Ah, yes. The Humble Pork Chop. #zach

 

Humble, but #loveable

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zach Neal

 

Ah, yes, the humble pork chop, unsung hero of many a working-class meal.

My old man loved pork chops, because they were cheap—but that was then and this is now.

There ain't nothing cheap no mo'

Also, your health comes at some cost sometimes. Big Frank had his first and only heart attack at about the age of 69. That was when, as part of his recovery, he took his old cane out the front door and started off just by walking up and down the street. It was a big thing when he made it to the end of the block and back again without having to sit down on someone’s porch for a rest. Luckily, he had Porky ten or twelve houses down, and Big Dick three doors down, and somehow, he always made it home, for a total distance of about three hundred metres. I have to admit to keeping an eye on him from the front porch or the kitchen window…it was Dick who called me that day, telling me the old man was in the hospital and I'd better get down there.

I guess he'd seen the ambulance and wondered what was up.

From there, he graduated to driving at 40 kph up Bright St. and Lochiel St. to the former Bayside Mall, (in his 200-kph turbo Volvo), where plenty of folks walked laps all year round and in any weather. He got up to four kilometres a day, and oh, yeah, we put him on a diet. (Briefly mentioned in a previous post.) We alternated cooking, which meant that we had spaghetti once a week, but Big Frank just loved cooking spaghetti. He also had a beef soup recipe, with noodles and vegetables. The basic stock came from a large can of stewed tomatoes.

I have tried to recreate that recipe once or twice. Hell, I even came close once or twice, and for that we have to thank my observational skills and a large tin of stewed tomatoes from a local food bank…

But that, is a story for some other time.

As for Big Frank, he lived to be about 80—and no more heart attacks, although he did suffer other ailments.

***

When your wallet's fucked, buy a fucking duck...how fucked-up is that duck, and how much fucking duck do you get for your buck???

After checking the flyers, I was sort of curious as to what a whole duck at $2.86/lb. actually looked like. I've never cooked a duck, and that is also a consideration. One has to admit, it might look pretty good on a food blog, also, one hears that it's oily. One wonders just exactly how one would go about cooking that, (and make it look pretty), and of course when I got there, there were no fucking two-buck ducks to be had.

Okay, so I got three fresh pork chops from Food Basics for $6.22, along with six fresh, not frozen chicken legs. I got a tub of deli-style coleslaw, ($2.99), a head of Romaine, ($2.99), and a 150-gram bag of salt and vinegar chips for a buck. Total cost, $18.90 approx. including the price of a fresh plastic bag. I put the chicken flat in the bottom of the bag, first thing, as I don’t really like chicken juice gooping all over the fresh lettuce.

We did rinse the leaves. Lettuce, tomato, onion and green pepper.

 

***

 Also, I did rinse off at least the exterior as soon as I got it home.

I have been known to rinse individual leaves as well, in any case I have tomato, onion, bits of (frozen) bell peppers, and have been known to make a salad once in a while.

The pork chop was treated with Shake & Bake, a bit of black pepper. I got a ten-pound bag of potatoes in late December and this is one of the last three. The other two are smaller. The carrots have been around since maybe even longer than that, thanks to a Christmas Hamper from Dunlop United Church. You can get potatoes for five bucks and carrots for two bucks on sale. They do keep quite a while. We shook just a faint hint of garlic powder over the mashed potatoes just before consumption. It did make up for the lack of butter or margarine in some small way.

Other than that, I keep forgetting margarine. #fuck 

(And tinfoil. - ed.)

That really won’t take much more than half an hour at 375 F, which means we set stuff on to boil, snap a few pics for the food blog and maybe write a quick blog post.

We'll sip at our beer and let our imagination and our appetite work on us.

 

#zach

 

END

 

Zach Neal has books and stories available from Kobo. (Why he's writing blog posts now, we just don't know. Possibly just bored. - ed.)

 

Thank you for reading.