Help me cook too many pork chops

[Farrar]

Our power was out off and on for like 24 hours. It was on for several decent stretches and I also put ice in the fridge and the freezer. I'm not worried about the freezer... everything seemed solid enough that I'm just not going to overthink it. In the fridge though, I'm concerned about a few things that I'm tossing, but especially the pork chops. I'd JUST gone to Costco and so there was one of those giant things of them. I was going to cook four for us to have tonight and freeze the rest in packs of four to have at later times. But now... that's not on in my view. I feel like they stayed cool enough that I'm okay with cooking them now and eating them... but I don't feel awesome about freezing and defrosting them later.

But... what the heck to do with them? Like, I freeze one pot type meals like chili sometimes, but these are pork chops. Someone suggesting I turn them into Crock Pot BBQ... but they're not the right cut at all. I don't want to cook and freeze them as they are either. And to complicate things, we don't have a microwave right now. So freezing things that I can defrost out of the box/bag and then warm in a pot is fine... but nuking something is out.

I may just let them go, as much as I hate to do it. It's not the money as much as the waste that bugs me, honestly.

Also, side rant... I know it's hard for them to know, but Pepco literally changed the "it'll be fixed by" time a DOZEN times. They moved it up and then back and then back again. The power would come on for half an hour and lull us into a false sense of crisis finished. This totally screwed over my night and day. And poor dh who had to take his computer and charge it in the night and burn out our phones hot spotting so he could work. If he'd known it was going to go on ALL NIGHT and most of the next day, he'd have driven out to his office. Instead they kept telling us, a couple of hours at most. I could have taken SUCH better measures to preserve the food. Now there are things I have to toss and the issue of the pork chops... UGH.

[PeterPan]

How many meals worth? Around here we either grill pork (marinate and grill, yum) or we do it as stuffed pork chops. For the stuffed pork chops I usually top them with a can of cream soup (mushroom, whatever) as a gravy. So in this situation, I would probably bake them off with cream soup and then freeze. I would think they'd stay protected and reheat reasonably nicely.

[sweet2ndchance]

Did they get warm at all? What was the longest stretch the power was out? If the power was off and on for only 24 hours and the fridge wasn't opened repeatedly or left open during that time, I would have checked to see if they were still reasonably cold when the power came back on for good. If they were, I wouldn't worry about them and just freeze them asap.

If you just want to cook them all, throw a bunch in the crockpot and make shredded pork. Yeah you usually make it out of roast but porkchops will work too. You can cool and freeze the shredded pork and use it for BBQ pork sandwiches with some BBQ sauce or add some taco seasonings and make shredded pork tacos. Put a bunch on the grill. Eat a few, cut up the remainder to put on salads or in tortilla wraps. Use it the same way you would use grilled chicken. Honestly, you could saute a bunch as well and use it the same way you would use cooked chicken. Pork fried rice. Pork stirfry. Pork quesadillas...

[sweet2ndchance]

5 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

Personally, I've never had standard cut pork chop left overs not be dried to heck upon reheating. I'd probably cook them up, eat what we can immediately and then feed the leftovers to our dogs or chickens or something. (I can't remember if you have pets beyond the local NIMH mice geniuses.) 

Really? I've never had that problem with pork. We usually have some form of left over pork in the fridge for lunches from a pork dinner made within the past week. It is a favorite leftover around here.

[ScoutTN]

Marinate, grill and use the leftover meat for fried rice, egg roll filling or other casserole type dishes. 

[sweet2ndchance]

14 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

Only with pork chops. They're just a super lean cut. I usually try and buy a loin and cut myself to make them thicker and get a little more fat cap on them, but how they preslice them at most butcher shops, there just isn't enough fat there. 

Huh, interesting. I normally find myself trimming some fat so they aren't super greasy. And I'm only about a day's drive from where you are... I wonder why they cut them so lean there.

[sweet2ndchance]

Yeah here you have to watch those big packs of pork chops sold at the big box store because they hide the ones in the middle that are more bone, fat and gristle than meat. It's more common here to ask the meat department of the small family owned grocery store to cut a pork roast for you into chops and you can tell them how thick you want it or how many you want out of the roast.

[Farrar]

55 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Can I just say that I was really hoping that the reason you had too many pork chops was related to the feral hogs thread?  PEPCO outages are much less exciting. 

I mean, I did ask if they were delicious. And I did so with great hope.

[Miss Tick]

15 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

But I will probably never buy that much pork again! 

I had something similar happen with a special lawn treatment I ordered. I should have been clued in when they called to ask if a truck could back up the driveway for the delivery (but I wasn't!) Took three years to use all that up.

[Farrar]

26 minutes ago, sweet2ndchance said:

Yeah here you have to watch those big packs of pork chops sold at the big box store because they hide the ones in the middle that are more bone, fat and gristle than meat. It's more common here to ask the meat department of the small family owned grocery store to cut a pork roast for you into chops and you can tell them how thick you want it or how many you want out of the roast.

