Author: Dad's Turn To Cook

Just an average Dad wreaking havoc in the kitchen.

Bird’s Nest Pie (aka Fancy Spaghetti)

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Hey, welcome back from the weekend!  I took a bit of a break as we had built up a fair amount of leftovers from the last week and didn’t really get to pull together anything new.  I’ll share some of our familiar family favourites, but I’m aiming to keep the blogworthy recipes to the new stuff.

My wife inherited a copy of Once A Month Cooking.  When I head back to work I’m envisioning us working on something like the meal plan outlined in that cookbook.  One crazy hectic day of prep, 30 meals that get dropped in the freezer, ready to heat and serve.  In the meantime, I’ll probably be going through the recipes now and again to see which ones will be winners in our house.  First up…Bird’s Nest Pie!

Bird’s Nest Pie

The link there has flax instead of egg.  Use 2 eggs.  I mean, if you’re making the recipe (it includes a pound of Italian sausage, you’re obviously not vegan…)

This recipe was a winner for the adults.  The kids found it to be a bit…complex?  I can see where they are coming with.  Honestly, I had a hard time placing the flavours and textures.  It really winds up being a ‘fancy spaghetti’, but there are hints of lasagna in there along with the spaghetti crust that actually comes out tasting a bit like quiche in part thanks to the egg.  There’s lots of tomato flavour in this, plenty of mozzarella…it really checks off a lot of boxes for me personally, but I think I would default to making plain ol’ ordinary spaghetti for the amount of time and effort involved.  It just doesn’t hold its structure as a ‘pie’ when you’re serving it anyway and winds up being a mishmash on the plate.  Take the flavours, simplify the work, I’d call it a winner at that point, this is really getting fancy for the sake of being fancy.

For those playing along at home, I went with 500g (that’s about a pound) of mild Italian sausage.  Glad I did that as it felt spicy enough.  Any hotter and I don’t think our mild Canadian tastebuds would have held up to the heat. 😉

Budget wise?  I’d say it worked out to about…

– sausage – $6
– tomato paste – $1.50
-onion – $0.75
-spaghetti – (leftover from spaghetti night actually, but i’d guess… $0.50?)
-mozzarella – 4oz…about – $2

So… all totaled, probably a bit over $10 (give or take).

-g

Ginger Glazed Pork Roast

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

When you’re working on a budget, you grab the deals.  So yes, when you have the chance to snag an entire pork loin for relatively little cash, you grab that deal, you chop it up into meal sized roasts and you go with it.  One thing I’ve noticed when you’re working with a particular cut of meat is getting into a rut with how you prepare it.   For me (and I’m shaking my head as I write this) the ‘old standby’ is a bbq pulled pork (I’m shaking my head as I presently have one in the crockpot…).  Sometimes you just need to shake it up, and with a little help from Google and some more seasoned bloggers, sometimes you stumble upon something quite amazing.  I give you…

Ginger Glazed Pork Roast

Now the usual words of warning I’ll give when doing anything in a slow cooker.

  1. Make sure you have plenty of time…it’s called a slow cooker for  a reason.
  2. Try to make sure your meat has been thoroughly thawed overnight if you’re working from a recipe and checking out their cook times.

# 2 is where I ran into an issue on this one.  I didn’t take the roast out and let it thaw overnight, so I went straight into the slow-cooker and had to crank it up to high to finish in time for dinner.  Bad move.  I have a little chart that shows pork roasts should hit at least 145 degrees F to be considered done.  I went WELL beyond that.  Still edible, but almost to the point of crunchy.  What can I say?  Rookie move.  But that’s why we eat every day, right?  Plenty of chances to learn, adjust and excel on the next attempt.

