My bread-baking is improving again. My latest loaf, from a few days ago, looks pretty good:
...at least, until you see the bottom 
...
Still, it's better than its predecessor. I used the screen you see in the top picture and no cast iron. It still got a bit too warm on the bottom. Next try I'll use the middle oven rack. The crumb shot will be at the end.
During our last trip to town, we succumbed to the promise of this label:
As we suspected, it was a "t" and not a comma that was missing. 
The label looks messy because the butcher was good enough to split a package and wrap the halves separately for us. A 3-pound roast is as much as we care to cook at once.
We wanted a pork roast for cool-weather cooking and to use some of the sauerkraut I made last fall. 5 of these 1-quart containers take up a lot of fridge space!
This is usually a slow-cooker recipe for us. Since we're on generator power only, we opted for the oven. Here's the roast, sprinkled generously with cumin and nestled in its bed of potatoes, carrots and onions, just before going in for a low and slow oven cook.
When the potatoes were soft and the roast was nearly done (somewhere around 160 - 165F), we added the kraut and let it come up to temperature.
We think this also helps slow the temperature rise of the meat and holds it at that magic collegen-stall temperature a bit longer, but don't have rigorous tests to prove it. We do know that if the kraut goes in too soon it's difficult to get the spuds cooked.
This is a different form of simple cooking altogether than the hash and microwaved asparagus, and we don't find it compatible with troubleshooting mechanical problems - but when it comes together, we're happy. The leftovers make us doubly so.
