are you sick of this yet?  Another thing I have realized through working through this thirty days of dinners and sharing them all is that we do have a few favorites or at least we have a few things we have made a handful of times.  The real tried and true favorites haven’t really been blogged about because they are so low brow or because I probably think I already have.  People think that just because we eat well means we eat ‘gourmet’ all the time.  Definitely not true.  We eat well in that I take the time, usually on Sunday, to plan out a weeks worth of meals and then go shop for them.  I suppose it takes me two hours to put a list together and make it through the market and home.   I ask every week if there is anything Z wants.  If he has any input at all it is a standard litany of pasta, burgers, pork chops and mashed potatoes.  Mostly all things that he knows we both like.  He is quite a good cook but takes a long time because he is careful and studies the recipes and preps before he starts cooking.  I on the other hand, prep as I go and am not very careful if the quantities don’t quite come out.  This can lead to slightly better and slightly worse things and sometimes aggravation when I don’t remember how I made it better last time.  Tonight I planned to make pork chops but ended up making sloppy joe’s because I decided I had the wherewithal to work on dinner for an hour or so.  The sloppy joe’s were on the better end of the scale being sufficiently spicy.  The sides were pretty fun.  I made the new Alexia sweet potato waffle fries.  They were kind of good but went from limp to lightly charred in the blink of an eye.  We also had dilly beans.  I feel like an idiot typing and/or saying dilly.  I make dilly beans a few weeks back and we tried the first jar tonight.  They were crunchy and a tiny twinge of heat.     They are different and slightly scary-being canned beans.  The vinegar is what makes them ok though.