Photo #29

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

Thoughtfully,

Kristin

Photo #28

I missed Thursday's update, so here's your waterfall a day late:

I hope to get a few quick things up this weekend and next week talk abut homemade laundry soap!

Thoughtfully,
Kristin

Photo #27

Here's a picture from a land far away from here:  Croatia

 I loved my trip to Croatia. If you love waterfalls it is definitely worth a look!



I hope you have a lovely day.

Thoughtfully,
Kristin

Pork Loin Chronicles Volume 4

Now I will try to show the breakdown of how to make these dishes into a cooking cascade. In these instructions I will be assuming that you have a nearly 10 pound pork loin and want to make the same dishes I did.

Day 1: Take your thawed pork loin and cut it in half. Put one half back into the fridge, covered.  Cut the remaining half in half again. Prepare both halves in the dutch oven and roast.  One roast is served as roast pork today. The other half is sliced and marinated in barbecue sauce and put back in the fridge. Leftover plain roast can be added to the bbq pot if desired.

Day 2: Retrieve the marinating barbequed roast pork. Prepare bbq pork and bake. Take the raw refrigerated half of the pork loin and slice off 1/3 (about a pound and a half). Put the remaining 2/3rds back under cover and refrigerate. Take the pound and a half chunk and slice it into 2 or 3 strips about an inch and a half thick. Make the marinade. Marinade the pork strips in a covered dish or freezer bag. Place it back into the fridge until tomorrow. Enjoy barbeque pork sandwiches today and Chinese barbecue pork tomorrow.

Day 3: Take the marinating pork out of the fridge. Prepare Chinese Barbecue Pork according to the recipe.  While that is baking take the last of the raw pork and cut it into bite sized pieces. Follow the Slow Cooker Pork Green Chili recipe up to the step where it tells you to transfer the meat into the crock pot. Instead let it cool somewhat and return it to the refrigerator. Have Chinese bbq pork today!

Day 4: Finish the Slow Cooker Pork Green Chili recipe where it left off.  This is the biggest meal and it reheats well.

There you have it. Four days of different main dishes all from the same pork loin. The leftovers from these kept us fed for the rest of the week around here.

I hope you have a lovely evening,
Kristin

Pork Loin Chronicles Volume 3

I still had about 3 1/2 pounds of pork loin left.  What do I do with that? My friend Jinger Burton had just posted an amazing slow cooker recipe for Pork Green Chili that she said I could share with you. I tried the recipe on Saturday and my house did smell divine.

Slow Cooker Pork Chile Verde
Ingredients:
3 TB olive oil
1 medium to large onion - chopped
4 cloves garlic - minced
4 pounds boneless pork, trimmed and cut into bite size chunks
½ - 1 tsp EACH: salt, pepper, cumin
1 C tomatillos, husked removed and coarsely chopped
28 oz green enchilada sauce (or for homemade green chile sauce use fresh roasted green chiles that have been peeled, seeded, and pureed with ½ C water, 1 TB vinegar, & salt until smooth)
4 oz can diced green chiles (if using the enchilada sauce)
2 chopped fresh jalapeños (or to taste)
1 small handful chopped cilantro (or to taste)
Heat the oil and sauté onions and garlic until fragrant. Toss pork in a little flour with the salt, pepper, and cumin (adjust spices to your taste) and add to onions and garlic. Cook until the meat is browned on the outside. Transfer pork, onions, and garlic to the slow cooker and stir in all other ingredients.
Cover and cook on high for 3 hours. Reduce to low and cook an additional hour or two. I thickened mine a little bit with a corn starch slurry so it could be eaten easily in a tortilla with black beans and sour cream.
Delicious, and your house will smell absolutely divine.

 

I made it the quick way with the canned sauce and chilies. I served it without thickening it and added sour cream and black beans to my bowl.  Very good! One of my kids really liked it, too (without beans). My house did indeed smell divine. Thanks, Jinger!

Thoughtfully,

Kristin

Kristin

Pork Loin Chronicles Volume 2

One of the next things I did with the pork loin was make Chinese Barbecued Pork.
I have meant to try this for a long time. I used a variant on this recipe.

