It's been a long time since I updated, but I'm finally back and will be trying my best to update once a week from now on. I took my exams on the very last day of October and am very happy that I can move on to my dissertation research... you know, the stuff I came here to study in the first place! After that, we were in California for a wedding and then I presented at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in San Francisco, so was at the conference for a few days. It was great to see some old friends from undergrad there (shout out to Steve and Andy!). Then came, Thanksgiving--thanks so much to our friends Bodhi and Sophia for hosting us for the holiday! Sophia made a perfect turkey (in the oven, not in a crock pot) and the meal was amazing. To sum up, I've been very busy since I last posted!
You may also notice that I took some time to make some changes to the format of the blog--changed around the main picture that I use and the style. Let me know what you think of the new look in the comments! I also want to point out a couple of the new features of the blog:
- On the right side of the web page, under my "Why Slow Cooking in Graduate School?" section, you'll find a "Follow by Email" box in which I assume you can put your email address to get updates every time I update the blog. I honestly have no idea if it works, so if someone wants to try it out and let me know, that would be really awesome.
- Underneath that, you'll find some new links. The first one is to my Big Blog of Crock store, a store I created on Amazon to bring together in one place all of the books and slow cookers that I recommend on this blog to make it easier for readers to find them. The second is to the Gourmet PhD blog of one of my close friends who is also trying to cook and eat well while doing her PhD. As she explains in her "Who's Who" section, we "have been making mischief since we first met, many moons ago, as wayward Catholic school teachers. In the intervening years, we both became graduate students and would-be food bloggers, so it’s no surprise we’re still close friends." The final link (unless I add more later) is to the Nutrition Action Health Letter, put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. My mother gets me and my siblings a subscription to this every year and they give you information about the latest studies on food and nutrition and make recommendations about how to eat healthier. My favorite part, however, is the three recipes that are included in each issue. In fact, the Chicken Tagine that I posted about in October 2010 was from one issue.
- Finally, underneath that you'll see the top five, all time, most popular posts of my blog. If you have a favorite post that's not appearing on the list... uh... I guess you need to click on it more.
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This is what it looked like before I turned it on.
Anyway, this is what it looked like after it cooked on low for 8 hours.
Now, in this recipe makes it a little difficult to calculate the calories because the amount of flour the recipe calls for is more than gets added to the actual dish and you definitely don't use all of the gravy just putting it on top of the pork chops! The number of servings in this dish also depends on the number of pork chops used. The recipe actually calls for 4-5 pork chops, but I used 6 because the larger packs were the ones on sale. So, as I made the recipe, if you go by the measurements in the cookbook, you get just over 190 calories per serving. In actuality, I'd estimate the calories per serving (for the pork chops with gravy only) at about 175 calories. In fact, the pork chop with the mashed sweet potatoes and broccoli is probably only about 335 calories. Really small if you're watching your weight because you spend more time in the library than you do at the gym! (And guys, you can be like my husband and have an extra pork chop and still only be at about 510 calories.) Budget-wise, you can't beat this. What's awesome about this recipe is that so many of the ingredients are things that many people will have on hand as staples: flour, pepper, and mustard. The only two items I had to purchase were the pork chops and the condensed chicken with rice soup, a total of $6.00 for $1.00 per serving. Of course, you do have to buy the side dishes, but the broccoli was only $1.99 and sweet potatoes at my store are about $0.99 each for the big ones (I actually had them already because we got them in the organic produce delivery we get each week, but if you had to get them, that'd be how much they are). Overall, not bad and you'll get at least 2-3 meals out of this if you're married or cooking/eating with a roommate and a whole week's worth if you're on your own! Though if you were going to eat these pork chops for a whole week, I'd recommend switching up your side dishes to make it interesting. What sides would you put with honey-mustard pork chops?