SATURDAY
Chicken burgers, chips
Nothing to report. I do remember asking my husband if we should have salad, and he said no, and I took that to mean that we should just sort of avoid vegetables all week. This, we accomplished.
SUNDAY
Gochujang bulkgoki with nori, rice, roast broccoli
This is such a swell recipe. I cut up the pork and set it to marinate the night before, so on Sunday we had our normal busy day and still had a great supper at a normal hour. Here’s the recipe:
per 1.5 pounds sliced pork:
1 bag matchstick carrots
1 white onions sliced thin
5 generous Tbs gochujang
2 Tbs honey
2 tsp sugar
2 Tbs soy sauce
5 cloves minced garlic
Mix the sauce together and then combine it with the meat, carrots, and onions, and then let it sit in the fridge overnight. Then fry it up in a little oil and serve it with rice. You can make nice little bite-sized bundles on your plate with lettuce or nori.
And now I have a caucasoid confession: this time, I used way, way less gochujang than the recipe calls for. Some of my kids are super tired of spicy food, and I really wanted them to eat it; so I cut it by a third. Mistake. It was still spicy by kid standards (duh: even a little fermented pepper paste is still fermented pepper paste), but it just tasted so diminished. Never again. I am so sorry.
The broccoli was also not great. I cut it up small and put it on baking sheets with olive oil, soy sauce, garlic powder, and sesame seeds and put it under the broiler. I used too much soy sauce, and it tasted kind of harsh, and damp. Bleh. I mean, it was a pretty good meal, but it could have been so much better!
MONDAY
Pepperoncini beef rolls
Well, all the sadness and regret of the past was washed away with Monday’s meal, also from my friend Elizabeth, who gave me the bulgoki recipe. So you take some cheap chuck roast and put it in a crock pot along with some jarred pepperoncini with the stems cut off. Let it cook all day. And that’s it!
Shred and serve on rolls with cheese and horseradish sauce.
I used potato rolls because they were cheap, but crusty bread would have been even nicer. I put the rolls under the broiler for a minute to toast them up a bit before adding the meat and cheese. I had swiss cheese, which was perfect, but provolone or havarti would be good, too.
Don’t forget to save some juices for dipping, because he who dips hot sandwiches into meat drippings is happy indeed. So toothsome, so fulfilling, so gratifying for all your senses.
This goes right into the rotation, no question. YUM.
TUESDAY
Taco Tuesday!!
I snuck a pound of turkey meat, which was on sale, in with the beef, and no one noticed.
WEDNESDAY
Sausage, egg, and cheese muffins
I didn’t burn the muffins! I think this might be the first time ever. I also am thrilled all over again with my two-burner nonstick griddle.
I can make dinner for twelve in two batches, instead of in five or six. Maybe I was just hungry, but these tasted so good, I was offended all over again when I thought about last time I had breakfast at McDonald’s.
THURSDAY
Chicken Olé! and chips; cake and cake and cake
Chicken thighs were on sale, so I had this great idea to put them in the crock pot with a bunch of jarred salsa verde, and then just sit back and let deliciousness happen.
Cold, hard, chicken facts had other plans.
First, utterly predictably, I had the infuriating job of trying to de-bone piping hot chicken thighs. And then, as I know perfectly well but forgot, thighs don’t really shred very well; they just kind of separate into slabs, and a low, slow heat makes them kind of slimy. Also, the salsa verde got very thin from cooking all day. So I was left with a kind of greenish soup.
We drained the meat and piled it on tortillas with lots of cheese, sour cream, and jarred jalapenos, but it was not great.
Oh well! It was easy! This would have been a fine combination of flavors; it just wasn’t great in the crock pot. Live and learn. Maybe someday, I’ll look up an actual recipe.
Thursday was my birthday, and my dear husband had a stray use-it-or-lose-it vacation day, so he made a cake with the preschoolers while I loafed around eating Skittles and watching Clash of the Titans.
(Abba, check out the apron! I forgot to tell you, she loves it. She did write a thank-you note, but the picture on it was so alarming and weird, I couldn’t bring myself to send it. She is a strange child.)
The cake came directly out of a five-year-old’s imagination. So cute.
Then, my friend Roberta stopped by with the cake and cupcakes from her office party. There was a lot. I let the kids just eat all the cupcakes they wanted all day. I’m telling you, there were a lot of cupcakes. After I decided they had had enough, I made a huge rookie mistake and left the box on the table. So Corrie went back
and, bearlike, helped herself one last time
I asked her what she was doing, and she explained very earnestly, “I nuh-no, Mama!”
And I believe her. I nuh-no what happened to that giant bag of Skittles, either.
FRIDAY
Says here “spaghetti.” I think I can manage that.
Oh, I meant to tell you, I found a quite easy recipe that we’re making as token gifts for various people. It’s chocolate caramel crunch almonds from Smitten Kitchen, and you have to scroll way down to the end of the page to get to it. It’s technically candy, but you don’t need a candy thermometer. This recipe won my heart with this line:
Once the liquid has fully evaporated, it will become sandy and you will think something has gone wrong; it has not.
