Pulled Pork-Easy Crock Pot Meal

We had some friends over this past month for our monthly "Preggers" dinner. I have a couple friends due around the same time, so the couples meet up to eat. What a great plan huh? The wives are even planning on sending our spouses to volunteer at a consignment sale, so we have first crack at the items for sale.
I wanted to use my crock pot and make either pulled chicken or pulled pork sandwiches. Mike chose to go with pulled pork.

Here's the finished pulled pork sandwiches.

I made a slaw composed of cabbage, red cabbage, carrots, and some onions. I was not quite sure of what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted a colorful, crunchy, non-mayo based slaw.  I ended up making one up using apple cider vinegar, rice wine vinegar, salt, ,sugar, and a splash of soy sauce. 

 

Here's the raw pork, onions, and garlic that we started with.  We used tenderloin because it was cheaper than the pork butt at Sam's Club, and I thought that it would be healthier to use a better, less fatty cut of meat.  Mike was opposed to the idea because "more fat=more better," but as you can see, we ended up cooking purchasing the tenderloin. 

 

Here's the flavorings/aromatics that I added: Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, yellow mustard, thyme, and vinegar.

  Here's a picture of the slightly cooked pork. 

Here's the pork after 8 hours of cooking. 

Shredding the pork.

We ended up with two types of pulled pork. I ended up dousing some shredded pork in Kent Rathburn's Texas Peach Barbeque sauce. Yum, but slightly acidic.  Mike chose to reduce the pork juices and ingredients into a sauce and added a bit more sugar. I think that the general consensus was that Mike's sweet pulled pork tasted better than mine (I'm guessing it's partially because his finished product had more fat in it too).

Vegetarian Home Cooked Meals

Yes, mom and dad, we do eat at home. We eat in more often than we eat out. I just do not take pictures of the foods we eat at home because you might think we are malnourished or you might think that I am trying to starve Mike or turn him into a rabbit. Just joking...well.  

This is what I made. Snow peas and oyster mushrooms in an garlic and oyster sauce. I'd like to think that I cook for taste and do not focus on presentation (Can you hear that sentence, just dripping with excuses).

This is what fancy pancy Mike made.  Cold tofu with a cilantro reduction (let's call it a reduction or puree) and unagi sauce. His dish blew mine out of the water in flavor too. Also, his unagi sauce could have been reduced a bit more, so that the sauce would stick on the tofu.

It was a good thing that this was not an actual dinner challenge because I would have lost and I have a food and culinary background. Arg.  Oh well.  Maybe if we are feeling up to it, Mike and I will have an actual dinner challenge some time in the future.
Any suggestions on the challenge theme?

Homemade Caramels

If any of my co-workers read my blog, they are now realizing just how slowly I post on this blog.  Okay, I do not take a year to post, but it sure does feel like it. 

I made an assortment of caramels prior to the 2010 Christmas holidays, but look it's perfect timing as a holiday gift idea.
 
After Mike and I returned home from Paris in late November 2010, I was on a "salted caramel" kick. I loved Laduree's salted caramel macaron and had it on my mind. I bought fleur de sel (French salt flakes) and grey salt from France just to experiment with it at home. 

Look at the pretty caramel wrappers. I purchased food grade candy wrappers from Amazon.com.  My mantra-wrappers and packaging make everything look pretty and more presentable.

I heated the sugar and water to caramelize it.  I heated the solution to 260F because I was afraid they would become to hard and glassy in texture. I should have actually cooked it to 310 F for a harder texture. 

Poured the mixture into a pan and let it solidify.

I also attempted to make chocolate caramels. The Flavor was similar to See's Candies Chocolate lollypops.

Most of the caramels that I made were a bit on the soft side.  If the caramels were refrigerated, they were the perfect texture after taking them out and letting them sit at room temperature for a few minutes. 

Hmmm....after blogging about this, I may make caramels again this year.  All though if I have time this year, I have my heart set on experimenting on some other creative concoctions.

Cucumber Kimchee

Every so often, Mike and I receive care packages from back home containing random food stuffs from Hawaii.  My mom seems to find these random new products that she's tried and then sends us some to try.  Last year, she sent this huge bottle of kim chee sauce to us and I haven't been able to make a dent in the bottle.

