Cranberry + Herbs Pork Roast, Italian Kale, Steamed Carrots

Dinner tonight was fabulous!!  Steph and I made something similar the last time she was out for a visit, and we made a few slight modifications this time, but kept the delicious, perfect heart of the meal.  We made a cranberry and orange infused pork roast, with a side of Italian Kale, and steamed carrots.

For the pork roast we started with about a cup of dried cranberries and soaked them in orange juice and some hard apple cider for a couple of hours before starting the roast.  Then we rubbed dried rosemary, thyme, some cloves, salt, and pepper into the roast and let that sit for a while.  When we put the roast in the baking dish we packed onions around it, stuffed some of the cranberries into it, layered jellied cranberries on top of it, and poured the oj/cider/cranberry mix over it.  Flavor.explosion.yum.

I would make a couple of changes to the kale.  I overcooked it, so I'll adjust that a bit next time.  I would also adjust the recipe by reducing the balsamic vinegar (maybe even down to 1/2 T) and I tossed in some extra garlic.

It was a lovely dinner and part of a fun trend (twice is a trend, three times is a tradition?) of cooking pork roast with Aunt Steph.  We subbed the veggies in for the previous starch of potatoes and I thought the flavors all worked well together.