Molasses Coffee Marinated Pork Chops

When Tim and I first began camping this summer, we purchased a Coleman Road Trip Grill. Although I love food grilled over an open fire, it can be a bit challenging especially when the temperatures are in the 80's and 90's. We enjoyed these pork chops on our recent Fourth Of July camping trip. No doubt our fellow campers thought we were a bit strange, always photographing our food.

When I first shared this recipe with Tim, he was a bit skeptical. I must admit, I wasn't 100% sold either but the reviews were excellent. Alton doesn't usually serve up disappointing recipes. I've always been a big Alton fan although he was a bit of a jerk on a recent episode of Food Network Star. Maybe it's all of the weight he lost? I know for a fact, people with a few extra pounds are happier :).

This recipe is a keeper. The molasses marinade makes a rich and delicious sauce. As it cooks down it thickens and the flavor develops. I wanted to eat it by the spoonful. This would be wonderful on chicken or even ribs. Give this one a try, you won't be sorry!!!





Molasses Coffee Marinated Pork Chop

Recipe courtesy Alton Brown

1 cup cool strong coffee
6 ounces molasses, by weight
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
6 to 8 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 (6 to 8-ounce) bone-in, 1-inch thick pork chops

Directions

Place all of the ingredients into a 1-gallon zip top bag, seal, and shake to combine. Place in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.

Preheat grill to medium-high.

Remove the pork chops from the marinade. Transfer the marinade to a small saucepan and place over high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-high, and boil gently, stirring often, until reduced to about 1/2 cup liquid, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove the thyme stems after the glaze has reduced. Meanwhile, grill pork chops 3 to 4 minutes per side or until they reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees F. Allow the pork chops to rest 4 to 5 minutes before serving with the glaze.

I am linking this to Foodie Friday and Miz Helen's Full Plate Thursday!

From The Good Life -

Over the 4th of July weekend, Tim and I camped at Prairie Rose State Park, one of our favorite state parks. Friday was hot and humid but Saturday brought cooler temperatures and the rest of the weekend was beautiful.



On Saturday, we took a drive to see the Bridges of Madison County. You know the ones from the movie with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. Tim was disappointed, he said he expected them to be larger, functioning bridges. After seeing the birthplace of John Wayne, we enjoyed a picnic lunch at the park in Winterset.



From Winterset we headed east to St. Charles to check out the Madison County Winery. It so happened on this particular day they were celebrating the grand opening of their brewery. Despite the crowd, we managed to belly up to the bar. We were served by the owners daughter who shared with us the bar was made from the crushed wine bottles her father had saved for 5 years. After tasting seven wines, we purchased a bottle of Summer Blonde, a semi sweet white wine.

Our travels then took us north to to Adel and Penoach Winery. The tasting room is in a 1917 barn. Not sure how many wines we tasted, our cordial host just keep saying oh try this one, now this one. We chose a Windmill Red, a red that reminded us of a Pinot Noir, which is quite unusual since Iowa wines tend to be sweeter. The last wine we tried was an apple wine made from local apples. We've tried apple wines before but this one had a touch of cinnamon. It will be wonderful to enjoy this wine, warm around the campfire this fall.

The balance of our holiday weekend was spent enjoying the beauty of Prairie Rose State Park!

Wild Blueberry Chews - Cookie Carnival

This is my second month baking with Cookie Carnival. In addition to trying new cookie recipes, the thing I love most about this group is there is no certain posting date. Most of the groups I participate in have a set posting date. Sometimes it reminds me of a school assignment, it's almost due and I haven't even started!

The two recipe choices for Cookie Carnival this month were Wild Blueberry Chews and Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies. I chose The Wild Blueberry Chews because they seemed to be the healthier option, can you say that about cookies?

After mixing the recipe, my dough seemed dry so I added an additional tablespoon of water. The recipe calls for dropping the teaspoons of dough onto the cookie sheet. I used my medium size scoop. When I checked them at 11 minutes, they hadn't flatted at all. I quickly grabbed a fork and flattened them.

