Food Friday: Crockpot Pork Carnitas

This recipe is pretty easy, it uses the crockpot and would be perfect for a big gathering over memorial day weekend. It comes from Pinch of Yum.

  Ingredients-

    4-5 lbs. pork shoulder

    5 cloves garlic
    1 tablespoon salt
    1 teaspoon cumin
    1 teaspoon chili powder
    1 teaspoon black pepper
    1 teaspoon oregano
    ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
    ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
    1 tablespoon chipotle hot sauce (optional)
    juice of 2 limes
    ½ cup orange juice
    12 ounces beer (it's necessary, it makes the flavor of the whole thing)
    ½ cup salsa (I like to use a less chunky one)

   - Place the pork shoulder in the slow cooker. Roughly chop the garlic and place in the slow cooker (I actually kind of rubbed it onto the meat to get as much garlic flavor as possible, but you could just toss it in, too).

   - Sprinkle the meat with salt, cumin, chili powder, black pepper, oregano, cinnamon, and cayenne. Rub seasonings onto the pork.
   - Add lime juice, orange juice, beer, and salsa. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.
   - Shred meat with two forks directly in the slow cooker (or take out, shred, and replace in sauce). It should fall apart easily.
   - Preheat broiler. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place the shredded meat on the cooking sheet and pour a few spoonfuls of sauce over the top. Broil for 5-10 minutes or until you get browned edges on the pork. This is a MUST.  We debated doing it and tasted it before and after. It makes a difference. Just do it.

  

 Serve on tortillas with fresh cilantro, black beans, avocado, lime juice or whatever ya got.

This recipe is Max approved (but what isn't these days).  Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Backyard Renovation Inspiration and Tour

Some of the first renovations we really want to tackle is in the backyard.  Normally we would wait since it's not an immediate need, but the fence is something we have to have soon.  Molly is a wanderer.  She likes to explore, which sometimes includes walking the whole neighborhood.  She is fine if you stand on the deck and talk her through the whole going to the bathroom situation, but if you let her out and go inside she'll be making her way through the woods and around the neighborhood.

Let's take a tour of our backyard.  We do have a decent size grassy area in the yard off of the deck areas, but as you can see there is a big slope into the woods. It's great for water run off, but not so great for children who roll easily. 

 

We have 2 gigantic decks that were already existing when we moved in.   The bottom deck is actually off the walk out basement level and there is a false concrete area so when you are looking up at the house from the backyard it looks like 4 stories (so let's just say it's steep).  One of the plans for down the road is to screen in one of the decks. Although we'd have to go downstairs to enjoy it, it'll be much easier to screen in the lower deck.

 

Here is our view from the grassy area into the woods.  It's a very peaceful serene view.

I really don't want to block any of the woods so we're going to install a black aluminum fencing, similar to what you'd see around pools. I like that we won't have to stain the fence and maintain it like you would a wood fence. It's more expensive, but we really don't have a huge area to worry about. I really just want to make our backyard as useable as possible.  Another thing we want to make sure to do is to put steps from the side of the house all the way down to easily access from the driveway/side yard.   I found some inspiration photos via pinterest that I want to show  you.

 

15 Month Update

**** If you can give any money to the disaster relief efforts in Oklahoma please stop over to my brother's blog for a complete list of ways you can help.****

I thought there was too much time in between the normal 12 month and 18 month updates so I thought I'd post an in between on our little buddy, Max.  He is a little over 15 months right now.   He is learning new things all the time so I wanted to document.

He is such a fun boy and acts so silly all the time.  His shirt was extremely dirty and I didn't want to waste another one after dinner (when I took these photos) so I just took his shirt off and we have a semi naked baby.

New Developments- He clearly says the word ball, he uses it for balls and any 3D round object (like apple, watermelon, the moon). He says dog, cracker (ka-ga), dada, mama (on occasion when he is crying/whining), car (picture a boston accent) and uh oh.  Michelle swears he has said the word breakfast clearly, but I haven't been able to get him to do it. 

