i cooked. alert the media.

Once a quarter, my cousins and our significant others gather for dinner at one couple’s house. This weekend was my turn.

In celebration/mourning of the end of summer, I went with a Caribbean theme. I was married in Jamaica—have I told you that? I will sometime—so I’m a big fan of jerk-flavored foods and general tropical fare. I’m also a huge fan of anything I can make in the crock pot. So the menu was this:

Jerk pulled pork with avocado mango salsa and/or red cabbage slaw (served with King’s Sweet Rolls)
Chicken pineapple skewers
Esquites (Mexican corn salad)
Caribbean sweet potato salad

Everything was bangin’, if I do say so myself. If I’ve got a recipe and a crock pot, I’m golden. Bonus: these dishes were all able to be prepped in advance, so I wasn’t running around the kitchen like a nut once my guests arrived!

Here are the recipes:

I, of course, added some of my own hacks to make things easier:

I didn’t actually make the salsa for the pork. I purchased store-bought fresh mango salsa and just added my own avocado.
My grocery store didn’t sell the “fancy” purple cole slaw, so I purchased store-bought and just mixed in some red cabbage.