Yummy in My Tummy

My friend Debbie posted this recipe on Facebook and I'm a sucker for a good slow cooker recipe.  I have to admit the ingredients for the sauce seemed a little odd to me, but not only was it super easy (all things I have in my cupboard on hand!) it was YUMMY!  I served it with kidney bean & cucumber salad and mandarin oranges.  Enjoy!

Tangy Slow Cooker Pork Roast
1 large onion, sliced
2 1/2 pounds boneless pork loin roast
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup white sugar
3 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp ketchup
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 dash hot pepper sauce, or to taste

 

Directions:

Arrange onion slices evenly over the bottom of the slow cooker and then place the roast on top of the onions. In a bowl, mix together remaining ingredients and pour over roast. Cover and cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours or on High for 3 to 4 hours

Best. Coffee Cake. Ever.

I'm a big fan of coffee cake. Especially when paired with a latte. So this past Thursday I hosted a Discovery Toys party here at the house and served coffee cake & made-to-order lattes from my Saeco latte machine (did I mention my husband spoils me rotten?).  They both got rave reviews, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you!

This recipe was passed on to me by my friend Amber, who knows of my love of coffee cake & lattes and was aware of my search for the "perfect" coffee cake recipe.  It's from The Pioneer Woman's blog and I assure you that it is, in fact, perfect.  While it may seem like a lot of work, it's really pretty easy and it is ridiculously yummy.  Probably has something to do with the 3 sticks of butter :)

COFFEE CAKE

CAKE
1 1/2 sticks butter (softened)
2 C sugar
3 C flour
4 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 1/4 C whole milk
3 whole egg whites

TOPPING
1 1/2 sticks butter (softened)
3/4 C flour
1 1/2 C brown sugar
2 T cinnamon
1 1/2 C chopped pecans

Cake: Stir flour, baking powder, and salt together. Beat egg whites until stiff; set aside. Cream butter & sugar together.  Combine with flour mixture and milk.  Fold in eggs. Combine topping ingredients, mix, and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes in at least a 9x13 pan. Bigger if you have it!

Notes:
- I have used 2 percent milk and it tasted fine, but it actually does taste noticeably better with whole milk
- I typically don't use all the topping, but that's just personal preference. I usually use about 2/3 of the mixture.

Enjoy the YUMMINESS!

Baby Food!

I am officially domesticated.  I made homemade baby food for the first time yesterday!

With Wyatt I would never have considered doing this. I guess because I was too busy trying to get the hang of this parenting thing while also working full time.  I also would have thought it was just weird.  I'm not really into cloth diapers, homeschooling, and teaching my kid to read at 6 months old, and I probably would have put making baby food from scratch in the same category.  Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things; I am just not dedicated or ambitious enough to do them.

But..... I was looking at recipes in this book my MIL gave me, and there were baby food recipes there. It seemed pretty easy.  Steam some veggies or fruit, and stick 'em in the blender. Maybe add some water.  Seemed pretty easy, and I has some extra veggies I needed to use up, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. You know, my newfound 'tinkering' in the kitchen and all.

So yesterday I embarked.  Again, seemed pretty easy.  So easy, that this was the result of the carrots:

And this was the result of the Peas:

LOL!  Olivia "helped" tip over the blender with the carrots, but the peas were all me.

Oops. :)

On a brighter not, the spinach turned out just fine.  What was left of the peas & carrots tasted pretty good too.  Way better than store bought - in fact, it was actually identifiable by taste!

Let's hope Olivia thinks so too!

Garlic Cheese Biscuits!

Since I have been home, the one thing I have been tinkering with is meal planning & cooking.  I'd love to take a cooking class, but there aren't any classes I've found that are taught in English beyond a one-time deal.  I have had some success with my tinkering and decided to start posting some of my favorite new-found recipes on the blog.  Here's one of my new favorites... Garlic Cheese Biscuits!

A friend made these as part of a meal she made for us right after we had Olivia.  I googled a recipe for it and tinkered with it until I got it right.  They are super easy!

Garlic Cheese Biscuits

1 3/4 C flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
4 T butter
1 C milk
1 C shredded cheddar cheese
3/4 t garlic powder

Coimbine flour, salt, garlic powder & baking powder.  Mix. Cut in butter (cut into small bits) and mix until you get coarse crumbs OR melt the butter for 15 seconds and pour in. Pour in milk & cheese and mix. Bake 12-15 minutes at 450 degrees until lightly browned.

