Pumpkin cupcakes and 11 meals

March 4, 2013

Today was a great day for the challenge. My son used up some never ending bread by packing a sandwich for his lunch. My daughter brought some leftover lemon chicken soup. I also had some of the soup for lunch.

I was up early today so I figured it would be a good day for luau pork. It takes about 12 hours in the slow cooker. It is the easiest recipe (I may have already written about it) but it so delicious that I'm going to mention it again. Put 1/2 cup apple cider or juice in bottom of slow cooker. Place a large pork roast on top. Cover the roast with 2 tablespoons of sea salt (I just used kosher salt) and then put 2 tablespoons of liquid smoke on top of the salt. Cover and cook on low. My favorite thing about this dish is that it reheats just as tasty as the first day. I freeze leftovers and then can pull out containers for an easy meal later on that tastes like I've been cooking all day.

I looked through the fridge to see what to make along with our pork. I cut up the rest of the cauliflower and broccoli and got it steaming. I saw we still had a small container of cole slaw from when we ordered fish fry on Friday. Hmmmm. I wish I had little Hawaiian slider rolls to make sandwiches on. Oh wait! I did buy a loaf of the Hawaiian round bread (comes in a pie plate). I cut off big chunks of it and then cut it in half to make sandwiches out of. We topped our pork with barbecue sauce and cole slaw.

For dessert, I wanted to make cupcakes. I looked in the fridge and saw I still had 1/2 cup of mashed sweet potatoes. Well, the kids did love the sweet potato bread I made twice this week. I decided to make a half batch of it and put it into a muffin pan. If it looks like a cupcake, it's a cupcake. Uh oh. I didn't have a can of frosting. One more look in the fridge and I found what I needed. I mixed together 1/2 cup milk with a small box of pumpkin spice pudding. Then I added half a block of cream cheese (softened). Once that was blended, I added a partial container of cool whip that I found in the back of the freezer. There was probably less than half left. They turned out so good! My son said "It's amazing, and I can't stop eating it". Ha. I really loved them too. I'm betting that the last few of them do not make it through the night! There is still quite a bit of the frosting leftover. I may need to find something else to frost tomorrow.

After dinner, I got back to work. Remember that I had bought a 9 1/2 pound roast to use today? I separated the leftovers into different sized containers. A few really small ones. My hubby can take those to work for lunches. I made a few medium sized ones. Those I can use when my hubby works late and it is just me and the kiddos for dinner. I also did a couple bigger ones that will feed the four of us. Cook once, and feed us 11 times. Yep, a productive day indeed.