Where did this energy come from?

Today?

• We decided we are moving in a month and filled out an application for a new apartment.
• We went to the pumpkin patch.
• I made a buffalo chicken casserole, which was amazing. No lie.
• Fed the kids, played with the kids, bathed them, brushed their teeth, read stories, and put to bed with nary a tear.
• Made a cold oatmeal parfait for breakfast in the morning.
• Made rootbeer pulled pork in the crock pot.
• Made breakfast cookies.
• Did laundry.

The only explanation I have is that I won’t do any more chores or feats of amazing-ness for the rest of the week. Oh, yeah. I have to work tomorrow and teach. Maybe I should go to bed…

Breakfast cookies:

• 2 cups quick oats
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup peanutbutter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 banana, mashed
• 1/4 cup apple sauce
• large handful of dried apricots, diced
• large handful of mini semi sweet chocolate chips

Mix and bake at 325 until slightly brown.

Cold Oatmeal Parfait:

• 1/4 cup oats
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup greek yogurt
• 1.5 tsp chia seeds
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp honey
• 1/4 cup peach pie filling I made this summer with my dear friend Katie

Shake until combined in a mason jar. Leave in the fridge until morning.

Rootbeer Pulled Pork

• Pork Butt, a large one
• 2 onions, halved
• 4 or 5 chipotles in adobo
• 20 ounces of rootbeer
• 1 cup-ish chicken stock

Low and slow in the crock pot all night.

A Saturday Alone

This rarely happens. Clean apartment, minimal school work to catch up on, a full fridge…

So today, I am in the process of making a Ree Drummond recipe that I’ve been eyeballing since she first posted it almost two years ago on her blog. Her original recipe is simple: pork shoulder roast, chipotle peppers in adobo, and Dr. Pepper. Doesn’t get any easier than that. I had to tweak mine, of course. I don’t think I’ve ever followed a recipe to the letter. Hers seems pretty perfect so I hope I didn’t screw it up. To mine, I added garlic and orange juice. It’s been in the oven since 8:30 and needs to go for about six hours. The apartment smells ridiculous. I didn’t use the entire can of peppers–I was worried the recipe seemed a bit one-note. Sweet and hot seemed to be the only thing it had going on. We’ll see. I’m excited to taste it.

Update: The pork stayed in the oven for about five hours. I pulled it out, shredded it, and strained the liquid. I put the liquid, which consisted of Dr. Pepper, chipotle, orange juice, and garlic, in the freezer so that the fat would congeal. I wasn’t so sure about the liquid, so to hedge my bets, I began another barbeque sauce. The sauce was just ketchup, chipotles, Dr. Pepper, and orange juice–plus some cooked down onions from the roasting process. I simmered that sauce for awhile and watched it reduce beautifully. Eventually, I checked the roast drippings and skimmed the fat–the flavor of that sauce was identical to the one on the stove save for one thing: the sweet porky goodness that came from bathing a roast for several hours. I added the roast juices to the new sauce and now they are simmering away.

Wow. This, hands down, is the simplest and more delicious preparation of pulled pork I have made or tasted. I highly recommend it!

Weekend Cooking

The husband and I just returned home from Winco.  Produce prices are really starting to rise.  80%-100% of crops in Mexico have been lost to freezing temperatures.  Peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant have been affected the most–prices in some places have already tripled.  Read more here.

Anyway, they say Mexico hasn’t seen such cold temperatures since 1957.

Moving on…

I have been thinking about making pulled pork all week.  I hate to use a bottled sauce–and I really couldn’t decide on which flavors I’d include in a recipe of my own.

I’ve semi-settled on this recipe for honey-tamarind sauce. For those of you unfamiliar with tamarind, it’s a common ingredient in Mexican and Indian recipes.  Also–Thai.  And also in African cuisine.  It’s also found in Worcestershire sauce. I bought tamarind paste a while back when I made pad thai and I’ve been thinking of ways to finish off the jar.  I think this recipe will be perfect.  The only changes to the recipe I plan on making are adding mango juice.

Below is a picture of tamarind.

I have also been planning on making chicken tortilla soup.  But since realizing that the only meat I can buy at Winco  comes in HUGE amounts, I’ve decided to make a vegetarian tortilla soup.  I just couldn’t bring myself to buy several pounds of chicken.  One pound, maybe.  But 5? 6? 10? No. So, instead of chicken, I’ll either substitute lentils or beans.  I haven’t decided yet.  But here is the recipe that I’ll riff off of:  Tortilla soup.

The First Meal I Cooked for My Husband or Damn You, Rachel Ray!

 

My ex-husband and I met when we were in college in Cheney, Washington.  We dated for two weeks and were married a short five months later.  It was ridiculous, romantic, and dizzying.

I was living in the dorms when we met.  A foodie, even in a dorm living situation, I had a full set of knives, pots, pans, and utensils that I pulled down from my bookshelves on a regular basis to cook for friends.  I invited my future husband to eat a dorm-cooked meal with me and my roommate soon after we started dating.

The only thing I knew about his taste in food was that he loaded everything with hot sauce.  Everything.  Drowned. Drenched. Buried. Flooded.  Soaked.

So, with this limited information, I scoured the Internet for recipes.  At that time, I was a huge Rachel Ray fan.  30 Minute Meals, 40 Dollars a Day…I was addicted to her cutesy food nicknames and the way she talked to her food as she cooked.  “Get into the hot-tub (what she calls her pots or pans), kids!” she’d shriek to her chorizo.  Naturally, her website was the first one I went to and this is what I cooked:  Smoky Orange BBQ Chicken Sandwiches

 

The recipe is simple enough: Grill some chicken breasts and make the smoky orange bbq sauce.

Sauce ingredients:

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 3 chipotle peppers (smoky hot peppers) in adobo sauce, found in cans in Mexican foods section
• 1/2 cup ketchup, eyeball it
• 1/4 cup orange juice concentrate
• 1 cup chicken broth

Basically, all you do is sauté the onion, put the other ingredients into a blender, blend, pour liquid into the pan with the onion, simmer, and reduce.

Now, I’m not one for following directions exactly.  And at this point in my culinary experience, I had never cooked with chipotle peppers before.  Instead of three chipotle peppers, I probably added five.  Or the whole can.  I don’t remember.

I finished the sauce, cooked the chicken breasts, put the sandwiches together, and plated them up for the roommate and the future-mate.  The roommate was a picky (read: weird) eater, anyway.  She used to eat meals that consisted of white rice with sugar on half and soy sauce on the other.  I didn’t expect her to love Rachel’s sandwich.  But I fully expected the boyfriend to love them.  (Especially because I didn’t realize that I turned the sauce into citrus-y, liquid fire.)

He loved them.

With tears streaming down his face, with me quietly cursing the Scoville units under my breath (I told him I could cook! Look at him; he’s weeping!), he ate the entire sandwich and then finished my roommate’s.

He said he loved it.  Still says he loved it.