I’m still not up to doing much cooking yet. Dear friends came over a week ago and we collaborated on having the St. Patrick’s Day dinner we’d planned in mid-March. I made the corned beef, according to my friend Linda’s recipe, Corned Beef for St. Patrick’s Day, a post from a couple of years ago. We  had the usual side dishes of cabbage and onions. Cherrie made her Colcannon, the mixture of mashed potatoes, leeks, cream and kale. I sent Bud and Joe to our wine cellar to find a really good bottle of red, which we opened in Dave’s honor and gave him a toast. I cried.

We also opened a bottle of bubbly, which Cherrie and I just love (it’s one of the many things she and I share a love for) – it was a pink champagne, but not sweet. It was wonderful. It tasted good. The whole dinner tasted good to me.

Cravings during grief probably vary with everyone, but what I crave is carbs. Not normal for me. I’ve eaten more breakfast cereal in the last 3 weeks than I have in two years! But my doctor has suggested I make sure I get protein 3x a day, so I’ve started having the one link of sausage (I’ll need to make a new batch of my home made ground pork and turkey sausage that I like so much, but for now I have Costco’s in the freezer) and a tiny bowl of yogurt with blueberries and raspberries. I’m not hungry much at all (also very different for me), and since pounds are coming off (a good thing) I’m able to limit portions without any difficulty. Eventually, I’m sure, my appetite will resume, so I’m going with the flow. I do eat 3x a day, so I’m getting plenty. My usual chocolate craving has virtually disappeared, although I did eat about 5 chocolate chips (not cookies, just the chips)yesterday, so maybe that’s resuming also. I do crave bread, mashed potatoes, toast. A half a sandwich used to be my norm if I ordered a sandwich (I’m more a salad girl, actually) but sandwiches have appealed to me. Now I eat half of a half a sandwich and save the rest for dinner. That’s worked. Friends took me to a Jewish deli the other day and I really enjoyed the 1/4 pastrami sandwich on fresh, soft rye bread.

And how am I doing, you want to know? Well, maybe a little bit better. Sleep still gives me fits and if I’m not rested I don’t cope well the following day. My doctor has given me something to help me sleep, but am very reluctant to take it every night. I still cry at odd moments every day. Sometimes several times a day. Looking at that one picture of Dave still brings me to tears nearly every time. Reading the cards from people – oh my gosh, I must have nearly 100 of them – makes me cry. Sometimes it’s the verse on the card. Sometimes it’s what the friends wrote about Dave. I still have a pile of cards to open – it’s very emotional doing that – so I try to just do 3-5 a day.  One of my blog readers commented today – I love what it said – “Sometimes my memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks.” So very true. Thank you, Connie. A friend brought me a book of daily Christian reading for grief. I ordered two books recommended on www.griefshare.org. I’m going to start going to a 13-week grief workshop in about a week. It may be too early for me, but the class won’t be offered again for several months, so I’m going to try.

As relatives and friends begin arriving this weekend I’ll probably do some cooking. I’ll have to. I have 2 large coffee cakes in the freezer to bring out – gifts from friends. Another dear friend, Kathy, brought me a batch of frozen lentil soup this morning (Ina Garten’s recipe, she said). That will taste particularly good. And my darling PEO sisters are bringing a dinner to serve 20 people on Sunday. And food for 6 for breakfast too. God bless them – I do feel so blessed. My cousin Gary, who spends Christmas at our/my house every year, is coming down for 10 days. I hope I’ll be UP to doing some things, not just having to do paperwork and dealing with our family living trust issues, etc.

Thank you, dear readers, for your patience with me. I will get back in the kitchen eventually.