That’s the roast.  I had about a 1.5 lb cut…I would trim back the amount of rub as there was PLENTY left that really just went to waste.  Now for the star of the show.  There’s a pizza place in Regina that has the marketing slogan “The Sauce Is Boss”, and that is definitely an adage that is in play with this meal.  It works, it is the spotlight and dang is it tasty.  I’m not just saying that as I completely over-cooked the roast and the sauce was the only thing that turned out, this glaze just ‘works’ and it is quite easy to do.  A notable change I made to the linked recipe?  I found that my glaze was just a bit too runny and the cornstarch wasn’t really having an impact on thickening things up while it was on the burner.  I added some more and it sorted itself out.  One quick reminder on that – NEVER add cornstarch directly to a sauce without first making it into a paste with a very small splash of water.  Straight cornstarch just turns into little clumps you’ll wind up straining out before using (unless you’re a fan of some little flavour powder shots in your meals – just like Grandma used to make!).  A little water, a little whisk and you’re good to go.  And when you DO start adding some cornstarch to thicken, do it a little bit at a time.  You can very quickly go from a rather runny sauce, to straight up pudding.

I followed the glaze recipe verbatim with the exception of substituting white vinegar for rice vinegar (it’s what I had on hand) and using powdered ginger rather than fresh (again, I had it on hand).

This one is going in the rotation.  And the slow-cooker a little earlier next time so I can roast it on “low”.

-g

 

YXE Le Burger Week – challenge accepted!

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

I guess before I go on any further, I should mention and clarify a few things…

  1. If I mention a product or business, it’s because I use said product or business.
  2. If somebody ever (for whatever reason) decides to toss some cash or comp’d product my way, I’ll be quite transparent about said endorsement.

All good?  Let’s proceed.

It turns out this is Le Burger Week in Saskatoon, my new hometown.  From what I gather, something like 15 different restaurants are crafting their best/wildest/most delicious burger concepts and letting the public and their patrons decide the winner.  I’m not a chef, and the concept of a gourmet $20 burger gives the Scottish skinflint in me the chills, but through trial and error here’s my take on a scratch made burger that’s a winner around these parts.

Jo-Ella’s 2 hour buns

The buns.  I said “scratch-made” and I meant it.  If I have time, I’ll knock out a batch of these.  Takes around 2 hours to start getting your first batch out of the oven.  They’re light and fluffy and you get to knead and punch dough which can help you burn through some frustration.  This recipe can apparently be found on the big bags of Ellison’s All-Purpose Flour that at one point (maybe even still) could be purchased at CostCo.  I’ve never had a pantry big enough to house one of those bad boys, so I don’t use their flour, but the recipe is a very versatile one (and very forgiving).  Mrs Friesen (not my mother-in-law) back in my hometown of Calgary used to use this recipe all the time for buns, cabbage buns, cinnamon buns…it’s good.  I go 50/50 whole wheat and all-purpose white flour, I find the whole wheat dries things out more so you’ll probably need a bit less flour overall than if you went straight all-purpose as listed in the recipe.  After making a few monstrous buns, I have since learned that about 75grams of dough will give you a good ‘burger size’ bun following the final proof and bake.  My wife bought me a digital kitchen scale for Christmas this past year.  It comes in handy!

The fries.  Okay, I lied about it ALL being from scratch.  With the oven being claimed by the fresh baked buns, I really didn’t have time to knock out some roast potatoes (to do ’em right takes about an hour and change…) so good ol’ McCain SuperFries to the rescue.  They only take about 25 minutes which I was able to manage while my buns were on their final proof.

The burgers!

We don’t have a barbecue at the new place yet (have a natural gas hook-up though – I can’t wait until grilling season gets here!), but our trusty old George Foreman grill does a serviceable job on making the meat hot.  Again, while the Chef’s at all the restaurants will be breaking out crazy meat blends featuring chuck and steak and whatnot, I’m on a budget here.  This is my quick and dirty burger blend.

Dad’s Turn To Cook – burgers

  • 1 lb lean ground beef
  • 0.5 lb ground pork (yup – keeps things very tender)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 handful of oats (can also use breadcrumbs or crush up some crackers)
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 1/4 cup diced onion – chopped REALLY fine so the kids don’t notice 😉
  • quick shake of cinnamon (shrug…I like it?)
  • 1 tablespoon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • and then a few cranks of salt and pepper from our grinder (I usually overdo it)

Form them into patties.  With that amount of meat, that should make 8 of them.  I usually vary the patties in size a bit.  A couple bigger ones for Dad and a couple smaller ones for our younger kids.  It’s a veritable Burger Family!  Toss them on the grill (or Foreman) and cook them until the internal temp is in excess of 160 degrees F.  The other Christmas gift I got was a digital cooking thermometer.  I LOVE that thing.

