miscellany

Editor’s Note: Just because the Dumbass Gourmet was on a month-long hiatus a while back doesn’t mean I quit cooking. (The Husband only wishes he were so lucky.) Here are a couple dishes I made while waiting for the new site to get up and running.

Apple-stuffed pork chops

Let me set the scene: I had a lonely apple and a slowly-getting-stale loaf of bread sitting in the fridge, and we had recently scored some butterflied pork chops on manager’s special for something like $2. I hit AllRecipes for ideas, and found a recipe for apple-stuffed pork chops that sounded absolutely heavenly. Add in some edamame and a baked potato, and we had a huge dinner that left both of us feeling like beached whales — but beached whales who’d just eaten a delicious meal.

The pork chops smelled unbelievable — all apple-y and onion-y. I’m drooling a bit just remembering them.

High-falutin’ edamame with sea salt.

Rigatoni

When I was little, I loved to watch my mother cook. She let me help, too, although most times I managed to eat more than I prepared. I still do that — snack as I cook — which means by the time the food is done I’m no longer hungry. (Of course, I eat it anyway.) One of my favorite jobs was to stuff the rigatoni, which sounds like an unfortunate euphemism but is literally what I did. I got to slice cheese into little rectangles, then stuff them into unsuspecting pasta:

Om nom nom.

Rigatoni noodles also double as fashionable fingerthings:

Coming soon to a Tiffany’s jewelry store near you!

The rigatoni turned out absolutely delicious, just like mom’s:

Cheesy!

As usual, we had some random fruit laying around in the crisper, so I chopped it up and put it on some spinach:

I wish I had something witty to say here.

I’ll leave you with a picture that makes me smile every time I see it. I spotted these containers when I was at my dad’s house in July, and they immediately made me nostalgic. Why? Because we have owned these spices for as long as I can remember. Seriously — they’ve been sitting in the spice cabinet for at least 20 years, if not more. Not only that, but they’ve survived three, maybe four, moves to different houses, and they now reside on the lazy susan in Daddy’s kitchen:

Sunriiiiiise, sunset, swiftly fly the years …

The Husband and I tried eggplant for the first time last night. Was it awesome? Did it suck? Stay tuned for another edge-of-your-seat Dumbass Gourmet!