Project 5: Cranberry Pork Tenderloin

Spoiler: This turns out totally nomalicious.

So this recipe was an adventure.  I'd never ever attempted pork before, and short of bacon, I don't eat a lot of it.  But it looked too good to pass up, so right after New Years I made a trip out to the grocery to pick up the ingredients.  But apparently, Pork tenderloin was on sale when I showed up.  There were two left in the entire store, and both of them had the stickers pulled off.  I really only needed a two pound piece of meat, so I picked the smallest of the two.  Surely it would be close to what I needed, right?

This is a five pound piece of meat.

If by "close", you mean "way over the size of what I need", you would be right.  This particular piece of meat rang up at about 5 pounds, making it completely overkill to feed me and KP for an evening.  I was worried the damn thing wouldn't fit in the crockpot, but I lucked out.  Barely.

Since the meat was more than what the recipe called for, I doubled the sauce ingredients as well. (I know the meat was really more than double, but I wasn't sure I needed that much sauce. Besides, I only had two cans of cranberry sauce.)


So all of my lovely and delicious ingredients went in the crockpot, including cloves, which smelled absolutely heavenly.  And it sat overnight.  And then it sat through breakfast.  And then lunch. Looking back, that was probably not the greatest idea in the world.  Unlike pot roast, there were ingredients in the sauce that scorch.  And they did just a little bit.

But the pork?  Well that was delicious.  It was sweet and tender, and with a little sauce on top, it was as KP termed it "nomalicious".  I'll take that as a win.

(Next time, however, I will not leave it on as long.  We'll either eat earlier, or I'll just put it in first thing in the morning, instead of overnight.)