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Danny’s on the way home from the restaurant right now. He’s exhausted — I could tell from his voice on the phone — from cooking for couples all night long. Maybe someone proposed at one of the tables, with a flourish of cloth napkin and candlelight and teary eyes. Maybe they were eating Danny’s pork loin special (stuffed with homemade garlic pork sausage, seared, and roasted) before it happened.

Maybe some couples had lousy nights, because they had so many expectations of this drippy day. (But the pork special probably helped.)

I really dislike Valentine’s Day. I disliked it when I was single because I didn’t have someone bringing me velvet heart-shaped boxes filled with slightly squashed chocolates because he had been so fervent in pressing them to his chest before he could reach me. Now that I’m married, I dislike Valentine’s Day because it feels so artificial.

Love feels much more like this evening will be. Danny will come home after 10 pm, tired and smelling of garlic and the grill. He’ll take off his hat — his hair sticking out above his ears — and fold me in his arms. Then he’ll go into our daughter’s room and watch her sleep for a moment. We’ll sit on the couch smooshed with crackers left over from her lunch and food stains on the cushions. We’ll sit down side by side, legs touching, the both of us tired but talking until midnight, sharing our day.

We might have a picnic on the couch and watch the Olympics. Probably, pizza. Maybe like this one — soft mozzarella, chevre, homemade puttanesca, and little slivers of prosciutto.

There will be no roses, no chocolates, no cards. Just the comfort of knowing each other, and knowing what love feels like, and no longer having to explain it to anyone else.

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Twitter often leaves me hungry.

Friends write slivers of the dinners they are creating at home (”Twice-cooked pork belly with pickled cabbage and taro”) or sampling at restaurants (”Porchetta stuffed with homemade sausage, roasted mushrooms, bacon, carmelized onions, & garlic, braised 6hrs”) or creating for other people (”Nothing says love like a spicy salami!”), and we are left feeling a little faint with all the possibilities, determined to get into the kitchen to make ourselves something that will satisfy that phrase-driven hunger.

A few weeks ago, Jonathan Gold left me ravenous. Now, let’s be honest: this often happens. The man is a god of food writing. Bawdy and confident, fascinated by street food and the dishes that come out of poverty, unabashed celebrator of all things Los Angeles (and even the Valley), Johnathan Gold always makes me laugh and gasp at his turns of phrase:

“The vibe here is evolved crunchiness, which is to say, like a pre-gig potluck whose intrinsic veganism has been expanded to include ricotta cheese and the occasional slab of organic pork belly, all resting comfortably within the boundaries of conscious omnivorousness. The stewed Rancho Gordo beans with toasted bread crumbs were delicious.”

And then he makes me hungry.

I happened to be on Twitter when he responded to my fellow writer and friend Renee Schettler’s wonderings about what to do with apples when feeling adventuresome. Johnathan Gold sent back this message:

@thejgold “Richard Olney’s pork chops and apples in mustard sauce. Godhead.”

That was enough to make me want to be in the kitchen, cooking.

It took a couple of weeks, and these pork chops, for us to have the occasion to make this recipe, in our own way.

Worth the wait.

Thank you, Twitter.

(You don’t have to wait, however. You can make this today.)

Pork Chops with Mustard and Apple Sauce, adapted from Richard Olney

2 slightly tart apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 bone-in pork loin chops
1/4 cup apple cider
1 medium onion, fine chopped
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh sage
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
3 heaping tablespoons mustard
1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 450°.

Lay the apple slices in the bottom of a glass baking pan (we used a pie pan). Throw it in the oven for 15 minutes.

As you are baking the apples, set a large sauté pan over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil. When the oil is hot, sear the pork chops until the bottom is browned, about 7 minutes. Flip them over and sear the other side.

Pull the apple pan out of the oven. Put the seared pork chops on top of the apples.

Deglaze the sauté pan with the apple cider, reducing the liquid until the pan is almost dry. Pour that reduced liquid over the chops.

Add the remaining oil to the hot pan. Toss in the onion and cook, stirring, until it has become soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the sage and rosemary and cook until they release their fragrance, about 2 minutes. Pour in the chicken stock. Stir in the mustard and combine.

Cook until the liquid has reduced to ½ its volume. Add the butter and whisk it into the sauce quickly.

Pour the mustard sauce over the chops and apples. Return the pan to the oven and bake until the pork chops have reached an internal temperature of 160°, about 15 minutes.

Feeds 2.

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Tender pork loin chops, with a thick line of fat, just unveiled from their brown paper wrapper.

What would you make with these?

(we’ll show you what we did. tomorrow.)

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It’s the Super Bowl tomorrow. Most of America will be watching (although I always find it strange when people watch just for the ads). And most of us will be gathered with friends, eating and laughing, taking bets on who will win. And yes, watching the commercials.

