This week’s friendly lunch on the Veranda was Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary. At the Firefly, pretty Bed and Breakfast near Madison GA, we are sticking with the keto-friendly basics.
We also like human-scale living, and cooking a local 4H head of livestock in a fireplace that you built yourself, using rosemary that is growing right next to us gives us three points on the “Human Scale Living” scoreboard.
Back Story
We built a lovely outdoor fireplace with a stone arch, and installed into it a nice grill, which is about 27X20. What that means is that you can multitask, and cook while having a nice pleasant afternoon in the shade.
Here’s the most recent blog post on the Fireplace project. In fact, we were able to install a grate just like this one in our fireplace to make it even more fun.
For what it is worth open fire cooking is a bit of a “thing” what with all of the campers (happy and otherwise) that are in the world right now. Here’s a link.
https://overthefirecooking.com/category/blog/cooking-techniques/
The Gear
We have a couple of these pans around. We got ours at the local place where we get interesting things. They were just perfect for our space. the handles stuck out a little and didn’t get too hot. The food got infused with all of that nice fire smell, and the whole thing washed up fine.
Your Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary will be just fine if you choose to cook them on your regular outdoor grill. We very often choose irregular.
We believe it is possible to throw food directly on the above grill grate. But, are choosing not to until we get a little more experience. We did engineer the grills above so that they would easily pop right out for cleaning.
The First Course(s)
We started out with egg salad, made with light blue cheese dressing so as to minimize the dairy. To this we added some cucumber and tomato salad to munch on. Veranda food means slow food, and we were in no hurry while we were waiting for the pork to finish.
The eggs came from our place, from chickens. Only one of them has a name, but the rest of them produce just as well.
The tomato and cucumber part of the lunch came from elsewhere, because it’s too early around here to get farm fresh. Later on, we will be sure to make up for it by grilling some tomatoes.
Squash with Rosemary and Bacon
The veggie course was squash with rosemary and bacon. The bacon came from the same little wonderful animal as the pork chops. It’s still a bit early for squash around here, so the zucchini and yellow squash was from probably Florida. The rosemary grows about six feet behind the outdoor fireplace. The whole combination plus a little thyme was combined in a little foil package and thown into the corner of the grill.
The Pork Chops
At the Firefly, there is a back story on everything. We have a freezer, and we know a farmer or two. There is underlying logic in having nice pork, from a pig that had a name. The Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary came as locally as possible. It was seasoned with a little salt and pepper, and a sprig of Rosemary from the plant that grows right behind the fireplace.
The Fire
Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary depends a lot on the nature of the open fire. Since this fireplace is one-of-a-kind, and newly constructed, we are still learning how to do this. We didn’t really get going until we adjusted our fire to look like this:
Dessert
Peaches and Cinnamon, roasted right next to the main course. These particular peaches are canned cling peaches in water. Very soon, it will be peach season around here and we will try something more interesting, out of “real” peaches from the area.
Wine Pairing
With our Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary we had to have wine. The warmup wine was some of the Grenache that we bottled back in January. It is still a little young, but now, quite drinkable. We finished it off with some wine from the store, and found it to be “less drinkable.” Have we told you we make our own wine sometimes?
Background Music
Otis Redding, who is from Macon GA, and “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” Around here, this is a “beach music” song. (Note: “Beach Music” in this part of the country does not mean the same thing as it does in the remaining 47 states.)
We have bluetooth speakers and can have whatever ambiance we want.
The Finished Product
Here it is. The Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary were delightfully roasty and delicious. The bacon and rosemary infused veggies were also quite good, as were the peaches. Sorry you missed it.
Keto Rating
Maybe only about a 7 on this one. One point deduction for the “light blue cheese” dressing, and one point deduction for the peaches. The wine is not keto, but an argument can be made that it is “paleo” since it is a gift of the ancient people to us.
Do we get one paleo point for grilling this over an open fire? I believe we do.
Do over
If we had to do it over would we do anything differently? Sure. For one thing, we probably put everything on too early. We need to not start anything before we have a nice fire going like the one above. Then, we’d have put the Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary on first, and veggies on “after” since they don’t take as long. The peaches will be “real peaches” from the local area, as will the tomatoes, and if they are good enough, which we thing they will be, you can just eat them raw if you want.
Also, we need a more photogenic bucket.
Do you see what we did?
We had a friendly lunch on the veranda. We had local Open Fire Pork Chops with Rosemary using local pork. The rosemary was literally from the flower bed next to the fireplace. The fireplace itself was made by us, The eggs were from the backyard. It was all infused with our wood flame, from our woods, and served with our own wine, which will get better with age.
We believe a lot in home grown, and home made. In our case, we are finally at the point where a lot of these elements can come together. Plus we learned something from the experience which is very valuable.
The main thing we learned is that our lovely outdoor veranda area, with fireplace, and roses, and twig art provided a lovely afternoon, after which we didn’t feel like going back to work.
So if you feel like not going back to work, and can appreciate the one-off randomness of it, click the “book now” button.
Maybe we will give lessons.
