The Yum Yum Factor

I am such a lucky girl lately. I was asked to take a programable  Crock-Pot© for test drive and give it a review. I was giddy at the offer because I am still using the crock pot that my mother gave me over 25 years ago. To be very honest, after she gave it to me, I never used it. I packed it away and it followed me from house to house, city to city, unused and mostly forgotten, much like her gift of a dreaded red, orlon sweater with a giant asian dragon embroidered across the front. I would wear that hideous sweater once a year when I went to pick her up from the train station at Christmas. She would see that red dragon peaking out under my coat and squeal with delight "oh, that's the sweater I bought you!" and I would say, offhandedly, "did you buy me this? Oh that's right, you did" like I wore the thing so much I couldn't remember when it came from. The things we do for love. Yikes!

I was craving chinese green beans with ground pork but I didn't have any ground pork, which was a problem. I also didn't have any dried shrimp or the chinese preserved vegetables that I would need to make them properly and they wouldn't turn out as yummy as the ones we get at Perfect Restaurant anyway so I gave up before I started. What I did have was a big bag of green beans, some deep fried tofu and a big handful of brown mushrooms so it was time to improvise. I wasn't even going to share this one since it was just a quick weeknight dinner born of desperation and  the absolute lack of desire to go outside but it was so delicious that I changed my mind. We ate this over some brown sushi rice with a side of left over chinese bbq pork - clearly we have reached our sodium limit for the week. I guess we can eat greek yogurt with berries and drink pints of green tea until the weekend to try to even things out but, man, it was some tasty business.

I love spicy jams and jellies with cheese and I also have been cooking with these spicy jams lately. I have a pepper blast berry jelly that is really quite hot and it's great with roast meats. The PC Bacon Marmalade is is thing of beauty and I feel sorry for all of you Americans who can't get your greasy paws on this stuff but it's a fair exchange for rotel, I guess. The high sugar content in jam means it really caramelizes nicely and it gives a nice, sticky, sweet glaze to a roast pork tenderloin or some chicken thighs. I throw in some chicken stock with some of the jam and make a delicious pan sauce and we are good to go. The magical asian produce store had a huge stack of fresh figs that were too cheap to pass up on so the only choice I had was to make a small batch of fig jam. Since I already know that I am only going to use it for dishes like this pork tenderloin with fig jam or with cheese, I decided to just throw some hot sauce right into the jam ...

Getting sick over the entire Christmas holiday is never fun, is it? When you are a food blogger, it's kind of your biggest holiday to showcase all kinds of great foods and fancy pants desserts but nooooooo, not for this kid. We did have a lovely Christmas eve party but I didn't really cook anything. We had mostly charcuterie stuff, cheese and cookies. Oh and waaaaaay too much prosecco but since the prosecco led to the spirited singing of caroles via some youtube karaoke videos, we don't regret the prosecco. Okay, maybe I regretted it a teeny, tiny bit on Christmas morning but not really. We enjoyed lovely turkey dinner with family and they cooked us dinner, so again, nothing to share. Then I woke up on boxing day with the plague and I am just feeling human again today, more than an entire week later. That means that there was no NYE, no New Years Day feast, no parties. Nothing. If you would like I can tell you all about the Habitant Chicken Soup I enjoyed and var...

As always, one of the best perks that come from food blogging is getting to try all kinds of food that you might not normally get around to checking out. We get invited to events, we are sent samples and given vouchers to purchase different things. This is one of those times so let's get it out there and make sure I tell you that I was asked to try this cheese by Castello right up front.