Food I love #2: Pork chops

     Confession time.
     In the years I regularly patronized Gene & Georgetti with my pals, the check was inevitably picked up by someone else, a Springfield lobbyist type, or law firm partner, or utility bagman, or top Sun-Times editor with a bottomless expense account. Whatever my regular dish, the "Schultz Special," aka filet mignon on a piece of toast, cost — say $35 — was not my concern. Nor the bottles of wine, nor the carrot cake dessert. My problem was getting back home in half decent condition after spending an long afternoon with Steve Neal and Dan Rostenkowski and half a dozen other hale fellows well met. A bar I did not always clear.
     But sometimes, on rare occasions, I would find myself the host of my own lunch at Gene's — thanking a colleague perhaps. And then, knowing the knee-weakening check arriving, eventually, would be my responsibility or, worse, I would have to try to expense it, I would rein in the dogs of appetite. Sometimes I would get their garbage salad — an oval platter piled high with lettuce and cocktail shrimp — or their pork chop.
     A pork chop is both steak lite and a bargain. At Gene's 20 years ago they were $19.99, which seemed less of a gut punch, bill-wise. On the lunch menu now, a petit filet mignon is $67, a double pork chop $38. Twice the food for half the money.
     Much cheaper and honestly, still quite good — a pork chop is the love child between a t-bone steak and a chicken breast. 
     Now that I have diabetes, I run through pork chops. Zero carbs. Zero sugars. Toss a couple on the grill. I'll have them for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, though not all three on the same day. Not yet anyway. The cheapest steak you can find runs you $7.95 a pound, on sale at Jewel. Pork chops are $2.99 a pound, and if they're trying to unload them, they'll give you two for one. As I said before, I'm a man who likes a free chop.
     I don't want to give the impression that cost rules my culinary habits. I am still employed, and would not eat as much L. Burdick's chocolate as I do if that were the case. But there is ... treading carefully .. a certain Stockholm Syndrome effect at work, and over the years, I have gotten more practical. So I enjoy a thick pork chop, dusted with tarragon, both sides, eaten along with a nice cup of all natural applesauce.

     And yes, I know at this point there is one reader, or a dozen, who is scratching vigorously behind his ear thinking, "Heyyyyy, wait a sec. A pork chop? Ain't ya, you know, Jewish?"

     Yes I am. And I've addressed this before, and recently too. Too many times — there must be some kind of perverse pride at work. I must like poking the empty stereotype. But for you newcomers, despite what you read on the Daily Caller, Jews are not a mass of conformity, with our beards and black coats and secret handshakes. Jews get to be individuals — it's one of the redeeming qualities of the faith. 

     Actually, everyone gets to be an individual; Jews just are less good about ostracizing the oddballs — if we were, there'd be no one left. I'm speaking of the more liberal branches. The Hassidim seem to have no problem imposing uniformity. No pork chops for them. Which is fine, in my opinion. That means more for me.