Shredded Apple Pork

Our pressure cooker is temporarily out of commission , but luckily my parents have one that they are lending us while they are off on vacation.  They also gave us some of their leftover apple juice that they didn't want to leave in the fridge, so I decided to find something interesting to do with it tonight.  What I came up with was shredded apple pork.

3 lb pork butt
1 honeycrisp apple
1.5 yellow onion
equal parts apple juice and gingerale
3 tbsp powdered ginger
approx 1/4 cup (loose) brown sugar
a few tbsp of maple syrup (dark)
chili powder
3 garlic cloves

I mixed all the ingredients except the pork to taste, added the pork, and then ran high pressure for 90 minutes.  After, I shredded the pork, pulling out the fatty bits, and strained out the the apples and onion and mixed them with the pork.  A taste test confirmed that it was as delicious as it smelled! The maple syrup we have is very strong, so the flavor came through wonderfully.  Not sure how we will eat this tomorrow, but no matter what we decide, it will be good!

Spiced Pumpkin Bisque

I got this recipe from Midwest Living, and I had to try it thanks to my obsession with all things pumpkin in the fall.   I'm not going to copy the whole thing here, as it is presented nicely on their website, complete with nutritional values.

Midwest Living Spiced Pumpkin Bisque Recipe

It is not what we expected in terms of spicy.  It is pepper spicy (note the Cayenne) rather than the typical nutmeg and cinnamon based spice that goes with pumpkin.  It was, however, delicious, especially with some french bread toasted up with some garlic olive oil, and shredded chicken we had from the freezer mixed in.  After mixing in the chicken, it became more of a stew than a bisque, but was more filling than the soup alone. 

The creme fraiche, however, is worth a describing here.  When reading this recipe in the magazine, I was a little confused, as part of the process is basically a fermentation with buttermilk.  However, it says that it can be done in a matter of an hour, whereas we needed to leave ours on the counter for almost 24 before it became the consistency that we wanted.  

It was DELICIOUS! I was prepared to be unimpressed by this, and to think it was not worth the effort, but it was like everything we loved about sour cream, but richer and creamier.  Yumm!!!

Pumpkin Bars

I was searching for a great pumpkin bar recipe, and found one here, at Visions of Sugar Plum.  Her blog has good recipes, and she's pretty funny!  I made this with my own frosting concoction and brought it to work to share on Halloween.  Everyone loved them, and I brought home an empty pan!


2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

 2 teaspoons baking powder
 1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 (16 oz) can pumpkin puree
 4 large eggs

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 15x10x1 jelly roll pan with cooking spray. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon. In a large mixing bowl, using a mixer on medium speed, beat together butter, granulated sugar and pumpkin until creamy - about 2 minutes. Beat in eggs until well combined - about 2-3 minutes. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually beat in flour mixture until just combined. Scrape and smooth batter into prepared pan. Bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into cake comes out with moist crumbs attached. Cool completely on a wire rack.

The frosting I whipped up included powdered sugar, a little splash of heavy cream, and butter.  A delicious experiment! I created to taste, until it had a light buttercream flavor.

Smokey Tomato Bisque

We have been on a major soup kick lately, and one of my favorite things is to toast up some delicious bread to dip into my soup!  So the bread for this dinner came first, and then I dug around to see what we could do.  I found this bbq sausage in the freezer, and decided to make some tomato soup to go with it.



I mixed together a can of Tomato Basil coup with a can of Tomato Bisque.  To it, I added some chili powder (spice island of course!), a sprinkling of ancho powder, some granulated garlic, some of the Harissa - a red pepper paste- my husband had made a few days before (recipe to come), and a little salt.  We topped it with some shaved Gruyere cheese, which added to the smokey flavor.   A little blurp of sour creme on top was the perfect addition!