And guess what? It got sandy, and I thought to myself, “Oh, it’s just like she said! I won’t worry, because this is supposed to happen.” Then it stayed sandy for way longer than I thought it should, and I went ahead and thought something had gone wrong after all. But then it changed into caramel. Amazing.
You can get nice, cheap almonds at Aldi, but do not use Aldi chocolate chips to coat the almonds! Aldi chocolate chips do not melt! Weird, but true.
Making or baking anything neat for Christmas? I wouldn’t mind a second recipe to go with the almonds. I was thinking of candy cane fudge, but I’m pretty tired of fudge.
Whiskey brittle
Preheat oven to 350.
Put a single layer of graham crackers broken into quarters into a jelly roll pan. You might want to line the pan with parchment paper.
Melt together 1 cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar. Bring to a rolling boil and immediately add 1/4 cup bourbon. Pour this concoction over the crackers, getting all of them pretty evenly coated.
Bake 10 minutes, and remove from oven. Immediately run a pizza wheel between the pieces of graham cracker and remove to a parchment lined baking rack to cool. Work fast – they harden as the candy sets.
We were thinking about making kolaches, though my mom mentioned today that that might not happen – time constraints, etc.
Happy (belated) birthday!
Crazy week. The only store I walked into all week was the liquor store and that was to buy a couple of cases of wine to give out as Christmas thank yous. So for dinner I mostly served up frozen pizza, chicken fingers, and pot pies to the younger kids, but the big kids weren’t having any and bought their own cheesesteaks, hoagies, and Chinese. I’m making chocolate covered pretzels. So easy. So delicious.
Yesterday was baking Sunday! I made 5 batches of cookies. I flash froze (thanks Pioneer Woman)! two batches to bake up on Christmas Day and the rest I put into dollar store tins to bring over to neighbors today. Also, this is the first year I made chocolate covered potato chips in addition to chocolate covered pretzels. Oh my goodness! They are addictive.
What’s the PW link to how to do that? It sounds invaluable!
I actually saw her do it on TV. It’s very easy. All you need is parchment paper (which I use for cookies anyway) and ziploc bags. You drop the dough on the parchment paper lined cookie trays just like you were going to put the cookies in the oven. Instead, you spread another sheet of parchment paper over the dough drops and then you put the tray in the freezer for half an hour. Set the timer – if you forget and leave the dough in too long, the cookies will begin to lose their flavor. Don’t leave the cookie dough in longer than 45 minutes. Then just take the frozen cookie balls and drop them into a ziploc freezer bag. A tip I’ve learned is to not melt the butter for your cookies in the microwave as that will raise the temp of your batter and may necessitate leaving the dough in the freezer for an hour or more. I just soften butter the old fashioned way – on the counter. The hardest part of flash freezing is making space in the freezer. Fortunately for me, I’ve got a single neighbor whose freezer rarely has anything more than a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
I am baking this for Christmas with my niece, nephew and cousin:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/9427/walnut-poteca/ (who knows if that is a decent version of the recipe, it’s just hard to explain to non-Slavs). I make it twice a year, given how involved it is, but make it every year because it is our culinary patrimony (matrimony, more likely).
I also go to my Mom’s house and promptly forget what I cook at home (literally, I can’t think of any fallbacks to cook when I am 3000 miles away from home). I was so happy to see your recipes, because I can help cook by just referencing some of the things you’ve liked.
I tried to attempt bulgogi not too long ago because my little one wanted bibimbap because they had made a very simple version at preK. I thought my bibimbap turned out ok but my bulgogi probably could have been better. It was a hodge podge week for me with food because my husband was traveling for business but I am super excited for the week to come. I think I have planned some pretty delicious meals for my family. As far as christmas baking I always make pioneer woman cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies and baklava and some years I make pizzelles. We will see what happens this year.
Well, now I want to eat cake.
Sat:pizza at my parents’ house after a disastrous attempt at taking a family photo. We were trying to make good on a Mother’s Day promise to get a whole-family picture. The photo place we scheduled was over an hour behind so we left; we tried taking it at my brother’s house instead since my dad has a good camera, but my twins screamed throughout.
Sun: no clue.
Mon: sweet and sour beef and noodles, but with venison. Pumpkin muffins.
Tues: chicken noodle soup
Wed: chicken and spinach alfredo lasagna with garlic bread. Husband and I liked it fine, but only one of the kids did.
Thurs: leftovers, which we, as we often do, combined with my brother and sil, because we live right down the street from each other. My kids usually prefer whatever leftovers they have to ours, and theirs eat our leftovers and everyone’s happy.
Fri: probably salmon bake.
I love the apron on your cake, decorating girl.
I adore just about anything from Smitten Kitchen. Her lemon bars (in her cookbook) are a game-changer. So so good. I’m going to attempt her Confetti Cookies for Christmas, because I have a sprinkles-lovin’ five year old, though I may regret it sometime around Easter when I’m still cleaning sprinkles out of cracks in the kitchen floor.