Crockpot Roast

This is a spin on pot roast that's cooked in the crockpot. I've done many different variations on this, but here's tonight's version.

Crockpot Roast

Ingredients:

• 2 pound chuck roast, all visible fat removed
•  Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt
• olive oil
• 5 medium carrots, thickly sliced
• 6 medium red potatoes, cubed (omit if you are strictly following the SBD, or use sweet potatoes)
• a few generous dashes of Worcestershire sauce
• 2 6-oz. packages sliced mushrooms
• 2 15-oz. cans diced tomatoes, drained, reserve 1 cup of the juice

Directions:

• Liberally season both sides of the chuck roast.  Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and sear the meat on both sides.
• In a crockpot, place the carrots and potatoes.  Season with TSSS.
• Place the seared meat on top of the veggies and add a few generous dashes of Worcestershire sauce.
• Add the mushrooms, diced tomatoes and reserved juice.  Season with TSSS.
• Cook on low heat for 8 hours.  Towards the last hour, stir the veggies with a wooden spoon.

In the past, I've also added a large sliced onion, celery, as well as peas.

Ahi Tuna Sandwich

Another way to prepare and eat fish. I love fish. :-)  The goat cheese gives this sandwich a lovely zing that goes really well with the tuna, but goat cheese is pretty mild, so you'll have to be rather generous with it.

In hindsight, I guess I should have seared the sides of the tuna just for photo presentation purposes.  If you look closely, though, you'll see I did get a nice brown crust on the top of the fish (and on the bottom, too, I promise), if not the sides.

Ahi Tuna Sandwich

Ingredients:

• Orowheat 100% whole wheat sandwich thins
• goat cheese
• olive oil
• fresh Ahi tuna fillets cut into patty-size pieces
• Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt
• baby spinach, washed and dried
• tomato slices

Directions:

• Spread goat cheese generously (generously!) over the bottom half of each sandwich thin.
• Place the sandwich thins in the toaster and toast until desired crispiness.  The goat cheese will soften but won't necessarily melt.
• Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil on medium high heat in a large pan.
• Lightly season both sides of fillets.  Place in pan and cook 2-3 minutes on each side until fish is nicely seared on the outside and fully cooked on the inside.**
• Place fillet patties onto the cheesed sandwich halves.  Add spinach and tomato slices and top with the other halves of the toasted sandwich thins.

**Note: unless you are purchasing sushi-grade tuna, please cook your fish all the way through for safety reasons.  This includes all fish purchased at mainstream supermarkets.  If you like seared tuna, where the fish is raw/rare inside, you'll need to buy sushi-grade tuna at specialty stores.

Sauteed Kale and Tomato

Kale.  It's my new favorite green.  Seriously.  It's robust, flavorful, and chewy and crunchy at the same time.  I had some beautiful tomatoes today so I thought I'd sauté them up together.  I loved it.  Hubby didn't care for the tomato part, so I'll try this again another time without the tomato (maybe with mushrooms?).

Sautéed Kale and Tomato

Ingredients:

• olive oil
• 3 medium tomatoes, sliced and seeded
• A big bunch of kale, chopped into bite-size pieces, washed and drained
• Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt
• Tastefully Simple Onion Onion

Directions:

• In a large pan, drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil.
• Add the tomato and sauté on medium-high heat until soft (approximately 5 minutes).
• Add the kale, a few dashes of TSSS and a few dashes of TSOO. 
• Sauté until the kale is soft but still slightly crunchy/chewy (approximately 3 minutes).
• Serve immediately.

We had this tonight as a side to some Simple Snapper and yams.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin

I normally would make this with a few cloves of freshly-crushed garlic, but I don't have any on hand at the moment, so I just used garlic powder (I'm also out of Tastefully Simple Garlic Garlic - gasp!). Ghetto, I know. My apologies. :-)

Roasted Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cloves of fresh garlic, crushed (I used 1 tablespoon of garlic powder today)
• 2-3 teaspoons of dried rosemary
• a few dashes of Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt
• a couple tablespoons of olive oil
• 1.5 lb pork tenderloin, all visible fat removed

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• In a small bowl, combine the garlic, rosemary, seasoned salt and olive oil so it forms a paste.
• Rub the mixture all over the pork.
• Place pork on a sheet pan and roast until a meat thermometer registers 155 degree F (45 minutes to 1 hour).
• Let the pork rest for 15 minutes before slicing.

I like to add veggies to the pan about 20 minutes before the end of cooking time, so they can roast alongside the pork and soak up any of the yummy juices.  Today's green of choice: Brussels sprouts.  YUM!