Pork Loin

I got a head start on tonight's meal by putting a pork loin in the crockpot. To ease my leg, which still hurts if I stand for too long, I chopped veggies while sitting at the breakfast counter with the girls. Here's hoping this turns out well!

1 3 lb. pork loin
1 green bell pepper, cut into strips
1/2 yellow bell pepper, cut into strips
1/2 white onion, cut into thin strips
9 oz. apricot jam
1 package onion soup mix
1/4 cup red wine
1/4 water
2 Tbsp honey

Place peppers and onions in the bottom of the crock pot.
Put pork loin on top of veggies.
Mix jam, soup mix, wine, water and honey together.
Pour over meat and veggies.
Cook in crockpot on low for 8-10 hours.

Depending on how I'm feeling this afternoon, we'll have this with roasted green beans and brown rice - or just the green beans...



As the above photo indicates, I felt well enough to pull together an entire meal. I was very thankful... one meal down, thousands to go.

Jalapeno Pimento Cheese

Thanks to surgery on my leg and the kindness of friends and neighbors, I haven't cooked a meal in a month. We're finally back to providing our own meals, which is (at this point) a treat. While I'm not up to full speed, we have a freezer stocked with left-overs from friends, so tonight we'll have a quiche from one friend accompanied by soup from another. But before we got to dinner, I had to make something I've been craving: jalapeno pimento cheese. I first discovered this treat at Mitchell Deli, but it didn't take long for me to make my own. (After all, it's a near certainty that Mitchell's version has mayo in it and I am a confirmed mayo-phobe.)

I paid no attention at all to measurements while throwing this together, but here are my best guesses for how to make your very own tasty, spicy cheese spread:

1/2 to 2/3 cup plain yogurt
4 oz. jar pimentos, drained and chopped
5-10 pickled jalapeno slices, chopped finely
1 1/2 to 2 cups finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Mix well all ingredients well. For a special treat, I topped my first sandwich with a Wickle. Yummy!

Recipes for a Snow Day in Tennessee

Before I went to bed last night, I knew there would be no school today. So I crept into A's room, turned off her alarm and headed upstairs, hoping the girls would revert to Christmas Break wake-up times. No such luck. Here's our day via a series of recipes.

Recipe for Disappointment
1 part anticipation
2 parts excitement
3 girls who rarely get enough snow to play in
1 happy mom knowing school is called off before going to bed
3 early risers
2 daughters who look out the window, see no snow and dress for school
1 daughter who clings to all of the talk about a snow day and stays in her PJs
1 yard devoid of any white sprinkles



Recipe for the Cure for Disappointment
1 pink panther cartoon, watched from under blankets
2 glasses of orange juice for the 8 year old and 5 year old
1 glass of water for the 10 year old with reflux
2 cups of coffee for the mom
1 recipe of 2-Mama's Cranberry Muffins

1/2 c butter
1 1/4 c sugar
2 eggs
3 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder (I realize as I type this that I left out this ingredient - you couldn't tell!)
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 c orange juice
1/2 c milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp orange peel
2 c cranberries

Preheat oven to 375.
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time.
Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Add flour mixture alternately with wet ingredients.
Do not overbeat.
Fold in cranberries.
Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Recipe for Enjoying a Snow Day with No Snow
1 board book for K
1 or 2 Dear America series books for A
1 copy The Serial Garden for B
1 book for Mom
1 copy of The Iliad, translated for youth

Read books separately while mom finishes her coffee.
Listen to mom read The Iliad aloud with great excitement, from under blankets.
Sigh with deep satisfaction.

And finally, half-way into our Snow Day, snow arrives! So go and play in it while your mom tries to capture the magic of a free day with her daughters.

Recipe for Gift Giving

Every year we try to give some small gift to our girls' teachers. This is our only year with all three of them at one school, so I wanted to think of something fun and different to do. And I'll be honest, it had to be easy. A loves dancing in The Nutcracker, but it's a big time investment for our family and leaves us all tired by this time of the year. I beat the holiday rush by sending a Thanksgiving letter instead of a Christmas one, but didn't have the foresight to do the same with teacher gifts. So this year, we make a bath soak.

