Ever since I went to Nashville, Tennessee, I have had a craving for pulled pork; I just can’t get it out of my mind.  Whenever I see it on the menu I must order it.  I have had some really bad tasting, dry pulled pork since that trip.  So, last weekend I decided to take the pulled pork challenge on!  A friend in Nashville said soda, and slow cooking was the secret to great pulled pork.  So here is what I came up with.

Ingredients

1 boneless pork shoulder (pork butt) 4 to 5 pounds

1-teaspoon salt

1-teaspoon black pepper

1-teaspoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

4 shakes Tapatio Hot Sauce

12 ounces dark soda (I had Dr. Pepper on hand)

Pre heat oven to 400 degrees

Place pork into a baking dish sprayed with cooking spray.  Sprinkle, salt, pepper, and garlic powder over the pork, both sides.  Mix together Worcestershire, hot sauce and soda together and pour over pork.  Cover with foil.  Place pork in oven, after an hour, turn oven down to 300 degrees and continue cooking for another 3 hours or until pork is tender and easy to pull apart with a fork.

Serve pork on soft rolls with or without your favorite barbecue sauce.

Enjoy

Spring is here!  As BBQ’s and picnics gear up, here is a salad you are going to want to make over and over again.  It tastes great and is simple to make. The first time I made this salad, (I hate to admit this) I ate the whole thing by myself!  There, I said it. Yikes, it sounds awful to say it out loud, it’s really, really good.

And, you don’t have to worry about if it sits out all day.

This salad gets better the longer it marinates together.  Try this salad, as a dip with chips or as a salsa on tacos and burritos.  It’s great as a topping on hamburgers too!

Ingredients

1 can black beans, rinsed well and drained

1 cup corn, fresh frozen or canned depending on the season

1 cup of diced jicama

1 cup diced red bell pepper

½ red onion chopped

1 handful cilantro chopped

zest from 1 lime

½ cup crumbled feta cheese ~ optional

Dressing

¼ cup lime juice

¼ cup olive oil

2 teaspoons sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Place beans, corn, jicama, bell pepper, onion, cilantro, feta and zest in a large bowl.  In a small bowl, whisk together lime juice, olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper.  Pour mixture over salad and stir to coat.  Refrigerate until chilled.

 I told you it was simple!

Enjoy~

One my all time favorite ways to make and eat chicken is roasted, nothing fancy, just roasted.  This is one of the easiest ways to make chicken, yet, it so juicy and tender.  It is just one of those recipes you can prepare, stick in the oven and go do your favorite thing (maybe watch an episode of Real Housewives?  I know, it’s a sick obsession!).  I decided to make a citrus marinade this time, with grapefruit and limes, but you can use any citrus you have on hand.

I put the breast side down when roasting, the juices fall right in to the breast meat to make it extra tender.

I was quite busy the day I made this, (no time for Housewives) so, I prepared the chicken and the vegetables along with the marinade in the morning, put it all in the baking dish and put it in the fridge until it was ready to go in the oven later that evening.  It worked out nicely, the marinade had time to do it’s job and because it is citrus, it helped keep my potatoes from turning that awful gray color.

Enjoy~

Do you like fish?  It seems as though a person is a fish person or not.  No middle ground.  I happen to love fish, all kinds, especially anchovies on pizza, its my favorite topping, really!  I also love calamari and stuffed clams.  Last night I made this salmon.

Its super easy, I always have salmon in the freezer (one of the only fish my kids like).  I buy a large filet when it is on sale, cut it into portions and freeze it.  That way, I always have something on hand I can make for dinner.  When making this dish, I take the filets right out of the freezer and into the baking pan.

I mix the butter, brown sugar and liquid smoke in a small bowl and then pour it over the salmon filets.  You need to spread it quickly as the frozen salmon makes it difficult to spread.  That’s it, then pop it in the oven and you have just made a wonderful dinner!

Enjoy~

A couple of months ago when I was flying back from Nashville, the flight attendant offered a cookie along with my soda.  It was a Biscoff cookie, and it was wonderful!  Being from California I had never ever heard of this cookie, but from the moment it touched my lips, I knew I had to get my hands on more of these delightful cookies.  At that moment, it was wonderful, but you know how things go, you get home, have to wash all the laundry from the trip and catch up on all the things that didn’t get done while you were gone.  I had forgot about my precious wonderful cookie, then while shopping in the peanut butter isle, at my local grocery store, my eyes could not believe what they were seeing…Biscoff Spread.

Could it possibly be the cookie in spread form???  So, I bought the little jar, I could not wait to get it home.  And, in the privacy of my kitchen, when no one else was home, I tried it.  It was my precious delightful cookie in spread form!  I decided to add it to my Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

These cookies came out so delicious, I ended up making a second batch the very next day!  I can’t wait to find more recipes to use Biscoff Spread with.

Enjoy~

Lately, I can’t get enough of a certain passion tea.

The one a certain coffee house has on their menu. It is the perfect sweetness and it keeps me off of my soda habit. I guess I felt like I was doing myself a favor, I need so many purchases to maintain my “gold card” status! So, I was doing two things at once, multitasking (at least in my head that made sense). This habit was getting kind of expensive. So, I decided while I was scouring pinterest one evening, I would look it up, someone out there must have a copy-cat recipe, and sure enough there are several, and all very different.

So here is my version~

Ingredients

4 Tazo Passion tea bags
Lemonade
9 cups boiling water
1 cup sugar

Boil 8 cups of water in a large pan and 1 cup of water in a small pan. Once the water is boiling, turn off the heat on both. Place 4 tea bags into the large pan and 1 cup of sugar in the small pan. Let the tea bags steep while you stir the sugar in the small pan to dissolve. Place sugar and water mixture (simple syrup) into a glass jar and place in the fridge to cool and become syrup. When the tea has cooled pour into a pitcher and place in fridge to cool.

To make a glass of passion ice tea:
1 cup of the passion ice tea
½ cup lemonade
2-3 teaspoons of simple syrup

If you want it frothy on the top like “they” make it, you can put ingredients into a martini shaker to mix everything, or not.  The great thing about making this at home is you can mix the combination of ingredients to your liking!

Enjoy~

Easter always makes me think of my Nonna, it was her favorite holiday.  She would be in the kitchen for days making all the goodies we would eat.  For as long as I could remember, my Nonna would make this wonderful bread every Easter morning.  It was the one thing I looked forward to even more than my easter basket from the bunny.

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 Yesterday, I had one of those days…I had a full list of things to do, with not enough hours to do them in.  And, throw in the added pressure of our DVR has been filling up with all my shows (getting pressure from the family), with no time to watch anything!  

True comfort food.