This Little Light Of Mine

My mother always used the phrase "cleanliness is next to Godliness".  I was never sure what that  meant, but her being raised in an Irish household, she had a lot of little funny adages and superstitious sayings. Just a few were - no new shoes on a table it's bad luck, throw spilled salt over your shoulder, speak of the devil and he will come, dream of the dead hear of the living, if your feet itch you will walk on strange ground, itchy nose you will have a fight or kiss a fool, I know, some crazy stuff.   My siblings and I grew up hearing these our whole lives, and we still live by some of her superstitions and adages.  My sister and I will say "mom use to say that".  It's funny how some things don't change over many years.

So me being the crazy cleaner, my sister is too, because you know "cleanliness is next to Godliness", I thought by buying this little Stink and Dirt finder I would have an even cleaner house.  It was only $7.99, got it through Foster & Smith, and thought now that winter is coming, for germs and such, it would do the household some good.  No one wants to be sick with colds or flu's in the winter.  What does it do?  You shine it on a surface and the purple light turns any dirt, print or stain a florescent yellow, so you can see it with your eyes.  It will also find old dried stains, even water that has dried and left a drip mark.  Most germy surfaces you can't see with the naked eye, this helps you see it, so you can disinfect the surface.  Well, now I am driving myself crazy going over the whole house cleaning everything I can find, you wouldn't believe it, things that I thought were clean, were not!  My neat freak sister told me to throw it out!  Truly it will drive you insane, but your house will be cleaner than you could ever imagine.  I am now obsessed with a purple light!

This Sauce Is The Boss

I was really busy the other day, my youngest is going off to France for the whole semester of her Junior year,  and we had to get a lot of last minute things that she needed to take with her.  Whew! It's all done now and all she has to do is pack her bags. I am going to miss her terribly!  So, before we left on our shopping trip, I needed to decide what to make for dinner that would be quick.  She takes forever to shop and I new we would be out all day.  I had taken a pork loin out of the freezer the day before and had it thawing in the refrigerator.  I figured the best way to cook it, while we were out and about, was to put it in the crock pot and make pulled pork sandwiches.  This is how I made it, recipe below.

Three ingredients to make the sweetest tasting pulled pork you'll ever eat!  Pour that root beer right over it.

 Sprinkle on the pork seasoning.  It doesn't look very pretty while it's cooking, but you will be surprised at the flavor when it's done.

 It's done, and the hardest part is shredding it, which isn't really hard, it take less than 5 minutes.

 Put that pork on a crusty roll, top with provolone cheese and some slaw, add a kosher pickle and some chips and you got yourself a delightful, barely any hands on cooking, meal.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 - 2 lb. pork tenderloin

1 - 12 oz. bottle root beer

1 1/2 cups of Sweet Baby Rays Honey Barbecue Sauce, more if you like it really wet

1 1/2 teaspoons of McCormick Pork Seasoning

8 crusty Kaiser rolls

8 slices of provolone cheese

1/2 lb. container of stringy cole slaw

Directions

Unwrap the pork tenderloin and put into the bowl of a crock pot.  Pour the root beer over the top and sprinkle on the seasoning. Turn the pork over. Set the crock pot to high, put the lid on and let cook for
4-5 hours.  When pork is tender and falling apart, lift it out of the bowl and onto a cutting board. Drain all but about a cup of liquid from the bowl.  With two forks, pull the pork apart shredding it.  Return to the bowl with the liquid.  Reduce crockpot temperature to low.  Pour in the barbecue sauce and toss with the pork. Let cook for another 30 minutes. Top each bun with pulled pork, provolone cheese and cole slaw.  Makes 8 - 10 servings.

I Live For Olives

Love, love, love olives!  Any kind, anywhere, in anything.  What I like about them is their fruitiness (they are considered a fruit), saltiness, meatiness, and they hold up well in cooking.  One of my favorite things to do is visit my local Wegman's every week, yes I do, just to get a container of this olive mix that they have on their olive bar.   It's a mix of all types of olives, cubed feta cheese and a dressing that they marinated them in.  When I get them home I add English cucumber and sliced grape tomatoes.  I will snack on this all day long, it's my new favorite salad and I can not get enough of it, I am sad to say I am addicted! Olives also contain a good amount of vitamin E, calcium, copper, iron, manganese and zinc, so they are good for you.  They also have mono-unsaturated fat acids - healthy fat.

Lotsa Vodka Sauce

SO, I'm back with a new look!  Hope you like it, as well as some new recipes that I will be posting in the future, enjoy!

  My kids all love pasta with vodka sauce, so I make it from scratch.  It's a nice change from  the same old, same old red sauce, because it has a different taste.  I was lucky enough to have everything in the pantry so I didn't have to run to the grocery store or the liquor store.  This is so easy and the sauce is made in one pot.  Recipe below.

