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Last night's dinner was baked bbq pork chops--the kind where you put two pork chops in a small casserole dish and find the almost-gone bottle of bbq sauce that's in the fridge and add a bit of water to the bottle and shake it up good to try to get every last bit of bbq sauce out and pour it over the pork chops before putting a lid on the casserole dish and baking it at 350 degrees for an hour or so. I also had half a head of cauliflower and a piece of broccoli left from what I bought last week, and it needed to be used or thrown out, so I tried roasting it in the oven as the pork chops baked, sort of like they did on Our Best Bites, only probably not really, and it turned out okay. And then I cooked some white rice on the stove. And that was dinner. Dinner was kind of rushed last night, because we were anxious to get out the door to go to a movie. Do you know how often we go to movies? Not very. We went and saw We Bought a Zoo, and we both enjoyed it very much.

• Barbecue Pork Chops
• Roasted cauliflower and broccoli
• White rice with butter and salt

For tonight's dinner, I thought peanut butter chicken over spaghetti noodles would be good. But I can never seem to find the recipe that Talena has given me a dozen times, probably because I always think "Oh, that's simple--I'll remember it." Also, knowing that it calls for Italian salad dressing from a bottle, which I don't have on-hand, I decided to experiment and come up with something similar. It turned out okay. In fact, I think it may be a keeper.

Peanut Butter Chicken

In a frying pan heat a teaspoon or two of oil and then add:

A chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces*

Stir and cook it till it's white on all sides. While it's browning (or "whiting), mix together in a small bowl:

2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 to 2 tablespoons vinegar (I used a little balsamic, and a little red wine, but rice vinegar would probably be the best)

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 pinches (probably 1/8 teaspoon) crushed red pepper

When the chicken is white on all sides, but not cooked through, add the sauce to the pan, cover, and simmer on low while you cook the spaghetti noodles according to the package instructions. Serve chicken and sauce over noodles.

*Tonight I took the frozen chicken breast from the freezer and thawed it in the microwave. I actually prefer doing that, because the chicken breast is still partially frozen, and it's easy to cut it with a pair of scissors into bite-size pieces and drop them directly into the hot pan.

Also, in reading one of the books that I checked out of the library, called Stocking Up, I learned a bit about freezing vegetables, and I remembered that last summer we actually preserved some of our green bean harvest by blanching and freezing two or three gallon-size bags of them, and I realized that I need to be using those and not expecting them to stay good in the freezer forever, especially while I buy frozen green beans from Sam's Club to use instead. So tonight I got out some of those green beans from our very own garden and cooked them up to have with our peanut butter chicken and spaghetti. Turned out pretty good.

• Peanut Butter Chicken
• Spaghetti Noodles
• Green Beans
• Brownies with cream cheese frosting and chocolate-mint-M&M's-sprinkles on top

Oh, and you may have noticed that I had a dessert tonight of special mint brownie cupcakes. Aunt Louise made these, posted about it on her blog, and sent me some to taste! I enjoyed them very much.

Incidentally, one of the things I read about in the book Stocking Up is how to make your own cheese and cottage cheese. A lady at the temple was telling me that she has taught classes through the USU extension service about using powdered milk, including how to make your own cottage cheese from powdered milk. Hopefully I'll soon be writing a post about my own homemade cottage cheese, made from powdered milk. But don't hold your breath too long...