Salsa Verde Pork Tacos

Salsa verde spices up ground pork in these gluten free tacos. Spread the corn tortillas with a layer of refried beans for extra protein & fiber, and finish with your favorite toppings!

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Photo credit Emily Bir

This post is sponsored by the Ohio Pork Council, so it's odd that I'm going to start off talkin' turkey, but bear with me. Have you ever had a small interaction, a seemingly insignificant moment, that stuck with you, burrowed in, and changed your outlook on life? Allow me to share one such moment in my life.

A few summers ago I had the opportunity to assist The Foodbank with the quadrennial Hunger in America study. This involved going to many member agencies--the food pantries throughout Montgomery, Greene, and Preble counties who receive food from The Foodbank and get it into their clients' hands. I met the folks distributing food and interviewed folks receiving food throughout the Miami Valley. It was at one of these pantries that I experiences a tiny shift of my axis that has stayed with me.                        It was a hot, muggy August day and the food pantry had a surplus of whole turkeys in their freezer. As the clients were leaving, after they'd gotten their normal allotment of food, they were offered a frozen turkey. Some folks took a turkey, but the majority did not. I overheard one client say, "now what would I do with a turkey in August?"    Mind. Blown.    My assumptions--that folks have access to an oven to roast a turkey, or access to the rest of the kitchen infrastructure needed to fully utilize a 20 pound uncooked bird [check the Bed Bath & Beyond circular in November if you don't know what I mean], or the skills to know how to cook the bird--were challenged. Free food doesn't help anyone if you can't transform it into ready to eat meals.

Photo credit Emily Bir

This is why I'm delighted to spread the word about the Ohio Pork Council's recent donation. Ohio farmers have donated 17,400 pounds of pork to feed needy Ohio families. The Foodbank in Dayton received 3 tons of pork, enough to make 30,000 of the 87,000 total meals donated in the Pork Power program this month. That's huge and I want to shout it from this rooftop.

A pound of ground pork is a convenient source of protein. It can be cooked on a grill, stovetop, hot plate, or even a microwave. After the holidays donations to the food banks are down so an influx of healthy and useful products like pork is much appreciated. Providing wholesome meals to Ohio families is a thoughtful and compassionate endeavor, and I'm glad to draw attention to the efforts of Ohio farmers and the Ohio Pork Council.

The next food occasion on my personal radar is Cinco De Quatro Mayo so my mind is naturally turning in a fiesta direction. I'm checking the basement stash of home-canned salsa [no need to ration--yet] and craving more guacamole than usual. When the Ohio Pork Council asked me to share a recipe using ground pork, I immediately started thinking pork tacos. I didn't want to just substitute a pound of ground pork for a pound of ground beef or turkey and use my usual jar of taco seasoning.

Salsa Verde with Roasted Hatch Chiles (Canning recipe)

This tangy green salsa gets bright flavors from tomatillos and roasted Hatch chiles for a smooth dipping sauce that is also excellent in baked dishes. This canning recipe provides ample stores to enjoy the flavor year round.

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This salsa is one of the easiest canning projects I've done--very little chopping, doesn't matter if you've chopped uniformly or not, only a few ingredients to measure. The immersion blender (and the chile roaster at my local grocery store) do the bulk of the work. The hardest part for me last year was sourcing the tomatillos.

In previous years I'd get ample amounts of tomatillos in my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. In fact, that's how I started making salsa verde. My first time making salsa verde was NOT born from a desire to eat salsa verde, but from a lack of anything else to do with the tomatillos that were sitting on the counter!

After the initial batch, we got hooked on this tangy concoction. Last year I had difficulty sourcing enough local tomatillos to make a batch. I even spent 2 Saturdays hitting up various farmer's markets in order to get enough. This year I'm growing my own tomatillos. So far, so good. Wish me luck!

No Hatch chiles? No problem! Simply use the hot pepper that's available to you. It doesn't even matter if you roast it or not--the flavor will be different if using roasted peppers, but the recipe works either way. I can't give you any roasting tips because I buy my chiles already roasted. I picked up a container of roasted Hatch chiles once on a whim and I loved the flavor so much I come back year after year for more. Roasted chiles freeze well, so what doesn't get put up in salsas in the summertime gets used throughout the year. This year I'm going to try my hand at making chile rellenos with a quart, since we discovered that amazing concoction while Eating Locally on the Road last summer.


