Renaming

Tonight I named dinner. I have noticed that with children, at least mine, the name and color and even the proximity of each item on a plate can make or break a dinnertime battle. So tonight we ate Apple Medley. If I had even whispered the word Pork Shoulder, I am fairly positive that no one would have touched their dinner.

Anyway, last week I threw pork shoulder, potato and carrots in the crock pot with some apple cider. It's delicious and requires almost no prep work. But, we had a lot of meat leftover so tonight's agenda was to use it up before it turned into a science project. I do think any meat would be great with this dish...chicken, steak, sausage--whatever you have on hand.

I love this dish because it is super quick.

Apple Medley

ingredients
1-2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1/4 of an onion, chopped
2 Cups cooked pork shoulder, cubed
1 Cup fresh spinach, chopped
2 apples, chopped
2 strips of cooked bacon, crumbled
1-2 Tablespoons cinnamon
1 Cup couscous
1 Cup water
1 Cup shredded gouda cheese (optional)

directions
1. In a medium pan saute onions and garlic in extra virgin olive oil until tender. Add meat, spinach, apples and bacon. Add cinnamon to taste.
 *If meat begins to stick to the bottom of the pan add a bit of water (just enough to prevent sticking). Drop to a low heat and cover with a lid for 5-10 minutes or until apples are tender.
2. In a small sauce pan bring 1 Cup of water to a boil. Remove from heat. Add 1 Cup of couscous. Lightly toss with fork. Let couscous fluff up, about 5 minutes.
3. Combine couscous and apple mixture together, top with gouda cheese.

Enjoy!

What a weekend!

See that pitchfork in the header? It's there to do more than just tickle your eyeballs when you hit up this here blog--it's a reference to the fact that our food interests supersede just combining elements to produce mouth-watering (and hopefully photogenic) delicacies. A tomato is awesome, but a homegrown tomato--well, there's nothing quite like a homegrown tomato, is there? So we're growing tomatoes. Well, more than just tomatoes--we're also growing cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, peas, beans and zucchini, not to mention strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, apples, pears and peaches. Here are four vegetable beds which, if my math is right, occupy about 240 square feet of our back yard.

Our climate hasn't exactly accommodated our gardening endeavors this year--the past month has seen multiple dips from the 80's to 40's, and rainfall has been a nightmare for the folks around here who grow stuff in the ground for a living--but we've been out there, shoveling, hoeing, and tilling whenever the sun offered us a few hours of productive time. So we're not sure what we'll actually be harvesting and what we'll be mourning, but we have high hopes, and, if even a percentage of our little backyard farm yields results, we'll be soon be blogging about recipes assembled from homegrown ingredients...and that could take us to some exciting places.

This past weekend handed us two days of glorious sun, and we spent both days out back, adding our sweat to all those pools of rainwater. Today, of course, my muscles scream in protest. It's important to have little joys to anticipate while waiting for basketfuls of larger joys come harvest season, and that's where this cinnamon ice cream with chocolate swirl comes in: It's how we ended our back-breaking weekend of sunburn and strained...well, everything. I grabbed this recipe and layered in this recipe for the swirl.

  Cinnamon ice cream with chocolate swirl (homemade chocolate sauce pictured in jar).