After my limited success a few weeks ago with my “infamous” dishwasher chicken recipe, I decided that I needed to learn a few more kitchen tricks. More than a few, actually.

Since then,  I have re-created a couple of simple recipes, but was reminded just how inferior my cooking was when compared to “real cooks” after being invited to dinner at a friend’s house last weekend.

Apparently, the ability to cook chicken in a dishwasher is not a highly regarded skill among those who consider cooking an art-form. I decided to try something more conventional, but also more unique.

Despite the multitude of reasons to be a vegetarian, I am still a meat-eater, but try to purchase healthy free range meats. Yesterday, I dug some pork chops out of my freezer and prepared a marinade that I found on Cooks.com with a combination of herbs, lemon zest, lemon juice, minced garlic, and olive oil.

I put the pork chops into the mixture and mixed them around a little and left the marinade in a tupperware container in the refrigerator to sit overnight. A few hours later, I went to bed and woke up with a terrible thought-did I mess up the marinade?  I couldn’t decide- should I get out of bed and tread over to my fridge to check the marinade? Was it worth a look at the recipe in the middle of the night?

I opted to forget about the marinade, but jotted myself a note on my bed-side table so that I wouldn’t forget to freak out about it at some point the next day. I nervously checked the marinade in the morning and it looked all right, but since there wasn’t a picture, I had no way of verifying whether or not I was on the right track.

Later in the day, I set out for a neighborhood shopping expedition: I purchased parsnips for my very first time, pears, red potatoes and some wine to drink as a special treat with the meal. The cashier asked me what I was going to do with the parsnips- I had to admit that this was my first attempt at a “very secret recipe”.  He went on to recommend pureeing carrots with the parsnips to take away the bitterness. As I attempted to respond intelligently to his suggestion,  I thought I saw a woman peeking around the corner to snoop into the contents of my basket.

I got home and read the recipe, but needed to call in the reinforcements. Was the recipe right? Did I really have to separate the lemon zest, garlic, and herbs from the pork chops to put them on the veggies or was the recipe written by an incompetent person trying to fool novices like me into thinking that they knew what they were talking about?

With help, I transferred the pork chops into a more suitable pan, and put some of the marinade on the veggie mix. I chose to broil the pork chops and roasted the parsnips, potatoes, and pears with the “sauce” on.

Despite a little smoke coming out of the oven and my lack of a decent oven mitt, the meal turned out much better than I  had anticipated.