Tangy Pork Chops

I like the ease of cooking with a slow cooker, so this week I went searching for new slow cooker recipes for  some pork chops I had on hand.  I looked on Pinterest and found this recipe from Taste of Home.  It's kind of a stewed vegetable sauce to go with the pork chops.  It was pretty good.

Table

The one thing I changed from the recipe was adding more peppers.  I cut up a green pepper, a red pepper, and a yellow pepper, instead of just one.  Just a little way to add some more veggies.  Otherwise, I followed the recipe pretty closely.

Morty even helped out a little bit and we mixed the sauce up together.  (Shortly after I took this picture, he tried to shove his right fist into the sauce, which was precariously perched on his lap, so this is the only picture I got)

The table version of this meal turned out great.  I love how you do all the work for a slow cooker meal ahead of time - I started this in the early afternoon - so that by the time dinner rolls by, everything is already done.

Tube
To make the blenderized version of this meal, I used 2 oz of one of the pork chops and about a cup of the veggie sauce - i.e. the rest of the recipe ingredients.  I tried to make sure that I scooped up a bunch of the peppers and tomatoes in my measuring cup to put in the blender.

I planned to make this with 1 1/2 cups of brown rice, leftover from our meal, but unfortunately, we only had a little over a cup, and I wasn't going to cook more rice, so I ended up substituting a slice of bread in our mix.  Oh well.

Even though I list Trader Joe's Omega-3 Carrot Orange Juice, you could really use whatever juice you have on hand.  I just happened to have purchased this juice on a recent grocery shopping trip.  I think I thought I was just getting carrot juice when I put it in the cart, but noticed later that it contains sardines, anchovies, and tilapia!  Sound gross?  Yeah, maybe.  But I can't taste any of the fish.  And it does have the good Omega-3's that the nutritionist wants us to get.  She suggests fish 2 times a week - even for Morty's blends.  We don't quite get to that yet - but I'm trying to do more fish.

I also list applesauce, but we actually put a homemade low-sugar apple butter in our mix.  It came from a recent apple picking adventure that resulted in far too many apples than I knew what to do with.  I've been adding apple butter to a lot of his mixes lately.  I'm actually not even sure what the difference is between apple sauce and apple butter - maybe apple butter has more of the liquid cooked out of it?

Now, even though I didn't exactly follow it, here's my planned g-tube recipe:

Whole Milk	1 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
TJ's Omega-3 Carrot Orange Juice	1/2 cup
brown rice	1 1/2 cup
applesauce	1 cup
Tangy Pork Chop Veggie Sauce	1 cup
pork chops	2 oz
Canola Oil	3 T
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	40
Cal/oz	33.9
Cal/cc	1.1
% Fat	23%
% Carbohydrates	65%
% Protein	13%

Pork Chops with Green Beans and Sweet Potato Fries

Ok, first confession is that I did not take the picture above - I found it on Google Images and took it off of Southern Living or something.  Second confession is that I did not make the pork chop dinner that is pictured above!  My husband was gone on a 2-week trip for work, so you might be able to imagine how hectic things become with a special needs child with only one parent - you may even be in that position permanently yourself!  I was pretty much lucky to not fix frozen pizza every night or just eat a bowl of cereal for dinner - and believe me, that thought crossed my mind more than once.

Table
This table dinner was a pretty simple one.  I just grilled a couple of pork chops and ate it with green beans and sweet potato fries.  Nothing spectacular.

Tube
For the g-tube blenderized version of this, I added brown rice for carbs.  We buy frozen brown rice from Trader Joes that only needs a 3-minute zap in the microwave to cook.  It's the best thing for busy people.  I think the blend came out super thick, so if you don't want it so thick, I'd recommend only using about 1/2 the brown rice and substituting a couple slices of bread.

I also put in applesauce, because pork chops and apples just go together so well, and he needed some fruit.  I also added maple syrup because there's a Real Simple recipe we often use for sweet potato fries where you drizzle maple syrup on the fries.  I just used store bought frozen fries this time, but the maple syrup is good for a calorie boost.

Whole Milk	1 1/2 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
brown rice	1 1/2 cup
applesauce	1 cup
sweet potato fries	3 oz
green beans	1/2 cup
pork chops	2 oz
maple syrup	1 T
olive oil	2 T
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	38
Cal/oz	36.4
Cal/cc	1.2
% Fat	15%
% Carbohydrates	71%
% Protein	14%