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.

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.

Unspoken traditions that make Mom giggle.

Photo by Alyssa Hawkins Photography

Little Miss has always done photoshoots and she has always had a blast doing them.  She loves the camera and the camera loves her. When she was a little Little Miss I would trade sewing skills for photography work.  I could do pictures with no problem I had a film camera not a digital.  I knew for toddler age I would shoot about 3 rolls of film to get 4 pictures that were decent.  Toddlers are so fun and busy.   But for this particular shoot my friend and awesome photographer Alyssa Hawkins in Simms, TX was taking pictures of Little Miss.  I had made Cricket and Grasshopper costumes for her daughters for halloween.   So she was doing a fall mini session at a horse auction barn.  Love it.  So I made Little Miss some overalls with farm accents.  Best part I made them so Little Miss could still easily potty train.  I loved those little overalls.   Alyssa took some amazing photos of Little Miss.  But she also started an unspoken  tradition  embedded deep within Little Miss's mind.  At fall photo shoots, I get to eat the apple props.  

Fast forward to last week and mom doing the fall photoshoot .  Little Miss immediately grabs an apple out of the basket of prop apples and started eating it.  Funny it is even the same type of apple.  Years later and nothing has changed. My little girl still stealing apples off of the photoshoot set and eating them.  I wonder if 5 years down the road we will be doing middle school fall pictures and she steals an apple prop and eats it?  

You know it is the little things in life that make you smile and giggle.  This was one of those times.  It actually too 3 days and standing in the kitchen if front of the basket of apples for me to  remember why I loved the apple thing in Little Miss's pictures.  This is all Little Miss, her idea.  It makes my heart smile to think about this.