Straw bales and potato cages

Straw bales with soil topping and drip irrigation system.  We eat the dandelions, so I don't count them as weeds... ;)

* We linked this post at Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop *

My straw bale experiments are finally yielding some results, so I thought I'd pass on what I've observed so far, and give a little update on the process while I'm at it.

Smothered Pork Roast with Blackened Tapenade Potatoes

* We linked this post at Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS and at Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade *

I woke up this morning to a great blanket of fog covering the pasture. There's nothing like a foggy morning to make you want to slow down and enjoy life a little more, and this dish is perfect for that.  The pot roast cooked for nearly eight hours, until it was fall-apart tender and covered in a thick, oniony gravy packed with flavor.  I made the potatoes on a whim, because we've managed to deplete our stock of greens.  They came out really good, I'd definitely recommend trying this one!

Menu for 03/07/11 - Bacon Wrapped Tenderloin & Garlic Carrot Potatoes (Dude1)

Apparently, I was making this meal for my dogs.  What you are looking at is a delicious bacon wrapped tenderloin moments before my dogs swiped if off of the dining table.  I served the meat with garlic carrot mashed potatoes.  This is actually a super quick and easy meal to throw together.  I liked it because it didn't require me to have remembered to prepare a marinade hours before the meal. 

Menu for 3/2/2011 -- Pork Tenderloin with burnt brown sugar and orange confit

* We shared this on EKat's Kitchen Friday Potluck -- check it out! *

I'd been eyeballing this recipe in Seven Fires ever since I got the book, and I finally got a chance to give it a shot tonight.  A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I got a shipment of fresh organic oranges from her parents in the southwest.  The oranges were fantastic, and we juiced a number of them.  I saved the peels with this recipe in mind...

This pork tenderloin is layered with orange peel confit, thyme, and burnt black sugar.  I served it with my special recipe rosemary scalloped potatoes and an experimental recipe for collard greens that turned out quite good. There are four recipes tonight, so I'll try to do a better job organizing them than I did on the fajitas post (I was pretty tired when I wrote that one).  If you start at the top and go down, you should have everything done at about the right times.  Here we go: