BSI: Strawberry (Strawberry Banana Cream Pie)

This past summer Johnny and I picked strawberries and raspberries at a local farm. We quickly realized that there were too many strawberries to just snack on, so I started looking around for recipes to use them up.There were two or three failed baking attempts. Variations of strawberry bread, strawberry pie, and strawberry scones. They all turned out really watery, took a lot longer than the specified cooking time, and overall just soggy and a big mess.

So, when the BSI was named as strawberry, I knew I'd be staying away from a baked dessert - which left a refrigerated version! Mmm, custards and cheesecakes, oh how I love you! Johnny and I finally settled on this strawberry banana cream pie because all of the flavors and components are delicious ones we love, and it had enough steps that we could divide it up and make it together.

First, I started making the pie crust from scratch, pierced it with a fork so it wouldn't bubble up, and popped it in the oven to start baking. (You could certainly cheat and buy a ready-made crust, but I didn't have one on hand.)

While I was doing that, Johnny started making the cream, or custard filling for the pie.

Filling:
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp corn starch
1/4 tsp salt
4 egg yolks
2 cups milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine sugar, corn starch and salt in a medium sauce pan. In a small bowl, mix egg yolks and milk. Slowly incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring to make a smooth paste, and eventually adding all. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture begins to boil. Boil at 1 minute, still stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Set pan in a bowl of ice water and continue stirring to cool.

This was a lot of stirring and kept him occupied, so I got to work on the strawberries and bananas. I took about 2 cups of strawberries and 1 large banana and cut them up to go in the pie. By now, the pie crust had finished, so we took that out to cool.

Layer the strawberries on the bottom of the crust, then spoon over half of the filling and spread out. Next, add a layer of bananas, and finally top with the remaining filling mixture. For garnish, decorate the top with a couple strawberry slices.

Let cool in the fridge for a few hours, until the filling firms up - almost like a custard, or flan. Then, cut into slices, serve and enjoy!

Crockpot Asian Peanut Butter Pork

The past two days a 2.4 pound pork roast (from the buy one get one free sale - was supposed to be $14) has been thawing in my fridge. And, for two days I've been terrified of it.

I like pork, but I did not want to dry it out, because that ruins it for me and it becomes inedible. That meant I'd probably want to cook it in a crockpot, versus in the oven. My new go-to for crockpot recipes is Stephanie at A Year of CrockPotting and she just finished up a whopping 11 recipe collection for the pork section on her site. Tons of variety and options to choose from!

Immediately, one stood out, Asian Peanut Butter Pork. As I was reading, she wrote how an anonymous commenter makes it every month for a potluck, and if she doesn't make it her friends get mad. Sounds good, right? I was almost sold there, but there's more. Stephanie packed this up for her friend, (also named Stephanie) and her family. She says she had a problem with it, and I'm thinking "oh no" because thankfully, she doesn't sugar-coat reviews and will honestly tell you when they work or not. Do you know what the "problem" was? Her husband ate the whole 2 pound pork tenderloin before her or the kids could even try it! hahaha I was sold!

Ingredients:
1.5-2 pound pork tenderloin (I used a 2.4 lb. roast)
1 onion, sliced in rings
1/4 cup soy sauce (I used low sodium)
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 Tbsp white wine vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
3 Tbsp water
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2 Tbsp chopped peanuts (garnish; optional)
1 lime, cut in wedges (garnish; optional)

Use a 4-6 quart crockpot. Put onion slices into the bottom of your crockpot. Put the pork on top. Add brown sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, water, garlic, and peanut butter. No need to stir - the peanut butter needs to melt before you can. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or on high for 4-6. The pork will be more tender the longer you cook it. 1 hour before serving, flip the meat over in the crockpot to allow the other side to soak up the peanut buttery goodness. Garnish with chopped peanuts, and serve with lime wedges.

One thing I noticed, is that this has a lot less liquid than what I usually cook with in the crockpot. When I'd go to check on it, it seemed a little thick and almost globby in some areas around the pork, so I'd stir every once in awhile, to keep it loosened up. I also went with cooking it on low for 8 hours, and the pork already looked white and not raw at about 5 hours, which made me nervous, like I was cooking it twice as long as needed. I checked with my meat thermometer, and according to that, it was already "well done!"