The katana on the bottle reads "Kim Chee" so I am not sure what company produces this base, but I think my mom picked it up from Marukai or Don Quixote back home.

I bought some Persian cucumbers and sliced them up for some quick cucumber kim chee. I haven't been able to find Japanese cucumbers in the Texas markets, but I have found these Persian cucumbers at Asian markets and they are similar to the Japanese cucumbers with small seeds. 

I do not like a lot of flavor on my kimchee, so I added only a little bit of sauce to the sliced cucumbers. I added more after I snapped this picture.  I then left the container in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and ate it with my dinner.

I think that this sauce produces pretty good kim chee. This is my extent of kim chee making. (Yes, I am part Korean and do not know the first thing about making kim chee). Mike is not a big fan of the flavor and said that there's a strong fishy taste to it.  I think it tastes pretty good for a "ready to use" (cheat) sauce and would purchase it for that quick Korean food fix.   

Korean Mandoo Making

Korean mandoo was one of the recipes I wanted to attempt to perfect this year.  It is time-consuming to make, but you can make a lot of it and either give it away or freeze it for future dinners.  

Chinese potsticker wrappers(~$1for the pack) and Korean mandoo wrappers (~$3.50)

Buying mandoo wrappers at the Asian market is a tricky process.  Some of them say "potsticker wrappers," "wonton wrappers," or "shumai wrappers."  Some contain eggs, some contain only wheat flour, while others also contain rice flour. 

In this past season of "Top Chef" one of the contestants purchased the incorrect wrapper, and ended up steaming wrappers that were supposed to be boiled.  Be careful when purchasing the wrappers.   

I gambled when I purchased the wrappers and hoped that they would work for mandoo making based on the pictures on the packaging. 

Sweet potato noodles.

Cabbage, chives, chopped round onion

Crumbled drained tofu

Mixture of ground pork, tofu, noodles, chives, cabbage, onion, raw eggs, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, and salt and pepper.  I did not measure the ingredients, I just arbitrarily added amounts of ingredients, skewed to a filling containing more vegetables than meat. 

I like to place a lot of filling into the wrapper.

Frying the mandoo. We first pan fried the mandoo in oil, then added water to the pan and "steamed" the mandoo. 

Both the potsticker wrappers resulted in a similar product. The Korean mandoo wrappers were a little bigger than my mandoo press, so there was extra noodle edge. The wrapper tastes were similar, so I would personally buy the cheaper wrapper from now on. 

Mike and I enjoyed the mandoo, but as we started eating the frozen mandoo a couple more times, our enjoyment started to wane.  At the moment, we prefer Ajinomoto's frozen gyoza much more than my mandoo. 
If I am going to pursue Korean mandoo making this year, 1)I have to make less mandoo, 2) invite people over to eat the mandoo, or 3)or develop a super awesome flavor profile for my mandoo that we enjoy a lot more.

Tons of Chili

A couple of weeks ago there was a chili cook-off at my work place to help fundraiser for United Way. We were initially supposed to make 2 quarts of chili, then another email said 4 quarts.  I didn't follow a recipe, nor did I measure the ingredients that I put in.  I ended up making probably a couple of gallons of the stuff...the most chili I've made in my life. 

Here's a picture of the two chilis Mike and I made. My chili is on the right; his is on the left. I call his "man chili" because we threw in a lot of strong coffee, beer, and cocoa powder to it and it had a deep, brown(?), rounded flavor to it.  His meat to bean ratio was higher than my chili because I like a lot of beans in chili. Mike took his chili to work to share with co-workers. 
My chili had more of that typical canned chili flavor that I thought most people would like. I didn't win the competition, but I thought that my final chili came out pretty good, considering this is probably the fourth time I've made chili in my life.

Look at all the cans of tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and beans we used!

Here's a list of the ingredients that ended up in  my "no recipe chili." Ground beef, ground pork, chorizo, kidney beans, chili beans, pinto beans, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, chili powder, chili flakes, cumin, soy sauce (for the umami flavor), brown sugar, salt, pepper, jalapenos, bell pepper, garlic, onions, beer, coffee, cocoa powder, italian seasoning. I'm sure we put other ingredients in the chili but I forgot what else was thrown in there. 

