Cheesy Orzo and Tomatoes

Sometimes I need to listen to my gut (literally!) With SP at band practice tonight and me having to work late I was going to stop off and get some takeout for dinner. But then a horrific storm passed through our area, knocking out our work server, and I ended up leaving work early with plenty of time to make dinner. We had been planning to have cheesy orzo sometime soon so I figured I'd make that.


While the dish itself was fine, it wasn't at all what I wanted for dinner and just generally seemed doomed from the start. First off, we were almost completely out of chicken stock so I had to make this using half chicken stock and half water, resulting in bland orzo. Then I went to chop the basil I was planning to mix in and all of it had gone bad. Water had somehow gotten into the sealed plastic bag and the basil was mush. And when I got out the mozzarella I discovered that the pound and a half we had in our fridge (one brick wasn't even open) expired almost 2 weeks ago.

In addition to the orzo I shallow-fried the pork chops SP was going to cook last night. I breaded them in egg and bread crumbs and then fried them in some vegetable oil. Since the chops were on the thick side they took awhile to cook through. I had half a chop with my dinner and it was dried out. I know SP will eat them, but by this point I just gave up on the hope of having a satisfying dinner.

I think the lesson here is that I shouldn't have cooked tonight. While I usually enjoy cooking when I'm stressed, inevitably the end result isn't very good. Sometimes you just need someone else manning the stove.