You could cool and eat this salsa right away, but I'm also giving canning instructions because this is my spouse's favorite salsa (mine is my Peach, Yellow Plum and Hatch Chile salsa recipe) and we eat salsa all year long. It's a terrific after school or pre-dinner snack, especially if you have family members who need to eat RIGHT NOW while you're standing in the kitchen finishing dinner preparations. Not that it's ever happened to me.

Easy Chile Relleno Dip

This hot, spicy, cheesy vegetarian dip has the flavor of a cheese-stuffed chile pepper similar to a jalapeño popper without all the fuss (or the jalapeños).  Salsa verde provides the heat in a smooth dip great for parties and game day snacking.

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I know I'm supposed to be all "eat healthier in the New Year" but the fact is that New Year's Resolutions, made during the post holiday let down while you're hungover from too much akavit, don't stick.

Small changes do stick. (Here's a link to how I increased the number of servings of fruits and vegetables over the course of my deployment. Here's another link to tips for increasing the amount of vegetables throughout your day.)

My small change for today is to offer a vegetarian alternative for your game day snack spread, evening cocktail party, or Cinco de Mayo fiesta.  While this recipe may not qualify as healthy, my grandmas--born around the turn of the previous century--would recognize the ingredients used to make it.

I tried my first Chile Relleno in Cody, Wyoming over the summer vacation. A roasted Hatch chile stuffed with Monterey Jack cheese, dipped in an egg batter, fried, then covered in a sauce made from more roasted chiles. And more cheese. I've ordered that dish twice more since we came home, made the flavor combo into a pizza even, but didn't think about making it into a dip until I spied twin warming trays at a holiday party. Little signs labelled one tray Buffalo Chicken Dip and the other Jalapeño Popper Dip. 

It was like dueling hot spicy cheesy dips--one for omnivores, one friendly to vegetarians. What a brilliant idea.

For more awesome veggie apps and snacks, please see my Pinterest board. For more game day snacks, just use the search bar on the sidebar to search for 'game day snacks'. For more recipes using Hatch chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipes Collection. For more recipes using tomatillos, please see my Tomatillo Recipe Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks trying to support their local producers by sourcing winter game day snacks out of produce grown locally during the summer.

Beef Tongue Enchiladas aka Enchiladas de Lengua

Spiced beef tongue with salsa verde and sharp cheddar rolled up in corn tortillas, covered with more cheese, crema, and salsa verde.

Getting dinner on the table when the family has been away from home all day long can be a family affair. [The dogs are not real helpful in this instance. Keeping squirrels on their toes in the back yard? They're on it.] Usually I'm the one with the dinner plan, and I call in the troops for reinforcement when I need help.

We like music while we work, so my spouse set up speakers in the kitchen that chat wirelessly with our computer. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the speakers are sick of my son putting his ear worms on continual play, or want to play something perkier at night when my spouse listens to his classical jams, but I like to mix it up.

After iTunes debuted their Radio component [and made it much more difficult to just play what I felt like listening to from my music collection] I discovered the Norteño radio station. What is Norteño? I haven't wikipedia'd it, but I would say you take the instruments from a German polka band and hand them to a group of Mexican musicians, stand back, and listen to the magic happen. I enjoy making dinner and dancing in the kitchen listening to Norteño, and it puts me in the mood to use a traditional meat, beef tongue, in my own way.

I'm all about using the whole Swiss chard and the whole cow, so here's another recipe using some of the parts we get when we buy a quarter cow. For another beef tongue recipe, please see my Beef Tongue Nachos recipe. Got ground beef? I've got 106 food blogger recipes using ground beef in my round up here. One of these days the Visual Recipe Index will have a category for Ground Beef and another for Beef Bits and Bobs, though that's not really search engine friendly. I'll probably throw a Pinterest board for all the random beef parts recipes on my Pinterest page. My darling daughter just suggested I call it Beef Undesirables, but I don't think she gets the idea of making it appealing.

