Cafe Rio Style Pork Salad

Yay! Okay! Pork Salad! It's Delicious!

I found this recipe online -- you can google Cafe Rio Pork Salad and this is pretty much what you'll find. My photos of it turned out to be particularly bad, so I'm stealing this one from Favorite Family Recipes...via google. Sorry for the lack of recent photography, kids. But seriously, I think successfully photographing pork is something I can postpone until later. Right? Right.

So, here's how Kristen makes a Cafe Rio Pork Salad.  

#1. Cilantro lime rice. You can be fancy and make it from scratch OR you can purchase this box from Target, put everything in the box into your rice cooker, and 20 minutes later (it's like magic) you have cilantro lime rice. Here's the thing: If it's going at the bottom of a salad with the pork & sauce and the tomatillo dressing, it could taste like gravel and the salad would still be delicious. 

#2. Black beans with cilantro and tomatoes. Recipe forthcoming. It's easy and delish. Or if you're in a crunch, just buy a can of BLACK refried beans, because they are also easy and delish.

#3. Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing. This stuff is ridiculously good. (Recipe & Instructions Below)

#4. Lettuce. Get some. (also get cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and salsa and chips. also get some friends because this makes enough to feed about 5 people.)

#5. The Delicious Pork. 

Okay, here are the recipes:

Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing

Here's What You Need:

1 C Buttermilk

1 C Mayonnaise (I use the olive oil kind, because it makes me feel better)

1 Package of Original Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing/Seasoning

2 Tomatillos, pealed & quartered

1 Clove of Garlic

1/2 Bunch of Cilantro

Juice from 1 lime

Here's What you Do:

Put it all in the blender. Turn the blender on. Transfer into pretty container. Or don't. You pick. 

SuperDelicious Pork

Here's What You Need:

Roughly 2 lbs of Pork (I used a packaged pork tenderloin -- I've read that other people use boneless ribs or other cuts. I honestly don't really know the difference. I'm new to cooking meat.)

3-4 Cans of Coca Cola 

1 1/4 C of Brown Sugar, separated

1 T Garlic Salt

1/4 C of Water

1 Can of Red Enchilada Sauce (I use Target's Archer Farms Brand)

1 Small Can of Chopped Green Chiles

A Crock Pot 

Here's What You Do:

1. You put the pork in a plastic bag. Pour in 1&1/2 cans of coke and 1/4 C brown sugar. Marinate overnight, or three-ish hours. I've done it in three hours and it was just fine.

2. Drain the pork, then put the meat into your crock pot. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Add another can of coke and 1/4 cup of water, and cook on high for about 3 hours. Longer is fine (great if you have, say a three hour engagement on Sunday) but you don't want it to get too dry. 

3. While the pork is cooking, put the green chiles, enchilada sauce, 1 C brown sugar, and another 1/2 can of coke into your blender or food processor and give it a whirl. After the pork is done, drain it and shred it, put it back in the crock pot (if you took it out), and then pour the sauce over the top. Cook on low for an additional 2 hours.

4. Create the salad of your dreams! Enjoy! 

Spinach: The Green Monster Smoothie

I was standing at my blender, literally thinking: This is the grossest thing I have ever made. I can’t believe people are getting away with hawking this on Pinterest like it’s some kind of dietary miracle.

I’m a skeptical person by nature, and when I see/read/hear something (pinterest-ed or not), that seems too good to be true, well I typically choose to believe that it’s just not true and move on. But for some reason food-related truths and half-truths are really bugging me right now. I feel like I’m on a crusade to debunk every pin that claims that this DELICIOUS food is also NO CALORIES and if you click on my blog and then make the hidden recipe, you will then magically be TRANSFORMED INTO A SUPERMODEL. And that is how I ended up blending a banana and four cups of spinach.

[Note: This is not my photo. I'll take one later and post it so you know I'm telling the truth.  You can find this image/blog by google searching "green monster smoothie"]

Dubious Pin: The Green Monster Smoothie (if you have a pinterest account, you’ve seen this floating around). 

Dubious Recipe Instructions: Add Spinach to your favorite smoothie and you can’t taste it even though it looks like Vom.

Back to me standing in front of my blender, salivating with delight at the thought of writing a full blown rant on how wrong everyone is. Pan out: I stop the blender, drop a straw into the blender cup (I’m not getting a glass dirty for this), and tentatively take a sip.

You can see where this is going. It actually doesn’t suck. The spinach smoothie actually doesn’t taste..bad…it’s kind of good?...it’s…good. Damn. Hot damn this is actually good. My quest was totally derailed, and I have happened upon a way to eat four cups of spinach almost painlessly. Transition shot to me happily jumping on the bandwagon.

