Forging New Territory

Here is the latest update on activities from our kitchen...

Last week our "Date Night" involved making potato soup and using Arthur's power juicer to whip up some pomegranate apple cranberry juice.  I have never done anything with pomegranates before.  I like things that are pomegranate flavor and my pomegranate shampoo smells delightful so I though I would give it a whirl.  Put pomegranates on the list with eggplant parmesan and boning a chicken as experiences that are good once but don't really need to be repeat due to the amount of effort involved.  Pomegranates are filled with a ton of little seeds that squirt fuchsia juice all over the place.  Luckily it didn't stain anything but it did look like a murder had been committed in our kitchen.  We poured our freshly squeezed juice into our fancy "celebrate life" glasses and toasted while settling down for a Cosby episode on Netflix-- we know how to have a good time

The next weekend we threw an impromptu dinner party as my parents and brother and sister-in-law stopped by after the K-State game.  We were going to eat out but changed our minds due to traffic.  Arthur and I were able to pick up the needed supplies and have dinner on the table and picked up our living room by the time they arrived.  We have mad skills with frozen pizza and spinach salad.  Kudos to Arthur for being a great host...tending the ovens, setting up extra setting, getting drinks ready, clearing the table, etc.

The next milestone in the kitchen was cooking pork tenderloin in the crock pot.  I have had a crock pot for about three years and I am sorry to say that this was my crock pot's maiden voyage.  I do have several crock pot recipe books and it is something I would like to utilize more now that I work and commute.  It is also one of my first forays into meats.  I do ground beef and chicken breast okay but haven't venture much beyond those safe limits.  If you cook with meat and it turns out terrible it is a little more expensive cost-wise than messing up a batch of rice or pasta.  I don't know if it was beginner's luck or just good advice from my personal cooking mentor (aka my mother who gets a lot of phone calls at 5:30pm when I am trying to figure out how to cook dinner), but the pork tenderloin went off without a hitch.  At dinner Arthur made some comment about how it must have taken some time to make the pork that day.  I had to break it to him that I dumped it in the crock pot, tossed in a sliced apple, put a few dashes of garlic powder in, and went to work for the day.  Since it was so easy he might expect it more often.  Omnia Vincit Amor.