I decided to just go with it, and keep cooking - I ended up cooking 1 hour on high in the beginning (it was still frozen in the center), and then about 6.5 or 7 hours on low. It was SO juicy and tender, and the sauce was absolutely delicious and a perfect compliment! I served with leftover rolls from last night, which I just wrapped in foil so they wouldn't brown and re-heated in the toaster oven, and also frozen peas.


Last week, Diana from Pom Wonderful contacted me and asked if I would like to sample their product, along with some health information and try out some recipes. Yes, please!!!

So, I was very happy when a box of 8 bottles arrived on my doorstep today! We love pomegranate juice, so I'm really interested in incorporating it into new recipes and ideas, because I've never cooked with it before. I'll be sharing the recipes (and the healthy stats) with you as I make them.

Sour Cream Yeast Rolls

Dinner tonight was corned beef and cabbage, which I made last year in a huge batch and froze a few containers with 2 servings each. I just thawed it in the fridge yesterday and today and reheated it in a pot on the stove.

Since I was going kind of no-hassle on dinner, I wanted to do something a little special on the side, to spice it up. That's when I remembered that I'd flipped to a recipe in my Taste of Home issue I got last month. Sour cream yeast rolls! I instantly knew I was going to make them because the picture looked great, we love anything sour cream, and it was simple ingredients I always have on hand.

I will have to say, they turned out to be more work than I realized. I dirtied several dishes and the kitchen, and felt like I'd been working on them all day by the time they were ready for the oven. There's not a lot of hands-on, but two separate dough rise times, so they're occupying your attention for awhile. They were good, and I'll probably re-make them because Johnny loved them, but definitely not an everyday batch I'd whip up.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 pkg (or 2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup water
3 Tbsp, butter divided (I ended up using only 2 and substituted Smart Balance)
1 egg

In a large bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, sugar, yeast, and salt. In a small saucepan, heat the sour cream, water, and 2 Tbsp butter to 120°-130°; add to dry ingredients. (That seemed a little on the hot side to me, so I only heated mine to about 110° - 115° so I wouldn't kill the yeast). Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add egg and 1/2 cup flour; beat 2 minutes longer. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. (At this point, I stirred in only about 1/4 cup more flour, because I knew I'd be adding a lot more during the kneading process)

Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. (I ended up adding 1/2 - 1/3 cup more flour during this.) Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. (I put mine in the kitchen sink with a little bit of warm water and a dampened paper towel over the top of the bowl. I saw this trick on somebody elses' blog recently, but I forget whose!)

Punch down dough. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide into 12 pieces. Shape each into a ball. Place in a greased 13 X 9 inch baking pan. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. (Again, I did this in the kitchen sink with warm water.)

Bake at 375° for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Melt remaining butter; brush over rolls. (I omitted this step.) Remove from pan to a wire rack.

Michelle at Lucky Taste Buds is having a giveaway here, so stop by before next Monday!

The host for this week's BSI is Laura at Hey, What's for Dinner Mom!, and she chose strawberries! I added them to my grocery list, but will have to put on my thinking cap!

Horrible Sunday

Almost every Sunday we go to Johnny's parents' house, eat, relax, and just have a calm day.

Well, not today.

On the way out, we usually walk down 4 or 5 steps into the family room to get to the garage door where the cars are. Currently, the family room is "under construction." So, there's cement floor, studs, and boxes of everything on the floor. It gets kind of messy down there, so we have a path of flat cardboard pieces making a makeshift walkway.

Today, I stepped off the bottom step onto the cardboard like any other day .... and sank. The cardboard was floating on inches of water. Like a slo-mo scene I looked up and it all slowly processed from what my eyes were seeing to my brain realizing that every inch of the family room, the laundry room, the bathroom down there and the crawlspace was completely under water!

It seems our sump pump must have failed sometime during the night or early morning, with all this rain and then when the water had nowhere else to go - it just kept rising.

I grabbed my rainboots and immediately started moving boxes of our stuff up to the garage, or on top of dry items. The boxes were so soggy and wet, they were just falling apart in my hands. And, each box I picked up would just POUR out water as you lifted it.

Thankfully, Johnny's dad ran to Menards and got us a replacement pump. While that was happening, I pried off the drain cover from the floor in front of the furnice with a chisel and amazingly the water started swirling down. Then, as the new pump was installed, all the water was cleared within about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately -- THAT pump broke, too, after only an hour!!! We ran back to Menards to return it and saw a man in line in front of us returning the same pump. So, we got a different brand and this one seems to be working fine, thank God.