Avocado Queso Dip

Avocado blended with queso and salsa verde for a creamy smooth dip. An excellent base for another layered vegetable appetizer.

This is not a sponsored post, though it probably reads like it. It's just on my mind, coming through the pen, and eventually through the screen. There is nothing to disclose.

In anticipation of Earth Day my family spent Saturday morning at our community park. We dug out muck from a drainage ditch, spread mulch across a playground, and enjoyed the pleasant feeling of being tired from physical work. That sounds so snooty, but our workdays are not spent shoveling, raking, and hauling wheelbarrows. It's a nice change to work at something physically and have immediate gratification. We went home and kept on going. Spending a weekend doing yard work is very fulfilling for me, though I understand I'm in the minority. I can deal with that.

See, I've got a secret: I've got good tools.

Just like how sharp knives and pizza stones make my days successful in the kitchen, the right tools make working in the garden a dream. I've mentioned my daughter's peach trees before, but what I haven't said was that the semi-dwarf variety was sneaking up to the power lines. My spouse fretted, then researched and bought a pruner stick. This tool is amazing. After he lopped off the offending branches, my daughter took charge and completed her annual pruning with ease. She's taller than I am, true--but her success comes from this tool. [It's her tree, she's in charge, we just advise and assist as needed.] One success led to another and I decided to do something about the bush that was trying to take over the driveway.

Last year a rogue branch dove down and took root in the mulch, starting a new colony right next to the asphalt and that just wouldn't do. I grabbed a trimmer but got stuck on the whole 'T Rex arm lack of upper body strength' thing. My spouse suggested I try the pruner. Holy cow! That thing cuts through thick branches like butter! After I brushed off some dirt from the blade it went in my finger like butter, too. Don't be like me, treat this tool with respect. [I still have 10 fingertips, I'm healing fine.] I extricated dead shrubs with this workhorse before switching to a smaller tool to remove the spent raspberry canes and transplant some new starts to make a second raspberry bed. On a roll, I fed the strawberry patch a Spring breakfast of coffee grounds and leaf mulch, then decided to feed the rest of the garden beds as well. The kids mowed after I picked violets to make my next Wild Violet treats, and my spouse de-dandilioned the yard with his favorite Japanese tool before spreading mulch on the dogs' race track, re-banking Dead Man's Curve.

We're greening up our little part of the world. Here's a green appetizer for you.

For other recipes using avocados, please see my Avocado Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks, please check out my Pinterest board of the same name.

Spicy Lima Bean Dip with Avocado

Lima bean and tahini dip with avocado for creaminess and salsa verde for spiciness. Top with more veggies and queso cheese for a tasty snack!

Ah, April. Everything is greening up outside. Our grass is enjoying the recent rains which, along with last Fall's snack of finely shredded leaves worked in with the mulching mower, results in a vibrant lawn I'd be proud to let a guinea pig nibble. Sadly after 5 years we are without guinea pigs to nibble grass. Instead, I have a posse of dogs who enjoy lying in the sun of an afternoon.

Vincent with the garlic bed.

I've planted peas and chard in the garden, and each day the garlic looks stronger and taller. Interestingly, there's now garlic appearing in 3 out of our 5 raised beds. I rotate my crops and apparently I have missed several bulbs over the years. If I get them out this time, I'm curious what a 'forgotten for 3-4 years' garlic bulb looks like. I'll share a photo on my FB page.

I wanted to green up our plates, as well. In the months leading up to the start of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share season I bounce between using put up vegetables from the freezer and buying fresh vegetables from the store. It is a treat to buy avocados because I know I'll be able to enjoy them as soon as they are ready (they won't be preempted due to vegetable triage).

In this recipe, I decided to keep the green theme going and use some lima beans from the freezer. I grew up eating lima bean and corn succotash but my kids are not fans, so I was looking for another way to use them. The lima beans blend nicely in a food processor and make an awesome veggie appetizer.

