Good chops

Another beautiful day in New England. I usually make pork chops during the cooler months, but this is one of my husbands favorite meals and the girls are always happy with pork chops.

I baked potatoes at 400 for about 40 minutes before starting the chops.

In a bowl, mix 1 C. panko with a few shakes of garlic salt, a couple grinds of pepper and about 1 teaspoon of flour.

Whisk an egg into a bowl with a splash of milk. Rinse the chops and quickly dip them in the egg mixture followed by a dredge in the panko crust.

Heat a heavy (I use Le Creuset) pan on medium high heat and add 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Add the chops and cook for 3-4 minutes per side, turn, then transfer the pan into the oven. Remove potatoes and let them rest covered in a dish towel.

Let the chops finish baking in the oven for another 8-10 minutes.

While the pork chops finished cooking, I steamed some corn and brought what's left of the huge bowl of cherries we bought yesterday to the table to eat with dinner.

I like to eat my pork chops with cranberry sauce (you know, the kind you have at Thanksgiving), but my husband and kids prefer apple sauce.

I have one more pound of ground turkey that I am going to make spaghetti & meat sauce with for tomorrow night.

Once again, where has the week gone?

turkey burgers

The girls are in their last few weeks of school, and the weather here has been amazing. After picking the girls up from school, play dates, etc... we took our neighbors dog for a walk and the girls wanted to catch butterflies in the backyard while I made dinner.

I had pulled a new recipe out from a magazine a few weeks back called: Turkey burgers with zucchini and carrots. I altered the recipe a little, but after eating the burger have added in the other changes I would have made. They were good, but needed a little more flavor. Below is my iteration of Turkey burgers with zucchini and carrots

1 package ground turkey meat
1 shredded zucchini
1 c. shredded carrot
1 egg
2 cubes frozen garlic
cracked pepper
kosher salt
1/4 C. shredded Parmesan cheese
shake or two of Lawry's season salt
1 tbs. olive oil

Preheat oven to 500, and line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Combine all ingredients except olive oil in a bowl and mix until combined. Form burgers.

Add olive oil to a large nonstick pan on medium high heat. When the oil shimmers, add the burgers and brown on each side for 4 minutes. When burgers have cooked on both sides, remove from pan and finish cooking on the cookie sheet for 5 more minutes.

I served the burgers with the frozen brown rice from Trader Joe's, a bowl of edamame that I had boiled while the burgers cooked, and a bowl with cherries and white nectarines. The girls scoffed initially, but wolfed them down with ketchup.

It was a good recipe (after the alterations) and I would definitely make them again.

Communal parenting

I took the girls to a friends house for a dip in the pool this afternoon. We ended up staying for dinner as each our spouses were away and thought feeding them with 2 adults would certainly be easier than going it alone. It's always interesting to get a peek into how other people eat dinner.

We ordered Chinese takeout and with 5 girls it was a busy dinner table. We did everything in an assembly line. It was rather comical that one girl would spill soup, then another milk, etc...

We all ate together, and I didn't worry about whether food was being eaten with utensils or fingers, just that food was being eaten. The girls really worked up an appetite after playing outside all day long.

I have 2 beautiful hangar steaks that I was planning on grilling tonight with some broccoli and baked potatoes, but that meal will have to wait until tomorrow night.

Breakfast for dinner.

The girls have been asking for chocolate chip pancakes for a while now. We decided to make them for dinner tonight. We had an early dinner of chocolate chip pancakes, turkey bacon and grapes.

It couldn't have been easier to make and the girls were thrilled. Thank goodness for Bisquick!

Nice skirt.

We had a fun afternoon with friends at the beach, then went to their house for a BBQ. They cooked chicken, edamame, corn and salad, and I threw two skirt steaks under their broiler. This is a great cut of meat and very flavorful. I seasoned the steaks with some garlic pepper, kosher salt and a drizzle of olive oil. I lined a pan with aluminum foil and cooked them for about 3 minutes per side. They were pink in the middle and browned on the outside. A simple dinner with friends.

We are eating at our local deli tomorrow night as I have a class at the house.

Weekend meals

It's Sunday night, I've just gotten the girls to sleep and am not looking forward to going downstairs to clean up after dinner. We had a nice weekend and although it rained for most of it, we grilled Saturday evening for dinner.

I marinated 1 1/2 lbs. of peeled, cleaned and deveined shrimp and a dozen fresh sea scallops in lemon juice, olive oil, Greek Seasoning, and salt and pepper. I made some rice pilaf (one of those Near East boxed ones) and made a delicious sauteed sugar snap peas.

I heated a little olive oil in a pan and added in 2 garlic cubes. When they started to sizzle, I added in the whole snap peas and stirred them around for a minute. I added about 1/4 C. of water and cooked them on high for another minute or 2, just until the peas turned bright green. I added a pinch of salt and a shake of dried chives. I turned the heat off and also added in a small pat of butter. There was very little liquid left in the pan and the peas stayed green and crisp.

I quickly turned the grill to high, added the shrimp and scallops letting them cook for about 45 seconds on one side, them turned them, shut the lid and ran inside to plate the rice and peas onto a large platter. Once that was done, I hustled back outside and removed the scallops and shrimp from the grill. They were tender and had beautiful grill marks. I served them over the rice and was planning to bring Tsatziki sauce to the table, but forgot. It didn't matter and the meal was delicious.

I grilled the girls 2 hamburgers and boiled some ravioli as they were eating earlier since we were having company, and I put them to bed shortly after our guests arrived.

We ate the leftovers tonight (Sunday) and I also boiled some corn and steamed a couple of artichokes as my younger daughter has proclaimed they are her new favorite food, go figure...

We are planning to meet some friends at the beach tomorrow for an early dinner and I have a class here Tuesday and Wednesday, so those will be eating out nights as well.

Cookin' with sticks

It was a lousy rainy day in New England and our older daughter was at a play date with her best friend. We spent a quiet afternoon with our younger daughter and I enlisted her to help with dinner.

I planned on making swordfish and grilled vegetable skewers. This was something I knew she would enjoy helping with. I had her soak the bamboo skewers in some water while I cut 1 zucchini, rinsed a bunch of whole button mushrooms, and sliced 1 purple onion.

I had her add about 1/4 C. of olive oil to a bowl, along with a few pinches of kosher salt, a big squeeze of Dijon mustard, the juice from a lemon and a heaping tablespoon of a red pepper jelly (which in hindsight I would have left out, as it made the food a little spicy for Abby, but we LOVED it.)

I cut a 1/2 pound swordfish steak into cubes and Abby dumped all of the veggies and fish into the bowl. She stirred everything around while we talked about how delicious swordfish was and how it tasted exactly like chicken, in fact, it's name should be called Chicken Fish...

Abby and I skewered the ingredients while Kirk heated up the grill to high. I've found that getting the grill nice and hot, then turning it down creates a good carmelization to the food.

Once everything was skewered, I put them on the grill and let them cook for about 3 minutes, then turned the skewers and let them cook another 5 minutes. I took them off the grill and squeezed the last of the lemon juice on them, and covered the plate with foil until we were ready to eat.

I had also baked some potatoes to go with our food on a stick.

Abby loved the mushrooms and fish, not the onions or zucchini. It was great to see her try the fish and she loved making things on skewers.

Tomorrow we are having our 91 year old tennis playing neighbor over for dinner. I'm going to grill some shrimp and scallops, saute some snap peas and see what else we can cook on a stick!