New recipes

I have tried a couple new recipes lately. One of them was totally against my will. A few weeks ago, we were out in Iowa looking after my mother-in-law after she had a lengthy hospital stay. We spent a lot of the time cooking and filling up their freezer with food for the coming months- lasagna, chicken noodle casserole, mac & cheese, split pea & ham soup, beef vegetable soup, chicken & rice soup, minestrone, etc. During the first several days we were there, I barely saw my mother-in-law take more than a few bites of dry toast or applesauce. But one day, she decided that Jell-O salad sounded great to her. I have to admit, I have never made Jell-O salad before. So, with her direction, I mixed the cottage cheese, orange Jell-O mix, crushed pineapples and Cool Whip together. Totally.gross. I couldn't even bring myself to taste it. I actually like cottage cheese, but there was just something about the mixture of those ingredients that did not seem like responsible cooking to me. However, she loved it and that's all that matters. And, now I know how to make a Jell-O salad should the need ever arise again.

A couple weeks ago, I also tried a new recipe that let me use one of the million zucchinis from my garden. I saw this recipe for Zucchini-Wrapped Pork in Better Homes & Gardens earlier this summer, and it can be found online here. I love recipes that are simple and have only a few ingredients, especially during warm weather. I can never seem to make things turn out the way they look in a magazine, though. For the life of me, I could not get my zucchini to slice in ribbon-thin slices with a vegetable peeler. It was pretty pathetic:

So instead of zucchini wrapped pork, I wound up with more of a zucchini topped pork. It was delicious. Can't wait to make it again!