Cooking:Baked Pork Chops, Mashed Potatoes, Oven Rice Pudding

This week I will go into more detail about the meal I presented last week:

Oven Baked Pork Chops
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Apple Slices
Frozen Peas
Oven Rice Pudding

This meal led to lots of fun stuff in the kitchen and full bellies all week!
So, let's get started.



Oven Baked Pork Chops

>pork chops, enough for a meal, plus extras for cascading>
seasoning salt


Sprinkle both sides of each pork chop with seasoning salt, lay pork chops out on a pan (with a rim to catch juice) cover the pan loosely with foil and bake at 350 degrees for an hour.

 That's it.  They turned out moist and really tender.



Garlic Mashed Potatoes

8 medium sized potatoes, washed and cubed (I leave the skins on)>
water
4-6 garlic cloves pressed or finely chopped
1/4 cup butter
milk
salt and pepper to taste

Put potatoes in a pot with room.  Add water to cover potatoes, plus one inch. Bring to boil.  Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.  Add garlic, simmer 10 minutes more, stirring occasionally.  Test potatoes for doneness, by poking them with a fork. The fork should easily sink into the potato. Test several potatoes. When they are soft drain them, retain a little potato water in the bottom of the pot. Return potatoes to the pot. Mash them with the potato masher. Add butter and stir into hot potatoes until melted. Add milk in small amounts until the potatoes are the consistency you like. Add salt and pepper to taste.



Oven Rice Pudding

>1 1/2 cups leftover rice (can be frozen)
1/2 cup raisins
3 cups water (divided)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 
1/2 cup sugar  
 2 eggs
1 cup powdered milk


Mix rice, raisins, 2 cups of the water, cinnamon, and sugar in a two quart casserole dish with lid.  Bake, covered  at 350 for 1 1/2 hours. Mix 1 cup water, eggs and the powdered milk in a measuring cup. One hour into baking stir into pudding and finish baking.
Bakes to a bread pudding consistency.




Cascade Factors:

Pork Chops- The leftover pork can be used in a many ways. I cut it into thin pieces and made pork lo mein with leftover spaghetti and vegetables,including leftover peas. The kids ate that heartily but left a bunch of veggies in the pan. I used those the next morning to make a frittata. Only half of the frittata got eaten so I put a little cheese on it and ate it as a breakfast burrito the next morning! Meanwhile that was only part of the meat, the rest I cubed and froze on a plate for an hour before transferring it to a freezer bag so it can be added quickly to stirfry or ramen. The juices from the pan I mixed into the potato soup I made with the leftover mashed potatoes. That is what I did, but you could also use the pork to make stir fry, barbeque sandwiches, etc.

Potato Skins-  If you don't like skin pieces in your mashed potatoes, you can peel them. If you peel them thickly you can use them as a potato skin snack or side dish. If you have chickens, you can boil the skins separately and feed them to "the ladies" as they are called around here. My chickens love them, but chickens can't (won't) eat raw potato. 

Mashed Potatoes- I use these to make potato soup, or croquettes. They freeze well for these purposes (they are not so appetizing as mashed potatoes when thawed).  Of course if I have time for soup they don't usually make it to the freezer.

Rice Pudding-  The leftover rice pudding gets a little stiff. I thin it with a little milk in a bowl, warm it in the microwave and eat it for breakfast.




That is the cascade for this week. Let me know what you think. Future posts could get into more detail about the cascades used here or I could start with a new meal.



Thoughtful cooking,

Kristin