Category: Uncategorized

Pork Shoulder Ragu

This appeared on Dinner A Love Story, one of my favorite sources these days. The original recipe called for braising in a dutch oven for 3-4 hours. Given that we don’t own a dutch over (why do they cost so much!?!) and it is much easier to put stuff in the crock pot and go off to work and come home to a tasty meal, I adapted it for the crock pot…or more truthfully, I just followed the recipe, it didn’t need any adaptation! YUM!

All I did was brown the pork shoulder in a skillet first as directed. After putting the pork in the crock pot I put the red wine in the skillet to deglaze and get all the browned bits scraped up. Add that and everything else to the crock pot and cook on low for a while, I did 9 hours because that’s how long it was until dinner time!

Came out yummy! Thanks for the recipe.

Crisp and Spicy Chickpeas with Ground Beef

This is from Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cook Book (p. 410, also posted on this blog).

We made this last week, but with sleep overs, and other things, it’s taken a while to get photos uploaded and this posted…

This was really good! The crisp chickpeas and beef had a great texture.

Quinoa pumpkin pancakes

OK, so it looks like most of my favorite meals are breakfasts. It is true that on most weekends I’ll come up with an idea based on some ingredient we have and Google around until I find something that looks good.

Today we had some pumpkin left over from last weekend and just found out about quinoa. I saw a few recipes around the similar to this, but they either didn’t have pumpkin, or used quinoa flour. So here’s our version:

Quinoa pumpkin pancakes

Cook 1/2 cup quinoa (1/2 c raw + 1 c water, bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10-15min. Start it and mix the rest of the stuff and it will be ready to add in at the end.*)

In a bowl mix:

  • 1 cup flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2tsp ground ginger

Add in:

  • 2 eggs
  • 3 tbs melted butter or oil
  • 1 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1.5 cup milk
  • 1.5 tsp lemon juice
  • And the cooked quinoa

Mix it all up and adjust the consistency as needed. Cook in pan, top with maple syrup or whatever you like.

* Under normal circumstances it probably wouldn’t take 10-15 minutes to mix this up, but this morning we had a standoff in the kitchen with the kids arguing over who got to add the baking powder: Kid 2 brandishing the open container of baking powder, Kid 1 refusing to relinquish the measuring spoons! My attempts to mediate the situation were futile and kids were banished from the kitchen…

Sweet and Sour Pork

Based on this recipe, we made some really great sweet and sour pork.

1 c. flour
2 lb. pork tenderloin
3 beaten eggs
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. vinegar
1/3 c. pineapple juice
1/4 c. catsup
1 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. cornstarch
2 c. pineapple chunks
1 bag stir fry veggies (broccoli, snow peas, etc.)
  1. Put flour in one pie dish and eggs into another
  2. Cut pork tenderloin into 3/4 inch cubes.
  3. Dip meat into egg, then into flour.
  4. Fry pork in vegetable oil (360 degrees) for 6 to 9 minutes, until done; drain on paper towels; keep warm.
  5. In wok or skillet stir fry  veggies until almost done.
  6. Combine the sugar, vinegar, pineapple juice (reserved from draining pineapple chunks) and catsup. Add to veggies and heat.
  7. Blend 2 tablespoons cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water. Stir into skillet. Cook, stirring until mixture is thick and bubbly.
  8. Add the pork and pineapple. Heat and stir about 5 minutes. Serve over rice.

Blueberry Souffle

Still trying to catch up on posts…especially where I have some photos. Last weekend, I made the blueberry souffle from the Yumology blog. One of the reasons I started this log was for recipes like this…I run across is online on a weekend morning trying to figure out what to make for breakfast, and make it. Trying to keep track of the successes and failures has been difficult.

Part of our challenge is modifying recipes to fit out no peanut, tree nut, fish diet since Kid 1 has life threatening allergies to these. The original recipe on Yumology had almonds and almond paste. I substituted sun butter (sunflower seeds) for the almond paste…ended up being a bit of an odd flavor, maybe  use a bit less than called for next time.

But something else happened and it took about twice as long as the recipe called for to cook. I am not sure if there was more water in the berries or what, but it was a bit soupy.

That aside, it was a delicious breakfast treat!

Let’s get going…

Not sure how to start this blog off other than to just post this week’s meals…so here we go:

  1. Campfire casserole from Leanne Ely’s Saving Dinner
  2. Panini using Mostly Whole Wheat Baguettes with Bulgar from Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cook Book (TFMCB). With ham, brie and apples.
  3. Pasta with smashed peas, prosciutto and scallions from TFMCB.
  4. Lemony-Chicken with Potatoes and Beans from Dinner a Love Story.
  5. Chicken Bulgar Skillet from Taste of Home.
  6. A freezer meal we made a while ago, Cranberry Chicken from Gourmet Mom on The Go.