Honey Wheat Pork Chops and Cheddar

So not only was last weekend wonderfully spring because of the Twins games, but we also kicked the weekend off on Friday night by pulling out our grill. Nothing is better in than a meal hot off the grill--much like the brats we had last night! Of course, Mother Nature still hasn't quite been able to shrug off Old Man Winter, and there are cold temperatures and possibly snow in the forecast for Friday, so it looks like we'll have to take a brief hiatus from our grilling frenzy. 

Friday night we turned to an old favorite in these pork chops; we found this recipe sometime last summer and must have done it at least every other week after that. It's just that good. And even my husband, who isn't a big "cheese" person, really enjoys the flavor of the smoked white cheddar. So delicious--and of course, so perfect for the grill (we tried it stovetop once over the winter in our grill pan and it wasn't quite the same--plus it nearly set the smoke alarms off!) Without further ado: 

Honey Wheat Pork Chops and Cheddar


4 pork chops
12 oz honey wheat beer (we used Boulevard this time)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
4 oz smoked white cheddar, shredded
2 green onions, thinly sliced
2 tbsp walnuts, toasted and chopped


Combine beer, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Pour into a bag with the pork. Marinade at least four hours. Drain and discard marinade. Cook pork on the grill over a drip pan (as you can see we just throw ours right on the grates). Stir together cheese, green onions, and nuts. Spoon mixture over chops. Cover and grill two to three minutes more or until cheese is melted. 


The other thing I love about grill recipes? They're so simple. Seriously. No complicated directions, no dirtying lots of dishes, just simple, good, food. 


And lest you think we are raving carnivores, we did serve a nice side of greens beans on the side, steamed (where else?) on the grill.

We've been on a little bit of an Asian kick lately with our green beans, so we tossed these with some dark sesame oil, a little garlic, and red pepper flakes, wrapped them up in foil, and tossed them on the grill. Ten minutes to perfection, and not a single dirty dish in the kitchen. Glorious.


I should warn you know that if you aren't a grill person, you probably should ignore the majority of my food posts for the next, oh, five months. Because we put our grill to good work in the nice weather. Now if it will just get warm enough for us to be able to sit outside and enjoy our meal as well... Life would be perfect (take the hint Old Man Winter and get the heck out of dodge!)

A Match Made in Heaven

And no, I'm not being cutesy and romantic and talking about Darrell and myself. I'm talking about spring, baseball, and the outdoors. Life just doesn't get much better than that. Darrell, my brother, and I drove up to Minneapolis this weekend to enjoy some Twins baseball, and while I never had any negative feelings about attending Twins games at the Metrodome (well, more like Metrobowl now, after it collapsed from the snow storms this winter), I don't think that I could ever go back. Not after enjoying games at Target Field. I mean, seriously, how awesome is this view?

Even with overcast skies and a less-than-thrilling game (Twins lost 0-1 against the Athletics), it was still a great night for baseball. I didn't get any pictures of the game on Saturday night, but here's a shot of us with our view of the field in the background.

We were seriously hoping for a foul ball, since we figured that 20-some rows up on the right field line would be pretty decent territory for one, but no such luck. Nothing even came close. Oh, and ignore the massive bags under my eyes--I played in a volleyball tournament Saturday morning (seven games in less than three hours) and was beat for the rest of the day. And apparently when I'm tired and nap in the car, bags happen. Oh well.


We also had tickets to the game Sunday afternoon. I'd explain the whole convoluted mess of how we ended up with tickets for both days (three for Saturday and four for Sunday), but it's just not worth it. Let's just say that you have to know my family to understand just how big of a mess it was. But I digress. Like I said, we had four tickets for Sunday's game. The three of us stayed with family in the Cities Saturday night, so we were already in town and ready to go to the game. My parents, sister, and boyfriend were supposed to drive up and meet us (and yes, I know that is more than four people--my dad was going to buy standing room only tickets at the gate). Well, they left my sister's house in Webster Sunday morning in pouring rain. And according to the forecast, that rain was headed straight to Minneapolis. So they decided to save the time and gas and bail on the game. We were likewise feeling uneasy about the likelihood of the game getting played, but since we were already up there we decided to wait it out. And I'm glad we did. Granted, the weather was having more mood swings than a pregnant lady, but it never did end up raining, which was all that mattered. We could deal with the constant back and forth between overcast and clear skies, which also caused the temperature to vary from cool and breezy to warm and muggy. It was a little bizarre--but we still got to enjoy the game. And this time, from seats along the first base line. 

