BBQ Season is here!

Thanks to Blogger Aid-Changing the FACE of Famine's project View & Review, I was selected to sample and write a review on new products from Loblaw's Presidents Choice Biggest BBQ Event and Tour. For more information on their Great BBQ Event go their website and check their schedule to see when they will be touring your area and don't forget to enter the contest. But back to the surprise box that arrived last week.

How great it was to open the box and pull out this beautiful Presidents Choice cooler containing all new must try Presidents Choice BBQ products, and...

this luscious red apron!!

Here are a few of the items that were inside the cooler to help me get ready for BBQ season. PC Slider Thin Mini Burger Buns, PC New World EVOO, PC 100% Sparkling Fruit Juice, New PC Glaze With Balsamic Vinegar Of Modena, PC Maple Bacon Marinade, PC Grilling & Roasting Seasoning Grinder, PC Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies, andtheir new must try PC Thick Cut Ballpark Hot Dog Rippled Potato Chips. Attached to the package of buns was a $10 PC Gift Card to try the new PC Angus Sliders and a tub of the new PC Ice Cream Shop Flavours Ice Cream.

Supper that evening was a no brainer as I knew that I would be drizzling those new PC Slider Thin Mini Burger Buns with the new PC New World EVOO from Chile. In 2006 Chile beat Italy for the prestigious Sol D'Oro Prize for the World's Best Olive Oil. This EVOO originates from the same award-winning region, where olive groves have been cultivated for more than 400 years. The slider buns split apart easily and heated up nicely on the grill and were the perfect size for the Angus meat patty.

The new Grilling & Roasting Seasoning grinder with Sea Salt had the right amount of punch needed to spice up the burgers. It was a great addition to the BBQ cooler from Loblaw's.

Would you believe a chip that tastes like a hot dog? Well, believe it! The new must try PC bag of Thick Cut Ballpark Hot Dog Rippled Potato Chips tasted exactly like a hot dog from the stadium and was a great addition to the slider meal.

The cooler bag also contained various glazes and marinades. The Balsamic Vinegar Glaze conveniently comes in an upside down bottle and its thick glaze is great over grilled vegetables.

The next morning I decided to use the Maple Bacon Marinade for our pork chop dinner. The lovely flavors of the Maple Bacon Marinade would also be an excellent marinade for chicken.

By evening time the heavens opened and the rain came down but that didn't deter us from BBQing our delicious pork chops with the Maple Bacon Marinade.

A lovely addition to the meal was the 100% Sparkling Orange and Tangerine Fruit Juice over a glass filled with ice which was both refreshing and very tasty.

Last but not least, the cooler bag had a $10 PC Gift Card with which to purchase the Angus Sliders and thenew PC Ice Cream Shop Flavor Ice Cream that would go great between the yummy PC Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies. Wouldn't the ice cream and cookies make for a great ending to a great BBQ meal?

One of the great things about Presidents Choice is that along with their new great food products, as a company they are also involved in many charities in particular the Breakfast For Learning which provides nutrition programs to children of all ages across the country. Once again a huge thank you to Loblaw's Presidents Choice and their partners, and also to Blogger Aid-Changing the Face of Famine.Do take a minute to check out the wonderful food bloggers from around the world at the Blogger Aid link.

Roast Loin of Pork with Sage

The mornings are quite frosty, we even have to scrape off the car windows, but believe it or not, the sage in the herb garden is still growing strongly.
Actually besides being an extremely hardy herb it also multiplied and grew like a weed! Ron had a great idea of using a bunch of this lovely herb on the pork roast. He started by seasoning the pork roast his usual way, by studding it with garlic and cloves, covering it with Dijon mustard and seasoning it very well with just freshly ground pepper and kosher salt.
The new twist then was to utilize the abundant sage.
Voila.




He covered the entire roast with the sage leaves and then roasted it in the oven at 375 degrees. For about a titch over an hour. (You will have to adjust the cooking time to the size of your pork roast). What a wonderful juicy roast this turned out to be! Seriously I can't rave enough about how great this tasted, absolutely fantastic! We usually have left over pork roast for sandwiches but this time everybody had seconds.( Sorry no pictures of the finished roast we were all too anxious and hungry to take photos, it smelled so good we just wanted to EAT!)