My Signaure Dish~Guacamole

    A few months ago I asked Mike what my signature dish was and he had a difficult time answering. He took the safe route and answered, "I think you're a better baker than cook."  Gee, thanks Mike. Here's my extra snooty remark, but I think I'm "above average" (at least a B average) in both the cooking and baking department.
    During my stint in culinary school, I felt that my forte was "making leftovers taste good."  In the "Intermediate Cookery" course, we rotated through different stations and the "special of the day" was one of the stations.  This involved creating dishes from the extra ingredients or foods from the "Fundamentals of Cookery" course.  Some days it would be finely diced vegetables, cooked meats, or base sauces.  I thought I excelled in creating dishes on the fly. I once made a "Hawaiian wrap" composed of kaula pork, a poi sauce, spinach, wrapped and grilled in a spinach tortilla with a lomi salmon-type salsa. 
  I'm sure Mike was sweating as I pressured him to answer my question, and the first answer that came to his mind was, "Guacamole. You make a mean guacamole." I had to hang my head and shake it in failure. What kind of wife am I?  I feed my husband good tasting guacamole. I only started making guacamole since we moved to Texas last year and avocados go on sale for 3/$1, instead of one for $1 in Illinois. 
 Yes, so according to Mike, my signature dish is a dish that always tastes different because I do not use a recipe.

Here are the ingredients to my "signature" dish:
Ripe Avocados
Finely chopped Onions
Finely chopped Garlic
Finely chopped Tomato
Finely chopped Cilantro
Juice of a lime (I like a lot of lime juice in my guac)
Salt, Pepper, Tabasco to taste

    Mike's a pretty good cook and I'm lucky to have a husband who likes spending time in the kitchen.  It's especially wonderful when I come home late from work and dinner is waiting for me.  It was easy for me to choose Mike's signature dish.  It's a good local-style fried rice.   He also makes a good spicy garlic edamame. 

What are y'alls signature dish?

Curiosity Challenge~Squash Blossoms

I've always wanted to cook with squash blossoms. When I was back home in Hawaii I was able to get my hands on some squash blossoms from Chinatown for $2. I didn't know how to prepare or cook them so they ended up sitting in the fridge for a couple of days before I decided to cook them.
I've heard of "stuffed squash blossoms" before, so decided to stuff the flowers with random ingredients I found around my parents house. I wasn't very creative and decided to stuff the blossoms with raw garlic and mozzarella cheese.
I filled the blossoms with my garlic cheese concoction and gently twisted the petals together.
Then I quickly battered the blossoms with an egg dip followed by a cornstarch coating.

I pan fried the blossoms are here are the results. My mom really liked the final result. She thought that the cooked blossoms had almost a meat-like texture. Personally, I thought the texture was more like a meat-substitute texture (almost mushroomy).
With the broken blossoms, I chopped them up and quickly stir-fried them in garlic and made a squash blossom and mozzarella cheese quesadilla.
Would I purchase and cook squash blossoms again? Probably not, unless I was trying to impress someone. They tasted good, but were definitely not worth the effort to clean, cook, and stuff.

The second week; my Crock Pot Meal

The second week of my panel is over! Whoo-hoo! With the help of my two awesome undergraduate assistants, I'm ahead of schedule! That means in my "free time" I can edit my journal article and thesis drafts which have been on my desk for weeks. I am starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Oh and what is this light? Graduation!!!!

Let's not forget that the husband also helped and labeled over 5,000 cups prior to the panel. As he has said numerous times, yeah, it's not fair that I am getting a PhD and he gets nothing for being my lab grunt and reading over my thesis drafts. He's way smarter than me, so smart that he was wise enough not to go to grad school. I love you Mike! He's back in Hawaii working longer hours at work than me. He works 6-7 days a week and has been pulling 12-hour shifts. With the time difference and our hectic schedules, we were lucky to have a phone date and celebrate Valentine's Day by playing online Scrabble. For now I have my "temporary husband" Aaron taking care of me. (I'm allowed to say this because Mike knows Aaron and is comfortable with our long-distance marriage.) He makes sure that I am eating, brings me beer chips (when I'm stressed, I am a chip binge-eater), and goes on lunch food runs with Erika.
So here's the crock pot meal that was waiting for me at home on Wednesday.
Recipe:
2 large chicken breasts
1 can diced tomatoes-Mexican flavor(?)
1 can of corn (drained)
1 can of pinto beans (drained)
1/2 cup of tomato sauce
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c. water (I would have omitted it, so it wasn't so soupy)
1 T. kosher salt (add more to taste)
1.5 t. cumin
1/2 t. Mexican chili
1 T garlic powder
1 chicken bouillon cube

Instructions: Throw everything in a crock pot. Turn the heat on to low, let it cook for 8+ hours. I let mine cook for about 12 hours. Stir and fix up the flavors to taste. Shred the chicken with a fork. Serve and eat.

