I can’t even think of a lame food pun for the title, that’s how excited I am! But before we get back to chattering about the pope, here is what we ate this week:
SATURDAY
Leftovers and french bread pizza
Not a very sumptuous collection of leftovers,
so I splurged a bit on these frozen pizzas that everybody likes. Damien and I also polished off the last of the butter chicken, and I can report that it used its time in the fridge very well, just getting more delicious.
SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, vegetables
Honestly it says “vegetables” on the blackboard menu, but I don’t think that really happened. My personal vegetable consumption has gone way, way up, but I haven’t managed to drag most of the rest of the family into that, yet.
I did have my first asparagus harvest, though!
You’re supposed to wait three years before you start to pick it, so that’s what I did. Now I’m wishing I had planted more! But I’m very glad I got this started. When I first started gardening, I was all about bright, showy annuals. Then I started investing a little more in perennials. A few years ago, I started thinking about what I really wanted out of life, and laid in some long-term beds. It’s just a garden, but, yanno.
Also Sunday, I spent a few hours lopping off blackberry canes and brambles. Of which we have thousands and thousands. Wicked, wicked things.
I comforted myself by making some rice pudding. We had quite a bit of leftover basmati rice from last week, so I excused it from Leftover Day and basically followed this recipe except I skipped the raisins
because the kids don’t like cooked raisins. I should have left them in, because I DO like cooked raisins, and I was the one who ate most of the rice pudding. I mean I ate so much that I think I shouldn’t make it again for a year or so, until I grow up. But it was wonderful pudding. All four adult duck ladies have been laying every day, and duck eggs are SUPERB for baking.
Speaking of superb, the new ducklings have been doing just great. They’re growing insanely fast — I mean like I leave the house for two hours and they’re visibly bigger when I get back. Lots of videos on my Facebook page if you want to see their shenanigans!
MONDAY
Chili verde, tortilla chips
Monday was Cinqo de Mayo, which is something I didn’t even know anything about until I was in college, and it felt very global and cosmopolitan to celebrate this exotic holiday by going to Applebee’s and encountering my first avocado. Then I started to hear about how “uhhhh, no, it’s not Mexican fourth of July, STUPID” and I was like, oh, sorry. Now apparently it’s considered kind of culturally gauche to mark it at all? I truly don’t know. I saw this and felt a kinship:
The moral of this story is, cultures may shift, but ham is forever.
We had no ham or cigarettes or Aquanet in the house, but I did take May 5th as an opportunity to make chili verde, which Damien and I love and no one else does, oh well. I roasted up the tomatillos, peppers, onions, and garlic, and then put them in the food processor with cilantro, and because I hadn’t put on my contact lenses yet, I REMEMBERED TO WEAR GLOVES.
This is half-dumb, because yes I protect my fingers from getting peppery, but if I’m not wearing contact lenses, my eyes water because of the onions; but it’s also half-smart, because if I’m wearing glasses, I can take them off and actually read the recipe. You may THINK that the solution would be to put on contact lenses to protect eyes from both peppery fingers and oniony fumes, and then to add reading glasses to I can also see small print. However, this is not taking into account that I have lost every single one of my reading glasses, and I’m really just not ready for a beaded lanyard tethering me to the necessary glasses nestling on my bosom all day like some kind of cartoon librarian. I’m not ready!
Anyway, here is the recipe:
Jump to RecipeI made a slight tweak: I roasted the garlic in its skin, and then just squeezed the soft insides out into the food processor. It was a bit faster than peeling all that garlic before roasting it, and the taste was great.
I cooked the chili all day and it turned out fab. It’s been chilly and rainy all week, and this wonderfully spicy meal was very warming, and produced a decent amount of broth without me having to add any beer or extra broth.
Served it with cilantro, shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, lime wedges, and tortilla chips.
Yum. I think the kids had Spaghetti-o’s.
TUESDAY
Pizza
Tuesday were two rather draining appointments and then day 2 of digging out blackberry root balls. Again, I say: HORRIBLE plants. See how bare the dirt in in the area where I was digging?
