Whats for lunch? What's for dinner?

Some days I just DREAD those questions.  I don't know, let me find my menu list...humm.. nope that doesn't sound good. What else is in the cupboards?  Sound familiar?  But for once, I had it all planned out. I had a super cute idea for the kids lunch which I knew they would love.  And dinner I was actually looking forward to what I had planned. Mainly because it was one of those delicious bacon wrapped pork loins I told you about here. 


Lets start with lunch.  Since schools been out for three weeks now (yes I've survived 3 weeks so far, and I haven't started counting when they go back yet, so that's a good sign that we are having a lot of fun!) I wanted to do something fun for lunch time.  I've seen this idea a lot of places that involve muffin tins.  You fill up each cup with a different item and VIOLA! easy lunch!  My kids love the idea of 'snacks' for lunch  or dinner so I knew they would gobble up this idea and they did.  I had fun finding different things to put in each cup too.  We have decided to try to make this a once a week lunch adventure too. If you are wondering there are PB crackers, cheese, skittles, pepperoni, strawberries and apples.  Little Miss Bacon had yogurt in her's since she doesn't eat cheese. I know, who would have thought there were kids out there that don't like cheese!

So we have lunch covered, one down, one to go!   I relaxed all afternoon with the relief of knowing what I was making for dinner.  It was nice. So about 4 pm I went and dug out the pork loin from the freezer so I could start on dinner.  Ok so it was kinda late to get started, we got busy playing and the day slipped away from me so I had to thaw the pork in the microwave.  I tossed the package of frozen pork in the micro and started in dicing my potatoes.  BEEP, BEEP. Meat's thawed.  Took the package out of the microwave and learned a good lesson the hard way!  I didn't defrost pork loin, I defrosted pork CHOPS. UGH.  There is a very good reason why when you buy foods in bulk and food save them and stick them in the freezer you should label them.  Why we didn't write on them like we always do I don't know.  I blame it on lack of sleep and mommy brain!

So now what am I going to do. I could attempt to do bacon wrapped chops, sounds good, but not as good as loin.  I decided barbecued chops sounded good.  Mr. Bacon wasn't to be home from work for a while yet, and lets face it my grilling skills are no where near what my baking skills are so grilling was out of the question.  I decided to bake them in BBQ sauce.

The pork chops were the easy part- place some BBQ sauce on the bottom of my pan, lay in the chops, cover with sauce.  Place in 350* oven.  

  There that wasn't hard!  Now what do I do with these potatoes I already diced up?

  

Honestly I was thinking that twice baked potatoes sound awesome to have with these chops.  But that takes along time to make.  And I already have a bunch of cut up potatoes.  Then the light bulb went off!   Why not make the diced potatoes with the twice baked ingredients on them?!  Yes sometimes the brain works, it just takes some time. 

 

 I dug though the fridge and pulled out what I normally place in a twice baked potato.  Milk, sour cream, ranch dressing, butter (melted), cheese and bacon.  Well I didn't have cooked up, crumbled bacon so I improvised with some 'Bacon,Bacon' from tastefully simple I had in my cupboard.  I will tell you I didn't measure anything. I just dumped and poured until it looked good. I was pressed on time to get these in the oven and have them done in time to have with dinner.  So if you are going to try this, you'll just have to wing it and use your best guess.  I poured  all the ingredients in a bowl and mixed well until everything was coated.  Then I tossed it in a well greased 9x13 pan and placed it in the oven too. 

 Oh and because I'm a super awesome good mom, I put some potatoes in a separate baking dish and put my usual spices on them with some oil since I knew Little Miss Bacon wouldn't come near my others!  She was very happy and ate everything in her 'special' dish! Which I was happy with since it was a whole potato cut up in there!

  

 I let everything bake for about an hour and a half.  How did it turn out?  DELICIOUS!  It was a great dinner.  Not bad for having to improvise last minute.  Goes to show you not everything goes as planned, but it wasn't hard to save the day! (or err.. dinner!)