Dinner Report: Pastured Pork Chops

I just finished dinner. I cooked up the Creswick Farms pork chops I bought last week and they were among the best chops I've ever had.

By way of preparation, I sliced an onion and sauted it in butter and olive oil. Removed from the pan - I used my french oven. Added the chops and browned them on all sides. Topped with a mix of 1 can cream of celery soup, about 1/2 C milk, a little water, some garlic powder salt and pepper. Baked at 350 for about 35 minutes (these weren't super thick chops).

The result was very tender with good flavor. Served with mashed potatoes and used the 'gravy'. I'm looking forward to having the other chop tomorrow night!

Sorry, no pictures, already ate. Oops.

#declaringvictory

Tonight's experiment was simple - test out the "french" cycle on the bread machine.

Yeah, I'm a creature of habit. I select the same cycle (rapid regular) and use the same recipe pretty much every time.

Results: Pretty good. Fantastic crust. The bread itself is super dense - this might be the smallest 1.5 lb loaf I've ever seen. I'm a little puzzled as why that's the case - I think I deviated from the standard recipe by adding just a hair more oil and yeast, but not enough to make a difference. I think I'll just chalk it up to me winging it - something I do a lot of. I could never write a cookbook.

Looking forward to seeing how the bread holds up on sandwich duty tomorrow. Pending that, I'm declaring victory.

Mealtime: Simple Pork Stew

After my trip to the market on Saturday - I backed it up with a run to Meijer of course - I felt like making something simple for dinner.

Oh, and I had a second motivation too. I wanted to try out the french oven I picked up the weekend before. What could I make? How about a real basic stew?

Pork stew it was.

Ideally I would have cubed some of the pork I picked up at the market, but it was frozen and I didn't feel like trying to rush the defrost process (I'll be eating those tomorrow), so I used a package of supermarket chop suey meat. Other ingredients: One medium organic onion, a little olive oil and two cans of Ro*Tel.

I like Ro*Tel. If you ever want an easy meal, find your self a chunk of meat that can be slow cooked, throw it in the crock pot with some Ro*Tel and in eight hours you'll have dinner.

Back to the stew.

Isn't that a good looking pot?

Oops, I digress.

Keeping it basic, I diced the onion and sauted it in a little olive oil, then browned the pork - I skipped flouring it. Added the onions back in, the Ro*Tel and a pinch of salt. Simmered for about 20 minutes.

The end result? Tasty. I think it would have been better with a longer simmer, the pork had just a bit more chew that I would prefer, but it was still quite good. Served with a side of organic potatoes, mashed. Simple comfort food for a late winter evening.



Let's go to the scoreboard:

Taste Rating: B. Would make and eat again, but would probably tinker with cooking time.

I Done Good Rating: D+. Didn't use the local pork. Ro*Tel is neither local nor organic afaik - tastes good though. The organic onion and potatoes were trucked in from who knows where. I'm not giving this a failing grade because I did intentionally select the (industrial) organic produce and at least I went through the effort of making it. Oh, and I just ate the leftovers, so no waste.

Market Buys and Butter Question

I rolled into the Sweetwater Local Foods Market rather late this week. It runs 9-1 during the winter season and I got there about 11:30. As a result, some items were sold out.

I still ended up with most of what I had on my list. I picked up some raw milk Gouda from Grassfields, a couple of pastured pork chops from Creswick Farms and a dozen eggs from Happy Hill Farm. I picked up a quart of milk on the way home and I'm in good shape.

In hindsight, I would have liked to have picked up some stuffing mix from Earthly Kneads - especially since it was half off - to have with the chops. Oh well. They'll still be good with potatoes.

***

On another subject, I spent a few minutes this week trying to locate a source for locally-made butter and I struck out.

I wonder why that is - is there some sort of regulation that makes the production of artisan (for lack of a better word) butter uneconomical or illegal?

I plan to do some more looking - I still have a few sticks of regular butter left, so time is on my side. There is always the organic stuff available at Meijer I guess.