Maple Jack Pork Chops

Another new recipe this week. And it earned another permanent place in my cookbook!
How could it not, with an easy 5 ingredients, less than five hour cook time (in the crock pot), and one of those lovely just throw it all together and truly forget about it until dinnertime.

I especially like these 'half-day' crockpot recipes... quite often I forget or get a late start on getting a meal in the crock pot first thing in the morning. But then I'm always around at noon or early afternoon, and thats the kids' downtime in their rooms, which means I should always have time to prep a meal!

Anyway. These pork chops. Melt in your mouth. Mmmm, Mmmm. Really.

Want to try them?
All you need is a crockpot, a few pork chops, an onion, some dijon mustard and this:

Yes, really.

Maple Jack Pork Chops
(from Recipezaar)

4 thick-cut pork loin chops
1 sweet onion peeled and sliced
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup Jack Daniels whiskey
2 tbsp Dijon mustard

Place onion slices in the bottom of your slow cooker. In small bowl, whisk together the syrup, whiskey and mustard. Season pork chops with salt and pepper and then dip each chop into syrup mixture and place in slow cooker on top of the onions. Pour remaining syrup mixture over the pork chops. Cover and cook on LOW for 4-5 hours.

Orange Chicken

I made this "mock" Orange Chicken dish last week and it was delish!! I found the recipe on this recipe blog and it really was soooo yummy. We've had a hard time finding a consistently favorite chinese place around here and this is the perfect substitute. I think I liked this better than any orange chicken I've had from any Chinese place.

It was a tad time consuming, but really quite easy. Definitely not health food, but so yummy!

Orange Chicken
The Chicken:
3 lbs. Chicken, cut into bite size pieces
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 cup of cornstarch
4 eggs with a little milk
oil

Beat the 4 eggs together with a splash of milk. Mix the flour, cornstarch and garlic powder together. Heat some oil in a skillet. Dip the chicken pieces into the flour mixture, then the egg mixture, and then fry in hot oil until golden brown.
Place chicken in baking dish.

The Sauce:
1 1/4 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of ketchup
1/2 cup of water
2 tablespoons of soy sauce

Combine all ingredients for the sauce in saucepan and bring to boil over medium low heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved and ingredients are combined.
Pour sauce over chicken, and bake for 45 minutes or until chicken is thouroughly cooked through.

We served it over white rice of course, with brocolli.
Ryan and I both loved this recipe. Ryan wants to try it and tweak it to make a General Tsao's dish.
I thought the kids would love it since it since it's so sweet, but no. They still wanted nothing to do with "yucky chicken". That's okay... more for us!

Menu for September 22nd-28th

Monday: Maple Jack Pork Chops
Tuesday: Meatballs and Potatoes
Wednesday: Pizza
Thursday: Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad
Friday: Fajitas
Saturday: leftovers
Sunday: Grilled Salmon

Chili in the Crock

I was brainstorming for menu ideas this cool and dreary past Sunday and my husband chimed in that a big pot of chili for Monday night football would be perfect...
So chili it was!

I've never really made chili before. I know. One of the easiest dishes around and I've never even attempted it. I buy the Banquet Homestyle Bakes chili and cornbread in the box. I know, we're sad. But I just don't like chili. Actually, I've realized over the years, I do like chili, I just hate the beans. And I hate the hassle of picking them out of a good bowl of chili. So I decided to buckle down and find a good no-bean chili recipe to try out this week.

In my searching I made some discoveries...
Did you know that original, classic, true chili doesn't involve beans at all? A popular saying among self-proclaimed chili purists is "If you know beans about Chili, you know Chili ain't got no beans!". The thought that beans do not belong in chili may be further proven in the fact that most official chili cook-offs do not allow beans. In many cases the chili would be disqualified if it contained such ingredients considered "filler".
Chili is a Texas creation, a Texas invention, and a Texas tradition. It was created as a cheap food for cowboys, one that could easily be made while riding the hard trails, and that would also travel well. In other words, it was quick and easy to make, but could be made to serve lots of people over a long period of time. Following the herds across country, a group of cowboys could start a pot of chili, and continually add meat scraps and fat to the pot over the weeks as they traveled--and it only got better as the trail went on. Including beans in chili just wouldn't have happened as dry beans were heavy to travel with and involved a long soaking and cooking time.

So anyway, here was my first attempt at my own homemade "beanless" chili. I picked a simple yet interesting recipe off of Recipezaar and tweaked it just a little according to my pantry and our taste. The original recipe:

1 lb ground beef
1 pkg dry onion soup mix
2 tsp cocoa powder
2-3 tbsp chili powder
1 can tomato paste
1 can diet coke

cook on low at least 6 hours

I chose this recipe because a) it made a decently small amout... enough for 4-6 adults. I knew it would just be me and Ryan eating this and I didn't want to make a huge pot of chili for us to be eating on forever... especially if I didn't know it was a great recipe!
and b) the diet coke and the cocoa really caught my attention and intrigued me.
I love that these are ingredients I would pretty much always have on hand.

