WITH YOUR WINE

Pot-roasted pork loin

Pork gets short shrift as a roast, which is too bad. It can produce wonderful results. Serve this to celebrate the last cold day of this unending winter, and a Texas wine like the Becker viognier would be a great pairing.

Serves 4-6, takes 3 to 3 1/2 hours

4 lb boneless pork loin

2 onions, sliced

2 Tbsp carraway seeds

3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

6 carrots

1/2 head cabbage, sliced

1 c mixed dried fruit

2-3 Tbsp red wine vinegar salt, pepper and red pepper to taste

1/4 tsp dried sage

2 bay leaves

1 bottle fruity red wine

Also may need: olive oil, rice or noodles

1. Preheat the oven to 325. Season the loin with salt and pepper, and brown on all sides in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large Dutch oven or oven-proof casserole dish. Remove the loin to a plate.

2. Sauté the onions in the Dutch oven until they start to brown. Add the garlic and carraway seeds, and cook for 30 or 40 seconds, until the garlic is fragrant.

3. Slice the carrots lengthwise to produce 3-inch sticks. Add the carrots, cabbage, dried fruit, sage, bay leaves, and salt and pepper, to taste, to the Dutch oven. Add the wine and red wine vinegar, and bring to a boil.

4.Add the loin (with any accumulated juices) to the Dutch oven. Cover and place in the oven for 2 1/2 hours. Check after an hour or so. Flip the roast and add liquid if it seems dry.

5.Remove the loin from the Dutch oven, and cook the liquid down for a few minutes if you want. Thinly slice the pork, and serve in a bowl with rice or noodles, the vegetables and dried fruit, and the liquid.

JEFF SIEGEL’SWEEKLYWINE REVIEWS appear every Wednesday on lakehighlands.advocatemag.com

AbbieChesney

An eating disorder is like a person. Like a deceitful, controlling, jealous, very bad best friend whose secret plan is suicide.

At least, that’s the way AbbieChesney talks about her disease.Chesney, 34, grew up in Lake Highlands and lives in Lakewood. Now she is a counselor specializing in eating disorders.

“I strongly believe the connection I have with my clients maintains because I have spent a lot of time in their shoes,” she says.

She knows what it’s like to be afraid of pain and failure. And she knows what it’s like to be afraid of eating.

Her struggle started as a middle school misfit, where she learned at the lunch table that eating less and being thin was “better”, so she challenged herself to eat less than her lunch mates.

She always judged thin, boyish figures to be “better”. In high school, she dated “the bad boy” just to fit in somewhere. And, as bad boys will, he took her virginity after much begging and then promptly dumped her.

She was devastated, full of guilt and self-loathing. So she tried drinking to numb the pain, but that didn’t catch on.

Soon, she found that if she didn’t eat, she thought about how hungry she was instead of how she felt about herself.

And by not eating, she got compliments for being enviably skinny.

“I was also doing what I learned at the lunch table every girl should want to do,” she says. “Every girl should want to lose weight. Smaller had to be better.” continued on page 30

Sometimes, she would eat enough so that people weren’t suspicious.

“Snuffers cheese fries were safe as long as it was a few bites,” she says.

That was at first, but the “rules” of her eating disorder kept changing.