Creative Cooking: Just Another Sunday Dinner

It's been a while since I've shared our culinary adventures with the VFN readership. I don't really have anything exotic or exciting to share, but this is a pretty typical Sunday dinner for us.

It started with some cauliflower. I know, I know, cauliflower is one of those unglamorous vegetables with a fairly high yuck-factor, but I've been in love with roasted vegetable recipes ever since I found an earth-shattering broccoli recipe. (I'll take pictures and share it next time I make it. It will make your heart flutter.) Roasted broccoli with garlic was so good that when I came across a recipe for roasted cauliflower, and the store had fresh cauliflower THE EXACT SAME WEEK, I knew I was destined to make it.

I poured some olive oil over the cauliflower.

Note to readers: Steve and I have gone through over two liters of olive oil this school year. Is this unhealthy?

I added whole garlic cloves. (They're kind of hard to see, but they're there, I promise.)

As far as Steve is concerned, this is the secret ingredient: bacon. (Or, more accurately, bacon bits. You know, the real kind. The hefty chunks of bacon in a ziploc bag you buy at warehouse stores.)

Sprinkle it all with kosher salt, throw it in the oven, and out comes...

this. And, yup, it tastes as good as it looks (unless you think it looks nasty, in which case it tastes much better than it looks). Steve and I polished off an entire bunch of cauliflower. By ourselves.

But, the cauliflower was only a supporting character to the porkchops. I have a really good recipe for pork chops with a creamed herb sauce, but I wanted to try something sans sauce. One of my favorite food blogs posted a simple pork chop recipe, I got right on it (this was kind of a week of food blog providence).

I started the pork chops with rosemary...

brown sugar...

cumin and pepper.

Then mixed it all up on a paper plate because I was too lazy to wash a real dish.

I coated the pork chop with the mixture and threw it in a hot frying pan with some olive oil (see, I use it in everything).

A few minutes on each side, and it was done. I was kind of embarrassed by the blackened parts, but they tasted really good, so now I display this picture with pride.

Tossed a quick salad with dried cranberries, pistachios, and blue cheese. Mmmmm, mmmmmm, mmmmm.

I love Sundays...