Wow you guys. I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last posted!

What a month it’s been! I’m so sorry for just falling off the face of the planet like that. Right after my last post I started a “little” project in our guest room, tidying up in preparation for a visit from my mother.

We don’t really use the space we call our “guest room” for much more than a room to store paper towels, kitchen electrics, and my ever-growing blog prop hoard. It’s basically a giant closet with a bed in it, and usually the bed is so deeply buried under slow cookers and dessert plates that you wouldn’t even know a bed was under there if you weren’t looking for it. It’s basically an oversized “junk drawer”, a place where we throw random stuff when we’re trying to clean the house for company but don’t feel like putting things where they actually belong!

The guest room is the only space in our apartment that we never painted when we moved in, and for almost 5 years the space has been an embarrassing, seldom-used, neglected eyesore of a room that we do our best to keep hidden behind a constantly closed door. When overnight guests would come for a visit, we’d do our best to clean off and make the bed, but the room was always so overwhelmed by junk that there wasn’t much more we could do.

About a month ago, I thought it was finally time to do something about it.

For mother’s day this year I decided to use a little vacation time and go up to help my mom out with some projects around her house, and she offered to come down to the big city to pick me up rather than having me rent a car or take the bus. Thing is, every time my mom comes for a visit, every single time without fail, she asks when we’re going to paint in there and finally do something with that room. Since the room needed tidying anyway, I decided to bit the bullet and bust out my brushes and rollers.

I thought I’d still have time to try to squeeze in a blog post or two before my mother’s day trip, but my painting project quickly snowballed into almost two weeks of spring cleaning and household improvement projects. Before painting I thought I’d go through and toss a few things to make a little room in there, but what ended up happening was much more involved. We ended up going over every inch of the room and throwing away half of the old clothes and random junk we’ve collected over the years. Then we packed up stacks of boxes and old suitcases with even more junk to store upstate in mom’s attic. Then of course, moving all the furniture in there back and forth meant that the painting took much longer than I expected, and once I was finally done I decided to do a little redecorating too. By that point I was on a roll, and while the paint dried I decided to go all in and re-caulk my shower, install new (brighter) light fixtures in my living room, and do some cleaning and planting in the back yard too. My apartment has never looked better but I am POOPED!!!

At some point in this two week span I did find a minute to make (and photograph) these amazing mojo marinated grilled pork skewers, but by the time the dust settled and I sat down for 5 minutes, I was too exhausted to actually write the post or edit the photos.

The next thing I knew mom was here and I was whisked upstate to help her with another laundry list of projects around her house. With the best of intentions I brought my laptop along with me thinking I could edit photos at night before bed, but of course that never happened either.

Time rolled along and before I knew it a month had passed since the last time I’d spent any time with you guys. I literally can’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever gone so long without posting, and it felt pretty weird. I’m glad I got so much done, but boy howdy how I’ve missed you!

We’re almost in the midst of grilling season proper now though, so I suppose this recipe is coming at the right time anyway.

This citrusy cuban mojo marinade is absolutely amazing with tender chunks of grilled pork. The sweet citrus and earthy cumin and oregano pair perfectly with the delicate pork and gentle smokiness of a charcoal grill. The original sauce recipe called for the garlic to be pulverized into a paste in a mortar and pestle, but since I was using it as a marinade I decided to make things easier on myself and just crush the garlic in a garlic press. If you’d like to reserve some for later dipping, you probably won’t want chunks of garlic floating in it so the extra work is probably necessary.

I served my pork with some grilled whole red potatoes, gently smashed and covered in creme fraiche and fresh parsley. This pork would be excellent though with a bright citrusy salad, maybe something with black beans, or avocado. Maybe some grilled corn? My wheels are spinning already, and my mouth is watering!!!

Happy grilling y’all! It’s good to be back!