Michelle, at Thursday Night Smackdown threw a smackdown challenge: Pick a recipe or technique you’ve never tried before, and do it. Christey and I took the challenge to another level, and switched roles. She cooked, and I shot the pictures.(Snarky comments in italics are Christey’s)

Christey cooked 40 clove garlic chicken (yes, 40 cloves of garlic), with a side of fettuccine carbonara. I struggled with a macro lens and had to have my white-balance and strobes set up for me (and film speed, shutter speed, and fstop, but who’s counting ). Between the two of us, we created this:

Garlic and bacon, what’s not to like?

This is a pork-only weekend. We haven’t posted any food in a week, life and work getting in the way. So I wanted to do as much as I could over the weekend, and if we’re doing a double header, why not concentrate on pork?

I have wanted to do a pork loin dish for a while, and there are a lot of marinades using Coke and fruit juices, but Christey found an espresso maker at a garage sale for $2, so why not inaugurate that? After sterilizing and de-calcifying, I figured it was a good chance to break it in.

I made an espresso-pineapple marinated pork-loin, with grilled pineapple and an espresso-pineapple-cream sauce. Bitter, sweet, pork, and cream. Oh yeah, there’s bacon, too.

Here, piggy piggy piggy