autumn and ravens: dinner and dessert!

i rarely (if ever) blog about food like im about to.

but i was pretty freaking proud of essentially all of my cooking today.

specifically dinner and dessert.

dinner tonight was a new adventure. i cooked pork chops for the first time because, while grocery shopping today, i found them on sale for a steal! alright, i said to myself, no better time to learn.

pork chops are pretty easy to cook, it turns out. basically all i did (i wish i had pictures of this process too, but i didn't know how fabulous it was going to turn out) was season the chops on both sides with salt, pepper, a little minced garlic, and literally a sprinkle each of paprika and worcestershire sauce. then tossed them in the pan with some olive oil and away we go! cooked them til they werent pink inside anymore and that was it. so simple.

after i took the chops out (but leaving all the drippings, etc in the pan) i dropped in a chopped onion, about ten or twelve cherry tomatoes, cut in half, and about 2 cups of white mushrooms, sliced. i sauteed this for a little while and then added some minced garlic, butter, and the juice of one lemon and let that all cook down for about six minutes. then i added a splash of half and half and a splash of heavy cream, mixed it all around and tada. i would have liked to have added white wine but i didnt have any and since i was just whipping up what i had, i just went with it.

the sauce turned out awesome, tart because of the juice from the garlic (jar) and lemon but smooth from the cream. i like the flavor but it might be too much for some people in which case i would add more butter or only use half a lemon.

i scooped this directly out of the pan half onto my chop, half on the plate. i served it with some canned black beans that i had heated up and it was PERFECT! i am not a huge fan of beans and honestly could have done with or without but the combo of sauce and pork chop was really surprising. the chop was kinda smoky and sweet and the sauce was tart and tangy and i was SO PROUD! this isnt a great picture, but here's the final product.

so then i was feeling super inspired and wanted to make dessert. i felt like having something with berries and cream. so i looked in the fridge and this is what i came up with.

what is it, you ask? well. its a parfait, of sorts. it has a crushed walnut 'crust' stacked with banana 'ice cream.' the next layer is a blueberry, apricot, peach medley and the whole thing is topped with a honey-ginger-vanilla tea infused whipped cream.

sound like a daunting task?

trust me, its not.

i only had my blender and it was so easy! it would have been even easier with my magic bullet (which is currently in storage).

anyway. here's how it went.

first, cut up one peach, one apricot, and grabbed a hand full of blueberries. then i grabbed two bananas from the freezer that i had peeled and thrown in a few hours before (i like to try to keep frozen bananas on hand for just such occasions) and dropped them into my blender. i used the "crush ice" setting to pulse a few times, then blended it a few seconds. it looked like this:

the texture was a little like dip'n'dots...then i added a splash of half and half (literally, less than half a cup) but you could easily use coconut or almond milk instead. then i blended a little longer until it was like soft serve, and stopped so it wouldnt get soupy.

i spooned it out into a bowl and was actually surprised how much two bananas had made!

then i covered it and put it in the freezer so it wouldnt melt while i was making my whipped cream. so the whipped cream i started right after dinner so that it would have time to infuse. i grabbed a piece of ginger and peeled it, cut it up, and stuck it into my tea infuser. then, feeling bold, i dumped some loose leaf creme' earl gray tea in the infuser too.

i took the infuser and put it into a glass jar. and poured heavy cream over it.

then i stuck it in the fridge, ate dinner, did the dishes, and then completed the first few steps already outlined above (re:made banana ice cream)

anyway. so when it came time to make the whipped cream. i took the tea infuser out and went from there. i took another small piece of ginger, peeled it, and dropped it into the blender. along with that about a tbsp of honey and my infused heavy cream. i turned on the blender and let it blend for about thirty seconds.