We have these little pork loin sandwiches about once a week. They are cheap, easy, and delicious! And most important – the kids love them!

You only need 3 ingredients – a pork loin, some cheese, and Hawaiian sweet rolls.

The easy part is that these pork loins come already seasoned, so they are ready to cook without any prep. You can find them in several flavors. Our favorite is the Cajun flavor, but they were sold out this week so this is a Peppercorn Garlic flavor. (I added some Tony’s seasoning to it to make it taste more like the Cajun flavor.)

I’ve cooked these in a glass dish and a metal pan in the oven, but I’ve found the best way to cook them is in a stoneware dish. You can find this kind of bakeware in just about any store nowadays. I don’t know the science behind it, but the meat stays juicy in this type of baking dish, while it dries out in the others.

Just put the pork loin in the dish, drizzle with about a spoonful of olive oil, and add about 1/4 cup water or chicken stock to the bottom of the pan to keep meat moist while cooking. The pork loin package will have cooking instructions on the label. This one was 425 degrees for 45 minutes. The cooking time will vary based on the size.

After cooking, the water (or chicken stock) will be cooked away and you will be left with this beautiful, juicy, tender piece of meat. Let it sit for just a few minutes and then slice it up for the sandwiches.

While the meat is in the oven, you can be preparing the sandwich part. First, cut the Hawaiian sweet rolls in half and lay out on a baking sheet.

Next, stack up your cheese (we use pepperjack) and cut into fourths.

They will be the perfect size to fit on top of the buns. (And yes, I put the cheese on the tops AND bottoms – we LOVE cheese!)

After you’ve taken the pork loin out of the oven, turn it to broil and put in the buns. It only takes a minute or so to melt the cheese, so watch it closely or the buns will burn.

Now just place the sliced pork loin on buns and assemble the sandwiches – super easy!

The sweetness of the rolls and the spicy pepperjack cheese go great together. If you happen to have any leftover, they are good cold as well, so you can put them in your kid’s lunchbox for the next day.

Thanks y’all!

   – Nikki

If you live in Louisiana, you have to love crawfish. It’s a state law. At least I think it is. If it’s not, it should be.

Besides eating them right out of the shell on the tailgate of a pickup truck, there are a lot of ways to eat crawfish. You can put them in a baked potato, gumbo, etouffe, casserole, omelet, or this recipe – crawfish-rice dressing. It’s a very simple recipe – all you have to do is mix up all the ingredients and pour into a casserole dish and bake. Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 lb frozen crawfish tails (with fat/juice), thawed
• 1 1/2 cups uncooked long-grain rice
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can cream of onion soup (my store was out, so I substituted 1/2 can French onion soup and 1/2 can cream of celery soup and it turned out great)
• 1 chopped bell pepper
• 4 tbs butter, melted
• 2 tsp Tony’s seasoning
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 2 dashes hot sauce (or more if you like it spicy)

Just mix all ingredients in a large bowl…

… and pour into a greased 13×9 baking dish. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Taste the rice when it’s done – if it’s still a little crunchy, put back in oven for another 10 minutes, or until rice is tender. That’s it! Super easy!

This is perfect as a main dish, but it can also be served as a side dish if you’d like. It tastes like you’ve slaved away in the kitchen for hours, and no one has to know that you were really watching old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy while it baked.

Thanks y’all!

   – Nikki