Catch up part two of "Planet of the Pulled Pork Recipes"

Or you can eat your sandwich while sitting on the Thames,
making all the tourists jealous in London.  

Well if you didn't catch the previous post, this was supposed to be Wens post, which has now been edited to give you the only thing any of us need: more pork tastiness!

Catch up-part one of "Planet of the Pulled Pork Recipes"

"What do you mean the auto scheduler didn't upload the posts?!"

Alright, so I've been busy, which happens, but it is frustrating when you auto-set technology to post something on a particular date and it doesn't do it.

Damn you technology! You destroyed us all!

Home, Home on da' Range...

Ok, so the only Western that I really like is Tombstone, but lets face it, how awesome is Doc Holiday? Only reason to watch that movie (and I can pull off the accent for a few days after watching it, which makes the ladies smile a lot). Needless to say, I've been at home-as in home-home, aka the parents-the last few days due to vehicular problems, nothing a lot of cussing and foul language couldn't solve until it got sent to the repair shop. But I'm back, well at least until the damn thing breaks down again.

In other news, I haven't forgotten my recipe challenge with our porky friend, so lets get to it!!!!

Leftover Pork Tacos

Tools:

Cast Iron Skillet

Metal Spatula

Cutting Board

Knife

Ingredients:

1 cup of pulled pork

1 large onion sliced thin

1 jalapeno diced thinly

1 bell pepper, diced thinly as well

shredded cabbage or lettuce

shredded cheese (I love the white cheeses for this)

diced tomatoes

1 package of warmed corn tortillas (I get a second pan out for this and dry cook them individually over low heat in a dry-no oil-pan until they brown)

Taco Sauce of your choice

Oil to coat the cast iron with

In the cast iron add enough oil that you can coat the pan in a THIN layer. You aren't frying ANYTHING in this recipe, but the cast iron needs some lubricant or the food will stick to it. If you can't guess how much oil you need, get a paper towel out and pour some oil on the towel, then rub it all over the pan. Heat the cast iron on medium heat until warm, then add the onions and peppers to the bottom of the pan. Cook and stir occasionally until they start to brown. Take the shredded pork and top the onions with this, stirring constantly until the pork is warm.

From this point you can probably guess how to finishing making dinner. Add the warmed stuff to the tortillas cover in a some taco sauce, and then add cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce.

And with that you have dinner!

Well that was it for my pork experiment, I went and ran out of pork after this recipe, but I ate for a good week and then some off of a four pound chunk of pork (lunch and dinner at least, breakfast I try to eat some oatmeal with some of Granny's homemade jelly to sweeten it up). The next week's challenge, how to abuse 20 lbs worth of chicken drumsticks. Muahahahahah. (ok, I won't just do that, but I have some recipes I REALLY wanna try!)

Until then: Bien Camino!

Sunny days, takin' the clouds away. . .

. . . take me back to where the air is sweet; can you tell me how to get, how to get to porky tastiness!

Seriously, seventy-nine degrees, sunny, beautiful weather, with a strong southern breeze (think Chicago style breeze, just several hours south of there) and far too much espresso (like four shots too much). Only thing better would have been biking to the cathedral of coffee goodness today, but I had to drive the old man to his daily "I shouldn't have smoked for 58 years" appointment.

With that said, the first day of Purdue's spring break fills me with a warm funny feeling. I'm 99% sure it isn't a heart attack, but you never know with how much espresso I drink. Well before I fall dead at the keyboard, I'll give you today's suggestion for the piggy goodness that is my experiment in pulled pork.

Warm Pulled Pork Pasta

Tools:

Large pot

Bowl able to hold everything

Cutting Board

Knife

Strainer

Large mixing spoon

Ingredients:

1 cup of pulled pork

2 cups dried rotini pasta (I love the wheat pasta and it is REALLY good for you)

1/3rd cup dried lentils

Water for the large pot

Green bell pepper (diced finely)

1 bunch of green onions, greens and whites diced finely

1 cup of diced tomatoes (either roma or cherry tomatoes cut in half)

1 small can drained black olives, diced and drained

1/2 cup of good olive oil

1/3 cup of red wine vinegar

2 tbsp parsley flakes

1 tbsp oregano flakes

dash of garlic powder

dash of black pepper

1 tsp red pepper flakes (cause you gotta have a slight bite)

Ok, as you can guess, this is another one of my wonderful one bowl recipes that I tend to be proud of. In the large pot, add water and lentils and bring it to a boil. Wait ten to thirteen minutes and then add the rotini to the water (I like rotini's shape for holding onto the dressing that we are going to make for this warm pasta salad) Cook until the pasta is just about done, and then drain the pasta and lentils in the strainer in the sink.

