Porkchops and Dessert

For those of you who don't know Anthony and I were recently married and moved out to California together about a month ago. We met working at a Young Life Camp in Minnesota, did long distance for about a year and on our 1 year and 5 days, we got hitched. It was pretty awesome... having grown up in Indiana, California is quite a shock, today is the first day I really drove on the 5...which has 4 crazy lanes of traffic, all by myself to go downtown San Diego for a career fair, which all in all ended up being a joke due to the fact that there were only 10 companies there, however, I do get to enjoy the company of a friend from camp today, Carly Hren, which makes the trip totally worth it. All in all, finding a job, even volunteer opportunities has been a struggle. So I am learning to find joy in being a house wife and doing house wife things such as cooking and cleaning and for those of you who know me or have lived with me before know that those aren't things I typically enjoy doing. However, cooking/ baking has become a new adventure to me, it helps being married to a man who claims to like everything that I make and as for the cleaning, well its still growing on me and it gets done.

Some people would call this our signature pose, yes...we do in fact have a lot of pictures like this, but its not everyday that a man can pick up a woman, put her over his head and squat... Crossfit is a pretty awesome sport and Anthony is pretty good at it. This week, we are eating lots of pork chops, I always said growing up that I never liked pork chops all that much, but that is because they were never prepared in a way to where I could enjoy them before... Well we are a newlywed couple living in California and well.... pork chops are fairly cheap, at least at the commissary on base they are, so this week we cooked up 6 large pork chops and I am trying to be creative with ways to make pork chops a little more fun. So far this week, here is what I have been able to come up with:

Mustard & Nut Pork Chops

I looked a several recipes and none of them really sounded delightful to me, so I decided to mix a couple and it turned out pretty okay....

Base Coat:
-1/2 cup of all-natural mustard
-1 egg 
-1tbs of Garlic powder 
-1tbs of thyme

Toppings:
-1/3 cup of chopped pecans
-1/4 cup of slivered almonds


Mix the base coat, cover the meat in coating, place nut toppings on plate, place meat on the mixed nuts. I personally cooked mine for 8 min ( 4min on each side ) on a hot skillet, however, you are able to bake them as well, you probably ought to visit another site to tell you the temperature and for how long.


Pork Chop Stuffed Peppers

For the meat & sauce:
- remove bones from pork chop
-shred pork chop in food processor
-place shredded meat in sauce pan
-add 1/2 can of all natural tomato sauces
-add 1/4 can of all natural tomato paste
-add agave, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and garlic to taste
-remove top of snacking bell pepper (and seeds on the inside)
-stuff meat sauce into the middle of the peppers
-place on baking sheet
-bake at 350 for 10 minutes

-We ended up having a little bit of leftover meat sauce...it also goes great on green beans! :]


For desert we had a couple of paleo chocolate chip cookies on hand so we put a couple of them in bowls and heated them in the microwave for 25 seconds... 30 probably would have been better, then we added a couple scoops of SO Delicious vanilla bean and chocolate ice cream on top of the deliciously warm cookie :]....genius, I know.

I made another delicious treat the other night for our growth group with our church, I have to give my sister, Heather Ross from http://321paleo.blogspot.com/   credit for this, because it was her idea, she created it first and I just replicated it, because it sounded so good, and trust me...it was. Paleo Ice cream sandwiches....really...

It's quite simple really, just make the Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies, let them cool and then take your choice of SO Delicious ice cream and place in between the two cookies and freeze. I left mine the freezer for a couple of hours that way they could harden and they turned out great! But once again, Heather gets  the credit for this great and creative idea, I just borrowed it.