Ginger Orange Bath Soak
2 cups baking soda
2 cups epsom salts
2 TBSP ground ginger
1 TBSP dried orange peel

Mix all together (I doubled or tripled this recipe) and pour about 2/3 cup of the mixture into a paper or cellophane bag.

We opted for paper bags, folded over and held down with a Christmas sticker.

I mixed the bath soak, the girls affixed the stickers and labels and we all enjoyed distributing them to the teachers at our wonderful elementary school.

The original recipe for the soak didn't call for the orange peel, but I wanted some citrus scent to complement the ginger. I tried out the left-overs myself in the bath and found that orange peel gave the bath a bit of texture, but just the scent I had wanted. This was a super-easy, inexpensive and unique gift.

Veggie Soup

After a weekend of party food and party food left-overs on Sunday, I wanted veggies, veggies and more veggies for dinner tonight. Here's what we had:

Tomato Vegetable Soup
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1 Tbsp olive oil
2/3 cup fresh bean dip
4 cups water
1 Tbsp fresh basil

Heat olive oil over medium heat.
Saute onion, pepper and celery.
Add tomatoes, water and bean dip mixture.
Bring to barely a boil and reduce heat to low until ready to eat.

We had this with crackers and it was a perfect meal for a rainy winter night. I had wondered if the peach salsa in the bean dip would make the soup taste odd, but it was a really good use of left-overs!

Party Food

For my birthday party, I tried to come up with a few dairy free, soy free items since my nephew is allergic to soy and dairy, thereby making my sister-in-law's diet more complicated. Two such offerings were:

Fresh Bean Dip
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can corn, rinsed and drained
1/2 of a red bell pepper, diced
2/3 cup peach salsa (medium heat)
1 Tbsp fresh cilantro

Mix all ingredients together and serve with tortilla chips (if you can find soy free) or Stacy's Pita Chips (which are soy free).

I love hummus for a party because it's one of the few dips that actually taste good with baby carrots, celery and cucumbers. Plus, it's full of fiber and pretty darn healthy for a party food. There's a brand that makes a lemon hummus and J and I like it so much that I created this to capture the same feeling:

Lemon Hummus
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 Tbsp tahini
1 Tbsp olive oil
approx. 1/4 up lemon juice
1 tsp garlic salt (or fresh minced garlic, if you want a bolder garlic flavor)

Mix all in the food processor and serve with assorted veggies and pita chips.

At Thanksgiving, J's cousin made an apple cider drink spiked with PGA (that would be pure grain alcohol, in case you've forgotten that college terminology). I decided I'm a tad too old to have a PGA drink at my birthday party, so I did this instead.

Spiced Apple Cider
1 gallon apple cider
4 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum

Heat apple cider, cinnamon sticks and lemon juice over medium heat until warmed through. Turn heat to low.
Serve in Christmas Mugs with Captain Morgan's nearby for those who want some additional spice in their cider.
(If I'd had an orange on hand, I would have sliced it into rounds and floated those in the cider as I heated it - do that if you can!)

My only other homemade offering was a tomato tart, along with Wickles pickles (the best pickles I've ever eaten), a sausage and cheese tray, cream cheese topped with red pepper jelly and desserts from Sweet 16th.

Turkey & Biscuits

While I am a big fan of using left-over turkey to make Turkey & Wild Rice Soup, J doesn't enjoy soups. So tonight I tried a variation on a recipe I've done before using chicken.

Turkey & Biscuits
2 cups cooked turkey
1 can cream of chicken soup (I used reduced fat)
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
12 frozen biscuits

Place turkey in a greased 9 x 13 pan.
Mix soup, yogurt and spices and spread over turkey.
Put biscuits on top, leaving space for expansion.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

We had this with left-over cranberry salad and a green salad topped with almonds and craisins.