Perfect Pot Roast, thanks to the Pioneer Woman.

My new next door neighbor is really great. Our kids love to play, and I marvel at how much alike we are. Both of our husbands are JAGs, both of our first cars we bought for ourselves are VW Jettas that both of our husbands now drive to and from work. We both love Americana themed things, and we even have the same picture hung in the same place in our separate homes. We have the same interests, and I see that we do many, many things the same way. One thing we share is a love for cooking and baking. She has turned me on to a cooking blog called The Pioneer Woman.

Apparently, I am the last person on earth that has a love for cooking and baking that had not heard of her blog until recently. I mean, this lady is amazing. Her husband runs a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma. She helps on the ranch, homeschools four kids, makes all kinds of delicious food, takes pictures of the process, blogs about it, as well as blogging about several other things besides cooking, writes cookbooks, has blog readers out to the ranch to cook with her....I mean, how do women do this? It doesn't seem like there is anything neglected in her life, except for maybe sleep. She didn't mean to become rich or famous, but is now both, at least in the cooking blog community. How come stuff like that doesn't happen to me???

My neighbor, Amanda, has The Pioneer Woman's cookbook, and she let me borrow it last week. I sat down, read it like a novel, then went straight to Amazon to order my own copy. I mean, this lady knows what's-what when it comes to cooking. I love that her recipes are real, and that she uses real, everyday, not-hard-to-find ingredients. It's hearty, wholesome food (she does feed cowboys, after all, and they ain't gonna eat no junk!). And she uses real butter and lots of it. You get automatic bonus points with me if you use real butter. And lots of it.

One thing I have always struggled with in my world of cooking is pot roast. I love a good pot roast. It is the ultimate comfort food, and I love to serve it on Sundays. Makes the whole house smell good and the oven or crockpot does all the hard work, which is nice on Sundays when we're supposed to be enjoying a day of rest anyway.

My mom makes a fabulous pot roast. She uses this dutch oven thing that has be at least fifty years old. I never remember having a pot roast she made that didn't come out of that pot. This past summer at Lamberts Cafe when we were at the beach in Alabama, I had some pot roast that was not better, but as good as my mom's. But after many, many attempts, I have never been able to make what I feel is a really good pot roast. Edible and fill your belly, sure. But nothing great.

Until last Friday. I decided I wanted comfort food on a Friday. I had a pot roast in the refrigerator and while reading the Pioneer Woman's cookbook, I found a recipe that looked divine. I have always cooked pot roasts in my crockpot. And I just could never get it right. They were always edible, but I could never get one where I pushed back from the table and went, "That was just an awesome pot roast!" Until last Friday night, that is.

I give all the credit to the Pioneer Woman and her recipe, and none to myself. My only regreat with this recipe is that I didn't buy a bigger roast. Lesson learned. If we would have had leftovers, they would have been great on sandwiches the next day. So I will send you here to her recipe, and give credit where it is due. Thank you, Pioneer Woman, for teaching me how to make a good pot roast. I promise I will never do a pot roast in my crockpot ever again!

Click here for The Pioneer Woman's Pot Roast Recipe

I also made her mashed potato recipe out of her cookbook. I used red-skinned potatoes instead of russets and left the skin on because we like extra fiber like that. And just for kicks, I sprinkled some cheese over the top. Holy schmoly. Just typing this and uploading these pictures makes me want to run right to my kitchen and cook another meal like this one.

Click here for the Pioneer Woman's mashed potato recipe.

I get way more excited about food than anyone probably should. I know this.

Stuffed Grilled Zucchini

Tonight I had this great dinner planned out. A great dinner that included my husband at the grill. He's good with the grill. We just have a cheap charcoal grill that I wouldn't feel comfortable operating unless my family was starving and that's the only way we could eat, but he's good at it. I wanted to grill Jamaican Jerk pork chops, have a nice green salad, and then my friend Kelly sent me the link to a recipe for Stuffed Grilled Zucchini. We're eating something from our garden (or our neighbor's garden) every night, and I'm getting kind of tired of fried and baked, fried and baked. So she graciously sent me several recipes that use summer produce in different ways.

Only it got to be 6pm and my husband still wasn't home from work. Hmmm. Where could he be? They're in the middle of a base-wide readiness exercise in which he's working even crazier hours than he was previously. And he's previously been working 12-14 hour days with no lunch breaks, but this time they can do crazy things like call him in out of a dead sleep at 12:30 am . They have to make sure if there is some horrible disaster somewhere that they can process their troops here and get them out within 48 hours. It's a worthy exercise, it's just unfortunate that it's falling now at this time when David's office is five attorneys short and the two that are there are being worked, literally, to death. I assure you I complain about much more than he does, and I try to keep mine to a minimum. It just gets lonely not having him around. A taste of what is to come, I suppose, when he deploys.

So I call him at 6pm. He's with a client. At 6pm. They rotate doing night legal assistance for people who work the night shift once a month, and it's his turn to do it. He'd been so busy today that he hasn't eaten or even had time to call and tell me he won't be home until probably after the kids are in bed. And you know that's late.

So, hungry, sad, and tired of whining, hungry kids under me (and rightfully so, I guess. It was 6pm and I hadn't let them have snacks since about 4), I took matters into my own hands.

If you haven't invested in a grill pan for your stovetop like this one, then you should. I use mine a lot, and even more so during the winter when it's too cold to grill outside. This one, of course, is a Pampered Chef grill pan, but I'm sure there are other good ones out there. I just love the way the nonstick Pampered Chef pots and pans clean up. It's a snap.

So I grilled our porkchops on the grill pan inside (and even managed to get the criss-cross-apple-sauce grill marks!), made a salad, and then made the stuffed "grilled" zucchini. Only I had to adapt it a bit.

We all cleaned our plates, and possibly because we didn't eat until 6:45 and we were all starving, but it was good.

Stuffed Grilled Zucchini

4 medium zucchini
5 t olive oil, divided
1/2 c finely chopped onion. (I used red onion because I needed to use it up, but the recipe said vidalia was really good in this recipe.)
1 t minced garlic
1/2 c dry bread crumbs
1/4 c + 3 T shredded parmesan cheese
2 T minced fresh basil (I just sprinkled some dried basil over the top because despite my fresh herbs being literally right in front of me multiple times during the day while standing at the sink, I forgot to water them and they died. Sad.)
1/2 t salt

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise; scoop out pulp, leaving a 1/4" thick shell. Brush with 2t of oil; set aside. Chop pulp. In a large skillet, saute pulp and onion in remaining oil. Add garlic; cook 1 minute longer. Add bread crumbs; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from the heat. Stir in 1/4 c parmesan cheese, basil, and salt. Spoon into zucchini shells.
Sprinkle with 3 T parmeasan cheese. Grill, covered with foil, over medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until zucchini is tender.*

*So because I didn't have the grill fired up, I did things a bit differently. I assembled them according to the recipe, but them put them on a baking sheet and roasted them for about 20 minutes in a 425 degree oven. Then I took them out and added them to the hot grill pan after I took the pork chops out and put my grill press over the top and grilled them for about 10 minutes.