Lemony Pork and Veggies

Well, it's been awhile.
I do have a few goodies I want to get caught up on and record here. Good dinners, yummy scones and sweet desserts.

First up, one of my old favorites that was resurrected (twice) in the past week. Everyone who's had this has loved this dish, I used to make it often for dinner guests. I was looking for an easy portable meal to make for friends last week and remembered this one. I made it for us again as well, because I couldn't resist! This pork just melts in your mouth and the slight lemony juice is just perfect on everything.
>I also always make my favorite beer bread along with this dinner!!

Lemony Pork & Veggies
2 lbs boneless pork shoulder
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 16 oz package peeled baby carrots*
8 oz parsnips, cut into 1/2 inch slices*
2 medium shallots, sliced thin
1 lemon, quartered
1/4 cup thinly sliced basil**
1 14oz can chicken broth
1 1/3 cups quick cooking couscous***

-In your slow cooker, place carrots, parsnips*, shallots, lemon quarters and basil**.

-Trim excess fat from pork and cut into 1-inch pieces. Combine flour and pepper in plastic ziplock bag and add the pork, closing and shaking to coat.
In large skillet brown half of the mean in 1 tbsp of the oil about 5 min, turning to brown evenly. Remove from skillet and repeat with remaining pork in remaining 1 tbsp oil.
Place pork on top of vegetables in slow cooker.













-Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours or high 3 1/2-4 hours.


-Discard lemon pieces. Use slotted spoon to remove pork and vegetables to a serving dish, cover dish to keep warm, reserving 1 3/4 cups of the cooking liquid in the slow cooker. Be sure cooker is turned on high and stir couscous into liquid. Cover and cook for 5 minutes more. Fluff couscous with a fork.***

Serve pork and vegetables over couscous.

*when I very first used this recipe, I couldn't find parsnips and instead came across a bag of prewashed and prepped mixed green beans and thin carrot sticks together. I used this and it was awesome. So now that's my go-to and if I can't find that bag in the veggie section at the store (not all stores carry it) I just grab a bag of green beans and then cut a few big carrots into matchsticks to add to it.

**I rarely have fresh basil on hand. Obviously dried basil flakes sub fine... I just sprinkle a bunch in over the veggies.

***I prepared this once as directed with the couscous and didn't really care for it. I normally just throw some brown rice in my rice cooker to be done at the same time as the pork and veggies and it goes wonderfully together. Serve the meat and veggies over the rice and drizzle with the cooking liquid.

overflowing

We had a busy week, followed by houseguests all weekend and I made a TON of food. Good food! I tried a few new recipes and they were all soooo good! I also made a few old regulars that we love and I realized that for some reason or not, they are not on this blog. I want to finally get them on here so I have access to them when I'm not at home. That's one of my favorite perks of this blog... I can get to all my favorite recipes wherever I am! That, and I don't have to email or write down recipes for people anymore... I can just direct them over here!

So. I have lots of recipes to get up on here and get caught up.
First I have to get these granola bars out of the way:
I've made these up quite a few times this winter, twice in the past week actually! The kids (usually) like them and since we no longer buy granola bars from the store (the peanut allergy) they've been happy to have granola bars again! These are a great filling snack or breakfast and you can doctor them up however you like. Thanks to Kim for the recipe!

Homemade Granola Bars
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (I usually use a bit less)
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup raisins (optional)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup honey
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350*. Generously grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.

In a large bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, wheat germ, cinnamon, flour, raisins and salt. Make a well in the center, and pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well using your hands (this is why Sawyer LOVES to make this recipe!).
Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bars begin to turn golden at the edges.

Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars while still warm. Do not allow the bars to cool completely before cutting, or they will be too hard to cut.

I always use a smaller pan... 7x11 or even 7x9x2... it makes for softer, chewier bars.
You can add whatever you like... I was out of raisins earlier this week so I just made them plain. I've also done plain with chocolate chips for a treat. This past weekend I did raisins and dried apples. Yum!

These were tried by four different people in and out of our house this past week and all gave rave reviews... they really are about the yummiest granola bars I ever expect to have!

Mmmm... fried food

I made an awesome impromptu dinner last night, if I do say so myself. We were off on our "menu plan" and I had nothing prepared or in mind. We did however, have an old(er) single piece of steak in the freezer and a ton of giant onions sitting in the pantry. Onions that are just begging to be made into onion rings. So I searched the internet for some good ideas and a great onion ring recipe. Boy did I luck out and find a great one!

