A Pinterest WIN!

I made another recipe from Pinterest and I finally documented it! Well enough to share it with you! 

First pickin's from the garden!

With the weekend being near I have new produce that came from my garden!

Home Grown

Home grown anything tastes and looks great! You get this feeling while you are picking your produce. It’s a feeling of all your sweat and hard work has really paid off.  With that said two nights ago D decided to cook hamburgers and fries on the grill. In the efforts of me trying to help a one man show, I decided to walk to the garden and take a look see. I came back with a hand full of lettuce! I picked enough to give me two salads, one for dinner and one for lunch the next day. I also picked enough to place on our yummy hamburgers!

While I was at my garden I started assessing the situation. Weeds are starting to come up throughout and my items are starting to grow. Some items are growing better than others. My tomatoes are coming along with lots of flowers and even a few itty bitty green tomatoes. While my cucumber plants look a little sad and depressed. 

D and I have found that our garden does stay fairly moist throughout the week. I have not decided on whether it is the two sunny days and then the third day of rain and thunder. Little watering is needed because of this.

D and I have thought about doing some maintenance on the garden before all of our plants get too big. We have decided that taking the suckers off of the tomato plants will help greatly. An article by Marie Iannotti at about.com gardening explains what suckers are, when you should prune, when you should not prune, and why you should prune.

Our neighbor placed straw on his garden so, I have been looking into why and if there are any benefits for us.  We are also looking into feeding and weeding our garden one last time (at least around the tomatoes) before we just “let them grow."

~Here's to our next few weeks of weeding, feeding, and picking!~

Dinner Time

Food, wonderful, tasteful, heaven sent food. This is what I think of when someone talks about food. However, when someone asks me what’s for dinner…..Blank…. nothing at all crosses my mind. I find it very important to eat together so what’s for dinner is a big staple in this. I understand with our schedule it truly is hard, however, I have found that I make it a point to cook dinner on our days off and punt on our days that we work. When we are on nigh turn there is no dinner plans. Honestly it’s more of a snack and do you have food for lunch. While on daylight I try to make dinner at least half of the time.

I am more of pasta mix it with vegies, red sauce, olive oil, chicken, shrimp… kind of girl, whereas my hubby is more of a meat and potatoes kind of guy.  If I had my way we would have pasta at least a dozen times a week and if D would have his way I truly believe he would have ham and potatoes every night.

In order to fill in the blank thoughts I have when someone asks me what’s for dinner and to help vary and broaden both of our horizons I decided to make a “menu”.  A menu should be slightly easy right? Well, I found it quite trying.  I have our staples, pasta, ham, and chicken breast. Then I once again blanked out. So I, of course, referred the internet to help me out.  

This is when I hit a major road block. The road block occurred when I started looking at food items and I had no idea if D would like it or not. I am pretty safe in making food that is bland and considered comfort food. However, items that I would consider comfort food, such as buttered noodles he won’t even touch. The staples I grew up on, he slightly looks at me odd and moves on. This leaves me at a loss and a repeat offender of the same food every week. I truly am tired of chicken fajitas and ham and potatoes. I want a little variety in my life.  

So to fix this, I stuck with the menu idea. I placed a few items on the menu and left it on the fridge. I explained to him this is the plan for dinner in no particular order for the next several days. Please let me know if you do not like anything on here or if you would like to add to the list.  In the hopes to do this I will start to learn what is ok to cook and possibly different variations. I am hoping this will work and I can come up with a master menu that has 30 or more items on it, this way I will be able to pull any of these 30 items out of my hat with in a month and whip it up.

Newly wed’s how are you trying to conquer this problem? Married couples how did you conquer this problem?

Pulled Pork 101

Pulled pork was a very farfetched idea for me. I had no idea how to marinade, cook, or pull it until last weekend.  My pulled pork came out really good and I am going to share what this first timer did in order to succeed!

I made 20 pounds of pulled pork, so this is no little task…however, for a home cooked meal in the crock pot, I’d do it again.

Supply’s: Pork butt or Pork shoulder (I had 20 pounds so five pork shoulders), marinade, sea salt, crock pot, crock pot bags, and bowl.

1.       Take the pork, I had five shoulder roasts, two without bone and three with bone, place the pork in a bowl and coat with sea salt. I took the sea salt and sprinkled it on the pork rubbing it in on each side. I do not like salt very much so I went sparingly on the salt…..

