Grilled Basil and Pine Nut Crusted Pork Chops

Keeping costs down when you have 1 working parent and growing kids as well as the other costs of living, means that we’re always on the look out for Budget Busting ways for us to shop and live. Morrisons have recently cut the prices of many everyday items that families buy and are promising to keep the prices that low and that they will stay low no sneaky super market ploys.

So when challenged by Morrisons to do our weekly shop and create a recipe for Bank Holiday Weekend we jumped at the chance. I’m not a normal Morrisons Shopper – in fact it’s about 10 years since I last shopped in Morrisons and I’ve never been to our local shop since we moved towns 7 years ago.

Our Morrisons Shopping Experience

One of the first things I was really pleased about was the abundance of parent and child parking spaces with room enough either side to easily load up and unload children from the cars without fear of hitting another car door as you try and struggle getting a reluctant traveller into their car seat.

We’re still in the sit in the trolley phase of shopping with the kids and yes I was mad enough to bring them with me for the first time in a new super market – luckily I brought along Rainy Day Dad as from experience we often have to have two trolleys to hold both of them as so few places have double seaters… Imagine my shock when every full sized trolley was a double seater – perfect for me to shop on my own with both kids without having to chase around the kids.

The shop was nicely laid out – I loved the quality of the fresh fruit and vegetables and stocked up including special offers like 3 bags of our favourite vegetables for £1.50. With so much choice we stocked up and have started a health kick having fruit salads for snacks and lots of fresh produce with our meals. Another shock for me was the meat, we tend not to buy a lot of meat because of the cost but with BBQ season fast approaching we thought we would stock up, in the meat counters it was obvious that the majority of the meat wasn’t fast packed instead was carefully selected and 2 reasonable – we picked up 2 HUGE pork chops which we’ve made 2 meals out of for £3.75.

Arriving at the checkout I was convinced it was going to be well over our normal shopping especially with the bottle of wine and bottle of sherry that I had snuck it especially for the cook and all of the meat and fresh vegetables imagine my shock that it was £74.25 for our normal weekly shop about £25 to £40 cheaper than normal. Plus the added saving of our fuel coupon to use within the week.

Grilled Basil and Pine Nut Crusted Pork Chops

Ingredients

Pork Chops
Bag of Pine Nuts –
Basil Plant – 2 good handfuls of leaves
Olive Oil – 2 tables spoons
2 Cloves of Garlic
Salt and Pepper to season

To serve – Baby Potatoes and salad

Method

1. Lightly season your pork chops with some salt and pepper
2. In a food processor add a bag of pine nuts, 2 good handfuls of basil leaves, 2 cloves of garlic peeled and the olive oil
3. Mix it all up together and add a little salt and peper to taste
4. Set the grill to high
5. Coat each side with a little of the basil and pinenut crust
6. Grill turning over – you may want to reduce heat half way through to avoid burning
7. Prepare baby potatoes to your choice (we love garlic and rosemary roasted baby potatoes)
8. Make up a salad
9. Once grilled add the remainder of the basil and pine nut mix – it’s like pesto but without the cheese – to the top of the pork chops

Cost per serving for the meal including the salad from Morrisons was £1.98 based on 4 of us eating

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Morrisons as part of the #MorrisonsMum campaign via BritMums

Author

Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.