Wednesday Already

Halfway through the week. Back in my office days it was reason to celebrate. Many times I think about those working days, especially on Sunday nights when Sunday night used to be very depressing because it meant that Monday was coming and another week of sitting at a computer punching in numbers all day. Now, Monday morning finds me sitting at a computer wasting time looking at puppies.

So, what have I accomplished this week so far? I was packing up an order yesterday and found that the pinback on the pin I was getting ready to send out had fallen off because it's one of those pinbacks with a plastic back on it that my glue apparently doesn't work too well with and then I had to go through all of my pins and see which ones were getting ready to fall apart and reglue all the pinbacks with better glue. I'm just hoping nobody who bought one of these pins has had their pinback fall off.

Then, I was working on some new soldered pendants where I put the glass over the picture on a wood backing so that the back of the pendant is paper covered wood instead of glass. It makes the pendant thicker than the glass backing and hopefully more sturdy. I was intending to make some pendants with the wood but the collage sheet pictures that I was using are just a tiny bit smaller than the wood and it really didn't look all that great with a little bit of wood showing around the picture and now they look much better under the soldered glass. I was collaging words cut out from a book to put on the backs of the pendants and wanted to put varnish over them to protect the paper and then couldn't find the varnish so now have to go buy more varnish. I think I threw it out when I was cleaning out my supply cupboards thinking I wasn't going to use it anymore and now of course I need it. Someday I will learn to not throw this stuff away but keep it for at least another six months just in case.

I made another halfway decent dinner the other night. I'm on a roll this week with no crappy dinners so far! This was a very easy dinner and now I'm thinking that maybe less is more when it comes to dinner prep. I see so many recipes where they are trying to be all fancy and the ingredient list has like twenty different things on it, twenty different things that you wouldn't normally have already in your cupboard, twenty different things that are things that you will buy for the recipe and then never use again.

Here's what we had. Cola Pork Chops. This recipe is for 8 pork chops but you can cut the recipe in half like I did.

1 cup ketchup
1 cup cola flavored carbonated beverage- love how they can't just call it Coke.
2 tbsp brown sugar
8 pork chops

That's all! Just 4 ingredients but if you are like me you don't keep Coke in the house and so you'll have to go buy some. But we all have ketchup and brown sugar, right?

Preheat your oven to 350.
Mix together the ketchup, cola flavored beverage, and brown sugar.
Place pork chops into a baking pan and pour the cola flavored beverage mixture over, coating well. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Bake for about one hour depending on the thickness of the pork chops. Thinner pork chops, less cooking time- duh.
I used kind of thick boneless chops in this recipe and I always, always trim any fat from around the edges- gross!

Now, the recipe didn't say whether to cover the pan with foil and I NEED COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS PEOPLE! but I kind of thought they would get really dried out if they weren't covered so I covered them up.

But, it did say that you could do this recipe with chicken breasts which sounds good, too, just cook for about 40 minutes instead of an hour. Or however long until your chicken is done.


Then we had these green beans alongside the pork chops.

Green Bean Medley.
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
1 tsp butter
2 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 16oz can green beans, drained
salt and pepper to taste

Cook onion in the butter in a non stick skillet until soft. Add bacon and green beans and salt and pepper and cook until heated through. Eat.