But our budgetary constraints of late have forced me back into the kitchen a little more frequently. And I've actually surprised myself. It turns out that if I have time, an easy recipe at hand and all the ingredients in the pantry, I don't mind cooking so much.
In the past several days, I've whipped up (with more effort than "whipped up" makes it sound):
- Whole wheat bread (in the bread maker)
- Zucchini muffins (with zucchini grown in our own garden)
- Zucchini parmesan (yep, more zucchini)
- Caramel pork tenderloin with vidalia onions
For the zucchini parm, I sauteed thinly sliced zucchini with 1 diced onion and 2 diced cloves of garlic. Then I put them in a glass dish, covered with spaghetti sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese and some Italian-seasoned bread crumbs. Baked it at 350 just long enough to melt the cheese and served with with whole wheat spaghetti. I just might do that again this week, it was so yummy.
The pork recipe came from an internet site that I had a free trial to and now don't have access to, otherwise I would just provide you the link. But here it is:
Caramel pork with onions
1-1/4 lb. pork tenderloin, cut into 1-inch strips
1 vidalia onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, diced
In a large pan (I used my wok), sautee the pork tenderloin strips for 5 minutes. Then add the onion and garlic and sautee for another 2-3 minutes.
1/2 c. chicken broth
3 TBS brown sugar
1 TBS soy sauce
1 tsp ground ginger (it actually called for grated fresh ginger, but ground was all I had)
Dump sauce ingredients over pork, stir and cook over medium heat until it thickens a bit.
Mine never got really thick, but it was still tasty. You could serve it with rice, but I didn't want to mess with that, so I just served it with chow mein noodles to sprinkle on top and a fruit salad on the side.
Just to be clear, if I hit the lottery tomorrow (which won't happen because I don't play the lottery), I will happily give up cooking. However, until that happens, it's nice to know that it's not as bad as I've made it out to be.