For other recipes using avocados please see my Avocado Recipes Collection. For other recipes using beans, please see my Bean Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource to help my readers figure out what to do when they've got ____________ to use. For other Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks, please see my Pinterest board of the same name.

Roasted Sweet Potato Nachos

Layers of roasted sweet potatoes seasoned with salsa verde, black beans, salsa and even taco meat if you've got it--all tucked under a blanket of cheese and baked until bubbly. Serve with tortilla chips for a tasty vegetable appetizer, another Awesome Veggie App {link to my Pinterest board}.

It's time for the Game!

In our family, that could mean Ticket To Ride, Sushi Go!, Qwirkle, Timeline or our newest find, Black Fleet (all game links are Amazon affiliate links). Several years ago, after repeated failures attempts we became a family who plays games together.

We don't play Candyland or Monopoly. To be honest, I never found those games particularly enjoyable and thought I just wasn't the type of person who liked to play games. I was wrong. It wasn't me--it was the games we had. If you'd like to have a blast playing games together, read on. If not, jump down to the nachos.

How did we become a game-playing family? My spouse. His engineer brain took on the task after my efforts failed, and he has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Over the holidays we had 12 people around the table, 3 generations, ages 14-86, laughing to the point of bladder control issues while playing Telestrations.

Telestrations is a combo of Telephone and Pictionary. Each person gets a drawing pad and a list of words. You read a word, draw a picture to describe the word, then pass your pad to the next person who writes a word based on your drawing. That person passes it to the next, who draws a picture based on the word they see, and so on. We bought 2 games so we'd have enough drawing pads for everyone--it's great for large group.

The Board Game Family is the blog where my spouse discovered our first successful games. Check them out here. Once you know the style of game that you like to play, you can find new ones yourself. We've had great success with Spiel des Jahres winners, and now enjoy cooperative as well as competitive games each week. It's great fun--yes I'm saying this about sitting around the dining room table playing games with my teens--and good for our mental and emotional health as well.

We don't feed our games, so the table gets cleared off, hands washed, and food put away before the games come out. If you're interested in another sort of game--say, you wanna watch football while eating these nachos--be my guest. They're certainly yummy and would work for that sort of game too.

For other recipes using sweet potatoes, please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index for this blog.

Cranberry, Chicken, Spinach and Leek Enchiladas

Leeks and frost-kissed farm share spinach, sautéed with chicken and cranberry salsa in a creamy enchilada, topped with spicy salsa verde.

Too early to break out the cranberry salsa? It pairs so nicely with salsa verde I couldn't resist. I'm tempted to try and make some of my own this year, since our farm share--and my spouse's coworkers--have provided so many hot peppers.  I've put up salsa twice, and have just enough ripe tomatoes left to put up a third batch.  In the mean time I put up a batch of hot pepper jelly as well--then promptly gave most of it away.  Update: I did make my own cranberry salsa! You can find the recipe here.  Between the canning and the freezing I'm trying to keep up with the supply of vegetables that I'll feed the family during winter. [I feel like the Ant, though I really want to lie down and read my book like the Grasshopper--so I'm going to keep it short and sweet and go do just that.]

Want more enchilada recipes? Try my Clickable Collage. More recipes using spinach? Here's the Spinach Recipes Collection. More recipes using Leeks? Try this collection. More recipes using Cranberries, in various permutations? Look here.

Beef Tongue Nachos

Wait wait! Don't run away so quickly after reading the title. The picture caught your eye, right? Have an open mind! Try something new! Hear me out. You might like it.

One cook's trash is another cook's treasure. It fascinates me that, across the world, certain foods are perceived as desirable in some ages or areas and seen as unwanted in other times or places.

• Wheat bread was seen as a peasant food in earlier times, and white bread was the bread of well-to-do folks.
• Yellow cheese (from pastured cows) is more desirable on pizzas in Asia, whereas white cheese is the desired pizza cheese in the US. The source of this fact is a fascinating article I recently read. You can find it here. My spouse also backs up the idea that pizza cheese in Korea was just different than what he'd been used to [before my pizzas, that is]. Now anything goes.

