Stay home Date nights

More and more Chris and I find we need to schedule time to spend together. Between evening meetings and early morning meetings for my job, his job, his growing practice, continuing legal education classes in Portland, the gym, church, family and social obligations we can go a long time without spending quality time together. When that happens we both get grumpy, we feel frazzled, and we start to get into little fights about stupid things. So we try to purposefully schedule time together. Often this is simply a night in together cooking something delicious, watching the Office or Frasier and hanging out.

This Friday we decided to make a Jamie Oliver recipe and hang out in our new kitchen. We did the dishes together. Chris sat on the bar stool and chatted with me while I prepared our dinner, we had some wine, we started unpacking our china and basically just hung out in our kitchen for the hour and a half dinner was in the oven. It was delightful and yummy.

We made Roasted Pork Loin with Peaches from The Return of the Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver.

It was so good and just as beautiful cooked as it was before it went in the oven. But we were so hungry by the time that it came out of the oven that I failed to take a picture.

Roasted Pork Loin with Peaches

pork loin (I made two so that the pork would stretch to 3 dinners)

2 TB butter

2 cans peaches with natural juice

fresh thyme

salt and pepper

olive oil

Yukon gold potatoes

Preheat oven to 425. Butterfly loins and season well with salt and pepper. Dot with butter and add thyme. I think I used 4-5 sprigs. Then lay peach slices in middle tie up with cooking twine. Line roasting pan with chopped potatoes, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Lay pork loin on top of potatoes and add remaining peach slices. Reserve juice to baste as cooks. Brush some oil on top of pork and season again with salt and pepper. Place in oven and cook 1 hour-1 and a half hours for medium. Check once or twice and baste with reserved peach juice. Remove from oven when meat registers 150 degrees on meat thermometer. Let meat rest at least ten minutes before slicing.

Recipe adapted from Jamie Oliver's see notes below

*Notes: the original recipe calls for using a pork loin roast with bones and fat still attached. I think this may be more common in the UK because it isn't something I see in our grocery stores. I probably could have gotten it that way at a local meat market but that would have made this a very expensive dinner, so I opted to alter the recipe instead and used a regular pork loin. I was also dealing with a new oven which I am learning runs low. I need to test the oven temps with a thermometer, but my sense was that 425 was not actually reaching 425. The recipe says to cook the roast for one hour (this is with skin and bones and fat) for medium and we ended up cooking it one hour and twenty minutes before it hit 150 degrees. The leftovers were great the next night and we still have pork left which I will be making into shredded pork tacos tonight with queso fresco, green salsa and cabbage slaw.