Tasty Tuesday – Curried Pork in Phyllo

Hi there!

It’s time for Tasty Tuesday!! 🙂

Make sure you remember to head on over to Lena’s page to check out all the fantastic foodiness and links over there! Oh, and you’ll be excited to know – she’s one of Lärabar’s newest brand ambassadors! Congratulations, Lena! ❤

Now, onto my Tasty Tuesday input!

I was in the mood for some curry but 1. didn’t want to make one of our old standbys and 2. didn’t want to spend the money on a restaurant (even though this place is on our list of ‘hell, yeah, let’s go eat there!’).

So, I made a Curried Pork in Phyllo!

Yes, I’m aware that’s lame and I need help with recipe naming. I’ll gladly take suggestions. I can’t figure out what else to call it. Curried Pork Log just sounds wrong to me and Curried Pork Pastry evokes strange thoughts – I mean, is it savory? Is it sweet? Is it confused?

Anyway, you’ll find Phyllo dough in your grocer’s freezer. Probably in the same area where you’d find puff pastry. Which is not the same thing. Don’t get them confused. And yes, apparently Phyllo can be spelled fillo.

Each package of phyllo comes with 2 separately packed rolls. You’ll only want to use one roll for this recipe. Otherwise, it’s too much phyllo. And, while delicious, sometimes too much of a good thing isn’t good.

And no, they won’t stick together to form a wreath or a circle. No matter how hard you try, how much you cuss, cry, or beg. So, don’t even bother.

So, even though it may not be the most beautiful creation in the world, once you slice yourself a piece and take a bite, you’ll forget all about it. Warm, flavorful, curried pork nestled into a flaky crust? WIN!

We topped our individual pieces with a little of this Thai Chili & Ginger sauce for a sweet and spicy addition to the curry. It was lovely. It’s also pretty tasty if you just want to drink some straight from the bottle. 😉

Curried Pork in phyllo
serves about 6-8 people

1 pound ground pork
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 orange bell pepper, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
4 tablespoons dry sherry
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Heat skillet over medium high heat. Add pork; cook, breaking into small pieces, until no longer pink. Add onions and bell pepper and cook 5-8 minutes, or until onions are translucent. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, stirring constantly, about 1 minute.

2. Mix in remaining ingredients and cook 2-3 minutes.

3. Unroll one roll of phyllo dough and separate in half (sheets should come right apart). Spread half of pork mixture on one set of phyllo and roll up; place seam side down on prepared baking sheet. Spread remaining mixture on other phyllo sheets and roll up; place seam side down on prepared baking sheet. Spray tops of phyllo with cooking spray.

4. Bake 20-25 minutes or until phyllo is deep golden and crispy. Serve immediately.

5. NOM!

Talk to me: Have you ever cooked with phyllo? What about puff pastry? What’s your favorite recipe?

– jennifer

Thanksgiving recap and some food prep

Hi there!

How was your Thanksgiving?

Ours was pretty good! I took a little bit of time off of everything – blogging, working out, showering…..

Hey, if I wasn’t sweaty, why would I need to shower?

Okay, seriously, I’m kidding. Sheesh! I showered. I promise.

We headed up to my folks’ house for Thanksgiving.

Halfway there, I realized I left the butternut squash at home. #sidedishfail

But, it worked out okay because 1. less butternut squash I have to share, 2. I remembered the brownies, and 3. we had PUH-Lenty of food!

And wine, of course. 🙂

Most of it was catered but there was reheating, etc to do. Took a MAJOR load of stress of my mom’s shoulders.

And I was pretty thankful about that, too, because my sailor and I usually end up in charge of the turkey (we grill it) and it was raining and miserable. I love me some grilling but grilling outside in the cold rain is about as much fun as waxing the bikini line. Right? Right.

Everything was really, really good!

My sister was in charge of the pumpkin pies and she totally made me a gluten-free (minus the crust) pumpkin pie!

swoon!

I was totally not expecting it and was weighing my pumpkin pie options (do I just eat the pumpkin and leave the crust, take my chances with the gluten-y crust, or skip it altogether and just eat a brownie?) when she pulled it out of her bag of tricks. 🙂

We headed back home on Friday (Black Friday shopping? no thank you.) and proceeded to sit on our butts all weekend.

Okay, not really.

We ran errands on Saturday and we hit up some antique/consignment stores and found the most amazing chairs for our dining room table!

We bought the table from Ikea back in 2001 and still had the original chairs we bought with the table.

