pot roast turned out well

I did it by my mom's method. (It's my favorite way to get acquainted with cooking a new food--try it how my mom does it and then play with it from there, if I even need to!)

In this case it meant I browned it on all sides, then nearly submerged it in water and gave it a good simmer until it got really tender. I also threw in some carrots and potatoes to boil in the meat water as the meat finished up.

At the last minute I decided I wanted to make some gravy too. I don't really know the first thing about gravy, except that you start with a roux, and that it involves flour and meat juices, but it turned out okay--a bit bland but definitely edible. Some salt and bay leaf fixed that up okay, and the meat was tender and moist enough that it didn't really need gravy anyway. The thing I ended up being proud of with the gravy was that I didn't burn it to the bottom of the pot. :)

artichokes, artichokes, yum yum yum

Alex has informed me that he doesn't care much about artichokes one way or the other, so I am eating them both myself!

Last night I had the first one fresh from being steamed, with melted butter to dip it in. Tonight I am looking for some other sauce varieties, but they all seem to be mayo-based. I wish I had lemons--I would make lemon-butter sauce, which is more up my alley.

I guess I'll just have to try one of these recipes and see how it does. How about a combination of mayonnaise, mustard, cayenne, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce? (Does that sound hideous to anyone else???)

another tasty dinner by the Bowlings

Alex and I were feeling inspired by the beautiful weather that we had today, so we decided to go to the store and see what jumped out at us for a good springtime dinner.

We found some yummy-looking pre-marinated pork tenderloin, but decided we could marinate some ourselves (pre-marinated was $7 and change and non-marinated was $2 and change, which was good motivation).

We also got corn on the cob to boil up, and then the real stroke of genius was getting apples and onions to boot.

We rubbed the tenderloin in this ridiculously yummy stuff called Maple Pepper. Aside from those, it also has garlic and some Secret Ingredients. My sister and brother in law gave me a jar of it from a restaurant somewhere in the boonies a while ago, and it turned out to be the perfect complement to the pork.

So we baked the pork while we fried up the apples and onions in yummy butter, then we poured the apples and onions onto the pork and baked it all some more.

This was possibly the yummiest thing we've EVER eaten. I'm not exaggerating, either. The pork was so tender we could cut it by waving a fork at it. I think it helped that we had a cover on the baking dish, so all the moisture stayed inside. Also, we threw a little brown sugar into the apple/onion mixture, which helped to caramelize it gorgeously.

The only flaw is that it used up a bunch of maple pepper! We'll have to find out where it came from, so we can get more. :)

some dinner pictures

We actually started out this dinner looking all organized and stuff:



The final product was much less picturesque, but darn tasty:

whenever I get a day at home...

...I end up cooking all day!

I started today with an apple-and-raspberry cobbler for breakfast. YUM. Yes, we already ate the whole thing. I'd show you a picture of the dish all scraped clean, but it's already in the dish washer.

Then I made a loaf of bread and some Parmesan-and-italian-seasoning rolls.

Alex and I teamed up for dinner. We decided to go all-American, having cheeseburgers with lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion. Also kettle chips (instead of french fries) with onion dip, and some baby-friendly decaf Coke. And of course, we used some of the aforementioned rolls for buns.

Incidentally, we discovered while making the burgers that lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle make a really good snack all by themselves--there's almost no need to even add the burger.

And as a closer, what would this fabulous dinner be without a little chocolate pudding for dessert? Yummm. I keep telling Alex that all he has to do is earn a million dollars and I will SO stay at home and cook delicious things for him ALLLL the time!