What did we eat this week? I thought you’d never ask.
SATURDAY
Hamburgers and hot dogs, chips, birthday cake and ice cream
My son turned 15 (actually it was kind of a while ago), and his wingspan, from fingertip to fingertip, is now six feet. He can almost touch the floor and the ceiling at the same time. We have low ceilings, but still. Size 14 shoes. Boxing lessons. Life is strange, and fast.
He wanted to go to the beach with his friends and then home for a hamburger and hot dogs cookout, and so it was done. He also requested, SIGH SIGH SIGH, a laundry bag cake.
This is from the new MST3K series, where the invention exchange includes a Carvel Cake Wheel of all the possible cakes one could make with a Carvel Whale Cake Pan. Including a laundry bag cake. Considering I don’t have a whale cake pan, I thought this cake designed to look like a cake designed to look like it’s made despite owning a whale cake pan turned out pretty good.
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SUNDAY
Curried chicken salad
I chucked a bunch of chicken breasts in the Instant Pot (YES, MY HUSBAND FOUND THE MISSING VALVE COVER BEHIND A PHALANX OF LAUNDRY BASKETS!) with a can of coconut milk and a little water, and pressed the “poultry” button.
I mixed a tub of unflavored yogurt with plenty of curry powder and added the cooked, cubed chicken to that. One of the kids chopped up the salad greens nice and small, so as to, I don’t know, make it more exotic. The recipe called for raisins or grapes mixed into the curry sauce, but I didn’t like the sound of that, so we had grapes on the side, plus chopped walnuts.
It was a pretty okay dish. The people who liked curry liked it, the people who didn’t like curry didn’t like it, and there were a couple who kept asking what curry was, but refusing to taste it, so I threw them out the window. Anyway, it was easy. I also gave two of my teenage daughters a driving lesson, and then unrelatedly headed briskly to the liquor store.
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MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, chips
There was a Big Clean a-comin’, so we had a simple meal Monday. Actually we had already pressed everyone into servitude getting the house ready for the last party, not to mention the one before that, so there wasn’t all that much left to do. Relatively speaking. You set your standards to “Low Low Low,” pretend it’s okay not to own a vacuum cleaner, and off you go.
We went to the town fireworks display that night, didn’t get into any fights with any yahoos, and came home with the right number of kids in the dark, so that was a success. Corrie proclaimed the fireworks “orange” and then fell asleep.
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TUESDAY
July 4th Cookout!
What a spectacular day. We had something like forty people, including my one and only cousin whom I haven’t seen in twenty years. Everyone brought something to eat or drink, and my father brought fireworks and read the Declaration of Independence
and handed out sparklers. The kids played in the stream and swung on swings, everyone gorged on watermelon and meat, the entire neighborhood filled up with smoke, we played Johnny Cash, and it was swell. A really happy day.
We had hamburgers, hot dog, and pork spiedies, chips, potato salad, pasta salad, corn on the cob, watermelon, cookies, and brownies. There was no end of beer and soda, plus Dark and Stormies (dark rum, ginger beer, and lime). And cigars. Actual conversation, one of many similar types of conversations:
Damien: We need fifty pounds of ice. No, sixty. Better get a hundred.
Me: Are you sure?
Damien: The bags are five pounds.
Me: You sure you want me to get twenty bags of ice?
Damien: I don’t know, I’m crazy.
Me: That just seems like a lot. I’ll get ten bags.
Me, loading ten bags into cart: This doesn’t seem like enough. I better get some more. [loads several more bags into cart]
Husband texts me to say there is not going to be enough beer, so I stop at another store to buy more beer.
Me at the next store: I don’t know if we have enough ice. Here, grab that bag for me. No, the twenty-pound one.
Husband texts me to say never mind, we have plenty of beer.
WHICH WE CERTAINLY DID. Then it turned out basically everyone at the party had some reason for not drinking, so we were stuck with enough beer to float a free boat off Craigslist in, and the quantity of Dark and Stormies I personally consumed turned into Three Days of Darkness and Stormies, all with lime. I do what I can.
The spiedies were insanely good, if I do say so myself. I got about sixteen pounds of pork loin and my husband cut them into hefty chunks, which we marinated overnight in this marinade. We soaked the wooden skewers in water to keep everything moist, and my husband grilled them veddy nicely. So juicy and flavorful! There really isn’t anything better you can do for pork.
I forgot to take pictures of any food. That’s how good of a party it was!
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WEDNESDAY
Cookout leftovers
The kids started the day eating cold pork and hamburgers, so we were reduced to leftover hot dogs and watermelon by dinner time.
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THURSDAY
One-pan honey garlic chicken and red potatoes, salad
This is a great recipe from Damn Delicious. It tastes even better if you have not allowed the chicken to go bad. Blehhh. We all had one bite, spit it out, and ended up eating potato puffs and scrambled eggs for supper. Boo.
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FRIDAY
Pizza
I said to my husband this morning, “I don’t know what we’re having next week, but it definitely won’t be hamburgers or hot dogs.” Then he reminded me we’re camping next week.
So . . . who’s got camp food ideas besides hamburgers and hot dogs?
Foil packets are wonderful, can be cooked on the fire, just use heavy duty foil: http://damndelicious.net/2016/05/31/sausage-potato-green-bean-foil-packets/
You can use pretty much any meat / veggie / potato combo you like. Yum!
