Balsamic Glazed Meatloaf

I love meat-loaf!!!  No shame in admitting it.  None.  Meatloaf sandwiches, probably in my top 10.  I have to share tho... I remember when I was a kid and my mom would make meatloaf sandwiches for my dad, I thought that was the NASTIEST!!! thing you could ever ever... ever make for someone.  Well, I was MISS'N OUT!  Now I make meatloaf just for the sandwich.  I went out on a limb and tried something new with this one, no regrets, it was perfect!

Balsamic Glazed Meatloaf
1 pound ground pork
1 pound lean ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large carrot grated
2 stocks celery chopped
1/2 large onion chopped
3 cloves garlic minced
1 turnip chopped
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons balsalmic vinegar
1 cup bread crumbs
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons sweet hot mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Glaze:
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon worcestershire
1 teaspoon hot sauce

Add olive oil to a pan and heat over medium heat.  Add carrot, celery, onion and garlic and saute until veggies are tender.  Set aside and allow to cool.  Preheat oven to 350.  Add remaining ingredients into a large bowl.  Once veggies are cool enough to touch, add to bowl and mix with hands until well combined.  Spray loaf pan with cooking spray.  Place meat into pan and form into a large mound being sure to leave at least 1/2 inch  on the sides from the top of the pan.

Place all glaze ingredients into a small bowl and whisk until combined.  Pour half over top of meatloaf being sure to cover the top evenly, most of it will run down into your moat.  Bake for 60 minutes.  Place remaining glaze into a small sauce pan.  Just before timer goes off, reduce glaze by half over medium high heat, stirring fairly frequently.  Once timer goes off, add a little of the thickened glaze to top of meat loaf and bake for another 15 minutes.  You can use a meat thermometer of you'd like to check doneness, ours was perfect.  Use remaining glaze as a dipping sauce.

This baby was AWESOME!  There was enough left over for sandwhiches the next day (my fav) and for some random meatloaf soup I whipped out.  The glaze is soooooo packed full of tangy sweet flavor, it was heaven.  So make it now! Enjoy!

ps. sorry for the weird photos, lovely winter light!

Paella

Going into this, I knew it wasn't going to be amazing paella with a crusty bottom and perfect seafood flavor absorbed into the rice.  For starters, I don't have a cast iron pan, and I didn't have any shrimp or mussels on hand.  So it was a really tasty rice dinner with a paella inspired flair.  Even though it wasn't traditional, it still made a good dinner with fairly little fuss.

Paella (of sorts)

What you'll need:

2 large sausage links

1/2 pound or about 6 chicken tenders

3 cloves garlic smashed and coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon ground mexican oregano

1 medium onion sliced in large pieces

1 1/2 red pepper sliced (you could use a combination of red and green, I only had red on hand)

1 large pinch saffron (larger the better)

1 1/2 cups hot water

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup carnaroli or arborio rice (or any short grain)

1 cup dry white wine

2 cups chicken stock

1 can large black olives

2 teaspoons fresh cracked black pepper

Add saffron to hot water and let steep while you cook the meats. In a large pan with a lid, cook sausage.  Remove from pan, slice into bite size rounds, set aside.  Leave sausage drippings and little burned bits.  Cook chicken, slice into bite size pieces, set aside with sausage.  Cook onion and red/green pepper until onions are translucent and tender.  Add garlic, oregano and one teaspoon black pepper. Saute until garlic is fragrant.  Add wine, saffron tea, and chicken stock.  Bring to a boil and rice.  Give it a stir, reduce heat to medium low and let cook for 10 minutes.  Add chicken, sausage and black olives.  Now cover and let cook for 30 minutes.  Rice should have absorbed most of the water but still quite a bit has pooled at the top.  Add peas and remaining pepper and fold until evenly distributed.  Test rice, if it doesn't seem like you have enough liquid left in the pan you may need to add another 1/2 cup water.  Cover, do not stir again, and let cook for another 15-20 minutes or until all liquid has been absorbed and the rice is begging to brown on the bottom.  Make sure your burner is on medium low.  Thats it!

 

 

 

So thats my half effort of paella.  Someday I'm going to make it for real.  You could add shrimp in there when you add the peas and it would get it one step closer to the real thing.  The reason I wanted to make Paella is because Costo had this little jar or saffron in the spices a few weeks ago and I couldn't pass it up (it was a little pricy though).  Paella was one dish I knew required saffron.  I want to try a dessert with it next.  So stay tuned for that!  Enjoy!

