Tuesday Night Dinner with Black-Eyed Peas

With the new year well underway, I'm going to try to bring back the Tuesday Night Dinner at Home entries with some regularity. Despite the low frequency of these posts, I've actually been eating at home and cooking dinner with the roommates a lot lately...but I've lacked a little creativity, defaulting instead to several old favorites (read: lots of pasta and side salads).

So, the other day I was flipping through a recent issue of Rachael Ray's magazine and flagged a few recipes I thought sounded good. Wanting to add a little variety to this Tuesday dinner, I thought I'd try the "Pork Chops with Warm Black-Eyed Pea Salad." I'd never had black-eyed peas before, so I knew that I'd find it interesting at the very least.

Pork chop prep with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Warm black-eyed pea salad prep. I might as well go ahead and confess right here that I screwed up not once but twice with this part. First: I forgot to buy a red onion, so I had to swap it with yellow (I swear I must have walked right by the red onions at the grocery store earlier tonight while imagining myself adding one to the basket), and second: I read the recipe incorrectly and thought it only called for one can of black-eyed peas (although, it clearly states two).

Tasty side salad. Eating a salad with nearly every meal is my new thing. I like to buy the plastic containers of organic baby greens (or in this case spinach) and mix it with several other good-for-you ingredients. Lately, I've been adding the NUT-rition Digestive Health Mix of nuts, dried fruits and granola, along with parmesan cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.

Finished product.

Despite a few missteps with the black-eyed pea salad, it turned out quite well (I cut back on the amount of crushed red pepper and balsamic vinegar so as not to overdo it). It had a hearty, nutty flavor and was a good complement to the browned-just-right pork chop.