Pork with Balsamic Tomatoes

This is a staple in my house. My husband requests this dish at least twice a month, sometimes more. It's easy, and super yummy. It's also very easy to make primal/paleo... simply exclude some of the items like flour and corn starch. They're not vital ingredients. Anyways, onward to yumminess!

Ingredients
1-2 lbs pork tenderloin (depending on how many you're feeding)
2-3 cans of diced petite tomatoes (3 cans if you're feeding lots of men)
1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar
1/4 cup chicken broth
4 cloves of garlic, diced
1/4 cup of flour
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

For thickening (optional)
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 teaspoon corn starch

Here is all the ingredients.

Cut up your pork into portion sized pieces. Salt and pepper as desired.

Coat in flour.

All my lovelies... I'm feeding 3 men tonight.

Heat oil over medium high heat.

Brown your pork until golden on all sides but don't cook all the way through.

See the lovely crust forming?

Remove the pork from the pan and set aside for later.

Lower the heat a bit on your pan and toss in your garlic. Let them brown for about a minute but make sure they don't burn. Burnt garlic is bitter and gross. Totally not what we want.

Measure out your Balsamic vinegar....

... and your chicken broth.

Open your tomatoes and let them drain. 

Add your vinegar and broth to your pan. Make sure to scrap the bottom of your pan to get all the yummy tidbits from browning the pork up. Let it simmer for a few minutes.

Add your tomatoes.

Stir to combine...

Add your pork back into the pan.

Cover and let them finish cooking for about 15 minutes. Every now and again turn your pork. 

At this point, I'll sometimes take a small amount of chicken broth and a teaspoon of corn starch, mix them together, then add it to the pan to thicken the sauce. But this can be omitted. I didn't get a photo of this step. Whoops.

And you end up with this! 

I love to serve it over fresh spinach. It's also amazing over rice. Even my picky two year old will eat this. It's that good.

Homemade French Fries

This is another Pioneer Woman inspired recipe. Her Perfect French Fries recipe is just that, perfect. I will never ever buy frozen fries again! Just pop on over to her website for the full breakdown of the recipe. She explains it very well. I just want to share my lovely photos in this post.

I used two potatoes and it yields more than enough fries to feed my family of three. As a general rule though, one potato per person. One of my persons is a 2 year old though, and she doesn't eat much.

Slice them this way...

...and then slice them that way.

 Toss them into a pot of water for at least an hour, but the longer the better. This pulls the starch out of the potatoes for better frying.

Then dry the fries on some paper towels. Moisture and hot oil don't mix well...

Toss them into your fryer in small batches at 300 degrees for 2-3 minutes (You're going to fry them twice, so don't worry about them browning this time). You never want to crowd your oil. If you don't have a deep fryer, then you can use a pot on your stove and an oil thermometer. 

Here's the first batch at the first fry on fresh paper towels, soaking up the oil. Continue on frying until you've done all your fries.

Then you're gonna toss them back into the fryer at a higher temperature of 375 until desired crispness. My husband likes them crispy so I leave them in for about 3-4 minutes.

Then salt them. I used Kosher salt. And you're ready to eat them!

Several fries didn't make it to this plate... RIP French Fries...

I can guarantee that they taste even better than they look.

And here's my husband's steaks as an honorary mention. Bravo dear, for grilling the steaks.

Shh..... they're sleeping...

Needless to say... dinner was very good tonight.

Crockpot Spicy Beef Sandwich

I'm convinced everyone has their own version of this recipe. For me, the recipe was stumbled on by chance. A family friend made a spicy beef dish that was just made with only the juice and peppers from 2 jars of pepperoncini. I had made that same recipe for my coworkers one day, but they had added a bottle of beer in when my back was turned. It ended up being better than the original! Eventually I added the Lipton soup mix to add some additional spice and flavor, and it works well.


Ingredients
3lbs chuck roast
1 jar of pepperoncini
1 bottle of stout beer
1 package of Lipton Soup mix
1 white onion
Salt and pepper

Directions
Salt and pepper your roast. Pour in your pepperoncini, beer, and soup mix into your crock pot. Chop your onion in half and toss into the crock pot. Add your roast. Low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours. Shred beef when done, throw it all on a bun and call it a day.

Everything that's going into the pot.

 Salt and pepper your roast.

It's pure torture to be in the house while this is cooking...

When the meat is done cooking, I toss it into my stand mixed for easy shredding.

The roast yields a ton of meat... enough to last for a couple meals.

I like to lightly toast my buns with a bit of butter.

And the finished sandwich.

Mom's Homemade Pizza

Now this is a recipe I'm really excited to share. To me, homemade pizza was a huge part of growing up. My mom would make it every Saturday night. The recipe never changed, the ingredients were always the same, and it was a staple in life.

So let's start with the homemade dough portion.

Ingredients
2 Cups of warm water
1 packet of Dry Active Yeast
5 Cups of flour
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 Teaspoon of salt
2 Tablespoons of olive oil

Directions
Combine the Dry Active Yeast with the warm water. Throw in the sugar as well to give the yeast something to munch on. Wait about 10 minutes for the yeast to activate. It will start to bubble and foam when it's ready. In a large bowl, combine 2 cups of the flour and salt together. When the yeast is ready, add it to the flour. Add the olive oil. Now you start kneading the dough. Your fingers are going to a get a bit messy here, but I prefer to hand combine over a stand mixer. Slowly add more flour until the desire texture is achieved. You're going over a nice pliable dough that doesn't stick to your fingers. If it starts to become dry and cracked, you've add too much flour. Simply add a dash of olive oil to moisten the dough again.

When  you have your nicely kneaded ball of dough, quickly clean out your mixing bowl. Lightly coat the bottom of the bowl with some more olive oil. Toss the dough in and lightly coat the dough with the oil you applied to the bowl. Cover the bowl and dough with a hot, damp dish cloth so it can rise. Ring out the cloth well.

In the beginning...

The yeast added to warm water...

... after about 10 minutes. See how it's bubbly and foamy? That's what you want it to look like.

Pour the yeast over the awaiting flour...

After roughly combining the flour and yeast mixture in the bowl, I transfer it to a clean surface dusted with more flour so I can easily knead the dough.

After a good muscle work out and adding more flour as needed, you end up with a nice ball of pizza dough.

Clean your bowl, and coat with about a tablespoon of olive oil.

Toss your dough around in the oil so it's evenly coated.

Over with a warm, well rung out towel and let the dough rise for a couple hours. 

After a couple hours, you end up with this.

I'm not sure if there's any reason for it, but I always punch the dough down and let it re-rise a bit before I work with it.

 Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

 These are my ingredients for tonight's pizza. Cheese, sausage, and pepperoni. You could use whatever your heart desired. I also enjoy the combination of chicken and mushrooms. Heck, you could even do BBQ sauce instead of pizza sauce.

And speaking of pizza sauce, this is my choice. For me, Pastorelli's the only sauce to use.

 Spray down your cookie sheet, and toss the dough on top.

Spread, knead, push the dough so it's even across the cookie sheet.

Spread your pizza sauce over top.

Add your sausage.

Add your cheese.

Then add your pepperoni. I like to have the final ingredient above the cheese since it helps to prevent the cheese from burning. But you can put all the ingredients below the cheese if that's what you prefer.

Then pop it in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until crust and cheese is golden.

 And here is your finished product! Doesn't it look so yummy? Now don't just dive in immediately. You want your pizza to rest for a few minutes. This makes sure your cheese doesn't peel off the top when you cut into it. Patience here will pay off.