Braised Pork Chops with Endive

I follow a lot of famous chefs on Instagram, Facebook, etc.  It’s my way of living vicariously through their lives while I sit at my boring desk.  I follow Zoë François– one of the co-authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes.  Long time readers will know how much I love that bread recipe, and now that we are getting into cooler temps, I don’t mind heating up my oven to bake bread – is there anything better than the smell of fresh baked bread?  Well, okay, maybe chocolate chip cookies, but since I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I think bread is the best kitchen smell.  So it was her birthday yesterday, so I posted a happy birthday to her wall and a picture of one of my artisan breads, and told her how much I appreciated the recipe and how I can now make bread for my family.

I am sure it was probably one of her “people” who replied, but still kind of nice to get a response back when I wasn’t even expecting one!

My store had Idaho Potatoes on sale for .29 a pound.  I stocked up!  I baked four on Sunday.  I had one of my favorite breakfasts – the twice baked breakfast potato with egg, ham, cheese and spinach.  Yum!

I was actually busy at work all day yesterday!  I know, I was as shocked as shit as you!  I didn’t end up going on my walk until nearly 1:15 – what a difference a day makes.  Sunday was sunny and 65, yesterday it was 50 degrees, but overcast and super windy so it made it feel much colder.  The geese don’t seem to mind me walking by them in the least!

I got my Blue Apron last week, but hadn’t made any of the dishes yet until Sunday.  I showed the choices to Hannah and Jacob, and they both kind of gave a thumbs down to the Chicken Khao Yellow Curry Soup and the Lentil Bolognese, so I decided to make the soup for two of my lunches this week. 

Blue Apron describes this dish:  “Khao is a traditional dish from Northern Thailand.  It’s an irresistible mix of noodles, coconut curry broth and Southeast Asian aromatics.  Ours gets its subtle heat from yellow curry paste, its hint of sweetness from the coconut palm sugar . . . together these ingredients create an extraordinary complex and delicious soup.”

Extraordinarily complex is right on the money with this dish. It looks plain but trust me, this soup packs a flavorful punch.  The squeeze of lime over the top really brought this whole delicious dish together and this is the second Blue Apron dish using kale and I loved it.  I thought I hated kale!

The afternoon zipped along and it was time to hit the gym for strength after work.  When I declared that I was done with dieting, it’s becoming clearly obvious that it doesn’t mean “eat anything you want any time you want!”  My size 14 pants are getting on the snug side, so it’s time to pay more attention to my eats and workouts.   I still don’t plan on stepping on a scale.  I don’t want to focus on numbers and get my mind all wrapped up in that again.

Strength took me about 20 minutes, and then I ran/walked 1.5 miles – walking .1 of a mile, and then running .1 of a mile.  I had to quit at 1.5 miles though. I could feel my blood sugar starting to drop and I got the hockey puck out of there.  When I got in the car I checked my blood sugar and it was 70 and dropping.  I keep these fruit candies in the glove compartment of my car because they keep forever and bring up my blood sugar rather quickly in just a couple pieces.  Not yesterday – I ended up eating six of them and by the time I got home my blood sugar only jumped up to 85!  Some days I hate the sugars – probably all the calories I burned were a wash with the candy. 

I think I mentioned before that Jacob and I have declared Monday Meat Monday since Hannah is at school.  It was the second Blue Apron meal of the week which they called Roast Pork and Braised Endive with Green Apple and Endive Salad.  Well, I wouldn’t really call the pork I got a “roast” per se, because I was able to cut the roast in half and we each got about a one inch pork chop out of it.  So I didn’t sear and bake the pork as the directions specified, I just seared it on all sides, then set it to the side when the endive cooked down and then added it back in the end to finish cooking.  The mustard sauce didn’t work out so well – I don’t think enough of the water evaporated when the endive was cooking so when I added all the ingredients to the “sauce” it was really watery.  So I played around with it – added a bit of brown gravy mix to thicken it up and added more mustard.

I also didn’t feel like the raw endive and apple salad, so I sautéed the apple with half a leftover baked potato from breakfast – I thought the dish needed a bit more starch.

So another new ingredient to me – I’ve never had braised endive before and it was delicious.  And Jacob had never had cooked apples in his life, what the what?!  We both licked our plates clean.  Another Blue Apron meal success.

We’ve got a few rainy days ahead of us and then the temps start to drastically drop – our high on Saturday?  37! And we may see some snow.  It’s just so crazy how Chicagoland weather can switch on a dime like that.  Oh well!  The warm temps were nice while they lasted!

Hannah has the next three days off from work and is meeting me out for lunch today!  With a rainy day I didn’t think I’d get my walk in anyway, and I’ll hit the gym after work.

Also, can you help a sista out?  Ranch, one of my blog BFF’s has a cousin who is raising money to travel this summer to help a small town in Honduras build houses this summer through her church.  She needs to raise $1900 to pay for her expenses to get there.  She’s a school teacher during the year and I love that she’s giving back on her time off of school.  Any little bit helps, if you feel like helping, that would be great.   You can check out the link here.  (Also, all donations are tax deductible!).

Make it a great day!