Day Forty-eight--Pork Chops

I think we should call tonight's dinner a cowboy dinner. It was a damn fine cowboy dinner. It was another one of these "almost didn't happen" nights again though. The plan was that Tim was going to work on the loaded potatoes mashed potatoes and I would do the green beans and the pork chops. I was going to start it all off with making home made chocolate syrup so it could cool off before dessert. My plans were shot when I was in the process of writing the recipe of the syrup down and my laptop just flipped off and had no power. I know the battery was full, and at first I thought maybe we had a power surge, but it was unplugged. Instead of putting Tim on the potato duty he was put to "fix my laptop" duty. Needless to say I'm glad it's still under warranty and it's being shipped out this weekend to get fixed.

Back to dinner:

Fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and garlic Parmesan green beans

Ok, so here is how it went down. I made the chocolate syrup first. Aidan actually was a huge help and did the stirring for me while I threw a few red potatoes in a bowl and chucked them in the microwave. While Aidan was stirring, I also chopped up some garlic and fried a few pieces of bacon. Aidan got bored and I had to finish up the chocolate syrup. No problem, it was almost done. When it was done, I pulled it to the side and let it cool. I checked on the potatoes. I hardly ever use my microwave. I've never cooked anything in it. For the most part it's used to heat up leftovers. I had no idea how long it would take the potatoes to cook. Come to find out it was just over 15 minutes. While the potatoes were still cooking, I cleaned up the green beans and snipped the ends off of them and got them to boiling. Then it was time for the pork chops. These babies were beautiful. Again, they were from a local farm and were good for you pork chops. I dredged them in a mixture of flour and seasoned salt, and black pepper and then put them in some hot canola oil to fry up. At this time, Tim came and said he didn't know what was wrong with my laptop. I know it's bad because Tim can fix anything. He took over the frying of the pork chops and I tended to the green beans. I drained the beans and cooked up some garlic and grated Parmesan cheese and then threw the beans back into the pot and stirred them together. While I was doing this, both Connor and Aidan came in and offered to help. I let them make the potatoes. I had already cut up everything and all they had to do mash and mix. They threw in the butter, chopped bacon, sliced green onions, sour cream and some of those french fried onions, you know, like the ones you put on top of a green bean casserole. Amazingly, everyone was done at the same time. I plated up and we all sat down and enjoyed. I invited Mr. Jack Daniels to meal with me with some coke. Thanks Deb for the coke. We don't ever have soda anymore but Aidan was begging Debbie for some soda this afternoon and she sent some over.

The dinner was a huge success. All four of us loved every bit of it. Aidan even ate the green beans. He was funny too about the onions in the potatoes. He said, "the onions add a nice texture to the potatoes." Pretty funny coming from a boy who generally hates anything crunchy in his food. He's growing up. I have to say that I think my favorite part was the mashed potatoes. They tasted exactly like loaded potato skins that you would get from a restaurant as an appetizer. Dinner was ended with a small bowl of vanilla ice cream from our favorite dairy with some pretty tasty chocolate syrup. Yee-haw! This meal is a keeper!

Until tomorrow, happy cooking!