The Great 2012 Cooking Extravaganza! Day 125
Hello again friends, and welcome back! Hope you all had a spectacular weekend!
Well, what can I say… It’s been an interesting weekend! The craft show yesterday, and then we tried to do something cool today, but it just didn’t work out, so I cooked and chopped and did laundry and puttered around the house…
We got up early, not too early, but early for a Sunday for us, made a nice breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs with cheese, and sausage. Got everyone ready to go, and out we went. Up to the movie theater we go, thinking we might be able to get tickets to The Avengers… YEAH RIGHT! The show we were trying for, and the next two shows, were sold out, and there was a line! There’s NEVER a line on Sunday mornings!! ARGHHHHH!! So we headed back home, I dropped off the boys, and headed off to Walmart to get groceries for the week. Not what we had planned, but what needed to be done. Got a trash can for outside, only been here almost six years, no rush right? Got a new pair of shoes for work, something comfortable but not sloppy. (had to throw out a couple pairs of “work” shoes recently, they finally wore out) And then…
I cut up lettuce, tomatoes, green pepper for salads. Watermelon and cantaloupe for my fruits this week. (last couple of weeks have been pineapple, papaya and mango plus red grapes, but the last pineapple wasn’t that great, so I’m thinking the season is over.) I shredded cabbage in my handy little chopper I got for Christmas, I can use that in salads, in recipes, or make some cole slaw. I sliced up some nice young yellow squash, made a couple of steamer bags for a lunch or dinner. Then put my pork chops in a marinade to soak for a while before dinner.
Next, I made mini meatloaves for later in the week, had everything thawed out, had to cook it, figured it will be a quick dinner later this week, or lunches for someone. Here’s the recipe in case you missed it the last time:
Mini meatloaves
1 cup ketchup
4 tbsp packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground mustard
2 eggs, beaten
4 tsp Worchestershire sauce
3 cups bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, corn flake crumbs (basically whatever type of filler you like)
3 tsp onion powder or flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp garlic powder
3 pounds lean ground beef, or mixed beef and sausage (mix 2:1 beef and sausage)
In large bowl, combine ketchup, brown sugar and mustard. Remove 1/2 cup to be used on top of cooked loaves. Add eggs, Worchestershire, cereal/bread crumbs, seasonings. Mix well, let set for 5 mins. Add meat(s) and mix very well.
Press mixture into 18-24 muffin cups and bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Drizzle/top with remaining sauce mixture reserved earlier. Bake 10 minutes longer, or until meat thermometer reads 160 degrees.
Leftover loaves are freezeable! Thaw frozen loaves and reheat at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Can also be microwaved for 1 minute each.
And here’s what I did for dinner:
Marinated Pork Chops with Fruit
6-8 boneless pork chops
Good Seasons Italian dressing (make with olive oil and apple cider vinegar)
1 Granny Smith apple
1 D’Anjou pear
10-12 baby carrots
2 Tbsp butter
Mix up some Good Seasons Italian dressing (using olive oil and apple cider vinegar) per the package directions. Place 6-8 boneless pork chops in a 9 x 13 baking dish, pour the entire bottle of dressing over the chops, pick up each chop to make sure some of the dressing gets underneath as well, and put the dish in the fridge for a few hours at least. Mine set for about 4 hours all together.
Core and 8th both the apple and the pear. Slice each 8th into small slices. Slice the baby carrots into rounds.
In one pan, cook the apple, pear, carrots in butter until soft but not mush.
In another pan, cook the pork chops until done through.
Place the chops on a serving platter, top with the fruit mixture, serve!
I kept some of the apples, pears and carrots out of the pan and served them on top of the salad, keeping those flavors going in different dishes. It actually worked really well!
I also had some baked potatoes around, since I cooked a whole bag of them last weekend and froze most of them so I would have them around. The recipe for these is REALLY simple, but makes GREAT baked potatoes!
Perfect Baked Potato (I actually found this recipe on the web)
1 bag (5 lbs) baking potatoes (Russets work really well)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Wash the potatoes well, and remove any eyes. Dry them!! Rub the potatoes with olive oil, pierce once on each side (total four sets of fork holes) then sprinkle liberally with Kosher salt.
Now this next part is up to you, but I prefer pans…
Bake either directly on the oven rack, or in a pan. The only drawback to the pans is you have to cook a few minutes longer. And if you do like I did and cook a whole bag at one time, it takes a LOT longer! (almost 2 hours total, but SO worth it!)
Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour on the rack, or 1 hour 15 minutes in a pan. Turn once about half way through to ensure even cooking and no hard spots in the skin.
When done (you can tell by poking with a fork, when it’s easy to poke it’s done) serve! Cut it open, top it with your favorite combination of toppings, or keep it simple with butter and salt.
You can freeze them after they are cooked, and reheat in the microwave using the baked potato setting (about 7 minutes) from frozen, or thaw and reheat about 3 minutes in the microwave.
Anyway, it was a cooking kind of day, and somehow I missed making William’s lunch sandwiches, so I guess I know what I’m doing in the morning! Had enough today…
Until tomorrow, eat well, love well, live well!
Ramblings and Recipes 