Late Dinner

Tonight we ate too late. I am used to eating dinner around 5 pm or so, but due to circumstances, it wasn't until 8 pm when we sat down with our plate of food. It was so worth the wait! We pan-seared pork chops and then I got to deglaze the pan! Yeah! Have I told you that I only feel like a real cook when I am deglazing a pan? It is so true. Here's what I did tonight.

After an emergency defrost of 2 bone-in pork chops, Bruce sprinkled them with Tony Chachere's seasoning and then pan fried them. While those were going he put on a pot of water to boil the butternut squash ravioli I found in my freezer. I think I bought them out of the clearance freezer rack at Publix. Boy am I glad I did! After the pork chops were done, I swooped in to create a sauce for the ravioli. While it might seem odd, all I had to deglaze the pan with was water. I forgot to defrost my broth from 2 weeks ago and I didn't think red wine vinegar would taste right. So, I poured about 1/4 cup water into the pan and added 2 thin slices of REAL butter. Next came a very generous shaking of Dill Mix from Pampered Chef. Dill is my all-time favorite herb and I think it makes everything better. well, not Lucky Charms cereal, but that is already yummy enough!

I stirred constantly and let this cook down until I had a very dense and intensely flavored sauce. There were bits of pork, some of the Tony'seasonings, a touch of creaminess from the butter, and of course my beloved dill mix! This was poured over the ravioli and really made the flavor pop. The bag recommended a butter, sage, and parm cheese sauce and I am glad I skipped that. It would have been too heavy to really enjoy, especially this late at night.

Everything except for the butter came from my stash! That is a good use of resources my friend. The pork chops were buried in the very bottom of my freezer. So far down that my husband couldn't even find them. I had to go digging myself!

Also, I did go to the grocery store tonight. It is why dinner was late. I had made trip last Thursday for milk and bread so had already used up ~$6 of my weekly budget. I am proud to say that, including that trip, I stayed under budget this week. I spent just over $18 tonight and that included buying some personal care items! Of course, I forgo eggs, so we'll have to wait another week to enjoy those. I hope hubby likes the waffles and bagels we pull from the freezer stash.

Oh! And tomorrow is a big ay at school... my students are taking an important test and I know that not all of them will have a good breakfast. So, I had a $10 Publix gift card that I got as a rebate for an earlier purchase and used it to buy fruit and nut granola bars and a bag of apples. Hopefully at least a couple of kids will show up and be able to put food in their belly so they can concentrate on the test!