That’s it!  Burgers!  Add your toppings how you like and you’re good to go.

As for the budget, all in all, you’re looking at about $2 (and some time) for the buns.  I got 20 burger size buns out of that recipe and then a behemoth to use up the rest of the dough for the fun of it.  The ground beef worked out to about $3.50/lb, the ground pork was about $2 for a half-pound.  Add it all up, including the SuperFries, and I knocked out 8 scratch-made burgers for the family for about $10 (plus condiments).  I’ll take it!

-g

Banana Oatmeal Cookies (Happy Back To School!)

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

After spending nearly every waking second with the kids over the summer as we marketed, sold, moved, and started getting settled in our new place I finally understand the sheer joy on those parent’s faces in the Staples commercials.  They’re going baaaaaaccck!

🙂

Now, as the kid’s new school, like pretty well every school on the planet, is decidedly ‘nut free’…and as I completely over-bought banana’s the last time I went to the grocery store, I decided to put together some snacks the kids will be okay taking along in their lunchkits (and burn through a couple mushy banana’s in the process).

Spoiler alert.  These are really really good.

Gotta be honest.  I was really hunting around for a recipe that would utilize the time honoured banana/chocolate combo.  Until I remembered that we burned through all of our chocolate chips before the move.  That is an issue that has since been rectified with a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips that weighs more than a small-to-medium sized child.

I like chocolate.

But as the chocolate level-up occurred AFTER I made these, I needed to hunt down a recipe that used bananas, and no nuts or chocolate chips (sad face).  Enter….

Banana Oatmeal Cookies

Tada!  What this recipe lacks in chocolate it more than makes up for in sheer volume of sugar.  Brown sugar AND white sugar?  Insanity!  Part of me wants to tackle this and see if I could replace at least some of that processed sugar with honey or some other sort of natural sweetener.  Then again, why?  They taste pretty good as is.  How could they not?  These are a very chewy and tasty treat.  I didn’t deviate from the recipe as listed, as long as I have all the ingredients in hand, I tend to follow baking instructions verbatim (for at least the first attempt).  I like my cookies a bit bigger than the recommended 1 tablespoon size they itemized in the recipe.  Only real change that occurred was to extend the baking time by about 5-6 minutes each batch as a result of a more substantial amount of dough that required a bit more time basking on the beach.  Or baking on the pan.  Whichever you prefer.

5 thumbs up from everybody in the family.  I think I’ll try these with some chocolate in them next time around – just for the fun of it.

Have a great school year kidlets!

-g

Spinach Stuffed Chicken / Greek-Style Lemon Roasted Potatoes

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

It’s a 2-in-1 Anniversary Special!

I teased the chicken breasts a few days ago on social media.  They looked pretty amazing in the prep stage, and I’ve gotta say, the final product did not disappoint.

So, the other day was my 16th Wedding Anniversary.  As we’ve just relocated to a new city and I have ZERO idea of the restaurant scene in town I decided to just whip up something special at home.  Now, one of the first meals that’s every really left my Wife speechless was a trip to the local Greek restaurant about 14 years and 2 cities ago (Spiro’s in Lloydminster btw.  The dry ribs are things of legend).  That is where she discovered Chicken Philadelphia.  I didn’t have seafood on hand (not my thing) so I did some google digging and found something similar and fish-free.

Spinach Stuffed Chicken

I’ll just go right ahead and say it.  “Wow”.  I wound up making a couple small substitutions from the recipe.  I didn’t have quite enough cream cheese on hand, so I wound up doing an equal parts mixture of cream cheese and feta (workable as the spice combo and spinach is in that ‘greek’ realm and I knew what I’d be pairing the protein with).  I also didn’t have red pepper flakes handy so I subbed in a pinch of powdered cayenne for the ‘heat’.

