Tasty Tuesday: Cranberry Dijon Pork Roast

This time of year, I love crock pot meals. Usually we have an after school activity going on once a week and having dinner ready to go in the crock pot gives me one less thing to worry about. This is a great one. I made some roasted root vegetables to go along with it including carrots, turnips, parsnips and sweet potatoes, just cube them up, toss with olive oil and salt and pepper and roast at 375 for 30 or 40 minutes.

Cranberry Dijon Pork Roast (Taste of Home)

Ingredients

• 1 boneless pork loin roast (2 to 3 pounds)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 envelope golden onion soup mix
• 1 can (14 ounces) whole-berry cranberry sauce
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Directions

• In a large skillet, brown roast in butter on all sides. Transfer to a 5-qt. slow cooker; sprinkle with soup mix. Add cranberry sauce to skillet, stirring to loosen browned bits from pan. Pour over roast.
• Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours or until meat is tender. Remove roast to a serving platter; keep warm. Strain cooking juices and stir in mustard. Slice roast; serve with sauce. Yield: 6 servings.

Tasty Tuesday: Apple Butter

It's that time of year! I used the apples we picked and made me some apple butter! Here is my post from last year (apple butter post). It includes the recipe and my trials from the apple butter making. This year I happened to have ground cloves, and a food mill, thanks to my friend Kristen. I gave her a jar of apple butter last year, and to ensure she got another one this year she got me a food mill for my birthday! I got one with your name on in Kristen! The food mill was so awesome. I am going to make homemade applesauce and use it and I also want to make gnocchi with it!

Apple Butter: It's a beautiful thing. In last years post I talked about how I loved to can. I was reminded of that once again, with every "ping" as the jars were sealing.

Estelle is also 10 months old today! She is getting big so fast! She loves wrestling with Lane. She crawls all over him. She is really pulling up on everything and likes to get into everything with in reach. She has been getting into cupboards a lot too. Next on the list of items to buy is a baby gate and child safe locks for the cabinets! I don't think we ever had a gate for Lane because we lived in a one story house. We all have so much fun with Miss Estelle. She just started refusing baby food too, so now I need to get creative with the finger foods! She's already got quite the opinion.

Tasty Tuesday: Poffertjes

We are Dutch. Frisian to be exact. The town where Reese and I grew up is a total Dutch town. While we were living there a few years ago we got a poffertjes pan, poffertjes are a Dutch mini pancake, kinda. Reese and Lane love this little treat. If you are not in the Lynden area, you can get a poffertjes pan on Amazon! According to my research, poffertjes are traditionally made with a yeast batter, but that is not the recipe I have... so here goes.

Poffertjes

1 cup flour 3 eggs

4 Tbsp sugar 4 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp salt Butter

1 cup hot water Powdered Sugar

Mix flour sugar and salt. Add water, eggs and oil. Mix well until batter is lump free. Fry on poffertjes grill or as silver dollar size pancakes in frying pan or griddle. To serve, spread with butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

The pan, and a squeeze bottle for easy dispensing.
flip once...

melt some butter on top and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Yum! (Can't get rid of underline AHHHH!) They are so yummy! I may or may not have eaten a few....

And here is my little helper in the kitchen in her jeggings! She is hilarious. She likes to be in the kitchen when I am, sometimes standing by the dishwasher, but usually getting into the recycling box! I usually have cereal boxes, etc strewn about the kitchen floor.

Tasty Tuesday: Chocolate Espresso Biscotti

So....I am doing Weight Watchers. Not because I think I am fat (to all of you rolling your eyes right now). I have had an extra 10+ lbs on me since I've had Estelle that I can't seem to get off. So in an effort to eat a little better and be aware of what I am shoving in my mouth, I thought I'd try it out. So far so good. The reason I share this is because this Biscotti recipe is from a Weight Watchers cookbook. Each little piece is worth 1 point. Now I can't just have one so I have been having two, but really not bad for a tasty little sweet treat.