I won't buy pork from our main grocery or the Safeway. It's okay from the Trader Joe's. But I've had good luck with all the meat from Costco. I mean, sometimes the cuts in the middle aren't as pretty, but mostly they're the same in my experience.

[Farrar]

Thanks, everyone. I doubled and cooked twice as many. Then I tossed the rest, which was just one more meal's worth. None of the solutions proposed seemed like they were going to yield something that we'd realistically eat and enjoy for the time put in. Sigh. We all had one tonight... and they'll be dinner again tomorrow.

I'm so annoyed with Pepco still. Sigh.

[sweet2ndchance]

1 minute ago, Farrar said:

I won't buy pork from our main grocery or the Safeway. It's okay from the Trader Joe's. But I've had good luck with all the meat from Costco. I mean, sometimes the cuts in the middle aren't as pretty, but mostly they're the same in my experience.

Rural midwest/southern area, where we do in fact have feral hogs and they are mean and destructive but I would never eat one, yuck, lol, but the nearest town is 10 -15 minutes away from our house there are exactly two choices for groceries The mom and pop grocery store and wally world. And even wally world in town doesn't have everything you could want. I was just telling dh earlier that we are going to have to make a grocery/library run to the nearest larger city 90 minutes away because last time I went shopping at wally world here there were even more products that we buy regularly that they decided aren't worth carrying anymore. Sigh. And they don't have grocery pickup or delivery and trying to order things site to store is hit or miss with them. I don't think I've seen a Costco since lived in the desert southwest and I've never been to a Trader Joe's. The nearest one is 5 hours away in the nearest metropolis.

[Farrar]

1 minute ago, sweet2ndchance said:

Rural midwest/southern area, where we do in fact have feral hogs and they are mean and destructive but I would never eat one, yuck, lol, but the nearest town is 10 -15 minutes away from our house there are exactly two choices for groceries The mom and pop grocery store and wally world. And even wally world in town doesn't have everything you could want. I was just telling dh earlier that we are going to have to make a grocery/library run to the nearest larger city 90 minutes away because last time I went shopping at wally world here there were even more products that we buy regularly that they decided aren't worth carrying anymore. Sigh. And they don't have grocery pickup or delivery and trying to order things site to store is hit or miss with them. I don't think I've seen a Costco since lived in the desert southwest and I've never been to a Trader Joe's. The nearest one is 5 hours away in the nearest metropolis.

See, this is why I couldn't live rurally, I think. Sometimes I see a good friend in our shared hometown, which is a mid-sized city. But she lives in a small town. She always has to run a million errands. Target and other stores she doesn't have. I know you adjust... I mean, I grew up before adolescence in the middle of nowhere. It was nearly an hour to the grocery store. Or, to anything other than the bait and gas station and the tiny diner with the Elvis impersonator. But I couldn't live without the Costco! I mean, that's a massive exaggeration, but I definitely choose not to live without the Costco.

It's all a choice though. There are rats in our alley. Ds and I went to the art store for some specialized glues the other day and there was legit blood splatter on the door. They were apologizing that they hadn't been able to clean it yet after someone was shot. Sometimes it takes me eons to get just ten miles because the traffic is abysmal. So... large quantities of food, check. Peace and quiet... lacking.

[sweet2ndchance]

I grew up in a major metropolis (Phoenix) that has already gotten exponentially bigger since I last lived there in the 90's. We moved to an east coast town with barely 30,000 people when I was a teenager. I thought I was in, to quote Lightening McQueen, "Hillbilly Hell" lol

Since then I've lived many many places as a young adult, some smaller, some bigger I always thought when I settled down and decided to stay in one place, it would be a metropolis if not back in Phoenix where I grew up. But, I have grown to like where we live now. There are a few places I would consider moving if the opportunity arose but we are happy here even if it isn't where we imagined we would end up. Yes, it is a lot harder to just go and buy this or that and specialty things will always have to be ordered but I learned patience living overseas where if we wanted things that we couldn't get locally it had to be shipped from the states and it was usually a minimum of 2 weeks, usually more, for it to get to us by mail. Waiting a couple of days for something to be UPS'd or Fedex'd to us here is nothing.

And waiting isn't always a bad thing for us. Dh and I have both noticed that since we moved her 5 or so years ago, we are a lot more scrupulous with our purchases and we have far fewer impulse purchases even when we do go to the larger cities near us to go shopping. We are working on using our land to become even more self sufficient so we have to go to the store even less lol. I would have laughed myself silly if you had told young adult me that I would settle in a town with less than 5,000 people and probably called you a liar if you told me I would be happy about it but having experienced everything from a large metro area with multi millions of people to a tiny town with only 500 people and everything in between, living on the outskirts of a town of 5,000 feels just about right for us. I do wish sometimes we had a Walmart with actual selection or that I could go to Target or Lowes or Home Depot without it being a day trip but then I remember that if we had those things, we wouldn't likely be able to afford several acres of land and be able to do what we want with it like we are now. Everything is a trade off. :-)

[Farrar]

39 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

Holy shiznit. You've dropped my jaw twice today. First wannabe commuter bears, now blood spattered doors. You get street cred galore after today Farrar. Causally drop "yeah, we used to have MS13 out front when we first moved in..." You're way tougher than I am. You're not even armed! Hogs are way less scary. 

