Weekly Dinner Challenge - Week 6!

I have to say I am having so much fun experimenting with new recipes every week and challenging myself to break out of my comfort zone in the kitchen! This week wasn't too challenging; actually it was surprisingly easy!

For dinner tonight: Marinated Pork Chops, Steamed Broccoli and Parmesan Risotto

I bought a large 4 pack of pork chops on clearance at Fred Meyer last week for $2.45! Since the pull date was close, I popped them in the freezer over the weekend so that I could cook them up this week. The broccoli was on sale as well but I can't remember how much I paid for it, whoops! I think it was around $1.00. The risotto was not from scratch but it was one of those splurge purchases from my Safeway trip last week for $2.66 and I haven't ever cooked risotto before. It turned out really yummy! I added some fresh parm flakes as well.

The "challenging" part of this meal was how to cook the pork chops. My comfort zone is to have James throw them on the grill with some spices or BBQ sauce and call it good. They are always pretty tasty but tonight I was looking for something more so I decided to look up a sauce/marinade recipe from my favorite, allrecipes.com.

I did vary from the recipe a little, here is how I made the marinade:

2 Tbsp thick Teryaki sauce

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp Veg. Oil

2 Tbsp Ketchup

2 Tsp Lime Juice

2 Tbsp Brown Sugar

Mix it all up and spread 1/2 of it it over the chops in a baking dish and cover with foil. Depending on the thickness, bake at 350 for 20-30 min. Uncover, flip the chops and cover with the remainder of the sauce and re-cover with foil for another 20-25 min. Uncover and turn on the broiler on high for about 5 min just to seal in the flavor of the sauce.

Everyone thought these turned out totally delicious! I wish I would have gotten a good photo but they all turned out blurry, besides, meat never photographs very well!

Since I didn't need to purchase any of the ingredients for the sauce, I ended up spending around $7.00 total on dinner tonight for 3 adults (sis was over) and Naomi!

I was feeling being in the kitchen tonight and decided to use up the last of my pumpkin puree from last week on one last batch of cookies for dessert. All in all from that one small pumpkin I rendered 2 large batches of pumpkin cookies and 2 large loaves of pumpkin bread. I do love my pumpkin goodies during the fall!!

What did you make this week? Leave a Comment!