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hol·low

noun \?hä-(?)l?\

1. A cavity, gap, or space: a hollow behind a wall.

2. An indented or concave surface or area.

3. A void; an emptiness: a hollow in one’s life.

4. A small valley between mountains.

This blog isn’t going to become a forum for grieving, but since I’ve received so MANY emails and comments from all of you, my readers, with kind words of encouragement and prayers, I thought I’d just write a little bit. Hollow is all I can feel right now. Our son and his wife had a photo of Dave on their family photo wall (at left), and when I took it down, I crushed the frame to my chest. It’s so HIM! I held it and I sobbed. I wish I could carry it around with me everywhere. Practically, I can’t hug it to me as I lie in my lonely bed at night, but I sure do hug it periodically during daytime hours. I’ve propped it up on my kitchen island and I see it there every time I walk in the kitchen. They’ve loaned it to me for now.

Many tasks await me – coordinating with the dear friends who are going to deliver eulogies at the service (April 7th); writing and printing the program for the service (our church would do it for me, but I want to do it myself), flowers, decorations, food, coordinating and ferrying people flying in from all over, responding to emails from my/our friends who have just poured their love on me. I want to do this right because I want to honor Dave, my helpmate, the man who treasured me for 31 years. Sara, our daughter, is putting together two separate powerpoint slide shows with pictures of Dave over every stage of his life – one to be shown before and during the service, and the other (with more lighthearted pictures) to show during the reception. We went to Kinko’s yesterday and scanned them in (most are printed snapshots).

Hugs are my undoing – I cry every time. Here’s hoping that gets better as nobody likes to hug some teary old woman!

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My dear darling hubby, Dave, passed away yesterday, the 21st. He fought valiantly and had begun to regain consciousness from the stroke and drug-induced coma, but the doctors believe he had a sudden lung embolism (a blot clot that lodged in the lung and it stopped the heart and brain). They gave him CPR and the paddles to the chest but his heart had stopped. It was an agonizing decision to tell them to stop. My family surrounds me. I’m not cooking, obviously, but eventually I’ll get back in the kitchen, I suppose. We have 3 children and 5 grandchildren. And yes, I’m just devastated. He was the love of my life. A wonderful husband, dad, and grandpa. We were married for 31 years.

Thanks much to those of you who sent me emails or left comments. It’s a terribly lonely time when you lose a spouse but I do feel surrounded with loving and caring family and friends.

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Last Tuesday (over a week ago) my husband, my dear darling DH, Dave, had a stroke here at home. He had severe vertigo and then the vomiting that goes along with that. I, of course, didn’t know that he’d had a stroke. I called 911 a few hours later and he’s been in our local hospital, in ICU, ever since. He had surgery last Thursday to relieve pressure on the brain (because the cerebellum, where the stroke occurred, was swelling – the cerebellum controls equilibrium and fine motor skills). They kept him in a drug-induced coma for 4+ days and took him off the sedation on Sunday, but so far he’s not waking up yet. They tell us this isn’t unusual. His heart went haywire within those 4 days and they did have to use the paddles to the chest (called cardioversion) to shock his heart back into rhythm, which it did. His blood pressure was way up, but as the days have gone on, his vital signs are all stable and good. He’s on a ventilator, of course, they’re feeding him through a tube. He opened his eyes yesterday for about 20 seconds (but we don’t think he focused on anything – he didn’t track movement or voices), but so far he’s still wanting to slumber. I hesitated telling all my readers about this because most of you don’t know him. I don’t have any more posts “in the bank” as bloggers sometimes refer to it. The Nutmeg Muffins I made were the last things I baked prior to Dave’s stroke. I have one more recipe to go, but I haven’t written it yet. It will just have to wait. There’s been not one stitch of cooking going on in my kitchen for 8 days. And I have no idea when I’ll start again. If you’re a believing person, pray for my hubby.

I’m doing okay – as long as I get enough rest I’m functioning. I have been spending long days at the hospital. Two of our kids live locally and they’ve been wonderful. I don’t lack for friends who want to help, to visit me, or bring me a sandwich, or friends who want to give me hugs – and oh, do I ever need those! One of our pastors has visited him every day. We don’t know how much he will be affected by the stroke – but as a double amputee it’s quite possible he’ll have to learn new ways to walk, although since he lost his legs (below the knee, to diabetes, in case you didn’t know) he’s used his eyes to balance as he walks, so perhaps he’ll adjust more easily than they think. Won’t know until he wakes up, sits up, and stands up. I’ll write another update when I have more to tell.

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Isn’t that a funny name for a muffin? I thought so until I tasted these, and now I see why, without a doubt, you won’t want to make any other kind of recipe for a nutmeg muffin.

Using nutmeg in a muffin – as the main flavoring – is certainly edgy. Some people might even say risky. Yet I’ve learned to trust Marion Cunningham. What a consummate baker she is. As time has gone by, more and more, I’ve learned that she really knows her baked goods. She must be part chemist. But most home bakers would never think to add so much nutmeg – for this batch that makes about 14 regular muffins, or about 26 mini-muffins, you’ll use about 3+ tablespoons of freshly grated nutmeg. Specifically, Marion says to grate 1 1/2 whole nutmeg pods. That’s one PILE of nutmeg, I’ll tell you, now having done it. I didn’t measure how much it was – but I’d say it’s almost 1/4 cup’s worth. Do not, under any circumstances, use pre-ground jarred nutmeg for this.

Using a rasp grater – a microplane grater – made easy work of it. I used the long, thin one on top in the photo at left. It probably took me about 5 minutes to get it done. The microplane creates airy shreds – lighter than other things you might grate. If you were to use regular ground nutmeg, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as much. But then, it also wouldn’t taste anywhere near as good. There is something significant that happens when you use freshly grated nutmeg.

The batter was simple to throw together – you don’t even use a mixer – just a fork. First you combine all the dry ingredients. Then you combine the wet ingredients in another bowl and slowly add the wet into the dry and stir JUST until you don’t see any streaks of flour. It’s very important that you don’t over mix this batter – you’ll have tough muffins if you do. The batter is wet, and using a tablespoon of baking powder is certainly a lot, but these don’t rise over-much, considering. I filled each muffin cup to the top, so they all puffed up nicely.

There’s more batter than you need, really, for one batch – I could have made another 3-4 mini-muffins, even after adding little dib-dabs of additional batter to each cup in the above 24-mini-muffin pan, so I poured the last of it into a greased glass (custard) cup and baked that right alongside the others – just for 5 minutes longer. The recipe indicates they’re best eaten warm, so I’ll probably reheat them in the microwave for about 5-7 seconds.

What’s GOOD: Loved the texture (light) of these. Right out of the oven they were heavenly. I ate one with nothing on it at all. This recipe exists on several other blog sites and most of the bakers served them with jam and/or butter. I’ll probably put out butter when I serve these to my friends who are coming to play Scrabble. The recipe indicates they stale quickly, so freeze them as soon as they cool down and defrost only what you need. The nutmeg flavor is sensational. But then, I love nutmeg.
What’s NOT: There was nothing not to like about these. Definitely a keeper.

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Oh gosh, this salad is just SO good. I think I could eat this every other night for the rest of my life and not get tired of it. Does that tell you anything? Like – – you need to make this? It’s that good!

So what is this stuff? It’s mostly Napa cabbage cut into narrow shreds, a whole bunch of radishes, some snow peas (or sugar snap, because that’s what I had on hand), some green onions and toasted almonds. All that cloaked in a really delicious mayo-based dressing that’s sweet with a little bit of sugar, sour with a bit of white wine vinegar (I used white balsamic), and flavored with ground ginger, a bit of cayenne, a garlic clove and just a smidgen of toasted sesame oil and soy sauce. Then you add a cup of mayo. The salad part can be made ahead; so can the dressing; then you just combine them before serving, although you don’t use all the dressing. The salad is best served immediately, or within a few hours. The next day the cabbage is somewhat wilted, but the salad is still edible. Not at its peak, but still tasty. I don’t eat left over green salad cuz the green leaves just get limp – and to me they’re inedible. This cabbage salad was nowhere near that, so it IS definitely edible one day later.

The CRUNCH? It comes from the cabbage, the radishes, the peas and even the toasted almonds. All of it is crunchy. The origin of this recipe is Sunset Magazine. A month or two ago the magazine did a 25-year retrospective of their favorite recipes. This recipe – THIS ONE – was the #1 nominated recipe (from both readers and editors). More reason to make it. Again and again and again.

What makes it special? I’d say it’s the salad dressing. It has just a hint of Asian flavor (from the soy sauce and toasted sesame oil) but it’s very subtle. Truly, it is subtle. And I particularly liked the hint of sweet in it too. And the faint hint of heat from the cayenne. And it’s probably from the variety of veggies. The combo is just different. I don’t know who came up with this recipe, but I tip my hat to her/him.

What’s GOOD: absolutely everything. Love-love-love this salad. It’s going to go onto my favs list if that’s any indication of just how good it is.
What’s NOT: Nothing, other than the time required to slice and shred the veggies. But worth it, for sure.

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The other night I made the best salad. I can’t say that on any ordinary evening I feel my green salads are exceptional. They’re GOOD, but not exceptional. And usually they’re good because I make my own salad dressings. This one, though, was about the salad itself, and it was likely enhanced because of the dressing. I’ll tell you about what was in it down below. . . it’s not like I could even come up with a recipe, exactly. But I will tell you what I put in this one.

The dressing, though, is what I’m mostly telling you about today. But first, I want to talk a bit about vinegar. If you read any of the foodie magazines, you’ve likely read somewhere about the sad state of apple cider vinegar in our country. Most of the stuff we buy at the grocery store (Heinz included) is just the straight white vinegar with a little bit of brownish coloring in it. It’s not cider vinegar at all.

According to Wikipedia, apple cider vinegar a type of vinegar [that is supposed to be] made from cider or apple must and has a pale to medium amber color. Unpasteurized or organic ACV contains mother of vinegar, which has a cobweb-like appearance and can make the vinegar look slightly congealed.

If you’re lucky enough to find apple cider vinegar that comes from some local farms, all the better, but on a bulk note, I generally buy Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar. According to their website,

“Certified Bragg Organic Raw Apple Cider Vinegar is unfiltered, unheated, unpasteurized and 5% acidity. Contains the amazing Mother of Vinegar which occurs naturally as strand-like enzymes of connected protein molecules. . . Bragg Organic Raw Apple Cider Vinegar is made from delicious, healthy, organically grown apples.”

At upscale markets you can sometimes find lovely winery-produced wine vinegar and at organic farms (particularly apple orchards, I’d guess) you may be able to buy apple cider vinegar. Since I see that rarely, as I mentioned, I buy Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar Organic Raw — 32 fl oz – sometimes even at my regular grocery store. I prefer to buy the unfiltered that contains the “mother,” a clump of yeasty, spongy stuff that you’ll sometimes find in the bottom of a bottle of vinegar (only the apple cider type).

Back to this dressing, though . . . I went to my most recent salad dressing cookbook I bought last year, Vinaigrettes & Other Dressings: 60 Sensational recipes to Liven Up Greens, Grains, Slaws, and Every Kind of Salad. By Michele Anna Jordan. I leafed through, looking at every recipe. I’ve added one of her recipes in this book to my regular rotation, the Molasses Honey Vinaigrette. And I settled on this one to try something different. I did make two tiny changes – I used apple juice concentrate mixed with a little water (so it may have been slightly more concentrated than her recipe; and after tasting the dressing, I decided it was just a tad too acidic, so I added another T. of oil.

According to the author, she prefers to use this dressing on a cabbage slaw or on a chicken or duck salad. (I used it on a green salad!) She offers 4 variations on the recipe below – I have included them in the recipe below, although I haven’t tried any of these variations. A spicy version: adding 2 T. apricot, kumquat or fig jam and  3-4 garlic cloves (wow, 3-4?). Another variation has 1/2 cup pureed fresh mango in it and cilantro. A 3rd one adds 2 T. hot pepper jam, like jalapeno jelly; yet a 4th adds 1-2 tsp. chipotle chile powder and a T. of crème fraiche.

So, the mixture is combined in a glass jar, or as I did, in my handy-dandy Chef’n Emulstir 2.0, Salad Dressing Mixer. It was a gift for Christmas, and I will say, I use it a lot. After I make a salad dressing, of course, it resides in the refrigerator. Depending on what kind of oil I’ve used, it may be really firm (as in EVOO) and a bit thinner if I’ve used canola oil. I take the Chef’n Emulstir out of the refrigerator when I start fixing dinner, so that by the time I’m ready to toss the salad, it’s warmed up and will pour out of the spout and doesn’t clump on the salad. First, though, you grab the jar and flex the green handle thingy, which rotates inside the bottle, hence stirring it up well – emulsifying it as best I can.

The SALAD, then . . . for a salad to serve 3 people (we had a houseguest, our friend Joe Casali, of the Italian mushroom story) I used about 1 1/2 cups of Romaine, about 3/4 cup of arugula that I chopped up coarsely, 1-2 leaves of red leaf lettuce, 1/4 cup chopped-up sugar snap peas, about 1/2 cup chopped celery, mostly inner pieces, 1 medium tomato, chopped up in fairly small pieces, about 3 tablespoons of Feta cheese, crumbled, 2 T. toasted almonds, a few dried cranberries (craisins), a few pepitas, and lastly after dressing and plating the salads, I added 2 slices of avocado on each one.

What’s GOOD: I liked this dressing a lot. I have just enough for another salad. The author says to use up all the dressing in one go, but I didn’t do that. I’ll add an addendum here if I find the dressing doesn’t taste great at the 2nd iteration.
What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of. All dressings are best the day they’re made, but that doesn’t keep me from making larger quantities. Nothing in dressings can really spoil except with very long term storage (the oil could turn rancid, but that’s a long shot).

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A couple of weeks ago I attended an all-day book event. An annual affair put on by the Literary Women of Long Beach. If you’re lucky enough to snag a ticket ($80 per – they allow 800 people to attend and they sell out almost immediately) you’ll be book-blessed for sure. All the proceeds of this yearly event go to the Long Beach Public Library. This was the 2nd year I’ve been able to go, and again, I came home inspired by the (women) author’s speeches and in awe of their writing abilities AND their poise at the podium. I’d only heard of two of the authors prior to the gathering, but I came away wanting to know more about each and every one of them.

Here’s the list – I’m not suggesting these are great book reads for everyone, but I’m planning to read some of them. Here they are:

Denise Kiernan – she’s written a best-seller entitled The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. A documentary (book) about The (1944) Manhattan Project (Oak Ridge, Tennessee), an ultra-secret project to enrich uranium which went into the atomic bomb. Kiernan weaves the story of 2 women (and others) who lived there, who didn’t know until 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, what they’d helped accomplish. Even the people who lived and worked there (in a locked compound) didn’t know what the overall project was about. Her talk, including some very funny stories about the centenarians she interviewed, was riveting. (I will tell you that 2 at my table had read this book, and although they enjoyed the beginning with the stories of the 2 women, neither of them particularly liked the 2nd half.)

Then there was Karen Connelly. A Canadian, she has written a number of things (including recently a book of poetry) but she’s more noted for her edgy books about Burma. In her speech she talked about her love of travel – she has a very indulgent husband, as she travels to the nether regions of the world, sometimes dangerous places. But Burma (Myanmar) has stolen a part of her heart. She’s a woman with a message (oppression, poverty, race relations and gender politics) and uses her novels to raise our awareness. Burmese Lessons is her most recent one. She also wrote The Lizard Cage. A couple of women at my table had read Burmese Lessons and were more than turned off by the over-the-top sex in it. She explained in her speech that her intense affair with a man who is a Burmese revolutionary was the genesis of the book, and that the explicit sex chronicled her relationship with him.

Everyone attending this literary event chose to go to a break-out session with one of three authors. Mine was Amanda Coplin, a young debut author. She grew up in Wenatchee, Washington, the land of orchards and harvests of fruit. Hence her book, The Orchardist: A Novel. It has an unusual premise – it takes place at the turn of the 20th century. Picture a man who borders on ugly, who is lonely but plodding along on his ranch in central Washington State. Enter two young teenage girls, both pregnant prostitutes, who hide out in the orchard. From that plays out a very intriguing story. Amanda shared how these characters had been inhabiting her brain for a long time before she put pen to paper. The man, the orchardist, is much like her beloved deceased step-grandfather, who helped raise her. Several in our group had read this book and highly recommended it. I have it on my Kindle and will read it eventually. Amanda was a very likable speaker with wonderful stories to tell.

The next talk was with Madeline Miller. Her recent book is The Song of Achilles: A Novel. She’s a student (and teacher) of the Classics. For the last 10 years she’s tutored and taught Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students. In describing how she came to write this book she explained she was intrigued by some mention of Petroclus, Achilles’ best friend in The Iliad. So Miller worked for years writing, re-telling Homer’s tale of Achilles from the voice of this friend (lover), Petroclus. No question Miller is a scholar. No question Miller is passionate about her subject. She’s devoted years to studying languages and classic literature. This book has been translated in 23 languages. Although I was very interested in her speech, I don’t know that I’m up to the challenge of reading a book (sorry, a novel) about The Iliad.

Lastly, we heard from Susan Orlean. This woman was very impressive. Very knowledgeable about numerous subjects. She’s a staff writer at The New Yorker. She’s written essays most of her adult life, mostly on non-fiction subjects. She wrote the bestseller (that became a movie, Adaptation) The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession. She talked about being inspired to live life outside our box, our boundaries, to learn. Education is a key element in her life since she has written about such esoteric subjects as taxidermy, women surfers, the subject of “permanence,” and female bullfighters. Her journey – the point when she discovers some subject she wants to investigate – that’s her student phase. Then she reads and researches – that’s her discovery stage. Then she assumes the role of teacher – by writing about that subject. She’s not an expert at it, but finds more than enough fodder to write an in-depth essay (or maybe a book). If she writes for The New Yorker, you know she’s one very sharp woman. She’s also written the definitive book about Rin Tin Tin – Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. She’s written numerous other books – go to her web page if you’re interested. Here’s a link to a search I did at The New Yorker, if you’re interested in looking at any of her essays there. She’s just about finished writing a brand new book called The Library Book. She said it was available for pre-order, but I can’t find any online mention of it. This new book is an in-depth history of the Los Angeles Public Library. And no, she doesn’t live in L.A.

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Gee whiz – I sure should have photographed these delicious meatballs on a colored plate, eh? I darkened it a bit so you could see some contrast. Can you even tell they’re meatballs? No matter, though, if you have a hankering for Swedish Meatballs – it’s the taste that will win you over.

Only a couple of times have I dined on Ikea’s Swedish Meatballs. We used to have the store near us, but they moved to a much larger building about 15 miles away, so I don’t visit it very often. But I’ve not forgotten how delicious their meatballs are. For whatever reason I was craving comfort food, so with some defrosted ground beef on hand, I decided to make this rendition (from the Food Network) of Ikea’s Swedish Meatballs.

I do recall when I had Ikea’s version, the meatballs were very soft. To me, that means filler, and yes, I suppose these do have some (bread, in this case), but not enough to make them quite fall apart. Almost, but not quite. The onions and garlic are cooked separately (to make sure they’re  cooked through), then combined with some milk (so the milk soaks into the bread completely). I didn’t have any dry bread crumbs, but had fresh. I should have used less milk, so my meatballs were very wet. The baking process, though, cooked off the liquid.

Once you form the 1-inch meatballs, they’re refrigerated for about an hour, then baked in a hot oven for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile you make the sauce, which is really just a beef broth gravy and a bit of heavy cream at the end. The only unusual thing in it is Worcestershire sauce. Not in the recipe, but I did put in just a little bit of freshly grated nutmeg in the gravy. Allspice is the predominating spice in the meat, with a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg, giving them that distinct taste. Just before serving, the meatballs are added into the gravy and heated through.