This is how it came out:



It came out more moist than the pork I have eaten in Chinese restaurants, but no one around here thinks that is a bad thing. The kids liked the flavor as much as the restaurant pork. They also liked that the homemade stuff had a more natural color (I omitted the red food coloring that is usually added.)




This one is getting added to our more regular menus. If I fine tune it to suit us I will post my recipe here.

Thoughtfully,
Kristin

Pork Loin Chronicles Volume One

Recently I took a pork loin out of my freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw. That sucker weighed over 9.5 pounds. I needed to come up with multiple ways to use it without getting sick of pork.

First I made almost half of it into roast pork like I did in this post. We ate that for super on the first night. When I cleaned up I made the leftovers into Barbequed Pork!! This is one of my childhood favorites.

Barbequed Pork 

Leftover Roast Pork
Barbeque Sauce
1/4 water

Slice the leftover pork and cover it well in barbeque sauce. Try to get as much of the surface area covered as possible. Refrigerate covered overnight. Place marinated pork slices in a ovenproof baking dish with a lid along with 1/4 cup water and more barbeque sauce (I used about a cup to cover over two pounds of slices.) Bake at 350 degrees for about 2 hours. Use a fork to break apart the meat into little chunks or shreds. Add more barbeque sauce if desired. Serve in buns or just on a plate. 

I made a few other meals with the pork loin. We'll get to them soon,
-Kristin
 

Quick Fixes: Yogurt Cucumber Salad

Here's a side dish I can whip up in a couple minutes. It also makes a good breakfast.

1 cucumber-peeled and cubed
1 tomato- coarsely chopped
 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 cup plain greek yogurt

Combine all ingredients & serve. 

Plain, simple and so tasty!

See you tomorrow.
-Kristin

Photo #26

It is nice to have something easy to post today!
I hope you have a lovely day.

Thoughtfully,
Kristin

Recipe Experiment: Power Cookie ---> Granola Bars

As I was doing the posts this week about leftover oatmeal, I had an idea of another possible way to use it.  I had never found a recipe for granola bars that I had liked at all. Usually they are so hard and crumbly that by the time you get them out of the pan you have a pile of regular granola. In fact that was what made me work out the recipe for power cookies in the first place.

My thought was, what if I added leftover oatmeal to the power cookie recipe. It had the potential to make a pan of bars kind of like the consistency of chewy granola bars. It was definitely worth a shot.

So tonight I tried it.  I used the power cookie recipe  and just added 1 cup of leftover oatmeal along with the eggs. I let it mix until well blended then proceeded to mix the dough the same way as the cookies. Then I poured the dough out onto a greased rimmed cookie sheet and baked it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

The results were not quite what I expected. The bars taste fine, the kids like them just as well as normal power cookies, but the texture is much more cake-like than chewy granola bar-like. They are very crumbly. This is not what I was looking for. 

I may try again. Maybe if I omit the baking soda and add another cup of dry rolled oats along with the cooked ones I will get a texture more like a granola bar. A little honey to make them a tad stickier may help as well.

If I try it I will post my results here.

Thoughtfully,

Kristin

Quick Fixes: Power Cookies

As my family and I were getting ready for a conference, I was trying to come up with a good grab and go snack. One we would want to eat and wouldn't take any work. I came up with a cookie recipe with lots of good stuff in it. I call them power cookies.

Power Cookies

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

1 cup butter (or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup peanut butter)
1 cup rapadura (or 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup cranberries or raisins
1 cup finely chopped nuts
1 cup  chocolate chips

Cream together butter and sugar. Add in eggs and vanilla and blend. Mix in salt and baking soda. Gently stir in fruit, nuts and chocolate chips until evenly distributed. Drop by tablespoon onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

When I remember to make these they usually help a lot in getting through a busy week.
-Kristin

Cooking: Blueberry Pudding Muffins

These muffins are some of my favorites and a good use for leftover oatmeal. I call them pudding muffins because they are so warm and moist. In about 1/2 an hour you can have a whole basket of muffins.