Alterations by me:
I didn't realize I didn't have any tomato paste on hand... I used tomato sauce instead
I added a can of diced basil garlic and oregano tomatoes
I added about a clove of chopped garlic and a sprinkle of onion powder

Verdict:
I thought it was really really yummy! Just the right amout of sweet and spicy. I was hesitant on the chili powder and only did about 2 tablespoons and I might go a little more on that next time. Also maybe add some real finely chopped onions. But the consistency was right on and I loved the flavor! Ryan really liked it too. I asked him if I should keep trying other chili recipes to find our favorite and he voted on keeping this one as the norm!
Of course the kids would have nothing to do with it... they pretty much only ate the accompianing corn bread!

Menu for Sept 15th-21st

Monday: Crockpot Chili
Tuesday: Tuna Noodle Casserole
Wednesday: Ravioli
Thursday: Orange Chicken
Friday: Meatballs and Potatoes
Saturday: Grilled Lemon Dill Salmon
Sunday: Leftovers

Berry Banana Mini-Muffins

Made these muffins last night in an ongoing effort to get Sawyer to eat something substantial for breakfast...
both kids gobbled down four of these mini muffins this morning!

They have a great fruity flavor and are so moist and tender. And it helps that I know there's antioxidants and fiber in every bite!!

Berry Banana Mini-Muffins
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 cup freshly shredded carrot
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup frozen wild blueberries

Lightly coat 48 mini-muffin cups with no-stick cooking spray (you can also make regular sized muffins, just bake about 5 minutes longer than called for); preheat oven to 400*.
In medium bowl combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
In second medium bowl combine eggs, bananas, carrot, buttermilk, honey and oil.
Make a well in the center of flour mixture. Pour in egg mixture and stir just until moistened. Batter will be lumpy.
Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling about 2/3 of the way.
Bake about 10 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool in muffin pans for 5 minutes.
Makes 4 dozen mini-muffins.
Yum!

French Dip Sandwiches... YUM!

I've been craving a good French Dip sandwich lately. I used to always order them in restaurants, but then I ran into a few too many blah ones and got tired of it. There's nothing like a really good perfectly tender juicy french dip sandwich though....
So when I found an easy yummy sounding recipe for it, I decided to try it. (First I found the recipe I wanted to try here, but ended up over here as in our house it's much more likely to find beer than a good red wine. hehe.)
So here's what we ended up with:

In the crock pot goes
1 can beef broth
1 can condensed french onion soup
dash of both garlic salt and onion powder
and 1 bottle (12 oz) of beer (I used an IPA because that's all we had in the house (well, that's not true-- we had plenty of light beers, but really I didn't need to be adding water to the broth!) but comments on the Allrecipe recipe mentioned the darker the beer the better)

Then I salt and peppered a 2+ lb sirloin tip roast and plunked that into the broth, turned the crock pot on low for 7 hours and that's it.
I had Ryan slice it up and put it back in the pot about 30 minutes before we ate to let the beef soak up more of the juices.
We piled the slices up in little french rolls, doled out the juice in individual ramekins, and French Dipped away!
It was really good. It may be just that I haven't had one of these sandwiches in so long, but I was quite impressed. I love easy recipes, I especially love easy crock pot recipes, and I loved this one! I will definitely be making this again!

Grilled Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin

Gotta love Aldi.
I personally love the premarinated pork loins you can get in the stores. A great base for some great recipes, but also yummy enough and easy enough to just cook it and eat it as is.
And when Aldi sells some great quality pork loins for about half the price of most grocery stores' sale prices... what is not to love about that??

We used a simple Teriyaki marinated tenderloin tonight and slapped it right out of the package onto the grill. Cooked up some asparagus next to it and we were good to go!
It was so moist and flavorful... didn't need any sauce or dips or anything. Unless you ask the kids of course and then I'm sure you'd be pouring on the ketchup right along side them...

Menu for September 1st- 7th

I'm back! I was so out of the loop of meal planning when Ryan and Sawyer were out of town... us girls just ate leftovers and whatever (cereal) while they were gone. Then even the week they returned I just couldn't get in gear with groceries and meals. Busy week.

But this week I'm back. I've been nicely on the ball with planning and prepping and even extra baking!

Here's our menu for the week:
Monday: grilled teriyaki pork loin
Tuesday: crock pot french dip sandwiches
Wednesday: pork chop stuffing bake
Thursday: fish cakes
Friday: BBQ chicken pizza
Saturday: grilled salmon
Sunday: ???