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!

Day Five--Pork Chops with Apples and Sage

Wow. I am full. I just finished the most delicious dinner. We are still in Olean and Laurie was kind enough to give me her kitchen to use. Dinner was later than we usually have and it and almost didn't happen.

We ate a late lunch and then 6 o'clock rolled around and we weren't really hungry. I waited until 6:30 before I even looked at the recipes and then freaked out because I was going to need to roast the potatoes for an hour. Oops. I ended up just boiling them and then making garlic mashed potatoes. The rest of the meal came together really fast. Tim came in and helped me for the last part.

So what did we have?

Pork Chops with Apple and Sage, garlic mashed potatoes and red swiss chard.

This dinner came together really quickly. I let the potatoes boil for about 30 minutes and then got to work on the rest. I browned the pork chops in some olive oil. Then I put the chops in a baking dish and sauteed the apples in a tiny bit of butter until they turned golden. I put them on top of the chops with a couple of leaves of sage. On top of that a tiny dab of Stilton cheese. I popped in the oven for a few to let the sage meld with the apples and melt the cheese a bit. While the chops were in the oven Tim and I worked on the potatoes and chard. I sauteed the swiss chard in a little bit of olive oil and garlic with salt and pepper. The potatoes were just the boiled red potatoes mixed with chopped up garlic, butter, a splash of milk with some salt and pepper. All that with some Merlot and it is all good. Eating real food isn't that bad. =)

Everyone loved the dinner. Aidan ate the pork and the potatoes and he had some of the chard. He actually said, "I kind of like this green stuff." We're making progress! I do have the receipts from this weekends eats and when we get home, I'll come back and edit with the cost of the meal.

We leave tomorrow morning to go home. I need to make my shopping list up tonight so that when we get home I can go food shopping. Monday night is going to prove interesting. I am going to the Peace and Justice Award dinner where there will be food served. I think I'm still going to go ahead and make the boys dinner. One nice thing with all of our meals so far is that we've had leftovers. This makes for yummy lunches the next day.

I think that is all I have for now. I'm going to go finish my Merlot and start packing up all of our stuff to go home. Until tomorrow. Happy cooking!

**edited to add cost of meal: Total cost was $30.77. Served 6 so cost per person was $5.13.