Tonight for dinner I took a soup recipe and modified it to fit into keto as well as use up a pork loin that my husband had made last weekend that was just too dry. I don’t know about you but I just can never get a pork loin to be delicious and moist to call it “amazing”. Last weekend my husband decided to make a pork loin while we were making Instant Pot Louisianna Style Spare Ribs. It was a great idea since we are already cooking the ribs, we could throw in the loin and have it for other meals during the week. The plan was to make the ribs on Sunday, so he prepared a marinade on Saturday and put the loin in it to give it a nice amount of time to tenderize and soak up… Read More

OK, this one is a laugh and its on me. I have been anticipating making cheesecake in the Instant Pot. I researched, I read, I watched videos, I really prepared. Finally, I found what I felt sounded like the bestest recipe for Instant Pot Cheesecake. So, I purchase a spring form pan. The one I purchased is a spring form silicone pan with a glass bottom. I thought that would be better than metal since I could release the cake from the pan easier by just peeling it off. There was only one fallback with this pan. I wanted to be able to use the trivet that came with the pot to get the pan out and I was unable to do it because the pan is just a little larger around than the trivet. However, in the end it… Read More

About once a year I give my cast iron a real scrubbing and conditioning.  For this I do use soap and wear some good cleaning gloves and a full front apron I personally like the japanese style apron.  What I do is I use a scouring pad pot scrubber that is made of stainless steel. You can probably find the same kind of scouring pad at your favorite local store. Fill your sink with hot soapy water, put on the apron and gloves, grab a scouring pad and the target pan and scrub. Scrub like crazy all over the pan. I start with the inside up the sides of the insides since they get slightly scaly. Then go after the outside and for this cleaning you want to concentrate a majority of your scrubbing to the outside of the pan.… Read More

This soup is a basic Tortilla Soup. You can use any kind of meat of choice such as shrimp, beef, or chicken. When I make this soup is it because I have some leftover meat that is just enough for the soup. That is about 8 to 16 ounces of meat. This soup has a really nice flavor that you can make hot by adding more jalapeno pepper or you can leave it mild and not add any pepper. You can add bean or not add beans, however I do suggest that if you add beans that you rinse them very well before adding them. In this recipe I use organic plain greek yogurt or if you want, you can use sour cream. Like I said the recipe is very flexible which is nice because you can make this recipe… Read More

Have you read the long drawn out methods for “seasoning” your cast iron cookware? I have and it’s just overkill. I read all the time where people post this long drawn out method for seasoning cast iron cookware.  Ya know, the one that says lather your cookware with oil and bake it in the oven at some temperature for over an hour then let it cool and wala! Really? I have had cast iron pans all my life. Sure, I had a while that I tried the nonstick cookware and it was really nice but it wore off and if it can wear off then I think I must be eating it in my food. Yuck. So I don’t buy any kind of nonstick cookware. In fact my cast iron is pretty much nonstick and it stays that way very easily. So,… Read More

Spare ribs was the second thing that I learned to make in the Instant Pot.  The first thing that I made was a 4 pound pork shoulder and it was absolutely delicious and I repeated that a few times. I had watched several videos showing people making spare ribs and I finally decided to make them. Since then I have made them countless times and we (as in my husband and I) are now adjusting the pressure cooker time to get them cooked to the point that they are done and tender but stay on the bone enough to transfer them to the grill without them just falling off the bone. Just a quick point about adjusting time when using the Instant Pot. I first was adjusting the time in 10 minute or more increments. That does not work very… Read More

I am always wanting to figure out how to cook different things in my Instant Pot. I will say I have found a few that I just don’t really prefer to cook under pressure. One of those being meat loaf. While you can cook meatloaf in the instant pot the time it saves it minimal and really not worth it. It still takes 30 minutes cook time in the Instant Pot and that is not counting the 20 minutes it takes to come up to pressure. As opposed to baking it in the oven that takes 1 hour and 30 minutes but enough of that. The point is that there are foods that when you cook them you don’t want them in a lot of water and the moisture or water is necessary for the Instant Pot to build up… Read More