There is still major MS13 here. They were gone for forever, but this year... ugh. All spring... so many shootings. I have no clue what happened at the art store though. Probably unrelated. But you have to understand that it’s not actually scary here. Like, I’m in a mad gentrified area too.

It’s all just the risk you know. I had a wacky conversation years ago about the prevalence of Lyme disease with a safari guide in Namibia. He was like, that sounds scary and I’m like, do you take anything for malaria and he’s like, of course not. So, there you go.

So... risk and reward. I like the free museums and the large packages of pork chops. When the power doesn’t go put anyway. (Which, to be fair, is really rare usually.)

[sweet2ndchance]

Oh and I forget to add... living rurally, electricity isn't a given for us lol. We have alternative non electric heaters in the winter in case the power goes out and most people have a generator because the power going out is a frequent occurrence so you just have to be prepared lol. You just buy the biggest generator you can afford and grill a lot so as not to tax the generator too much lol.

Oh and pack rats that live in the woods around our house regularly chew wires in our vehicles. lol

Edited August 10, 2019 by sweet2ndchance

[Farrar]

8 hours ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

I read something years ago about a search and rescue team from the DC area that was sent to Japan to pull people out of the rubble after an Earthquake.  They pulled out some guy who had been trapped long enough for a team to fly all the way over from DC and as they did so he said "DC?  I could never live there, don't you have a lot of crime?" 

I think we're all scared of things that are unknown to us, and accustomed to the dangers we face every day.  

That's so funny. Our crime rate (this spate of gang killings this year notwithstanding) has actually dropped dramatically since I've been living here. Sometimes I feel like people's view of the city is frozen in 1991 or something. Like, dude, we're WAY from from being the murder capital now. We don't even crack the top twenty for violent crime or murders per capita.

8 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

Oh and I forget to add... living rurally, electricity isn't a given for us lol. We have alternative non electric heaters in the winter in case the power goes out and most people have a generator because the power going out is a frequent occurrence so you just have to be prepared lol. You just buy the biggest generator you can afford and grill a lot so as not to tax the generator too much lol.

Oh and pack rats that live in the woods around our house regularly chew wires in our vehicles. lol

Yeah, when I was a kid, if we lost  power, then it would be at least a day and usually a week. And it meant that we wouldn't have water either because the well couldn't pump. I remember one winter when we lost power, my mother just said, okay, let's go. And we drove to my grandparents in New Orleans a day's drive away. Because she was like, let's wait this out somewhere else. This summer, we've been unlucky with the power. There was a transformer that blew and started an underground electrical fire. And then whatever happened to the cables yesterday. But before that, I could count on one hand all the times we'd lost power in a decade of living here, at least that wasn't a planned outage for some sort of work. And we've still never lost power during a snow or ice storm ever. Knock on wood! Being in the middle of the grid has advantages.

Ugh to rats in your car. We've had that. Shudder.

[sweet2ndchance]

2 hours ago, Farrar said:

And it meant that we wouldn't have water either because the well couldn't pump.

Yup. Right now we have a regular electric pump but the plan is to put the well on a solar pump with a medium to large battery bank. At least then we won't lose water when the power goes out. We're pretty lucky in that even though our area is usually the one of the last to get power back during a wide spread outage, only once in the 5 years we've lived here has the power been out more than a day or two. The area is small enough that they can get power back fairly quick in town and we aren't so remote that it takes weeks to months to get power back. There are some areas around here that have had to wait a month to restore power after a wide spread outage.

2 hours ago, Farrar said:

Ugh to rats in your car. We've had that. Shudder.

I thought it was bad when I kept smelling this horrible smell in the car and decided to replace the air filter in the engine to see if that helped. When I took the old filter out, there was a dead field mouse under it in the air intake. Yuck! But removing him fixed the smell lol! Then we had a similar smell one time in the truck. First thing we checked was the air filter compartment but there wasn't anything there. Ended up taking it to the mechanic to find out what the smell was... apparently a large pack rat had climbed into the fan compartment and probably fell asleep and when we started the truck, he was dashed to bits by the fan (we never heard it somehow) and then cooked to the engine parts. We had to get the engine compartment cleaned to get rid of that. Other than those two incidents, we've just become experts at replacing wires. That's normally all they do if a vehicle is driven regularly lol.

[cintinative]

16 hours ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

Personally, I've never had standard cut pork chop left overs not be dried to heck upon reheating. I'd probably cook them up, eat what we can immediately and then feed the leftovers to our dogs or chickens or something. (I can't remember if you have pets beyond the local NIMH mice geniuses.) 

 

Me too. The pork loin chops (boneless) they have at Costco just can't take much reheating. I have the same experience with pork loin--the first time it is fine, but the leftovers I have to be super careful with or they become dry.  I prefer bone-in pork chops for this reason.