Baked Apple & Raisin Pork Chops

We were in Pathmark the other day and there was a "Manager's Special" on Pork Chops. They were just crazily cheap! 10 thick, super large and juicy pork chops for only $6.99!! This are not those tiny pieces of pork chop but really thick and HUGE pieces. So, we happily bought a pack :D I have pan fried some up as well as tried to marinade it with the Teriyaki sauce that I have sitting in the refrigerator. I wanted to try something different today, so I made some Baked Apple and Raisin Pork Chops!

I started off by marinating the pork chops. I used McCormick's Grill Mates Montreal seasoning. You can pretty much use any type of seasoning that you like. I love this marinade because it contains all kinds of different herbs as well as green pepper, paprika, onion, garlic, orange peel, lemon peel, sea salt and red pepper powder. Just place the pork chops in a Ziploc bag, add in the seasoning and about 2 tablespoons of oil. Mix the pork chops with the seasoning and let it marinade for at least a couple of hours. As usual, I would let mine sit and marinade overnight in the refrigerator.

The first step to making this dish is to brown the pork chops in a skillet. This is to give the pork chops some color as well as drain some of the fat from the chops. You do not need to fully cook the pork chops, just sear it until it turns golden brown.

Once, that's done, remove it from the skillet and set it aside.

Core and cut some apples into slices. Arrange it at the bottom of a baking dish.

Sprinkle some raisins and cinnamon onto the apples. Then, pour about half a stick of melted butter over the apples.

Place the pork chops over the apples.

Slice up more apples and arrange them on top of the pork chops. Sprinkle some raisins and some sugar on the apples. Pour the remaining half stick of melted butter on the apples.

Cover it with aluminium foil and place it in a preheated oven (350F). Set the timer for about an hour.

After an hour, remove the baking dish from the oven. The Baked Apple and Raisin Pork Chops are done! The smell is just lovely, it smells like a mix of freshly baked apple pie and BBQ!

Here it is! I served the pork chops up with some Creamy Herb and Butter Mash Potatoes. The pork chops goes so well with the apples, it's just a perfect pairing. I will definitely have to make more of this in the not too distant future!!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.

Happy St Patrick's Day!!

Simple Teriyaki Chicken

I decided to make something really simple but yummy for dinner tonight. A simplified version of Teriyaki Chicken with Steamed Broccoli and Instant Sesame Chicken Flavored Whole Grain Rice. It doesn't really take much time to prepare, in fact, two sides can be made in minutes.

First, you would need some chicken drumsticks. I would usually debone the drumsticks, it cooks faster and it's easier to eat.

This is what it looks like after deboning. A nice flat piece of meat, with some skin on the top. You can remove the skin if you wish but we like the nice crispy skin once it's done :P

Put the chicken in a Ziploc bag and marinade it with Teriyaki sauce. You would need to marinade it for at least a couple of hours for it to be fully marinated. I would usually just leave overnight in the refrigerator.

Cut up two onions and lay them at the bottom of a baking pan.

Place the chicken, skin side up, on top of the onions. Apart from letting the flavor from the onions infuse into the chicken pieces while it's cooking, it is also to prevent the bottom of the chicken from burning while it's in the oven. It also allows the juices from the chicken to drip down to the bottom of the pan, thus allowing the chicken to be dry and not soak in it's own fatand juices. Place it in a preheated 375F oven for 20 mins.

While the chicken is in the oven, we can prepare the sauce that we will use to baste the chicken later on. Mix some dark brown sugar and teriyaki sauce in a small bowl.

Add in some water and mix it all up well.

After 20 mins, remove the chicken from the oven and bast it with the sauce. Return the chicken to the oven for another 20 minutes.

While the chicken is in the oven, you can start preparing the sides. I love this Lipton Instant Sesame Chicken Whole Grain Rice. All you need to do is add 2 and a half cups of water to the mix and put it in the microwave for 15 minutes. Take it out, stir and let it stand for 2 minutes. One side dish is done! For the broccoli, I would just steam it and mix it with a lil bit of butter. Voila! That's done too.

