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Health & Fitness

Hurricane Dinner of Pork Chops, Drumsticks and Grilled Vegetables

Dinner in the Dark courtesy of Hurricane Sandy. Make these grilled pork chops, drumsticks and vegetables in your dark home.

We were largely spared by the hurricane, a.k.a., Super Storm Sandy.  We feel lucky to just have only lost power (like 90 plus percent of Darien, CT).  No flooding.  No roof caved in from fallen trees.  No large trees down on our property.  We witnessed all of these disastrous consequences in parts of the general community as we ventured out yesterday in our car, driving under downed trees and power lines on almost every road.  

But we are the idiots who do not have a generator, deeming it a too expensive of an investment because our power usually only goes out for a few hours.  Dumb.  Very dumb.

Cooking without power in darkness is not exactly enjoyable to me.  I will also confess that I was not at my most creative, likely due to being stuck inside most of the day with a 21 month old who is getting his two year old molars and doesn’t understand why the lights and T.V. don’t work.  He took it upon himself to routinely climb up on tables to turn on lights and scale the television stand to grab the remote.

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But we had some pork chops and chicken drumsticks that were slowly defrosting in our nonfunctioning freezer as well as an eggplant and some sorry looking zucchinis (the last ones I could get at Stop N Shop on Sunday afternoon).  Thus, we cobbled together our hurricane dinner of pork chops, drumsticks and grilled vegetables.  I suppose it was a better dinner than chips and salsa.

Thankfully, we had the world’s best chicken rub, that apparently also is pretty tasty when applied to pork along with some olive oil.  The drumsticks took about 20 minutes on the grill.  The pork was grilled in 8 minutes flat.  It was rather fascinating and a tad bit scary to see my daughter chomp into that chicken leg like a prehistoric cave child.  Halloween is cancelled, but not at our house!

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I chopped up the zucchini and eggplant and marinated it in garlic powder, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.   The kids didn’t touch these (“I hate zucchini!").  But mommy and daddy gobbled them up even though we could barely see what we were eating as we listened to our battery powered radio to get the latest updates from A.M. 880.

 

Please forgive the pictures.  They are horrendous.  They were taken on my i-Phone in the dark.  And now are being uploaded from Le Pain Quotidien in New Canaan – the only place where I could find a seat for free WiFi.

The line at the Starbuck’s in Darien was like waiting in a line at Disney World in peak season without a fast pass.  There were even a variety of diehards camped outside in jackets and hats trying to utilize one of the rare locations for free WiFi in Darien.

If you too find yourself without power and have access to a gas grill as well as some defrosting meat and soon to be rotting vegetables, I would recommend you make this dinner.  If you have power, then I am jealous, and you should probably cook something else!

Here's to hoping the power comes back on soon....

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