2 cups flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

2 1/2 Tbsp ground coffee (not instant, actual ground coffee)

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

3 Tbsp strong brewed coffee

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Spray baking sheet with nonstick spray. Whisk together flour, cocoa, ground coffee, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl; stir in almonds. Beat sugar, eggs, brewed coffee and vanilla in a medium bowl until mixed well. With electric mixer on low speed, add sugar mixture to flour mixture, beating until dry dough forms. Cut dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, shape each piece of dough into a log about 15 inches long, 1 inch high and 1 3/4 inch wide. Transfer to baking sheet. Press logs until 3/4 inch high and two inches wide. Bake until toothpick inserted into center of log comes out clean, 20-25 minutes, rotating baking sheet after 10 minutes. Let cool about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, reduce oven temp to 300. With two spatulas, transfer 1 log to cutting board. Using long serrated knife, cut log into 1/4 inch slices. Repeat with other log, making a total of 80 slices. Place biscotti on baking sheet (cut side down). Bake 10 minutes per side. Let cool on wire rack.

Estelle is now 9 months old! She is sooooo fun! Estelle's sleeping habits have greatly improved in the past month or two and I am feeling much better as a result. She takes two pretty good naps a day and sleeps well through the night. She is a happy, curious and quite social little one. We had her 9 month appointment yesterday. She weighed 21 lbs 7 oz and is 29 inches long. That put her in around the 95th percentile for height and weight. I am feeling so blessed to have Estelle. She really brings so much joy to our family and I can't imagine life without her!
Reese bought a helmet for a her a while back. We put it on her last night and it fit well. So we put her in the bike seat for her first little ride. I am not going to go on long rides yet, I feel she's a little young to keep that heavy helmet on her head for too long. But little rides are fun and she seemed to love it!

Tasty Tuesday: Peach Cobbler

So while we were in Alaska, I planned to make one of the dinners and two desserts. When we go up there we have to fly all of the food into the cabin because we come in by float plane. So I like to buy things that can be used for a couple purposes and make recipes that have minimal ingredients. We had Bisquick on our list so we could make pancakes, biscuits and this peach cobbler. I get to the grocery store in Ketchikan and they have no Bisquick, hmmmm. So I buy Krusteaz pancake mix and call it good. So when I went to work on the cobbler I substituted 1 cup of pancake mix for the Bisquick. It was really good! And to top it all off, the oven doesn't work to well so I baked it on the barbecue! I also had brought some Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mixes. I also baked those cookies on the barbecue and they turned out yummy, just a little "done" on the bottom. So here is my recipe for my Barbecued Peach Cobbler!

1 cup Bisquick (or pancake mix :)

1 cup milk

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup sugar

1 can (29 oz) sliced peaches, drained

Heat oven (or BBQ) to 375. Stir together Bisquick, milk, and nutmeg in ungreased square baking dish (8x8). Stir in butter until blended. Stir together sugar and peaches; spoon over batter. Bake 50-60 minutes. (More like 40 minutes on a BBQ). 6 servings

And no I am not confused on my days of the week, I am just that unorganized. Tasty Wednesday it is!

Tasty Tuesday (on Wednesday)

Since I can't seem to consistently keep up on the menu thing, I thought I'd try to do Tasty Tuesday. Some other blogs do this and I might link up to one at some point. So my plan was to start this week, well one day late....here it is.

I made this tart last week. It is so yummy! The crust is cornmeal crust which is such a nice change from a normal crust. I halved the recipe and just made the tart a little smaller. The crust would be great with apples, pears, peaches, any kind of berry, and I want to try it with rhubarb too.

Blueberry-Blackberry Rustic Tart

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
• 2/3 cup cold butter
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 
  FILLING:
• 4 cups fresh blueberries
• 2 cups fresh blackberries
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tablespoons turbinado (washed raw) sugar or coarse sugar
• Whipped cream, optional

Directions

• In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar and cornmeal; cut in butter until crumbly. Gradually add buttermilk, tossing with a fork until dough forms a ball. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into a 14-in. circle. Transfer to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
• In a large bowl, combine the berries, sugar, flour and lemon juice; spoon over the pastry to within 2 in. of edges. Fold up edges of pastry over filling, leaving center uncovered. Brush folded pastry with egg; sprinkle with sugar.
• Bake at 375° for 55-60 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Using the parchment paper, slide tart onto a wire rack to cool. Serve with whipped cream if desired. Yield: 8 servings.

Recipe Courtesy of Taste of Home

Hope everyone is having a great week. We are enjoying some down time before some adventures in the next week!!