Cooking With Emily

Forty lashes with a wet noodle...I have (again) been sadly neglectful of my writing endeavours.  As always I can offer a laundry list of excuses, but at the end of the day they are exactly that, excuses.
Emily's cooking day last week was delayed until Friday because of  other commitments.
 Monday was not only my birthday but our monthly girls' night out.  Emily was home eating KD with a babysitter, I was enjoying way too much good food with some of my amazing friends.
Tuesday was Awana, so while Emily enjoyed her kids' club I had supper with one of my sons, a lovely time catching up.  I miss spending time with my boys.  I had hoped as they grew older we would have more time, but I neglected to factor in jobs and girlfriends and all the other "grown up" stuff that keeps all of us so busy.
Wednesday my dear little girl had decided she needed to throw me a birthday party.  At first I thought she had only invited Andrew for supper, and Christopher and Lily, who I knew couldn't come, being in Calgary precludes a jaunt to Coaldale for supper.  Peter was working too, and was planning to come later in the week anyway.  But she also invited my oldest & dearest friend and her husband.  Not really a big deal, but as you may have gathered from an earlier post, I haven't had a real dinner party for ages. Emily wanted to handle the cooking, but I thought perhaps it would be beyond her, especially since dietary considerations now needed to be taken into account.  My friends are both gluten and dairy free in their diets.  I let her make cake and thawed out a bison roast.  It was a good opportunity to use it, since it was too big a piece of meat for the two of us.  I roasted the vegetables with the meat and attempted gluten free gravy.  It tasted ok, but I wasn't overly impressed.  Nonetheless we had a marvellous evening and I realized I could still manage guest for dinner.  I was also very pleased that Emily cleared the table and put all the leftovers in containers in the fridge.  She wanted to do the dishes for me too, but it was late.  And I didn't want to re-do any the next day.

Thursday was supposed to be Emily's night for kitchen duty, but she came home from school feeling lousy.  Head colds do knock your stuffing out and make cooking rather unappealing.  She ate the rest of the chicken noodle soup she made for her lunch that morning, I made myself a salad, and we postponed for another day.
Friday she was eager to tackle cooking again.  She wanted sweet potato fries so I gave her some money and sent her to the store for sweet potatoes, explaining where to find them and teasing her about not looking in the ice cream freezer.  She was home in good time and I set to peeling and cutting them into wedges for her, for the sake of expediency.  I slipped with the knife too & nicked the backs of three fingers, which is why I was doing the heavy chopping.  Once they were tossed with olive oil and blend of spices I concoct (sea salt, chili powder, cayenne, black pepper, cumin & whatever else seems to work that day) and in the oven she set to her planned recipe.  I had already opened a can of pineapple rings, draining the juice into the jug of orange juice in the fridge.  She combined barbeque sauce with soy sauce and prepared to grill pork chops.  We had a set-to because she misunderstood me when I expressed my hesitation to let her use the barbeque.  She was looking for a  pan, and tired and frustrated stormed out of the kitchen in tears when I told her she needed to GRILL the meat, on the grill.  Thankfully Peter was here to intervene, and to supervise the open flame on the grill.  They timed the turning and brushing with sauce with a military like precision generally not found in my kitchen, and we only lost one pineapple slice to the murky depths below the flames.  Dinner was delicious, although Emily really didn't care for the grilled fruit.

Aloha Pork Chops

4 tablespoons barbeque sauce (we used chicken & rib)        

4 teaspoons soy sauce

4 boneless pork chops (about 1lb)

4 drained canned pineapple rings

Mix barbeque and soy sauces.  Grill chops 1 1/2 minutes on each side on high heat, reduce heat to medium, brush chops with sauce, grill 4 minutes.  Turn chops, brush with remaining sauce, add pineapple slices to the grill; grill until chops are done, 3-4 minutes & pineapple is heated through.

Top pork chops with grilled pineapple.

Tomorrow I will (I promise) be back with last night's menu.  In the meantime, enjoy.  Winter may be attempting to return but there's not enough snow to keep an intrepid Albertan from the barbeque.