{"id":38556,"date":"2013-05-23T08:06:19","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T15:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=38556"},"modified":"2013-05-22T16:54:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T23:54:23","slug":"two-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=38556","title":{"rendered":"Two For You"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is about two recipes I made recently that turned out exceptionally well.<\/p>\n

The first was a dinner made perfectly for a sunny, warm evening spent on a deck with a grill. The evening was cooling down after a record hot day and Michael had biked home from work. I got home from the gym and we relaxed outside with a glass of wine while it cooked. The side dish, Creamy Dill Cucumber salad, was really quick to make, kind of a lazy man’s tzatziki\u00a0sauce.<\/p>\n

I halved the recipe since I only had one cucumber (although it was a very large cucumber so….it might be pretty close to the recipe). Either way, my calculations make it about 160 calories for Michael and I splitting half the recipe.<\/p>\n

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:68]<\/p>\n

I didn’t follow the directions exactly (it would help if I read the instructions first, right?) and skipped the step with the salt and cucumber. Oh well! It didn’t seem to matter. The cucumber salad was\u00a0delicious\u00a0and not soggy at all.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5052\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’d been marinating some chicken thighs in a store-bought lemon and herb marinade and even though it was store-bought, it turned out to be really, really good. I was happy with the end results.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5055\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I definitely prefer to make my own marinades (and I’m pretty good at it) but this one was just fine and good for a work night when I didn’t have much time. The cucumber salad went well with the lemon chicken. \u00a0I think next time I’ll try it with plain Greek yogurt.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5055\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael and I split the whole cucumber salad and it was delicious! Definitely staying in the rotation for this summer.<\/p>\n

The second recipe was a crockpot recipe I found on a food blog. I had some frozen pork chops (from Costco) that had been cut in half so I used 4 thin pork chops instead of the 6 thick ones the recipe called for.<\/p>\n

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:70]<\/p>\n

It took about 15 minutes to throw everything in the crockpot and just let it do it’s magic. I did this one on a Sunday and spent the rest of the rainy day catching up on some TV shows while it cooked.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5352\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I checked on it periodically and had some doubts about the pork. It was starting to look a little overcooked but I decided to just wait and see.\u00a0About 30 minutes before it was going to be done, I shredded the pork, added the peanut butter and then mixed the pork back into the sauce.<\/p>\n

The sauce thickened up nicely with the peanut butter and it smelled great!\u00a0I started the rice cooker with some jasmine rice while I finished things up.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5354\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I LOVED the flavors. The peanut butter was not overpowering and it wasn’t too spicy (next time I’ll add more red pepper flakes). I topped the dish with crushed roasted peanuts, green onions and drizzled some fresh lime juice on it. Everything went together perfectly. I loved how the peanut topping added some crunchiness to the meat.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5361\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The red peppers were pretty\u00a0decimated\u00a0by the time the dish was done cooking. I might add them later in the process next time just so they don’t get so mushy. Michael loved this recipe. It’s definitely the kind I would make for a dinner party.<\/p>\n

Using 4 thin pork chops got me about 4.5 servings total. I had leftovers for lunch the next day and it still tasted great. The pork wasn’t dried out like I had worried it would be. \u00a0It could definitely be done with chicken, too.<\/p>\n

Both of these recipes were winners! I hope you give them a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is about two recipes I made recently that turned out exceptionally well. The first was a dinner made perfectly for a sunny, warm evening spent on a deck with a grill. The evening was cooling down after a record hot day and Michael had biked home from work. I got home from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,55,1621,1841,315,104,107,4247,3205,5662,201,212,5170],"tags":[8584,468,7122,1842,7121,8770,7123,632,5148,4064,1572,934,937,7124],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38556"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38639,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38556\/revisions\/38639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}