Honey Mustard Pork Loin and Potatoes

A couple of weeks back I posted a recipe for Marvelous Magnificent Honey Mustard Sauce.  Wasn't it yummy.  Have you dipped chicken tenders in it yet?  Handy hubby and I have.  I have even dipped Home Fries in it.  I posted a picture of the Glazed pork loin in the post.  I thought I better share that recipe with you, if for no other reason than it was tongue tickling yumminess.  And even better it is simple to make.  I buy my pork loin on sale.  Handy hubby and I then cut them down to smaller pork loin roast and pork chops.  Works out great for our budget.  I typically can get 20+ pork chops and a roast for $9 that way.

Glazed Honey Mustard Pork Loin with Potatoes. 

Getting about a teaspoon of EVOO warming in a skillet.  I used cast iron so it could go from the stove to the oven in the same pan, less dishes.  Then I minced 3 cloves of garlic and a medium yellow onion and tossed them into the skillet with the oil on a low to medium heat and let them do their thing while I am getting the pork loin ready.

I had some of my Marvelous Magnificent Honey mustard sauce ready to go in a cute little vintage Pyrex bowl.  I love the pouring handles on these.

I brushed a little bit of the Honey mustard on all the sides of the pork loin.  

I added the Pork loin into the skillet with the onions and garlic.  See how they have started getting some beautiful brown color.  Yum.  I turn the heat up to med high and seered the pork on the top and bottom. That brown coloring adds some good flavor, and some say it locks in the flavor and moisture.  

When it is all seered I pour the  rest of the honey mustard over the top and tossed the entire pan in the oven at 325 for 45 minutes or until the internal temp of the pork is 160.  Then I  served over roasted potatoes.  Made a yummy Sunday lunch.

Swollen noses, gray hairs, grody patina, friends, and antiques

My week started out like any other week, school and work.  Sophie and I even made cookies during the fall break.  I love baking with the kids.  Then Thursday night after the cookies, there was a wrestling incident that ended in Mom catching an elbow to the bridge of her nose.  Yes, I caught my husband's elbow in the nose.  Luckily I don't bruise like most people, so I don't have 2 black eyes.  Instead I look like I haven't slept in a couple of weeks and have a major sinus infection.  No big deal.  Mr. Handy Hubby really felt bad, he made me a special ice pack that worked better than any ice pack ever.  In a quart zippy baggie fill with equal parts hand sanitizer and water, then he just popped them in the freezer for two hours.  It never freezes hard, it gels more like a great margarita.  You have to wrap it in a towel because it is colder than ice. It molds perfectly to the area you apply it too.

Friday while at home with the little kids, by the way Ethan hates that title, Matthew's work called.  He had a seizure at work.  I ran up to get him and he was still a little altered by it.  I get him home.  He is alright.  We are still just counting down the days until the neurology appointment. Waiting for doctors is going to make me go completely gray way too early.  I mean common, I thought the military was bad about the hurry up and wait game but these specialist could teach the military a thing or five about hurry up and wait.  We have been dealing with this seizure stuff for over a month now and still have 3 weeks to wait before we see the neurologist.

So Friday night we had a pair of teen brothers staying the night with Ethan.  Eli and JJ are great kids that go to church with us.  I made homemade calzones for dinner. Yum Yum right, well kind of, I need to tweak this recipe a bit more.  They were good but I prefer to have a bit more flavor to the crust. But the teenagers did not complain.  The boys stayed up late and played Super Mario Brothers on the Wii.  Surprising that the Wii still entertains teens, although they kept saving things like "This takes me back to my childhood" and "I loved playing this as a kid".  It is bad enough I have a swollen face, and more gray hairs this week, now they are making it worse with their comments about "when they were kids".  I thought it was funny.  Handy Hubby and I exchanged looks several times, rolled eyes, and snickered more than once.

The teens wanted to sleep in on Saturday. Go figure.  I had different ideas.  I made them all a big breakfast.  Pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon.  All that work and they ate and went back to bed.  Teenagers, go figure.  See the young can't hang.  While the teens were back to crashing, my friend Tammy came into town and we hit the Dollar Generals.  I got 3 rolls of landscape fabric and a metal table/plant stand for all of $2.50.  Woohoo big spender. Then she and I hit up the local antique store.  I have to give a shout out to Old Songs Sung antique store in downtown Cushing, OK.  If you are in the neck of the woods, you have to stop in there.  They have everything.  For this trip I was hunting out antique flatware with a nice grody (yes I still use Grody) patina to it. I had and idea.  Jackpot!! $6 later I had 4 knives and 2 forks.  I already had 3 spoons at home to complete my idea.