While all of this is cooking, chop up any veggies that need to be chopped, adding them into the big bowl. Take all the ingredients left on the list and mix them well in the large bowl. Once the pasta and lentils are drained, add it directly into the large mixing bowl while still warm. Mix it all together and you have a TASTY pasta salad dinner. Enjoy!

With that, I'm off to soak up some more sunshine before the sun sets. Until next time!

Bien Camino!

Liquid Lunch

Lunch is a fantastic meal of the day, even if it doesn't involve food for the first two hours. Needless to say, I haven't done this in far too long and I'm finding it very relaxing that drinking coffee on a very warm day to hydrate from my lunch. That and drinking with smart people can be a blast! (And for all of you under-aged individuals out there not of legal age reading this, I don't condone misbehaving and do your parents know you are reading this sort of subversive dribble?)

I would like to point out that no one was harmed in the making of my lunch today, and I was a good boy, and that I have another piggy recipe for you out there.

Drum roll please.

I'm waiting. . .

You can do it.

No one will think you are strange, just do it!

I don't care you're in public. Make sure to share this site!

Better! It took you long enough!

Pulled Pork Potato Patties

Tools:

Cutting Board

Mixing Bowl (large enough for all the ingredients)

Knife

Measuring Cup

Wooden Spoon

Non-stick skillet

plastic wrap (or lid for the mixing bowl)

Spatula

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of pulled pork

2 cups of instant mashed potatoes (made as per the recipe on the box)

1/2 bunch of green onions, chopped up finely

4 cloves of garlic, diced

pepper

1 egg

Non-stick spray

2 tbsp of butter

1 tbsp parsley flakes

1 tsp sea salt (I like the flavor better than normal salt)

Make the mashed potatoes as per the recipe on the box. Once the potatoes are cooked, mix in all the other ingredients in the large bowl with the taters. You will want to use a wooden spoon rather than a plastic one, I've snapped more than one plastic spoon making this. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator to cool for an hour or two.

When the mix is cool enough to work with your hands, put the non-stick skillet on the stove over medium heat, adding a liberal dose of non-stick spray. This is important, non-stick cook-wear ONLY works if there is an oil or spray between the food and pan. Over time if you don't use a good non-stick spray or oil, you will ruin your pan.

Get the bowl out and take the lid off. This is the fun part (which you can do before you start cooking). Spray your hands with the non-stick spray and you are going to make 'snowballs' out of the tater mix (you don't HAVE to spray your hands, but it makes life easier when dealing with the taters). When you make them, you want the balls to fit nicely in your hands if they are held together, but not so large that they can't be easily held. Think 2 inch balls of 'taters for reference. Once you have a ball made, smoosh it flat (yes, smoosh is a technical word, get over it) in the palms of your hands until it is 1/3rd of an inch thick.

Place the tater patty on the warm skillet and listen to it sizzle on the skillet. Let it sit there for 4-5 minutes until you have a brown crust start to form. Lift up the edge slightly on each patty before you flip to see if it is browning, if not, leave it alone until it does! Flip the patty with the spatula only once to the other side and let cook until it is brown. Remove from the heat and serve warm with ketchup, warmed pasta sauce, or even white sausage gravy.

I love doing this with left over taters from dinner the previous evening, it is a great way to use up leftovers that you might have. Feel free to use any other kind of meat for this, but make sure that it is diced finely and precooked before you add it to the patties.

Well until the next time, enjoy the fantastic weather if you have it and the rest of your weekend.

Bien Camino!

Brain, I will poke you with a flaming q-tip!!!!

Alright, after a wonderful day of *BLEEP*, I am yet again safe in the safety of the internet. Oh, safe, sarcastic internet. If I didn't have you protecting me I might do something productive, like run for an hour. Read a book. Break out the NES and beat the crap outta a giant, fire breathing, shelled, lizard-king. Those sorts of highly productive things.

Or I could cook.

Wait, this is something I like!

