Jeff and I have been craving potstickers lately. I used to make them all the time, so much so in fact that we got sick of them. Now though, they’re sounding good again.

Well, I bought some ground pork to use for the potsticker filling and didn’t realize that I’d bought way too much until I got home. Ground pork tends to spoil pretty quickly, so I needed to come up with something to do with the other half of it right away. I decided to season all of it in the same way that I season the potsticker filling and then just roll the other half into meatballs.

With fresh veggies and some sweet and sour sauce, it became this…

To make, I mixed ground pork with garlic, ginger, scallions, sesame seeds, and spices and rolled them into little meatballs. These got baked at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

While those were baking, I sauteed broccoli and shiitake mushrooms in sesame oil with some red pepper flakes. When the meatballs were done, I added them to the vegetables and glazed everything with sweet and sour sauce.

It was so good over hot rice.

Sweet and sour pork meatballs

A new take on sweet and sour pork with flavorful pork meatballs and fresh vegetables.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Yield: 2-3 servings

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound ground pork
• a 1 inch piece of ginger (grated)
• 3 large cloves garlic (minced)
• 3 scallions (chopped)
• 1 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds
• 1/8 tsp. chili garlic sauce
• 1/2 tsp. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. mirin
• 1 small head of broccoli (cut into florets)
• about 6-8 shiitake mushroom caps (quartered)
• 1/4 cup sweet and sour sauce
• 1/8 tsp. red pepper flake

Cooking Directions

1. Mix ginger, garlic, scallions, sesame seeds, chili garlic sauce, soy sauce, and mirin into ground pork.
2. Roll pork into small meatballs and bake on a foil-lined tray at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.
3. Sautee broccoli and mushrooms in sesame oil and red pepper flake until cooked through.
4. Add cooked meatballs to vegetable saute and add sweet and sour sauce, stir to coat.
5. Serve over rice.

I love recipes like this that come out of nowhere. What started as a problem with too much ground pork turned into a really unique dinner idea.

Have you ever had a stroke of cooking genius?

July 22, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 3 comments

Around 3 o’clock yesterday, I had a sudden and intense craving for blueberry muffins. It was like, panicky intense. So bad that I actually looked up a recipe and drove straight to the grocery store to buy what I needed to make them.

Ahhhhhh……blueberry muffin crisis averted…………..

Is that not the most gorgeous thing you’ve seen all day? To me, it’s just not a real blueberry muffin without a crumb topping, so I made a basic brown sugar crumb topping and added it to this recipe to form the perfect muffin!

This one was really interesting because you actually make a blueberry jam to swirl into the batter, yum! We almost ate them for dinner because I wasn’t in the mood to cook.

Sadly, we have an ant problem in our kitchen right now. I thought I’d found what had attracted them and eliminated it but they won’t completely go away. I’m sure having sweets in the house doesn’t help to convince them that there’s nothing for them here.

Anyone have any good DIY ant killer recipes? I’ve found a bunch online for how to kill an anthill outside, but not too much good advice about something to spray directly on them indoors that is non-toxic for food surfaces. I’m hoping they just go away on their own.

For now, we’re hiding the muffins in the oven to keep them from the ants!

Ever have a craving so bad you made it immediately?

July 22, 2011 Alayna Discussion 6 comments

Here’s one I don’t allow myself to indulge in too often: Pro Bars. These are one of the more expensive bars on the shelf, but they’re so hard to pass up with all the gorgeous fruit mosaic labelings and truly unique flavors.

I chose this one specifically because I had no idea what it was. Most of the flavors are very descriptive, but this Art’s Original Blend was a mystery to me. From the ingredient list I at least knew that I was in for peanut butter and chocolate chips, and really what more could I ask for? 😉

There are 19 grams of sugar and that’s more than I like, but at least it’s not full of corn syrup or anything gross like that. The 10 grams of protein is a nice touch.

At 370 calories, I really feel like this is more of a meal replacement bar than a snack. I love that Pro Bar is honest about that too. It says right on the front that it’s a “whole food meal bar,” that tells me right away that this is a meal in and of itself.

I couldn’t be happier with that ingredient list. It’s rather long, but most everything in it is real food, much of it in a raw state.

Appearance: It’s a bit smaller than anticipated, and with a $3.49 price tag that can be a little upsetting. It kinda feels like I’m being tricked with the rectangular packaging making the bar appear wider than it is. But inside, everything is as it seems in this bar. Whole nuts, seeds, and dried fruits are held together with what looks like a peanut butter glue.

Texture: It has a great soft and chewy texture, and even though all the ingredients are whole in this bar, it isn’t a chore to chew through. Bites flake off in big chunks, but it isn’t so crumbly as to be messy. The big chocolate chips have a wonderfully soft texture, not chalky or hard.

Taste: It’s hard to explain, but you can actually taste each individual ingredient. If I think about the papaya, I can taste the papaya. If I try to taste the sesame seeds, they come rushing to the foreground. If I’m not thinking about it, it tastes mostly like a mixture of brown rice syrup and peanut butter, studded all over with fat chocolate chips and juicy sweet raisins. The chocolate chips have an incredible flavor too, almost fruity like raspberry or blackberry.

Overall, I absolutely loved this bar. The flavor is incredible and the ingredients are so wholesome. With it’s higher price and calorie content though, it’s definitely one that I would reserve for those random occasions that I miss a meal and need a healthy snack to fill me up for hours.

Do you ever use snacks like this when you know you’re going to miss a mealtime?

July 21, 2011 Alayna Discussion 2 comments