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(Note: This is a long-ago post from a previous blog I shared with my husband. Since it’s food-related, I decided it should live here.)

Okay–lest everyone think that all I do is eat at expensive restaurants and then carp about them, here’s what I’ve been doing in my own kitchen lately. And yes, I’ve been cooking up a storm…

Last Friday, rather than just take the lazy route and eat out as usual, we stopped off at Whole Foods on the way home, picked up some nice thick pork chops, a couple of corn-cilantro fritters and carrot-parsnip cakes from the deli counter, and some apples and Haagen Dazs dulce de leche ice cream for dessert. Once home, I seared the chops on the stove, then stuck them in a 425 degree oven to finish cooking through while I made a pan sauce (more or less according to this recipe), using some of the American Spoon cherry preserves we’d picked up a few weeks ago. (I have to say, if there’s one kitchen trick I’ve learned in the past few years that’s made all the time I’ve spent reading cookbooks and foodie magazines worth it, it’s pan sauces–in addition to making some really simple dishes seem quite elegant, it makes cleaning up afterward SO much easier, which David–as designated dishwasher hereabouts–appreciates.) I also sauteed the fritters and carrot-parsnip cakes in a little butter to heat them through, and viola–a relatively fancy dinner (for us, anyway) with a minimum of fuss and muss. I won’t be giving Thomas Keller a run for his money anytime soon, but I thought it was good.

Still feeling ambitious after all this, I made apple pie cakes for dessert (recipe courtesy of the Kitchen Chick). Not at all difficult (although it did require peeling and chopping two apples), and quite yummy with the dulce de leche ice cream melting all over the warm cake. (Just a note: I made the cakes in a jumbo muffin pan, and while they were a bit messy to remove just after baking, unlike the Kitchen Chick’s experience, I found they popped out beautifully–and in one piece–the next day.)

Over the weekend, I finally got around to making Guajillo-spiced Pork and Potatoes (or, more accurately, since I decided to go with a couple of the alternate “riffs” suggested in the recipe, Guajillo- and Ancho-spiced Pork and Sweet Potatoes), from Rick Bayless’ book, Everyday Mexican. Lots of chopping, including dismantling a pork roast, but other than that the only annoying/complicated bit was seeding, ripping into chunks and then toasting the dried peppers. Oh, and then pushing the tomato-pepper puree through the sieve; I still can’t help thinking I must not have pureed the sauce enough, because I had so much solid material left, but it turned out fine anyway. Also, incidentally, I ended up conducting an experiment of sorts–I had enough ingredients to make two batches (which is a good thing, because I’m coming to realize that Bayless’ idea of a serving size is much smaller than mine), so I made one in the slow cooker and the other in the dutch oven. Both batches were good–not terribly spicy, but mildly smoky, with sweetness from the peppers and tomatoes and sweet potatoes augmenting the pork–but I think the oven-cooked batch was a bit better; slow-cookers are convenient, but they don’t caramelize food.

Actually, everything turned out well enough this weekend that I think I’ll keep going with this–only on the weekends, to be sure (I’m not crazy enough to try this stuff during the week … usually 🙂 ), and I probably won’t be able to keep it up once the holidays hit, but time-consuming and foot-fatiguing though it is, it’s somehow still a little indulgent, getting to eat some of the food I’ve been reading so much about. You know what they say: if you want it done right, do it yourself. (And hey, it’s gotta be cheaper than eating out, right?)