When you read the title of this recipe, you'd think these cookies are "chewy" but they're not or at least mine weren't. I love the tartness of the blueberries mixed with the sweetness of the chocolate and the crunch of the almonds! These cookies are delicious!


Thanks to Tami for hosting Cookie Carnival. You'll find a recap of all of the Cookie Carnival bloggers on her site after the end of July!

I am linking these to Tuesday's at the Table, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday , Tasty Tuesday's and
Sweet Tooth Friday.

Secret Recipe Club - Lavender Lemonade Martini

This is my second month participating in Secret Recipe Club. When I received the email with my assignment, I couldn't wait to see which blogger been chosen for me. I was assigned Creative Culinary. What a lovely and delicious blog!

On a Saturday morning I sat at my computer scrolling through the hundreds of recipes on Creative Culinary. As I was scanning the recipes, I ran across many things familiar to me. There were posts of recipes from Nordstrom's Cafe, drinks from Yia Yia's and several versions of St. Louis Butter Cake. I started out with a list of six recipes: Nutella Fudge Brownies, Potato Chip Cookies, Lavender Lemonade Martini, Best Coffee Cake Ever, Hamburger Baked Bean Casserole and Olive Oil & Rosemary Cake.

I've been wanting to bake with Nutella! Potato chip cookies sound so fun. Who can pass up a martini? The casserole would be perfect for camping! My rosemary is growing like crazy. Which recipe to choose?



Inspired by Tim's and my recent trip to the Missouri Valley Lavender Farm, I chose the Lavender Lemonade Martini.A couple of summers ago I made some lavender simple syrup to use for cocktails. I think it ended up in the back of the fridge and not in the cocktails. Infused simple syrup is perfect for cocktails. It adds sweetness, along with a nice hint of lavender. This is a perfect summer cocktail or if you prefer, this makes a refreshing lavender lemonade.

Lavender Lemonade Martini

Recipe Courtesy of Creative Culinary
Ingredients

• 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 6-8 sprigs of lavender
• sugar for rimming
• Vodka, preferably chilled
• lemon slices and lavender sprigs for garnish (optional)

Preparation Instructions

1. Add sugar to water in pot on stove and bring to boil; cook only until sugar is dissolved. Add lavender sprigs and allow to cool completely.
2. Put lemon juice in pitcher and strain lavender/sugar water into same pitcher.
3. Add cup of ice to pitcher and stir well.
4. Use a lemon slice to wet the edge of a martini glass. Rim the edge with sugar. I typically put a layer of sugar on a saucer and dip the top edge in it.
5. Add ice to the glass and fill 2/3 with lemonade.
6. Add 1/2 to a full shot of vodka, stir. Enjoy!

Cake Batter Ice Cream

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend! We'd planned to take a camping trip to a state park about an hour west of Omaha. The hot weather, heat indexes of over 110, caused us to change our mind and stay home. The unexpected weekend at home left me with the time and motivation to cook and bake all sorts of summer treats!

If you live in the Midwest, you may be familiar with Sheridan's Frozen Custard. Sheridan's is a Kansas City based custard company with locations in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Illinois and few other states across the US. I was thrilled when our first Omaha location opened a few years ago! My favorite treat at Sheridan's is a Be My Cupcake Concrete. My husband loves it when we go to the drive through and he get's to order the "Be My Cupcake" for me! It's a frozen treat made with vanilla custard, white cake and sprinkles.

I was looking for a similar treat to make at home, when I found this recipe for Cake Batter Ice Cream. Instead of cake and custard mixed together, cake mix is used for the cake batter flavor. In reading the comments on this recipe, I found a couple of people who used skim milk and half and half instead of heavy cream and whole milk. Awesome, anything I can to do to make ice cream a little less bad for you works for me. Several people also commented the recipe was a little lacking in flavor, so they added more cake mix. I used 1 cup of cake mix and 1 tablespoon of vanilla paste.

