Sweet Fire Pork Chops

I went to the grocery store TWICE in search of some nice, thick, bone-in porterhouse pork chops and both times, I was disappointed and came up empty handed.  I had a recipe for Sweet Fire Porterhouse Pork Chops that I was anxious to try and sadly, couldn't find descent pork chops anywhere.  After my second attempt to locate the pork chops, I finally gave in and decided to go in a completely different direction with this recipe.  I took the opposite approach and went with wafer thin chops instead.

Does it seem odd to anyone else that the serving suggestion on the package of "wafer thin" pork chops is a nice thick cut chop?  Thick cut chops were no where to be found - trust me.  

After a few modifications, I attempted the sweet fire pork chop recipe with my wafer thin chops.  Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

Sweet Fire Pork Chops
4 pork chops (wafer thin)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon chipolte pepper 
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
zest of 1 orange
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
1/3 cup honey

Combine oil, chipolte, salt, orange zest and garlic in a small bowl.

 Spread mixture over both sides of pork and let sit for 15 minutes.

 Grill 5 minutes on one side.

 Turn and brush with honey.  Grill another 5 minutes or until completely cooked through.

 The nice thing about thin chops is that they cook up really fast.  

Add some brown rice and a sweet potato and voila - a quick summer meal.  

I reduced the amount of chipolte from the original recipe and I think it was still a little bit to spicy for my family.   I thought that the honey would take away more of the heat that it did so I think I may switch it out with chili powder the next time that I make these.  Who knows, maybe I will even find some nice, thick pork chops so I can try it again.

Ciao!




 

Steak Salad

Courtney is babysitting this summer and Ryan is life guarding and they are both on fairly random schedules. It's all I can do to keep up with who will be home for dinner at what time.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those mom's who prepares separate meals for everyone when they happen to roll in the door. I fix dinner at one time and the kids know that if they're late, they are responsible for reheating their own meal. 

This steak salad recipe from taste of home was a perfect, eat-whenever-you-get-home, kind of meal.  Ben and I had is as a salad, Courtney and Ryan made it into a taco.  I bought ultra thin steaks which cooked up super quick and they were delicious. 

Grilled Steak Salad
1 beef top sirloin steak
1 Tablespoon olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon thyme
1/8 teaspoon cumin
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 large tomato, chopped
15 ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
3 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup minced cilantro
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 avocado, diced
1 cup corn







Combine salt, garlic powder, paprika, thyme, cumin and cayenne pepper.







Brush steak with oil and sprinkle with seasoning.

Grill.

Combine remaining ingredients.

Serve with sliced steak.

This was really tasty and I ate the leftover tomato/corn mixture for lunch the next day with some baked tortilla chips.  (Super yummy)

Ciao!

Lemon Chewies

I found a recipe for lemon chewies on endlesslyinspired.com and I can assure you that they didn't look ANYTHING like these do. 

I'm not sure what I did wrong because the ingredients and the instructions were very simple.  There just wasn't a lot of room for error but somehow, I managed to screw them up.

They weren't a complete disaster.  I did eat one and I passed a couple out to friends but I am still baffled by the fact that I could mess them up. 



These cookies are vegan and they contain coconut oil and the only thing that I can think of that might have altered the cookies is that my coconut oil was a little old.  (Ironically, that was the very reason that I wanted to make these cookies in the first place - to use of the rest of my coconut oil.)

Lemon Chewies

Ingredients

1. 1/2 c sugar, plus more for rolling
2. 1/2 c coconut oil
3. 1 T fresh lemon juice
4. 1/4 t lemon zest
5. 3 T honey (for truly vegan use molasses, agave or another plant based sweetener)
6. 2 c flour
7. 1 tsp salt
8. 1 tsp baking powder

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350º and line a baking sheet with parchment.

 

Cream together the sugar and coconut oil until fluffy. 

Then mix in the lemon juice and zest, followed by the honey.

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder. Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed sugar mixture and mix until smooth.  I had to add more coconut oil because the dough was so crumbly that I couldn't even get it to stay together in a ball.

 

Roll dough into 1" balls and roll in granulated sugar.

Place onto the baking pan and flatten slightly. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until set and lightly browned.

So here they are - little lemon biscuits - I will call them.  They didn't flatten into nice little round disks like I had expected but overall, not a bad biscuit. 

Has anyone else tried this recipe with success?  If you've got any suggestions for me, send me a comment, I'd love to hear them.

Ciao!