Tonight’s dinner was “I have a headache, I’ve had a headache all day. I need only one pan because I don’t want a lot of dishes, and I wanna use up stuff in my cupboards.”
Directions:
In a pan, put some boneless pork chops. They can even still be frozen because you’ve had a headache all day and didn’t plan ahead for the fact your children want to eat every freaking day. I lied already … I actually put the pork chops in last. Revisit this step later.
Get out your lasagna pan. It is metal and easier to clean than your other casserole pans. Look into the cabinet and find a jar of pasta sauce. Decide this is a good starting point. Try to open the jar. Fail. Try again to open the jar. Fail again. Bang the lid on the edge of the cabinet, still fail at opening the jar. Yell fuck (you may use whatever word you like instead but that’s mine. I’m not sorry.) Curse the fact you don’t have enough arm strength to open the jar, put it away, think about the fact you need to start lifting weights, abandon the thought because headache and dinner time.
Think back on all the TikTok videos you’ve watched, all the Pinterest things you’ve saved, search the cabinet for things that are easier to open.
Ahhh haaa!!
In this pan, mix some cans of condensed tomato soup (3), with 2 cans of water, and the leftover heavy cream in the fridge. Add one small pouch of tomato paste for good measure because when the hell are you ever going to use a teeny pouch of tomato paste anyway? Season this with Italian seasoning, garlic, onion, salt, and pepper. Season with your heart and then a teeny bit more. Because this can’t taste like soup but needs to taste like sauce.
Remember you have a couple of hamburger patty’s that aren’t cooked from yesterday in the fridge and crumble them into the sauce mixture. Don’t brown them first, because one pan dammit!! Also, you consider that meatloaf cooks in the oven, so these will too.
Dump in a box of rigatoni noodles, uncooked, because one fucking pan dammit! Get in the fridge to find your shredded mozzarella cheese, there will be some. You realize your Heathen offspring ate it all, use some string cheese instead. I think I used 4. Peel them into the sauce mixture.
Then put the pork chops in. I definitely didn’t do that part first. So much happened prior to this step. I don’t know why I tried to start with that. I’ll blame the headache.
Cover the one pan with foil. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Take out the pan when the oven timer beeps and your child has yelled at least twice that the oven is beeping. Uncover the pan, everything smells good, see that the pork chops aren’t fully cooked through yet.
At this point, your youngest son will have a meltdown because he doesn’t want salmonella because he just now realizes meat begins raw as you’re trying to reassure him you aren’t feeding him the undercooked food and you’re going to bake it longer. Also, go over animals when he asks if pork comes from a chicken as you sprinkle some more Italian seasoning on top, because why not?
Think about adding a 5th string cheese to the top of the pan while you wait for the oven to heat to 400° because your mind doesn’t stop working even while explaining pork is not from a chicken. Get a piece of string cheese out of the fridge and drop a dozen eggs on the floor in the process. Forget all about that piece of cheese, (I mean, serioulsy forget about it. I think it is still sitting out on the counter right now), recover the pan with the foil, put the pan back in the oven at 400° this time for an additional 32 minutes.
Clean up the eggs while briefly considering making some garlic bread but abandon that plan, because one pan dammit! Also, the pasta is enough carbs already. Help your youngest son through his food starts raw crisis while nursing a cup of coffee that you made an hour ago at least. Finally, the food is done and the offspring have again told you the oven beeped several times. Everything is cooked all the way this time, it still smells great, and serve the kids and yourself each a plate.
And they both LOVE it!! It was surprisingly delicious. Also, it could have been my headache, because I tend to only crave pasta when I have a headache, either way it was yummy. It did not taste like soup at all but tasted like a very creamy sauce. The pork was tender and it was cheesy enough without the lost string cheese.
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