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Slow Cooked Pork with Ginger Beer BBQ Sauce

September 14, 2011 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 11 comments

My blog is fixed! The below post was meant to post last Friday after a truly dreary week. Over the weekend, with lots of crazy work stuff and the anniversary of 9/11 happening, along with my blog being down, I got to take some time to let go, not really by choice, but it was kind of nice and reminded me how great my life is. It’s something I am trying to remember every day, and I am really happy to be back blogging.

I am loving the below recipe, which will be perfect for these chillier nights.

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Well, despite my best efforts to ignore the change, summer seemed to slip away this week, bringing unnecessary rain and cold. The downside? Rain and cold. The upside? It was a perfect time to do some slow-cooking of something I had a major craving for, pulled pork. The vegetarian in me is always surprised, but I do love well-spiced pork, cooked for a day, falling apart in a spicy sauce.

I picked up a pork roast at Market Basket over the weekend and put the rub on over 24 hours before cooking. My rub was a mix of all sorts of things: cinnamon, cayenne pepper, Tyler Florence’s brown sugar pork rub, garlic powder (lots!), My Spice Sage BBQ seasoning, black pepper, salt, and red pepper flakes.

dry rub

Once the spices were mixed, I gave the roast a good rub, liberally coating it with the mix. It smelled amazing.

dry rub

On cooking day, I pulled out the pork, already hanging out in the slow cooker bowl. To the slow cooker I added a can of Gosling’s ginger beer (also perfect for cocktails) and a whole can of tomato paste.

ginger beer

I also chopped up a small handful of the beautiful local peppers I bought for my cod dish. I’d done a quick pickle to preserve them, and they added a bright, spicy, and vinegar-y touch to the pork. I also poured in about 1/2 cup white vinegar.

pickled peppers

The ginger beer and tomato paste broke down into a rich, spicy sauce with a hint of sweet and made for some of the most tender pulled pork I have ever had.

pulled pork

We ate it atop salads with a homemade peach salsa, mountains of cilantro, and Greek yogurt, and again the next day in Tortilla Land tortillas with the same toppings. It was the stuff that chilly fall Sundays are made of, and I will definitely be repeating this recipe.

pulled pork

Annnnd I am glad that the weekend is going to be warm and sunny. I refuse to acknowledge the end of summer until the boat is in winter storage.

Are you still with me in summer, have you moved to fall or are you feeling somewhere in between?

Tags: cooking, Food, pork, recipe, salad

Girard’s Salad Dressings

August 25, 2011 in Food by traveleatlove | 13 comments

It’s another giveaway today! I am in a great mood because it’s Thursday, it’s beautiful and breezy, I got about four and a half  hours of work done last night after 5:00, and we are going on a mini vacation to the Quebec countryside this weekend. What’s not to love?!

Let’s rewind a week, shall week? Last week I received a beautiful, heavy box in the mail from the folks at Girard’s Salad Dressings. I was excited to find a bunch of fun items inside, including four of Girard’s salad dressings: Greek Feta, White Balsamic, Light Champagne, and Old Venice Italian.

Girard's Salad Dressings

I am on a feta kick, so we went straight in for the Greek Feta to make a simple grill pan dinner on a hot night. I should also mention we have barely been grocery shopping so we were pretty excited to have new food items in the house Winking smile.

Girard's Greek Feta

We generally don’t eat dressing on salads, I usually just got for a splash of balsamic, so we started by using the dressings as a marinade for zucchini spears and shrimp.

marinated zucchini

marinated shrimp

Then I remembered why I love having ready-made dressing on hand. It makes for such a quick and simple dinner! The feta dressing was salty, tangy, and really added a pop to the shrimp and veggies. Dinner was done in 10 minutes, and cleanup was a cinch.

grilling shrimp and zucchini

We’ve started using the Greek Feta on salads which we really haven’t eaten much this summer. I have been eating huge bowls of arugula, spinach, roasted red peppers, beets, and tuna in oil, topped with a little bit of the dressing, and it actually makes me excited to eat raw veggies again. Sure, it’s a little more fat than my typical balsamic, but eating salad with a little dressing is better than no salad at all, in my book. I have lunches I look forward to, and I am feeling better. Maybe Girard’s provided that little push I needed.

They also provided some recipes for the dressings, and once I am home long enough, can’t wait to try them!

Girard’s is generously giving one of my readers the same four pack of dressing I received. I would love to know your favorite recipe idea using one of the dressings, so to enter please leave it in the comments below.

I’ll choose a winner on Monday. Good luck, and thank you Girard’s!

Tags: Food, giveaway, grilling, salad

Lemony Arugula Pesto Tortellini Salad

August 2, 2011 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 8 comments

The title is a mouthful, isn’t it? And this easy pasta salad was too, a mouthful of lemony, garlicky, summery flavors, perfect for a late Sunday dinner at sea.

Making food for boating is tricky. It needs to be something that will keep fairly well and that will fit in the small fridge or in our cooler bag. And it has to be enough for a five or six hour trip, usually for four people.  One of the things I learned early on as a little boater was that eating is imperative. It’s actually when you don’t eat that you get more sick. So packing substantial food is key, and being creative is always important to me.

So important that Saturday night I could not sleep because I didn’t know what to make for a dinner outing with friends. We had cheese and crackers, pretzel thins, cookies, and salami, but we needed more. At around 4 am, I finally figured out all of the ingredients for this Lemony Arugula Pesto Tortellini Salad.

Lemony Arugula Pesto Tortellini Salad

While a container of Trader Joe’s spinach tortellini and a half a bag of orrechiette boiled, I whipped up a simple pesto made with several cups of arugula, a cup of baby spinach, garlic, juice of a well-juiced lemon, olive oil, sea salt, and parmesan cheese.

arugula

arugula pesto

The pesto was just so bright, due to the lemon, and slightly creamy from the parmesan and olive oil. It was bursting with flavor, and my warm pasta drank it in.

arugula pesto pasta salad

To the pasta I added a can of artichoke hearts, rinsed and chopped.

artichokes

And two cups of sweet grape tomatoes, chopped in half.

grape tomatoes

Three chicken breasts were chopped, tossed in the pesto, and baked until done. Them using my vegetable scissors, I shredded the meat to top the pasta salad.

arugula pesto chicken

lemony arugula pesto tortellini salad

Once chilled, the salad was the perfect light summer dinner, packed with protein and flavor, keeping us full as we bobbed along the waves and watched the sun go down over Boston. I am definitely going to be brainstorming more creative pasta salad ideas for the summer, just hopefully not at 4 am.

Do you have any pasta salad combos you love? Like me, do you do some of your best thinking in the middle of the night?

Tags: arugula, chicken, Food, pesto, recipe, salad, summer

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