Peaches & Recipes!

In honor of all the lifestyle and food blogs I've been gravitating toward lately, I digress from my usual program to bring you this:

I love Colorado peaches. Having spent many of my summers growing up on the Western slope as the crops came in, I'm all sorts of supportive for peaches and sweet corn.

So I purchased some peaches when I last went to the store, and we've been enjoying them. Sometimes right out of the fridge (cold and refreshing) and sometimes like this:

And sometimes like this:

We love peach crisp. Tasty stuff, especially fresh from the oven with a bit of (or a lot of) vanilla ice cream...

Seriously, though, we're enjoying our new kitchen and have been trying to eat at home more. A few examples include carnitas in the crock pot (left) and honey chicken (right). Both are modifications off of recipes - the carnitas comes from a slow cooker book recipe for shredded beef, but I use pork and whatever peppers/chilies I can find, and the honey chicken is a Rachael Ray recipe, but with a lime-for-lemon juice substitution and some bell peppers for added flavor (and we don't make the rice the way she does - just white for us, please).

If you're interested, you can find the Rachael Ray recipe here:
http://www.grouprecipes.com/18248/honey-chicken-over-snow-pea-rice.html


The Reynolds' Carnitas
(based on "Shredded Beef for Tacos" from Fix It and Forget It, p. 126)

4-5 lb pork roast, scored deeply on top (if smaller, just decrease veggies)
1 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp. salt
pepper to taste
1 cup water

Mix & match chilies based on desired heat level:
(Last time for us - mild chilies and four jalapenos, as we couldn't find serranos)
2 serrano chilies, chopped
1 can (small - 4 oz, I think) mild chilies
2 seeded green jalapenos
2 seeded red jalapenos

Grease slow cooker (I prefer an olive oil spray, as it's easy) and add meat (scored side up), onions, chilies, garlic, salt, and water. I prefer to put all of the veggies together before adding them in, but it shouldn't make a difference in the outcome. I just make sure that they fall into the scoring, so the flavor seeps in through the middle of the meat as well as the outside.

Cover. Cook on High 6-8 hours. You can also cook on High for 4 hrs and then turn it to Low for 4 hrs - totally up to you.

Shred meat with forks. Put into tortillas with sour cream, cheese, rice, beans, lettuce, salsa - whatever your heart desires really. Leftovers are great for quesadillas, tacos, and a variety of other tasty foods.