THICK PORK CHOPS WITH SPICED APPLES AND RAISINS

Yes I'm back , Colorado is a place I would like to return to. I found it absolutely beautiful and would love to visit some of the places that we did not get to this time around. Time will tell if we ever return. The funny thing is that 34 years ago Ron was scheduled to go to a conference in Aspen that had unfortunately fallen through, I remember we were newly-weds and I was so jealous that he was going becauseI wasn't able to go.I was teaching and you just didn't take time off to join your husband, the School Board would not give you time off for that! Well to make a long story short, we did get to go,34 years later. Ron is still in Denver, hopefully returning next Wednesday, I did get to go and spend some time with him, see some sights and hopefully it won't be another 34 years before we return.
The weather here in Ottawa has just been gloriously sunny, cold, but what the hell here it's still winter. I can't complain seeing as my sister got snowed in , in the Washington DC area. The weather is making me feel itchy for some spring cleaning, but that soon passed as I decided to make the "Boys" a nice supper instead. What I started with was a brine for the pork chops. I like to do that sometimes with pork especially when they are a thick cut.

This is a sugar- salt solution with apple juice concentrate. The only sea salt that I had left had lavender in it and that is what you see floating in the brine, it did not call for it, as mentioned it was all that I had and it certainly didn't harm it.

Place the pork chops into the brine and let it marinate for no longer than 2 hours as you really don't want it to break down the meat texture too much.

While the pork is in the brine, get your apples ready for caramelizing and I also decided to serve this with a celery root puree instead of mashed potatoes.

This recipe came from Tyler Florence's book called, "Real Kitchen" with some minor adjustments that I made along the way.

One Boy loved it and had seconds, the other doesn't like his meat with fruit...oh well you can't please everybody. Thankfully the pork chops produced enough Au Jus for him to pour over his celery root puree. ( Hey Ma, why do the potatoes taste funny? #@**?)

PORK CHOPS/BRINE

1 gallon water

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup sea salt

1 cup thawed frozen apple juice concentrate

1 T black peppercorns

2 fresh thyme sprigs

(I also added a bay leaf)

4 pork chops

sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

SPICED APPLES & RAISINS

2 T. unsalted butter

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced( I used 3 apples)

2 fresh thyme leaves

1/4 c. raisins

3/4 c. frozen apple juice concentrate

3 T. brown sugar

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp.ground cloves

pinch of cardamon

pinch of dry mustard

sea salt/pepper

juice of 1/2 lemon

Combine the ingredients foe the brine in a plastic bag or bowl. Because this is a cold brine that does not get boiled make sure the salt and sugars are dissolved. Refrigerate and do not brine for longer than 2 hours as the meat will get mushy.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Discard brine, pat the chops dry season with salt and pepper and in a heavy skillet with some EVOO, brown your pork chops for 4 minutes on each side. Remove the pork chops and place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for an extra 30 minutes. They are done when the center is still rosy and the internal temperature is between 140-145 degrees.

In the meantime prepare the apples. Melt the butter in a med/high pan add the sliced apples and thyme sprigs and coat in a frying pan for about 8 minutes, until the apples get a nice hue to them.Toss in the raisins and the apple juice stirring up the bits from the pan.Stir in the brown sugar the the rest of the spices. Squeeze in the lemon juice to wake up the flavours and simmer for another 10 minutes, or until the apples soften and brown. Serve over the pork chops.

Sizzling Pork Chops

Ron is working in Boston, actually his hotel is in Marlborough Ma. and I've come to spend some time with him, keep him company and make sure that he isn't eating too many meals out!

He always, stays in a suite that has a kitchen convenience, but this time the room had a full fridge, and micro but much to my surprise No Oven!! Only 2 burners, 1 pot and 1 frying pan. Oh My!! Well, looks like meals were going to be limited to frying, not the most healthiest way to cook, but it beats eating out every night.

Ron's cupboard had the obligatory Mac n Cheese, and some pork chops in the fridge, a half opened bottle of wine , spicy brown mustard and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce , Tabasco sauce (To spice up his clamato juice, geez he's got his priority spot on!)

