EASY Crock-Pot Tenderloin with Apples

To Kyle...hope you still aren't waiting to ... you know.  :)

This recipe is so easy and is actually two meals in one!  We tried it for the first time last week, and it was delicious.  Throw this together in the morning, and in 15-20 minutes you'll have a meal in the crock-pot ready to eat by 6pm when you walk in the door from work (and the house will smell amazing)!

You'll need:
2 to 2 1/2 lbs pork tenderloin; trim the fat and slice into 1" pieces
2 large granny smith apples; peeled, cored, and chopped
1/2 cup appplesauce
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Place the pork in the bottom of a crock-pot, cover with remaining ingredients and stir to coat the pork.  Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours.  Serves 8, and you can pair it with steamed veggies and rice or mashed potatoes.  The pork dish is only 5 weight watcher points per serving! 

When we finished supper, I took the leftover pork (which was falling apart tender) and shredded it, tossed it with our favorite BBQ sauce, and put it in the fridge.  The next day we had delicious pork BBQ sandwiches!

Easy Summer Pasta Salad

I LOVE this recipe.  And it's perfect in the summer because you can toss it together, have it for supper, and then lunch again the next day.  We sometimes eat it for three or four days!

Cook a box of tri-color spiral noodles and drain.  Throw them in a big bowl.  Add two to three cups of cubed, cooked, boneless/skinless chicken breast.  You can use leftover chicken from another time, cook it fresh, or buy it already cooked and chopped.  Chop up:

1 sm/md green pepper (seeded)

1 sm/md yellow/orange pepper (seeded)

1 sm/md red pepper (seeded)

1 large cucumber (sometimes I use two because I LOVE cucumber) 

and add to bowl.  Add a bag of shredded cheddar (2 cups).  Then pour in a bottle of ranch dressing (I like Kraft Cucumber Ranch...) and toss it all until coated.  Throw it in the fridge and you can eat that for lunch and/or supper whenever you don't feel like cooking!

Enjoy!

It's too HOT to cook.  But unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees, and fast food isn't the healthiest option even if you do order the "salad."  And I can't not feed my family.  My three-year-old, Peyton, is perpetually hungry these days ... which doesn't bode well for those teenage years--for our food budget anyway.  Guess that new mini-van savings account might turn into a Teenage Boy Food Savings Account.  

I digress.  

In hot weather, your slow cooker is your best friend!  What?  She's crazy, you say?  I'm not -- slow cooking isn't just for chili and cold-weather stews!  Google slow cooker recipes and the hits you get will overwhelm you.  At least, they did me.  Did you know you can make desserts in a slow cooker?  Apple dumplings.  That's about all I knew of...but there's so much more!  And the best part is, you throw it all in the pot in the morning, forget about it, and Voila!  At supper-time, you just fill your plate!  No more turning on that hot oven, or standing over the stove burning up over the frying pan.

One of my new favorite recipes for the slow cooker is BBQ chicken.  That's right.  Take three-four cuts of boneless, skinless chicken (thawed), and put in the slow cooker.  Then mix up your favorite bbq sauce ... or take the easy way out (which I do) and just pour in the ready-made BBQ sauce straight from the bottle.  We like Stubbs BBQ sauce around here.  But feel free to use your own favorite.  :)  Let it cook for 3-4 hours on high, or until the chicken has reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees.  When it's finished, you have two choices:

1)  Eat it as is.  Throw some steamfresh veggies in the microwave, and dinner is served.

-or-

2) Take the chicken out, shred it up, and throw it back in for a few more hours on low so the sauce and chicken can simmer together to get that extra flavor.  Serve on a bun with some chips and a salad.

Enjoy!

After A Busy Day . . . or Month

Sometimes when you come home after work; or a long day at the zoo :) you just want to whip something up and throw it on the table.  But you don't want to sacrifice taste or nutrition.  So here's a really easy skillet meal that takes about 20 minutes from fridge to table - I can usually get it done in about 15.  Thanks for this tasty, quick meal idea, Mamaw (Sis Sells)--we use it a lot!!!

