The Impromptu Pork Roast

The voice mail was short: I’m having an impromptu dinner party tomorrow – check your e-mail. A minor windfall and a very generous nature prompted my friend to invite a small group of us to a roast pork dinner. Dinnertime is always more eagerly anticipated with the knowledge that someone else is cooking.
In recent years October had tenaciously held on to late summer temperatures, but that day Fall was making its presence known early, the way it did in memories of my childhood. So much so that the maples were showing spectacular oranges and yellows, and the euonymous were demonstrating why they are also known as the “burning bush”, ablaze in vivid shades of red.
The apartment was in an old art-deco building, and the old wood floors and plaster walls recalled memories of the house where my father grew up. I wandered into the kitchen, half expecting to find it equipped with the ancient appliances that graced my grandparents’ home, and almost disappointed it wasn’t.
A scent can transport us decades away in a breath, and mingled with the roasting pork resting on its bed of sauerkraut was…tobacco. Taboo these days (with good reason, dear friend) my grandfather smoked cigars and a pipe (and lived into his nineties). His pipe rests in my top dresser drawer, the bowl charred, still fragrant twenty years later.
While my family preferred braised red cabbage to accompany our Sunday pot roast, the cabbage of choice with my friend’s family was sauerkraut. I never thought sauerkraut, with the simple addition of a grated potato and an apple, mingling with the juices from the pork shoulder slowly roasting above, could be transformed into something positively superb.
That evening we shared the good company of friends, conversation, and of course an outstanding meal. I also enjoyed a generous helping of nostalgia. Parting ways much later that evening, we agreed that if we had tried to plan a dinner party, it was unlikely we’d have found one mutually convenient date; yet here we were. Walking to my car I gave a salute to the Impromptu Pork Roast.