That’s because blackberries won’t let anything else grow! Even wild mint, which is every gardener’s invasive nightmare, got chased out of this area.
However, eradicating blackberries is great for working out any pent-up emotions you might be harboring. I had my shovel, my Japanese gardening knife, my pickaxe, and my heavy duty tarp, and by the time I put them away for the day, I was way to tired to feel anything except hungry.
Happily, I had made three pizzas in the morning: One plain, one pepperoni, and one black olive. Sooner or later I will have to face the fact that we’re on the cusp of becoming a two-pizza family. I used to make SIX extra large pizzas. I do make more than we will eat for one meal, because the kids like leftover pizza; but we’re not keeping up, harrrrooo. (That was just a crooning sound of sorrow for the march of time.)
Tuesday I also made a new garden bed! Look at that tremendous soil.
This area is near the stream and also next to the compost heap, so you could probably live off the soil alone, without even planting anything. However, I am going to plant corn this weekend.
WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, cheezy weezies
Wednesday I cleared out my pumpkin patch and heaved a bunch of compost onto it,
and then I worked on the new fence a bit, and then I dug out more compost and ferried that over to the soon-to-be corn patch.
I would apologize for filling a food post with so many photos of dirt, but I know you guys! You like looking at pictures of dirt! Also you can see that my wattle fence held up just fine over the winter. I would like to add more this summer, but I don’t know if I will have time. I suddenly have lots of projects planned.
Speaking of projects, of course Wednesday was the beginning of the papal conclave! I got to watch the cardinals all taking their oaths in the Sistine Chapel, and that was very cool. We Catholics are so good at drama.
On the way home from school, one of the kids wanted to open a bank account, which always takes a million years longer than I expect. But at least we finally got it done. And I did snap this attractive photo of the bank office, with a somewhat disconcerting corporate poster.
They’re as stable as a squirrel, great. I couldn’t really complain, because it turned out the kid didn’t have any actual cash for the $10 minimum deposit to launch the account, and neither did I, and then they said well maybe it only needed to be $5, and then they said probably a dollar would be okay, so I found some change, and she deposited that. I made sure she understood that was her Christmas present this year.
We just had hot dogs and cheezy weezies for supper, and again I had worked up quite an appetite with my pickaxe and my buckets! Crazy how delicious a hot dog can be when you’ve been working outdoors, not to mention watching a conclave and looking for spare change.
Wednesday night, I started marinating the meat for Thursday’s dinner, because I knew it was gonna be a busy day. Damien has been sick all week, and when I say “sick,” I mean he’s LETTING ME DO THINGS FOR HIM and SLEEPING and TAKING MEDICINE. So you know it’s pretty serious. I think it’s bronchitis, and he’s starting to feel a bit better, but it’s rough.
THURSDAY
Chicken shawarma, fresh pita, tiramisu
Thursday was when we were celebrating Moe’s birthday, which was actually the day before. In the morning, I started the tiramisu, which is usually one of Damien’s signature dishes. I followed the recipe he uses, except maybe I can blame the conclave, because I got distracted and mixed together the custard and the whipped cream! So rather than six layers, there were only four. Gutted, as the brits say.
All I could do was sift some cocoa powder over the top, put it in the fridge, and hope for the best. Then I prepped all the shawarma fixings, made some garlicky yogurt sauce, and that’s when the white smoke came out! Most of the kids were at school and Damien was still conked out, so I made the ducks watch with me.
This is very exciting for Shaq, Zippy, and Tulip, because they were born in that time period when everyone was briefly a sedevacantist, so they’d never had any pope before, much less one from Chicago with Hatian grandparents and a special affection for the poor in Peru!
I did drag Sophia, Elijah, and Damien in before Leo appeared on the balcony, and wow, that was exciting. Wow, wow, wow. Here’s my camera roll, when I found it needful to take multiple photos of the TV screen, because where else am I going to find a blurry picture of the pope?