Beef tongue evokes strong reactions. Depending on experience folks either love it because they've tried it or cringe because it looks like, well, a tongue. In keeping with my philosophy that if you choose to eat beef, you might as well use all of the cuts offered, I am firmly in the "love it" camp. My kids are still cringing because beef tongue looks different than all the ground beef in tidy packages in the freezer (link to my Ground Beef Recipe Round Up).

Does beef tongue skeeve you out?  How 'bout Mashed Potato Casserole, that can be made the day before, and cooked in a slow cooker or baked in the oven? My recipe for Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole is in a Featured Bloggers Favorites contest over at SavingStar. Voting enters you in a chance to win a $50 American Express Gift Card, and the winning blogger also receives a gift card. You can find the contest here.

The whole family pitching in to make beef tongue enchiladas. The recipe is coming.

Each time I prepare tongue, the flavor overcomes more of the cringe factor. By our next cow it should be quite commonplace. With this tongue we had enchiladas, sliders, and nachos because there was plenty of meat and I felt like experimenting. This recipe gets shared first because I love the colorful photos and I could go for a plate of nachos right about now.

Creamy Avocado, Bell Pepper and Hatch Chile Enchiladas

A rich vegetarian dish, these avocado, bell pepper, and caramelized onion enchiladas are spiced with roasted Hatch chiles and covered in plenty of cheese.

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My New Years Resolution to add more avocados to my life continues.  [Ya think, since I've posted 2 avocado appetizers in the past month or so?] Since we like enchiladas I wondered about using avocado as the filling for a vegetarian dish.  Low fat or skinny this is not--it is rich!  Instead of a tomato-based enchilada sauce like I've used most recently in Confetti Turkey Enchiladas, or a tomatillo-based salsa verde, like in my Fish Taco Enchiladas, I made a spicy white sauce with Hatch chiles. 

Simon and I walked down to fetch freshly roasted Hatch chiles last summer.

In this dish I used bell peppers from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share plus roasted Hatch chiles from my local grocery store.  Both of these peppers can be frozen when they are harvested and thawed for using in baked dishes like I've shown here.  It's another way I feed my family local foods all year long. The caramelized onions are also freezer-friendly flavor boosters. I use both Dorothy's Slow Cooker Method or Alanna's Flavorful Slow Cooker Onions.

This is an involved dish, with multiple steps, so I'll skip any further chitchat and get to the chopper recipe.

Wait--one note--next week I'll share my recipe for the Cheater Margarita Smoothies shown in several of the photos. I rarely suggest wine pairings with my recipes, but I can say with confidence that a Cheater Margarita Smoothie--or two--goes well with these enchiladas.

Another note--if you want to boost the structure of these enchiladas, feel free to add 1 or 2 cups of cooked grains (rice, faro, quinoa, etc) to the vegetable filling. We ate ours with rice on the side.

For more enchilada ideas, vegetarian or with fish, chicken, or pork--hey, no beef, yet, huh--please enjoy my newest Clickable Collage of Recipe Suggestions below.  As always, Anyonita taught me this party trick via this tutorial.

Click on the top 6 photos to be taken to the recipe, the bottom row are "coming soon"!

Harvest Sweet Potato Salsa

Roasted sweet potatoes and corn tossed with beans and avocado in an red and green salsa dressing. One of the ways I put up food to eat local all year long.

When the garden is barren and there's snow falling down is a strange time to talk about harvest and abundant vegetables, no?

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I think it's exactly the right time.  You see, the vegetables I used in this salsa--the corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and tomatillos that is*--came from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.  George, Mark, Josh and Erik of Patchwork Gardens grew and harvested them, and we got a weekly box of locally-grown vegetables during the growing season.  Once in my kitchen, I performed Vegetable Triage--eating what won't keep, freezing or canning what can be put up, and using a cold corner of my breakfast nook as my Strategic Winter Squash Reserve (link to a photo on my FB page) for the long storage crops.  Even though the fields are brown, we're still eating the fruits of our farmers' labors.

If you'd like to know more about where your food is grown, now is the time to research local eating in your area.  Up on the left sidebar is a Local Harvest gadget.  If you're in the US, type in your zip code and see what's available near you.  Signing up with a CSA farm share before the season starts means your farmers will have the funds to purchase or repair equipment like the potato harvester shown here, which harvested the sweet potatoes I used in this salsa.