*I've done this both ways and they taste identical to me.  So I usually take the easy route and melt the butter.

Enjoy!

The Day I Almost Burned Down the Bunker

I have decided to start volunteering more for Tommy's unit.  This week I volunteered to make 10 pounds of Spanish Rice for the Cinco de Mayo dinner for the single Marines in the Barracks. It didn't sound hard, and I thought what is the difference between making one pound and 10 pounds? Seemed easy enough, just buy more ingredients, right?

Wrong. Ooooooohhhhh so wrong.

First off, it didn't occur to me to find a *bulk* recipe until the last minute, after I had already done my shopping. So right away I had a problem because I didn't have some or enough of the ingredients, but I thought I could improvise easily enough. So I put the kids down for naps... or so I thought... and set out combining ingredients.  I was throwing things in left and right and realized I was actually behind schedule. So I wasn't exactly taking my time, and the improvising of ingredients turned out to be more difficult than I thought.  This led to me making last minute decisions like, "How much chicken broth do I really need?"  "Can I use tomato sauce instead of tomatoes and that will make up for some of the aforementioned lack of chicken broth?" "Is 1/2 cup of chili powder really necessary?"

So I just dumped things into the pan. Then I realized I did not have enough pans for all 10 pounds of rice.  More like 7 pounds of rice.  And even if I had enough pans, I certainly didn't have enough oven space! Well, 7 pounds will just have to do. I shove the first pan in the oven, then realize the racks are too close together. I take everything out and rearrange the racks in the 425 degree oven, then shove both pans in.

I re-read the recipe and happen to see a key phrase - "cover and bake for 45 minutes."  Hmm. I had forgotten the covering part. I remove both pans again (these suckers are heavy!) and cover with tinfoil, then repeat - yet again - the shoving into the oven part. By this time I am getting annoyed.

And that's when I heard the "...sssss...." sound.  And started to smell something bad.  It smelled like... plastic. Burning plastic. Confused, I look inside the oven. Nope, nothing plastic in there. What the...???

Oh my Lord.

In my rush, I had set down the ginormous bag of leftover rice right on top of one of the burners. The burner that releases heat from the oven.  The burning plastic was the rice bag MELTING and the "...sss..." sound I was hearing was the rice falling out of the bag... into the burner... through the burner hole....and right into the oven. All 3 pounds of leftover rice.

And now there was black smoke pouring out of my oven at an alarming rate.

@*&$*#$*(@&*!!!

I tried to remain calm, but I'm not going to lie. I wasn't calm at all. I was freaking out. Our smoke detector was right outside the kitchen, so I quickly shut the kitchen door, threw the storm screen off the window, opened it, shut off the oven, and tried to assess the situation.

My oven looked like a billion rats had been running around crapping in it for about a week.  There were crusty black droplets of rice everywhere!

I gloved up and removed absolutely everything I could from the oven.  I obtained a hand-held broom and dust pan and began sweeping the rice turds out of the oven.  My goal was simply to clean everything out so I could resume cooking the food.  Therefore, there were now rice turds all over my kitchen, as they were flying everywhere in my panic.  Sweet.

Then the kitchen door opened and Wyatt walked in.  Aaaahhhh!  Why aren't you napping?!?! And don't touch the oven!!! Of course he wanted to know what was going on, and I don't blame him. But seriously? Could the timing be any worse?  And that's when I heard Olivia crying in the living room.  Awesome. Both kids fully awake!

It was all I could do to get Wyatt back to his room. I literally had to carry him. I calmed Olivia and resumed the process of getting everything in the oven.  I put all the racks and pans back, restarted the oven, and said a silent prayer that the food would cook quickly!!

Then I set about the task of cleaning up the rest of the kitchen.  I regret not taking a picture... it was quite the sight.  Cans, pans, jars, food, ruined burners, window screens, and black rice turds everywhere. I am pretty sure people will be finding rice turds for centuries to come in this bunker. There is no way I could get them all. Some fell on the floor. Some fell in the drawer below the oven. They are literally everywhere.

The good news? The Bunker didn't burn down. And the rice cooked quickly, and made it there only 15 minutes late. Bon apetite!