He is now signing the word more, which is very helpful!  It looks like he is trying to get someone to fist fight (he takes one hand like he's showing us the number 5 and then fists the other hand and puts them together). If you ask him where his ears, nose, eyes, hair and belly button are he can point to them.

He has 7 teeth (4 on top and 3 on the bottom, not sure when the other bottom will come in).  

He loves playing with legos, blocks, cars balls and Molly most of all.  He has a pretty good arm on him for a 15 month old.  He is still climbing on anything and everything.  His new trick he just learned was opening doors.  We have the pull down handles inside and he can now get on his very tippy toes and pull the latch down and open it up.  Needless to say we have to lock doors.  He blows kisses and waves bye bye on command.  He LOVES facetiming with my brother and Marla.  My brother makes funny faces at him and Max is at his copying phase so he tries to do them back.  It's pretty cute.

Sleeping- He is still napping twice a day at around 10am and 3pm for about 1.5 hours on average each.  He gets a bath around 7:30pm and we read books until bed around 8pm. It's getting harder to get him to settle down at night since it's so light out still.  He loves his glow worm and presses him a lot before bed.

Eating- He is still loving food.  He gets mad when he doesn't get his smoothie in the morning and his cracker (raisin bread-bread, graham crackers, gold fish are crackers to him). He also loves his grapes, bananas and cheerios for breakfast.  He eats sandwiches, leftovers, raviolis, fruit, veggies for lunch and whatever we are having for dinner.  He is really loving watermelon now that the summer is here and just sucks that juice right up (and usually all over him).

 Personality- He is a pretty funny little guy.  He is very expressive and tries to make you laugh.  He does get shy around a lot of people.  It takes him a little bit to warm up and then he is good to go. 

He loves to get things for you, his most favorite thing is shoes.  He goes to the closet to pick shoes out for himself and for you.  Most of the time they aren't the proper ones, but he does know how to match and he ALWAYS wants you to put his shoes on him to walk around in. He is wearing size 3 pampers cruisers, size 18 month clothes (except for shorts and pants he can still fit in 12 month sizes and truth be told some of those fall off, too). 

He still looks nothing like me (I'll claim the eyelashes), but that's OK!  We love our little boy, he is so much fun.

This weekend we...

We got a lot accomplished this weekend and it turned out to be the exact opposite weather than we were suppose to have. The weatherman said it was 20% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday and I'd say it should have been 80%.

 

Thursday night we started to get into the warm weather spirit by taking Max to get frozen yogurt. He really enjoyed it! 

This weekend mom got a new beautiful bed set.

 

David put out pine straw that is now fully washed away in the exact area you see David standing in (more on why in a minute).

Max helped as well.  He had to do exactly as Daddy was doing. It was adorable.

  

So Saturday night we had some CRAZY storms.  I'm talking full on lighting every .02 seconds, super loud thunder and torrential downpours. Luckily, magically Max did not wake up for it. We don't have curtains/blinds on our windows upstairs and boy was it a full on show.  I knew it was raining pretty bad, but I didn't know how bad until we got up.  Our little creek in the back is SO full.  We went out to get food Sunday morning and the one of the back roads behind our subdivision was fully flooded.  This is the yard beside the road. 

 Here is the view from the road. It was nuts!

Molly got a new dog bed finally which she definitely approves of. She has been laying there non-stop. We got it at SAM's and its a serta memory foam type thing.  She loves having the side arms and we had to have it washable.

We went to a graduation party on Sunday and Max got to play with his cousin Aiden.  He was a bit shy at first but they warmed up to each other pretty quickly.  Congrats Jake on graduation high school!

We were suppose to go to our neighborhood pool party yesterday as well, but judging from this picture I don't think you'd want to go either. All the debri and such from the storms contaminated the pool. It is DISGUSTING looking.

Max played ball with Molly a whole lot this weekend, too.

I did make an applique Memorial Day shirt for little Hadley.  It was kind of fun once I got the hang of it. I am going to work on 1 more for her and one for Max this week. So although we didn't accomplish everything on our to-do list we got a lot of it done.