After the 20 minutes is up, take out the chicken from the oven and it should be done. Serve it while it's still warm and while the skin is still crispy.

There you go! A simple home made dinner. Teriyaki Chicken with Whole Grain Rice and Steamed Broccoli.

Happy Valley Restaurant

It is another typical lazy Sunday evening here at the Podany household. We have been lazing around all afternoon watching the Jon & Kate Plus 8 marathon on TV and before we knew it, it was already dinner time. We didn't feel like going out (mainly because the Amazing Race followed by Celebrity Apprentice will be on TV soon...yeah, we morph into couch potatoes on weekends :P), so we decided to order in some Chinese take out.

There are so many Chinese take outs near our apartment. Those menus are only a handful of the choices that we have. We have tried most of the take outs within 2 miles from our apartment and we came to the conclusion that Happy Valley Restaurant is the best, in terms of taste, value as well as delivery time. We went ahead to order and as usual, the food was delivered to our doorstep in less than half an hour.

Kevin ordered the Sweet and Sour Chicken ($4.00) that came with a portion of White Rice. The chicken was crispy on the outside and juicy in the inside. Really good. Kevin also likes the Sesame Chicken and the General Tsao Chicken is also worth ordering.

I ordered the Fried Beef Lo Mein ($4.25). They are generous with the amount of beef and the portions are really big. I ordered a small Beef Lo Mein but as you can see from the photo, there is enough in that little box to fill two big dinner plates! I feel that their Beef Lo Mein is the best compared to the other Chinese take outs around this area.

We also ordered a side of Fried Chicken Wings (4 pieces for $3.25) and Fried Cheese Wontons (8 pieces for $3.25). The Fried Chicken Wings are my favorite! Crispy and flavorful, it's really good. The Cheese Wontons are really value for money too. 8 pieces for $3.25. Worth every cent! :D

Now, this might come about as being a little bit weird but Kevin thinks that they have the best Buffalo Wings in their part of town! Yeah, I know, you must be thinking...Chinese take out? Buffalo Wings? Well, I think Kevin is right. They do make some really good Buffalo Wings! Not only are they good, they are pretty cheap too. $3.50 for a portion of 4 wings! Way cheaper than Papa Johns wings :D

Overall, I would most definitely recommend Happy Valley Restaurant. They have really fast delivery, good food and great service (since we are considered regulars, they would always add in two cans of Coke for free with our order :P). I can truly say that this is our favorite neighborhood Chinese take out shop!

Happy Valley Restaurant
255 Broadway,
Newark, NJ 07104
Tel: (973) 482-8088

Biz Hours: Sun to Thurs - 11:00am to 12:00 midnight , Fri & Sat - 11:00am to 12:30am

Midnight Dinner @ Waffle House

Where do you go to if you are travelling on the Interstate, in the middle of the night for some cheap and good food? WAFFLE HOUSE!! Yup, that's right. It's open 24 hours and you can order great diner food even at 3am in the morning! We were on I-78, heading from Newark to Pittsburgh when we decided to stop for some food. Sure, McDonald's is always open but nothing beats some good old fashion diner food :D

As you can see from the parking lot, there was only one car (ours!) in the front parking lot. We headed to one of the booths and the restaurant was almost empty. I think there were only like 2 or 3 truckers at the counter, eating their meal.

I just love how it looks like an old fashion 50s diner. With checkerd tiles on the floor and an open kitchen. One thing you can always find in a Waffle House is a trusty old jukebox at the corner.

You can choose to sit in a booth or just join the rest up by the counter.

The waitress was really friendly, just like how any small town diner waitress is. Since it was in the middle of the night, there were only two people working. The waitress and the cook. I like how they didn't give us that "whatcha city kids doing in our part of the town" look. She gave us our menus and took our drinks order. Of course we ordered the famous Waffle House Freshly Brewed "Alice" Sweet Tea ($1.40).

Their menu is a two sided menu, one for Breakfast and the other for Lunch/Dinner. You can of course order from whichever side that you want, any time of the day.