No foul balls Sunday either, although we did see some get hit into the area we were sitting Saturday night. I guess it's just a matter of timing. Unfortunately the game wasn't much better--there was a little bit more scoring going on (final score was 3-5), but the Twins were on the losing end again. And I know I've already got a shot of Darrell and I on this post, but I thought I'd demonstrate just how varied the weather was. You can't see much of the sky in the previous picture, but it's heavily overcast and no sun is getting through to the field. Just over a half an hour later?

Massive sun. Thankfully our seats were in the shade or I probably would have left the game with some serious sunburn. Darrell and I should probably buy stock in sunscreen products once we have kids because they'll probably have the same easy-to-burn fair skin that we do (not quite as bad as redheads, mind you, but between the two of us we easily go through a bottle of sunscreen the one week a summer we're at the beach with Darrell's family--not to mention all the trips to the lake with my family). 


Hopefully the Twins get their bats going with a little bit more consistency--I know it's still early on in a loooong season, but no one wants to be tied with Detroit at the bottom of the American League Central Division!


PS I just realized that I never got a picture with my brother this weekend, despite spending the entirety of it with him. In fact, I don't think he's made an appearance anywhere on this blog yet. I'll have to remedy that soon

Green Thumb-ing It!

Despite our crazy work schedules (Darrell's been putting in some 60-hour weeks--gross!), we have managed to spend a little bit of time together doing something productive. We still have a long ways to go before we have anything resembling a garden in our backyard, but we finally decided where it's going to go and what to plant in it!


Our humble garden beginnings:

Note my yellow tape and cheat sheet under the planter so that when we go to transplant them into the garden we know which seedlings are which. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I had that idea :)

It should be noted that we have absolutely no idea what we are getting ourselves into. We currently have two tomato plants and four pepper plants taking root (hopefully!) in our little seedling green house. Do we have any idea how much vegetables those plants will yield? Not a clue. So if you start to see lots of salsa and fajita cooking going on later this summer, you'll know why. We also have plans to do squash, broccoli, spinach, zucchini, green beans, and green onions (that doesn't sound like biting off more than you can chew, does it?). We (literally) couldn't be more clueless about this whole process, and Darrell is very much of the "let's just do it and if it fails then we'll try it a different way next time" mentality, so this summer will either be a massive failure or a massive success. I'm praying for the later--I've got oodles of veggie-heavy summer dishes (off the grill!) that I can't wait to start trying. And using produce from our own garden will be significantly cheaper (and supposedly healthier. But I only really care about the cheaper part).


Not only did we decide to test out our green thumbs on a vegetable garden, but Darrell has also been dying to have an herb garden in the kitchen, so we got that project started as well. The progress?

You won't believe how many stores we had to go to before we found something that would be acceptable to put on that ledge. Darrell really wanted a rectangular planter, but they were either massively deep or way too wide. So hopefully these little pots do the trick; I think they look super cute, and that window couldn't be in a more perfect location--it's within an arms reach of the stove and gets gobs of sunlight. I know Darrell planted two pots of basil, and I think the other three are rosemary, parsley, and cilantro. 


Stay tuned for progress on our little adventure--I'm dying to see some little green sprouts start to stick up! (And you can fully expect pictures of them when they do!)

Letter to Future Daughter

To my future daughter:


I think there are a few things you should know about me before you are conceived and come into this world. I may have plenty of strong qualities that will make me a good parent, but there are many things about raising a girl that I will definitely lack.


