Asian-Braised Pork with Cucumber Salad

I can't even look at the title of this post without drooling a little. 

Seriously, this is our first post on our new blog about great food, and we couldn't think of a better way to start it off than this recipe.
Now- a large part of this blog is about finding good & inexpensive food, and we promise you- that's exactly what you'll get.
We will post how much each meal cost us to make as well as where we got all the ingredients. We'll post pictures of these meals- cause we are making every single one of them as we go. A big part of this is finding recipes to cook for two (since we are always stuck with leftovers, we want to expand our use of the food that we do make without always making the dreaded  leftovers.) Our first recipe we are posting is actually a Crock Pot meal. We bought our crock pot @ Bed Bath & Beyond for 30$! And we've definitely got tons of use out of it.
I'm done with going on....now onto the good stuff...the recipe :)

**Before you go on to count the items needed in this recipe, note that many of the ingredients are things that you probably have in your spice cabinets already. Also, the things you need to make this dish are reusable in a number of other recipes thus bringing the overall cost down (the other recipes will be posted later in the week). Think ahead & plan ahead for your meals- possibly the most important thing for budget grocery shopping.**

What you'll need:

1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce (regular soy sauce works fine)

Salt & pepper to taste

1/4 cup of brown sugar (for pork)

1 tbsp. of brown sugar (for cucumber salad)

2 lbs. boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into pieces

1/4 tsp. ground ginger-optional

1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper

1 cup of white rice

1/4 cup rice vinegar

1 cucumber, thinly sliced into half moons

1/4 cup of a sweet onion thinly sliced

Directions:

1.) Combine soy sauce, red pepper, salt/pepper, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, in a crock pot or slow cooker and coat the trimmed & cut pork pieces.

2.) Cook on low for 7 to 8 hours (times may vary depending on cooker)

3.) About 30 minutes before finished start cooking the rice according to the package
4.) Whisk together rice vinegar, tbsp of brown sugar, ginger, salt and pepper, put in sliced cucumber and onion.
5.) Serve pork over rice and cucumber salad on the side.

Pictures of our meals and steps..with tips!

 Make sure to slice the cucumbers really thin!

 SO good :)

Stay classy, fellow food lovers!
-J&T

{All ingredients bought at Walmart & Kroger for best deals. Total for this meal (including all the spices used was 18$). That might seem a little expensive, but remember, you'll be able to use all these spices again in later meals thus bringing the overall cost down. Besides all that, we used about 1/2 of the pork for this meal and are saving the rest of the pork for a meal later in the week. The pork was 8$ at Walmart, and you'll get 2-3 meals out of it! Great deal!}