Iceburg and Watercress Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing & Pork Chops with Onion Marmalade

Like salad? In a salad rut?

Iceburg and Watercress Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing is quick and easy and just different enough with the peppery watercress to make you feel like you've been adventuresome.

The salad components are simple (iceburg, watercress, celery), and the dressing components, with a little luck, are things you have kicking around in your fridge (mayo, sour cream, blue cheese, lemon, milk) or have growing on your doorstep (chives).

This version actually ended up being a reduced fat dressing, since all I had for milk was skim, and I chose a low fat Hellman's over Cain's (nothing is better than regular Hellman's so I had to choose the lesser of two evils).

Folks, you really can't go wrong with blue cheese. It makes anything taste great, and blue cheese dressing is a natural with iceburg lettuce.

My one and only word of warning is: be careful with the watercress. For whatever reason, it's grown in sandy soil, and you'll most likely need to wash it--in fact, I'd recommend doing what you do with leeks--put it in a bowl of water and swish it around--let the sand fall to the bottom.

Even if you think it's clean...I didn't think I needed to wash my watercress but when I was digging in to this salad I got more than one mouthful with the slightest amount of grit. Edible, but irritating.

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When family members dine with Mrs. S., I take their personal appetites into consideration. M. is a vegetarian. J. loves desserts. K. & L. are gourmands.

But T. and S. are the polar opposites of gourmands, especially T. Basically, he's a meat and potatoes kind of guy, so when I thought about what I would fix for them I tried to keep it simple.

I knew T. loved the Roast Pork Cubano I made last week, so I figured I'd try pork again. Rosti was a big hit at our house, so I thought that might be a fun way to present potatoes. And steamed spinach with butter--what's not to love?

So I settled on Pork Chops with Onion Marmalade. The marmalade might be pushing the envelope, but I figured I'd take a chance.

Readers, this is an easy dish that smells AMAZING and tastes delicious. What is it about onions and vinegar on the stove? Everybody who passed through the kitchen swooned.

Don't get freaked out by the word marmalade. If you've ever caramelized onions you can do this with no problem because all you do is add a little balsamic vinegar and red currant jelly during your slow cooking process, then throw in your browned pork chops at the end to finish them off.

Easy and delicious. If you like pork, give it a try!