All Recipes review

All Recipes has become one of my favorite site to find recipes lately. I love how all the recipes have lots of reviews, and a lot of the reviewers give changes and suggestions to improve the recipes. One of the other neat features is that you can do an advanced search for the ingredients you have on hand, and it'll find you recipes with those ingredients in them.

Last week I searched bacon, pasta, tomatoes and spinach and came up with this fabulous recipe for Penne Pasta with Spinach and Bacon. I did end up using chicken instead of bacon, fresh tomatoes instead of canned, and spaghetti pasta instead of penne, but it still turned out delicious!


Last night was pork chop night...I was bored with all the usual ways I cook pork chops (we eat them a lot because they are so cheap here!), so I did a quick search and found this amazing recipe. Baked Pork chops with Spicy Tomato Sauce. Here's the recipe and picture... Both Justin and I thought the sauce was astonishingly different and incredibly tasty. He was quite impressed and kept asking me what the ingredients were! The only changes I made was to lightly bread the pork chops in flour and pepper before browning.

INGREDIENTS

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 thick cut boneless pork chops
• 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 (10 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup water

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Heat olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Place pork chops in the skillet, and brown about 5 minutes on each side. Remove from heat.
3. In a small bowl, mix brown sugar, salt, pepper, and dry mustard.
4. Arrange pork chops in a medium baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice, season with brown sugar mixture, and cover with tomato sauce. Pour water into the baking dish.
5. Cover, and bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, to an internal temperature of 160 degrees F (70 degrees C).

Finally here's a great recipe for Pumpkin cookies. Last night I finished off 4 or 5 of these and could have eaten more, but alas, they were gone! Light, not too rich, and very, very yummy!

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 
  
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup of butter and white sugar. Add pumpkin, egg, and 1 teaspoon vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Drop on cookie sheet by tablespoonfuls; flatten slightly.
3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies, then drizzle glaze with fork.
4. To Make Glaze: Combine confectioners' sugar, milk, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add milk as needed, to achieve drizzling consistency.

Note: all 3 of these pictures are from the All Recipes site; they are not my own.