Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Pork Tenderloin with Mango Salsa

There are not many foods I don't like.  Put most anything in front of me and I'll try it, if not like it.  I'm not as adventurous as Andrew Zimmern - and I won't eat most of the things he eats, but give me something in the "normal" range and it'll do.  Mostly.

One of my big dislikes is pork.  Now I don't mean processed, cured pork.  I mean, who can not like bacon or ham.  I mean pork chops.  Or roast.  Or tenderloin.  But only when it really tastes, well, porky. So if you disguise it with enough flavors, I'll eat it.  And maybe even enjoy it (posting soon ... Travis' favorite carnitas ... om nom nom)

Unfortunately (fortunately?) my family does like pork so once in a while I'll give in and make it for them.  I like using the tenderloin because it's lean and usually cooks up pretty quickly (and about a quarter of the time it's a recipe that I'll eat too).  Last night I tried for Asian fusion with a tenderloin roasted and served with coconut rice (packaged), roasted broccoli and a mango salsa.  I almost roasted a chicken breast along side the pork but decided since I'm not a restaurant, I'm only cooking one thing.

Sometimes Things Don't Work Out Like We Plan

Last night I was planning on making the pork tenderloin (roasted) with a side of black beans and chorizo, topped with Cotija cheese.  Sounds really good, right?  Well, would have been except I put the black beans in the crock pot, covered them with water, and forgot to turn them on.  When I got back from my errands yesterday I did so to a cold crock pot.  Heavy sigh.  I immediately turned it on to high but by the time dinner rolled around those beans were not ready to be eaten so a quick look around and a Plan B had to be formed.

Not bad for a Plan B, hm?

Dinner Delight

All I can say at this point is "wow" ... I have the best of intentions of getting this blog back up and running again and post one or two posts and then can't seem to get my mojo back.  Either life interferes or my menu just doesn't seem too inspiring and I figure no one wants to see pictures of boring meals.  (Or I honestly just run out of things to say ...)  So, here I go again, and we'll see if I can make it "stick" again.  I do miss blogging and the food blogging community - man how is grown!  Well, enough prelude, on to the actual post ...

This summer I spent 10 weeks working full time plus and it was an experience.  The good thing is I know I can do it - and really don't mind - but that leaves meal planning and cooking up to either chance or sheer luck.  This week I'm back to part time and had a menu but decided that what was on it I really didn't want.  Do you ever do that?  And if you do, do you suck it up and stick to it, or change it?

I had bought a pound of ground pork and was going to make won tons and egg rolls but decided I didn't really want to make them (they are extremely unhealthy, sigh, and I'm trying to get us to eat a little healthier).  The problem is there's not a whole lot of options for ground pork.  For such a mild meat, it's got a very distinctive taste to it that doesn't always make a good substitution for ground beef.  In comes this recipe for Thai Ground Pork Salad from Food & Wine.

I served it with white rice, an egg roll (one of the kind that is from the refrigerated section of the supermarket that you bake), and some California rolls.  Wrapped up in a lettuce leaf, topped with chopped peanuts, diced jalapenos, some Srirachi sauce, and a squeeze of lime, it was perfect for dinner - and everyone requested I make it again soon.  Yum!

 

 

Start of a Trend?

Hmmm... blogging 2 days in a row.  I hope this is the start of a trend to get me back to blogging reguarly.  Tonight's dish?  A pasta I found in November's Everyday Food magazine ... Spaghetti with Sweet Sausage and Cabbage.

How was it?  It was good but a bit too greasy (from the sasusage).  I opted to use spicy sausage instead of sweet and I'm glad I did because it added a nice bite.  It really reminded me of my mom's cabbage and noodles -- which is basically cabbage saute'd in butter and then mixed with either egg or bow tie noodles.  (That, by the way, happens to be a favorite of my brother.)  No, I don't believe I would make this again.  While it was eaten (by everyone but Liam who had plain spaghetti) it didn't receive big rounds of applause.

A Crockpot Recipe that Works

Thanks, everyone.  I'm glad to be back.  :-)

While I was on my hiatus from blogging I took maybe 2 pictures of things I could share.  I'm not proud to say that over the last 2 months we've eaten a lot of quick throw together things as well as a number of take out meals.  When you don't feel good it's hard to get excited about cooking (or anything for that matter).

One of the meals that I actually cooked and we liked came out of the Crockpot cookbook Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes.  It's not very exciting, but it worked.

Yes, it's a pasta sauce recipe.  Unfortunately it's not just a "throw all together in the morning and let it cook all day recipe" but it was nice that it was ready to eat when we were and at 5:00 I didn't have to stand and cook.  The original recipe says you can cook it all day (well, 6 to 8 hours), but in the past I've found if you cook Italian sausage all day in the crockpot it gets, well, mushy and unappetizing.  I opted to throw all the actual sauce ingredients into the crockpot in the early morning and then about 2 hours before dinner throw in the browned sausage (and mushrooms).  All in all something I could happily repeat again.

