March Break Cooking

So finally, we have reached March Break!  As classes are coming to an end and my second placement is starting soon, I feel like I have been incredibly busy.  I have not been cooking as much as I had hoped to, so I have taken march break as some cooking time! I am back at home and have been making a few crockpot meals for my mom and I.  Last weekend we had some pork chops in the fridge so I decided to try making slow cooker Dijon pork chops and potatoes.  The recipe seemed fairly easy and sounded delicious.

1 can (10.75 oz.) condensed cream of mushroom soup, undiluted

¼ cup chicken broth

¼ cup whole grain Dijon mustard

1 garlic clove, minced

½ tsp dried thyme

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

6 medium red potatoes, sliced

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

6 boneless pork loin chops (about 1-inch thick)  - I used 3 instead of 4

1 tbs oil for browning

For this recipe I had only 3 pork chops instead of 3, so I originally was going to cut the sauce in half. Once I started doing this I felt like it was enough, so I decided to keep the full sauce amount.

After frying the pork chops (just to get them brown on each side) I added them to the Crock-Pot with the sliced potatoes and the rest of the ingredients for the sauce. I then set my timer for 4 hours and proceeded to have a well deserved nap.  Little did I know, I did not actually turn the crock pot on. Instead, I just turned it to the 'keep warm' setting.  It is very frustrating to wake up from a two hour nap only to realize that your food was not cooking that entire time.  Thankfully once i turned the Crock-Pot on, the food actually started to cook much quicker than I thought it would. So, instead of being done at 6pm the meal was finishing cooking at 7:30pm.

Although it looks pretty bland in the picture, the meal turned out delicious!  I broke my rule a little bit with the can of condensed mushroom soup, but overall this meal worked really well and was a hit with my mom too.  I would definitely make this meal again. it was quick and easy ( once I actually turned the Crock-Pot on) and tasted delicious!

Stay tuned for my next post when i make my one of my favourite meals - Butternut squash soup!!