• 1 pckg of smoked sausage; the traditional rope (substitute turkey sausage if you want to go for a healthier option)
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 1 green bell pepper; seeded and chopped coarsely
• 1 small onion (optional)

Throw all ingredients in an ungreased non-stick skillet on med to med-high heat.  Toss around until everything's hot.  We serve it over minute rice - you can use white or brown, and just follow the instructions on the box.  To get that extra serving of veggies in there, stick some Steamfresh broccoli or sugar snap peas in the microwave and in six minutes you're good to go.  Voila!  Fridge to table in 20 minutes or less . . . what will your record be? 

Happy Cooking!

The Other White Meat

It seems like pork gets a bad wrap - don't eat sausage, don't eat ribs, don't eat ham and whatever you do stay the heck away from bacon!  ...Well, okay ALL pork cuts aren't the healthiest choices, but I say if you're really trying to change your habits to healthier eating (notice - not dieting, especially not fad dieting) then a little indulgence is necessary sometimes, or lookout for that midnight binge on the freezer burned ice cream in the way back of the freezer that you forgot was there, and those last five stale Oreo cookies in the pantry.  Okay, no one lets Oreo cookies sit around long enough to get stale - but you get my point!

Now, there are some pork options out there that maintain a healthier reputation -  tenderloin, loin chops, and lean ham.  Believe it or not - "...Compare pork tenderloin to skinless chicken breast, one of the ideal low fat meats. A three ounce serving of lean pork tenderloin has 102 calories, 2.9 grams of fat and 17.9 grams of protein. A three ounce serving of roasted, skinless chicken breast has 141 calories, 3 grams of fat and 26.4 grams of protein. The pork has 25% fewer calories and it's lower in total fat!"  This excerpt was taken from http://www.webefit.com/articles_100_199/article_180_pork.html.

So last night I decided to go with the loin chop - and I even found a rub that tastes great, is super-easy to make, and has a total weight-watchers point value of 5!  

Chili Crusted Pork Chops:
2 tsp chili powderd
1 1/2 tsp packed light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp table salt
1/4 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
20 oz lean pork loin, boneless center-cut chops, four 5 oz pieces (thawed)

Combine all your spices/salt/pepper in a big ziploc bag and mix well.  Toss in your pork loin and coat each piece, rubbing the mixture into the meat.  Grill chops for about 3-4 minutes on each side, or until meat has reached an internal temperature of 160 degrees.  Or if you haven't reached grill weather yet, throw them on the George Foreman for the same amount of time.  MMMMM!!!

For my sides, I threw some Steamfresh Sugar Snap Peas in the microwave and of course you can't serve pork chops without applesauce!  I also made up some cheesy-rice because it's a favorite around here!

Cheesy Rice:
(SUPER-easy)
Just make however many servings of white, minute rice as you usually would for your family size.  Cook according to instructions on the box.  After the rice soaks up the water, add a few slices of American cheese (I make 2 cups rice/water so Matt has lunch the next day, and I usually add about 5-6 pieces of cheese, but you can adjust accordingly).  After adding the cheese, cover rice and let sit for a few minutes so the cheese gets melt-y.  Then stir, mixing the cheese into the rice.  And you're done!  Kids everywhere will love this one!

So - if you've banished pork from your menu, consider this - fewer calories than you think and no trans fat makes some cuts of the "other white meat" worthy of adding back to your dinnertime rotation!

Happy Cooking!

A Lunchtime Solution

So, this isn't the family dinner but as I puttered around my kitchen yesterday trying to determine what to have for lunch it occured to me that sometimes you can move a lunch menu item to the dinner menu and vice versa.  So here it is -- Left-Over Quesadilla.