For my first crock pot meal, it was not bad. It took less than five minutes to prep, and it was nice to have a meal waiting for me at home. I even threw the chicken breasts in frozen. If I were to make it again, I'd also add some chopped onions and chipotles or something to add heat to the dish.

Frozen dinners. blah! Hello crock pot meals!

This past week in review

I survived the first week of my sensory panel. Whew! My basic day consists of waking up at 7:00am, arriving at lab by 8:30am, leaving the lab at about 8pm. I go home and eat dinner while vegging out watching television shows (Mondays-"Heroes", Tuesday-"Leverage", Wednesday-"Lie to Me" and "Top Chef", Thursday-"Burn Notice", Friday-"Psych"). I shower, do a little bit more work, and then go to sleep. Then it's wake up at 7am again, and the cycle continues. I guess this is what it must feel like to have a "real job."

Highlight of the week: Aaron walks into the lab carrying a crock pot with cans of food in it. He tells me, "throw everything in the crockpot, add chicken, turn it on in morning before you go to school, and when you go home you'll have dinner waiting for you."





I'm salivating at the thought of walking into an apartment that smells like yummy food after a 11-hour day at the lab.
Aaron, if you're reading this, I *heart* you!

I guess he felt sorry for me because I told him I'm too tired at the end of the day and have been eating a grapefruit for dinner and random stuff in my fridge that I can zap in the microwave. The other night it was rice and kimchee, the night before it was rice, kim chee, and korean nori.
I've lost that "food spark" and am not really excited to eat anymore. I am, however, excited that an 18lb bag of grapefruit is only $5 at Meijer. That's about 18 dinners! (just kidding...well sort of).

And Chou, I did try your super food challenge, but I did not get to post it by your deadline. I'll write more about it later. I tried to batter it with those new jumbo rice krispies, but it didn't come out. I ended up making a french toast battered in the rice krispies and topped it with avocado.

Happy Holidays!

Okay, this post was originally set for Christmas, but I got lazy and forgot to post it. Merry belated Christmas and Happy Early New Year!

We hope your holidays have been spectacular!
We went to a few holiday dinners this week, but forgot to bring our camera to the events.
So we'll leave you with some of our Christmas "feast." One of our friends took us to Sam's Club and we went a bit crazy shopping.
Mike drinks sparkling cider like its water. So that's why we bought 2 4-packs of Martinelli's cider. At the moment, we're down to 3 bottles. Oh he also drinks beer like its water too, so that whole case is his. I don't drink beer.
*Random Note*If you ever are at a loss of what to buy Mike for a gift, you can never go wrong with sparkling cider (any kind, apple, grape, mixed berry, etc) or lobsters. Every time I ask him what he wants, he replies with "a hundred billion lobsters." I roll my eyes at him and then he says, "A hundred billion dollars." So trust me, sparkling cider works well for him.
Mmmmm.....crab cakes, my seafood weakness. These were actually pretty good. Better than crab cakes sold in restaurants in Champaign (since most of them make crab cakes from canned crab meat).
Mike's lobster tails. He's lucky I'm not a fan of lobsters. Yeah, my mom said my sister and I are cheap dates since we're not big fans of lobster, shrimp, and crab. We'll eat those crustaceans, but we're not big fans of them.
Fresh mozzarella and goat cheese.

We will post pictures of our dinner later on. But here's a funny story to tide you over...today we decided to go into my lab to get some work done and then end the day with working out at the gym. Mike forgets his running shoes at home, so he goes home in the afternoon to get his shoes. He spends a couple of hours at home, then walks to the gym. I receive a phone call from him saying that he walked to the gym and then realized that he forgot his running shoes again. I guess he's getting his workout in by walking up back and forth from the slippery icy sidewalks.

I resisted and did not go "after-Christmas" shopping. I was like a "real person" who actually went into work instead of had the day off.