A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Slow Cooker Brown Sugar and Balsamic Pork Loin

        

 Pinterest Recipe? Why yes, yes it is.  And an excellent one at that. Easy to put together in the slow cooker and melt in your mouth yumminess!

After clicking several links, I finally tracked it down to Danielle at Let's Dish who adapted it from Wendee who posted it to Allrecipes.com (links below to their versions).  I adapted it slightly from Danielle, mostly to accommodate that I used boneless country ribs instead of a tenderloin or loin. The ribs have more fat in them  so I didn't add the water to either step in their recipes and did remove most of the melted fat (with a turkey baster--great fat removing tool) before adding the sauce.

We will definitely be making this again. 

Recipe by Danielle at Let's Dish, which she adapted from a recipe called Herb Roasted Pork by Wendee on Allrecipes.com

I've adpated it slightly from both so I'll post my version.

Banana Bread Brownies

 

I kept seeing a Banana Bread Brownies recipe on Pinterest and even pinned it myself. What a clever idea, I thought, especially for those of us who don't care for chocolate all that much or often.  Banana bread brownies...something about it just sounds right.

And it is.  So right.

Baked in a large jelly roll pan, the brownies make 35 pieces and come out to be little squares of OMG delciousness. 

I looked at the recipe I had pinned, one that had been adapted from another recipe, and looked at the original as well. Then I changed a bunch of stuff, not because anything was "wrong" with the original recipes, but because I've been trying to eat a little cleaner by add more whole grains to our diet, change out sour cream for Greek yogurt, use honey instead of refined sugar, etc., and I know from experience with banana bread that it's a great vehicle for whole grained flour.  Banana bread made with half whole wheat is actually tastier, in my opinion, than banana bread made with all all-purpose flour (and Gene can't tell the difference). 

These are truly not to be missed!

Summer Porridge aka Yogurt Oats

 

When I first saw this recipe, called "summer porridge", "yogurt oats", or "overnight oatmeal", I honestly thought it sounded gross but so many people were enthusiastic on Pinterest and other places on the web that I knew I had to give it a chance. It's not like I'm not an adventurous eater anyway, and with these ingredients I knew that at the very least it would be very good for me. (I just needed to check it out to see if it was "good" in the concept of "good & good for you".)

Guess what? It's my favorite way to make oatmeal now.  Hot oatmeal in the winter is filling and somehow defines cold weather for me, but the summer? Not so much.  Now I have a summer oatmeal to enjoy and start off the day with a nice healthy meal that keeps me going.  And more than just breakfast, it's now included in my lunchbox almost every time I go to work as my go-to healthy mid-night snack that keeps me going until 0700.

This healthy habit plays off another of my new favorite healthy habits:  Sangria Water, where I fill a pitcher with filtered water and fruit of all kinds and let it soak overnight, giving me great fruit-tasting water to drink all day and then the fruit to put on my oatmeal for the next day. So the Sangria Water  I made yesterday, with peaches and blueberries, became the peaches and blueberries that topped my yogurt oats this morning for breakfast. It's a win-win, for sure.