Photo credit Marguerite Mertz/Patchwork Gardens

*See the avocados in the second photo? Yeah, they sure are not local to Ohio and one of the reasons (along with bananas and salmon, vanilla and chocolate, tea and olive oil) that I will never be a completely local eater.  To me, local food just tastes better (think garden tomato vs store-bought) so I put my efforts into eating local food where I can.  I am fortunate to have a choice where I spend my dollars on food, and I choose to keep my money in my local community when possible.  It's why I started this blog and organized my Visual Recipe Index by produce type--to help other folks eat locally as well.

Visit all the other Appetizer Week Peeps for more Munchie Causing Goodness:

• Pizza Dip by Cravings of a Lunatic
• Steak and Potato Bites by Kiss My Smoke
• Gluten Free Brie en Croute by Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker
• Caramelized Onion, Brie, and Pear Crostini by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Easy Low-Carb Chicken Dip by Yours and Mine Are Ours
• Caramelized Onion Dip by Cooking in Stilettos
• Tuna Bruschetta by What's Cooking, Love?
• Harvest Sweet Potato Salsa by Farm Fresh Feasts
• Parmesan Chips by Makobi Scribe
• Mini Cheeseburgers by Rants From My Crazy Kitchen
• Bacon Wrapped Little Smokies by Clarks Condensed
• Baked Buffalo Chicken Bites by From Gate to Plate
• Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Apricots by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Crock Pot Party Meatballs by My Catholic Kitchen
• Bacon Cheese Popcorn by Life Off the Clock
• Empanada Mini Pies by The NY Melrose Family
• Buffalo Chicken Tortilla Pinwheels by Home Cooking Memories
• Easy Cheesy Mexican Dip by Cupcakes & Kale Chips
• French Onion Grilled Cheese Stackers by Mom's Test Kitchen
• Root Beer Chicken Wings by Try Anything Once Culinary
• Low Sodium Swiss Cheeseburger Stuffed Mushrooms by Cookerati

Shrimp and Salsa Verde Cornbread Pizza

Shrimp, salsa verde, and cheddar cheese on a cornbread pizza crust

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The inspiration for this pizza came from a dish of grilled shrimp my son made over the summer.  It was spicy and served on corn tortillas and I did not have 100% of the effort involved in making it so of course it was good!  He got the recipe out of a cookbook at our library--one of our family summer reading activities.  We re-created it alongside cornbread in the fall.  When I had leftover cooked shrimp from our New Year's Ever Appetizerpalooza [not to be confused with #AppetizerWeek, that's next week] I decided to try shrimp on a pizza.

This is not my first shrimp recipe--I snuck a Roasted Shrimp, Celery, Grape, and Potato Salad in here last fall--nor is this my first seafood pizza.  Check out my Visual Pizza Recipe Index or the links at the bottom for additional seafood pizzas for your Friday Night Pizza Night.
Even though this wasn't my first rodeo, this recipe was not without dithering.  I was torn, trying to think of a way to duplicate a grits crust.  Or even a cornmeal crust.  Finally I just decided to Keep It Simple.

Keep It Simple, Sillybilly (KISS) is the title of one of my early blog posts before I clued in to making a recipe more searchable by using the actual recipe name in the title.  Revolutionary!  KISS is a recipe post for Beau Monde dip, another vehicle to transfer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share vegetables into my mouth--and those of my family.

What could be more simple than taking my tried and true cornbread recipe and baking it in a 10 inch skillet instead of my usual 7 inch skillet?  Perfect.  The thickness is less than a deep dish pizza, but more substantial than a thin crust pizza.  You can eat this with a fork, or pick it up with your hands.

With precooked shrimp, pre baked cornbread, and put up (or store bought) salsa verde, this pizza assembles and bakes very quickly.  Perfect for a last minute pizza or easily one where you don't have yeast or don't feel like fussing with dough.  Mix it up, pour it in, bake, prep the toppings, top, and go.