Pantry Collective

I don’t love pork, especially things like pork chops and pork roast and ham and… well, pork in general. But John likes it, and I never cook it (see above), so when we got our George Foreman “Next Grilleration” indoor grill last week and it was suddenly easy to cook two different meats AT THE SAME TIME (don’t bother telling me this was possible before), I was happy to buy a package of boneless pork chops. That first exciting night with the grill I made us some sweet and spicy rubbed pork and chicken, and it was good. The next day, we had ginger lime marinated chicken on the grill, and it was good! And on the third day, I didn’t want grilled meat again. So I had to come up with another idea for the leftover pork.

Sure, I could have frozen it for some future night of grilling, but I was determined to find a recipe that sounded good to me, even with the pork. I figured if I marinated it to death, it would be better, right? So I fired up the search engine and after about thirty seconds settled on this recipe at Epicurious. It’s reasonably low in fat, has tons of great Asian flavors, and was a very successful use of our leftover pork chops. My bowl was about 75% green beans, which was fine with me, but if you prefer a more even ratio of meat to veggies, just increase the number of pork chops (well, or reduce the veggies, but I would never recommend THAT).

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A while back, I was browsing through my favorite food blogs, looking for some new ideas. One glance at these beautiful Eggplant Piccolinos from Kayotic Kitchen and I knew I couldn’t resist. Apparently, I am as easily swayed by the idea of pizza as her adorable little son! So upon returning home from the holidays and feeling like I was in serious need of an infusion of vegetables in my diet, I whipped up a batch of these yummy little treats. Since we had them for dinner, I served them sort of like eggplant parmesan, over a bed of (white whole wheat) spaghetti topped with some leftover pizza sauce.

I followed her recipe almost exactly - basically the only thing I did differently was to add fresh basil to the list of toppings. Fresh basil makes every single Italian-inspired dish better, I promise. Try it sometime! But other than that little tweak, all the credit for this dish goes to Kay!

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I love hearty meals I can eat from a bowl, for some reason! Stews, casseroles, and soups are mainstays of our cold-weather diet. This beef stew fits the bill perfectly. Slow cookers are a lifesaver for meals like this - just throw everything in and let it cook slowly all day long, and when you come home, you’ve got a delicious hot bowl of food all ready to go. Just a few minutes of chopping veggies and you’re all set! You can brown the beef before you add it to the pot, if you like, but you don’t need to.

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These burritos aren’t remotely authentic, I suppose, but they’re definitely yummy! I’ve made them a million times and every time I probably so domething a little differently; once you get past authenticity you’re pretty much free to experiment with all kinds of things. I use whole wheat tortillas and low-fat cheese since I’m on weight watchers, but feel free to use the full-fat versions if you like. I used to put a whole 10 oz package of spinach in, but they were a little too spinachy for me, so I’ve halved that amount the last few times and it’s much better.

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