Old Faves, New Faves, Recipe Loved and Recipe Fail

   Since the weather in North Carolina plays ping pong between all 4 seasons during this time of the year, sometimes its hard to have a set in stone menu for the week.  Saying that, I have several meals that revolve around the weather.  Beef Burgundy is one such meal.  I have made Julia Child's recipe as well as Rachel Ray's.  Mine fall somewhere between the two and it is a serious family favorite.  The Yorkshire Pudding aka popover recipe is one that I have made for years and a recipe used by my mom.  However, due to our weather patterns, we grilled out  burgers at my parents' house on Monday. 
 Chimichangas on Tuesday, are a recent addition to our family faves that we tried last July.
   Wednesday brought a love and a fail of recipes to my collection.  Caramelized Onion & Bacon Smothered Pork Chops were fantastic!  My only changes to this were: boneless pork chops, beef broth and 1/2 & 1/2 in place of heavy cream.  Unfortunately, the Au Gratin Potatoes were the fail for the night.  The only change was 1/2 & 1/2 instead of heavy cream, all other directions were followed (including the rest time) - but it was still VERY watery.  I have never ran into this when substituting the 1/2 for the heavy cream.  After reading the comments, I did find where the author says 1/2 will not work for this but there were others who used heavy cream and it was still watery/soupy.  I have several more au gratin recipes that I want to try or already have tried, so I won't go back to this one to figure it out, because even though it was edible, we have others we'd rather eat.
   Thursday brought us back to a stand by as the steaks were marked down at the grocery store.  They were prepared simply; just sprinkled with kosher salt and pan seared until medium rare.
   As much as I love to cook, there are times that I would rather work on a project, especially if I am in a great flow so the week ended up with Pizza Hut and Hunger Games, but that is fine, because that is life.