Some meals are worth the wait, even when you’re hungry and patience is elusive.
Dawn Kessinger/The Lima News
Time flies.
Unless your stomach is already rumbling when you pull fresh pork chops and raw carrots from the refrigerator and line them up next to the seasonings, soups and baby potatoes in front of the crockpot.
Unless you’re imagining how tasty and so tender it falls apart those pork chops will be … in about six hours.
Unless you suddenly realize you haven’t enjoyed a hot meal in a few days, since you’ve been too busy to consume much more than salads and quick, cold-cut sandwiches.
Unless you remind yourself that pork chops have been one of your favorite foods since childhood — and it seems to have been years since you’ve eaten one.
Unless you realize that you’ve forgotten not a key ingredient, but a favorite one — and you run out to pick it up.
Time flies — until you begin to catch a whiff of what’s cooking — and can’t be distracted from your hunger any longer by nuts, fruits or other suddenly cardboard-tasting snacks.
Then time slows to a crawl, despite the occasional taste-tests (carrot’s still too crunchy). Being patient for 5 minutes more seems like too much, yet you still have 45 minutes in which you cannot yell at the crockpot for being slow because it does not care. It knows you cannot rush a great meal.
Some meals are worth the wait, even when you’re hungry and patience is elusive. My Mostly Easy Crockpot Pork Chops is a simple recipe — the only tough part is the wait.
Mostly Easy Crockpot Pork Chops
Ingredients:
• Package of boneless pork chops ( or 6 thick or regular cut)
• Seasoning salt and pepper
• 2 cans cream of soup (I use Cream of Chicken and Cream of Celery)
• 1 can mushrooms
• 1 package baby carrots (16 oz – I didn’t use the whole bag)
• 1.5 pound bag of The Little Potato Company potatoes
• 1 can green beans
• One packet (dry) Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning (1 oz)
Set your crockpot to high.
Spread one can of Cream of Celery soup on the bottom of your crockpot. Add some potatoes and carrots. Salt and pepper your pork chops, and layer three pork chops on top of the soup, carrots and potatoes. Add one can of Cream of Chicken soup on top of the pork chops. Place your remaining pork chops on top.
Add more potatoes, carrots, and the cans of green beans and mushrooms. Sprinkle the packet of Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning on top of it all.
Cook for 6 hours.
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