Now, for the side dish…nothing makes a meal feel more special than some fancy potatoes.  I’ll share out the best mashed potato recipe you’ll ever try one day, but until then…this next option ranks pretty high on the list.

Greek-Style Lemon Roast Potatoes

I had all the ingredients on hand except for lemons and again, some RealLemon subs in just fine on that front.  Don’t skimp on the chicken broth.  The liquid will cook off, as it does, it soaks in through the spuds leaving behind pure flavour.  Delicious.  This one is going into the rotation.

On the whole, everything worked out fine.  Here’s the only issue I ran into.  With 2 separate dishes requiring the oven at 2 separate temperatures…my problem-solving mind thought, “hey, why not just split the difference?”.  I picked a temp in between, and as the potatoes would be roasting at a lower than called for temperature, I added about 20% more time on the clock.  What I neglected to account for was not just extra time due to temperature, but extra time due to the chicken being cooked at the same time.  While it might seem that an oven at 390 is an oven at 390…not all things are equal when you start changing variables.  Rack placement, number of items in the oven, they will all play a factor and need to be considered.  If I were to tackle this one again, I’d leave the chicken in for about another 5-7 minutes and the potatoes for another solid 30 minutes – I don’t think the extra time would hurt them, in fact, with the amount of liquid and flavour happening – the longer the better.

All that said, the flavours and the pairing of these 2 recipes just ‘worked’ together quite well.  These are both definite ‘keepers’.

Happy Anniversary indeed!

-g

Sunday Pancakes

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Hope you enjoyed your Sunday.  I’m pretty new at this blogging world and am still trying to find my feet and a content schedule as to how often and how much I’ll be putting out into the digital universe, I do know that I’ll most likely be taking Sunday’s off from publishing anything.  Personal preference, we try to keep things as ‘screen free’ as we can for at least one day a week, and Sunday seems like the best fit overall.

It’s also the day that we typically wind up working through any leftovers from the previous week, so not a lot of new tastes being manufactured in the DT2C Kitchen!

I will pass along a recipe that I’ve been knocking out weekly for the past 10 years at least.  Sunday Pancakes.  It’s a family tradition…everybody needs some of these.  A special meal you eat exclusively on a certain day, whether it be a holiday, or a weekend.  We have a few such traditions around here.  1) Christmas morning waffles.  That one started up about 30 years ago when my brother and I teamed up to buy Mom a waffle maker for Christmas and we all just couldn’t wait to try it out.  and 2) Sunday Pancakes.  To be honest, this was really the start of my foray into the kitchen.  I took ownership of making Sunday lunch for one meal a week to help my Wife out and give her a break on a day that always seemed to be rushed and harried getting everybody gussied up and out the door for Church that morning.  It’s fairly quick, almost impossible to screw up (believe me, I’ve pulled it off a few times) and if there’s leftovers they’re a quick snack later in the week.

Here’s the recipe I’ve been using.  I had to go hunt down the card in the recipe box as I make this one so often it’s been ingrained in my memory.  Although I do need to refresh myself on occasion if I’ve taken a week off due to travel, etc.

Sunday Pancakes

– 3 eggs
– 2 1/4 cups milk
– 3 cups flour (I use 1.5 cups white and 1.5 cups whole wheat)
– 3 tablespoons sugar
– 3 tablespoons oil of choice (canola usually, we’ve used melted coconut oil too)
– 1.5 tablespoons baking powder
– 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Crack the eggs into a large bowl, whisk the until fluffy.  It doesn’t really get ‘fluffy’ per say, but the yellow yolk lightens a shade or two and you start seeing some air bubbles in there.

Add remaining ingredients.  I start with flour, end with milk.

Mix it all up.  Don’t under-do it or you wind up with ‘flour bombs’ as my one child puts it.  Don’t over-do it or you’re making glue.

Warm up a griddle.  When you can sprinkle some water on it and the water sizzles and dances, you’re good to go.  Spoon batter on.  Wait until the bubbles in the batter stop popping and you can see a bit of a ‘curl’ on the edge of the pancake forming, then flip.

This makes about 24 pancakes.

