Thursday, August 15, 2013

Dick Van Dyke, Porkchops, and That One Time I Was Pushed Out Of Bed

I'm not sure if I should be proud of it or not, but I successfully hooked my husband on The Dick Van Dyke show. It's not that I'm tired of watching Batman: Brave and the Bold, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Batman Beyond... am I the only one catching the pattern here?... It's just that I like a little variety every once in a while, but sitcoms usually just fail to catch my eye. I introduced him to Family Guy and American Dad back while we were dating, but there are only so many times you can watch repeats. We tried out The Dick Van Dyke Show one afternoon and discovered something creepy. We discovered that our relationship is almost an exact model of Rob and Laura Petrie. We knew our ideals about family and life were a little old fashioned, but who knew they were 1960's ideals. In one episode they had a fight that David and I had recently, and they fought it almost word for word like we did. As I said, a little creepy.


A friend of mine told me she was looking forward to me adding more recipes, and how could I refuse the chance to show off this recipe. My husband is addicted to these, and for once I didn't get the recipe off of Pinterest. This recipe was actually something I threw together one night when we were still living in Greenhill and I didn't feel like doing a huge amount of cooking.

Jessica's Baked BBQ Pork Chops

  Ingredients:
1 Pack of Pork Chops, can be frozen or thawed (2-6 chops, any cut)

1/2 of a Medium Onion, Chopped (Yellow or White)

1 Bottle of Jack Daniel's Original No. 7 Recipe BBQ Sauce

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line the inside of a 8x8 baking dish (9x13 dish if they're big chops) with aluminum foil. Place pork chops inside of baking dish, spread out as much as possible but it's ok if they overlap. Spread chopped onion evenly on top of chops. Pour the entire bottle of bbq sauce all over the top. Cover with foil and put in oven. Check every 30 minutes until cooked through. Amount of time it takes will depend on thickness and if it was frozen.


Last, but not least, I leave you with a lovely tale of my husband. He likes to sleep in the very center of our queen sized bed. It's extremely early the other morning and I've been suffering from medication induced insomnia (Thank you steroids!). So as I lie there counting the passing time on the clock my husband decides that he is going to roll over a bit closer to me... and 5 seconds later I said hello to the floor and he woke up to me giving him the stink eye and threatening to make him a pallet in the walk-in closet. Perhaps we should do like the Petrie's and have separate husband/wife beds.


So our question for this blog: Have you ever found that either you or your significant other matched a TV show character a bit too closely? Tell me about it in the comments below.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Good Idea... and Bad Idea

Since this is my first post, it's probably a good guess that most of you don't know my addiction to Pinterest. Ok, even addiction may be falling a bit short. It's more like I spend more time on Pinterest than the average person does on Facebook. That being said, I don't just pin things to my wall for the sake of saying I did. I actually make a good amount of what I pin. This is sometimes good.... and sometimes not so good. Let's start this thing off by looking at an example of each.

Good: Bean & Cheese Burritos

Courtesy of the blog Money Saving Mom

I am the queen of convenience, but convenience doesn't normally come cheap. My husband loves Hot Pockets, so on the nights that it has been a long day or we don't have much time I turn him loose on a box of them. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Hot Pockets, which is why these enticed me. They were cheap to make and not too rough on calories. Money wise I came up to $5.24 (before tax) for the ingredients, and since this made 8 for me, that comes up to about 66 cents a burrito. Not bad when Hot Pockets are $2 for a box of 2 and not near as filling. To try the recipe yourself, click the link here.


Bad: Waffle Iron Hashbrowns

Courtesy of Recipe Sweet

It sounded like a great idea, especially since my husband helps me cook breakfast and we're always elbowing for room at the stove. What this ended up though was a big greasy mess. I won't say it didn't taste good, but I will say that it didn't form any kind of solid object. It stuck to the iron, even after I lightly oiled the iron, and I ended up with a huge puddle of grease and what looked more like tater tots that had exploded. The taste was good and reminded me vaguely of a Mcdonald's hashbrown, but the mess made it completely not worth it. I want to give it some credit since the recipe did specifically say to use Cascadian Farms Spud Puppies, but since that isn't sold anywhere near us I used Great Value Tater Tots. I don't know, maybe it would have worked if I had been able to find those exact Spud Puppies.Willing to try it yourself? Click the link here to see the recipe.


Found a good recipe on Pinterest lately? Found one that turned into a horror story? Leave a comment below and tell me about it.