I follow recipes less and less. Sometimes, I just make shit up. Somewhere in there is a metaphor for life, but I haven’t had enough coffee yet to suss it out.

Now, the shit that I make up isn’t revolutionary. The recipe you’re about to read does not comprise instructions to make “cabbage foam” or “pork napoleons smeared in civet shit confit” or anything. It’s simple, and in some ways obvious, but hell with it. It was delicious, so let me tell you about it.

Get yourself some pork tenderloin. Two of ‘em, since you can use the other one for later. On the small-to-medium size. Really, though, any pork roast will work in this regard.

Put them in a crockpot. Into the crockpot also goes:

About 1 cup of cider vinegar

About 2 TBsp of Worcestershire sauce

Two smashed cloves of garlic

Then season the pork: salt, pepper, a little rosemary, a little thyme

Crockpot goes on high for about six hours.

Then go and, y’know, do something. Write bad poetry. Take a jog. Punish the wicked. Fiddle with your balls. Whatever.

Come back five hours later.

Get out one head of cabbage and a bundle of four leeks.

Cabbages can be a whore to cut, so if you have a cleaver, use that. Bisect it, and slice out the thick core, and remove the outer green leaves. Slice half the cabbage like you would for slaw or sauerkraut. “Slaw that bitch up,” my uncle used to say. Except, he didn’t. I’m lying. Save the unslawed half for some other day.

Chop the leeks into rings — just the whites, not the green stems. Also, it’ll need to be washed, as leeks are filthy little sluts. You can’t just wash the outside, though, because the dirt gets all up in there. Like herpes, or tapeworms. Cut the rings, put the rings in a big bowl of water. They’ll float. Pull them apart and wash them with your fingers; the dirt and silt will sink, so rescue the now-clean leek rings from the water with a slotted spoon. You can pretend you’re Frodo, rescuing the One Leek Ring — and when you toss it into the pan, you’re destroying it in the name of the Shire. Whatever.

Getcherself a big-ass sautee pan.

In that pan, heat 2TBSP olive oil. Toss in the leeks to soften, five minutes, over med-low heat (“sweat” them like you would a “perp”). Then, atop it goes the cabbage. Then, atop the cabbage, literally just drizzle a little water (a tsp or two) atop it. Then, atop all that, cut up 3 TBsp of butter into little hunks and spread it around. Finally: salt, pepper.

Head over medium. Cover that bitch for 10 minutes.

It’ll get all steamy. All sexy-like. Mmm. Sexy cabbage. That was actually my nickname at Space Camp. “Sexy Cabbage,” they’d say, “take your crazy ass into the centrifugal force machine.”

Ten minutes goes by, then you take the lid off.

Toss it around. Mix it up. Keep the heat on medium. And let it go for another 10-15 minutes. Don’t let it brown. Keep mixing it up.

Okay, back to the porky goodness.

Out of the crockpot, it goes — slap it down on your cutting board or kitchen floor or wherever it is that you animals do your prep.

Shred it. You don’t need to go crazy, just pull it apart.

Do not — I repeat, do not — throw away the delicious porky-vinegary broth that lurks in the crockpot. If you do, you will have fucked this whole thing up, and your family will hate you. Your wife will leave you. Your kids will leave turds in your sock drawers. This is true.

So, here’s how the final phase of dinner construction goes: pile up some of your cabbage-leek sautee onto a plate. Make a nest out of it, like for a bird. Then, grab some of that pulled pork, and the pulled pork will become your bird. Nest the pork into the delicious cabbage.

Then, scoop some of that awesome crockpot broth atop the whole thing.

After that, start eating. Eat until your belly bloats.

As a companion, I also roasted some okra (toss okra in olive oil and salt in a pan, oven at 400, roast them whole for 25 minutes) to go with it. Roasting okra diminishes the slime effect.

That’s it. That’s the recipe. Go and do likewise, peeps.