Mandy and Jace

Until recently I didn’t know how stupid easy making your own chili powder was. Who knows how much money we have spent on “good” chili powder when we could have done it ourselves for a couple of bucks.

So are you ready… there is a lot to remember…

Chili Powder

Dried peppers (any kind you want. We just went to HEB and bought a bag of mixed dried peppers)
Ground white pepper (any kind of pepper will do)

Cut peppers in small pieces and leave as many seeds in as you can handle. Remember the more seeds you leave in, the hotter the powder will be. Put the pieces in a coffee bean grinder and grind into a powder. Grind some pepper into the powder and leave it out for a day to finish drying. Put it in a shaker and use it wherever you want to.

Ta da! That’s it. Enjoy!

We tried a new recipe tonight that was so good I had to share it with everyone. It is a Zucchini Carbonara that was wonderful. The original recipe was from a website called Serious Eats and was enough to feed an army so I cut it in half. If you decide to make enough food to feed an army just double it. Oh and sorry for the bad photography. My real camera wouldn’t work and I was too hungry to get another one so I took it with my phone.

Zucchini Carbonara
adapted from Serious Eats

2 medium zucchini
1/2 pound whole wheat penne (I use whole wheat pasta whenever available but regular pasta is fine)
3 egg yolks
1 handful Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 thick slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
3 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves removed
salt and pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook pasta.

While the pasta is cooking, slice the zucchini into small rounds.

Combine the egg yolks in a bowl with half the Parmesan cheese and lots of salt and pepper. Stir with a fork to combine.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and add olive oil. Fry the bacon until it is almost crispy, then add the zucchini and thyme. Cook until the zucchini is to your desired doneness.

Drain the pasta holding back a small amount of the pasta water. Add a little of the pasta water to the egg yolks and stir to loosen the eggs. Pour the egg mixture and the zucchini, bacon, thyme mixture over the pasta and stir to combine. Pour remaining cheese over the top and season to taste.

This past weekend we got to attend the 70th annual Gregg Family Reunion with my wonderful father and mother in-law. We had the greatest time catching up with family and doing lots of swimming, shopping and eating (which I am trying to forget about). It was so great to be able to see everyone and create memories we will never forget.

As always you can go here to see all my photos from the reunion.

I put on my Facebook status that I made this and several people said they wanted the recipe so I though I would share. This sounds hard but believe me its not. I am a definitely not the cook in this family so if I can make this anyone can.

I got this recipe from Giada De Laurentiis’ cookbook Everyday Italian and changed a couple of things to make it mine. I love this cookbook. I know a lot of people don’t like her food, but everything I have made that came from her has been fantastic.

Rosemary Crusted Pork Loin

2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 boneless pork loin

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Pull the rosemary leaves off of the springs, discard the sprigs and chop the leaves. I like mine very small because I don’t like rosemary in my teeth but you can chop it as finely as you would like.

Combine the oil, rosemary, salt and pepper in a small bowl and stir it together. Rub the oil mixture onto your pork loin and rub it in well. Depending on the size of your pork you may not use all the mixture.

Put the pork into a roasting pan and put it in the oven. I use a thermometer that I can read outside the oven. If you have one, heat the pork to your until the temperature is to your liking. 160 degrees is the recommended temperature but we like ours a little more rare (don’t call the contamination police on me it is perfectly safe). If you don’t have a thermometer it should say on the package that your pork came in how long it should take. Mine took about 20 minutes.

Remove from oven, slice and serve.

This weekend we threw my memaw and pop a birthday party. Pop turned 80 and memaw turned 75. So we invited 125 of their closest friends and had a party. The guest list started out small and much like our wedding it grew and grew to where our small party turned into a huge blow out.

We had a great party. We got to see friends that we haven’t seen in a while and friends we see quite regularly. And above all memaw and pop were reminded once again that they are loved very, very much.
I had to throw this photo of my cousin Rani in because I thought it was really funny.