Week 1: Day 1

 Pork Chops with Roasted Beets

Ease of Ingredients: A
One difficult thing about cooking is finding the right ingredients.   Who the hell just has sherry vinager in their pantry? So I will use "Ease of Finding Ingredients" as a criterion by which to judge a recipe.? Everything  on this recipe was easy to find at the grocery store, even the fresh beets, which I had only ever seen canned.  Also, everything was pretty inexpensive.  I couldn't find a package of just arugula, so I had to get the arugula/radicchio blend, but whatever; grass is grass.  Also, the oranges I bought were definitely dry.  I think the recipe would have turned out better with juicer oranges. But that is not the fault of the editors at Real Simple.  I just need to learn to pick better oranges. Also, it did not require wine or liqueur.  So you don't need to be 21 to make it.


Ease of Preparation:  A+
The recipe itself was easy to prepare.  There was no marinating ahead of time, or doing anything that required skill or patience.  I hate recipes that ask you to reduce something by 50 percent.  How can you even tell when a sauce has been reduced to that.  It takes so long to thicken that by the time you get it to half its volume you forgot how much you started with.  It does require you to turn your oven on, which can be a pain in the summer, but that's what AC is for.  Maybe you can use a toaster oven for that step, but I don't have one, so I have to live with a hot kitchen.

Taste:  A-
I loved loved loved the roasted beets.  Even with shitty oranges it was still quite good.  Beets look like unpeeled red potatoes, but they kinda taste like baby corn.  And their texture, when cooked is somewhere between a pear and a melon.  I was not crazy about the pork chops.  For starters, I used about 1.3 lbs of boneless chops, but the recipe called for 2 lbs of bone-in chops.  This resulted in  overly-seasoned chops.  Also, I could taste the oregano and the thyme separately.  Flavors should blend in harmony and compliment each other, not just sit there and stimulate your taste buds independently.  I have very little experience in cooking meat, and thus ended up with slightly overcooked chops.  But I'd rather eat a tough pork chops than die.  The boyfriend was happy with the pork chops and unimpressed with the beets.  I grew up poor, so my mom would whip up meatless dinners all the time, and I developed a penchant for vegetables.  The boyfriend  grew up Texan, so he is a carnivore by definition.

Left Overs:  B+
The recipe tells you to toss the roasted beets with the arugula and serve.  Whatever is leftover wilts in the refrigerator, but it still tastes good one day later.  I added feta cheese and raspberry vinaigrette and had a tasty salad.  I microwaved a left over pork chop and ate one third of it.  It was too salty and the texture was somewhere between a rubber boot and a Hoffbrau steak.  By the way, don't ever go to Hoffbrau.  If you want good steak go here.  Since I did't love the meat the first day, I will not lower the "Left Overs" score significantly.

Overall Rating:  A.