Pork with a Brie & Blue Cheese Sauce

Happy Nom Nom Monday!  Today's recipe is a delicious Pork Tenderloin with a Brie & Blue Cheese Sauce, and a new potato & carrot side.

Ingredients:

For the Pork & Cheese Sauce:

-1 lbs of thinly sliced pork tenderloin

- 1 tablespoon of butter

- 3 tablespoons dry white wine

- 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

- 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley

- 4 oz of brie and blue cheese

- 1 1/2 teaspoons of honey mustard

- ground black pepper

For the Potatoes & Carrots:

- 1 tablespoon of olive oil

- 3 cloves of garlic

- 3 carrots

- 2 cups of new potatoes

- 2 tablespoons of fresh parsley

- seasoned salt and ground black pepper

Directions:

Sprinkle ground black pepper on the pork tenderloins.  Melt the butter in a frying pan on medium-high heat.  Once the butter has melted, and started to brown place the meat in the pan.  Cook for about five minutes, or when the meat is just barely cooked, turning only once.  Transfer to a warm plate, and keep covered.  Then add the white wine to the frying pan, and bring to a boil.  Add the heavy whipping cream, and parsley, mixing together while bring back to a boil.  Then add the cheese and honey mustard.  Cook together until everything has melted together, also add any juices that have run off of the meat.  Once everything is throughly combined, plate the meat, and cover with the cheese sauce.  

To cook the potatoes and carrots, start by washing them off, and removing the skin from the carrots.  Cut the potatoes into quarters, and then slice the carrots about a quarter inch thick or less.  Also mince the garlic cloves, and warm the olive oil in a frying pan.    

Then add the minced garlic, and potatoes.

Add the carrots, and season with seasoned salt, and ground black pepper. 

Now chop up the fresh parsley, and add that to the mixture. Stir, cover, and let cook until the potatoes and carrots are cooked through, about 8 to 10 minutes.  

Serve and enjoy!  I love a good cheese sauce, and this one is fantastic.  My husband has become an expert at whipping this up, and it's now a new favorite of ours.  I could eat this everyday.  Though I guess that wouldn't be too healthy. 

Happy Nom Nom Monday, and happy DIYing, chris!

BLT Grilled Cheese

Aaron and I hung out with our good friends Kristen & James last night, and they had a magazine with 50 different grilled cheese recipes.  I woke up this morning salivating with grilled cheese ideas.  So I HAD to make some for this edition of Nom Nom Mondays!  After eating some breakfast, we headed over to this fantastic local farmer's market called Highland Orchards.  We bought some tasty fresh bread, farmer's cheese, a tomato, romaine lettuce, spinach, and some organic bacon.  

Aaron also picked out some broccoli and kohlrabi.  We started our broccoli a bit late, and only two of them came up.  Boo-hoo.  These look lovely though, so yay for local farmers!

We shared lunch with my mom, so I enlisted her help with slicing the bread.  My mom is dang skilled at slicing bread thinly and neatly by hand.  My slices always end up thick and uneven.  

Aaron slowly cooked up some bacon on medium/low heat.  We like our bacon crispy, so this was the longest step.  When the bacon was done we moved it to a plate with some paper towels, and we used the bacon grease to cook the sandwiches in.  Oh man, that was a key step there, that bread tasted phenomenal.  

We placed the bread in the bacon juices, and then layered on the farmer's cheese, tomato, bacon, and the other bread slice.   After about two minutes we flipped the sandwich.  

Once the bread was browned to our liking and the cheese was the perfect meltiness (that is definitely a real word), we sliced them in half and commenced eating!  

Perfect sandwich!  We will definitely be making these again.  Before packing it all in, I opened it up and slipped some of that lovely romaine in there too.  The bread and cheese and bacon and lettuce were all so prefect together, mmmmm.  I can't wait until we have some of our own tomatoes and lettuces to put on the sandwiches!

Here's Cricket Chicken wishing you a happy Nom Nom Monday, and happy DIYing!  Hope to see you tomorrow, chris.

Buffalo Blue Cheese Biscuits

Here is another recipe for Nom Nom Monday.  Today's instructions are pretty random.  I didn't feel like buying any ingredients today, so I went with what we had in the house.  I had this roll of biscuits I wanted to use up, and a ball of buffalo blue cheese.  

I began by rolling the biscuits out, and then I gently laid them in a muffin sheet.  While I was doing this I had the oven heating up to 400º F.  

Then I scooped a tablespoon of the buffalo blue cheese ball into each cup.

This is where my creative really started to kick in.  I figured since the cheese was buffalo flavored, that celery would be the prefect accompaniment.  I cut the celery up in small squares.

Next I put a few celery bits in each cup.

I also have a ton of crushed plain ruffled potato chips, so I covered the cups with them as a topper.  

Then I stuck them in the oven for 8 minutes.    The biscuit part looked nice and toasty brown when I took them out.  

The biscuit made the prefect delivery system for the buffalo blue cheese.  This little concoction was pretty good, but I'm not sure I would buy the ingredients to make them specifically.  However, if I ever find myself in possession of a cheese ball again I will definitely be buying some biscuits to cook it into!!  

Hope ya'll are having a good Monday, happy DIYing!  chris.

Blue Cheese, and Tomato Mac & Cheese

This is something I've been doing for years.  I've loved boxed mac & cheese since I can remember.  I probably loved it in utero.  As I've gotten older I've had to adjust the way I make it, to grow with my grown up tastes.  This is my most recent adaptation, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

-one box of mac & cheese (any brand but velveeta) 

-1/3 cup milk

-1/3 cup of crumbled blue cheese (use less if you don't want it to be extra blue cheesey)

-2/3 cup of shredded mild cheddar cheese

-1/4 cup tomato (diced)

Directions:

- Boil water in a medium saucepan.  Once boiling add two tablespoons of salt, then add the macaroni noodles.  The salt will help keep the noodles from sticking together.  Cooking according to the directions on the box.  When you drain the noodles run cold water over them, this will also keep them from sticking together.  Let the noodles sit in the strainer while you make the sauce.

- While the noodles are cooking cut up your blue cheese, and shred your mild cheddar.

- In the same pan you used to cook the noodles add the sauce pack, the milk, and both cheeses, and cook over a low heat.  Make sure the pan doesn't get too hot, or the cheese will overcook and stick to the pan.  While that's melting together dice up 1/4 cup of tomato, and set aside in a small bowl.  Make sure to stir the cheese sauce repeatedly, so that it doesn't stick to the pan.

- Once the cheeses are all melted together, add the noodles, and mix thoroughly.  

- Serve the mac & cheese, and then add the tomatoes to each serving.  I like to add a little of Lawry's Seasoned Salt too, but definitely not necessary.  

If you love blue cheese you have to try this!  Sooooo tasty.   Happy DIYing!