Slow Cooker Pork Tenderloin

Each afternoon when the boys come home from school, they have one thing on their minds: food.

“Mommy, I’m hungry.”

“Mommy, when are we going to eat?”

“Mommy, what’s our snack today?”

“Mommy, I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”

“Mommy, I don’t like that.”

“Mommy, I just want a lollipop for dinner.” (When Monkey Boy said that, I had to look away so he wouldn’t see me giggle.”) Read more

Slow-Cooked Achiote-Marinated Pork (Cochinita Pibil)

The boys start back to school today and Michael went back to work after a well-deserved holiday break, which means we have returned to our weekdays full of drop-offs, pickups, multiple schedules, homework, and little time for preparing dinner. Tackling big cooking projects on weekdays is out of the question, so we are making easy weeknight meals such as this achiote-marinated pork. Read more

The Daring Cooks Make Chinese Dumplings and Potstickers

I remember first tasting Chinese dumplings and potstickers when I lived in Saipan, and I always liked ordering them in restaurants, but then I visited Hong Kong and southern China and got hooked. It was so fun to see the dim sum trays in the restaurants, taste different things, and try to figure out what was in all the fillings. Though I have enjoyed Chinese potstickers and dumplings all these years, I’ve never made them from scratch—getting bags of gyoza from Trader Joe’s is just too easy—so I felt a huge amount of excitement when I saw Jen of Use Real Butter had challenged the Daring Cooks to make her family’s recipe for Chinese dumplings and potstickers. Read more

Spicy Black Beans and Ham

Ham bones are a traditional flavoring for beans, and I remember my mother making pinto or navy beans cooked with ham and onions and served with cornbread. It was simple, homey food that warmed the belly and was easy on the budget. We use ham bones in soups and beans, and save the large ham bones when we cook ham for Sunday dinner, I just store them in the freezer.

I like black beans with ham and spice them up with Mexican flavors. We enjoy these beans as a main dish with jalapeno cheddar cornbread or rice or as a side dish for Mexican foods.

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Jambalaya with Shrimp, Chicken, Andouille, and Ham and a Giveaway

I don’t have any Creole or Cajun relatives (that I know of), so for authentic recipes I turn to some of my favorite cookbooks. Emeril calls this particular recipe his “Clean Out the Ice Box and Freezer” Jambalaya, my kind of food, particularly now because after the holidays and fall harvest we have a freezer stuffed full of…stuff. After going through it a week ago we renewed our commitment to using up some of the stash and cleaning it out over the next month, which will of course make room for more stuff. The cycle never ends.

The recipe is pretty straight forward, but I made a few modifications as a I went. First of all, I couldn’t believe it had no celery and I added some anyway. The recipe calls for a mix of dark and white meat, but since Michael doesn’t care for dark meat I used only white meat. I also used brown rice instead of white rice and reduced the oil to 1/3 cup. Not much of a difference in the amount of oil, I know, but I think the recipe turned out just fine. And because this was dinner for all of us, I cut back on the cayenne so the boys could enjoy it too. Michael made up for the lack of heat by pouring some hot sauce onto his servings.

This is an easy dish to prepare, and it’s practically a meal in a pot. Add a green salad or other green vegetable and you are set. Read more

New England Clam Chowder

New England clam chowder ranks in my Top 10 list of comfort foods, and it’s one of my favorite things to order in seafood restaurants. Recipes for clam chowder are hotly contested, and if you get into a discussion about chowder with New Englanders you are likely to get a wide variety of opinions on what is the best clam chowder. When I fix this soup I feel like I’m back in Maine, and that’s good enough for me; serve it en boule and I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.

This recipe starts with cooking some bacon, then sautéing onions in the bacon drippings, cooking it all with clams, clam juice or stock, potatoes, thyme, and bay leaf, and then adding the clams and corn and thickening it all up with some heavy cream. This chowder doesn’t require loads of salt because of the bacon, plus canned clams are kept in brine, and the stock will be salted as well, so I use a light hand with the salt. I almost always use more than the amount of bacon specified in a recipe because I love my bacon. I confess I had a 12-ounce package and it all went into the pot for this chowder. All that flavor gets into the onions and then the flour soaks up some of it and it infuses the potatoes and mixes with the clams and creates a thing of beauty. We only have bacon a few times a year, so by golly I’m going to enjoy it! Read more

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