Easy Dinner- Pork Chops

I love to cook, but I really don't want it to take too long.  Dinner doesn't take long to eat, I don't want to put too much work into it.  Most of my cooking doesn't come from recipes, it comes from techniques.  I never "learned" to cook, it was just something I grew up doing, the idea of not "knowing" how to cook is beyond me.  Roasting and broiling are two of my favorite techniques and when you're lucky enough (like I am right now) to have double ovens I've been doing a lot of it.  I just walk away, make a salad and pull out dinner.

 PORK CHOPS! So these are from The Local Pig, and have been brined but nice thick chops with some fat on them will do nicely. 

Arrange on the broiling pan, we cheat and put foil in the pan so that clean up is faster. 

Season!  This is a sage and savory rub from a great book, which I cannot remember the name of right now.  Dump a bunch on there, drizzle a little olive oil on then get rub all around.  I normally wear a latex glove so my hands stay clean.

BROIL!  Yes thats it, set the oven to broil, stick them on the top rack and enjoy the crispy goodness.

Roast some asparagus  and potatoes (or seen here sweet potatoes).

Make a salad, and in about 30 minutes you've got dinner and you didn't do very much work.  

Zucchini Bread

Its summer in the land of Kansas, and no matter how hard you try to get all the zucchini before they become monster, you will fail.  Luckily there are sad folks like me who moved to the area mid-growing season and have no garden and for 50 cents a piece I'll take those monsters off your hands!  I used this Recipe, from CHOW.  It turned out better in the little tins, more chewy outside to inside ratio.  I also like the little slices better.  Maybe I'll make muffins next, since there is still a monster zuc in the fridge. I think the recipe is a little sweet, it might be that I used the raw sugar I had rather than white.  I'll cut down on the sugar too, and let you know.

Cherry Season

One of the great benifits of not being in the NW any more is I get tons and tons of cheep cherries. Sadly few of our delicious washington cherries stay in washington. To celebrate I dug up some cherry recipes. Cherry salsa with pork. 

Cherry carnage 

Cherries, cilantro, mild peper, garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar and olive oil. Mix, let sit. Serve over pork. 

Adventure Time : Cured Meats Edition

The Local Pig

Down a road that you're certain is a cruel joke by google maps is where you will find the delightful Local Pig. Cured meats are an important part of this household and needed to find a purveyor of such items, posthaste. Seeing as this was a Sunday adventure, and we are in a part of the country which feels this is an important day, we had few options. However this turned out in our favor, since we lucked out. 

Attacked to The Local Pig, is the not so mobile food truck, Pigwich.  The Pigwich smells like carnivore heaven, and I'm sure tastes close. We didn't partake, yet. A steady stream of all variety of folks (a cop pulled up for lunch, a bunch of families, a few post churchers in heels) picked up their box lunches. You can take it to go or enjoy their covered picnic area. 

Once inside you're treated to the delightful aroma of MEAT! Two cases of all kinds of wonderment. A dozen different kinds of sausage, locally sourced beef, lamb, pork and chicken, chicken and duck eggs, little hand made pot pies, beef, lamb and pork bacon, and a few kinds other treats. If you get there in time, fresh bread from a local bakery is there and coffee from Oddly Correct. Don't forget to check the case by the checkout for schmaltz and lard, pickles and rilettes. 

The yummy pig part painted on the wall

Too hot outside or just want to watch them work hang out here. 

Map of where all the local yum comes from

Spoils of the hunt

Slow Food

I'm a huge foodie.  I blame a lot of factors for that that, but its mostly why I crossfit, so I can eat.  Also, I have awesome Crossfit friends, so when one of favorite folks (Jess) wanted to do some special for her non-landmark birthday, we all drove to Seattle to visit The Corson Building! Now in my foodie journey, I've had some crazy meals.  The 16 course, 3 Michelin's starred, can't consume another bite meal.  The perfectly executed, bright, yet refined meal served in an old house.  Or the "this place looks good", turns out to be awesome tasting menu that's totally cool that our guest are wearing jeans.  But this was a whole new event for me.  I was trilled with the easy food, the comfortable surroundings and the happy people.  There was just enough quirk at know that they didn't take themselves too seriously. Bottom line, it was awesome!!

 

 

 

 

 

BACON

Hub is the bacon man in our family, he handles the making of the bacon. Except he might just have less than zero time, in fact I'm certain he's borrowing it. So we had promised a few people some bacon and so I dug around in the seemingly bottomless chest freezer to find some uncured pork bellies. Mmmmmm pork bellies. Without further ado....

BACON!!!!!!

