One Dinner, Two Events

Sunday's dinner ended up becoming an entry for 2 weekly food blogging events.

Due to the cutbacks (in time, not money) that need to happen here, I was going to skip making anything for VRC: Cinnamon and simply submit an old tried and true recipe that contained cinnamon. I decided, however, to stick to my original notion of challenging myself to try a savory dish with cinnamon. So, off I went on an internet search to see what I could find. Mind you, the search for a recipe alone can take me a very, very long time, so it's always a bit of a risk and usually a big consumer of time.

This time, however, I hit on a recipe almost immediately. Over at Epicurious, one of my favorite recipe resources, I found a recipe for a cinnamon-spiced rice that sounded like it would be a nice side dish for the pork tenderloin that we planned to grill that night. It also looked quick and easy, another bonus.

After that, I went in search of a new pork recipe that would go nicely with the rice dish. I went with second recipe listed on the Epicurious search and looked no further. Not only did it sound delicious, but it had many, many rave reviews AND, better still, it included an ARF ingredient - cranberries.

Unfortunately, I did not realize until later that these two dishes really didn't go together - I had been concentrating so hard on the cinnamon that I really didn't take into account the cumin seeds. With no time to make a change, I went ahead and made them both anyway. Each dish was excellent on its own, but as I rather belatedly expected, they really didn't go together. No worries - it was still gobbled up by everyone at the table.

I'm so glad to have tried the rice - it was very good. Easy to throw together, but so different from any other rice I've cooked. It made me crave a meat or fish dish that had other Indian flavors. The pork sauce was excellent. Also easy to throw together, even considering I used fresh cranberries to make a sauce as opposed to using canned sauce. Though very similar, I thought this sauce was much better than the cranberry, port and rosemary sauce that I tried a while back. I think the addition of balsamic was the key here. (Hey Mom, are you out there??? I think this has Dad written all over it, don't you????)

Not a new recipe, but I also made Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies. It's really all Anna's fault. Every time I visit her blog, Cookie Madness, I crave cookies. :-)

Don't forget to check out Sweetnicks on Monday night for VRC: Cinnamon and then again Tuesday night for ARF/5-A-Day-Tuesday.

Cinnamon-Spiced RicePhoto from Epicurious

Pork Tenderloin with Cranberry-Balsamic Sauce

So, one dinner, one post, two food blogging events. I think that's using my time wisely.