In the Kitchen With Mattie

Pork Tenderloin, Mashed Potatoes and Spinach

When it is hot out you still need to prepare a dinner for your family, none of us I don’t think stop eating just because the temperature rises although we might wish we could! Sometimes it is too hot to stand outside and cook on the grill too, or we may not have access to a grill if we live in an apartment or co-op that doesn’t allow them. When the temps soar I look for things to make that won’t have me turning on the oven too much or spending too much time in my HOT kitchen. We don’t have central air conditioning and we live in the south about 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico………to say at times it gets really hot here is an understatement! Tonight I made some pork tenderloins, fifteen minutes in a saute pan and they are done, the potatoes took the longest as I made fresh ones but even they only took about 20 minutes. If I manage to get in and out of my hot kitchen in under 30 minutes I consider that great when it is sooooo hot and humid. I know we could go out to eat but then what about the cost of doing that so often, plus is there anyplace near you that doesn’t serve mostly fast food? We do have some good local restaurants that we like but again, at the cheapest they would cost us about $25-30 for a meal each day if we went that route, I don’t know about all my readers here but I do know that we could not afford to do that. The other options are the typical fast food chains and they are not great for your health if you eat a steady diet of that kind of stuff. So tonight I made the pork tenderloins that I picked up yesterday at Sams, there were two packs of two tenderloins packaged together, I froze one two pack and we had the other for dinner tonight and hubby will have it for lunch at work tomorrow, forgot the middle son also came by and had some. If our son had not come by we would have had enough leftovers for another meal but we enjoy having him come by for a meal……….he figures he is just stopping by to check on “the old folks” but we know it is more for some of moms cooking! So for the four tenderloins we paid a little under $14, that breaks down to about $7 worth of it for tonights dinner for three and hubbys lunch tomorrow, not bad in my book at all.

     The meat was taken out of the fridge about an hour before I planned to cook it and was seasoned and allowed to warm up a little. The seasoning is something an old employer of mine used to use and we love it, you just sprinkle it on whatever you wish and it adds a lot of flavor, you can’t get much simpler than that, you don’t have to sit a figure out what seasoning goes with another and you don’t have to worry about dinner being too bland, this one seasoning does it all with just a shake of the jar! We haven’t found anything it hasn’t enhanced the flavor of but you do need to be aware and use it sparingly, also shake the jar before each use as the spices tend to sink to the bottom and using it without shaking it might give you a salt overload. There is no place locally that sells this so if you can’t find it in any of your markets either then there is always Amazon, they have just about everyting anyone is looking for. Here is a picture of the jar it comes in, it is made in Italy and I think if you try it you will be amazed that something so simple can make your food taste so good, but that’s just my opinion, everyones tastes vary and you might not be as enthused as me about it.

Seasonello Italian Herb Salt

So tonight as I said I made fresh mashed potatoes that were boiled for 15 minutes then whipped with some heavy cream, sour cream and butter. The spinach was just chopped finely and steamed. The meat was cooked, after seasoning, in a saute pan over medium heat for 10 minutes. See simple and yet a great dinner. The gravy was some I had frozen form our last pork dinner and was heated in the pan I sauteed the tenderloins in after they had been removed and place aside to rest before being sliced, I brought the gravy to a rolling boil to make sure it was nice and hot for the meat and potatoes. I was planning on making some fresh rolls too but it was so hot and humid today I gave that idea up, I didn’t want to have to turn on the oven at all.

 I hope that wherever you are it is cooler than it is here! If not think about cooking some shorter prep and cook time items for your dinners too.