If it’s a good party, you’ll be eating crispy pigskins.

“‘It’s just fat and salt and crunch,” said Lester Ayala, a cook from Connecticut who had dropped into Porchetta in the East Village for the first time last month to try a sandwich with a good ratio of soft, lean pork to fatty, crispy skin. ‘What’s better than that?’

To be sure, fat, salt and crunch should always be invited to a Super Bowl gathering. Adding a porky layer of fried skin not only gives heft and flavor to the snack menu, pigskin is just sort of fun to serve at football games.”

Click on this link to read the entire New York Times article about the rise of pig cracklings, pork rinds, and crisp pigskins in the last few years, an era Kim Severson characterizes as “…a good slice of the country still deep in its pork worship period.”

And with the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl, why not eat what they do in New Orleans?

“Cracklings are the American cousins of the French grattons and the chicharrón common to Latin America. In its perfect form, a crackling offers a square of skin that cracks when you bite into it, giving way to a little pocket of hot fat and a salty layer of pork meat.”

Of course, if you are an Indianapolis Colt fan, you might not want to eat the New Orleans treat. Then again, it’s pork. You’ll probably make an exception.

What porky goodness will you be eating for your Super Bowl party?

And if you’re reading this Monday, give us the play-by-play of your pork after the fact.

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We could write this with much innuendo and suggestion.

Instead, we simply want to share this story, widely reported on the 28th of January:

“BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s president recommended pork as an alternative to Viagra Wednesday, saying she spent a satisfying weekend with her husband after eating barbecued pork.

“I’ve just been told something I didn’t know; that eating pork improves your sex life … I’d say it’s a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra,” President Cristina Fernandez said to leaders of the pig farming industry.

She said she recently ate pork and “things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true.”

Argentines are the world’s biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.

“Trying it doesn’t cost anything, so let’s give it a go,” Fernandez said in the televised speech.”

Well, duh!

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If you are trying not to spend too much money on food in one week, you can still eat well.

Quinoa is one of our favorite grains — light and fluffy when cooked right — mild enough to accept the tastes of foods around it, assertive enough to have its own taste. Every day, we throw some whole grain in the rice cooker (we wouldn’t know what to do without this rice cooker, particularly with a hungry toddler around) and have it around for meals. Quinoa for breakfast is fantastic.

And a poached egg, timed just right so that the texture of the white is firm (I love the ripples on this one), the yolk just a touch runny. I love the taste of a slightly salted quinoa that has soaked up some poached-egg yolk.

Plus, the bacon. Supple slices with a crunch, cooked solid without a touch of singe. Drape them over quinoa, plop on the egg, and you have a perfect breakfast.

Pork is wonderfully friendly to the family budget.

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This week, Danny and I are taking on King County’s United Way Hunger Action Week challenge. From January 25th to the 29th (yesterday through Friday), many of us food bloggers will be living on a bare minimum of food money each day, equal to the maximum food assistance available to an individual living in Washington state.

Here, in King County, that’s $7 a day.

For a family of three, the maximum allowed is $18 a day.

That’s a heck of a lot less than we have been spending.

When we planned out our groceries and rough ideas of meals on Sunday, the day before the challenge, we immediately thought of a pork shoulder to roast. Not only could we eat the tender, falling-apart meat right out of the slow cooker, but we could also make great quesadillas with grated cheese, as well as a satisfying dish of brown rice, pieces of pork shoulder, and sauteed vegetables, with a sauce made out of the braising liquid, reduced.

No matter how much we spend, we’re eating well this week.

Slow-Cooked Pork Shoulder

2-pound pork shoulder roast
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 large carrot, peeled and medium chopped
2 stalks celery, medium chopped
1 large yellow onion, peeled and medium chopped
½ head small garlic
1 apple, cut into eighths
1 sprig rosemary, taken off the stem and fine chopped
½ fresh bay leaf (or 1 whole leaf, if dried)
1 quart chicken stock

Searing the meat. Set a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Pour in 1 tablespoon of the canola oil. When the oil is hot enough to run around the pan easily, put in the shoulder roast. Sear until the bottom has browned, about 3 to 4 minutes. Sear the roast on all sides. Remove from the sauté pan and put in the slow cooker (we used a 6-quart cooker).

Pan-roasting the vegetables. Pour the remaining oil in the same pan, again on medium-high heat. Add the carrot, celery, onion, garlic, and apple. Cook, stirring, until the onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the rosemary and bay leaf cook until they release their fragrance, about 1 minute.

Cooking the pork shoulder roast. Add the roasted vegetables to the slow cooker. Pour in the chicken stock, making sure that the roast is covered with stock. Put on the lid and turn on the slow cooker to low. Cook until the roast is tender enough to almost melt between pinched fingers, about 8 to 10 hours.

Enjoy.

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