So I present to you the second recipe from my experiment on slow roasting a piggy:

Pulled Piggy Sandwich (2 sandwiches to be exact)

Tools:

knife

cutting board

flat skillet (I like non-stick for this)

plate

spatula

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of pulled pork (chilled)

1 small onion, sliced thin

2 roma tomatoes, sliced

spicy pickles (I discovered a pickle from FrogFarm which is AWESOME for this. It will clean your sinuses out! But if you don't like spicy, I guess normal pickles will do. . .wuss.)

1/2 cup of sliced cabbage (coleslaw mix)

non-stick cooking spray

loaf of a thick, crusty bread that you can slice into sandwich size meals (I use half a loaf of french bread for this from my local supermercado)

deli-style mustard (My favorite is Plochman's Mustard which has a slight bite, but compliments all the tastiness in the sandwich rather than taking over)

Overall this is really easy to make. Take the sliced onions and place into the bottom of the skillet hosed down in non-stick spray set to medium-low heat. While that is cooking, slice the bread into acceptable sandwich sizes and layer on the pickles, tomatoes, and cabbage onto the bottom slice of the sandwich (a good crusty bread won't get soggy when you do this).

After the onions start to take on a wonderful golden color, add in the pulled pork to heat it up and add just a little bit more flavor. Once the pork is warm, spread the onion/pork yumminess (one of the most accurate scientific words in my vocabulary) evenly onto the bread. Add mustard to taste and put the top slice of bread back on.

Now here is the strangest tip ever. Walk away.

Wait, what?

Seriously, walk away from the sandwich for five minutes. This will let all the flavors of the sandwich start to mix together, which is exactly what you want. You can even wrap the sandwich in plastic wrap for later if you use a crusty enough bread, it shouldn't get soggy if you choose wisely (and really, experiment, because depending on where you live you can have entirely different bread styles which can modify how this tastes. Experiment = better food = happy belly.) After that I'd suggest eating over the sink for easy clean up as you enjoy the rewards for your effort.

And until the next pork-related recipe:

Bien Camino!!!!!

Sleep, I don't need no stinking sleep!

Coffee.....

I might be living on it more than I should, but you have to do what you have to do. I also won't mention the VERY dirty look I got from the nurse yesterday when she heard I'm going off of two hours of sleep. Bah! Sleep! Who needs it when you have caffeine replacing food. . .

Ok, I want SLEEP! But "oh well," I'll get over it soon. (or die of a caffeine induced heart attack)

As I promised, today is the second installment of the Experiment: Spanish Rice

Porky Spanish Rice (ok, so not exactly spanish rice, but still GOOD)

Tools:

Pot with a heavy lid

Cutting Board

Knife

Spoon

Ingredients:

1 cup of loosely shredded pork (from yesterday)

1 cup of dry rice

1 packet of taco seasoning

1 large onion, diced up

2 fresh jalapenos, diced up

1 green bell pepper, diced up

1.5 cups of high quality H2O

Get out the cutting board, the knife, and pretend that you are part of the movie Psycho. After everything is cut up ("no mommy, I didn't do it!"), drop it into the pot, followed with the rice, taco seasoning, and high quality H2O. Mix it all together so all the flavors are mixed together. Put the lid onto the pot and turn the heat onto low-medium (or the lowest flame possible for you silly gas stove cookers). Once you get it to a constant boil, turn off the heat, and let it continue cooking for about 20 minutes. Open up the pot and fluff all the rice with a fork. Serve with tortilla chips, queso (CHEESE!), and salsa.

Bien Camino!

Good job on overdoing the workout!

Welcome to the new year and getting back into the exercising tradition that has slacked for a month. I'm a bit sore but I did it to myself. This is the second day in the row which I've overdone my workout. So I intended to work out for 45 minutes and ended up doing 2.5 hours....nothing a good stretch and soak won't cure later. That and a handful of ibuprofen.

Yeah, it isn't a surprise I'm a bit rough on my body, but I have to keep it in shape for my insane travels. It isn't like I can just throw on a backpack and walk several hundred kilometers without shaping up slightly at first. Well I can, and I lose it fast, but that isn't the point!

Lunch today was delicious, a bowl of black bean soup. I made this from some leftover christmas ham that I snagged from my family and then froze. It spent the better part of 12 hours yesterday in the crock pot slowly boiling away, breaking up all the meat and making a really tasty broth. Add in some black beans and suddenly you have a delicious meal!

Black Bean and Ham Soup

Tools:

Crock Pot (I use my smaller 2 quart for this)

Can Opener

Ingredients:

2 cups of Mr. Pig, broken down in the slow cooker, BBQ style.

