What's cookin' good lookin'?

So, I cooked. And when I cook dinner, it takes Dennis, Echo, and Connor all by surprise. It's not something that I like to do or that I do often. But, I figured one last time in 2010 wasn't too bad.

I took Connor to the grocery store with me this morning after I scoured the internet for recipes last night. I came up with "Healthified Smothered Pork Chops" and "Butter Glazed Asparagus". And yes, I do realize that eating anything that is "healthified" is negated when you are also eating something the begins with "butter". So anyway, pork chops and asparagus. Not too complicated of recipes, but I ran into some problems.

After asking the guy at Kroger - an employee, don't worry, I didn't just ask a random person who looked like they knew how to cook THIS TIME - where the thyme is, I was directed to this plant. Apparently all of the regular dried stuff was out of stock. WTF? So I got a plant. He said I can trim off what I need for the recipe and then it would be wonderful because I could just water it and it would grow back. That is AWESOME because I had a life-time supply of thyme on my Christmas list and didn't get it.

So, I come home with a plant, among other things. Dennis says that I bring home weird things when I go to the grocery store and he isn't completely making that up. I very often do bring home unusual things or at least a lot of icing.

So, OK. We have the plant. And then I realized that Canola oil was next on the list. If a recipe calls for Canola oil, can you substitute another oil (I'm talking vegetable oil, olive oil, etc.) in it's place? What is the difference between the different types of oils? I sent my mom an email, to answer this very important question at a later thyme.

Besides having a question about cooking oil, I also was a little bit weary of the brown-fin-like-things from the underside of the sliced mushrooms that I purchased. So, I trimmed all of those off. The brown stuff looked gross so I got rid of it. Am I supposed to eat that part of the mushroom (and yes, I'm really asking for help here!)?

ONE of the ironic parts of my cooking adventure is that I have this plant. And I only need 1/4 tsp on dried thyme. One-fourth of a friggin' teaspoon.

I know the suspense is building here, so I'll fill you in on the end result: we loved the meal. Dennis even rated it an 8 on a scale of 1-10 so I'm pretty impressed with myself.

And, while I'm asking for advice, I have another to throw out there. How do you handle an 18 month old that likes to hit his parents, throw fits, and will do anything to avoid having his clothes put on in the mornings? Just being hypothetical here, because we are obviously perfect parents without any problems. I mean, you should see our house. Never a toy or anything on the floor. PERfect.