I should have stayed in bed. After six days of helping friends with Hurricane Harvey recovery, I woke up aching all over, including my hands. Ours was one of the homes that did not flood, and after two days helping one friend sort, clean, and move her remaining household goods, I had switched to cooking supper for several families.

Today would be my last supper to fix before returning to my regular work schedule and I had planned to serve pulled pork sandwiches. I was doubling a recipe and it would require six hours of simmering in a crock pot, so I pulled myself out of bed and retrieved the pork.

Error #1: Uh oh. The refrigerator door had not fully closed overnight. Although the “use by” date was today, the pork itself didn’t have a healthy color. After consulting with my husband, I pitched the meat and went to the store for fresh pork loins.

Error #2: After browning the pork loins and pouring the sauce all over the meat, including working it into multiple knife holes poked into the pork loin, I decided to taste the sauce. Ugh. Too salty! Why didn’t I taste it before applying? Oh, I also forgot to add in the onions. Drat.

Error #3: The old sauce was rinsed off, the pork loins added to the crock pot to begin simmering (I was running out of time by now). Starting over with the sauce, I made a second, double batch with onions.  Once again I poured it all over the meat already simmering in the crock pot. And I tasted the sauce. Not great. I liked the first batch better except for too much salt. What was missing? Oh. Brown sugar.

After stomping around my kitchen and growling at myself for yet another mistake, I added the brown sugar to the crock pot and attempted to mix it in to the existing sauce. At this point, I just had to hope for the best if I wanted to serve supper by 7:00 p.m.

Disgusted with my own errors, I used the pork drippings to fry two eggs and sat down to a very late breakfast of comfort food: fried eggs, toast, home made blackberry jam, and hazelnut coffee with lots of milk and creamer.