Blueberry Pudding Muffins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Makes 24  muffins

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of nutmeg
1 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter
2 eggs lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup leftover oatmeal
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries
rapadura (for topping)

Grease or line two muffin tins. In a large bowl mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. 
Add the milk, butter, vanilla and eggs. Mix lightly just until dry ingredients are moistened. In a small bowl mix water and oatmeal until well blended. Add oatmeal mixture and blueberries to the batter and mix gently. Use an ice cream scoop to fill the cups of the muffin tins. Sprinkle the tops with rapadura. Bake for 20 minutes.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do.
-Kristin



                                                                                    

Quick Fixes: Stovetop Oatmeal

Good Morning!

Today I am going to talk about one of our old time staples: Oatmeal. We used to eat this so often that my technique went through a lot of changes over time. I started out like many people with oatmeal packets cooked in the microwave, but those cost too much and were really, too sweet. Then I moved on to quick cook in the microwave, one bowl at a time.... I even worked out an elaborate system of 6 steps to make sure there was a big serving and it was nice and creamy. That did not last long. I tried making a big batch in the microwave, and that took a really long time (it usually boiled over, too so the mess was awful.)

Around this time I found out that the kids really liked the oatmeal cooked in milk. That made the leap to stove top seem impossible. How long was I going to need to stand there to cook it and keep it from scorching?? This was supposed to be a quick breakfast. Ughh.

Then I had an idea: powdered milk! I can do the cooking part with water and add powdered milk right before the batch is supposed to sit. It worked like a charm. It worked so well we had oatmeal all the time and I was left with extra, that I had to find something to do with! Now nobody in my house eats oatmeal, but I still love the recipes I made from the extra. So yesterday I made oatmeal to show you how I do it and I will make other things with the finished product today.

On to the recipe!




Stovetop Oatmeal



3 cups cold water (use less if you like stiff oatmeal, this makes it really creamy)
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
handful of raisins or dried cranberries (optional)
1 cup instant powdered milk

In a 2 quart saucepan add the water, oats and fruit.  Bring to a boil over medium heat stirring occasionally. Once the oats are boiling set kitchen timer for 6 minutes. Add powdered milk and stir 1 minute, the timer will now be on 5 minutes. Turn off burner, cover pot and let rest until timer goes off (5 more minutes).  Stir, and serve.


Makes 4 servings in around 10 minutes.

I didn't add fruit to this batch, since I am using it in blueberry pudding muffins today. (I'll share that tomorrow)










I hope you have a lovely morning and a lovely day.

Thoughtfully,

Kristin

Elegant Solutions: Pet Curtain

We had a problem. Our newly designed family room with its lovely heated floor opens up into our cold kitchen. Of course our pets love the warm room, but the food, water and litter boxes are on the other side of the door. There is a door between these two rooms, but there had to be a better solution than letting all the heat out into the kitchen, or constantly opening an interior door to let pets in and out. (Of course one of our furry friends would get shut on the "wrong" side of the door at night and leave us with a mess.)

Then I had an idea! Put a curtain in between the two rooms. It would do a pretty good job keeping the heat in while letting the pets pass freely. I had a simple curtain idea, too!

I put a twin flat sheet on a tension shower curtain rod. The rod slips easily right inside the ready made top seam. Once it was hung the first time I hemmed it to length, and Voila! Years later it still works like a charm.

This solution was much easier, cheaper and totally removable, unlike a pet door, especially since one of those pets is a large dog. We can keep our family room toasty, too, without breaking the bank. I love finding an elegant solution.


Thoughtfully,

Kristin

November Writing Challenge!

A lovely member of my household is doing The NaNoWriMo.
For those of you who don't know what that is, you try to write a whole novel in the month of November! It is going to be fascinating to watch and I look forward to seeing how this adventure unfolds. I am tempted to join in myself...

But not enough.  So I set myself a different writing goal. I want to get back into writing and have set a goal for myself to write daily. (Ok, me being me, I set myself lots of lofty goals around writing for November, but the primary one is to write every day.)

1. Write Every Day!
    
I imagine this will be harder than I think it will be. I have actually been storing up ideas and pictures all summer while I took some time off, so I think I have a good shot at making it.

So I guess I will just say feel free to follow along as I write through November!

Thoughtfully,

Kristin