Friday Letters & Food Friday-Pesto Tortellini Salad

Dear Friday, I always seem to start out with Friday on these letters. It's a great day, because the weekend is almost here! We have a lot planned (as usual-I'm a planner), but it's nice to have a to-do list or I would seriously do nothing. On the list for the weekend: set up David's Moms' new Ipad they got her for mother's day, cars oil changed, get and put down pine straw, finish my embroidery projects, sort papers/old mail in the office, meal planning/grocery shopping, graduation party, pool party, drawing out plans for fence for HOA and of course playing with buddy. Dear David, Yay! Glad you are back in town, you were gone too long this week. Can't wait to see you.  Dear Max and Mom, I am jealous of your day you have planned. Kinsley is hanging with family today so Mom and Max are heading to play in the fountains, maybe the mall and lunch. Dear Blurb Blog Book, I am still working on you for my pregnancy book. It seems easy enough, but when they take 1 post and make it 10 pages, that isn't cool so now I have to go through and spend 30 mins per post and that is not fun, but it's necessary. I have got to get on this.

I had a lot of requests for me to put up this recipe after people saw it on instagram (follow me at Jens871). This recipe is a great main meal dish or would be great for a pot luck side.  They said to eat it cold, but who has time for that so we ate it warm and it was great. This recipe comes from Katies Cucina.

Ingredients
    1 package of refrigerated whole wheat tortellini (I used 2 and doubled recipe for leftovers for lunch)
    ½ bag of spinach (I used kale pieces)
    ¼ cup pesto from sauce aisle
    ¼ cup sun dried tomatoes
    ¼ cup artichoke hearts, drained and cut (get the non marinated kind)
    3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
    ½ cup grated parmesan cheese

Instructions
    In a large pot boil water and cook tortellini according to directions. During the last 30 seconds of cooking add the spinach and wilt. Drain the pasta and spinach and place in a large bowl.
    In a small saute pan toast the pine nuts until they are golden brown then set to the side. This step is a must, I know it's easier if you don't do it, but it doesn't take long and really does make a difference taste wise.
    In the large bowl with the tortellini and spinach add the pesto, sun dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, toasted pine nuts, and grated parmesan cheese. Mix well until incorporated. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and serve cold. Remember, if you are pressed for time, this is really a simple weeknight meal that can be eaten warm and was delicious! One thing that is also great about this, it's meatless and filling!

Nautical Themed Embroidery- Finished Product

One of my first projects with our new embroidery machine was for Jen's baby shower. I wanted to keep it simple and I know she has a nautical theme going for baby Michael so I took out to find a design I liked.  I went with an anchor. No gift is complete without a few things to go with it so we choose to do a onesie and 2 burp cloths. You might recognize the fabric, I got it on our trip to premier prints. Wait until you see some of the new patriotic shirts I am doing for the upcoming Memorial day, July 4th and Labor day holidays with appliques. So cute!

Here is the happy mom-to-be opening her gift.  We can't wait for baby Michael to arrive in a few short months!

Enjoying the Little Things

I promised an after shot of the new bushes David planted and here it is!

I wanted to capture some pictures to enjoy the little things that happen on a daily basis as normal as they are, they are special to us. Max helping with the watering. To say he loved the hose is an understatement, he was ecstatic about it.

Auntie Michelle with the babes.

He was soaked after we were done.  He still loves watering the plants with us. We brought him outside last night to help and he threw a HUGE fit when we had to come in.

Mmmm Tasty

He is such an outdoorsy boy, can't get enough of being outside. We do have a rather steep hill on the side of the house that he is always trying to throw himself down so that is a challenge to keep up with, but the weather has been gorgeous lately.  We are going to take him to the kiddie area of our pool this weekend so that should be fun to see if he likes the water more than last year.

David had to go out of town so Max tried to hitch a ride on the suitcase.  We love our weekends hanging out all day together!