Vegetable Dip

Last night we went to our friends from dinner and fun!  They asked me to bring veggies and dip so I grabbed a box of cream cheese and just started adding.  You really can't go wrong with anything that has a whole box of cream cheese.  So yeah, it tasted good.  Mrs Butters, Paula Dean, was making Tzatziki sauce on the TV the other day, but instead of making the half way healthy normal version, she made it fattening as hell!  So that was sort of my inspiration.  She didn't use cream cheese, but it was a start to a yummy idea.

Glorified Tzatziki Vegetable Dip
1 package cream cheese (I used 1/3 fat)
1 cup sour cream or greek yogurt (I used half and half of each)
juice and zest from 1 small lemon
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
1 small cucumber
1 tablespoon ranch seasoning
1 clove garlic minced
1 tablespoon dill
1/2 teaspoon salt

In a medium bowl, blend together cream cheese, lemon and zest  and sour cream/yogurt with a hand mixer.  Cut cucumber in half and scrape out seeds. Place in food processor and pulse until chopped.  Pour cucumber into mesh strainer and press and squeeze in your hand until no more water comes out. Should have around 1/4 cup but a little more is ok.  Add cucumer and remaining ingredients to bowl and mix until combined.  Serve with fresh sliced veggies.

Thank you to Eric and Julie for fun times last night.  Savory Saturday is Savory Sunday this week because Kam really wanted to leave and I didn't have time to finish this post.  They had us over for a belated birthday dinner and Julie made chocolate fondue!  Needless to say, it was awesome!  Enjoy!

Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup

Every year I have to make split pea soup. On our birthday, we decided to go over to the local meat market and buy some nice steaks to have for birthday dinner.  To my joyful surprise, they had smoked ham hocks in the case too!  "I'll take the largest one please!"  And that's when split pea soup became our destiny...and I have to admit, I'm surprised by the short ingredient list.  I thought I forgot something, but it's all there.  I'm not sure where the sweet potato came from, I was looking at the veggies I had and just thought it might be a perfect addition.  It was.

Ham and Sweet Potato Split Pea Soup
What you'll need:
1 large ham hock
4 cups diced carrots divided
3 cups chopped celery divided (use heart and leaves if you can)
1/2 large onion chopped
8 cups chicken stock
3 cloves garlic
1 medium sweet potato diced and divided
1 bag dried peas
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

In a large soup pot, add chicken stock and ham hock and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a slight boil and let cook for about 4 hours.  Meat should come off the bone in big chunks.  Don't worry about shredding it, it will continue to fall apart as you make the soup. (You may want to add a little more ham chucks.  We added a small pack of the packaged ham cubes.)

Once ham has fallen off bone, try and remove (if any) the bits of skin/fat that are attached to the meat.  Add garlic and pepper and half of each carrots, sweet potato, onion, and celery.  Allow to cook, still at a small boil, until soft (about 15 minutes).  Once vegies are soft, add the bag of dried peas. Reduce heat to medium low.  Stirring occasionally let peas cook for 30-45 minutes or until you can see that they are starting to absorb the liquid and break down.  Once peas start to mush, but you can still see some of their shape, add remaining vegetables.  The soup will be done when vegetables are soft and soup is thick.  The peas shouldn't be visible anymore.

If you wanted to make this quicker, you could skip the ham hock and just use the packaged ham chunks, but you would loose the awesome flavor that develops from boiling the ham bone.  Winter comfort food? Yes please! Enjoy!

Sausage, Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna Rolls

I have seen these Lasagna roll ups here and there and decided I wanted to give them a try.  There are probably 200 different things you could fill them with, I just kind of used what I had. If you wanted to make them meatless, it would be really easy.  Or use white sauce instead of red.  Basically any way you make lasagna, you could roll instead of layer.  I was even thinking of making thanksgiving leftover lasagna roll ups.  Kam might explode with excitement over that one though....

Sausage, Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna Rolls
What you'll need:
8 Lasagna noodles cooked according to package (make 10 just in case one tears beyond repair)
1 package ground sausage (you could use ground beef, turkey or chicken too)
2 cups sliced mushrooms
4 cups fresh spinach
1 cup diced onion
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes (remove most of the oil and chop into smaller pieces)
1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
2 cups shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup parmesan reggiano
2 cups pasta sauce (if I wasn't making this after work I would have made homemade, but I went the quick rout today)

Begin boiling water and cooking noodles.  In a large frying pan, cook sausage until no longer pink. Remove some of the fat leaving about a tablespoon. Add onions and saute until tender and translucent.  Add mushrooms, spinach, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, pepper and oregano and cook on medium low until most of the moisture is out of the spinach and mushrooms.  About 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray. Lay 3 or 4 noodles onto a glass cutting board (or your counter will work too).  Spread a small layer of the meat mixture over each noodle. Leave about 2 inches of noodle bare.  Spread about 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce over meat and a thin layer of mozzarella.  Now starting at the end of the noodle with meat, fold the noodle over a tiny bit and begin to roll the bare end which will be the bottom.  If you work slow and steady, you shouldn't loose too much filling out the sides of the rolls.  Now use a spatula to transfer the roll into the pan.  You should have room for 8 rolls in your pan.  Cover each roll with 2 or 3 tablespoons more sauce and remaining mozzerella and parmesan reggiano.  Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, removing foil for the last 10 minutes.

