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.

one pot meals

I have a few new recipes we've tried lately that we were impressed with and I need to get caught up and get them written down here.
I'm always looking these days for recipes to help me use up random odds and ends from my produce co-op, and have found a few to be especially yummy (and easy!). I linked to them previously, but have learned from past experience that links sometimes go away... I think I can always go back to that recipe, wherever I found it, but one day -poof- I find it's gone! So I'm transposing them here for future reference and safe(r)-keeping.

Here are just a couple:

Garlic Potatoes and Ham

• 8 small red potatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 (16 ounce) package frozen chopped broccoli, partially thawed
• 1 cup cubed fully cooked ham
• 1 (1 ounce) package herb and garlic soup mix*

In a large skillet, cook potatoes in oil over medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Stir in broccoli, ham and dry soup mix. Reduce heat; cover and cook for 25 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

*Lipton has a great mix called Recipe Secrets Savory Herb with Garlic soup mix, which is what this recipe was written for. I simply used what I had on hand- regular Onion Soup mix- and it was still yummy. I am going to keep my eye out for the herb and garlic one though...

The kids ate this one, veggies and all!

Teriyaki Pork and Sweet Potatoes

2 md Sweet potatoes, peeled, cut
- in 3/4-inch cubes (3 cups) 1 T Oil
1 lb Boneless pork loin, cut in
- 3/4-inch cubes (3 cups) 2 c Green beans or peas
1/2 c Bottled Teriyaki glaze
1 t Grated orange peel

1. In large skillet, combine sweet potatoes and 1/2 c water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and cook 8 to 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Drain and remove
potatoes from skillet; cover to keep warm.
2. Wipe skillet with paper towels. Heat oil in same skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add pork; cook and stir until browned.
3. Add green beans or peas and teriyaki glaze; mix well. Reduce heat to medium; cover and cook 8 to 10 minutes or until pork is no longer pink, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir in potatoes and orange peel; cook an additional 1 to 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated.



Beef Stroganoff

• 6 Tbsp butter
• 1 pound of top sirloin or tenderloin, cut thin into 1-inch wide by 2 1/2-inch long strips
• 1/3 cup chopped shallots (can substitute onions)
• 1/2 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of dry tarragon or 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh tarragon
• 1 cup of sour cream at room temperature

1 Melt 3 Tbsp of butter in a large skillet on medium heat. Increase the heat to high/med-high and add the strips of beef. You want to cook the beef quickly, browning on each side, so the temp needs to be high enough to brown the beef, but not so high as to burn the butter. You may need to work in batches. While cooking the beef, sprinkle with some salt and pepper. When both sides are browned, remove the beef to a bowl and set aside.

2 In the same pan, reduce the heat to medium and add the shallots. Cook the shallots for a minute or two, allowing them to soak up any meat drippings. Remove the shallots to the same bowl as the meat and set aside.

3 In the same pan, melt another 3 Tbsp of butter. Increase heat to medium high and add the mushrooms. Cook, stirring occasionally for about 4 minutes. While cooking, sprinkle the nutmeg and the tarragon on the mushrooms.

4 Reduce the heat to low and add the sour cream to the mushrooms. You may want to add a tablespoon or two of water to thin the sauce (or not). Mix in the sour cream thoroughly. Do not let it come to a simmer or boil or the sour cream will curdle. Stir in the beef and shallots. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately over egg noodles, fettucine, potatoes, or rice. (Potatoes, rice, and wheat-free pasta are wheat-free options.)

Serves 4.

This one was reeeeally good. I love a good stroganoff and this is a great one. The kids didn't go for it, but Ryan and I fought over the leftovers...

Pulled Pork

We've been using this recipe regularly for going on a year and we're not even close to tired of it yet. It was our go-to company meal over the summer and it's not turned into that even this winter. It's perfect for a big group or just when you want a really really yummy really easy meal.
I originally found this super easy tasty method on this food blog.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork
Here's all you need to get started:

a packet of chili seasoning mix
and a pork butt (or shoulder, but pork butt is more fun to talk about!)

