4 cups chicken broth
8 sundried tomatoes
1 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic, crushed

1. Bring chicken broth and sundried tomatoes to a boil in a large saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in cornmeal.
2. Spread cornmeal mixture out on a cookie sheet or large casserole dish, evenly spacing the sundried tomatoes. Allow to cool until firm.
3. Cut circles out of the polenta with the rim of a pint glass and set aside, discard remaining polenta or reserve for another use.
4. Melt butter with garlic in a large skillet over medium heat. Lightly brown polenta rounds in batches, then serve.

Makes 4 servings

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 small red onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
19 ounces canned black eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1 medium tomato, chopped
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
3 tablespoons plain yogurt

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until tender, then stir in the garlic, beans, tomato, cayenne and cilantro.
2. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Top with yogurt and serve with rice or other starch.

Makes 4 servings

This was my first experience with polenta that I would actually consider favorable. It's a pretty simple (and incredibly quick) thing to make and taste good, but I guess I just didn't find a lot of useful information about it before. Since it's basically cornmeal porridge, it's pretty important to make sure you're adding something more flavorful than water to cook it! Hence why I made Sundried Tomato Polenta. Sundried tomatoes are so intensively flavorful that it's scary.

The whole polenta shapes has become clear to me, too. It's really important to chill the polenta for a bit to allow it to set. This might seem like common sense, but I am not so smart sometimes. So, voila, perfect circles that could be broiled or, in this case, fried in garlic butter. I was very happy with the way that this turned out.

I topped the polenta rounds with something not particularly Italian, some Caribbean Black Eyed Peas. Since I used canned black eyed peas this was a cinch to make. I imagine that the beans would've absorbed more flavor had I used dried, though. It was just a simple dish with garlic, tomato and cilantro.

Shannon wanted a pork chop that tasted similar to the Ribs I made yesterday. Since I love pork and beans so much, I made the Cajun Pork Chops again, only with better quality chops, and then prepared the glaze like I had for the ribs with brown sugar. I had mine without.