First I thawed the steak, cubed it up and coated them to make steak "bites".
Here's how:
I mixed up 1 egg and a quarter cup of milk in a small bowl and let the steak bites soak for a mintue while I combined 1 cup of flour, 1 tsp of steak seasoning, some extra garlic powder and a little bit of cayenne in a gallon ziplock bag. I took the steak from the egg dip and put the pieces in the bag, sealed it up and shook to coat them all. Ryan fried them in the deep fryer. You can of course, just fry these in oil on the stove. The FryDaddy is sooo easy though! I think they fried for about 5 minutes in two batches.

Meanwhile, I went to work on the onion rings. I used this recipe and here's my low fuss process...
Put the 1 1/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt into a ziplock bag. I made nice big thick slices from our giant onion and threw them in the bag to coat. Then you fished them out and put them aside on a plate while you add 1 egg and 1 cup of milk to the ziplock bag. Seal it up and mash it all around good, mixing the milk/egg and flour mixture till it's a smooth batter. Then put the onions back in and work around with your hands to coat. Remove the onion rings and place on a rack over the sink or a baking pan and let the excess batter drip off of the rings. Put about a cup of breadcrumbs (I only had italian seasoned breadcrumbs handy) in a shallow dish and when the onion rings have stopped dripping, place them one at a time in the bread crumbs to coat. Then fry 'em up, just about a minute and a half on each side.

These are sooo good. Very simple flavor, but they are really so good! I might play around with it a bit next time because I have a Garlic Parmesan seasoning I thought may be really good with these, but honestly they are perfectly good on their own. I'm excited for this summer, because I'm predicting these will be a huge hit at our barbeques this summer.
I'm thinking I can make up a good batch somewhat ahead of time, have them battered and coated and ready to just have Ryan man the fryer when we're ready to eat!

Anyway, we enjoyed these steak bites, fabulous onion rings and a great big salad last night for dinner. Sawyer scarfed down the onion rings; I think he probably had close to a dozen rings! He loved 'em! I did too. I had to make myself stop. Luckily I only made one onion. Mind you, it was a HUGE onion, but at least the pile didn't go on and on like it could have, had I sliced up another. Try them!

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

Easy crock pot comfort food recipe.
I got this from a crockpot cookbook I have, from the section of five ingredient dinners. I've tweaked it quite a bit to make it feel more "homemade"...

original ingredient list:
2 cups cooked, cubed chicken
2 cans condensed creamy chicken mushroom soup
1 10 oz package frozen mixed vegetables
1 tsp seasoned pepper or garlic pepper seasoning
1 1/2 cups dry egg noodles

my recipe:
2 cups cooked, cubed chicken
2 cans cream of chicken soup
I skip the frozen veggies and slice/chop up onion, carrots and celery
I also add way more than 1 tsp of seasonings.... usually salt, pepper and garlic powder. Plenty of it.

Stir 5 cups of water into the cans of soup in your slow cooker. Whisk until smooth.
Stir in chicken, vegetables and seasoned pepper.
Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hrs or high for 3-4 (lower for longer is preferred for soup!).
Stir in noodles for last 20-30 minutes of cooking (if using low setting, turn to high-heat setting). Cook until noodles are tender.

Like most soups, this is much much better days after preparing!

The kids like this too!

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!

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...

Barbecue Chicken Pizza

I've been wanting to make this up for awhile now. My sister-in-law had a great recipe for a barbecue chicken pizza and even though I'm not a fan of barbecue, I don't love chicken, and I usually avoid "gourmet" pizzas and prefer plain old tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni... she made us this pizza often and we really liked it.
I've searched online for her recipe, knowing basically what was in it, but I never found THE one. I'm hesitant to try any other one for fear that I just won't like it as much. And you know how when you have a craving for just the right thing?
Last time I checked, she couldn't find her recipe, but she did rattle off the ingredients to me. So I decided to finally give it a go. It turned out pretty decent and it's soooo easy, I had to share it here.

