The Pork Boys Do Groundhog Day

Of course we celebrated with a nice dinner.  Doesn't everyone?

This was our first dinner with the new chair covers M.P. found online for a very reasonable price.  They accentuate the lovely finish of the dining table that M.P. built some years ago with a solid poplar top, hand-rubbed with 12 coats of tung oil that give it a perpetual lustre.  Sometime soon I will post a daytime pic so you all can see the elegant pattern of the chair covers better.

For our Sunday dinner this week, we feasted upon - what else? - a very succulent Roast Groundhog stuffed with braised cabbage and bacon, and basted lovingly for hours with butter, herbs, and white wine.  I can report that the final result was superb, all tender and juicy, and slathered with a luscious gravy of cream, butter, and white wine.  Really something to write home about.  I tell you what.

As usual, M.P.'s teleophone camera, though very handy for cookery pics, fails to catch the fine, fragrant steam arising from the roast, pulled out of the oven just moments beforehand.

And here is the stuffed groundhog neatly sliced and ready to serve.

This rich, thick cream gravy was good enough to eat with a spoon, I declare!

Delicate young sweet peas, pearl onions, and bits of red bell pepper, all in a luxurious sauce of cream, butter, and white wine - exquisite.

Creamed white corn is very sweet and undeniably delicious.

Yummy parsleyed potatoes, just like M.P.'s mama used to make them.

Clockwise rom the 6 o'clock position:  roast groundhog and cream gravy; peas and onions; one of M.P.'s famous schoolhouse rolls; parsleyed potatoes.  Missing:  creamed corn (omission remedied after this picture was snapped).

For dessert, an old Southern favorite:  chess pie, always scrumptious just in its natural state, but in this case enhanced by M.P.s brilliant intuition with a soupçon of peach brandy.  Oh my, my, my!  You talk about good!   

P.S. -- Okay, I confess:  it was really just pork loin. But one of my mother's old cookbooks actually DOES have a recipe for woodchuck pie - so it could happen!


P.P.S. -- Who knew a groundhog and a woodchuck are the same thing?

What's that?  All of you?  Oh hush up, Yankee boys, and get back to your rhubarbs.