Domestic

Pork Chops n' Peaches

Imagine that—it's been ages between posts!

A big reason why:

We bought a house! Our landlord—at the supposed-to-be-temporary apartment I couldn't stand (and consequently wasn't all that domestic-ish about)—handed out condo conversion notices. We thought about finding another rental, as we didn't think we were ready for a house yet. But what the heck—why not check in with our old lender? Turns out we could qualify for enough for a house. Boom—five weeks later, here we are! I'm not kidding—we knew the 30-day notice was coming before it actually hit. When it did, we had to be out by June 30. We closed on this place June 29.

So it's been a nutty month or two.

 

But we're here, we're fairly settled, we've got more space than we've ever had—a whole basement! a dining room! a yard! a garage!—and we've got a to-do list a few pages long (not to mention an entirely new part of town to explore—we were SE PDXers, and now we call NE home). Which means lots to blog about.

Last night, we picked up a Weber grill found on craigslist, and officially retired the apartment-issue Lil' Weber. Tonight, we grilled pork chops with a spiced peach-puree sauce and grilled peach halves. Sonia gave them a big thumbs up.

 

Italian Shells

I was in charge of grocery shopping yesterday. That's usually a joint endeavor (we're both grocery store geeks), but there was a laundry backup Sonia needed to deal with. So grocery-getting was all up to me.

I busted out the family cookbook—the one my mom assembled a few years ago, which she gave me for Christmas one year. I love how she's organized stuff: I wanted to find the Spaghetti Pie recipe, so I checked the "pasta, egg, cheese" section. No luck. On a hunch, I flipped to the Meat-Beef section. I think Spaghetti Pie is in there, but I got distracted by Italian Shells, the first recipe in beef land (you'll note that it's a pasta dish, really... ah, mom. I'll have to ask her how she decided where to put things.).

Sonia insisted I'd never made Italian Shells before. I told her it used to be one of my favorites, before I took the oath of vegetarianism. She was game. How could you not be? It's so very midwest—a "jar of Prego" is one ingredient. And it contains no vegetables.

I made half of it with real meat—italian sausage and ground beef—and half with fake meat. So that means two casserole dishes. Between the two of them, there's over a pound of cheese, a pound of pasta, a tub of plain yogurt (instead of sour cream—see, now it's healthy!), and several cans of tomatoes in the tomato sauce. And meat. A full pound in Sonia's meaty version, and a little less fake meat in mine. I almost pulled a muscle lifting this sucker into the oven.

Wow. That's alotta cheese. I forgot to take a picture of it after it browned. We were too hungry for a photo shoot.

Italian Shells was a hit, though (and will continue to be all week, as there's enough for three lunches each). It's now officially part of the 'family favorites' repertoire.