Delightful Dinner

My car has been putting me through the wringer over the past month. The alternator was sending surges of electricity to the engine, which blew out the headlights. The battery then died right before my shift at work, leaving me stranded at our apartment until a friend came to my rescue. We bought a new battery and alternator, and Everett installed them. On his way to lunch after fixing the car, the belt broke. He then fixed that, and drove home as quickly and carefully as he could.

Luckily for him, I had a delicious dinner waiting and ready as soon as he got back.

I started with some roasted chickpeas, a new recipe that I modified from several on Pinterest.

Roasted Chickpeas

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• olive oil
• garlic powder
• salt

Directions:

1. Drain can of beans and dump onto cookie sheet. 
2. Broil at 525 degrees for 10 minutes.
3. Shake cookie sheet to move beans and broil for 5 more minutes.
4. Dump beans into bowl and toss with oil, garlic and salt. 
5. Place back into the oven and roast until brown.

 Next, I made some of my "original recipe" creamed corn.

Creamed Corn

Ingredients:

• Can of yellow corn
• 1 cup of milk 
• salt
• cinnamon

Directions:

1. Drain corn and dump into pan. 
2. Cook without water or oil for about 5 minutes so that the sugars in the corn can caramelize.
3. Turn heat to low, add 1 cup of milk.
4. Add salt and cinnamon to taste, let simmer.

For the main course, I had a garlic and peppercorn pork loin from Trader Joe's that I cooked in the crockpot with my secret marinade for 6 hours. (My marinade is so secret that I don't even know what it is, I just dump things in until I think it will taste good!)

Look at those eyes!

The chickpeas were so yummy! I'll definitely be making some for healthy snacks later on. I served the pork on pita bread toasted with oil and garlic salt, and I think I've found the bread I'm going to serve barbeque on forever. Everett is obsessed with that corn recipe. Obsessed. We later ruined the health benefits finished it off by going to the local snowcone stand, and got silly with sugar highs.

The (rather simplistic) moral of the story is that if lots of things go wrong, control what you can and make delicious food to make the day a good one.