2.       After prepping the meat with the salt, marinade the meat. I let the meat sit in the fridge for 12 hours.

Not the best picture however, this is a pork shoulder roast with out bone.. 3.47 pounds.....

I used Morton Sea Salt and Lawry's Hawaiian marinade

My lovely roasts chillin in the bowl before I place them in the fridge

3.       While waiting for the meat I prepared my crock pots. (All five of them). I placed them threw my house; each one had a crock pot bag in them and a slight film of water on the bottom of the pot.

4.       Once it was time to cook the meat, I placed one roast in each crock pot put them on low and letting them cook for 15 hours.

Two of my five crock pots.. I got these two guys for my shower... LOVE THEM!

5.       Next I took the roast out of the crock pot one at a time, pulling apart the pork with two forks and placing the pulled pork in a bowl. I also, examined the meat as I pulled it apart, taking fat and (what I call) gristle out.

This is one roast pulled, examined and re-marinaded. Also, I got this bowl for my shower too... Talk about big and roomy and able to hold a lot. This is a MUST NEED on everyones list.

6.       After taking out each roast and pulling it, putting the pulled pork in the bowl, I re-marinade each roast. I let the meat sit in the bowl while I cleaned out my crock pots. Once I had two crock pots relined and cleaned I replaced the meat into them and placed them on low for another hour.

7.       Time to serve!

Lessons I learned:

1.        I had bought five bottles of marinade, thinking one bottle per roast. However, once I started the process I only used two bottles. This lead to the meat tasting a little bland, which made me re-marinade and let sit a while before serving. (#6)

2.       I also think I put too much water in the crock pots while cooking. I did not want the meat to dry out but I did end up having half the roast covered in the water I added plus the juices it produced.

Must do’s and Don'ts:

1.       A big must do, I found was to use crock pot bags. This made clean up so much easier. Instead of trying to get rid of the juices while in a hot pot, you just pull the liner and boom! I was able to pull the liner and replace the liner in order to replace the pulled pork into two of the crock pots. The other ones I pulled the liner and let the pot cool until I could give them a fast wash.

2. DO NOT! I repeat DO NOT put the juices the roast produces down the drain. There is a lot of grease in them and they will clog up your drain... Do not ask how I know.. just understand its not pretty!

I hope my little adventure will be able to help guide you through when you make pulled pork. I would like to state that no matter how intimidating a food item might be you definitely should try to make it! I love to cook, however I can be very intimidated behind the stove. But sometimes you just have to let your inner chef come out!

Having food delivered to your home

A thought crossed my mind this morning, as I was trying to clean the house before work. I thought " wouldn't it be awesome to have my groceries delivered to my fount door during weeks I was to busy to shop. Most of you know, it is a very long processes to gather all of your bags, coupons and list and head to the store. You  will be in the grocery store at least half of the day. To me this is time well wasted and unless you are managed correctly very stressful.

I find going to the grocery store is one of the most unpleasurable experiences. I love when I can have items shipped to my front door. Working the odd shifts I do and have a small percentage of days off I cherish every minute I have at home. Days like today, I find I partially clean and partially relax. I enjoy every minute of this and dread going out of the house to buy grocery's. D and I have recently started buying our dog food from Amazon. We have found that it is much cheaper and less aggravating. In order for us to go buy her food we would have to make a special trip to the store because it is only sold at Tractor Supply.

I have not been able to find a store that will deliver to our home for items I would want. Items such as meets, produce, and milks. I did however find places that will deliver items such as can goods and boxed goods. Most of these places are stores such as Amazon.

In my research I was hoping to find places that were more local and green so to speak. However, due to living in an area such as ours these places are non existing. I did find a really nice organic store that would bring food right to your front door. Of course we are not in the correct area for this but I find this very promising.

Here is the website I found  to be very helpful. 50+ places to buy groceries online . I will be looking into a few of these stores for our caned goods and boxed items. It is my hope to be able to buy these items online. I am a big advocate of coupons and saving money. If I am able to buy these items online for a better price life would be great! I will continue to share my adventures.

I do know some of my friends in different area's already do a form of this and most of these friends have most of the same views as I do. However they are in different area's and are able to fulfill their requirements.


Here is the question I have for you. Does anyone already do this? If so what, where, when and how???