Grow Your Own Roundup

On January 10, I posted about the herb encrusted pork that I made for dinner that night.

Shortly after it posted, I was contacted by the Nate from House of Annie, who is the wintertime host of the Grow Your Own roundup, and invited to join their round up.



The Grow Your Own roundup is a collection of blogs that talk about food made from ingredients they grew themselves.

The roundup posted today, and I spent quite a while reading different recipes and food adventures.

This edition boasts 61 different dishes from 8 different countries.

They range from Sharlene in North Carolina, who baked a chicken outside in a solar oven in 34 degree weather, to Peter in California who brews his own beer from homegrown hops.

From Fiona in England who made raspberry vinegar to a 14 year old girl in Austrailia who used lemons from her Great Grandmothers tree to make lemon meringue pie.

If you want some recipes, some encouragement, some inspiration and some laughs, head over to the Grow Your Own roundup and check out the other entries.

And when you make it all the way to the bottom, you will find contact information, in case you want to join yourself next time.

See my original post here.

Read all about Troys Herb Blend here.

I'm going to be joining Balancing Bedlam and Beauty this week for Tasty Tuesday.

Herb Encrusted Pork

What good are herbs if you don't use them?

When we first started growing herbs, I was very good about picking them and drying them. But that was where I ran into a snag.

Anyone who has grown and dried herbs knows that it takes a lot of leaves and a lot of time to make a little bit of crushed dried herbs.

So, once I had them all dried and crushed, They became like my own personal saffron. Akin to gold flakes, I hoarded them, put them in little bottles so I could look at them, and didn't use them. It was so hard to put a tablespoon of something into a recipe when I knew how much time and work it took to make a tablespoon.

Let me just add, that, I know that current wisdom says that dried herbs should not be crushed until you are ready to use them, but we have such a tiny home and such limited space that it was our only option.

To be honest, I think we still get pretty good flavor from the crushed dried herbs that we have. Maybe it would be even better if they were whole, and we crushed them as we used them, but I don't have any complaints with what we have.

Anyway, I decided that it would be silly to keep growing herbs unless we started using them, so I have really tried to use our homegrown herbs every chance I got.

Tonight, it was my turn to cook dinner.

I had a package of boneless pork cutlets that I bought at Kroger from the "Marked-Down" section, there were six of them, and they were marked $2.21. I set out to cook them.

I put about 1/2 cup of flour on a plate and added about 1 teaspoon each of garlic powder, onion powder and Lawry's Seasoned Salt. Stirred it well with a fork.

Then I cracked an egg into a bowl, added an equal amount of cold water and mixed it well with a wire whip. I poured that out onto a second plate.

Finally I put about 3/4 cup of bread crumbs on a third plate and added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of my Herb Blend. This is basically just a mixture of all of the herbs we grew this year. You can read how I made it in this post here.

I put about 2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil in a frying pan and put it over medium-high heat.

I patted the pork loins dry with a paper towel, coated them with the seasoned flour, dipped them in the egg and water and coated them with the bread crumbs and herbs.

When the oil was hot enough that a drop of water danced when I flicked it in the pan, I put the meat in, just long enough to brown it nicely on each side, then put them all in a glass casserole dish.

I covered it with foil and put it in a 300 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Now, I had quite a bit of seasoned flour and some of my egg mixture left over, although most of the bread crumbs were gone.

This is one of the reasons I don't bread meat as often as I would like to. First of all, it makes a mess and uses a lot of dishes, but then I always have left over flour, egg and bread crumbs and I'm not sure what to do with them. I hate to throw them away and you can't really save them.

I peeled 3 big potatoes, cut them in thick slices and dropped them in a bowl. I threw in the flour, eggs and bread crumbs and mixed it all together, then put them in the frying pan that I had seared the pork in. I covered the pan and let it on medium high heat until I could smell them cooking. Then I lifted the lid and stirred them off the bottom of the pan, added 3/4 C of cold water, and quickly returned the lid. This made lots of steam. After all steam is what cooks potatoes.

I turned them down to medium low and left them cooking.

When my 20 minutes were up, I took the foil off the pork and put it back in the oven at 350 for another 10 minutes, to an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

By the time the meat was done, so were the potatoes. Not attractive, but yummy!




A can of corn finished the meal.

Voila! Herb Encrusted Pork Loin, Stovetop Potatoes, and Corn:



There is something about growing your own food that makes it taste better than the very same food would taste, grown by the neighbors.

I swear I could taste every single one of the herbs on the meat while we ate it.



I have been invited to join the Grow Your Own round-up with this post. It looks like a fun link-up to join, and I look forward to joining them in the future as well. Grow Your Own is hosted, through the summer months, by Andrea at Andreas Recipes, and will be guest hosted this month, and perhaps more months this winter by Nate & Annie at House of Annie

You can read all about Grow Your Own Here

Once the roundup posts, I will add a link Here.

***Update***

The roundup posted February 1, 2010. You can see it and read all about different things people made with food they grew themselves by visiting here.

I am also joining these fun blog recipe parties this week:

A Southern Fairytale for Mouthwatering Monday

Blessed with Grace for Tempt My Tummy Tuesday

All the Small Stuff for Tuesday at the Table

3451

Looking for Suggestions

We have a fun Christmas Tradition.

It started back before we were even married. By Christmas night, we are always a bit burned out on ham and turkey and all the usual holiday foods, so we invited Diann's parents to join us for dinner.

Years ago, I worked in an Italian Restaurant, and so that's what I knew how to cook, so I made an Italian meal, Diann set a fancy table, used all her fancy dishes and we had a ham-turkey-less Christmas dinner.

It was so much fun, that the next year we had a big stir fry, egg rolls, crab rangoons and fortune cookies.

From there we started drawing a new country every year, and each year we have cooked as close as possible to a traditional authentic meal from that country. We have since done, among others, Poland, Israel, New Zealand, Brazil, Switzerland. We research the Christmas Traditions from that country, and we have a fun cultural learning experience as well as a very formal, elegant meal.

This year, we drew Italy, and, although I know how to make a lot of Americanized versions of pasta, I don't know a lot of authentic Italian dishes.


I am, therefore looking for Information. Does anybody have any history , or personal knowledge of Christmas in Italy? Have you spent Christmas there? Does your Italian Grandmother have a favorite recipe that she has made on Christmas Day ever since she was a girl and learned it from her Grandmother?

We are working on putting our menu together now, and are looking for authentic, traditional Italian Christmas recipes.

Of course, between my blog and Diann's we will bring you all a full report on how our dinner turns out.