Here's what I did:
We grilled chicken breasts the other night, so I had Ryan grill up a couple of extra to save for the pizza. Two big breasts were plenty for us.
I shredded the chicken and stirred it into about 1 cup of barbecue sauce. You can obviously use whatever kind is your favorite; I used Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce.
Then I mixed up the pizza crust (I have a really good pizza crust recipe I should post here sometime, but last night I was lazy and just used two boxes of Jiffy), baked just the crust for a few minutes, and then spread a thin layer of more bbq sauce over the crust as you would the tomato sauce.Next over the bbq sauce, I sprinkled just a bit of mozzarella cheese. Then I spread out the bbq chicken, sprinkled with red onions, covered with more cheese and topped with some chopped parsley and basil.That's it.
My SIL's recipe also called for cilantro and peppercinis, but I didn't have those on hand so I winged it. You can really, as with any pizza, put on whatever you think sounds good.
I baked (according to the pizza crust directions) for 18 minutes at 425* and our yummy pizza was ready to slice up and eat.

Ryan and I really liked it (though it's not quite as yummy as I remember yours Holly!), Sawyer had a few bites (and I think actually liked it, if it weren't for wanting to get down and follow his big sister), and as usual Savannah turned up her nose at it.
It's so easy, and yummy, I'm sure I'll be serving this up more often!

Fajitas

Ryan makes this meal and I love it! He slices up some red and green peppers, some onion, and sautees them in some oil. Then he adds some sliced beef and browns that up. When the meat is done, he adds a packet of fajita seasoning mix, simmers for a minute and we're ready for fajitas!! Just dish it up in a tortilla with cheese, tomato, salsa, guacamole... whatever you like. I usually serve this with some spanish rice.

For the kids (my kids hate things combined like tacos and fajitas), I put it all in separate little piles on their plates. With corn chips and guacamole for Sawyer (he won't eat tortillas) instead of tortillas and cheese, a couple pieces of the seasoned beef cut into bites, a pile of raw sliced peppers, and some sliced peaches, and they were good to go. They actually both ate well... Sawyer ate everything but the peppers and Savannah finished off her whole plate!

Cheesy Tuna Noodle

Hold on to your hats, the kids ate a meal!
Well, that may have something to do with the fact that it's little more than they're stand-by of mac and cheese, but still... they ate it! With a little extra protein!!

Here's my super quick, super not-good-for-you, Cheesy Tuna Noodle Casserole:
2 boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, prepared
2 cans of Cream of Mushroom Soup
2 cans of tuna, drained
mix together
ta-da!

This is one of my favorites. Don't ask me why. And I'm not a big leftover fan, but I will eat this every day warmed over out of the fridge until it's gone.

Homemade Applesauce

*Edited to Add* Sawyer loved it! He ate a whole big bowl at dinner and asked for more.

I love homemade applesauce. I love anything baked with apples, but that's beside the point!

Here's my favorite Crockpot Applesauce recipe:
8-10 apples, peeled, quartered, cored, and sliced through food processor
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Put water and apples in slow cooker on low for 6-8 hours.
Add brown sugar and cinnamon and cook for 30 minutes longer.
Simple as that.
Yummy.

Here's also another version I have sitting in my cookbook along side this one. I have never tried it because I love the basic version so much, but doesn't this sound good??...
Caramel Applesauce
31/2 lbs of Granny Smith Apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 jar of caramel topping sauce
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp cinnamon
Cook at on low for 8 hours.

catch up

or ketchup... which happens to be Sawyer's favorite food right now. Today he dipped not only his fishsticks, but his mixed vegetables (the peas carrots and corn) and his apples as well.

Okay, first here are a few meals we've had in the past week or two... and surprisingly my kids are actually eating!!

Tonight we had Creamy Cheesy Chicken Alfredo with honey butter peas and bread and butter.

Savannah loved it, can you tell? (note that is a cheese mustache, not a milk mustache!)
I loved it because it was THE simplest and best meal I've made in awhile.


Last week another successful dinner was a Garlic and Herb pork loin with asparagus and mandarin oranges. Once again, the kids both actually ate it!

And this past weekend we had the best meal the kids have eaten in I can't remember how long... Toasted Ravioli (I think that's a St. Louis thing, as I've never seen them outside of STL and Ryan was sooo excited to be back here and able to buy it!). The kids each had four or five raviolis on their plates and a dish of marinara sauce and they went to town! We had salad along with it and Sawyer actually at that for the first time!

Apparently my kids like food better in Missouri!