Maple & Honey Pork Chops and Cookie Dough

When I'm at school, Friday's are typically my baking day. At home, over summer vacation, I have far less to do, so I want to bake more often. Yet, between not having working air conditioning and having less people to taste/eat my baked goods, I don't do it nearly as often as I would like. So today, instead of baking, I made dinner and "dessert." 

Dinner, it's not something that I usually make. I much prefer the joys of baking. But today, I decided to help my stressed mother out and make [the second set of pork chops for] dinner. After much debate, we finally settled on making her pork chops. They are really simple and quite delicious. And by simple, I mean, they require practically no work whatsoever. 

Ingredients: 

Pork Chops 

Honey

Pure Maple Syrup

Allspice

Start by browning the pork chops in a large frying pan on a medium to high heat. This should take a few minutes on each side. 

As that's going, mix together the honey, maple syrup and allspice. Since this is my mother's recipe nothing is exact, BUT, she uses roughly, 1 tablespoon of honey per pork chop, as well as 1 tablespoon of maple syrup per pork chop, and 3/4 to 1 teaspoon of allspice total (depending on your preference). Make sure it's mixed thoroughly! 

Once the pork chops are browned, turn the heat down to low, and pour the honey mixture over the pork chops. Cover and let simmer for a long while! Or at least it seems long while starving. Occasionally flip the pork chops, making sure each part of it is getting in that wonderful sauce. They should be done in about 30-45 minutes - they should look that "caramelized brown color" according to my mother. 

Four delicious pork chops!

Since that requires very little attention while cooking, I decided to make cookie dough [per my mother's request]. I had talked about making cookies while it was much cooler out, when it looked like it was going to pour all day. By the time I had all of the ingredients for it, it was getting to be the predicted 90 degrees or so outside. That's why I've only gotten around to making the dough... and really, that's all the mother wanted anyway. 

The cookie dough is simple enough... The recipe should look familiar since it was borrowed from the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bag (I just omit a few of the ingredients)

Ingredients:

3/4 c white sugar

3/4 c brown sugar

1 c. margarine, mostly melted

2 eggs

1+ tsp vanilla extract

2 1/4 c flour

1 bag chocolate chips

1 bag M&Ms

I always mix together the white and brown sugar then add in the eggs, margarine, and vanilla. Once all of that is mixed together, I add in the flour and mix! Oh! And don't forget to mix in the chocolate chips and M&Ms!!. Growing up, we mixed nearly everything by hand, so I still do that now. I realize that an electric mixer makes life easier (and is required for some things), but I always get more satisfaction out of mixing things together by hand. That's pretty much it for the cookie dough, especially since it has not and might not ever be made into cookies! 

Mmm. Tasty.