Ok. That may be a bit of an overstatement. In fact it was carnitas for my Sunday Dinner family. After church on Sunday we must eat. We had been going out a lot but having dinner out every week is something of a “budget buster” especially if you have more than one mouth to feed at the table (some with expensive taste-buds). As I mentioned in an earlier post, cooking for special occasions is not my strong suit, but this was just dinner; not Easter or Christmas. So when it was my turn to contribute, I went with something that my son and I really like. I found a recipe for pork carnitas on Pinterest and had fixed it at home a few times and it had gone over rather well so I figured it was a safe bet.
One problem: not everyone in my tribe loves Mexican food and some of them have an extensive list of things they just don’t eat. Oh, well. I put on my big-girl pants, accepted that I will never please everyone and cooked what I like. The pork roast cooks slowly for hours in my dutch oven, (a Christmas gift from my mom – love her) so when it’s time to shred it, it literally falls apart at the slightest pressure. When I mentioned what I was going to make to my cousin and I told her I usually eat it with a corn salsa, she suggested that I try to make it. Her suggestion was excellent. I found a recipe, on Pinterest of course, and followed it except dialing down the jalapeño. Tasty.
I would love to report that they all loved it, but that’s not quite how it went down. Some liked it and others tolerated it. My son liked it so much I had only enough left for lunch the next day. So my lesson in all of this: Just because you do something and do it well does not guarantee that others will like what you did…and that’s OK.
It happens every twenty-four hours; dinnertime. I get home after work and my son greets me with “Hello, what’s for dinner?” There are times that at that moment, I hand him 2 warm pizza boxes and say, “Dinner is ready” but young men do not grow on pizza alone.
Now, I love my tech, between mobile devices, websites, and apps, I have found my way to have a variety of tasty meal options so we don’t have to rely on packaged box meals. For new ideas about food (and pretty much everything else that interests me) I search on Pinterest. That’s where I found my recipe for Cilantro Lime Shrimp from the Skinny Taste website. I tried the recipe about a month ago and it got a thumbs up from the family so I knew I’d make it again. Enter Evernote.
Evernote is great because it creates searchable tagged content in notebooks. If I find a recipe that I know I’m going to want to make again, if gets saved to my recipe notebook. But wait, there’s more! The is another app named Evernote Food that works with Evernote to creates this magazine stylized repository of my mundane recipes. These digital tools help my family go from front door to fed.
I really love gathering with friends and family to eat and enjoy each others company. They are an animated, loving group of people who can cook their behinds off. Each one of them excels at a throwing ingredients of unknown amounts, (they never have to measure) into bowls, pots, and pans and come out with such tasty treats.
In my quest to be a culinary diva in my own right, efforts really fall short at these cook-offs. I’m not saying that I can’t cook, anyone can cook (confession: Ratatouille was on TV yesterday). I simply don’t like cooking for these and other gatherings. I don’t care for the way it makes me feel. I don’t like wasting time and money making things that just sit there.
I am being taught to be true to myself and I am trying to walk that out. So next time we’re putting together the menu, count on me for plates and napkins. My fare works better in a less grand menu. And I am ok with that.
My son really likes tortellini but I have always made it the same way. Tonight we’re going to try something different. I found this recipe Spinach Tomato Tortellini Soup and we’re going to give it a try if I don’t get stuck in traffic.
In a previous post, I mentioned the gift of basil I received. It was lovely and quite a lot. I was able to spin it into, not only the Italian Style Sloppy Joe topped with Fresh Mozzarella and Basil, but also a very tasty Basil Chicken with rice. My family ate it without hesitation and my son requested a Sloppy Joe encore.
I go to church with a great group of people. I love the fact that we are all such individuals with different gift, talents, and the like. Now, although I am a girl who was brought up in the country (and still live there), I don’t think it’s a correct moniker to call me a country girl. I don’t love being outdoors. I really don’t care for things that are rustic and my style of choice is mid-century modern. My church, however, is in the city and I have a lovely friend in the congregation who definitely has the gardening touch. Yesterday, she presented me with a bag of the prettiest basil leaves that I think I have ever seen. The color was so crisp and green that my mom and son ate two of the leaves on the spot.
So my dilemma: What do I make with such a gracious bounty for dinner tonight? I have a few constraints that I must work around, though. The first being time. I’ve got to get home, feed the family and start them on the way to bedtime to stay on schedule. The second constraint, budget. I can’t go hog wild buying ingredients because it’s Monday and the budget needs to stretch all the way to Friday. The third hurdle, the taste-buds of my family. It’s gotta be something they’ll eat so they don’t spend the rest of the evening supplementing the dinner they almost ate.
What I already have is the wonderful basil, a ball of fresh mozzarella, and garlic… I think I have a plan. I’m going to stop by the market and pick up some sub or sandwich rolls, ground beef or pork, and some lovely tomatoes. I’m pretty certain I have a jar of tomato sauce in the pantry. I believe it’s going to be an Italian Style Sloppy Joe topped with Fresh Mozzarella and Basil with a side salad. I’ll let you know if it works out.
