I’m hoping to keep a running update of some of the things we are eating during our month of non-processed foods, hopefully without it simply turning into a list. I want to share some of the recipes we are using, particularly for the benefit of a few people who said they are interested in hearing what we eat, and I want to share the ups and downs and what we find works and what doesn’t.

With today being the first day, experiment level was on high. We had leftover cupcakes for breakfast (I’ll be sharing the recipe in the next few days, because they were delicious and, with a few adaptations, could be completely unprocessed, I think), then had Summer Snow for a snack. We were both a little over-full from eating hamburgers last night, so we skipped lunch in favor of dinner before Bobby went to work tonight (around 5:15).

For dinner, I cooked boneless pork chops with a creamy red wine sauce, potatoes au gratin from Pioneer Woman’s recipe (see below for more details on the pork and potatoes) and steamed carrots.

I feel pretty good about what we did for dinner. The pork was sauteed with olive oil and minced garlic, flavored with seasoned salt. Once the pork chops were cooked through, I added red cooking wine (I’m not sure how questionable the use of this is, but it is an ingredient we already had on-hand … I think it’s probably OK, though, at least according to the number-of-ingredients rule), organic heavy cream, salt, pepper, parsley and basil. I covered the mixture and let it simmer for about 8 minutes, then flipped the chops and added sliced baby bella mushrooms and onion, cooking it for about 10 more minutes on low-medium heat before turning the heat up to high and cooking down some of the liquid.

The potatoes au gratin were simply amazing. I made them using Pioneer Woman’s recipe. The recipe is pretty straightforward. I halved it, since I was only cooking for the two of us, and it didn’t cause any problems as far as I could tell. The ingredients included russet potatoes, minced garlic, heavy cream, salt, pepper and cheese. I had never tried to make au gratin potatoes from scratch, and this was refreshingly simple with great results — infinitely better than the dried (processed!) potatoes and cheese you can get from a box. This is a recipe we are sure to repeat this month, because Bobby loves this style of potato. And it made me feel good that I was able to make something I would usually just get from a box with such a wonderful end product.

So far, so good, I think!

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