OMG, its late Sunday afternoon. About 4pm to be exact. I’m trying to think of something for dinner and I don’t want to run to the grocery store. When I was very poor I had the talent of looking in the fridge and the cupboard and figuring something out. I always managed to just come up with something that would pass as a good meal. It seems like nowadays I’m not as poor and so I don’t have to work as hard at being so frugal because I don’t have money. Now that I’m thinking about it I really need to return to my use of figuring out great meals with what I have on hand and I’m going to do it today. First I need to check the deep freezer which I always keep stocked with “something”. <gone to… Read More

So, many of my recipes that I post I am thinking about my Grandmother. I think about what she would think about the dish, about the taste, would she be proud to serve it in her restaurant? I have never made squash soup or pumpkin soup,so this was a first. I studied a few recipes I found online and then I combined what I thought were the best parts of each recipe. I liked the idea of using heavy cream and sour cream. The recipes I found used more heavy cream or sour cream than what I used but I figured if I’m using both I need to cut back a bit on both. This soup came out surprisingly great! I could hardly believe it. Usually, when experimenting with a recipe, I would make the dish and then decide if… Read More

My daughter has found that she is gluten sensitive and I have a brother that also has removed gluten from his diet. They both claim to feel much better as a result. I have also cut back on gluten and I am now trying to avoid it where I can do it easily. I figure sooner or later I’ll probably figure our how to completely eliminate gluten. As far as turkey goes I have stopped stuffing my turkey. I think if you “stuff” your turkey it is called “stuffing” and if you cook your “stuffing” separate it is called “dressing”. Feel free to correct me on this. Over the past four years I have been experimenting with a gluten free dressing that is as delicious as the regular gluten version. Here it is for you to try.

I have a recipe that I have made countless times in a crockpot. This recipe is in fact perfect for a crockpot. I decided to try it in the Instant Pot to see how it would come out. Basically, this is turkey and dressing for 2 to 4 people without cooking the whole turkey. I first saw this idea years ago in the early years of Stovetop Stuffing. Obviously, you can make this with Stovetop Stuffing which calls for 1 1/2 cups of water per envelope. When using Stovetop Stuffing for this recipe you reduce the water to 3/4 cup. Over the years I stopped using Stovetop Stuffing and decided to just make my own stuffing for the dish, which is below. If you decide to make this in your crockpot or in your Instant Pot they both come out… Read More

So, if you have read any of my blog posts on cooking you know that I own a Instant Pot. This is the one that I have. It is capable of 7 different functions which includes, soup, Meat/Stew, Bean/Chili, Poultry, Sauté, Steam, Rice, Porridge, Multigrain, Slow Cook, Keep-Warm, Yogurt, Pasteurize and Fermented Rice (Jiu Niang). I will be making dishes using all of the functions above so make sure you check back. This post is about using an inner pot inside the Instant Pot stainless steel liner pot. This is useful for making things that you may not want to have a lot of water added to the dish. The first time I did this I was making meat loaf. I wasn’t sure how well it would work placing the meat in the Instant Pot inner liner without enough water to… Read More

My Grandmother was an amazing cook. I don’t say this without having some testimonial type of information. Let me give you a little bit of background about my Grandma. My Grandfather was a hemophiliac. He was a “Christmas Hemophiliac” also called “Hemophilia B”. Because of this incurable disease my Grandfather could not be fully insured for complications resulting from the hemophilia. It was not unusual for him to be hospitalized for bleeding and my Grandmother knew how to control it and would work with the doctors to keep him well. I can even remember a few times when they would be traveling and he would have a bleed and she would have to hospitalize him away from home. There were times that the doctors were not listening to her and she would check him out of the hospital and transfer him to a facility where they would listen… Read More

The big cooking craze lately is all about electric pressure cooker. I got the “Instant Pot”. I researched this device after my daughter bought one and came over and cooked a 4 pound pork shoulder to fall apart tenderness in 90 minutes. Really…90 minutes. I had seen similar devices advertised on television. One called the XL Pressure Cooker.  However the XL Pressure Cooker has a non-stick surface and in my research I found where a few people complained that the non-stick surface was peeling. The Instant Pot has a stainless steel insert which I think is essential and it comes in several sizes and a multitude of features including fully programmable and even a Bluetooth one that can be controlled using your cell phone. Take a look at a few of these. I called my daughter back and asked if she… Read More