Friday's Dinner

As you've probably guessed by now all I think about is food. So when I woke up Friday morning, I was completely uninspired about dinner. I asked Poppy what she wanted and because she doesn't think about food 24/7, she wanted to mull it over during the day.

As luck would have it, we're having Kathy, Darryll and Dad for dinner tonight so I wanted to stop at the store on Friday night so I wouldn't have to get up this morning and do it. That just opened up all kinds of possibilities for the dinner last night. So, we settled on pork chops and corn-on-the-cobby. We had some cherries at the house so I had an idea that I would cook them in some red wine and maybe a little honey, chipotle salt and pepper and put over the chops.



I gave my love a cherry that had no stones...Gotta love the sweet heat with the pork. But then I thought that corn-on-the-cobby might make the meal too sweet so I consulted with Poppy and she suggested creamed spinach.

Creamed Spinach ala The Kecky's

2lbs fresh spinach
1/2 cup shallots, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 cup of cream
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt (I used Kecky's Herb Salt)
1/2 pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Parmesan cheese

Get a big pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Add spinach and cook two minutes. Drain and get as much of the water out of the spinach as you can. Set aside. Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan, add garlic and shallots and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the spinach and the nutmeg, salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes until water starts to release from the spinach. Add the cream and lemon juice. Cook until heated through. Top with grated parm. NOM!! This will serve two.

As for the cherry sauce, I have no measurements for you. I pitted a handful of the little red things and then put them in a little pan with the red wine and water; I simmered until the liquid reduced; probably about 20 minutes. Then, I added some balsamic vinegar and continued to simmer another 20 minutes. Then, per Poppy, I added some apricot preserves instead of honey, covered the pan and simmered for another 15 or so minutes. My goal was to get those cherries soft. Once that was done, I salt and peppered the pork chops and Poppy cooked them up.

Voila!



You remember the Hershey/Horfing incident when MomJean was out for a visit...well, Poppy has come to the conclusion that it wasn't the crab in the soup. In each bowl of soup we ordered was one raw egg (yeah, you see where I'm going with this). Mind you the soup was piping hot. I stirred my egg up so it would cook but Poppy and MomJean did not. Yep, they were part the salmonella egg epidemic.

The incredible, edible egg bacteria...



Okay, have a great weekend!