Let's Not Repeat These Meatballs

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you know I love to try new recipes.  Sometimes they're weird, sometimes they're normal, but I enjoy having something different for dinner all the time.  This past weekend I opted for a recipe on the Food Network that was showcased on Emeril Live - Sausage Meatballs with Red Gravy.  Apparently this recipe is one a New Orleans firefighter feeds to the crew of his firehouse.  The recipe states it serves 4 (plus enough) but it really serves more like 12.  We had 6 people eat and more than half was left.

The one good thing I have to say about it is that Travis made it (mostly) by himself -- and did a great job keeping things in order while he did it.  The not so good thing?  They tasted weird and not in a good way.  The recipe (link above -- I'm not going to post it) uses ground beef, mild Italian sausage and hot Italian sausage mixed together.  While I can see the novelty of doing such a thing, the execution just didn't work for me.  (Though in all fairness we froze the leftovers so Don can have them this coming week as leftovers.)

Guess we'll stick to either meatballs or sausage and not a hybrid of the two.

Polish Sausage & 'Kraut

I've said this before but one of the things I like about warmer weather is I can get away with simple dinners.  Last week when I made the baked beans, we had enough leftover for the next night's dinner as well so I opted to grill some Polish sausage, stick it on some rye bread with some sauerkraut and sliced onions and we were good to go.

Usually I'll just throw the kraut on whatever we're having it for but I decided to try a recipe I found on All Recipe's site:  Sauerkraut Hot Dog Topping.  How was it?  Not bad but I don't think it added anything more than "plain" sauerkraut would.

This sandwich reminded me of one they serve at Wienerschnitzel - same kind of deal, Polish sausage, mustard on rye bread though with theirs it's served with pickles instead of kraut.  I honestly can't even remember the last time I ate there (we don't do a whole lot of fast food) but it was fun to have some kind of food memory.  Is there something that you remember eating years ago that would be fun to recreate?

(BTW, how do you like the new blog look?  The black was way too hard on my eyes so I'm hoping this will be slightly easier to read.)

Week In Review

Since I haven't posted since Tuesday I thought I'd do a quick "week in review".

We've had a pretty busy week -- Liam was sick again with his allergies so back on breathing treatments he went.  The good news is I think we caught it early enough that he won't end up with pneumonia yet again this year.  Adrienne had a big project due this week in math -- a 5 paragraph essay and accompanying charts about a stock market project they've been working on (which you know is just as big of a job for mom as it is for her).

Travis hasn't had as much homework as he usually does so he's been working on his Warcraft character and getting his tailoring level up.  As for my Warcraft "career", I'm trying to decide exactly how I should spec my Paladin -- I was holy/ret for so long then last night switched to protection/holy and really didn't like it so back this morning to holy/ret I am.  (I know most of you have NO clue what I'm talking about so you can skip this ..oops, too late.)  For those of you "in the know", here's a screenshot I took last week of one of my guildies and I after we'd cleared Stratholme.  Gotta love that instance.   :)

Tomorrow is Travis' 16th birthday so last night we celebrated a little early with my brother -- I made ribs, some yucky broccoli salad (packaged from Costco -- it wasn't good AT ALL), garlic french fries and then a coconut cake.  So I'll have something to share tomorrow on his actual birthday, I'll share the rib recipe with you now and the cake tomorrow.

This recipe was originally from a post on rec.food.recipes many years ago (like, um, 15) and I wouldn't make them any other way.

Birthday Dinner

Tomorrow just happens to be my brother's birthday so when he came over for dinner tonight I thought it was only appropriate that I make him something "birthday-ee".  I asked him what he wanted and he replied "well, too bad Alpine Village Inn isn't around anymore".  So the best I could do is re-create a little bit for him.

For those of you (okay, almost all of you) who don't know about the Alpine Village Inn, it was a landmark restaurant here in Las Vegas until the late 90s (I found an article about it here if you'd like to read a little more).  They were where you'd go on your high school dates for prom just because it was so cool.  They were decorated like an old swiss village and served decent German food.  One of my brother's favorites was their cottage cheese "dip" they started you out with and so I started tonight's menu with that.  Simple but brings back so many memories.

If I had thought of it sooner, I would have made Sauerbraten but, alas, we were stuck with bratwurst and red cabbage sauerkraut tonight (tasty too).  That recipe comes from Food Network courtesy of Bobby Flay.

Dessert?  I had thought about going with a German Chocolate cake but finally went with Black Forest cake.  It went together fairly quickly and turned out great.

Adam, hope you have a wonderful birthday tomorrow.  :-)

 

PPN: Yummy Pasta and Sausage

For this week's Presto Pasta Night over at Ruth's Once Upon a Feast, I thought I'd share a recipe that we make quite frequently around here.  It doesn't have to be made with pasta, but I always give that as an option because most people like it with pasta.  Travis, on the other hand, prefers it on a roll as a sandwich but then again he's not a real pasta fan anyway.

It couldn't be simpler to make -- brown the sausages in a little olive oil and then remove to slice.  Add peppers, onion and garlic to the pan to get soft, add back in the sausages, 2 bottles of beer (any kind will do), a small can of tomato paste and a few shakes of hot sauce.  Cook until the sausages are cooked through.  I'll add the "real" recipe from All Recipes after the jump. :)

Tonight is also the first night of Hanukkah and I wanted to wish all that celebrate a happy one!