Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

For this month’s Secret Recipe Club I got fellow Nicole from i am a honey bee. Nicole lives in Boston and has a cute daughter, boston terrier, and bunny. She also likes scrapbooking when not making delicious meals.

I recently got a slow cooker and have been trying to think what to make with it. Honestly, I leave the slow-cooking to my husband since he works from home and will be the one preparing it. He took a look at Nicole’s blog and decided right away on this barbeque-style pork tenderloin.

We served this pork drizzled with the liquid remaining in the pot along with some spinach and curried quinoa. This pork was a tiny bit dry but adding sauce cured it immediately. The tenderloin pulled apart effortlessly and we quickly ate the leftovers on sandwiches later in the week.

It also held up great when packed for a bento lunch. Like I do with pasta and sometimes rice, I sprinkled a little water on the pork when re-heating so that it wouldn’t dry out. And of course I was sure to drizzle some extra ‘juice’ in when I was packing it up the night before.

Check out Nicole’s blog for other great posts, including homemade cheez-its, slow cooker roast chicken, biscoff muddy buddies, s’mores chex mix, and everything bagel pretzel bites.

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Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes (Bento Stash)

I’ve only made this batch of Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes from Cannelle et Vanille once, but they’ve lasted for a very long time. My boyfriend wasn’t interested in eating them since they contained coconut oil so I had them all to myself. I ate some right away with tzatziki sauce (above) and stored the rest in the freezer to be used for meals in the future.

One such meal was this, made when I was working from home one day. Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes topped with some mustard seed cheese, hot pepper jelly, an egg, all atop some pita crackers.

Other meals were compiled last minute or just needed a little something extra.
Left: Curried Potato Gratin, Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes, Edamame

Right: Sundried Tomato Pesto Pasta (dinner leftovers), sweet potato quinoa cakes, edamame, homemade apple/asian pear/ginger applesauce with granola

See how the quinoa cakes just fit perfectly in to a lunch box? More curried potato gratin, quinoa cakes, a japanese wagashi jelly, and some peaches and blackberries we picked at Hollins Farm.

Egg Salad & Carrot Cake Cupcake Bento

It’s been a while since a lunch post appeared!

Have you ever boiled a bunch of eggs and wondered what to do with them? Easter, Labor Day, and other holidays come to mind. This egg salad is a basic recipe that substitutes the celery for green peppers and is on pumpernickel/rye swirl bread . Going with the Easter theme (only 5 months late, right?), this lunch was packed in a Miffy sandwich box with a carrot cake cupcake, some edamame, and a fruit cup.

The cupcake packed above was from my “mother-in-law”. It’s a coincidence because I made a bunch of carrot cake cupcakes too! I stopped by a local cake supply store and got some sugar carrots as decoration, but other than that, this recipe is simple and timeless.

I used the extra batter to bake mini-cupcakes. I mixed a little green food coloring and some shaved coconut to make some “easter grass”, then decorated them with jelly beans for eggs. An ice cube tray was a perfect vessel for transport.

This past April I went to my parents’ for Easter. We had some Hawai’ian bread, sweet potatoes, ham, scalloped potatoes, bacon baked beans, and corn. I’m not religious, though my parents are a bit. They know I just come for the food ^_^ I tried to propose a lamb or rabbit for Easter dinner next year but that didn’t seem to fly. It was hard enough to get them to try a different turkey last Thanksgiving!

Recent Creations

Here’s a little of what I’ve been up to lately in the realm of home cooking, baking, and general creation of delicious things.

I made chocolate whoopie pies with vodka caramel cream cheese filling (tinted green) for a co-worker’s going away celebration in March around St. Patricks Day. The cookies in a bag are from my boyfriend’s mom and are molasses spice cookies (I think the recipe is on the side of the Grandma’s Molasses jar). She also made the delicious chocolate cake in the bottom left. My boyfriend and I made the oatmeal raisin cookies in the bottom right (recipe from the Quaker Oat’s container).

For a work potluck, I made a simple blueberry and quince tart by layering blueberries and poached quinces on top of a pie crust and topping it with a simple crumble. Some parts of the quince were a bit tough since I didn’t remove the parts near the seed pods all the way, but it was a great way to use up fading fruit!

Around Christmas last year I made gingerbread houses with my family and spent two days during December making homemade truffles (Oreo, Fleur de Sel, and Hibiscus Tea) and peppermint bark for family, friends, and co-workers with my bestie Stephanie. We packaged them up with twine, artist tape, and stickers for the season. If I get around to it, I’ll post our truffle adventures, including a truffle class and recipes. I also made gingerbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and milk chocolate espresso cookies since exchanging cookies during the winter is a family tradition.

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Spring & Summer Bento 2010

Whew! The warmer weather and abundance of sandwich-lunches instead of true bento made Spring and Summer light seasons for bento. Often times I made and photographed dinner and plopped the leftovers into a container to eat for several days, so no pictures of that boring stuff. Below find the bento that I made and had the mind to photograph before devouring. There are bento from the end of February to the end of September.