(edit – we’ve been using this one for so long, I forgot where it came from – my Wife tells me this can be found in Betty Crocker’s Entertaining Basics – only real change we’ve made is to go 50/50 with the flour and I believe the original recipe asked for 4 eggs, so we’re at 75% of the remaining ingredients)

You can serve these however you want really.  We thaw some blueberries and strawberries and put some syrup on the table.  My one child eats them plain, my other coats them with chocolate peanut butter.  On the side we fry up some Butterball turkey bacon (waaaaay less grease and hassle than regular bacon) and usually serve some orange juice to drink if we’ve remembered to pick some up.  It’s easy, it’s simple, the kids can learn stove safety and help measure in the ingredients and flip the pancakes.  I like it.  If the batter winds up too runny, add some flour.  If it’s too thick, add some milk.  If you add too much sugar, you’re basically making a cake.  I have honestly forgotten at least one ingredient in this recipe at least once over the years and it somehow still seems to turn out – it’s pretty ‘DOH!’ resistant.

-g

 

Greek Wraps (A DT2C Original!)

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

There are a few things that just taste FRESH.  One?  Pico de gallo.  I wish I had the knife skills to pull that one off adequately.  The other?  Anything and everything greek.

Okay, despite the title it’s not like I invented the concept of a wrap, or a greek wrap to be even more specific.  My definition of an ‘Original’ is a meal that I make with only slight reference to a posted recipe, usually to confirm a hunch or spice pairing.  With that said, when you have a pack of flour tortillas that is still open and left over from the last appearance of fan favourite “Taco Night”, you’ve gotta come up with something to appease the hungry masses.  Or at least 3 kids that are well on their way to getting hangry.  Combine that with (as I’ve previously documented) an overabundance of pork tenderloin from a killer deal at the local grocery-monger (that’s a naming convention that really just went away, isn’t it?  Black Panther rivals notwithstanding…) and you have the makings of something fun and fresh.

Garlic, lemon and oregano are the ‘holy trinity’ of greek flavour.  A quick google gave me a marinade by Bobby Flay that I completely shoehorned into what ingredients I had on hand.

  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped.   [I substituted 2 tsps of crushed garlic from a jar]
  • 1 lemon, zested and juiced.  [I substituted 4 tablespoons of ‘real lemon’ juice]
  • 2 tablespoons chopped oregano leaves.  [2 tbs dried oregano]
  • 1/2 cup canola oil.  [I used that.  I think they’d kick me out of Saskatchewan if there wasn’t a ready supply of canola oil in the pantry at all times]

Slap your tenderloin in that, get it nice and comfy, cover it a let it sit for at least an hour before you start cooking it.  I seared the tenderloin in a frying pan to seal in the juices and then baked at 380 degrees for about 30 minutes.  I pulled a bonehead move and had the bakeware situated on the top rack – could have sped up that process by putting it closer to the bottom element.  You could BBQ that if you like (Meat+Fire=GOOD).  If I were doing this one again, I’d honestly chop up the loin into strips or cubes and just fry everything up in the trinity to speed up the process and add a little crusty char/sear onto the meat.  That’s the meat, so what goes with it?  Whatever you want!

Here’s what I wound up with as handy guideline.

  • 1/4 spanish (yellow) onion diced [red onion would have been better]
  • 1/4 long english cucumber sliced about 1.5cm thick and then chopped up into easily chewable chunks [I loathe cucumber…in every situation except greek.  It’s a MUST.]
  • 1/2 tomato.  Chop it up, slightly bigger chunks than the cucumber.
  • Feta cheese.  It’s a great way to add on some calories.  I got the LIGHT version and my Wife tells me every little cm x cm cube counts as 70 calories.  I wouldn’t know because that would require reading the nutrition info.
  • Olives.  I had a little tin of sliced black olives.  Again, kalamata would have been ‘better’, but your call on that.  These cost $1, the kalamata ones were quite a bit more than that.
  • 1 head romaine lettuce.  I find cutting it across into thin strips works better when using in a wrap.

