Dinner Idea for You!

Since beef and I are on the outs right now (and we usually had some form of beef at least 2x a week), I've been forced to be more creative with mealtimes.  Pork is one meat that I've always been "afraid" of - my mom didn't cook with it a lot growing up, so I don't think I bought it until a few months ago when I decided that I could use pork tenderloins (I think that's what they're called) to cut up for stir-fry.  

I really wanted to try a pork roast, so I decided to buy one without giving any thought to the fact that I had no recipe for it!  I decided on a pork-shoulder-butt-roast.  It weighed a couple of pounds. I went on all-recipes.com and found a recipe for a 5-lb crockpot pork roast.  The ingredients were pork, salt and pepper, beef broth, BBQ sauce, and coffee.  However, after reading some comments, I learned that the coffee and beef broth weren't even necessary - which is good b/c I can't stand the smell or taste of coffee now, and I didn't have the beef broth in the house!  

Monday morning, I put my roast in the crockpot, sprinkled it with pepper, filled a small canning jar (!) with water, and dumped it in.  Then I sprinkled some onion soup mix around the water to give it a little flavor, and squeezed a few squirts of BBQ sauce on top.  I put it on low for 8 hrs.  

I came home from work, and it smelled heavenly!!  I squeezed a bunch more BBQ sauce on top, and let it cook for about 20 more minutes.  Then I pulled it out and shredded it, and added a few spoonfuls of the "broth" to the meat pile, just to flavor it some more.  Chris and I ate it on big buns with some extra BBQ sauce on top, with homemade pasta salad on the side.  

All I can say is that we were drooling!  This is definitely a keeper! :)

Recipe Time

My sister-in-law, Naomi (she doesn't have a blog, otherwise I'd link her!), found this recipe on allrecipes.com and let me say, it is fab. It is a lip-smackin' combination of the three best kinds of cookies: peanut butter, oatmeal, and chocolate-chip.

Here you go!

Peanut Butter Cookies IX

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, white sugar and peanut butter until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine the flour, wheat flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture. Finally, mix in the oats and chocolate chips. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

3. Bake for 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Photo: A little crisp, due to my horrible oven, but still SO good!

Buon appetito!

Sweet summertime

Well, sorry about the lack of recent updates this week! We have been having a lot of house drama - too much to list here - and I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that we are still waiting on the bank to accept/reject our counteroffer so that we can hurry up and get our inspections done before our 10-day time limit is up. This wouldn't be a problem, except that the time we will be in this country is quickly drawing to a close. We leave for our 10-day trip in the Dominican Republic on June 30th. Technically, we have internet in the mission dormitories, but I really just wanted to be completely focused on this trip and the people I was serving and not be stressed out everyday about the house.



So if anyone from Fannie Mae is reading this, could ya hurry my house along?!



Thanks.




Anyway, I did get to go strawberry picking on Friday, and it was great! I got nine pounds of strawberries, and only have about two cups left. Yes, we love us some strawberries up in these parts. ;)



Two of my favorite things to do with this most delicious of all fruits:

Strawberry "shortcake" (on biscuits is the way I really make it):

And strawberry jam.....(disregard the clutter on my counter - everything once again had to be pushed back from the wall since we found more ants last night! ahh)

The thing about jam: my sister-in-law and I made freezer jam on Saturday, and it really, really is SO easy. Anyone can do it. Freezer jam doesn't require any kind of special seals or boiling. And it is soooooooooooooo good. You will want to eat it plain. By the spoonful. Trust me on this.




Hope you're enjoying warmer weather and strawberries and sunshine and all of that good stuff that June brings. ;)

*Sigh*

I was saddened today to realize that a fellow blogger had copied one of my blog ideas only a day after I originally posted. This is not the first time she has done this. She's not a regular commenter or anything, but I knew that she read my blog and vice versa. She's not anyone I know in real life, but she does profess to be a Christian.

She has recently been writing about/asking others for new ideas for her blog, saying that she was fresh out. I guess I'm mostly disappointed because she has a ton of readers, and I have...well, not a ton :)...and maybe she has figured that since so few people read my blog, no one would realize she was copying my thoughts almost exactly?

I e-mailed her today about it. Because even though we live in this virtual world, as Christians we are supposed to admonish one other when someone has done something unpleasing to God. I was very kind - not rude at all, although I wanted to be! haha


I've just always hated when people condescendingly say, "Copying is the sincerest form of flattery."

No, actually, it isn't.

It's unethical, lame, and just plain rude.

*Whew* Okay, had to get that off my chest!



In other news, has anyone gone strawberry picking yet? I've been waiting for about 3 months now and I think I'm going to go this Friday, since I don't have class. My mouth is dying to taste strawberry shortcake again. Does anyone have a great strawberry recipe? Please share!

2 Fun Things to do with Zucchini

Yes, I am very aware that the title of this post makes me sound like an 85-year old grandma from the depression years.

However! (and yes, I'm smiling over here in front of my laptop), since I believe firmly that good news should be shared, I am sharing two of my favorite recipes that utilize this lovely green vegetable.

Numero Uno:
I learned this one from my mama, who (although actually Irish) married an Italian and therefore learned to cook exceptionally well with olive oil and garlic:

- Chop up zucchini, summer squash, and a red pepper into various sizes and shapes
- Saute with olive oil and salt until slightly tender
- Add several teaspoons of garlic and saute for a minute or two longer (because burnt garlic is truly wretched)
- If you don't have red pepper, subsitute crushed red pepper for a punch of color and a little zing
*my addition

Buon appetito!

I can honestly say that my darling husband LOVES when I make this. This coming from a man who used to eat iceberg lettuce with cucumbers and croutons and French dressing and truly believed that was a magnanimous concession on his part in the way of vegetables. We've come a long way, baby.

Numero Dos:
If you've never tried these before, don't groan. These are truly amazing. You will notice tiny bits of green, but honestly, I think I actually might possibly like these even better than real brownies. Try them and see. If you do end up thinking they're gross (which will never happen, but still!), console yourself with the fact that you made your colon happy with the extra fiber. ;)

Zucchini brownies (from Allrecipes.com)

1/2 C vegetable oil
1 1/2 C sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 C flour
1/2 C cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 C zucchini, shredded
chocolate chips, as desired *my addition

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour 13x9 pan. Mix first 3 ingredients until well blended. Mix next four ingredients in separate bowl. Stir into sugar mixture. Fold in zucchini and chocolate chips. Spread evenly. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Tonight, I had planned on using zucchini with dinner, but quickly realized that I was going to have two much. So I kept 2 C zucchini out for the brownies, which I'll make either tonight or tomorrow. No waste and two great recipes! Aren't I fancy?

Happy cooking!