Cabin Casserole (I know! How cute is this name?) aka Pork Chops Baked with Curried Green Tomatoes

Pork chops baked with curry-seasoned green tomatoes and onions in this homey casserole from a vintage cookbook.

Each time I make this dish, I add a few tweaks on the seasonings but keep the main elements of pork chops, green tomatoes, and onions. I'm happy to report that this casserole is delicious over rice and my family still ate it all up! I used lemon pepper seasoning with the pork chops and hot curry instead of sweet curry on the vegetables--and they were very flavorful.

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Right now the seasons are a bit topsy turvy. The temperature swings from shorts to sweater weather. I'm excited to turn on the oven but still using the grill. The trees have started to change colors and I foresee leaf raking in the not to distant future. Yet the tomato plants are still plugging away, producing plenty of tomatoes. Once the night temperature dips far enough, there's no amount of sunny days that will bring me red tomatoes. I need to bring them in to ripen--or learn to love green tomatoes. This recipe is one of the ways I've embraced green tomatoes, and I'm glad to re-share it with you.

I love to read cookbooks.  I may be terrible at actually following the recipes, but I never come away from a visit with a cookbook without inspiration.  The other day was no exception.  I was looking through the index of my mom's OK it's mine now 1950 1st edition Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook for something in the Cs, and I came across this recipe name:  Cabin Casserole.  I flipped to the page and saw this:

CABIN CASSEROLE

A heart-warming dish for a cold day.

Place in alternate layers in buttered casserole sliced onions

and sliced tomatoes (green preferred) . . . using in all 1/2

cup of each for each chop and sprinkling each layer with 

salt and curry powder.  On top, lay browned seasoned pork 

chops. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees (mod. oven) 45 min.

Then cover, and continue baking until tender
 (30-45 min more). Serve hot.

Strawberry Banana Muffins #MuffinMonday

This whole wheat treat combines the sweetness of fresh local strawberries and ripe bananas with the tang of sour cream while using less sugar than you'd expect.

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You know how seeing one of those cooking videos ignites a craving? That's what happened here. I kept seeing a video for strawberry banana bread in my feed, or strawberry banana smoothies at the store, and the next thing you know I've got a hankering to make Strawberry Banana Muffins.

Conveniently I had fresh local strawberries from the farmer's market and ripe bananas on hand, plus the the endurance to make muffins. You see, while we're mostly unpacked in our new home, very little is set up exactly how it's going to stay. That means every time I cook something it involves finding the right ingredients, locating the proper tools, and doing a lot of  'hmmmm . . . this would work better over there, which means I should move that to this other place, and stick that other thing in a pile by the stairs to figure out where its new home will be . . .'.  It's the standard dance of the military family in a new place--finding the best way to arrange our stuff to quickly make a house into Home.