I’m a pretty big fan of wraps for family meals as it lets everybody customize and build-their-own.  On the whole, we didn’t do too badly on this one.  4 out of 5 thumbs up, with the abstention being our ‘picky eater’ who really just wanted to go for the meat on a tortilla.  Honestly, that’s fine.  We have a rule at our house (and especially when “Dad” is getting a little experimental…) at any time a kid can ‘tap out’ and go for a peanut butter sandwich.  We’d love them to at least TRY a bite before doing so….that’s not always the case.  It stings.  I’ll live.

Budget wise?  This one worked out something like so:

  • Pork tenderloin – $3 (that was a crazy deal…I should have bought more)
  • Feta – $4 (but we only used about 1/3 of the tub)
  • Romaine head – $1.25 (got a 5 pack at Costco for $6)
  • Tomato – $1.25 (used 1/2)
  • Onion – $1 (used 1/4)
  • Cucumber – $1.50 (used 1/4)
  • Olives – $1 (used about 1/2 the can)
  • Wraps – I’d guess about $2? They were left over from Taco Night

$8.63?  Thereabouts?  Little bit of meat leaf, and some veggies in the fridge that I’ll need to ponder how to polish off in the next day or two.  Maybe a greek salad as a side dish?  Might need to hit up google and see how to kill a cucumber.  Sorry Larry.  Nothing personal.

LarryTheCucumber

-g

Oh!  For some folks it ain’t greek without the tzatzik.  (I know it’s tzatziki, but that didn’t rhyme).  I’ll save you some googling and list a recipe for that here.1 cup Greek whole milk yogurt.

– 1 cup Greek whole milk yogurt.
– 1 English cucumber, seeded, finely grated and drained.
– 2 cloves garlic, finely minced.
– 1 teaspoon lemon zest plus 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice.
– 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill.
– Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper.

Or buy it and save some work.  I think it was about $3 for a 300ml tub.

Slow Cooker Pork Stew

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

When you have more time in the morning and will be jammed up against it in the evening there are 2 words that can save you every time.  Slow Cooker.

If “This Is Us” hasn’t got you afraid to plug one of these bad boys in, well, this recipe might complete your phobia.  Okay, that might be a spoiler.  Honestly, it’s not THAT bad, it could just use some…oomph and there are a couple technical suggestions I’ll lay out.

Slow Cooker Pork Stew

The prep time for this one is pretty quick overall.  Some ‘chunky cut’ veggies, a bit of a dry rub for the meat, and a couple cans to open.  I stuck to the recipe on this one for the most part.  I didn’t have fingerling potatoes (never heard of them before I read this recipe) so I cut good ol’ fashioned roasting potatoes into some longer chunkier strips to match the approximate size I saw on google image search.  Carrots, instead of cutting 2 inch chunks, I just tossed in some mini-carrots we had kicking around as that’s about the right size.  I used powdered ginger instead of peeling and grating as that’s what I had on hand, and I used a 1.5lb pork loin as, again, that’s what I had on hand.  (Sweet deal at Costco…one massive loin for $15 that I chopped into 5 roasts about 1.5lb’s each – booyah!)

The prep was pretty easy.  Fishing the bay leaves (DO NOT EAT THOSE) out afterwards was rather tedious.  A couple notes.  It’s not really a soup, but there’s quite a bit of liquid that makes it not really a ‘stew’ either.  The potatoes were still pretty crunchy, and as my oldest child informed me “Carrots are never meant to be cooked”.  This one was…hate to say it, a swing and a miss.  1/5 stars.  The meat tasted pretty good when you got a chunk of it.  Everything else was pretty bland.  I though the tomatoes might kick things up a bit, but no.  Not really sure how I’d save this one.  Tomato paste for a more potent kink?  Chopping the potatoes and veggies up into smaller pieces would be a good idea – the big chunk cuts are quick for assembling, but felt weird in the finished product.

I think overall, this one is going in the ‘Do Not Repeat’ folder.

With all that said, yeah, slow-cookers/crockpots!  They’re pretty great.  I’ve made some pretty amazing ribs in them before, they’re great for taking food to the next staff potluck, I really just need to dig in a bit more and figure out some recipes that ‘work’.  And for those that are asking?  No.  I haven’t yet been converted to the wonders of the Insta-Pot, although I’ve met a few hardcore evangelists for the product.  That said, if anybody wants to ship me one….  😉  I’m always open to try it out.

