Quarter-Sheet Pan Pork Chop Dinner for Two (with Green Beans and Sweet Potatoes)

Sheet pan dinners are easy clean-ups.

TOP TEN POSTS OF 2022: #1 Barely Lemon Shortbread. #2 Summer Vegetable Tart. #3 Greek Salmon Pasta Salad. #4 Apple-Cheddar Corn Muffins #5 Double (GF) or Triple Chocolate Cheesecake #6 Mushroom and Leek Lentil-Chickpea Soup #7 KIDS BAKE MOTHER’S DAY: Apple-Pecan Coffeecake #8 Pizza Egg Bake #9 Tuscan Chicken Stew (Revisited) #10 Ham and Broccoli Quiche (Cleaning Out the Christmas Kitchen) As we begin a new year of blogging, my most loving thanks goes to the sous chef of my life, my husband Dave, who shops for me; chops for me; grills for me; keeps me laughing, and shares my table nightly. He’s always been my best taste-tester and for that, I’m infinitely grateful.

The greatest number of people read the now 14-year blog on March 10, 2020, though the post was published two days before that: FRIDAY FISH: Oyster Po’ Boy with Horseradish Blue Cheese Sauce.

In December, I promised you I’d have a few more Quarter-Sheet Pan Dinners and, right on time a month later, here’s the next! If you’re like me, you’re ready to put the holidays in the rear view window and have something different to eat after those big meals and all of those leftovers. (Do you have cookies in the freezer?! I do. Ok; we’re good. And you’ll guess our tree is up until Epiphany.) This week’s quarter-sheet pan meal features a simply seasoned pair of thick, bone-in pork chops paired with some fresh beans, thyme, red onions and thinly sliced sweet potato. A fast searing of the chops on the stovetop and the whole shebang slides into the oven for all of 20 minutes while you pour the wine, chat with a friend, or watch a little bit of the new, fab PBS News Hour. (I’m going to miss Judy Woodruff so!) With hardly any work — isn’t that what the oven’s for?–you have a gorgeous, real-deal dinner quick like a bunny. And, wink-wink, this doesn’t feed 4, 6, or 8; it makes just a couple of servings. Exactly what you or someone you know needed.

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Chimichurri Pork Salad

If it’s high summer and there are tomatoes (and it wouldn’t be summer without tomatoes), I’m making caprese of some sort. Maybe every week. I don’t stir up chimichurri quite that often, but unlike caprese it shows up throughout the year mostly with pork (love it with ribs!), but sometimes on beef or shrimp or ________. A couple of weeks ago I made three of my Chimichurri Pork Chops only because the package had 3 in it–weird, I know. What to do the next day with the lonely fellow left on the platter? I had fresh mozzarella, zucchini to grill, plenty of tomatoes, and why not serve a hybrid of caprese and chimichurri pork layered with grilled zucchini? Since chimichurri is packed with other fresh herbs, the basil could be skipped. A big handful of fresh greens at the center would set the seal on this stunning deal. I’m wanting it again already.

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Pork Chop Parmesan with Lemon-Mushroom Risotto for Valentine’s Day

If someone asked me, “What is a romantic meal?” I’m sure I would be expected to have an answer. After all, I’m a food blogger; I’m a cooking teacher. I’m married to the man of my dreams. I don’t think I do, though. (Today’s Pork Chop Parmesan with Lemon Mushroom Risotto might qualify!) Do I even know how to define “romantic”? To begin with, the word “romantic” is both an adjective and a noun. Leave it to the English major to think of that. If you just drop the word “romantic” into a conversation, I’m likely to think of Brahms, Chopin, Verdi, or Beethoven because I’m also a musician. While several definitions pop up when you search, here is one likely to make sense to most folks:

...conducive to or characterized by the expression of love.
 "A romantic candlelit dinner."
                                                                                                                       ~Oxford Languages
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Date Night Chop on Butternut Squash with Sage Mushrooms

Now faster and even a bit lighter than my older versions. Try this!

Looking ahead to Thanksgiving



I often cook thick bone-in pork chops for guests. In cold weather, they’re served with a creamy and decadent mushroom sauce on a bed of softly mashed root vegetables with a green vegetable or two on the side. Longtime blog readers and friends who’ve eaten at my table will easily recognize the dish that often looks something like this:

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Chimichurri Pork Chops

Shown here with oven-roasted potatoes, carrots, leeks, and bell peppers, as well as sautéed zucchini garnished with minced green onion.

