Adventures in Cooking

I love to cook... and decided, what better use of my
new free-time than to make good dinners? I've been making some old favorites of mine, like pork chops with scalloped potatoes and red wine.

If you're looking for a really easy dinner that can easily feed a lot of people (or 3 sailors...), than pork chops are  a winner!  I mixed bread crumbs with salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning.  I first dipped the pork chops in egg then covered it in the seasoning mix.  Pan fried it for a few minutes, until each side was brown.  The baked it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Looking for a fast dinner?  Make dill-salmon.  Season the salmon liberally with salt, pepper, and dill weed.  Then pan fry each side for about 5 minutes (if you like your fish rare), longer if you like well-cooked fish.  Serve with brown rice and salad: spinach, tomatoes, and carrots.

I love making skillets and this one has some of my favorite things in it! Hash browns with avocado, spinach, tomatoes, and blue cheese; topped with sunny-side-up eggs!

For our first Sunday brunch, we made banana pancakes.  We tried whole-wheat pancake batter for the first time and were pleasantly surprised.  Definitely a good batter for flavored pancakes as it is very "hearty" and full of flavor.  Served with coffee (of course), sausages, and fresh blueberries!  Learned something new about blueberries (and other fresh fruit)... if your  fridge is too cold, it will freeze the blueberries.  So I turned our fridge down... only to discover blueberries that are semi-frozen then defrosted rot!  I discovered this the morning I went to eat some yogurt and fresh fruit for breakfast.

We were having friends over and dinner was going to take a bit to prepare, so Ben made some really yummy appetizers.  Crackers with melted Brie cheese and Pancetta on top.  He melted the cheese in oven first before adding the Pancetta.  These were wonderful... but don't try to save the leftovers!  The Brie cheese gets really hard.

So I obviously didn't make this ice cream... but I decided to include the ice cream because it was so good!  We found this old-fashioned ice cream parlor in downtown Coronado.  If you're ever visiting Coronado, make sure to stop by MooTime Creamery.