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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Pork, it's what's for dinner...tonight anyway!

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In an effort to use our ridiculously expensive blender more I've decided we are now a soup eating house hold.  So tonight we are having home made Tomato Cheese Soup.  I'm quite pleased.  I found a recipe online and then adjusted per usual, for instance the original receipt didn't call for garlic or jalapenos.  Who has a recipe for tomato soup with out garlic of jalapenos, that's just wrong!   Now, I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "wait a moment, I've been misled, the title of this post was about pork, this isn't pork!"  And right you are, but don't worry meat eaters, we're also having stuffed pork chops with our soup, as well as a delish salad that I'm whipping together as we, errr, I type.

Tonights pork chops come to us courtesy of Mollie Stone's Market in the Castro.  According to the gentleman working in the butcher shop tonight, these are pork chops stuffed with spicy italian sausage with spices and parmesan.  I'm quite excited about this, who knew you could stuff meat with other meat?  Okay, i knew you could do that because I've had turducken, but this is completely different.  There's also a nice layer of parmesan on the outside of the pork chop.  Okay, on to the recipes and cooking directions....

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(Cheesy) Tomato Cheese Soup

Ingredients: The ingredients with parenthesis around them are the original recipe ingredients and portion suggestions.

tomatos ( 1 large)

onion (1/4 cup)

cheese (1/4 cup)

vegetable bouillon (1 tsp)

tomato paste (1 1/2 tsp)

salt and pepper (to taste)

water (1 cup)

cayenne pepper - shake it, you know what you like

jalapenos - I threw in half of one, seeds and all

garlic - about 4 little cloves

I only used the recipe as a basic guideline for my creation.  I used two medium-ish tomatoes.  Who really knows what a "large" tomato looks like anyway?  Anyway, I used 2 medium tomatoes, a handful of diced onions, two handfuls of cheese (a blended mix of something or another that's also good for quesadillas), a couple scoops of tomato paste, and a scoop of vegetable bouillon - which by the way I'd never seen before.  I then threw in the half a jalapeno, and the garlic along with a few shakes from the salt and pepper shakers and a little cayenne pepper to top it off.  I threw all these ingredients into my blender and smoothed it out nicely.  The original recipe then tells you to add a cup of hot water to the mix and then eat it.  That's silly, why would I do that when I've made such delicious soup?  I halved the amount of water (okay I just eyed it) and then put the mixture on the stove top to heat up slowly and deliciously.  I've been taste testing ever since, and damn is it good.  Mmmmmm.  I highly recommend this if you like tomato soup, you will never eat campbell's or another canned tomato soup again.

Pork Chops

I'm not going to list the ingredients because I didn't make it.  And I already told you what was in the stuffed pork chops at the beginning of this post.  I will tell you how I chose to cook them.  My favorite way, wrapped in tin foil in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour.  Yum, moist and perfect.

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Apple Salad

Ingredients:

spinach

pine nuts

cayenne pepper

apple/s

feta

My fav olive oil dressing concoction

So you don't have to use the pine nuts, you can also use almond slivers or walnuts if you want it to be easier.  I just happened to have pine nuts in my fridge that I needed to use.  I used red apple slices from the Chiquita snack pack because I didn't want them to go to waste.  I used the equivilant of probably 1 and a half apples and we had more than enough salad for two of us.  Four people could have enjoyed the salad, it was spicy, but sweet and I'm quite pleased with my decision to use some cayenne pepper while browning the pine nuts.

Overall it was a very yummy and pretty healthy dinner.  Look at me cooking at home!

:)M