My cuisinart ice cream maker is several years old and just didn't seem to be freezing properly anymore, so I'd been thinking about getting a new one. A few weeks ago, while browsing the shelves at Goodwill, I found a Cooks Essentials for $7.99. It looked brand new, I am not sure it had ever been used. My new ice cream maker made the perfect consistency of ice cream! Gotta love a bargain!!

While it was freezing, I spooned out a taste. OMG this is so good! I had to make myself back away, I could have continued to spoon out way too many tastes. I can't wait to try a chocolate version of this recipe!

I love ice cream socials. As a kid, we always had an ice cream social at church to celebrate the end of Vacation Bible School. They were always so fun. Today I am participating in two ice cream socials in the blogsphere. Suzy at Kitchen Bouquet is having her third Ice Cream Social Weekend. I particpated last year with these Key Lime Ice Cream Sandwiches! In celebration of National Ice Cream Day, La at A Musing Potpourri is also having an ice cream social.

Enjoy!



Cake Batter Ice Cream
Recipe adapted from All Recipes

• 1 cup milk (I used skim milk)
  
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 egg yolks, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used a tablespoon of vanilla paste)
  
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream (I used half and half)
  
• 3/4 cup yellow cake mix, sifted (I used 1 cup)
  

Directions

1. Whisk together milk, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla, cream, and cake mix in a saucepan until well blended. Cook over medium-low heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees F (70 degrees C), stirring frequently. Remove from heat and place in the refrigerator or freezer until liquid is cold.
2. Pour the chilled mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions until it reaches "soft-serve" consistency. Transfer ice cream to a one- or two-quart lidded plastic container; cover surface with plastic wrap and seal. For best results, ice cream should ripen in the freezer for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Bobby Flay's Grilled Sweet Potato Salad

This month's celebrity cook along over at Happier Than A Pig in Mud features Bobby Flay. Are you a Bobby Flay fan? Is it me or has Bobby mellowed a bit the past couple of years? Maybe, like me, people were finding him a bit arrogant. Whether or not you like him, one thing is for sure, the man can grill!

When I was planning our meals for Fourth of July weekend, I found Bobby's recipe for Sweet Potato salad. Tim's not a traditional potato salad fan. Since potato salad is synonymous with 4th of July, this recipe was perfect. I'd been wanting to try sweet potato salad!

The flavors in this salad are delicious. The sharpness of the balsamic vinegar, the sweetness of the potatoes and the salty bacon all compliment each other. This salad gets better after it sits a day or two and the dressing has a chance to soak into the potatoes.





Grilled Sweet Potato Salad with Bacon & Herb Vinaigrette
Recipe Courtesy of Bobby Flay

3 large sweet potatoes
1 T. plus 1/4 cup olive oil
8 oz bacon, diced
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 t. fresh thyme, finely chopped
Salt and ground black pepper
1/4 cup canola oil

1. In a large pot of salted water, boil the potatoes until just cooked but not completely soft, 25 - 30 minutes, depending on the size. Test by piercing a potato with a thin bamboo skewer. (I used a fork) When the skewer meets some resistance but can slide all the way through, the potatoes are ready. Drain them immediately; set aside and let cool.

2. Heat grill to medium.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a medium saute pan over high heat. Add the bacon; cook until golden brown and crispy. (I didn't add the olive oil) Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towels.

4. Return the pan to the heat, adding the shallots to the rendered fat, cook until golden brown and slightly caramelized, about 3 minutes. (I skimmed off most of the remaining bacon fat) Add the vinegar and cook for 1 minute. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in 1/4 cup olive oil, herbs and salt and pepper to taste.

5. Cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch slices; brush both sides of the potato slices with canola oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Grill until slightly charred on both sides and just cooked through, about 5 minutes total.

6. Place the potatoes in a bowl while they're still warm and gently toss with the dressing. Sprinkle with the crispy bacon. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Thanks to Lynn at Happier Than A Pig in Mud for another fun Celebrity Cook Along! In addition, I am linking to Foodie Friday and Miz Helen's Full Plate Thursday!!

In My Garden