Easy Pork Dinner

(This recipe was first posted in conjunction with the Meijer Ad Week of 1/28/12-2/4/12)

This easy, tender pork entree is a nice change from the typical beef roast.  Throw it all in the crockpot in the morning, and forget about it until suppertime.  Delicious and family-friendly!

Ingredients:

1 center cut half pork loin (or you can just use half of the half)

1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can french onion soup
1 can golden mushroom soup
as many potatoes as you need to make mashed potatoes for your family

Directions:
Place meat in crockpot.  Wisk together all three soups.  Pour soup mixture over meat.  Turn crockpot on low for 8-10 hours.  Peel, dice, and cook potatoes.  Mash with butter and milk according to your preference.  Remove meat from crockpot.  Slice if desired, or just pull apart into chunks to serve.  Use the sauce from the crockpot as a gravy for the meat and mashed potatoes (or you can strain it into a pan and make a thicker gravy).  Serve with a vegetable.

Options and Tips

• Pork loin is cheaper than pork tenderloin, but in my opinion, just as delicious!
• It might shock you to dump a $12 piece of meat into your grocery cart, but you can easily get two meals out of a half pork loin.  Cut it in half and freeze half of it for another day.  Or, cook the whole thing and use the leftovers for pork barbeque.  (The pork barbeque recipe makes plenty for supper plus extra to freeze for another meal, so my family can easily get four meals out of a pork loin.)
• To stretch the pork loin even further, slice off a small piece (about 6-8 oz) before cooking it, and dice it into smaller pieces.  Freeze raw and use later for pork fried rice.

This recipe came from one of my cookbooks...but I can't remember which one!  I started using the recipe a long time ago, and it's so easy that I just make it from memory now.