Cooking in December

We cooked a lot this month--pizza/calzones, breakfast foods, pulled pork in the crock pot and pork nachos.  We also hosted Christmas Eve at our new casa, and we were in charge of appetizers.  Stay tuned for White Chicken Chili and Fruit Salsa!

PIZZA
First we made calzones.  I used Pioneer Woman's Dough recipe (super easy--4 ingredients!) and a Pinterest-inspired Calzone.

{PW's Pizza Dough}

{Pizza}

{Braided Calzone}

The Calzone looks a bit like a mummy at the moment.  And I forgot to take a photo of the finished product, but it was tasty!  We both actually preferred the calzone to the pizza.  We made our Calzone without sauce and just dipped it in as needed.  

Our pizza had sausage, green peppers, tomatoes and cheese in it.  {Adam introduced me to green peppers on pizza, and I love the crunch it adds!}

COOKING CLUB

I hosted Cooking Club this month, and we had breakfast foods in our jammers one Saturday morning.

 It was a fun morning!  I loved setting the table with new wedding gifts.  It was a great excuse to get everything out.

{The Table}

Our Spread

Coffee Cake, Quiche, Baked French Toast,  Sausage Balls, Fruit and Iced Coffee.

I made PW's Iced Coffee recipe with Evaporated milk and served it in Adam's Glass Jar mugs.  It seemed to be a hit, but I think mostly they were excited about the jar-glasses!  

PULLED PORK--SLOW-COOKER STYLE

I recently discovered my co-worker didn't know how to use a crock-pot, bless her heart.  Seriously, it is one of my favorite ways to cook.  Who doesn't love to come in after a long day and have a hot meal nearly ready to go?!  

We got a pork tenderloin and threw in half a packet of McCormick's Slow Cooker pot roast seasoning and Head Country BBQ Sauce (the original recipe-giver said this was imperative.  And she's a good cook, so we went with it.  Apparently, it's only available at Kroger, though).  And Voila!  Come back hours later, and it's so easy to pull apart.  We've eaten it plain or on sliders.  Both are delicious.

PORK NACHOS

Adam and I actually could only find a small pork tenderloin at the time, and it was more than enough to have leftovers.  He will tell you that I'm not very good at using left overs, which is true (I am my father's daughter).  However, there's something about a crock-pot that cooks all the flavors in, so it seems to taste just as good the next day.  

With these leftovers, we made pork nachos, and they were so good.  Whenever I would spend the night with my grandparents growing up, Papa and I would usually have nachos as our midnight snack.  It brought back memories of that, and I taught AMP how to make a mean nacho.  To our pork-cheese-chip trio, we added black beans, tomatoes and salsa.  I wanted to make sure it was filling, and it was so filling, in fact, that we only ate half of this pan.  We served it with rice and green salad as well.

{Pork Nachos}