Grilled Pork Chops, Mashed Potatoes, and Green Beans

On Saturday I usually go grocery shopping for anything we need over the weekend and through Monday including Saturday night dinner, Sunday night dinner, and lunches.   I try to cook something on Sunday that I can serve as left overs on Monday.   I don't enjoy left overs unless its something I really like and since I generally plan on eating left overs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, that means I need to make something delicious on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. 

Sometime on Saturday morning, before I go grocery shopping, I plan what we are going to have for dinner on Saturday and Sunday.  One of the reasons I started this blog is to keep a good record of what I have had for dinner.  I find that if I don't write it down, its hard for me to remember what I had for dinner even a week ago.

It was a beautiful day on Saturday which put in the mood to do some grilling, so I planned to grill pork chops on Sunday.   Each member of the family likes grilled pork chops prepared slightly differently.   I like them lathered in barbeque sauce.  My current favorite sauce and Everett and Jones Super Q Medium Barbeque Sauce.   Everett and Jones is a barbeque restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

My wife likes a spice rub on her pork chops.  I usually use the same rub I use on the spice rubbed pork tenderloin.   My daughter likes her pork chops plain.

I used the grilling technique I used the other day on the Tandoori Grilled Chicken, banking the hot coals around the outer edge of the grill.   This keeps meat from charring.   It worked great on the pork chops, but I have to remember that 1) I can't use the amount of charring as an indicator of how well cooked the meat is 2) it does take a little longer to cook this way.    The slightly longer cooking time, plus the fact that I forgot I was out of charcoal and had to run to the store to buy some, resulted in dinner being a little late.   Luckily, the grocery store is 5 minutes away, although the amount of time I had to wait in line at the checkout was longer than the time it took me to drive to the store.

To go along with our pork chops, I made mashed potatoes and green beans.   Nothing special about our mashed potatoes.   Peel, boil, add milk, sour cream and salt, mash to cream smoothness.   Now the green beans are a different story and I don't make these in a very healthy fashion.   I drop about 2 teaspoons of bacon grease in a dutch oven, dump in the beans, add salt, sautee the beans for about 4 minutes, pour in about a half cup to a cup of water, bring to a boil, and then let the beans simmer for about an hour.   They are super tender and very flavorful, but I know the bacon grease is probably a very unhealthy thing to add.



Anyway, it was a delicious dinner and this dinner makes great left overs.