Well, my job was cut out for me. First we had to get those pork chops marinating, salt, pepper (the only spices he had) some vegetable oil ( not even olive oil!) some wine and those chops were now going to sit in some marinade.

Later on I browned the chops , sliced 3 onions (they were rather small), some garlic, added them to the browned chops, put a lid on the pan and lowred the heat to LO.

In the meantime I prepared the cucumbers, salted and drained them and diced in some green onions and tossed them in some sour cream. The Mac n Cheese was out of a box so that was fairly simple.

An hour later I took the lid off the pan and let the sauce , that came from the onions and pork chop juices reduce down and flavoured the sauce with some of that spicy brown mustard and a splash of wine. Not to brag but the chops were absolutely tender and quite flavourful. All in all not a bad meal. Next stop Trader Joe's for some groceries!

When Ron came home, I turned up the heat and got those pork chops sizzling in the pan. There were even 2 left to freeze, so that he could have a meal at a later date when I am back home and he is still finishing up in Boston.

PULLED PORK AND COLE SLAW

Canada Day was an absolutely gorgeous day. We went to the country for a day spent relaxing with family, swimming, talking,laughing, reading and of course eating. As usual there was way too much delicious food An easy recipe was the Carolina-style pulled pork mainly because I was able to prepare it ahead in my crock pot and the Cole slaw was also bought ahead and prepared earlier that morning.

As a matter of fact it was nice that most of the food was prepared ahead, this way even the men were able to enjoy the day and not have to slave over the hot BBQ.

There are many pulled pork recipes out there all of them excellent, even for those who don't desire to go this route it can be prepared as easily as jut using your favorite bottled bbq sauce, I like to prepare a rub for the meat and marinate it over night before I do it in the crock pot. This recipe is actually intended for the oven but the thought of putting the oven on and dealing with all that extra heat in the kitchen made me ill, so thank goodness for those crock pots!

This recipe came with the crock pot and over the years has been changed and added to and quite frankly I do it differently every time I make it, so it really doesn't matter so long as the basics are there. In my opinion tangy sauces are pretty standard for pulled pork, so whatever works best for you goes.This was how it was prepared this time.

DRY RUB

For a 6lb pork shoulder

1/4C brown sugar

1/4C paprika

1/4C cumin

1T cayenne pepper (or less optional)

1tsp. both onion powder and garlic

1/4 tsp.salt and pepper

Mix ingredients and rub on pork.

Refrigerate overnight

Carolina-Style BBQ Sauce

In a pot bring to boil the following ingredients. Use half of this sauce for the crock pot reserve other half for extra sauce when serving.

2/3C apple cider vinegar

1C ketchup

1/2C tomato paste

1/2C brown sugar

3T Worcestershire sauce

3T mustard

2tsp.paprika

2 tsp.garlic

1tsp. salt

1tsp. pepper

3/4C water

Peel and thinly slice 1-2 onions and place in bottom of crock pot. Take marinated pork and place on top and cover with half of the boiled sauce. Heat in crock pot for 6-8 hours. Pull out pork shred with 2 forks and return to sauce in crock pot. Can be kept in pot on the warm setting. You can either add reserved sauce at this stage or keep it on the side fir those that like it extra saucy.

Serve on a bun with a Cole slaw on the side or on top.

COLE SLAW (with or without mayo)

In my house everybody but me likes their slaw with mayo, while I prefer mine without. This recipe solves that dilemma, I cheated and bought the ready sliced Cole slaw prepared by the supermarkets, but homemade is still best in my books,

1 clove garlic minced

1C apple cider

1/3C sugar

1tsp salt

1tsp pepper

1tsp celery seed

Bring above ingredients to boil,to dissolve sugar. Set aside to cool

1 red onion diced

2T oil

Add the onion,oil and cooled vinegar mixture to Cole slaw mix everything and adjust salt and pepper seasoning. (At this stage you can refrigerate as is or add the MAYONNAISE, like I have to,I shudder to tell you how much...so you do it to your family's individual taste.

HAPPY CANADA DAY TO YOU,HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED YOUR DAY AND SAW SOME FIREWORKS.