Happy Friday! I was looking through my camera roll for this week’s food pics, and came across this image:
and smiled quietly to myself. Then I thought if I shared it, I really need to hunt up the source, so I searched for it on Facebook, which helpfully supplied this as the only hit:
I guess Facebook never heard of snitches get stitches.
Alternate joke:
. . .nah, never mind, I was gonna do a thing about misusing substances while shouting “I refute it thus!” and then breaking your foot, but in fact college was just too long ago.
(But actually the source is this funny lady on Instagram.)
Speaking of substance, I have lost six pounds in the last two weeks, by more or less adhering to the eating plan I outlined here. I’ve been up and down enough times to know that things could go south (or north, I guess) at any point, either because I sabotage myself or something outside my control happens; but dammit, I did lose six pounds. Usually I can lose four pounds and it doesn’t mean anything, but six pounds is enough to get my attention.
My secret weapon is neither GLP-1 nor cocaine, but gum. Because my big problem, when I’m trying to lose weight, is not really that I get hungry; it’s that my mouth gets lonely. So I give it some gum, and it works. This is humiliating for me because I’ve spent my entire adult life being absolutely horrible to people for chewing gum in my presence. Oh well. I’m just trying not to be an absolute cow about it, and if anyone wants me to apologize, I will.
Okay, that’s enough of that! Here is how we made our mouths less lonely this week:
SATURDAY
Salmon tacos or mac and cheese
I had already defrosted some salmon filets the previous day, but we had…something else, I don’t even remember.It was not a week worth remembering, as I recall. But I’m trying really hard to waste less food, so I patted the filets dry and sprinkled them with .. . I think salt and cayenne pepper? I don’t remember. Then I heated up a pan super hot with a layer of olive oil, and put them salmon on, skin down. I let it cook for probably four minutes and then flipped it over and cooked it for just another minute or so. Then I squeezed a lime over it. Turned out really nice! Not dry.
I only made four pieces because the kids that were home are not fish lovers.
I made a bowl of guacamole and shredded up some cabbage, which I set out like this and nobody said a thing about it
This is top tier food humor, but my talent is wasted.
So we just had really simple little tacos with the salmon, cabbage, and guac, with more lime
Nice.
SUNDAY
Cinnamon garlic chicken, roast squash and Brussels sprouts, hobbit bread; Rosemary olive oil cake with homemade ice cream
Sunday was Clara’s birthday, and she did the baking at her apartment and then brought it over here to finish. So I made the garlic cinnamon chicken I make at Passover
Jump to Recipeand a big tray of roast butternut squash and Brussels sprouts. I drizzled them with olive oil and hot honey and sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and broiled them. Dinner ended up quite a bit later than expected, so I ended up scraping them into a pan and keeping them warm under tinfoil, but this wasn’t a bad thing! Just a bit more medey’d than usual.
Clara brought a giant, pneumatic loaf of bread to bake, which turned out lovely, very tender
and she baked the olive oil rosemary cake from Parsley and Icing. She put rosewater in the frosting instead of vanilla, and she decorated it with phlox blossoms.
NOTE: Perennial phlox is edible, but annual phlox is not!!!! Decorate accordingly, depending on whose birthday it is and whether you would like them to have more.
But it was such a lovely cake, and a great texture.
I was very pleased with myself because, a few months ago, I found a KitchenAid stand mixer on FB Marketplace for an amazing price. I believe it’s from the 90’s and works great, and it’s GREEN.
Well-received, as you can see, and obviously she will put it to good use! My own KitchenAid was a wedding present in 1997, and it was refurbished then, and it’s still going strong. A few years ago it needed oiling, and Damien put a new cord on it this year, but other than that, it’s been working away with zero problems. If you are thinking of getting a KitchenAid, I highly recommend a used one.
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to figure out when the decline that everyone is sad about actually happened, and it’s really hard to say. Some people are saying the newer models have a sacrificial gear that’s designed to break, to spare the engine, and it’s actually a cheap fix; but others are saying the whole design got nickeled and dimed and is just not the workhoree it once was. So, that was a paragraph without any actual information in it, sorry. Anyway, at very least, a used one will be way cheaper. My eyes really bugged out when I saw the price tag for a new machine!