Kevin looking super bored and hungry. He just can't wait for the food to arrive! :P

I ordered the Grilled Texas Bacon Steak Melt Plate ($6.80). It's chopped steak, bacon and cheese in between two thick slices of white bread. It also comes with a huge side of hash browns! Really really yummy.

Kevin had the Grilled Texas Bacon, Egg and Cheese Melt Plate ($5.35). It also comes with a side of hash browns. It's so yummy he couldn't wait for me to take a photo of it. He already started eating half of the melt when I took the photo! He also ordered a biscuit with sausage and gravy to share. I didn't manage to take a photo of that cos we were too busy eating when it came for me to take out my camera and start snapping photos again (bad blogger, I know :P)

I also love the sauces they have on every table. They do not have some cheap or generic kind of sauces but only the best and branded ones. The sauces range from Heinz ketchup to Lea and Perrins sauce to Tabasco sauce. They also have Heinz Mustard, BBQ sauce as well as Maple syrup! What a selection!

We just love Waffle House! They serve good, hearty and affordable meals...anytime of the day! We would always try to stop by one of the Waffle Houses on the Interstate every time we are driving back to Pittsburgh. Too bad there aren't any Waffle Houses near where we live!!

More photos from UPMC Passavant

Kevin's mom wasn't feeling that great when we visited her the next day after the surgery. The nurses took away her morphine drip and her knee was really really painful. She asked them to bring back the morphine later on and of course the pain subsided (they took her off the morphine drip the next day and she is now just on pain pills). We were there pretty early in the day, so her flow of visitors hasn't started yet. The nurses had already helped her onto a wheel chair so that she can sit up comfortably while she ate her food. Here is a photo of Kevin watching TV in his mom's room.

We just love her room. Here is a photo of all the balloons and flowers that she has gotten so far. The big bouquet of flowers are from her choir group and the smaller one at the top of the cabinet is from her good friend Meg and Meg's dad. The smiley face balloons and candies are from her other friend and of course the sunshine face balloon bouquet is from us. I love how flowers and balloons just brings a ray of sunshine into a hospital room.

This is the whiteboard at the other side of the room. Can you see some cards printed out below the telephone number? UPMC has this website where friends can go to send e-cards to patients. All you need to do is go to this website, click on the type of card that you would like to send and fill in your message. It will be sent to the mailbox of the respective hospitals and the nurses at the nurses station will print it out in full color and deliver it to the patients. Very very cool. Oh, and it's FREE!

Some of you might be wondering what the food is like at the hospital. Gone are the days where you get a standard meal on a tray with a weird piece of jello. These days, it's just like ordering room service from a 5 star hotel. Check out the menu.

Looks so nice, hor? Like some restaurant menu. Wanna see what's inside? They have such a wide selection, looks better than the average restaurant! You can basically get anything you want from this menu.

There are also no standard mealtimes for the patients. You can call and order your meal anytime during the day before 7pm. You can order whatever you want and call as frequent as you want. Here is Kevin ordering his mom's lunch as well as her dinner. You can just pre-order your food for the entire day so that you do not have worry about not having any food during a certain mealtime, just in case you forget to order your food.

We are really pleased with the comfort level, cleanliness as well as the attitude of the doctors and staff in this hospital. I feel that all this little things makes recovery a whole lot faster. We are now back in NJ and Kevin's mom will be there for another week. Of course we feel bad that we cannot stay any longer but Kevin needs to work. I guess it helps to know that this hospital has staff and facilities that are a class above the rest and we can rest assure that she is in very good hands. :)

We're back in New Jersey!

Boy, has it been a tiring week. We are really sorry that there have not been any new updates since Monday. We have been really busy running around and getting things organized in Pittsburgh.

Firstly, we would like to thank all of you for your prayers and concern for Kevin's mother's operation. It went really well and she is now on her way to recovery. She is still in hospital and should be there for another week or so. She started her Psysical Training (PT) day before yesterday and she will have to continue with her PT for another month or so (at least until she is able to move around well enough). There were a few concerns after the operation though, like she wasn't urinating much as the doctor would have liked her to. So, the doctor ordered an ultrasound to be done to her kidneys. Praise the Lord that the results came out normal and she is now doing better. I think maybe she just needed to drink more water. She was on morphine after the operation so the after operation pain was tolerable. They took her off that yesterday and she is now only on regular pain pills. Just continue to pray for a speedy recovery and that her wounds will not hurt that much. It especially hurts when she is undergoing her PT.

Since we didn't have time to update the blog in Pittsburgh, here are some backdated updates, pre and post surgery. She had her surgery done in UPMC Passavant and I must say I'm pretty impressed with that hospital. The staff working there are really friendly, helpful and warm. The hospital is also very clean and nice looking, looks more like a hotel compared to a hospital! We were supposed to check in for surgery at 10:45am on Tuesday morning. We arrived at about 10:30am and we were lead to the surgery check in section on the 2nd floor. They took Kevin's mom to another room to fill up some forms as well as prep her for pre-surgery. Then they gave us Kevin's mom's "Patient Tracking Number" and some sort of a paging device. They said that they will page us once they are done with the prep. They also took down Kevin's cell phone number and told us to go get some breakfast at the cafeteria or we could get some free coffee in the waiting area. They would need at least an hour to prep Kevin's mom. Then we will be allowed to see her again before she is wheeled in for her surgery.

We went down to the coffee house at the lobby of the hospital to have some bagels and tea. Another thing I noticed about this hospital is that the food are really cheap and good! :P This is a picture of the paging device. It's something like those paging device you get from Olive Garden or Red Lobster when you are waiting for a table. The pager works anywhere on the hospital grounds. It's really cool that you don't have just wait in the waiting area while your love ones are undergoing surgery.

After about an hour, we decided to go back to the waiting room to check on Kevin's mom's status. There is a big LCD screen where you can check/track the progress of the patient using the "Patient Tracking Number". It's just like those arrival/departure screens in the airport. You can see where the patient is currently at, be it still in the waiting room or if the surgery is in progress or if they are already in the recovery room or back in the ward. Kevin's mom was still in the prep room so we just watched some TV and waited. There is also free WIFI in the waiting room. Too bad we didn't bring our laptops. The pager went off soon after and they brought us to a room to see Kevin's mom before she is wheeled into the surgery area. We were told that the surgery would last about an hour and recovery time is between 3-4 hours. They said we should go home to rest and come back after 4-5 hours.

We went back to the hospital after about 3 and a half hours, checked the screen and saw that Kevin's mom is already in the recovery room. The nurse said that she will be there probably for another hour but we can go chill out in her room and just wait for them to bring her up once she is fully recovered. They then gave us her room number. She has a single room, so that's pretty good. Kevin and I then went to the nearby mall to get her a huge balloon bouquet so that she can see it the moment is gets back from surgery! The sun balloon was so huge it was kinda tricky to get it in the car! Hahahaha!

When we got back, she was already in the room with a visitor already!! Soon, a few other friends (from her choir group and Red Hats ladies) and her cousin and cousin's husband also visited her. She was in very good spirits, even though she was hooked up to so many things. She had a pint of blood, IV (sorry mom, it's not Bbruan, it's from Baxter), oxygen, her morphine dispensing machine, some machine that monitors the amount of oxygen she is getting as well as a machine that moves her operated leg and massages her other leg. After she had her dinner and when the visitors trickled down, we went home and let her get some much needed rest. Will blog more about her second day in the hospital later on.

We'll be leaving tonight!

We'll be heading to Pittsburgh after work tonight and hope to get in no later than 2am (hopefully). Kevin's mom will be undergoing a total knee replacement surgery tomorrow and we will be in Pittsburgh until Thursday, just to be with her. Please pray for journey mercies for us (it's no joke driving 6 hours in the dark after a whole day at work) as well as for the operation to go on smoothly and also for a speedy recovery for Kevin's mom.

We do have Internet access in Pittsburgh but I am not sure if I will have the time to blog. If not, I'll see all of you on Thursday. Have a good week! :D

Note: For those of you who do not know what knee replacement surgeries are all about, click here. Just click on the START button under the "Virtual Knee Surgery" section. It's actually very good, you get to become the doctor and it takes you through the whole surgery, in cartoon form...check it out!

Southern Hospitality BBQ & Bar

We were in the Upper East Side of Manhattan on Saturday to meet up with some of my friends for a late lunch. One of my ex INTI college friend Sabrina was in NYC, visiting from Atlanta, Georgia. Also, another ex INTI friend Audrey, just had a baby girl (well, not JUST, she is about 3 and a half months now) and we wanted to meet baby Meryl.

We decided to meet at Southern Hospitality which was on 2nd Ave, between 76th and 77th St. It was already almost 2pm when we arrived. The restaurant was kinda packed but the waitress was really good and got us a table really fast. There were 9 adults and a baby but she still managed to get a big comfortable table for us on the stage.

Truthfully, Kevin and I didn't know how popular this restaurant was until after we came home and looked it up online later that day. All we know is that Sabrina told us the food is pretty good and the Mac n Cheese rocks (it's really cheesy). For those of you who are as blur as us, Southern Hospitality is owned by Justin Timberlake and the Executive Chef is Ray Lampe, also known as Dr. BBQ. He is supposed to be one of the best BBQ chefs ever. There are also quite a lot of celeb sightings in Southern Hospitality (though we didn't see any celebs while we were there). I think Lindsay Lohan and Chance Crawford was spotted hanging out in SH only last weekend.

Anywayyyy...all this young celebs all don't interest us much lah. The important thing is...is the food really that good? We had the brunch menu that day. The food offered in Southern Hospitality is Memphis Style BBQ. I must say that the food selection wasn't really that large..maybe cause it was the brunch menu.

Here is a photo of baby Meryl while we wait for the food. Isn't she such a cutie? She is such a good lil girl. She just sat there in her stroller and didn't make a fuss at all while her parents enjoyed their meal. We were there for about 2 and a half hours and I only heard her make a fuss once!

Another photo of baby Meryl and Aunty Sabrina, all the way from Atlanta.

It didn't take very long for the food to arrive. I ordered Fried Chicken and Waffles ($11.95). The Belgian Waffles were really nice. It was served with syrup and butter. I wasn't really impressed with the chicken though. It's supposed to be Southern style buttermilk marinated chicken but it tasted just like any other fried chicken. Yes, it wasn't oily and stuff but it was a lil bit burnt and over fried.

Kevin had the Pulled Pork Sandwich ($10.95). It's a slow smoked Memphis style pork shoulder that was hand pulled and piled onto a sesame seed bun. Kevin seemed to enjoy it and a few other friends of ours who had it said that it was good too. Most of the food had positive reviews, well, except for Eugene's Chicken Fried Steak n Eggs ($13.95). He said that the steak cutlet was rubbery and they messed up his egg order. He ordered scrambled but he got fried egg instead. Audrey who ordered the Smoke Pit Huevos Rancheros ($10.95) had ordered fried eggs but got scrambled instead. I guess they mixed up Eugene and Audrey's order. Hahaha.

Overall, we had a great time. The bill came up to $167 for 9 people. That's not too bad at all. It was good to catch up with old friends over brunch. We also noticed that our topic of conversations has changed over the years. Back in the day when we were still in INTI college, we would talk about where to go clubbing that weekend or where is the hot and 'happening' spot for that season. These days, everybody just got so excited talking about their favorite chef on the Food Network and which bakery has the best HK style pastries in Chinatown! I'm glad that we are still in contact after all these years and it was still fun to hangout with them. I'm certainly looking forward to the next time we head out for lunch or dinner again :D Oh before I end, here is another photo of baby Meryl. She is just so cute! She looks so comfy and warm in her stroller, all ready to face the cold winter chill. She must be thinking, "When can I go home? All this aunties and uncles talking non stop..I am so bored!" Hahaha!

Southern Hospitality BBQ & Bar
1460 Secod Avenue (between 76th and 77th Street)
New York, NY 10075
Tel: (212) 249-1001
Web: http://www.southernhospitalitybbq.com/index.php