Gingered Pork – A Taste of Home Recipe

When it comes to cookbooks I have 3 categories:

1. Cookbooks that I like to look through;
2. Cookbooks that I like to actually cook from;
3. Cookbooks that I like to look through AND actually cook from.

Y’all know the me’s of this world – the cookbook hoarders with every book there is out there, only to cook from our own family’s recipes instead.  There are a FEW cookbooks that I really love – America’s Best Test Kitchen (a fabulous gift from Nate’s cousin Carrie), The Pioneer Woman Cooks (obviously), and a great little Cooking Light find that I saw in TJMaxx one day.  Otherwise the other books I have I probably read (because reading cookbooks is tooooootally cool, didn’t you know?) and may have a couple of favorite recipes, but never actually use consistently.

In the past week this has changed though – I now have four whole cookbooks that I love!  The newest is the Taste of Home Best Loved Recipes (release date September 2012).  I mean let’s just face the cold hard numbers here:  there are 1,485 recipes in the thing that have all been tested in the Taste of Home test kitchens over the past 20 years.  You and I both know that’s a winning combination in and of itself.

 

One thing I really like is that there are several different indexes, based on ingredients, holidays, etc. so you don’t just have to find something based on the title.  Love that feature!

 

And, in typical hyperemotional super-sensitive and overly-sentimental Heather fashion, each recipe has a little story that goes along with it.  I’ve said it a million times, but I’ll say it again:  I love, LOVE, that food is such a personal part of our lives.  It invokes memories, emotions, and has the ability to bring us back to our roots the way no otherthing on this earth can.

 

Have I mentioned I really like this cookbook?

I’ve actually made a couple recipes from it, but my favorite one thus far was for gingered pork.  This past weekend I had a pork loin that I needed to cook and the typical roasting method just wasn’t going to work for me since I was, ahem,cleaning my oven when it was 95+ degrees outside.  So I grabbed the book and found a long list of pork recipes, only to discover the gingered pork.  I have to say, I loved it – Nate loved it – and I can only assume that Wes would have liked it too!  It made the house smell amazing and the leftovers were just as good, if not better.

 

The only changes I made were using fresh ginger instead of ground (the recipe called for 1 Tbsp ground ginger and I used the same measurement for the fresh) and I didn’t have asparagus, so I subbed in broccoli florets.  Awesome.  Make it – the recipe is here!

 

Also, make sure you stop back by tomorrow – I got something special for you guys 🙂

 

*I was sent the Taste of Home Best Loved Recipes book to review; the opinions are my own.*