pork butt in the crock pot getting ready to cook!
tuesday was a good cooking day for me. i had decided to finally try my hand at making pulled pork in the crock pot, made the tomato vegetable soup i had wanted to try, baked more banana muffins for stephen (or was that monday, i really can't remember) and made homemade french fries to go with dinner.
finished pork butt...yum!
for the pork butt i just used a recipe that i found online at the good housekeeping website. the recipe was easy to follow and you could even change the amount of servings and it would change the amount of ingredients for you...that was a big bonus! i made a couple of substitutions (mainly because i forgot to pick up the items i would need while i was at the store...and let that be a lesson to me to always make a list!), but they didn't seem to alter the flavor in any way so it all worked out in the end! even the kids liked it...jordan put up her usual fuss, but ate it all anyway; stephen made a bit of a fuss, too but he also ate all that was on his plate.
homemade french fries, made from a recipe in the joy of cooking book, were the last minute side item and while the cuts were of various size and shape they also turned out good in the end. stephen liked them the most!
homemade french fries
while the pork butt was in the crock pot and before deciding to make the french fries, i got everything together and made up a batch of tomato-vegetable soup from a recipe i found in one of the cookbooks i picked up at the library. it was so easy since it used canned tomatoes and frozen green beans and corn, along with some onion, carrot, celery and chicken broth (my homemade chicken broth, no less!). bonus of the recipe was that it was very low sodium/salt content since the tomatoes were the only canned item and i hadn't added any salt when i made the broth. yay, me for making something healthy...even if i am the only one eating it!
side view of the soup
since wednesday was st. patrick's day, i decided to try my hand at making irish soda bread. of course, the only problem with me making that was that i had never tried irish soda bread before so i would have no idea if it turned out well or not! but still, since i'm always one for trying new things, i went ahead and found a recipe in my good housekeeping baking book and dove right in! i made the alternate recipe that also uses whole wheat flour since i wanted to attempt to make it somewhat healthy. i followed the recipe as it was written and had no troubles with any of it. kneading and shaping the loaf made a nice floury mess on my counter and i had to add a few more drops of milk than it called for since the dough wasn't sticking together as well as it should have. but once it was all together and shaped into a somewhat decent ball, i popped it into the oven and just waited for it to get baked!
finished irish soda bread
i'm not even sure if it looks like it's supposed to, but it tasted very good fresh from the oven and even heated up for breakfast the next couple days. i'm finding that i am a complete bread-a-holic, if that's even a word!, and therefore, will be trying my hand at many other types of bread probably weekly just so i have fresh bread around whenever i want it! that's the bonus of this project i guess...being able to make things up whenever the mood strikes and finding out the kinds of things i really enjoy eating!
my newest kitchen toy!
thursday was the last time i baked anything, having made chocolate chip cookies for the family since i overbaked the last batch (even overbaked that batch still got eaten). so i went back into the kitchen today and broke in my newest kitchen "toy", a 6-quart enameled, cast iron dutch oven! it finally arrived wednesday night and i can honestly say that i had never been so happy to get a new pot, ever! now the pot roast is cooking in the oven and the mashed potatoes will be made up shortly...i'm so super excited to see how it all turns out since i've never made a pot roast in the oven, i've only ever made it in the crock pot. i'll post all about it sometime over the next week...so be sure to come on back to see the pretty pictures of the finished product!
who knows what else i will be making this week...i still need to make an angel food cake since i've promised stephen i would and i'm starting to crave monkey bread so i may have to make that again, too. there's an easy apple pie recipe that i want to try as well, so maybe i'll make that, too. and of course, i'll need to make up a fresh loaf of bread to have around as well, think i'll make the beer bread recipe that i found in the joy of cooking. oh, and there's also been a request for my chocolate truffle torte so i'll be making that at the end of the week! high hopes for baking this week...good thing i'm stocked up on flour, sugar, eggs, and of course plenty of butter!
come on back soon! more pictures and adventures to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment