Two Home Cooked Meals!

I think I am actually getting the hang of this cooking thing!  As long as I pull meat out of the freezer, I am making a meal happen!  For lunch today, I had decided to make a recipe for Slow Cooker San Francisco Chops that I had found online, but when I started preparing it this morning, I realized it would not be ready until dinner time.  There went my idea for having leftovers for dinner!  (Believe it or not after last nights leftovers, the fridge has nearly no leftovers in it!)  So I pulled out a pound of ground beef to thaw.

Lunch ended up being cheeseburgers-I started off using the recipe I found at beefitswhatsfordinner.com, but then I basically scratched that whole concept-instead of oats I used ranch flavored bread crumbs, and then a little bit of this and a little bit of that, until it just felt right!  The oldest (and pickiest!) told me that they tasted as good as dads!  That said-he kept telling me some ingredients that the hubby puts in his burgers, so I guess they would have to taste similar.  For a side dish, the oldest asked for fries.  I suggested potato logs, and he said that sounded good.  I found a recipe for potato logs at copykatchat.com (the recipe from 11-7-06 at 4:23 PM).  He made them mostly by himself, with a few minor seasoning-change suggestions from me.  

Dinner was the San Francisco Chops (which were actually boneless ribs) found at melskitchencafe.com, rice (plain white rice-nothing special), and Corn Salad found at motherthyme.com.  

For the chops (oops-I ended up using boneless ribs-is that a bad thing?), the blogger pleaded for anyone using the recipe to brown the meat before adding it to the slow cooker, and not to eliminate the red pepper.  I decided I would follow those instructions because the blogger was so insistent.  The only thing I changed was to use regular white sugar and a bit of molasses instead of the brown sugar-you guessed it-I couldn't find any!  I HIGHLY recommend this recipe!  Yummy!  The boys both really enjoyed it, and told me they would like me to make it again.

For the corn, I had some leftover corn on the cob that came fresh from the farmers market.  I can't let fresh corn go to waste-it just has too much yummy flavor!  I just had to add a little garlic to the recipe, and since we only had regular white onion at the house, I used that in place of the red onion.  I realize that the flavors are different (and the coloring would be lacking, too) but I figured white onion was better than no onion.  In order to cool it before dinner, I placed it in the freezer to chill quickly.  The verdict:  not so great.  I finished what was on my plate, but scraped the leftovers in the trash.  The boys didn't care for it either.  Oh well-at least the pork was good!