Yesterday's Comfort Cooking

It has been a brutal week, full of activity which really when combined with service and contract people coming in resulting in a hectic and frustrating week.  Our custom window treatment contractors were in last Saturday.  Both window treatments were wrong!  The kitchen panels were the wrong material and the front California shutters were only partially installed.  At almost $2,500 I was beyond being disappointed.   They came out yesterday to replace the panels so the kitchen is one step closer to being completely finished.  The shutters are scheduled to be fixed Wednesday evening.   I've been canning when I could get a stretch of a couple of hours and I did one smaller bulk cooking session but yesterday I was in the mood for homemade cookies after the custom window treatment contractors fixed the panels in the kitchen (looking good now!).   That translates into peanut butter or shortbread cookies, our two favourite homemade cookies.  It's not like I don't make other cookies but those are our comfort cookies!  I made a small batch (3 doz) of peanut butter cookies. Hey, these are a need right now!

Carrying on the theme of comfort cooking for the day,   I popped a homemade peameal bacon roast in the oven along with a couple of potatoes for baking.  Peameal bacon is our favourite quick cook, low fat meat.  Although peameal bacon is a home cured pork loin, the texture is a bit different than ham.  Roasting the peameal as a chunk gives a bit smoother texture when cut compared to raw sliced then fried.  However, frying the peameal bacon slices gives a nice caramelization and bit of crisping to the coating that roasting does not achieve.  Either way, peameal bacon is a delicious, comfort meat!

Baked potatoes are the perfect side for a peameal bacon roast as they can bake while the roast is cooking.  Any time you can cook more than one component of a meal in the same vessel, in this case the oven, it is a frugal use of energy.  I served the peameal bacon roast and baked potatoes with lightly buttered sweet peas and tomato slices.  Not pictured is the sour cream I topped my potato with for just a touch of creamy comfort.  Rounding up our comfort meal, we ate in front of the television watching Coronation Street.  The beauty of comfort cooking is the end result always makes you feel better :)