While friends and relatives in lower and warmer climes harvest strawberries, brag about their huge beds of towering annuals, and swill a cold one on the patio, I’m still making big vats of soup we’re snarfing down watching “Designated Survivor” episodes snuggled up under afghans.

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Pork Chops on Mashed Root Vegetables with Mustard-Mushroom Sauce–Cook at Home for Valentine’s Day

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If you haven’t made a restaurant reservation yet for Valentine’s Day, you’re probably too late except for the 3:30 or 10:30 pm slots.   

What you’re definitely in time for is a trip to the grocery store, a little cooking action, an attractively-set table, and a relaxed dinner with no one asking

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Grilled Pork Chop Caprese or What to Do With One Leftover Pork Chop and Two Hungry People on a Rainy May Night

IMG_2370My favorite year-round company meals often include a big, thick pork chop. If you’ve eaten at my house, you’ve probably had one. I’m talking 1 1/2 – 2-inches thick, bone-in, please.  Cold months I’ll brown them to a crisp, throw them in the oven to finish off slowly with a sprinkle of warming rosemary, and serve them nestled  down into a buttery root vegetable mash of some sort with lemony green beans or spicy sautéed spinach and a creamy mushroom sauce. Insert Pinot Noir. Continue reading

Rosemary Pork Chops with Sweet Potato Mash, Garlicky Spinach, and Mushroom Sauce — Dinner with French Wine, Please

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On a night when the world reeled from the Paris attacks — and from the unending hate and carnage we seem to constantly face (Do we humans desire to end our world?) — I had planned some sort of a pork chop dinner.  That said, you’ll imagine I had a couple of great big, thick babies unthawed (1 1/2 -2-inches thick) and a few vegetables basking on the counter waiting to see what I’d do with them. I kept one eye on the tv and another on the sauté pans. I began without a perfectly clear idea, but it quickly came into focus:  tender, rosemary for remembrance-scented pork snuggled up to garlicky spinach and cozy mashed sweet potatoes, to which I added a regular Idaho potato.  A lusty French-style white wine-mushroom sauce tied the whole thing together. Why not? Love was the key, the answer here.  Wasn’t it?

Quote of the Day: Love

THE LOVE FOR equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.


The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.


And then there is the love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.

-Originally published in The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner

And I can’t help but think of the hundred of thousands of Syrians already killed in this horrific time.  No one has changed their Facebook page to mourn them.  Last count was 250,000, I thought–but as I researched it that number might be just a little too high.  Here’s what I found.

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BBQ Pork Chop Salad

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Our rainy Colorado summer continues. Each day, not all day long, but typically in the afternoon or evening, we’re nearly overwhelmed by lightning storms and great, heavy rains we are unaccustomed to. Most years, a desperately needed now and then drizzle qualifies as a Colorado summer rain.  Instead of that sweet pitty-pat every couple of weeks, there are regular and torrential downpours creating gullies and near-ditches where none have gone before. Streets are closed due to flooding; cars are stuck in rising water.  Potted plants float and are emptied repeatedly and still rot.  My two precious pots of rosemary (brought in over the winter and taken outdoors in the late spring) don’t know how to act; one has nearly expired.

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While Rosie, our labradoodle puppy, has no trouble with the rumbling, grumbling, crashing, thunder or the moaning or beating rain, Tucker is a wreck–a new behavior for him.  I can barely console him and often find 75 pounds of golden retriever in my lap. I know; he needs a thunder blanket. Sometimes I’ll “kennel” them together. We don’t use a real kennel but have our mudroom baby-gated and that seems to comfort him. Poor puppy.

One of the gorgeous things about near-mountain life (we live in the Front Range of the Rocky mountains up on the mesa on the west side of Colorado Springs), is the plethora of rainbows. We have many each year even with just a little rain; this year, we have bookoo displays weekly.  The above beauty –they’re so hard to photograph– was snapped just off Highway 24 up near Cascade by my husband Dave while I was a church board meeting. Faithful Christian folk call rainbows, “God’s promise.” (Think Noah.) I can never help but think it.  Right after I think about the pot of gold, that is. (Think Fred Astaire in “Finnian’s Rainbow.”) Continue reading