1 cup dried black beans

2 tbsp dehydrated onion flakes

1 can of chopped tomatoes with green chilies (medium or hot, your choice)

enough water to cover the soup.

Ok, take Mr. Pig and put him into the slow cooker. Cover with water until the meat is covered, crank up the heat, and leave it alone for 12-24 hours. This will make your home smell wonderful. I know how tempting that it might be to use this broth as a homemade cologne or perfume, but it would be a shame to lose any of this tastiness.

Once the meat has broken down, add in the cup of dried black beans and the onion flakes. Here comes the tricky part of the meal, you will want to add water to the pan, but you need to make sure that you have enough room left over afterwards for the can of tomatoes/chilies. This is more of an eyeball guessing game than anything, I've gotten really good at it with practice, but still occasionally goof up.

The best trick is to add water to cover all the ingredients and then another 2 inches worth of water. This 'should' leave you enough room in the crock pot for the tomatoes/chilies later. If not, well get a ladle out and scoop some broth into a bowl. This broth will make a delicious snack if you dip bread into it.

Let it cook overnight if possible, but at least 8 hours on low. This will hydrate/cook the beans. About 2 hours before serving, add the can of tomatoes/chilies (juice and all) to the crock pot. This will add some fantastic flavor.

I like to serve this in bowls with a thick rye or dark grain bread on the side. The bread is perfect for soaking up the awesome flavors in this soup.

Well it is back to working on my next book, The Zombie's Diary, and I have a good deal of work ahead of me. A writer's work is never done, not unless the writer likes to starve.

Bien Camino

Mainlining mashed taters....

Well if I'm going to taunt you about the taters, I should probably give the recipe.

Doctoring Instant Taters

Tools

Pot with a lid that you made bacon in this morning.

Ingredients

Bacon Grease (if you aren't saving your bacon grease after making bacon, then your Grandmother should slap you. You only need as much bacon grease as what's left in the pan after you drain it off.)

3 tbsp of butter

1 tbsp of chopped garlic

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tbsp red pepper flakes

2 tbsp parsley flakes

1 1/3 cup of water

1 1/3 cup of crappy mashed potato flakes

Alright, real easy, heat the pan to get the bacon grease and butter to melt, then add the garlic, all the powders, and herbs to the pan (everything but the water and potato flakes).

When the garlic softens, add the water and bring to a boil. Once that happens, take it off the heat and add the flakes while mixing. And potatoes that you will want to mainline.

Bien Camino!

Bad Kitty! My Pot Pie!

"Mom! Kitty is being a..."

Alright, if you are my age (I just celebrated the 12th anniversary of my 21st birthday. And I'm not in denial, that is a river in Egypt I like to drink gin & tonics on), then you know how this ends, but the kitty seriously needs to remember that he doesn't get people food, no matter how tasty it is. Today can be summed up in a single word: funky.

Bad Reputation

So I'll be the first to admit that when I hear the words "left-overs" I still shudder. The never ending horde of food that you hate to waste but are so tired of eating. After Thanksgiving, this is doubly so, I look at the metric ton (ok, more like 15 lbs...but that is still A LOT!) that my Granny sent home with me the other day.

Ah, and now you will die....

...Mr. Miller.

So I'm a bit dramatic some days, it is part of my charm (well if you count charm as a sort of neurosis of the mind that takes a scorpio's innability to trust to levels deemed 'unhealthy'). After a long day of texturing a ceiling with mud and a paint brush, then working on several doors, I am more than ready for a simple dinner (at 10pm at night...my diet SUCKS some days). Good thing I thought ahead and have some rice pre-cooked in the refrigerator.

Leftovers

The worst part of living alone has to be the dreaded meal of 'leftovers'.

"No, anything but that!"

"How can you eat the same thing over and over again throughout the week?"

"Bah!"

"Anything but 'that' again!"

Mommy, what is the bad man doing?

"Nothing honey, he is making breakfast."

Alright, waking up in the morning cold and cranky has meant that I have gone out of my way to enjoy some traditional cold weather scout food from my childhood, and today is no different. This is what I call a leftover recipe that any uneaten baked potatoes become the heart and soul of this tasty mishmash of flavors in the skillet. Have you ever wondered when you go to a little roadside dinner how they get their skillet fried potatoes so crispy on the outside but still moist in the center? Well it is because they are precooked, all you are doing is making the outside all golden brown and tasty.

With that, to breakfast!