Then all you have to do is rub your butt (see? told you it was more fun to talk about). Just take the seasoning packet and rub it all over, around and into your butt. The pork butt that is.
Then just stick the pork into your crockpot, turn it on low and leave it for 6-8 hours or all day long.

About 2 hours before you want to eat the pork, pull it out of the slow cooker and pull it all apart with two forks. Or your hands... once it cools a little, I find it easier with my hands. Once it's all pulled and shredded, throw it all back in the slow cooker (drain all the fatty juice) and pour a big bottle of your favorite bbq sauce all over it. Stir it up, put the lid back on and leave it for another hour or two. The longer the better, but I never can wait it smells so good!

Then just serve it up on some buns and a nice big salad... we love it with corn on the cob in the summer, or maybe some fresh seasoned green beans. Any of those summery bbq feeling foods!

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.

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...

Saucy Pork Chops

I randomly found a few versions of this recipe online trying to come up with some new ideas for the pork chops I had in the fridge yesterday. I decided to throw this together and it was so simple I couldn't believe how much I liked it!

I mixed up 3/4 cup of ketchup, 1/4 cup of barbeque sauce and 1 cup of diet Coke. Yep, that's it!
The usual recipe for this I believe called for just a cup of ketchup, but I wanted a little more tang to it and I was planning to use Diet Coke (instead of regular Coke), so I thought using a little bbq sauce with the ketchup would tone down the sweetness with just a bit of kick.
I stirred it together, salt and peppered four thin pork chops, placed them in a baking dish and poured the sauce over the top. I then sprinkled just a tad of brown sugar over each chop.
I covered the dish in foil and baked at 350* for about 45 minutes and then uncovered and baked for another 15... or until we were ready to eat.

I thought the sauce was pretty yummy and (was it the Coke?) it came out soooo tender!
We served it up with some steamed broccoli and baked potatoes. And applesauce of course.
Pork Shopshhhh and Appleshaushhh... anyone know what that's from? I have that running through my head any time we eat pork chops :)

Anyway, we grown ups ate our fill... the kids pretty much just ate applesauce. Savannah said the pork was "disgusting" and at least ate most of her potato and broccoli. Sawyer not so much.

New Years Day Dinner

Each year we have a big New Years Day Dinner Celebration with as many friends as we can gather. Also each year we try to create a menu of lucky foods full of good wishes for our friends for the coming year. There are many traditional and symbolic foods to celebrate the fresh start of a new year!

Here’s to a very Happy New Year… or at the very least a happy belly!
Our Menu this year:

Shrimp Martinis
(original recipe here, we just hang plain shrimp around the rim of a martini glass filled with cocktail sauce)
seafood stands for good luck and shrimp specifically signify long life and a year filled with laughter

Vegetables with Arugula Broth
(recipe here)
green foods like arugula and spinach mark growth and wealth
Cooked greens, including cabbage, collards, kale, and chard, are consumed at New Year's in different countries for a simple reason — their green leaves look like folded money, and are thus symbolic of economic fortune. It's widely believed that the more greens one eats the larger one's fortune next year.

Grilled Pork Chops with Creamy Mashed Potatoes
(recipe here and I did these amazingly delicious make ahead potatoes found here)
pork is considered good luck and symbolizes progress or "moving forward" since the animal pushes forward, rooting itself in the ground before moving. Also, traditionally, a family that owned a pig would be eating "high on the hog" for the whole year; thanks to its rich fat content, it signifies wealth and prosperity.