I always keep some soft tortilla rounds or whole wheat wraps in the pantry and it just so happened that I had leftover chicken (oven-baked, plain) in my fridge as well.  So, turn your broiler on Low and then throw together this easy Quesadilla.

• 1 soft tortilla round-or-1 whole wheat wrap 
• Sprinkle a little taco seasoning on 1/2 
• Slice up your cooked chicken (or other leftover meat - pork, ground beef, steak) and spread out over the taco seasoning
• Slice up whatever fresh veggies you have around (I used green peppers, but go with what you've got at home) and sprinkle over your chicken
• Add some shredded cheddar - you can make this healthier and use a white cheese, very little cheese, or none at all; but I say the more chedda' the betta'
• Fold over the round/wrap and secure with a toothpick 
• Throw it in the oven for about 3-5 minutes depending on how crispy you want your shell, then flip it over and put it back in for 3-5 additional minutes

Now, that's the 1/2 lunch version.  Should you wish to make this your dinner-time meal, just use 2 rounds/wraps and layer everything on one wrap and cover with the other.  Either way, you can serve alongside your favorite salsa and some sour cream for garnish.  Voila!  Dinner in under 15 minutes!

Happy Cooking!

Breakfast, for Dinner?

Well whatever invading virus that has been striking households across Southern IN got us--which is why I haven't posted recently.  But, we finally beat it and banished it from our house!  Now enough about germ-y ickyness.

How many times have you gone to start dinner and realized that you had not put anything in the fridge to thaw overnight and it is going on six p.m.?  Sure the microwave has a thaw option, but the meat never gets unfrozen enough to work with, or else it starts to cook causing tough spots in the finished product.  If you're frying up ground beef for something like tacos or chili, it's really not too big of a deal.  Chicken is another story.

So my dilemma tonight - wait around for the micro to thaw some beef, or serve up cold cereal?  Neither one strikes my fancy this particular evening, but the cereal begins to lead me in a new direction.  Breakfast for dinner.  


Call it crazy, but I can remember that some of the best meals I had sitting around the dinner table were actually breakfast foods.  Because let's face it; on the average weekday morning no one in my house was forgoing precious sleep to fry up bacon and eggs before school, and usually on the weekend sports practices, Sunday School, and other activities started pretty early as well.  So in order to have a family breakfast, we had to do it at supper time.  Pancakes, scrambled eggs and cheese, and bacon found their way to the table those evening hours - and as young children we thought it was amazing that you could even do that!

So tonight I took a lesson from Mom and Dad, and I served breakfast for dinner!  Our menu was a little different though.  Instead of pancakes, I decided to spice it up with French Toast.  NOT egg-dipped bread.  There is a difference...and please don't serve me fried bread that's been dipped in an egg and tell me I'm eating French Toast.  That's just wrong.

This is a simple recipe and can even be a small indulgence to those wishing to cut calories...what?!?!  Instead of white bread use whole wheat.  Instead of eggs use egg substitute, instead of butter use Pam cooking spray, instead of Buttery Maple Syrup use a light syrup, and just leave out the powdered sugar.  Ta-da!  

Now the first thing you want to do is make your coating for the bread which is what makes French Toast, French Toast, and not soggy, unappetizing, egg-dipped pan-fried bread.  In a small bowl crack 2 eggs, add 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. nutmeg, and a splash of milk and whisk it all together (see - that is so easy, it makes you wonder why people go through the effort to dip bread into the egg and try to pass it off as edible instead of taking five extra seconds to add some spice!).  Grab a skillet and melt some butter over medium heat.  Dip your bread into the mixture, making sure to coat both sides very well.  Cook for about 2-3 minutes on each side, or until lightly browned.  Place your French Toast on a plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar and drizzle some syrup on top - voila!  Breakfast for dinner!

I have to say, Peyton ate almost three whole pieces (and we used wheat bread) so even the finicky eaters will love this simple entree!

Happy Cooking!