Anyway, after dinner and presents, we had such a nice, happy evening, just sitting around yakking. Damien and I kind of sat back and let the kids talk, and it really warmed my heart to listen to them just enjoying each other’s company, talking about movies and candy and whatever. I sure like my kids.
Oh, I forgot about the ice cream! I made both kinds in the morning, which is a bit of a gamble because some ice creams don’t firm up enough in a few hours. They were on the soft side, but still scoopable.
I did one with almond, and I just did the Ben and Jerry’s sweet cream base (2 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups of heavy cream, one cup of milk) and I added a big hit of almond extract; then after it churned for half an hour, I mixed in a bunch of toasted almonds.
For the other one, I followed this recipe for cardamom ice cream with warm ginger drizzle. Sounds complicated, but it was really easy. The ice cream is just milk, sugar, cream, and ground cardamom. Then for the drizzle, you heat up a little syrup of white sugar, brown sugar, and water, and then you add the ginger and boil it for a while. I don’t have a microplaner, so I used the small holes on my cheese grater, and ended up with little nubbins of ginger which were actually really nice.
Both kinds of ice cream turned out great. I wished the ginger drizzle had been thicker, but the taste was fabulous.
I really enjoyed the cardamom ginger one. I might make it again and boil down the ginger syrup until it’s really thick, and swirl it into the ice cream before freezing it.
MONDAY
Aldi pizza
My car has gone crackerdog again, and Damien can fix it but the parts are taking forevvver to come, so we’ve been doing a lot of duck-fox-basket of corn maneuvers every day, with the extra added spice of one kid doing a ton of dental appointments before he loses his insurance, and another kid doing a wisdom tooth consult (where we learned that she has one lone third tooth deep down in her gums! Not a baby tooth or an adult tooth or even a mesiodens, but just a little bonus guy. I like to think that, in tooth society, this is the equivalent of a holy fool, which doesn’t have any obvious specific value, but you gotta think it’s there for a reason, so you just make sure you know where it is). Anyway, we had Aldi pizza.
Also on Monday, I was seized by a sudden urge to clean and reconfigure the refrigerator. I basically switched the vegetables, which were in the bottom drawers, and the condiments, which in theory were in the door but in practice were scattered all over the place, many of them lying on their sides with loose tops, which is the main reason I suddenly got mad and cleaned the fridge.
So here’s the new sich:
You can see that we have replaced the bottom door shelf with a PVC rod and some screws, but the middle door shelf also recently broke and I haven’t fixed it yet. The bottom drawers have been replaced with plastic tubs, and the bottom shelf has been replaced with a wire closet shelf. I’m proud of my ingenuity but furious at the people who design refrigerators.
I also moved the eggs to a low-clearance shelf, so people won’t be able to put heavy things on top of them; and I put the packaged meat and the cheese on separate shelves, so people will stop mixing them up (which leads to nobody being able to find anything, and more food waste).
It’s weird having the veggies on the door, but I am the main person who needs to be able to find and grab them, so it’s a weirdness I can deal with. The things that the rest of the family uses more often are easily accessible. I really think I’ve done it this time! I’ve designed a system so perfect, no one will need to be good. This might actually work, because it’s just a refrigerator.
Anyway, we got to the oral surgeon.
TUESDAY
Pork chops with peach butter, mashed ginger acorn squash, risotto
I got pork chops because they were irresistibly cheap, but I really hate cooking pork chops. It’s a mental block. I’m so afraid they’re going to dry out, and I’m gonna serve the fibrous grey mittens that haunted my childhood, I always end up messing them up even if I have a great recipe. Pork ribs are fine; it’s just the chops I have issues with, even if they’re cut thick.
But Damien took a kid to the appointment that’s like an hour away and I recorded a podcast with A Simple House, which was fun! So I got moving and made a pot of Instant Pot risotto, which everybody likes.