Here’s the way I made spinach not taste like spinach. I haven’t tried all the other ways, but I probably will because let’s face it, I’m not really good at eating my greens and this seems sort of miraculous.

Spinach Smoothie

Here’s what you need:

1 banana, peeled, cut, and frozen

1 generous tablespoon of creamy peanut butter

½ Cup of 0% Greek Yogurt

1 Cup of Vanilla Soy Milk

4 Freaking Cups of Spinach (or less, if that much doesn’t fit in the blender after everything else is in).

Here’s what you do:

You can see where this is going, right. I put all the ingredients, in the order listed, in the blender and: Blend. After that you can email me and we can exclaim some more about how crazy this is. Crazy because it’s super high in Vitamin A, Iron, and Protein: All things that I’m pretty sure you need for survival. The moral of the story: if you have a blender, your survival is assured; or: maybe don’t hate on every recipe that’s “good for you.”

Here are the deets:

Roasted Acorn Squash with Orange Cranberry Glaze

DELICIOUS! Delicious Veggies! Okay, I'm really trying to eat more veggies and fruits, and to get what's easily available at the market. The very best veggie recipes I've found are either from friends or from this amazing cookbook by Mollie Katzen -- you remember the saladita? Yeah, that was from her book too. Most recent veggie adventure: Roasted Acorn Squash with Orange Cranberry Glaze.

The final deliciousness: 

In the beginning, there was an acorn squash

The original recipe calls for two acorn squash, so I went with it, even though Lito and I really don't eat that much squash -- I try to stick to the recipe the first time around and wait until either the second time or the last minute to make changes. Making two squash is fine. I personally liked a little higher ratio of glaze to squash, but knock yourself out with as much squash as you like here.

Nutella and Banana Ice Cream

Okay, so I saw this recipe on Pinterest and I was reeeallly skeptical -- there seem to be a lot of really too-good-to-be-true pins. Like the one about how Quinoa has more protein than meat. Or the Alan Rickman "All this time" quote, which apparently he never said. The pin said nutella + bananas = life changed.

So...overstatement? Yes. Life changed? Not entirely. But is this pretty dang good and easy to make? Absolutely. Okay, write this down: 5-6 medium bananas and 1/3 Cup of Nutella. Blend. Freeze. That's it.

This dessert meets nearly all of my criteria for awesomeness:
1. Easy
2. Easy
3. Chocolatey.

(We'll get to my other criteria later...)

Okay, so seriously try this and let me know if you love it and/or if your life is completely changed.

k.

Eating In Season:

Just saw this on Pinterest and I thought it was a great idea. I'm new to eating fresh fruits and veggies, and this guide, I think, is really helpful for getting started. What else is in season right now? Anyone have any good mid-winter cooking ideas?

<3  k.

Spinach Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Okay, if I can get dudes to eat salad during the SuperBowl, then you know that either 1- bacon is involved; or 2- this is a really freakin' good salad.

I kind of think it's both. This recipe was originally from my Aunt G, who is a pretty amazing chef, and it is my pleasure to share my simplified version of it here!

Snowflake Carrot Cake

So lately I've had several requests for carrot cake, which I've never tried before because I don't really like it. I think it's a texture thing -- the cake is full of stringy carrots and nuts. I really dislike nuts in cookies, cakes, brownies, etc. We should talk about nuts some time. There are great uses for nuts. Chopped and thrown haphazardly into desserts is not one of them. But I digress. Carrot cake!

This carrot cake turned out amazingly moist and perfectly warm with more than a hint of cinnamon and clove. Here's a  peek at the final cake: Snowy and cool on the outside (January needs more appropriately wintery desserts) and warm deliciousness on the inside.

Did I mention that the kicker here, that actually forced me to go for a carrot cake recipe, was that it was our friend Crispy's birthday. Crisp absolutely adores winter/snow/christmas at all times and in all things and in all places. So we went for it!

Here's a shot of one of the six-inch rounds that I stacked  and later layered with the icy blue cream cheese frosting.

Since I had never even attempted a carrot cake, I searched the internet for "best" carrot cakes, and finally landed on Paula Deen's recipe for the best carrot cake cupcakes. The recipe was really easy to follow and (surprise to me) called for crushed pineapple, which I thought sounded absolutely delish. I made a few very slight modifications to the recipe, but overall, I think it's great.

[Below] Process: frosting an orange crumby cake with wintery cream cheese frosting.