Welcoming a Special Guest Chef!

Before I get started I just want to say THANK YOU!  Today From Plot to Pot reached 1,000 page views and I couldn't be any more excited and appreciative!

Every time someone tells me they read my blog, I can hardly believe it. It's really cool and I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.

I have one friend I know is a fan because he came over last night to help me cook!  That's right, my friend James is my first ever guest chef - even before my boyfriend (though he pitched in last night to help too...more on that later).  James' company and help really made the work fly by.  Dinner only took about an hour to make last night and had I done it alone, probably would have taken FOREVER.

Together we made a leek and cumber salad, garlic green beans and parmesan crusted pork chops.  Ok, so the pork chops don't have anything to do with my share, but my goodness they were tasty.  I also made carrot cake earlier in the day using carrots from my share, but that is a post for another day.

The leek and cucumber salad was a really simple, oven free, way to use the leeks and cucumbers piling up in the vegetable crisper.  It also required the most peeling, chopping and seed scooping!  There's not much to it when you get all the work done - just mix your veggies and black olives with a lemon and olive oil dressing and pop in the refrigerator to chill.

The garlic green beans didn't require much prep, just cutting of the ends of each bean (probably not even necessary, but they looked a little stringy), boiling in salted water for a few minutes and then quickly sauteing with pine nuts, and chopped garlic.  Sadly, by the time we sat down to dinner the green beans had gotten cold (a result of only having one large saute pan) so we had to zap it in the microwave quickly to reheat.

There is a great butcher shop in Davis Square called McKinnon's and you really can't beat the prices.  I don't get there as often as I would like, but when I do I try to grab a few items (chicken breasts, steaks, pork) to keep in the freezer when we need a good protein and sometimes what I have in the freezer dictates what I make for dinner.  In this case, I had pork chops and since neither the beans or the salad called for cheese I figured I'd try to incorporate it into the breading on the chop.  I found an easy recipe from the Food Network website and it was really pretty incredible.  Follow the simple directions and I don't think there's a way to mess it up.

The only hiccup I had with the pork was trying to figure out when it was cooked.  I called in Craig for reinforcements since he's more experienced at these kinds of thing.  The recipe tells you to use a meat thermometer until the internal temperature hits 150 degrees.  Well...surprise! we don't have a meat thermometer!  We do have one for frying oil so I tried using that, but I felt like the temperatures weren't making sense in conjunction with the cooking time so we eventually decided just to cut into the chop and do a visual check (hence the slice mark in the photo of the final meal).  Obviously, making sure the meat is cooked properly was a huge priority - after all, I didn't want to give my very first assistance chef/dinner guest food poisoning.

Everything in the meal ended up being really delicious, although I wish the green beans didn't need to be microwaved.  The pork was fantastic and juicy and the leek and cucumber salad was fresh, light and perfect for the summer.  You could easily throw this together for a cookout.

Thanks again, everyone for helping From Plot to Pot hit 1,000 views!  I look forward to the next 1,000!!!