Pork Chops with Raspberry Sauce

And, tonight's supper!  For a side, I have some sweet potatoes cooking in the crockpot, a yummy-looking recipe from the new slow cooker recipe book from Cook's Illustrated.  I'm hoping that turns out good.  I've made these pork chops several times since I first saw the recipe in Family Circle magazine, they're super yummy and easy!

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries	½ cup water
1/3 cup sugar	1 T butter
¼ cup raspberry vinegar	Pork chops, 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick
1/8 tsp. ground ginger	½ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg	½ tsp. pepper
1/8 tsp. ground cloves	½ tsp. rubbed sage

In a medium saucepan, combine raspberries, sugar, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.  Stir in ½ cup water and bring to a boil, crushing berries with a wooden spoon.  Simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Take off heat, stir in butter.  Meanwhile, heat oven to 350°.  Heat grill pan over medium high heat.  Season the pork chops with the spices.  Lightly grease grill pan and grill chops 5 minutes per side.  Place chops in baking dish and bake for 10 minutes, or until internal temperature is 145°.  Allow to stand 5 minutes.  Serve with warm sauce on the side.

Strawberry Jam

This is what Cheyenne's teacher and bus driver ended up getting for end-of-year presents.  I didn't remember about needing presents until 8:30 last night, so I ran to Wal-Mart and bought two lunch bag cooler and two cold packs.  Then, this morning, I wrote a card for them, stuck it in a ziploc bag so it wouldn't get wet from the condensation off the jam, and gave them each a jar of the freezer jam.  I didn't think it was half-bad for completely last minute panic!

 

Strawberry Freezer Jam

2 pts. Strawberries (about 3 cups)	1 pkg. Sure-Jell
4 cups sugar	¾ cup water

Crush the strawberries and measure exactly 2 cups of crushed berries.  Mix the 4 cups of sugar thoroughly into the berries.  Let stand 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir ¾ cup water and the Sure-Jell together in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil on high heat, stirring constantly.  Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat.  Stir pectin mixture into berry/sugar mixture.  Stir constantly until sugar is completely dissolved and no longer grainy, about three minutes.

Pour into prepared containers (1 to 2 cup plastic or glass containers with tight-fitting lids), leaving ½ inch space at the top for expansion during freezing.  Cover.  Let sit at room temperature for 24 hours, until set.  Refrigerate for 3 weeks, or store in freezer for up to 1 year.  Thaw in refrigerator.

I won't buy jam from the store anymore-- this is way too easy, and way too yummy, to eat anything else.

Popular Desserts 'Round Here

I got ambitious the other day and made a batch of cookies to take out to Altamont preps. They seemed to be a hit, so here's the recipe! These have been Clover and Cheyenne's favorite cookies for about a year now!

The great thing about these cookies is they don't spread much when you bake them. You can really cram them on the sheet-- as illustrated here.

Here they are while raw...

And here they are after baking (this is how much you will get if you make them fairly largeish-- minus the obligatory dough tasting.)

This recipe was originally published in our newspaper a few years back. I've tweaked a few things, mainly doubling the recipe while still only using one bag of the Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirled Chips. They still have lots of chips, and it's cheaper! The Swirled chips aren't carried at our Super Wal-Mart, I have to go to Wegmans to find them. Worth searching them out, though!

PB&Chocolate Oaties

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3 cups uncooked oatmeal (I like using the Old Fashioned variety)
• 1 pkg. (11 oz.) Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Swirled Chips

Preheat oven to 350 °. Cream together butters and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add flour, soda, cinnamon, salt and oatmeal, and beat until blended. Mix in chips. Place dollops (generous tablespoon) on cookie sheet, and bake for ten minutes. They don't brown much, so just use the timer and trust it! Let cool on cookie sheet.

I also got REAL ambitious last Wednesday and made a pie for my husband (and my brothers that were passing through) in addition to cleaning my house for meeting that night. This is Evan's favorite dessert. It's only this last year that I have successfully managed to roll out two-crust pies, so finally Evan doesn't have to depend solely on his mom for this pie!

I have two different pie crust recipes I like-- one from my Mom, for French Pie Crust, that uses butter, and Sylvia's Perfect Pie Crust from Pioneer Woman that uses Crisco. I like the taste of the butter crust better (duh!) but the other one is slightly easier to work with. Here's the French Pie Crust recipe.

French Pie Crust

• 2 cups sifted flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 10 1/2 T butter, diced and chilled
• 1 egg
• Pinch of salt
• 1 T of water

Mix flour and sugar in a very large bowl. Form a well and add butter, salt, and the egg mixed (but not beaten) with the water. Use a pastry cutter to gradually cut the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Roll out 1/2 dough and line a buttered pie pan. If you're doing a one crust pie and need to prebake the crust, prick it all over with a fork and bake at 375° for 10 minutes. Cool and fill. Otherwise, fill and cover with the rolled out top crust. Follow the recipe for the filling for baking directions in that case.

Speaking of fillings, I like Joy of Cooking's recipe for raspberry pie filling. I use frozen raspberries, and this recipe is for all frozen fruit and berries. It's one of the sweeter raspberry pies I've had, which is how I like it. I love fresh raspberries to eat out of hand, but if I want PIE, I want sweetness!

Raspberry Pie Filling

• 5 cups frozen berries, cherries or peaches, defrosted only until separates easily
• 3 T quick-cooking tapioca
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 2 T butter, melted

Mix all the ingredients together. Position the oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 450°. Turn the filling into the unbaked pie shell and cover with a pricked or latticed top. (Yeah, like I'm ambitious enough to have tried pie lattice!). From my experience, this crust burns easily at the edges, so it is essential to fold aluminum foil into fourths, cut the corner off, and open up to (ta-da!) a ring of foil with which to cover the edges. Bake at 450° for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350° and bake about 45 minutes more. The easiest way to tell when the pie filling has cooked sufficiently is when the kitchen fills with smoke because the raspberry filling has bubbled over and burned on the bottom of the oven!

My brothers tore into it, and poor Evan only got one (albiet ginormous) piece.