Tammy and I do craft shows together heading up to the Holidays.  We use the extra cash for Christmas money and black Friday shopping.   But this particular idea is actually for my house.  Although I think I am going to make a few to take to shows this year.  It is an organizer for the kitchen.  It will hold my rolling pin and my aprons.  This will free up some space in my drawers and be a more decorative way to hang my aprons than just a nail.   Tammy also dropped of some ribbons and a wreath so I can make bows for some awesome wreathes she is making. Busy busy busy.

You know if you think about it, I go to an antique store to get things with a grody aged patina and with a swollen nose and more gray hair I have a grody aged patina.  I accept that.

New meets old, recipes, memories, and windmills.

This past week my grandmother went home to heaven.  While it is sad for us and we will miss her, she lived a long life and deserves to rest and see other family including her husband that have passed on.  We went down to the funeral over the weekend.  I hated the reason for the visit but loved being there.  My grandmother was laid to rest in an tiny old cemetery in a tiny dying town in Texas, but the area feels like home.  We took the dirt roads back to town.  On one of the dirt roads not far from where my grand parents used to live, I pulled over and took this picture.  It struck me the new and the old windmills.  It struck me how many wind farms the ranchers in the area had gone too.  But with the recent droughts in Texas I can certainly understand the need to supplement income.  

I received box of things from my grandmother's apartment.  There were pictures and mementos, but one thing had struck me...a recipe full of recipes cut from newspapers, magazines, and product labels. 

 This last thing the folder of recipes struck me as very interesting.  I am constantly patrolling Facebook, blogs, and Pintrest for recipes then save them and print them.  Some recipes I use and some I just mean to use.  But sitting in the  dining room floor excitedly going through my grandmothers stash of recipes, something dawned on me.  I do the same thing my grandmother did, just with different media.  Where I go through Facebook, blogs, and Pintrest and saving recipes with good intentions is just the same as my grandmother going through newspapers, magazines, and product labels and clipping and saving recipes with the best of intentions.   Just like the picture of the windmills, you have the old and the new, they do basically the same things but in slightly different ways.  

I sat in my dining room floor with this treasure trove of recipes that my Grandmother thought were worth saving, I felt a connection with her that wasn't previously there.  It is odd we were always pretty close but this made me feel closer.  I held the few hand written ones, boy what treasures.  There were a couple in my Sister's hand writing.  Which is funny to me, it is no family secret that my sister couldn't cook for many years.  She can cook it just took her longer to come to it.  You know the old saying "You never trust a skinny cook"  my sister is the embodiment of that saying.  While she is better, she is still a skinny cook.  (Sis, if you read this I don't mean it to hurt your feelings. I love you.)  I did come across an very interesting recipe printed on bright yellow paper.  It was from a Girl Scout newsletter.  It is for Dump Cake.  It was a recipe I modified when I was a Junior Girl Scout or maybe a Cadette.  It got modified because I have always hated reading directions, it comes from dyslexia.  The original cake was supposed to be all dumped in at once and I layered it.  I also cooked it in a dutch oven over a fire instead of the oven.  The fact that she kept that recipe for this many years was very touching.  I think the recipes we keep are as much a scrapbook of our life as pictures are.  I mean after all we are what we eat right?  So the recipes tell our story right?

Gump (Dump) Cake 

• 2 Cans of  Blueberry or Cherry pie filling
• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 1 can crushed pineapple
• 1 stick of butter
• coconut

In a dutch oven lined with foil, or regular cake pan (no size given but I think a 9x13 greased)

1st layer pie filling

2nd layer pineapple including the juice

3rd layer cake mix (dry)

4th layer butter cut into small pieces and spread  over the top

5th layer the coconut

Bake 350 for an hour or until top is golden brown

 I am going to have to make this soon just for the memories.  I don't think I have made this since It was printed.   Which was quite a while ago.