13 years and 7 moves later, those chairs were DONE. One actually broke a couple of weeks ago. While someone was sitting in it. Thankfully, the chair took the brunt of the damage.

We also bought a new Christmas tree!

The tree we’ve replaced was almost 20 years old and had been through WAY more than 7 moves. It was falling apart and starting to look a little like Charlie Brown’s tree.

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It was definitely time to upgrade. This one is pre-lit! No more ring around the rosie trying to string lights! #winning

I also did a little bit of food prep.

I made some of Lindsay’s Quinoa Breakfast Bars for grab ‘n go breakfasts/snacks (edited the recipe to make it gluten free). They’re all individually bagged and ready for snacking.

 If you have not made these yet, you are totally missing out. Super easy and super delicious!

 I threw together a pot of Smoky Beef and Black Bean Chili for lunches this week.

 Stay tuned for the recipe tomorrow!

steamy!

 

 And, finally, I tried a Pinterest recipe for Ginger Chicken Stir-fry and it turned out fabulously!

We have leftovers so that adds at least 2 more lunches or quick dinners this week. Whoop!

I also roasted up my accidentally left-behind butternut squash. 🙂

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Talk to me: Did you shop on Black Friday? How long were you out and what time did you wake up to go?

– jennifer

Weekend things and a little bit of food prep

Hi there!

Happy Monday!

Are you gearing up for Thanksgiving? Are you cooking? Have you started cooking already? Are you traveling to where someone else is doing all the cooking? <—-winning

I’ll be doing only a small amount of cooking this year as we’re headed to my folks’ house.

Mom’s having the bulk of the meal catered (this should be interesting – my first catered meal experience) and the rest of us are  responsible for a few side dishes and desserts.

I’m making this. I made it for just us last year and it is the bomb dot com.

Plus, the pecan tree in my back yard is literally vomiting pecans so…..yeah.

My town had its Thanksgiving market on Saturday and my favorite vendor was going to be there so, you know we had to go. 🙂

There were like 65 vendors or something!

Lots of artsy craftsy stuff.

There were lots of puppy dogs.

Seriously, I can’t post pictures of all the dogs – we’d be here all day.

And there were lots of leafy green veggies!

There was a pony that I wanted to ride but I don’t think he was there for people of my size age.

I loaded up on sweet taters (duh!) and apples and the biggest butternut squashes I have ever seen (needed for above recipe!).

I tried to get my sailor to take a picture of me holding the butternut squashes but he said no. Because I don’t have a porn blog.

Seriously, where was HIS brain? Haha

And besides, has he never ever heard of food porn?

Whatever.

So, he took this picture of this goat instead. Her name is Latte. She was hanging out with the goat cheese lady. Mmmm…..goat cheese……

Here’s my haul on fresh beef. Score!

After the market, we took our goodies home and headed out for some lunch and errands.

We went to our favorite Indian place. MMMM…

I had the medium spicy vindaloo and was sweating bullets at the table. lol

For the record, I only ate one little triangle of the naan because it is made with wheat and I’m doing that whole gluten free thing.

I was okay with it (or I just couldn’t tell I wasn’t because I was still breathing fire) but a few hours later, I had an iced skinny vanilla latte from Starbucks and that made my stomach hurt.

Did some research and turns out the skinny vanilla stuff has gluten in it! Blech!

I didn’t finish it. Which sucks. Starbucks ain’t cheap.

So, I’m thinking about heading to the doc to officially get tested for celiac, just to see. Because it really did make me feel bad.

Sunday was a pretty low key day.

I did a little food prep but not too much since we’re going to be laden with turkey leftovers, too. 🙂

I made some gluten-free banana bread. Because, it’s banana bread. Duh.

I made us some homemade chicken noodle soup (gluten free rotini pasta) with the last of the chicken from last week and some of the broth that I made.

To make it creamy, I added a tablespoon of grass-fed butter (I buy Kerrygold and if you haven’t tried it yet, you are totally missing out!) and about half a cup of heavy cream.

So delicious!

Then, I made some beef stew in the crockpot using some stew meat that I snagged at the farmer’s market.

I used less than 2 pounds of meat so I used upped the veggies a little. I also subbed Yukon Gold taters for the red taters because that’s what I had and I used regular onion because the recipe didn’t state red onion until down in the directions.

Yes, I broke the cardinal rule of following a recipe – I didn’t read the whole thing before I started.

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It worked out okay though. 🙂

I also didn’t add any frozen corn because I didn’t have any. T’was fine. Delicious, in fact.

Talk to me: What’s your favorite thing on the Starbucks menu?

– jennifer