Alrighty then

So, I went out and had a great day with my mom today. We ate lunch at Joe's out at Jax Beach and attempted to find a Lady Foot Locker with no luck. We hit BJs super store where she bought a huge pack of chicken breasts and really thick pork chops and gave 4 of each to us. So, for dinner tonight I made chops, yellow rice, and spicy pinto beans.

First I brined the chops for about an hour or so. Seasoning on the chops - even parts chili powder, key lime seasoning from the Keys, onion powder, oregano, half as much cumin, and a minced clove of garlic. Slapped some foil on the panini press, layed down those fat daddies, layed another piece of foil on top and we were golden in about 15 minutes.

The rice was simple, bought the tiny yellow bag of seasoned yellow rice and boiled it up.

The beans are my favorite beans ever. Half an onion chopped, 4 cloves of garlic minced, 3 tomatoes chopped, 2 peppers from the small can of adobo peppers, 2 tbsp of the sauce from the can, 2 tbsp on H2O, and a can of pinto beans rinsed really well. Cook the mixture in this order and let it simmer together for the time the rice was steaming up.

And there you have tonight's yummy-ness.

John took a job at a pizza joint...

... so I haven't had to do much cooking as of late, but tonight he is home and we will be eating sausage, peppers, and onions tonight. Hopefully there will be enough left over to make some quesadillas out of them later in the week. Chop up everything real small, layer in on the tortilla, drop some feta cheese down, place another tortilla shell on top and press that sucker.

Oh, I almost forgot. Since today was President's Day and I have the day off for a holiday I did a little something special that I learned from an old college buddy, Mike Graff. The neighbors gave us a couple of small yellow peppers and a few teeny red peppers, so I pretended that they were all jalapenos and made poppers. Cut em in half, cut out the ribs and the stalks, stuffed them with tasty deli cream cheese and wrapped them with bacon I semi cooked for 2 minutes in the microwave. Then I "grilled" them in a stove top skillet. This was my first time making them, so I didn't make a big production out of it, but let me tell ya - those suckers were yum-my!!

Wow - been quite a while...

So, I've made lots of meals since the last time I wrote, but I was too much of a procrastinator to post. Unbelievable! I promise myself that I'm going to hop on and do this because within the past month, I've made a dish or two that I would like to know what I wanted to do differently. Since I didn't blog about it... I've forgotten and probably will just not make the recipes again and that's a shame.

Tonight, I made an herb seasoned roasted pork tenderloin with granny smith apples and a pan sauce. First I cut the silverskin from the 2 loins that came in my package from Publix. If you don't know about this trick, learn it. It's that sort of silvery looking thick stuff on the thicker end of the loin. Grab a paring knife and cut it off.

After I cut the off the silverskin, I made an herb mixture of garlic salt, onion powder, chili powder, cumin, oregano, thyme, and a little dash of dillweed - these were all dried herbs. I rubbed this mix onto every side of the loins and seared it in a dish on the stove top at medium-high heat. Towards the end I added in a clove of minced garlic and deglazed the pan with some apple cider vinegar.

I sliced a granny smith apple and placed a few slices on top of the loins and in the pan. I roasted the loins at 450 degrees for approximately 20 minutes. I made sure the meat reached an internal temperature of 160* and let it rest on a platter.

I added in a little water (it would have been chicken stock if I had any) and a bit of freshly ground pepper and thickened up the pan sauce on the stove top.

I served the pork medallions with a few slices of apples and poured some of the super tasty pan sauce on top. Yum-tastic! Try it and tell me how you like it.

Lazy, lazy, lazy

Holy crud! John and I vegged out for like a week and are so lazy right now. I haven't cooked anything but breaksfasts since Christmas, I think. Aside from the grilled cheese here and there, there hasn't been much going on in my kitch in a while. We hit Publix last night after looking into ou bare fridge - we didn't even have milk! LOL. I spent only about $90 and that will feed us for the week. We will be living on soups mostly.

I made us some knock-off, semi-homemade burritos last night. Rotisserie Mojo chicken, Newman's Own Medium salsa, chopped up some pepperoncinis (b/c that's all I had) heated all that through and put it into some tortillas. Baked them up at 350* for about 20 minutes and that was dinner. Haha. Mama would be so proud. ;-)

Got 2 boxes of 48 oz. low-fat, low-sodium chicken broth and some recipes. Tonight I'm going to make some Plantain Soup from a recipe by my favorite Cuban, Ingrid Hoffman.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ingrid-hoffmann/plantain-soup-recipe/index.html
I'll let y'all know how that turns out. Publix is selling their Cubanitos platters, so I figured (correctly, I might add) that they would have a nice selection of Cuban Pan (bread) so we'll have some garlic toast and Plantain sopa.

I'm BAAACCCKKKK, y'all! See ya next time!

~Meg in the Kitch~