Love this flower pepper!  Love it!

This was a great dinner.  Lasagna with a different presentation.  They were even better the second day!  I think these would be really fun to serve guests.  Kam was my assistant for this one and when I have about half done rolling them, I asked him if he could do this.  He shook his head in a funny Kam way and said NO, No, no.  He was pretty stoked to eat them though! Enjoy!

Snow finally blanketed Spokane.  Now I hope we get 12 inches before Thanksgiving so we can go sledding at our friend's Eric and Julie's.  We are spending the beloved turkey day at their house this year, and they have THE BEST sledding hill!  Here is a photo of us from last year's sledding adventure.  We love them!

Happy saturday amigos!

Carnitas

Happy Saturday everyone!  Not too much to report today, just being lazy.  We woke up to a light dusting of snow this morning.  It may still be fall, but winter is in the air.  I'm kind of hoping for a white Thanksgiving.  Hope everyone is doing something fun today, whatever your kind of Saturday fun might be!

Carnitas
What you'll need:
2-3 pounds pork loin, butt or shoulder (I had loins, you would usually use something more fatty)
1/2 cup orange juice
2 divided teaspoon salt
2 divided teaspoon cumin
2 divided teaspoon chili powder
shredded lettuce
corn tortillas
cilantro
lime wedges


Place everything into slow cooker and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.  Remove from cooker and let rest for about 30-60 minutes to cool enough to handle.  Shred and break up into large chunks.  Place shredded meat on to a foil lined cookie sheet. Preheat broiler.  Place meat under broiler and broil until tops begin to get crispy and slightly dried.  Around 10-15 minutes.  Be sure to watch it!


Avocado sauce (if desired)
1 avocado
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
few dashed green hot sauce


Place in food processor and blend until smooth.


Now make yourself some mexican rice to go with the awesome tacos you are about to love.  Pile some meat and lettuce, some cilantro and a squeeze of lime, top it all over with a little avocado sauce and eat eat eat!

 

 

This is one way that you can make carnitas.  Kind of the quick and easy way, set it and forget it method.  I plan on trying this recipe again, handing the initial cooking of the pork differently.  Plus, the loin just didn't have quite enough fat in it.  This will be a to be continued...Enjoy!

Clam Chowder

Tomorrow is our friend's Julie's birthday so we are having them over for some birthday fun.  I've been planning on making chowder this weekend for a few weeks now, so that's what Julie is getting for her Kam & Bren hang out birthday dinner.  That and a pie thing I made, beer bread, and champagne cocktails!  I kind of made this chowder recipe up, I don't think traditional chowder calls for Old Bay or oregano, but what the heck!  

Clam Chowder
1 1/2 cups bacon
3 cups celery
3 cups carrots
6 cups potatoes
1 tablespoon butter
4 14.5oz cans chicken stock
1 Costco Giant Can Clams (51oz)
4 or 5 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon ground oregano
1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon old bay
3 teaspoons fresh cracked pepper
2 cups half and half
2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley

Cut bacon into small pieces using kitchen scissors and fry in a large pot.  Once bacon is crispy, remove some of the bacon fat so you have about 2 tablespoons remaining and add butter, onion, celery, carrots and potatoes.  Sweat veggies for about 10 minutes over medium low.  Add chicken stock, clams and juice, bay leaves, salt, oregano, old bay, pepper and 1 cup half and half.  Over medium low bring to a boil then reduce and let simmer until veggies are cooked through. About an hour.

In a small bowl whisk flour with one and half cups milk until smooth and add to chowder with remaining milk and half and half.  Return to a boil stirring fairly often, reduce and eat when ready!  Top with extra bacon and parsley or oyster crackers.

I haven't made chowder in so long, and I know I've never added Old Bay to it. That stuff is becoming one of my favorite on hand flavor boost spices.  So good on popcorn!  Also, this made a giant pot of soup.  I wanted enough to feed 4 people, send some home with Eric and Julie and have left overs for us.  So I you don't want that much chowder, half the recipe.  Hope everyone is having a fun Halloween weekend!  Enjoy!