think it would be next February before I had it done and she did it in less than a day.

Let me know what you think.