Pork glazed with sesame oil with fresh squash

My mother brought us two garden fresh yellow squash and I thawed out pork in anticipation of guests but they had a family emergency...

Ingredients
-5 thin cut boneless pork chops
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons sesame oil
- sesame seeds
- one tablespoon orange juice concentrate

In a large frying pan or cast iron skillet, heat butter and sesame oil over low heat. Add meat, increase heat to medium, and cook for about five minutes each side. Glaze with orange juice concentrate and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

For the SQUASH:
Without cleaning the skillet...

Ingredients
- 2 medium yellow squash, chopped
- about 2 tablespoons of sesame oil
- about 2 tablespoons butter
- about 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
- about 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- one cup water
- about two tablespoons orange juice concentrate

Add first four ingredients to skillet over medium heat, squash last.

Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl to make a sauce.

Stir fry squash until golden. Add sauce and cook until the juice boils down.

Lemonade Smoothie

Are you sick of smoothies yet?

This morning:
- 1 Chobani lemon yogurt
- about 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
- about 1/4 cup very vanilla soy milk
- about 1/4 cup seltzer
- one heaping teaspoon orange juice concentrate
- pinch of [food grade] lavender

Creamsicle Smoothie II

This is what I had for dinner last night. It's a variation of Nava Atlas' recipe from the 5 Ingedient Vegetarian Gourmet:

In the blender
- 1 packet vanilla carnation instant breakfast
- 3 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate
- 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
- 1/4 cup seltzer
- 3/4 cup very vanilla soymilk

Creamsicle Frozen Yogurt

Based on my recipe for creamsicle smoothie today I combined in the ice cream machine:

About two cups vanilla yogurt
About one cup strong orange juice
About three tablespoons half and half
About one-half shot Bols Blue Curacao (to keep it from freezing solid like an Italian ice)

Tasted pretty good in liquid form. We'll see when the ice cream maker finishes with it.

And it's green...

Kiddie Sunrise

I don't think my daughter likes orange juice.

Too sweet.

So I took a wine glass this morning, and added a couple tablespoons of cherry juice and three maraschino cherries into the bottom, then filled half the glass with OJ and the other half with plain seltzer to dilute it.

She enjoyed watching the colors swirl and the cherries are a prize at the bottom of the glass.

Baked Chicken and Fruit

As I mentioned another day, I own many cookbooks and I don't get to read them often enough to remember what I want to try... 

This particular recipe was the dinner I made when we had our first post-baby dinner party. Our neighbors had a baby one week older than ours so we shared this casserole one night. It comes from The Big Book of Casseroles by Maryana Vollstedt. 

Baked Chicken and Fruit (pictured before it goes into the oven): 

1 chicken, cut into serving pieces (3 to 3.5 pounds)

[I have always used about a pound of chicken breasts, cut into small chunks]

salt and pepper to taste

paprika [I don't have any today]

1 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil [I use olive]

1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds

1/4 cup golden raisins [I use golden and regular, we like raisins]

1 cup pineapple chunks [I use one can]

4 peach halves [I use one can sliced peaches]

8 dried prunes [I skip]

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

2 cups orange juice

1. Preheat oven to 350. Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper and paprika.

2. In Dutch Oven, over medium high heat, warm one tablespoon oil. Brown chicken until golden, five minutes on each side. Add more oil if needed. Add remaining ingredients. 

3. Cover and bake until chicken is no longer pink in the middle, about 50 minutes. Baste with sauce while cooking. Remove

 lid and cook 10 minutes longer. [I don't imagine the covering and uncovering is necessa

ry with my little pieces.] 

I made brown rice to accompany. My husband had three plates. I had three small scoops, which more or less equaled one big serving. My daughter ate one serving. I divided the leftovers into three containers: two containers each with one serving for an adult lunch and one big container with enough for all of us to have for dinner. If I had to figure it out, I would guess the whole batch cost less than $10 to make and more or less covered three meals for the family. 