Jump to RecipeIt’s not the same as stovetop risotto, of course, which is magnificent but so much work. But it’s still really good!
And I fetched an acorn squash from the garden, cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt, and roasted it. Then I scooped out the flesh and mashed it, and then I added the leftover ginger syrup, and a little cardamom.
I am a golden god and it was the best mashed squash I’ve ever had. The chops, I sprinkled with salt and pepper and lightly roasted them and served them with peach butter.
A very lovely autumnal meal altogether, very mellow fruitfulness. Not a stringy mitten in sight.
WEDNESDAY
Peach-stuffed waffles
Wednesday Damien had promised to take the kids to a concert in Boston, and Elijah was at work, and that meant that the only people home for dinner were me, Irene, Benny, and Corrie. Waffle time!
I broke out the old Mary Gubser cookbook and made a double batch of waffle batter.
The kids requested chocolate chip waffles, which is fine with me; but I myself wanted peach. We had a small jar of peach pie filling I never used, so I buttered the waffle iron, put on a thinnish layer of batter, and then spooned some peach filling on that,
and then a little more batter.
Dang, they were good.
I was very pleased with myself, and just sat there making more and more waffles until I suddenly remembered I had an article due in the morning. I told the kids they could watch three episodes of something, and went off to write, and then reemerged at 10 PM to discover that they had turned the TV off after three episodes, but I hadn’t said anything about going to bed, so they did not do that. I may have shouted, “WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID?” and they may have shouted “YES.” (You can do this every once in a while, for a treat, especially if you’re all full of waffles. I also tell them they’re smart, just to keep them on their toes.)
THURSDAY
Chicken orzo soup, rolls
Thursday I finally faced the oyakodon recipe I have been planning to make for weeks. But the truth is, I had a giant turkey breast in the fridge, which I got because it was 99 cents a pound, and which I had defrosted because I don’t remember why. Oyakodon really needs dark meat, but the breast was already thawed, and I honestly couldn’t remember if people even like it, and I didn’t have dashi, and so on.
BUT, it was a foggy, drizzly day in September, so I made regular old cheater’s soup. I just chunked that whole breast in the Instant Pot with a lot of water, carrots, onion, celery, a little parsley, and some salt and pepper, and pressed the “soup” button. When it was done, I tasted it and hastily added a few tablespoons of chicken bouillon powder. I pulled out the turkey breast and shredded it and put it dumped it back in, added a small box of orzo, and simmered that for a while, and heated up some frozen rolls from Walmart, and man. It was a perfect cozy little meal for a rainy day.
I love orzo in soup. It’s so elegant and comforting at the same time.
Also, Cub Scouts got cancelled because of the rain, to my vast relief. I really loved signing up for Cub Scouts. This whole “going to meetings” nonsense has to stop, though.
FRIDAY
Regular Spaghetti
Regular! Regular! Regular spaghetti, pasta from a box and sauce from a jar. We love it.
A quick update on the comments situation: I didn’t fix it, but I made it slightly better, so you’re far less likely to get follow-up emails from Russians trying to explain arcane things about ferrous metals, or someone crowing, “your piece is highly educative and wonderful. More power to your elbow!” (If all spam were like this I’d let it go, but most of it is boring and gross.) Anyway, that’s where that stands, and I apologize if your inbox has been haunted because of my site!
And that’s-a my story. Middle Aged mom out.
Cinnamon garlic roast chicken
This is the chicken we usually serve at passover, but of course you can make it any time of year. Faintly sweet and nicely cozy, it's popular with kids and tastes good cold.
Ingredients
- 4-5 lb whole chicken
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
- 1/8 tsp allspice
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp cinnamon
- 5 cloves garlic, smashed
Instructions
-
Preheat the oven to 500.
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Mix the spices together and rub them all over the outside of the chicken.
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Stuff the cavity with the garlic.
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Put the chicken breast side down on a rack and roast for 15 minutes.
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Reduce heat to 450 and roast for another 15 minutes.