It's just SUCH a kick-in-the-ass situation because the majority of ruined things weren't down there just a few weeks ago!! Cleaning up for the Superbowl party, Johnny boxed up all of his DVDs (read: hundreds) and put them down there, all of his video game systems and games and put them down there, and all of our board games!!! Just this past week Johnny has been clearing out his office and sorting through boxes of things and organizing. Some of these boxes were LITERALLY just brought down there last night!!! Also, I've been setting up my bookcases and was just in the crawlspace two nights ago and mentioned to Johnny that I should bring up more of the stuff - but I didn't!!! Arrrrgh, I wish I could press rewind.

And, believe it or not, this is the second time my stuff has been flooded! Before I moved in with Johnny, I was living in Prince Edward Island, Canada. My stuff was all up there, I closed the house up for the winter and left the key and the care in charge of a contractor who was hired to do work while I was out of the house (like I'd done the year before). Except - this year, the work didn't go as planned and the PIPES FROZE before the plumber ever made an appearance and the results were disasterous.

Johnny's taking off work tomorrow to try and get started on cleaning up the aftermath, but I unforunately have a HUGE work obligation I can't get out of - so I'll have to wait until Tuesday to help and start the sorting through my boxes.

Hopefully this is the last time my stuff gets flooded. I don't know how much more I can take!!

Salsa Chicken

We love Mexican food. I'm not one for repeat flavors, but we could honestly eat Mexican food 2 or 3 times a week and not get sick of it.

I had the rest of the pack of thin sliced chicken breasts to use up, but it was too little to use a full pack of seasoning to make tacos, so onto plan B.

1/2 cup salsa
1/4 cup frozen corn
maybe 2/3 lbs. (?) of thin sliced breasts
salt and pepper to taste

Pour all into a skillet over medium heat and place the lid on. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning once or twice.

I went to the pantry for rice and found a box of Mexican Style Rice a Roni, so decided to cook that instead. Last, I opened up a can of black beans and heated them on the stovetop. We dressed everything up with the usual shredded cheese and sour cream. Mmm, mmm yummy!

Oven Roasted Cauliflower

About two weeks ago we ordered pizza from a local place and I got the breaded cauliflower as a side. $3.75 bought me a little take-out bag of, maybe, a 1/2 of a cup of fried and breaded, cheesy cauliflower florets and a ranch dipping sauce. It was good, but I knew really unhealthy, and the price left a little more to be desired. Still, ever since then, I've been in the mood for cauliflower, so during the last grocery trip I bought a big head, figuring I'd stumble upon some recipe or idea to use it.

Today, Biz posted a cauliflower soup that looked delicious and reminded me of the cauliflower soup of 101 Cookbooks I've made a few times. It awakened my craving, but I wasn't in the mood for soup, but remembered that Heidi had posted another cauliflower recipe that had caught my eye - roasted cauliflower! I'd add a little cheese to make it reminiscent of the cheesy, fried cauliflower, but it'd be healthier!

Ingredients:

1 medium to large head of cauliflower
3 Tbsp olive oil, divided
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 large clove of garlic, minced

Pre-heat oven to 400°. Wash and cut the head of cauliflower into little florets. In a medium bowl, toss florets with about half of the olive oil and the salt. Spread on a sided baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, turning once to prevent sticking.

In the same bowl, combine the remaining olive oil with the bread crumbs, garlic, and cheese. Sprinkle over the cauliflower after the first 15 minutes of baking time, then bake an additional 10-15 minutes.

This smells absolutely delicious as it's cooking and tastes even better once it's done! I served it with thin sliced chicken breasts that I cooked in a skillet with a little of Drew's Italian dressing, and couscous cooked with sliced carrots. All three were so complimentary of each other - definitely a dinner I'll revisit in the future! The cauliflower hit the spot with a hearty, roasted flavor and just the perfect amount of crunchy, cheesy goodness. Mmm!


Michelle at Lucky Taste Buds is giving away Barney Butter, but it ends tomorrow, so hurry!

Give-away 2 winner

Alisa at One Frugal Foodie was only 6 jujubes off with her guess of 122 (there were 128), so congratulations - you are the winner!!! Email me at mystinamarie@gmail.com with your info and I'll get your salad dressing out to you!

Coincedentally, she's having a huge give-away of her own, so go check out her blog and leave a comment!

Also, Biz is having her 1st of the month give-away here, so head over there and leave a comment, too!

Don't forget to check back here every 23rd, because I'm making Dinner at Christina's give-aways a monthly treat!