Filled Pork Roast

All this working in and around the house made us hungry.
The other day there was a filed roast on one of the blogs and I thought we should try something like this today.
J.P. bought a 2 pound pork roast and I cut it accordingly so that I became a flat piece of meat.
I used garlic salt and pepper on the meat surface before I layered the thawed spinach, some small garlic pieces and shredded mozzarella cheese on to the top and sprinkle herbs over the mixture

Filled roast, spinach, mushrooms and potatoes

The next step is to roll the meat up (like a cake) and bind it with cotton household twine. The whole thing has to cook in the baking oven with a cover for about 60 minutes and additional without cover for 30 minutes.  The fluid which cooked out of the meat was an excellent start for a sauce.
I could use up a whole package of frozen spinach in the roast. The rest was worked into the side dish. Sautéed mushrooms, onion and spinach.
Ingredients:
1 pork roast
1 small pc of frozen spinach, thawed, drained
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 garlic, clove, minced
1 tsp rosemary, dried, crushed
1 tsp italian herbs mixture, dried, crushed
garlic salt, pepper to taste
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 F.
Cut the roast so that it becomes a big piece of flat meat. Season with garlic salt. Layer spinach and mozzarella cheese on top and sprinkle with garlic bits ( we like rather less than more.) Top with dried herbs.

Roll the meat, beginning at one end, into a tight roll and tie household twine around so that it stays in shape. Season the surface with garlic salt.

Slightly oil the bottom of a oven-proved dish and put the roast into it. Cover and cook for an hour. Remove the cover and cook for another 30 minutes.
While the roast is baking for the last 30 minutes prepare the side dish.
1 onion
5 mushrooms
rest of spinach

Slice onion and mushrooms and sauté in 1 tbls oil and 1 tsp butter. Add the spinach and simmer until the roast is done. Season with salt and pepper.
Take the roast out of the dish and thicken the stock with 1 tbls starch.

Before slicing the meat carefully remove the household twine.
Enjoy!

Chicken on a bed of spinach

What I like with this kind of work. It shows. You can see what you have done.
Very satisfying.

Before and after (per today)

Did finish the walls the hallway walls and cleaning the stairs off paint that the former house owner left behind. What is still to do: sanding the floors and getting the mouldings on, ceiling and changing the light fixture. With J.P. busy preparing for his new job I guess he won't have the time to do it all before our guest from Norway arrive.

I would rather stop now, get ready for the guests and do the rest later in in the fall.
We will see what happens.
There wasn't going on much in the kitchen corner. Not that we starved, but nothing to write about.
Today, though we shall have baked chicken on spinach.
Ingredients:
1 pk frozen spinach, thawed, drained
 1/4 cup chicken broth or vegetable stock
 2 chicken breast halves, boneless, sliced
 Worcester sauce
 salt, pepper
 1 large tomato, diced or 1 small can diced tomatoes
 2 green onions, with green, sliced
 1/2 cup Feta cheese (optional, I happened to have a rest goat cheese)

Instructions:
Heat oven to 350°. Put spinach in the baking dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add chicken broth. Sprinkle chicken with seasoning blend, salt, and pepper; arrange over the spinach. Sprinkle with the diced tomato and green onion. Crumble the cheese over the whole, cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake for 30  minutes longer, or until chicken is cooked through.

Served with boiled potatoes.

Now I have to get out and give Molly a bath. She rolled herself in something fishy. Yakk!

Just a grey day

Done with the Queen's Jubilee I went on to see if I could get a glimps of the Venus traversing the sun.
That was "nixed". No sun, just a heavy cloud cover. Now I will have to wait until 2117 before it happens again! Uhg.

That was all of the sun we saw today...

What did I do else? Washed down the ceiling and walls to prepare for the painting job. The next thing will be to give the ceiling a new coat of paint.
Then I will move on to the walls.
Stripes or no stripes - that is the question.
Not really.
Hubby doesn't want to sleep in a striped bedroom. There is no question about that. End of discussion.
The good thing is that the small room will look good in white. That way I can change the curtains and bedding colours any time.

Not much more happened.
I had a nap in the afternoon. When I awoke J.P. had come back from shopping and a pizza was sizzling in the oven.
Easy dinner for me.

Pepper Mill Refill

Today was the day where I decided to refill  my three spice mills.

I know, there are not the fanciest one and could easily be replaced by new ones, but I am the type of person that does recycle if possible.
Even the egg shells (but that is story for another day).
The thing with one of these pepper mills is that the refill happens maybe once a year. I always tell myself time and again that I will remember how it was done; just to find out that I forgot how I did it when I have to do it next time. Very annoying.
But - this time there will be no forgetfulness. I will pen it down in my blog- and just pull it up when I need it next time. How is that?

The mill for the steak-mill is easy - just screw the lid off and refill.

The pepper- and salt shakers are the culprits.

I recall the first time when it took me nearly an hour to figure out how to get the top off. I gathered all kind of tools to squeeze, push and pull. Nothing would work.

Then, in a final attempt to get it off I used both hands and screwed at the lid AND pulled at the same time. THERE! Done! Salt and pepper rest flew around, but the lids came off.
Now I create my own spices-melanges.
One: a pepper melange with all kind of colourful pepper seeds.

 The other: my personal mixture for steaks: pepper seeds, jalapeño pepper seeds, dried garlic, parsley root, a few coriander and cumin seeds and sea salt.

And the third (former used for sea salt): as a crusher for cumin and coriander seeds only for Tex-Mex or Asian style foods.
Now I don't need a pestle and mortar.

For lunch I felt for something with tomato.
Since we love tomato soup we had a tomato bisque.

How to make it see here.