Picnic Lunch: Tuna melts and orange-mango smoothies

You can always recognize a good cookbook in someone's kitchen. It's dirty, warped and maybe even unidentifiably sticky. I have Italian cookbooks, Chinese cookbooks, vegan cookbooks, vegetarian cookbooks, French cookbooks, chocolate cookbooks, casserole cookbooks, even a pasta cookbook.

Nava Atlas' The Vegetarian 5-ingredient cookbook is one of those tomes that is on its way to dirty stickiness. I don't actually use it that often, but after flipping through it looking for the orange creamsicle smoothie recipe this morning... Well, there are several recipes that piqued my interest that I had never noticed before. I love that every recipe is five ingredients (or less.) I think that speaks well to the harried nature of our lives and blends with a "this is what I've got on hand" situation.

I "got hungry" for Atlas' smoothie when I bought those YoBaby smoothies the other day and made the wisecrack that I knew I could make them at home. And they'd taste better. And I knew making them (with the blender, the blender!) would thrill my daughter. So, we made the smoothies and packed them with hot sandwiches for my daughter's picnic with Daddy. (I have class Tuesday and Thursday 11:00 to 12:15 p.m.)

Smoothies first...

Orange-Vanilla Creamsicle Smoothie

makes one to two servings (I automatically double.)

From Nava Atlas' 5-ingredient Vegetarian Gourmet

In blender combine (or stir if you want a lumpier consistency):

1. 1 cup fresh orange juice
2. 1/2 cup low fat vanilla yogurt
3. 1/4 cup seltzer or sparkling water (optional)
4. dash of vanilla extract (optional)
5. ice (optional)

I did not have any "bubbles" on hand, so we skipped them. And I added probably less than 1/4 cup mango sorbet. And doubled the orange juice and yogurt. As expected, it was a hit.

For the entrée of this lunch, I toasted English muffins, added some cheddar cheese and melted it, and then piled on the tuna (which I make with Nayonnaise because I think mayonnaise is nasty). I popped the lid on and wrapped the hot little sandwiches in foil with the home of getting them to my husband warm. When I asked if I succeeded, he shrugged. An attempt at portable hot lunch, when you're on a tight schedule is not worth the effort and stress. But it was fun for today.

Recycling

This may look suspiciously similar to the Cashew Pork with Pea Pods/Pork with Apricots from the other night but it's not (quite). I made more of the orange juice-based sauce, made more veggies, and threw in the leftovers from the pork and the pineapple from our daughter's snack the other day. I served with mini egg rolls and while it was very similar to the original (Sunday) I used slightly different seasonings since I ran out of ginger. We had mango sorbet for dessert. My father-in-law had stuck the mango sorbet in the freezer a while ago...

"Pork with Peaches"

I thawed out the two boneless pork chops I had left from the pork with apples last month and planned to make "pork with peaches" or Cashew Pork with Pea Pods. It's a recipe I got from my college roommate. 

Cashew Pork with

 Pea Pods

1 pound pork, lean and boneless

1/2 cup orange juice

1/4 cup orange marmalade

2 tablespoons soy sauce 

1 tablespoon corn starch

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon oil

2 cups pea pods

1 can peaches chopped

1/2 cup cashews or peanuts

1. Slice pork.

2. Make the sauce: Mix

 the juice, soy sauce, marmalade, corn starch and ginger. Set aside.

3. Cook the pork with the tablespoon oil. When cooked, add pea pods and peaches. Cook long enough to warm the center of the peaches. Add sauce. Cook until bubbly and thicker. Add nuts.

 

4. Serve with rice.

Now, as usual, I deviated from the recipe. I doubled the sauce, used a quarter of the meat, and used Hong Kong Stir Fry veggies (frozen) instead of pea pods. I didn't use marmalade but substituted applesauce. And I skipped the nuts. Oh, and I used apricots instead of peaches.

Then, I made gourmet Asian noodles and stir-fried them so they were a mix of crispy and soft and served them instead of rice.