Italian sausages and onion wedges (and mushrooms and cut-up peppers if your kids aren’t veggie phobic) roast easily over a fire on long “marshmallow forks”.
Also, we only buy Zatarain’s Red Beans and Rice mix once a year and the kids all look forward to it when we go camping. We add cut up summer sausage and cook it on a camp stove, generally saving it for whatever evening is rainy. It would be too much of a pain to keep water simmering that long if you only had a fire to cook over though.
Chili pie! Fritos (preferably in the little bags), chili, cheese, onions, peppers, and anything else you like. Put the chili in the Frito bags and top as you please. Eat straight from the bags
Chili pie! Fritos (preferably in the little bags), chili, cheese, onions, peppers, and anything else you like
I just did this, Frito pie they called it, for my family of 7 camping this week. Huge hit!
We also did DIY pizza lunchables. I put the pizza sauce in small paper cups, -inheated, right from jar,gave out crackers, cheese pepperoni. They all liked it!
Beyond the Tent was a blog with lots of good camping ideas!
Random thoughts on the above:
1. Peter kind of made my morning.
2. That sweet turf on your 15 y.o.’s baby head must have brought endless light and joy to your household.
3. My friend Elizabeth is your doppelganger. If you had blue hair and nose piercings it would be uncanny.
4. Your bald brother is cute.
5. You are “a good cooker”. Charlotte and Xave coined that term in our household a while ago. I’m a bad cooker at this point in my life because this week I ONLY HAVE TWO PEOPLE TO COOK FOR!!!!! (ALL CAPS IS KINDA INTOXICATING, MAKES YOU FEEL POWERFUL—IT’S HARD TO STOP ONCE YOU GET GOING.)
It’s so easy to cut meal planning corners when nobody is watching. I had fish tacos at the beach for breakfast with Charlotte this morning, and carefully ate half so I could bring home the other half for John Paul’s breakfast/lunch. Charlotte ate her french toast so late she’s good to go till an early dinner with snacks.
“Dark and Stormy three days of darkness” Heheheh.
I’ve been thinking about vegetarians lately. We know a few, and I’ve been known to put my foot in my mouth. The last time it came up I think I said “I’d rather be dead than a vegan.” I really did. Then I added, “six feet under.” It might be a slight exaggeration, but it brings up a really important point: Vegetarians are in complete denial. We all end up eating and being eaten. Except of course for the people who insist on being hermetically sealed and encased in lead, which has got to be the grossest fate of all. Who wants to end up like beef jerky, with a tuft of hair on top and zombie clothes? If I don’t get burned up at the end (ashes still feed organisms, right?) I like the idea of a tree being planted over me. Even if I end up feeding a lovely tree, there will be all manner of little creatures that get to have their day. I’ve noticed that the mosquitoes really go to town after wine o’clock, so I’ll be sure to be nicely marinated for all of my little friends before I go. 😀
I haven’t tried any of these, but they seem like good camping food options that aren’t burgers or hotdogs: http://blog.trailcooking.com/2016/03/21/scout-ready-recipes-latest-book/
My caps lock works just fine. And a good thing, too.
How do you pronounce “spiedies”?
When your dad read the Declaration of Independence, did anybody get worried or call him a traitor or terrorist or anything? Not that he is, of course, but you heard about the recent Twitterstorm, right?
I haven’t. Did someone get called a traitor for reading the Declaration of Independence? I mean in this century?
NPR tweets the Declaration every Fourth of July. This year, apparently a bunch of people got upset at what they thought was incitement to riot against our current administration. It *is* inflammatory language, but didn’t these guys ever read it?
MY CAPS LOCK BUTTON IS BROKEN, TOO! HI, SIMCHA!
I NEVER EAT MEAT OR FISH. I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE BRUTAL MURDER OF ANIMALS JUST TO SATISFY THE TASTE BUDS OF HUMANS. I BELIEVE THAT MOST PEOPLE DO NOT EVEN THINK AS THEY ARE EATING MEAT, THAT THEY ARE EATING THE DEAD CORPSE/CADAVER OF A MURDERED ANIMAL. DO PEOPLE REALIZE WHEN THEY ARE EATING HAM, PORK CHOPS, BACON ETC. THAT THEY ARE EATING ONE ON THE FOUR MOST INTELLIGENT ANIMALS ON EARTH? THE PIG RIVALS DOLPHINS, CHIMPANZEES, WHALES AND ALL THE GREAT APES FOR INTELLIGENCE. A PIG IS ON THE INTELLECTUAL LEVEL OF A THREE-YEAR-OLD HUMAN CHILD, AND IS FAR MORE INTELLIGENT THAN DOGS. PIGS CONSOLE AND HAVE EMPATHY FOR EACH OTHER AS THEY HEAD TO SLAUGHTER. PIGS SCREAM IN PAIN AS THEY ARE BEING BOILED ALIVE BECAUSE IT MAKES THEIR SKIN EASIER TO PEEL OFF. JUST A FEW THINGS TO THINK ABOUT THE NEXT TIME YOU ARE PUTTING A DEAD ANIMAL IN YOUR STOMACH.
AND SOYLENY GREEN IS PEEEEEOPLLLE!!!
TACOS IN A BAG!