Honey Sweet Peas
Cornbread
the saying in the south goes "peas for pennies, greens for dollars, cornbread for gold"

*Sweets in general symbolize a “sweet year” and plenty of good fortune
Here are the desserts and extra wishes we had on our table*

Champaign Shooters
Champaign (just to celebrate!) poured over Lime sorbet which symbolizes a prosperous new beginning

Gingersnaps
(recipe here)
ginger reprsents a sharp mind and intelligence and cookies mean sweetness of nature and a good disposition

Chocolate Eclair Cake
(recipe here)
pudding is symbolic of the sweetness of life

Orange, Peanut and Red Candy Plates
oranges represent gold and wealth, peanuts are for the hope and luck for the birth of children in the coming year, and red candies traditionally stand for good health and good luck.

you should try these

a couple of catch-up recipes from last week:

Wednesday we had
Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin with Apple Glaze

Ingredients
-		1 HORMEL® ALWAYS TENDER® Teriyaki Flavored Pork Tenderloin (17 oz.)
-		2 tablespoons butter
-		1 cup apple juice

Directions
Preheat oven to 425ºF. Remove tenderloin from package. Place butter in an ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. When butter foams, add the tenderloin and brown it well on all sides (about 3 minutes per side). Remove tenderloin from the skillet and whisk in apple juice, stirring up browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Return tenderloin to skillet and baste with juices. Place skillet in oven and roast meat, turning every 5 minutes and until internal temperature reaches 155ºF (about 20 minutes). Remove skillet from oven and allow tenderloin to rest for 5 minutes. Slice tenderloin into ½-inch medallions and place on a serving platter. Before serving, drizzle medallions with remaining glaze.

We serve this over our favorite brown rice.
I love this dish.
Savannah even finished hers without complaining.... so you know it's okay!

Later in the week, I was going to make Beef Stroganoff, but Ryan was complaining he wasn't in the mood for more pasta. I came across this recipe I had floating around in my recipe book so I decided to give it a spin:

Beef Stoganoff Pot Pie
1 pkg Pillsbury Pie Crusts, softened as directed on package
1 lb extra-lean ground beef (I used the beef I had for the noodley stroganoff... cubed sirloin, probably just over a pound)
1 cup chopped onions
1 garlic clove minced
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1 cup chopped parsley
1/2 tsp pepper
2 eggs
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
4.5 oz sliced mushrooms
1 egg white, slightly beaten

1. prepare pie crust as directed on package for two-crust pie using 9" glass pie pan.
2. Heat oven to 375*. In large skillet, cook ground beef (or beef cubes!), onion and garlic over med-high heat until beef is browned and cooked through. Drain. Stir in all remaining ingredients except egg white; mix well. Pour into crust-lined pan.
3. Unfold second crust. Cut out shapes or vents in several places. Place crust over filling; flute edge. Brush with beaten egg white.
4. Bake at 375* for 45 to 55 minutes or until crust is deep golden brown If necessary, cover edge of pie crust with strips of foil after 15-20 minutes of baking to prevent excessive browning. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

It's definitely not low-cal, but it was really yummy! Savannah helped me bake it all, but she wasn't too interested in eating the "meat pie". It's a nice warm, homey, meal for grey days!

Pork Chop and Stuffing Casserole

This is one of my favorite comfort foods. Super simple recipe I learned from an old friend...
Brown your pork chops in skillet with oil.
Place in baking dish.
Cover with prepared box of Stove Top Stuffing.
Cover all with 1 can of Cream of Mushroom Soup.
Bake, covered, for 30-40 minutes.
Easy as that.

My kids LOVE stuffing, so they devoured that part and maybe got a bite or two of the pork in with it. Overall, something I'll probably make often, as it's one of my all time classic favorites.

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!

Pork Tenderloin on the Grill

I simply bought an already marinated tenderloin and the man of the house grilled it up for me, along with some asparagus I cut and seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Both the kids used to eat pork like this, but with their newfound pickyness, neither of them even touched it. In fact the only thing Savannah ate was mandarin oranges, and Sawyer left his plate full as well, only minus a handfull of green beans (offered along with the asparagus because I know he hates the asparagus).

As for the adults... it was very delicious and I love how easy the meal was!!