For starters, don't expect me to teach you how to do something like this to your hair:

photo credit here

I do not possess such finely developed hair styling skills. I've got ponytails down pat, I can do a mean French-braid, and my straight-as-straw hair doesn't need any coaxing to master the "sleek and straight" look. However, if you get your father's curls and waves, don't expect much guidance from me. And styling products? Don't even get me started. It's a lucky day when I'm able to find hairspray in my bathroom cabinet. 


Similarly, don't expect to have a mother-daughter bonding day where I teach you the ins and outs of using these kinds of tools:

photo credit here

I can't even begin to tell you what all those brushes are for and where on your face all those different shades and colors and tubes belong. Mascara I can handle. Eye shadow? Sure, just as long as you stick to the neutral colors and don't want to do anything fancy with eyeliners and smokey eyes or anything. Blush and foundation? You'd better have someone else pick the colors out, because that's what I did. And that about sums up my beauty routine.


But most importantly, you should know that I don't "get" fashion. And because of that, I will never let you leave the house looking like this:

photo credit here

Trust me, I won't care if it's what every one else is wearing. You might as well strike that phrase from your vocabulary now. And don't think that you can make the situation better by wearing slightly longer spandex shorts underneath. If anything, that will only draw attention to just how short your shorts are and they will promptly be confiscated. These same rules apply for any type of a skirt or dress. As long as you are living under my roof it will be expected that boys have to do more to see your butt cheeks than just walk behind you. 


If you have objections to any of this I recommend that you just go ahead and let all the male and tom-boy sperm ahead of you so that you can avoid the disappointment of having me as a mother.


Sincerely,
Your Caring Mother


Disclaimer: I do not, under any circumstances, have a bun in the oven. Nor is there currently any work being done to put a bun in my oven. I just felt this would be an enjoyable way to A) ridicule my faults as a women and B) address the serious of issue of way too short shorts that girls wear. We've had reasonably nice temperatures the past few days and it's butt cheek central around here--and no shame about it whatsoever. This kind of clothing is only the "style" because parents allow it to be--if every daughter's mother (or father!) refused to let her wear super short shorts, then clothing lines would be forced to carry more reasonable attire for teenagers. Bottom line.

On Budgeting...

Work has become our lives as of late, which hasn't left time for doing much of anything (although we did manage to squeeze a late trip to Lewis last night before they closed to pick up some stuff to get our vegetables/herbs started...but more on that later). However, all the working and paychecks and bills and everything else has spiraled me into the land of budgeting. We've been sticking to one pretty well for the past couple of months, and it really hasn't been too bad (Darrell maybe had to loan me some money at the end of last month because I was out of my allowance and really wanted a few cute shirts that were on mega-sale...but that's beside the point). However, we've found that in one area it is particularly difficult to stick to our budget: Groceries. Try as we might, we always end up just barely scraping by, and as of late have resorted to taking a calculator with us so we return that bag of chips to the shelf because they'll push us over budget aren't surprised by the total at the cash register. What we've realized, though, is that food is an area where we aren't that willing to compromise. We loooove ourselves some fresh produce (although we've gotten better at eating only what's on sale in season, hence the branch into cauliflower), quality meats (but, meatless Mondays have been successful the past two weeks, so we're on a roll with that) and the (occasional) spirited beverage. Plus, we just genuinely enjoy cooking (and eating!) a variety of tasty food, and sometimes that requires purchasing some "not-so-local-or-cheap" ingredients, like coconut milk and pine nuts. I'm also a little bit of a brand whore--the differences between generic brand and name brand peanut butter and yogurt (to name a few items) are noticeably different enough for me to justify forking over the extra dough.


