Ham and Split Pea Soup (p58 The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition)
This was quite good...but I made lots...and still have lots. I used the ham bone from the honey glazed ham.
Honey-Glazed Pork Chops with Sweet and Tangy Slaw (RC Cook's Country December/January 2010)
This turned out well. The pork chops were great and the slaw was pretty good with it. Considering neither of us like slaw too much, and we liked this, I guess that means something.
As a point here. I was just thinking about it and when we had the glazed pork chops we had pork quite often in the past week...and the pork was almost exclusively from Eden Farms (I did have to subsidize the pea soup with other ham, cause I didn't have enough meat left).
Good stuffs.
We did a whole lot of travelling this past week. The first trip to Cedar Rapids, we left early, Spent the 23rd time with my family, spent Christmas Eve morning with the Matta's, and the rest of Christmas Eve day and eve with Shannon's family. Christmas morning we spent a good chunk of it with the Matta's (the two girls were so excited) and then spend a good chunk of the rest of the day with my family (Cara and her family, Lovina and her family, Jed, Joseph, Isaac, parents and us).
We kept an eye on the Iowa road conditions map and decided to risk it, even though a good portion of central and western Iowa were "Travel not advised", we decided to head back home. Shannon had to work Saturday and all that. The trip back was normal for the most part until around Altoona, where roads went from fine to "I think I'm gonna slide off the road" in the space of a few moments. At one point we were going 30 or so on I-80.
First trip: ~297 miles and 6 hours 27 minutes of driving (google estimate + 1 hour for some awful driving)
Saturday afternoon we headed up to Ames for a meet up that normally happens around Thanksgiving to see Shannon's Uncle, cousins and her sister and parents. We ended up at Black Market Pizza. The food was quite good. I really liked that place. We had: The Reuben, Bacon Double Cheeseburger, Barbecued Iowa Chop, Mr. Meaty, and The Iowegian. All were pretty good, but the reuben was quite fantastic. We were late and left in a hurry, which I felt bad about. I'm thinking we should visit uncle Jan more often.
Then we headed back over to the Matta's to have a little get together with some old friends (Dave, Mark, Cam, Rich, Lena, Jenny, Nathan Shannon and I). We stayed up late chatted, shared some stories, remembered old times... It was a good time. We had a lazy morning at the Matta's and headed back home.
Second Trip: ~300 Miles, 6 hours 4 minutes of driving
So a grand total of nearly 600 miles and over 12 hours of driving...
Quite worth it though.