The pièce de résistance, though, is the jam. Traditionally it’s lingonberry (which you can buy at Ikea). I had some Montana huckleberry jam which was just great with it. Each and every bite should have just a tiny bit of the jam – it gives it a hint of sweetness. I served this with mashed potatoes (I think that’s traditional) though some serve it with egg noodles. You’ve heard me say before that I think Costco’s instant mashed potatoes are great. I wouldn’t serve them for Thanksgiving or a fancy dinner, but they’re amazingly true to home made mashed potatoes. And ever-so easy to make. In this case the gravy and meatballs are the stars of the show anyway. The potatoes are almost an afterthought, but a necessary one.

We had a friend over for dinner – Irene – who has Norwegian heritage. She swooned over these meatballs and said “oh, these taste just like my mother used to make.” You can’t get a more hearty recommendation than that, can you? I sent her home with some left overs.

What’s GOOD: Oh gosh, we thought these were wonderful. Absolutely mouth-watering delicious. Whether they’re true to the store’s version, I don’t know, but they’re very, very close and definitely worth making. Yes, I’ll be making them again, according to this recipe! I have another version of Swedish Meatballs on my site, but these are better!

What’s NOT: not a thing.

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Did we have pork chops in the freezer? Check. Apples? Yes, one. Check. Onions? Yes, always one of those on hand. Check. Italian Parsley? Yup. Check. Lemon juice? Oh yes. Check.

I’m sure you’re all just like I am – we eat different meats in rotation. Sort of. Chicken, chicken, fish, chicken, pork, chicken, fish, and way down the rotation list, lamb. This particular night I was in the mood for pork and sure enough, we still had two more pork chops from the Berkshire pig. I think this dinner will be the last, however. We have a Berkshire ham, which we’ll probably have for Easter, and I think I have one more pound of ground pork. When those are gone, I’ll be completely empty of Berkshire. Sadly.

Lucky is the word for me when it comes to pleasing my hubby – Dave never complains no matter what I serve him. Only when we’ve had the same leftovers 3 times does he grumble a little. I rarely do that – I try to insert something else in between, or I try to re-invent the dish somehow. But with some things that’s not possible. When I’ve defrosted meat to begin with, made something, I don’t like to re-freeze it. It’s already been frozen and I’ve read that meat just loses flavor when you do that. I’ve been known to do it with soup, when the protein comprises very little of the taste in the soup itself. Like tonight, for instance, as I’m typing this, I have meatballs in the refrigerator, chilling. From a couple of pounds of defrosted ground beef. (I’m making something close to Ikea’s Swedish Meatballs – if it’s good, I’ll post it in a few days.) I made a big batch – bigger than I should have I think – and my only hope is that we’ll have a guest over to help eat it up. Because I don’t want to freeze them.

Okay, back to pork chops. I’d saved this recipe in MasterCook – and so my notes say, I found it on Oprah’s website, although it’s a Mark Bittman recipe. Must have been awhile ago. But I searched for pork chop recipes within my to-try recipes and this one just seemed the best fit. And talk about easy!

The chops were seasoned with salt and pepper, browned in a skillet. Some vermouth was added to the pan along with a minced-up shallot. The chops are removed, and then you add the sliced apples and onion and cook that for awhile with some chicken stock, then the chops go back into the pan for a little while – maybe 10 minutes – while the sauce reduces down a bit. That’s it. Add a tidbit of butter (as a finish to the sauce) and garnish with Italian parsley. Done. I had a smidgen of rice left over from the chicken tikka masala I’d made the other night, so I added just enough to give the plate a rounding-out. It was enough for the sauce to soak into, which was delicious.

What’s GOOD: how quick and easy the dish was to make. My DH loved it – but then, he loves pork chops just about any way I’ll make them. Loved the interplay between the savory sauce and the sweet apple. Apple and pork really do go together well.

What’s NOT: nothing at all, really. Liked the dish a lot.

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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click on link to open in MC)

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