-g

Spinach Pork Tenderloin Pasta Toss

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, I made that.

I thought it was about time to actually share a recipe on here.  After picking up an absolute killer deal on pork tenderloins at Safeway the other day (seriously, I think it worked out to about $3 each in a pack of 5) we’ll be burning through some pig.

Tenderloin is of course a very tender (hence the name) and easy to cut to cook.  It’s also very lean.  Doesn’t have a ton of natural flavour, we’ll get to that.  Having gone through my ‘usual’ pork tenderloin recipe a few days back, I decided to shake it up and try something different and this one I found on the Kraft site was a definite winner.

Spinach Pork Tenderloin Pasta Toss

A few substitutions on my end.  We used ‘regular’ parmesan cheese to finish before serving.  Didn’t feel like buying a bottle of ‘shredded’ for one recipe.

I also substituted regular mustard for dijon (personal preference) and fusilli pasta instead of rotini (again, we had fusilli pasta on hand and curly pasta is curly pasta).  I made more pasta then they recommended.  I like pasta and it lets you stretch this a bit more.

This one worked out great.  Thumbs up from all the family, even “the picky kid” who really only asked if I could make it without spinach next time.  No.  I can’t.  Spinach totally finishes this.  It feels like you’re putting a whole salad bar into the pot, but MAN that stuff will shrivel down when it finally catches the heat and starts to wilt.

This is a very soft taste on the palate and will definitely be going into our tenderloin rotation.  If anything, as mentioned above, the tenderloin could stand a bit of seasoning prior to going into the pot to kick it up a bit.  With the mustard/pepper/spinach already in the dish…hmm…I think I’d go for a bit of garlic and curry powder.  I’ve got this recipe bookmarked so I’ll try that out in the future and document the results.

Budget:

Tenderloin (on-sale) ~ $3
Spinach (uses most of a bag) ~3
Chicken broth ~$1.50
Cream cheese ~$1

Breaking it all down, even if you don’t get a sweet deal on the protein, you’re looking at about $10.  This fed our family of 5 and had a little bit left over for my Wife to take to work as leftovers.  Again, add some more pasta if you want to stretch this a bit.  It’s a very liquidy sauce and having some extra surface area to soak it up doesn’t hurt one bit either.

-g

Men In The Kitchen

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

I’ve enjoyed cooking for a number of years.  Really, I did take a good decade off there after marriage when we had our first child and my Wife was staying at home.  I guess we went back to the 60’s there and did life a little more old-fashioned than most would these days.  What can I say?  Having a parent at home was more important to the two of us than having a big fancy house and lots of shiny things.  This recent return to the culinary arts is exactly that for me, a bit of a return.  Prior to marriage I had a small handful of standby dishes I could whip up as needed.  Stirfry’s were always quick and easy.  Following the instructions on the box to make some Minute Rice, fry up some frozen veggies and a protein and slather in sauce?  Voila!  A quick penne and marinara?  Delicious!  And a step up from the one and only meal my Dad knew how to make (I think it’s still his only hot meal in the rolodex…he does however order up a MEAN take-out).  Now I may get in trouble for giving away all the family secrets, but in the interest of setting out a benchmark for those reading this blog, I’ll break his recipe down for you here and now.  If you can pull this one off without difficulty, congratulations, there may just be hope for you yet.

Grandpa’s Pasta Dinner

1 – box of macaroni noodles.  Bring water to a boil, add noodles and cook, when soft strain noodles and return them to pot.

Add – 1 can tomato soup.

Stir and enjoy.

It’s quick and cheap, I’ll give him that.  As society changed over the years, and as both men and women entered the workforce, it has become much more commonplace for guys to get in the kitchen – I think that’s a great thing.  That’s where the food is.

But enough throwing MY Dad under the bus.  Let’s hear about yours?  What’s YOUR Dad’s ol’ standby?  Hit me up and comment below.

-g