All rubbed down

Hiding behind the soda, in the fridge

I call this pre-bacon

Instructions

Best Mayo Ever

For christmas I got this great book, full of super easy and uber d'lish recipes. Fantastic pictures and good tips and tricks. Part of my crossfit world includes being as paleo as possible, which falls into my personal goal of eating squeaky clean. Homemade everything makes me happy, no or minimal chemicals limitly processed and yummy. So you know what's amazingly easy to make on your own and is CRAZY good. MAYO!!!!!!!! Get yourself a stick blender an egg, a touch of mustard and a cup of grapeseed oil (my favorite neutral oil) and whirrrrrr together for creamy delightful finger licking burger smearing, french fry dipping, ketchup mixing mayo. Trust me you might not "like" mayo but this will change your mind.
Ps this was also the best batch I've ever made.

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When Mondays are good

Sometimes Mondays are good, sometimes they can start something that will make the rest of the week. I'm ignoring the super wet back yard and my HUGE water bill (I've called the landlord). Celebration cupcakes are in order today. It was a delicious little cupcake too. The runt of the litter I frosted it first, then ate it. The red cross was dragging its big feet so I went to "help" out this morning and push them into getting my placement. It didn't take long, I went to the lab around 10:30. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the feeling of being somewhere needed and wanted passes over you. I played around in Hematology which appears to be my new home. It was lovely. Then when I got home I got my order of lovely Blueface lester wool! (pictures later) and an email about the Lab job I applied for. So I made cupcakes of celebration!

Having a Punny Good Time

We like jokes in this family, we also like really silly puns. An attack with rolled up socks is normal and then the claim of being "socked". So while making dinner the other night it happened, there was at good ol'fashion

BEET DOWN!

I'm not sorry for that.

But other than silly food jokes, I'm still crafting away. Granted I did go to post to get my volunteering straightened out. Turns out no one called the lab director yesterday (when I talked to the volunteer coordinator about starting today) so I had to wait on her to call us back, and it was a busy (okay they thought busy) morning in volunteer land. Well long stupid, you people have got to get this ironed out or your going to keep loosing every volunteer you get through here, story short..... I'm going to be working in the lab as a volunteer MT. I know that sounds really strange, and the more I say it the stranger it sounds, since ummmm I made lots of money per hour as an MT and now I'm giving myself away. Since we've reached our employment event horizon so to speak (just about 4 and half months left here and thanksgiving and x-mas in there) I'm really not going to get to do anything unless I just give it away. So hopefully I can start soooooooooooooooooooooooon, I'm so board I'm making root vegetable jokes.
After fighting and fighting with the printer to get it to print in reverse so I could make some neato little tags for my stuff....
I also got some yarn cakes ready for use. I'm almost done with the first arm of the Lady February Sweater (soft green), I plan on making a shawl with the dark green, and a second ball of silk bamboo for some fingerless gloves to take the chill off the mini coopers chrome gear shift. Let me tell you that bugger gets red hot in the summer!

COOKIE!

Since I've been home during my stay-cation (aka unemployment) I've been releasing my inner Martha Stewart. This includes crafting, cooking and more importantly COOKIES. See the Hub loves cookies and power through a bag of chips-a-whatevers in like 3 days. I started out with those just add an egg and stick a butter type cookies but recently moved up to see what the COOKIE of the day was at Martha Stewart.com.
Now you can go back through the past few days and see the other cookies. Lots of those too may ingredient kinds of cookies, even more of those too complicated for cookies which will be consumed in one bite kind of cookies. But every now and again, you get a good one.
When I was a weee little Claire my gram and I would go to the bookstore on friday (after lunch-bunch but that's another story) and then go two stores up the hill to the deli and I'd get a snickerdoodle and milk. Never failed for years. Mmmmm they were those big snickerdoodles, that are a little crisp on the bottom up soft too.
I just had to make them, and when the Hub asked "whatsa snickerdoodle" I was sure if I'd have 3 dozen cookies to myself or if he's eat them too.
The dough even tasted like right, just like the cookie but unbaked. These are quite possibly the tastiest cookie I've cranked out in a long time.
I highly recommend this particular recipe, You'll find it here! They are best served with Milk or tea, and are not half bad with coffee, water, soda, or just after dinner.

