Midweek Ramblings

My good friend Kim wanted the recipe for the Slow-Cooker Carnitas I shared with her a few months ago. We ate the carnitas with fresh cilantro leaves and prepared salsa rolled inside flour tortillas. This recipe is simply a delicious and easy way to make carnitas. Since this recipe makes a lot, you can freeze batches of the cooked pork for future meals. My only suggestion is that you may want to adjust the salt in this recipe. I found it was a bit too salty for my taste. Then again, I don't remember if I used a smaller grain of salt which may have increased the saltiness.

Below is another simple dish that I served last night. Surprisingly, Ashley loved it. It was tostadas.

Easy Weeknight Tostadas
Mission brand tostadas shells (or similar)
1 lb. 93% fat-free ground meat
salt
pepper
garlic powder
16 oz can vegetarian refried beans
4 oz light cheddar cheese, grated
1 small jar of prepared salsa
lettuce, shredded
1 small onion, diced

Brown the ground meat in a skillet until it's no longer pink. Season with the salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste. Remove from skillet and pile onto a large serving platter. Warm up the refried beans in the same skillet until warm. Remove from skillet and make a separate pile on the same platter. Place 4 tostadas shells in the warm skillet, cover with a lid, turn off the heat.

Arrange the cheddar cheese, lettuce, and onion into separate piles next to the meat and beans on a serving plate. Stack up the warmed tostadas shells next to the other ingredients on the serving plate. Allow diners to make their own tostadas by layering the refried beans, meat, salsa, lettuce, onion and cheese according to their desires.

Ashley and I recently joined Lighthouse Baptist Church. I am so pleased to see that Ashley is very excited about being involved in the children's ministries. She joined the children's choir and young girls dance ministry. We also attend weekly Bible study classes.

Last Sunday, Ashley performed with the choir at both the 8 am and 11 am services. She just joined on Saturday and had only one day to learn and practice three songs. The children sang How Excellent Is Your Name, How Great Is Our God, and one more song which I couldn't figure out the name. She did an excellent job!

Tonight is Bible study. Ashley had to learn the names of the first 10 books of the Bible. I had a workbook lesson to complete along with scripture to remember. I am loving our new focus on spiritual growth and learning.