Grilled Veggies, Grilled Breaded Pork Chops and Stuffed Peppers

Everyone has their favorite pork chop recipe. We like them lots of ways. We have two go-to recipes. In the winter, it's pork chops with cardamom and carrots. It's slow-cooked, tomato & meat brothy, fall apart, bread dipping, soul-warming yummy. It summer it is breaded pork chops grilled.

If you haven't tried this recipe, check out the website. In fact, both recipes are there and are really good. They turn out amazingly good yet the recipe is easy and the cooking time fast. How can you beat that? I am amazed every time I try it, mainly because for the limited time it takes to prepare and cook, it it so juicy and tender! Try it with grilled vegetables. We had grilled peppers, eggplant, mushrooms, yellow squash, zucchini, and onions, all marinated in a bit of garlic and oil.

It's a no-heat-in-the-house recipe for warmer weather. It is dog-gone healthy, if you get lean chops. I could have some more right now!

Another night we had stuffed peppers. They looked so good in the pictures. Have you ever tried a recipe and your instincts told you that you should do it your own way, but instead, you thought, well, he is a well respected trained chef.....More often than not I change the recipe, but in this case I gave him (Michael Chiarello and his Tra Vigne cookbook) the benefit of the doubt and followed the recipe exactly. It was awful! The hint should have been that it was something his Mom made. His childhood memory of it clearly overrules his taste buds. The recipe calls for adding a substantial amount of water to the meat mixture to absorb the bread crumbs. What it tastes like it an under seasoned mush with a very strange texture we both found unpleasant. Even ours looked great.

Now I have to figure out how to rescue the remaining two without throwing the whole thing out. To be fair, it is the first recipe of his that I have absolutely not liked. It reinforced my belief that my instincts are generally accurate and I need to stick with them.

Adventures in the kitchen are always a learning experience, which is a good thing! I don't know why some people don't like to admit to having a bad experience. I say that's the way you learn as well as develop your tastes! You have to take the bitter with the sweet. Live and Learn!

Cheers!