Spinach Phyllo Pie with Turkey

A while back I came across a recipe what just needed something, but was too yummy looking to pass up.
Adapted from Everyday Food
Spinach and Turkey Phyllo Pie

• Olive Oil
• 1 medium onion
• 3 large garlic cloves
• 1 package baby spinach
• 1 cup crumbled feta
• 1/4 dried dates
• 16 oz ground turkey or chicken
• 20 sheets frozen phyllo, thawed
• salt and pepper

Heat oil over medium heat, and cook onion until soft and then add ground turkey. Cook until slightly brown. Transfer to a large bowl.
Return pan to heat and working in batches if need be cook spinach until wilted about 1 minute. Press out the excess moisture and then roughly chop. Add the spinach to the turkey. Add the feta and dates to the bowl, then salt and pepper to taste.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Unroll the thawed phyllo, working one sheet at a time, brush with olive oil and lay another sheet down. Repeat until you have 10 sheets. Spread half the mixture down the center and roll into a log. Brush the seem with oil to seal. Use a sharp small knive diagonally cut across the top.
Repeat with the remaining filling.
Place both logs seam side down on a parchment lined baking sheet. Baked until golden brown, about 45 to 50 minutes. Serve warm or at room temp.

London Part II

Yes I know, I've been a little slow on getting this second post up but I've had lots going on and just haven't thought much about it.

On Sunday, we got up at our usual half awake what-time is it here and what time is it there. Hit the Pret for our now favorite breakie. We did lots more walking on Sunday. Remember that all the museums are free, so we popped into the National Gallery to see a few of the more important item there. Another place that will make your head spin from all the amazing art and the amazing amount of it. So we headed out to St. Paul's by taxis after walking around by Parliament again and snapping some pictures of the Household Guard. Those boots are not made for walking.

We walked along the water front until we reached the Tower and the Tower Bridge offering me a chance to take some nice pictures. But most of them are very underexposed.

The people watching at the Tower was fantastic, including a large group of overly skinny girls wear nasty street walker shoes and nearly falling on their butts. So we moved on to the next thing. It was getting to be lunch time so we walked over to St. Katherine's Dock. On a little "island" in the middle of the dock we had a great meal and watched the boats go in and out. A touch sun burned and very full we went a walking again.

As soon as we could find a cab, which was kinda hard since this end of the Thames is very residential, we went out to Greenwich Park and the Prime Meridian. I did fall asleep in the cab, which was hard to avoid. It was a great toasty warm day, I was full and it was a long ride. Hub and I climbed all the way to the top of the hill, which wasn't as bad as it looked. A huge line was waiting to take their picture with a line in the brick. I just snapped a few pics at the end of the meridian. Despite the large number of people we walked through the observatory. It was amazingly well preserved. By now, we've gotten a little hot and sticky so we stopped at the best little I can't believe this is in the park kind of a place, The Honest Sausage. They serve yummy sandwiches and more importantly ICE CREAM! Two ice cream cones and two waters.
After we headed down off the hill we want to find the farmers market that we had passed when we drove it, but it was just too hot and there were just too many people, so we called it quits.
Once back to the hotel we napped a little and got ready for our last night in London. Just a few more stops. Refreshed we made the short walk to the palace again, and across Green Park, which lead us to Picadilly Circus. WOW, the people watching was fantastic! So by now it was dinner time and we wanted something a little different. Now if you want to go to TGI McFunster's this is the place to find one. I did not fly 9 hours to eat at a restaurant that I can eat at in Nashville, so to the Alley! A little Japanese Restaurant caught our eye, called Akasiro. The dinning room was super tiny but the food was great, it came up from the down stairs kitchen on a little elevator. As with every restaurant we dinned at in London, something was just a little off about this place and it was the music.
After dinner, we walked down through Reagents and Pall Mall and through St. James Park.

Good Bye London!
We left Monday morning, getting to the Airport almost 3 hours early to avoid any problems. We enjoyed a great Airport Breakie at a pud and then spent the next 9.5 hours on a plane. Once in Atlanta we collected our bags and rechecked as is the process, and then flew home to Nashville. We'll be back!

Tasty..

I love Orangina, but I never drink it. It's for a few reasons. Mainly because it's hard to find in C-ville but also because it very sugary. I know I've kinda forgotten about my blog, but my hardrive is 'bout full and I can't risk adding more pic until I can move some stuff around. In April I should be getting a new computer, all new bits and pieces. Spot the Younger has been with me for 4 years and its about time to replace the little bugger. I've got it all picked out just gotta wait a few more weeks. So I talked to a friend whom I haven't heard from in like 4 years. Lots has changed in those four years since I got this thing. Like he's married and has a kid, crazy. He's going over seas in a few monthes really for the first time, we're just finishing our second full deployment. Hopefully we'll get out to see them sometime before he heads out. I don't really know where time goes sometime.

BTW: We BBQ'd tonight and made cedar smoked Salmon and some grilled Sea Bass. Also I whipped up some white truffle mac and cheese to go with. Yum YUM. I really have been knitting too I promise!