Sauteing onion in butter, and some of my other ingredients.  I buy tomato paste that comes in a tube, so I don't have to open a whole can and waste it.  I have tried storing the remainder of the can in the freezer but it always gets lost and I never use it, so the tube paste works great for me.  Just squeeze out the amount you need and put the cap back on! 

 Ahhhh.... the Locatelli cheese and fresh basil from the garden.  The sauce is getting started, a work of art!

 Grated Locatelli and heavy cream and you get a nice rose colored sauce.

 Some linguine, my favorite, topped with vodka sauce and fresh basil.  Dig in!

Pasta With Vodka Sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of butter

1 small sweet onion, diced

3 large cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes, more if you like heat

1 - 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

1/2 cup of vodka

1 cup of heavy cream

1/2 cup of grated Locatelli cheese

6 big leaves of fresh basil, sliced

1 pound of pasta, your choice

Directions

Start a pot of salted water for the pasta.  When water starts to boil, add pasta and cook to your liking. While you are waiting for the water to boil, melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium - high heat and saute the onion until tender.  Add the garlic and crushed red pepper, cook until fragrant. Add the crushed tomatoes and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and add the tomato paste and vodka. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 minutes. Add the heavy cream and grated cheese, and stir until the cheese is melted. Continue to cook reducing heat to medium -low for about 5 minutes until sauce has thickened. Drain pasta, but reserve about 1 cup of the water to use if sauce is too thick.  Transfer pasta to a large serving bowl.  Top pasta with sauce, grated cheese and sliced basil.  Makes 8 servings.

Ummmm....Cookies And Milk

Let's face it, I don't think there is anyone on the face of this green earth that does not like chocolate chip cookies.  Just baking them in the oven, brings home memories of childhood.  The recipe never really changes for them, the same ingredients for many years, although some people do add extra things like nuts or berries to them. I like mine the old fashioned way with just the chips.  I add a bit more of two of the ingredients to recipe, that no one can pin point when they eat them, that makes them extra special.  There are none better than the chocolate chip cookie, and when I do make them they go fast, my family still loves them.  Bake a batch today and make sure you have plenty of milk in the house when you do, there will be lots of dunking going on!

Oh, these are mine, I'm putting my feet up, watching a good movie and enjoying my milk and warm cookies. Life is good........

Holla For Some Challah

Whether we go out or stay in, we love a nice big breakfast on Sunday mornings.  Eggs, bacon, scrapple, ham, steak, hash browns, pancakes, waffles or French toast, we love it all.  This Sunday I was in a French toast kind of mood.  I had a small loaf of challah preserved in the freezer so I took it out the night before and made French toast out of it.  It was sweet and delicious, if you have never tried making French toast out of challah, do it, it's fantastic! 

Slice the challah to your desired thickness.  Dip on both sides, in a mixture of eggs, cinnamon, heavy cream and vanilla extract.  I used 6 eggs for my small loaf, and use as much or as little as you like of the the other ingredients.  I am also brave enough to use flavored coffee creamers if I don't have heavy cream,  they taste great!

 Use a tablespoon of canola oil on the griddle, heat it up and place the slices on the griddle.  When brown and crispy on one side, flip them over, cook on the other side.  Transfer toasted pieces to a serving plate.

 And, VOILA!  Yummy French Toast.

Time For A Change

I got a little crazy over the weekend and decided to move the master bedroom around, I needed a change of scenery, I get bored.  Everything has been in the same spot for the last nine years, I know, right, too long! So I snapped my hubby into shape and got things moving.

This is where the king size bed was, between the two single windows as you walk in the bedroom.

 This is where the sofa was, in front of one set of the triple windows.  I had always used this part of the room as the sitting area, boy was I wrong!  The sofa looks lost there, and we never used the fireplace.

So, I moved the bed where the sofa was, closer to the fireplace there on the right.  Winter is coming so it will be nice and toasty at night. The room now looks much bigger and not so cut up.  The size of the room is 27 feet long x 14 feet wide, pretty big master suite.

Way more room than we use to have now that the bed is tucked into the one end of the room.  This is the other end.

The sofa is now where the bed was, I will need to get some new artwork for that wall.

This table I showed in an earlier blog.  It's a Yankee table and is 27 years old, my mother-in-law bought it for us when we first got married to use as a sofa table, I was into the rustic country look then.  When I changed the decor in our home, I put it out for a yard sale for $20, no one bought it.  I maked it down to $15 and still no one bought it.  I couldn't throw it out or give it to the thrift shop, that I donate a lot of things to, for some reason I couldn't part with it.  It's been in my garage for 9 years!  So I decided to paint it and use it in my bedroom somewhere.  I chose this Behr bright color and now it sits at the foot of my bed.