Grilled Pork Chops with Fresh Nectarine Salsa

I found the recipe for Grilled Pork Chops with Fresh Nectarine Salsa from AllRecipes.com after it was featured as the "Recipe of the Day" a couple of weeks ago. I find a lot of my recipes through the great "Recipe of the Day" newsletter from AllRecipes.com and would recommend it to any and everyone.

The recipe takes flavorfully-seasoned boneless pork chops, grills them and then tops them with a scoop of Fresh Nectarine Salsa. I knew it would be good, but I didn't realize just how good it would turn out.

I started by making the Fresh Nectarine Salsa, which involved a fair amount of chopping. It also required me to seed fresh tomatoes, which I had never done. I looked online for a guide to seeding tomatoes and sure enough, I found a simple one on AllRecipes.com. Here it is for anyone else who is equally clueless: Removing Tomato Seeds We followed the recipe for the salsa exactly, except that we doubled it so we would have extra to eat with chips later. It smelled so delicious while we were making it that it was really hard for Ty and me to wait for dinner to eat it.



The pork chops were really tasty, but simple. The only thing we changed from the recipe was that we added a 1/2 tsp. of garlic powder. Everything came out great!! The guys all went back for seconds and Ty even proclaimed the recipe "restaurant quality".



This is one of the best recipes we've tried lately. Do yourself a favor and try it out for yourself: Grilled Pork Chops with Fresh Nectarine Salsa

At Last, the Long-Awaited Meatloaf!

Meatloaf was on our meal list last week, but because we wanted to make sure we used up all our leftovers it ended up getting pushed to the next week. When we finally did make it, the guys were definitely ready for it.

I've been making meatloaf for a long time, honestly it's one of those dinners that I probably popped out of the womb knowing how to make. I never use an exact recipe, but nearly every meatloaf I've made has contained the following ingredients: 1 lb. of lean ground beef, 1 lb. of ground turkey, an egg, chopped onion, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder and crushed crackers or bread crumbs. Sometimes I even like to go a little crazy adding in different kinds of spices. You get the idea.

Here are the meatloaves before going into the oven. I always make two because we usually eat one and have the other for leftovers.



We served the meatloaves with boxed butter and herb mashed potatoes and "California-style" veggies.



I'm particularly fond of the boxed mashed potatoes from WalMart. They're only $1 and save me from having to wash, peel, cube, boil, drain and mash the potatoes myself (which I try to only do for holidays and other special occasions). Besides all of that, they actually taste good. It doesn't get better than that.

Matt's Chicken Enchilada Soup (Mmm...tasty!)

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away... Just kidding, I couldn't resist. Anyway, a long time ago when we lived with our grandparents here in Montana, our Grandma Vicki introduced us to a delicious Chicken Enchilada Soup that she made. Honestly, it was one of the highlights of living there...it was THAT tasty! So after we moved out, Matt decided that that couldn't mean the end of our Chicken Enchilada Soup eating, so he got the recipe from Grandma. Years later, he's totally reworked the recipe to make it even better and has made enough changes that he can truly call the recipe his own.

The ingredients in this delicious soup include cubed chicken breast cooked in chicken taco seasoning, canned enchilada sauce, corn tortillas, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, Cheddar cheese, canned corn and black beans. Yes, it is just as delicious as it sounds.

Matt makes his amazing Chicken Enchilada Soup several times a year and it's always a favorite at our house.

Here is Matt's Chicken Enchilada Soup in all it's glory. It's perfectly okay if you find yourself drooling after looking at this picture. We didn't see it happen and we won't tell a soul. ;)

Ravioli

Ravioli is a lazy night favorite at our house. We can have the ravioli and the garlic bread done and on our plates in just under 20 minutes. What could be better than that? I always buy one package of three-cheese ravioli and one package of meat ravioli and use half of each bag. I put the rest of the mixed ravioli in a Ziplock bag for another lazy night dinner occasion. Keeping with the marvelous speediness of the meal, we usually use a nice, jarred pasta sauce to serve over it. This time we used Newman's Own Cabernet Marinara and I'm almost certain it was the best marinara sauce I'd ever had. Not only was it delicious, but it was nice to know that we'd bought something we could enjoy that would also benefit charity. Again, what could be better than that?

Spinach and Ricotta Chicken Roll-Ups

This was another recipe I found in my Jillian Michaels "Making the Cut" book. The chicken had to be pounded to a quarter-inch thickness, which was, surprisingly, not as much fun as it sounds. Still, I pressed on. The filling consisted of chopped fresh spinach, Ricotta and Parmesan cheeses, and various seasonings which was spread on to the flattened chicken breasts and then rolled up.

Here's what the Spinach and Ricotta Chicken Roll-Ups looked like just before they went into the oven.



Here's a look at the finished product. We served the Spinach and Ricotta Chicken Roll-Ups alongside Au Gratin potatoes for a tasty dinner that was a big hit with all the guys. I will definitely be making this recipe again!

Grilled Eggplant and Summer Couscous

We're always trying to include variety in our diet so this week I decided to make a grilled eggplant recipe that I found on About.com. I'm not very familiar with eggplant, in fact this was the first time I'd ever had eggplant that wasn't fried! But the recipe sounded tasty so I decided to give it a try. The eggplant was sliced and brushed with a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, thyme, basil, dill and oregano, and then grilled on our George Foreman. The finished result was good, but not quite what I had expected. I think I'll need to do a little more experimenting with this fruit (yes, it's a fruit) before it becomes a favorite.

For those of you who love eggplant already, this recipe is fast and easy. It was also highly rated by the reviewers on About.com. Here's a link to the recipe in case you're interested in trying it out: Grilled Eggplant

Since I was trying new recipes I decided to find a new side dish recipe to serve along with the eggplant. After a lot of browsing I decided on a recipe called Summer Couscous that I found on AllRecipes.com. The recipe combined couscous cooked in chicken broth with minced red onion, sliced green onions, diced cucumber and tomatoes. I wasn't sure how I felt about diced cucumber in a hot dish, but thought I would give it a shot anyway. I was so glad I did! The couscous turned out to be the star of the dinner, much tastier than I had imagined. I will definitely be making it again and would recommend the recipe to anyone. Here's a link to the recipe: Summer Couscous

Quiche Florentine with Blueberry-Walnut Salad

The Quiche Lorraine we made last week was such a hit that I decided to make another variety of quiche this week. I'm a big spinach fan, so Quiche Florentine is absolutely my favorite kind of quiche. I looked for a good recipe for Quiche Florentine online, but didn't find one that really "grabbed" me. I decided to use the basic recipe for Quiche Lorraine and modify to make it Quiche Florentine. So I added chopped fresh spinach to the existing recipe and replaced the cayenne pepper with 1/2 tsp. of nutmeg. It was delicious! I knew the guys liked it when I went to put away the leftovers and there was only one tiny piece left!!

I served the Quiche Florentine with Blueberry-Walnut Salad. I found the recipe for the salad on AllRecipes.com a few days ago and knew I had to try it! We used classic Romaine salad mix, fresh blueberries, chopped walnuts and crumbled Gorgonzola cheese. The recipe called for a raspberry vinaigrette, but we substituted Newman's Light Cranberry Walnut Dressing. It was delicious!