Our whole family was together this Sunday – a rare event these days! What a blessing to minister in music together in the morning church service. Whitney was at the piano while Alli played her violin to accompany my husband and me singing, “Consider the Lilies.”

After the service ended we came home for dinner. My husband and I sat at the counter so we could pop up and serve. He’s my favorite dinner companion!

Katie Brown Chicken w/carrots

I served our favorite dish – Katie Brown Chicken. That’s our name for it. Katie Brown is a woman who had a cooking/decorating/crafting show at one time. I loved it. I’ve lost touch with what she’s doing now, but I sure wish she’d bring back her old show, “Next Door with Katie Brown.” It was so good. One great thing about it was getting this recipe from it!

 

Katie Brown Chicken

What was cooking in your kitchen?

With love,

Here was Sunday dinner:

To prepare the pork: Rub meat (tenderloin or chops) with herbs and salt and black pepper. Heat olive oil in a very large pan until smoking hot. Add the meat and sear well on all sides (if using chops sear both sides, turning once.

Mix the honey (or agave syrup), garlic, mustard, shallots, lemon juice and zest, and pinch sea salt. Pour over the meat and place in the oven and cook until meat reaches an internal temperature of 140 degrees about 15 to 20 minutes depending on the thickness of the meat.Remove meat to platter or plates. Place the pan on stove top over medium heat and bring to a boil add the butter and adjust the seasonings. Pour over sliced tenderloin or chops and serve hot. (Alternately offer the glaze at the table to allow each diner to add their own.)

Later this week I’ll also share the recipe for these muffins – a new one for me. I served these for Sunday morning breakfast. They were full of blueberries and baked up better than other recipes I’ve tried. Usually the topping sinks down into the muffin, but these stayed high and pretty!

Herbes de Provence is a blend of herbs native to the Provence region in southern France where the fresh herbs are gathered from the mountain sides to use in traditional dishes. Rosemary, thyme and bay leaf are the base for the blend-without these it is not herbes de Provence. From there basil, lavender and fennel are added. In France, lavender is only added in very small amounts and sometimes excluded.

Here is a very basic blend that can be mixed, although each cooks adds her or his own touch to the blend which changes it slightly.

Dry herb Ingredients:
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 tablespoon marjoram
1 tablespoon summer savory
1 tablespoon thyme
1 crushed bay leaf
1 teaspoon lavender
1 teaspoon fennel

Mix together and keep in a covered container.

It was a busy weekend in my kitchen! What was cooking in yours?

I’m freezing! With summer temperatures at 90 degrees, I’m certainly not talking about the weather. I’ve been freezing food this past weekend. My mom has had some real issues with back pain, and I prayed about what I could do to help her and my dad. Food seems to be the greatest need. Though my dad is very efficient in every other area, cooking is not a skill he enjoys! I’m headed to Kentucky today with a cooler full of food that I prepared on Saturday and froze in individual servings for them.

I made…

Countryside Chicken Bake and cooked apples
Oatmeal, pecan, chocolate chip cookies

Sloppy Joe meat, Taco meat, & Banana Bread

I also cooked fresh green beans and put them in individual serving sizes. And I fried up a batch of bacon so all my dad would have to do is warm it for breakfast or BLTs.

If I worked outside the home, I would definitely do this type of cooking/freezing each weekend. Everything I did is completely cooked to simplify it for my dad, but you could get the dish ready up to the point of baking it, then freeze it.

To make up the lasagna, tacos and Sloppy Joes, I followed this game plan from Robin Miller on The Food Network. You make up one big pan of meat, then add different ingredients for the Sloppy Joes and Tacos.

I’ve made this Beef meal before and it’s all very good. The reviews written on the recipes are very critical, but as with any recipe you use, adjust it to what your family likes. I will say that it is a little soupy, so you might want to reduce the amount of liquid from the tomatoes, maybe drain one or two cans before adding them to thicken it up, or add some tomato paste to do the same thing. All in all it’s a great plan and will provide you with many meals in one cooking time. I was in the kitchen the better part of the day making all that, but it was well worth the time! Now, I can spend time visiting my parents instead of being in the kitchen!

What was cooking in your kitchen this week?

With love,

I know it’s not Monday, my day to share recipes, but I was wondering if you have an overflow of tomatoes at your house? What do you do with them? We have been blessed to have a supply of tomatoes given to us by gardeners in our church. Oh, how we love them! I love them in salads, or on a piece of bread with a little mayo (my sister thinks this is strange! Does anyone else love tomato sandwiches?). We also love Tomato Pie .

This week I tried another recipe using fresh tomatoes and basil and we really loved it. it’s called Tomato, Basil and Parmesan Flatbread from Cooking Light. We had tried a chicken flatbread at Olive Garden and loved it, so I knew I had to try to this recipe.

First you make up the flatbread recipe, then you roll the dough into four pieces and layer it with yellow and red tomatoes. It goes into the oven for 13 minutes.

Meanwhile you mix up the basil, garlic and Parmesan mixture to put over the tomatoes…

Pop it back into the oven ’til the Parmesan cheese melts.

This makes a great appetizer. You could add chopped chicken to it to make it a little more hearty. If you have tomatoes lying around that you don’t know what to do with, try this!

So, what else do you do with your summer tomatoes?

Thanking the Lord for the bounty,

Summer has been busy for us. It seems like every Saturday for the last several weeks has had something added to it that’s made it a busy weekend and has kept me from having guests for Sunday dinner. Last week we had a missionary family of ten here, so we took them out for dinner. 🙂

This weekend we had the privilege of going to a special birthday celebration for a dear friend in South Carolina. We made the trip there and back in about twelve hours time. It was a blessing to be able to attend. Getting home in the evening kept me from preparing a meal for Sunday. I was so very glad that I had a frozen dish of Tomatoes, Sausage and Pasta in the freezer. I learned a long time ago that it’s just as easy to double a recipe when you’re cooking and put one in the freezer for a busy day. Many recipes double very easily. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. You’ll be so glad to have something you can just pop into the oven when you’re busy or when you just don’t feel like cooking!

I added salad and toasted bread and dinner was done when we got home from church! I also served Blueberry Crisp for dessert. We were hungry for blueberry or blackberry cobbler, using some of the fresh fruit we’d gotten, but this light version of a crisp satisfied our hunger just as well (and with lots fewer calories and fat grams!).

Hot out of the oven… Can you smell it?

Wrapped and ready to deliver…

Do you have something you do for others that have shared with you from their garden? What is it? What’s been cooking in your kitchen this week?

With love,