Feel Good Friday

Hello Friday, we meet again.  I am SO excited for the weekend to be here.  It has been a very long week...always strange on a short work week when it feels like that.  I am looking forward to sleeping in Saturday before our dance class and then doing a lot of cleaning, recipe hunting, and working out.  Sunday we are heading out to the apple orchard...one of my most FAVORITE fall past times.  The girls love apple picking, and I love fresh fruit...so, it's a win-win!  We are going to pick in the morning, enjoy a soccer game in the afternoon, and then make a batch of homemade applesauce in the evening.  Yummy for my tummy!
 
So now that you have my exciting weekend line up, here is my Feel Good Friday update.  I am feeling good about getting in a few nice walks this week (by nice I mean 2+ miles each).  One of them was to the farmers market on Wednesday.  I didn't get a huge shop but I got some fresh apples (not too many...we are going to the orchard after all), some fresh red skin potatoes and a batch of fresh green beans.  I am loving the fresh picked green beans lately.  I had a very happy two year old when I picked her up from pre-school and she found out that there were fresh apples in the car.  Extra bonus...the market on Wednesdays is at The Cleveland Clinic.  World renowned for their care.  They host a local farmers market on site every Wednesday all summer which scores them extra points with me on their emphasis on health but this week they also had someone handing out reusable grocery bags to haul your loot back in.  Cost of said bag?  A smile!  How awesome!

Yesterday afternoon I was driving home and could not stop thinking about pork chops.  I wanted pork chops for dinner.  I myself have never cooked pork chops but wasn't going to let that stand in my way.  Where I used to have a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when I would think about attempting to make something I have never made before, I am "feeling good" about the fact that now I view it as a challenge.  Mini me and I made a quick stop at the grocery store (which ended up with us also picking up some fresh peaches) and went home to start on Operation Pork Chop.  Found a recipe on Food on the Table that I decided I wanted to try (again, loving that app) and set to it.

the ingredients have been assembled

The challenge was Maple Pork Chops with roasted red skin potatoes (from the market) and green beans (also from the market).  Yummy, fresh and healthy...three of my favorite things in a meal!  I am happy to say that my chops turned out juicy and delicious, the potatoes were darn near perfect (still amazed at the difference in fresh taters) and the green beans were good...close to the end of the season though I am sad to say.  Now that I have made this recipe once, I would make some tweaks before doing again.  With the pork chops, it calls for onions to be chopped and added on top with the "sauce" mixture right before oven time begins.  I think next time I would either saute the onions first or omit them completely...they didn't add much to the dish...but with the maple syrup, I think sauteed would be good.  I love the sweetness onions take on when they are sauteed.

final presentation

I even made a plate of these delectable delights for the two year old (sans onion) and she gobbled it up!  Feel pretty good about that too!  Recipe coming to Daring to Dream tab.

What are you Feeling Good about this Friday?

 

Take a sec and tell us your Feel Good Friday story on your blog and link it back up here in the comments section! Invite your readers to share as well.