Pork Chops!!

You already know my husband is an amazing cook. But when we have pork chops in the freezer, he almost always chops them up into bites and puts them in some kind of stir fry. He says he doesn't know how to make pork chops without them drying out too much. I think my kids have only had Asian/diced pork chops. Which is kinda sad! One of my favorite dinners when I was a kid was pork chops. I have asked my mom how she made them and her answer is "oh its been too long." dang.
So a friend told me how she makes hers, including how to avoid them drying out, and I thought it was definitely worth trying!! Dinner tonight!

Oven Pork Chops - by Rabilin Snow
Thaw the chops. Set the oven to 350* or 375*.
Put a little water in the bottom of a broiler pan, lay the pork chops on the top of the pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper. (both sides) Cover with foil.
If the pork chops are thick, (1/2 inch - 1 inch) bake about 15 mins, and turn to cook on the other side an additional 10-15 minutes.
If the pork chops are thin, 7-10 mins each side is long enough.

This is the only picture I caught, and its "in progress". Our pork chops were quite thick so we did 15 mins on one side, 15 on the other, and back for another 5 on the first side before my husband said that the juices were clear so it was fine to eat. He and I had a little A1 sauce with our pork chop and it was delicious!! Our kids ate theirs plain and enjoyed them too!

When my friend told me how to make it, she also added that my husband would take the basic idea and "perfect it", haha. So, his suggestion is to sear the chops before baking them. I'll let you know if we give that a try! In the meantime, this is a good method!



Bake a Cake!

While going thru my freezer this morning I decided to pull out some frozen zucchini to make a cake! Just for fun! YUM!

The complete recipe is listed below, but I did use applesauce in place of the vegetable oil, and for probably the first time ever, I used actual buttermilk!
Growing up, we always sprinkled chocolate chips on the top and then baked the cake. The chips stay on the top, and that's in place of a frosting. After today's cake came out, most of the chips had sunk in so that you could only see about 5. Weird. But the thing was, I really, really wanted frosting...I asked my husband what he thought and he said to frost it anyway, so I used half of a chocolate buttercream recipe and that was just enough to cover this 9x13 cake. And it made it soooo rich! And! we discovered that most of the chocolate chips had sunk to the bottom of this cake! Weird!!

 

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

(Cheryl Lawrence)

½ cup soft margarine                                                  ½ cup oil

1 ¾ cup sugar                                                              2 ½ cups flour
2 eggs                                                                          4 tbsp cocoa powder
½ cup sour milk or buttermilk                                    1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon                                                            ½ tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg                                                               1 tsp soda
2 cups grated zucchini                                                           

Cream Margarine, oil and sugar. Add eggs, vanilla and milk. Separately blend flour, cocoa, salt, soda an spices. Mix oil-sugar mixture. Add zucchini. Pour into 9x13x2 inch pan which has been greased and floured. Top with chocolate chips and nuts if desired. Bake 40-45 minutes at 350*

More like a SPLAT

..than a flop... haha.
So, my husband was helping me plan out our menu so that I could get the grocery shopping done, and suggested we start putting at least one recipe each round that comes from a cookbook we have taking up space. brilliant! :) So last week we tried this recipe...

Which came from this book...

It was very simple to put together, as everything I've ever seen from Pampered Chef is. My can of chicken is more than 10 oz...maybe it was 15? I used 1 tsp of lemon juice rather than zest, and the bell peppers I had were frozen slices of red, yellow and green, and everything we had didn't quite total 1/2 a cup, so we had all three kinds in our mixture. Then I ran in to a snag...
I don't own a pizza pan, or any round pan!
...and neither do the two friends I called, haha!
So, I ended up doing sort of half circles on the rectangular pans I do have, like this...

and it was a hit! It was a light meal, perfect for spring or summer. It was really good- everyone of us enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure my kids have never raved about anything I've made as much as they did this, haha.
Not so great as left overs- crescent rolls don't reheat very well.

But the story behind the title?
As I was rotating the pans in the oven, because the two rectangle pans didn't fit very well,
one pan was resting on the stove and started slipping....
and in my attempt to shove it back on and save it...
I flipped it over.
and it looked like this:

That was not happy.