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Turn chicken breast side up, baste with pan drippings, reduce heat to 425, and continue cooking for another thirty minutes or until temperature reads 180.
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Let chicken stand 20 minutes before carving. Also can be refrigerated and carved later, to be eaten cold.
Instant Pot Risotto
Almost as good as stovetop risotto, and ten billion times easier. Makes about eight cups.
Ingredients
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground sage
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
- 4 cups rice, raw
- 6 cups chicken stock
- 2 cups dry white wine
- 1/2 cup butter
- pepper
- 1.5 cups grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
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Turn IP on sautee, add oil, and sautee the onion, garlic, salt, and sage until onions are soft.
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Add rice and butter and cook for five minutes or more, stirring constantly, until rice is mostly opaque and butter is melted.
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Press "cancel," add the broth and wine, and stir.
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Close the top, close valve, set to high pressure for 9 minutes.
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Release the pressure and carefully stir in the parmesan cheese and pepper. Add salt if necessary.
I’ve heard that grand multipara women shouldn’t donate blood, because every baby she has been pregnant with alters her blood somewhat, even if they all have the same blood type. I heard it on some podcast so it’s not necessarily reliable information, but they sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Apparently there is way more to a blood type then just being let’s say O positive . According to the podcast, transplant recipients had much better chances if their donor never had children. Weird. I dunno.
I’m also that lady that buys bogus eye cream and yoga shapewear because some Insta woman with wet looking skin tells me I’m missing out.
On another note, my husband has started fasting till noon and we have both dropped some weight. I’m not as committed as he is, but I know it works.
My two youngest kids have a whole new vocabulary for some more bodacious body parts –they aren’t necessarily negative. I think I’m going to go with that accepting positivity.
Actually, the podcast got it backwards. During pregnancy the mother’s immune system is exposed to the blood type proteins (called antigens) and the human leukocyte antigens (called HLA) that she doesn’t share with her offspring. Half of a person’s HLA comes from their mother, and half from their father.
This means the mother may makes antibodies to them, and they become part of her immune memory. As a result, she is more likely to have antibodies to blood transfusions in general or antibodies to a donor kidney from a child or the father of her children. Blood banks test for antibodies in donated blood and don’t transfuse across blood types, so it is unlikely to be an issue, especially as almost all of us have antibodies to blood types that are not our own.
For transplants, it’s the mother that is at a disadvantage–she may not be able to accept a donation (or have a rejection) because she has antibodies to the donor HLA. Multiparas donate organs all the time–and the outcomes in terms of rejection are not worse. However, they often cannot accept donation from their children or the father of their children, because they have antibodies to the donor HLA. If the HLA they have antibodies to are “common”, they may be limited as to donation by unrelated people who have these HLA.
I never knew about all this! My thought is that the Red Cross tries to be as careful as possible when screening blood donors (think untoward effects, not to mention liability…), and if multiple pregnancies were not a good thing when it comes to donating, they would ask those people who have had them not to donate, as there are many other screening questions asked prior to donation that can exclude donors.
Well, I like the plate with a beard and a toupee! I put olive oil, capers and black pepper on salmon and bake it at 350 for whatever it takes – we like it with mashed potatoes. I was not able to comment before but when your iron is too low to donate blood in one hand, sometimes it will be higher in the other hand. I thought that was crazy, but it’s happened a couple of times to me. I take iron to try to make sure I can donate because I’m a universal donor and have found this out over the years. Also, drumming your fingers on the steering wheel while you’re driving there or doing some other activity to move your hand and fingers a lot like waving them around hard can help – again, sounds crazy but evidently the iron in your blood flows to the part of your body that is working/ using muscles, which kind of makes sense.
oh, that’s interesting! They did try both fingers, but no dice. I will try the drumming next time.
Yeah. I’m that lady in the photo. My children think my favorite food is salad, because I eat it so much. Little do they know.
I use Tic Tacs like you’re using gum. I have always hated gum, either other people chewing it, or me chewing it. So, Tic Tacs it is.