Our solution (and, ultimately, I suppose, the point to this post)? I don't have one. Seriously. We already plan weekly menus to minimize waste (need a small quantity of green onions for one dish? We'll plan another with green onions so we don't have to throw the extras out). We love ourselves some rebates (handle of Bacardi Rum + sale price + $5 rebate = mega deal). We already shop the ads and specials. But just today I looked through the new ones for our local store and complied over a $40 list of the on-sale items that are either regular use items to stock up on (peanut butter, sugar, oatmeal) or items we'll incorporate into our meals this week (peppers, zucchini--although that one might get put in a bread--yum!, sweet potatoes). And I know from experience that once we plan our menu and add the other ingredients that we need that amount will shoot way up--easily over budget if we're not careful. I do need to get better about using coupons, although I do always use the ones in the ads when they are applicable. 


Ultimately, I know that there are things we could cut. But when it boils down to it, we don't want to. We don't want to give up fresh ingredients and flavor and taste and go back to our college days of Zatarans and tacos every week. And if things really start to get dicey (and food prices keep getting higher...) expect to see me on my bike A LOT this summer. Because this girl will gladly cut back on her gas budget in order to be able to fuel herself with quality food.

The Whistling Season

I'd love to give this book a rave review, because by the time I finished I really had come to enjoy it. However, I had too many issues with it along the way to really sing its praises. The first issue was really my fault for not catching the historical background of the text--it presents itself as a book about life on the Montana prairie, which I foolishly equated to life on the South Dakota prairie. So it took me awhile to get used to all the horse references, especially since I do not have much familiarity with horses. Another issue I had with it was the fact that it's written from the perspective of a man looking back on his childhood. However, I felt that it didn't make very clear distinctions when it would shift back to the present, which always left me confused for a paragraph or two. My final, and biggest, issue was that the book's action moved very slowly. The first few hundred pages had a couple of exciting occurrences, but they were far and few between. I suppose you could argue that the narration and pace of the book would be fitting for life on a Montana homestead in the early 1900s, because really, besides going to school in a one-room schoolhouse and waiting for the rain, there wasn't much to do. However, at the end of the book, things started to unravel out of no where, which started to add some drama and excitement (which made me glad that I never put the book down and refused to finish it in the midst of the slower sections). Part of me wants to reread the book now and see if I can identify the clues that I missed that might have given away the ending.... But I also know that I have some much more exciting and scintillating books on my "to-read" list that I want to get through first (like The Book Thief, which I started a few days ago and am just flying through).


The bottom line? I guess I probably wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone. It's not terrible, but if you don't have a strong interest in life on the Montana prairie (which I learned means horses and ranches) or experiences in a one-room schoolhouse, then it probably isn't going to keep your interest.

Fired Up

South Dakota is ridiculous. These past four months have made me glad that I don't plan to raise a family here. At the beginning of the calendar year, while the Legislature was beginning their session, our governor proposed a 10% cut to all state-funded agencies: Game Fish and Parks, Medicaid, and EDUCATION, just to name a few. Do you have any idea what a 10% cut to a school means? To put it in perspective, the Sioux Falls School District, the largest in the state, could cut all extra-curriculum programming (sports, fine arts, etc), stop all bus routes, significantly reduce the number of administration, among other cuts, and they still wouldn't be able to make up all of the money that would be lost in that cut. And should I mention that South Dakota teachers are already the worst paid teachers in the nation? Good plan to take away more of the money they already don't have--that's a good way to keep teachers working here. Ultimately, by the time the state budget was finalized, the cut ended up being only a 6.6% cut--still not what you want, but at least more manageable. 


So this morning while I'm getting ready for work I heard a news clip on the radio about a piece of legislation that was passed which allows the governor to use a $16 million fund to help develop the economy of the state. In layman's terms? The governor is going to use this fund, which is fueled by taxpayer's money, to help large construction corporations with the cost of the building projects. His goal? To bring more business--and subsequently, more people--into the state. Brilliant Mr. Governor, just brilliant. I wish you the best of luck enticing people--people with families--to move to South Dakota when it's been made quite clear that this state sees education as an expense (and an expense that can be readily cut, no less), not an investment. 


(full article found here)