Anyway, boy, that was a thrill! Still had to make supper, though, so quick quick I started the pita dough before I had to run out for the afternoon drive (and you can see I got a couple more pictures of our local church, which had already switched from black to yellow and white bunting).
I still haven’t really settled on a good pita recipe. I ended up using this recipe from Food By Maria, and no, I didn’t read it all the way through, what do you take me for. So I was a little dismayed to find that you have to let it rise twice, and the second rise is a full hour, and that each pita bread takes six minutes to cook. Actually I think I’ve made this recipe before, and probably found it by googling “simcha fisher pita,” but I still had no idea what it said.
I started the meat cooking about an hour before dinner, and Moe and Clara came over and chatted with me while I fried the pita, and honestly, everything turned out great.
Shawarma was delicious. I was out of red pepper flakes, so I put Aleppo pepper in, and also I couldn’t find the garlic press, so I put the garlic cloves in a bag and hit them with a meat tenderizer, and put in big smashed chunks. When I took the chicken out of the marinade, I fished out all the garlic and strewed that over the top, along with the red onion quarters. I think I’ll do all those things from now on!
It was completely delicious. The chicken was so tender, it didn’t need to be cut up, but had turned itself into lovely little bite-sized chunks, and the generous onion quarters sort of cuddled themselves around the chicken, and it was just a real treat all around.
The pita was also quite good. It did not separate into two layers, but it was chewy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and had a good, rich flavor.
I’ll probably use this recipe again, even though it was a bit of a hassle. I did two pans at once, so it took me about half an hour to fry up twelve pieces.
Supper was very jolly! I wish everybody could have made it, but it was a good crowd.
Then we had the tiramisu, and it was not a failure! I was afraid that, because the cream was mixed into the custard, the sweetness would be too diluted and it would taste bland; and I was afraid that I had mixed it so much that all the air would be knocked out of the cream and it would be thick and dense. Neither thing happened!
Pictures of tiramisu always look a little ghastly, for some reason, but here’s the inside:
Just so you can see how the lack of layers worked out. But it did set up nicely. Anyway, everyone liked it and I was so relieved.
Today is Moe’s awards ceremony, then tomorrow is his graduation, and then Sunday he’s moving to his new apartment, and Monday he starts his new job! Glad I got one last shawarma into the boy before off he goes. Harrrooooo.
If you couldn’t tell by the Frog and Toad shirt and the Ferdinand the Bull tattoo, he’s going to be the new youth librarian at a public library. That was my father’s first professional job, too. He would have been very proud of Moe! I am. I’m proud of all my kids.
FRIDAY
Mac and cheese
I have already made the mac and cheese, and we are out of milk so I made it with leftover heavy cream from the tiramisu, and I used so much cheese, I think it may be illegal.
So, like I said, habemus papem! I don’t like every last thing I’ve heard and read about him, but I like an awful lot of it, and overall, I’m incredibly hopeful and excited. The way he speaks and the way he has comported himself so far is immensely appealing. I’m so ready for some good things to happen. And if it doesn’t, well, at least we have food.
Spicy Chili Verde
You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!
Ingredients
- 5 lbs pork shoulder
- salt and pepper
- oil for cooking
- 2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)
For the salsa verde:
- 4 Anaheim peppers
- 2 habañero peppers
- 4 jalapeño peppers
- 4 medium onions, quartered
- 12 tomatillos
- 1 head garlic, cloves peeled or unpeeled
- 1 bunch cilantro
For serving:
- lime wedges
- sour cream
- additional cilantro for topping
Instructions
-
Preheat the broiler.
-
Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.
-
When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want. If you roasted the garlic in its peel, just squeeze the insides out and discard the peels.
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Put the tomatillos, peppers, garlic and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.
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In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.
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When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.
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Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.
-
Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.
Chicken shawarma
Ingredients
- 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
- 4-5 red onions
- 1.5 cups lemon juice
- 2 cups olive oil
- 4 tsp kosher salt
- 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
- 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
- 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces
Instructions
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Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
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Preheat the oven to 425.
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Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more.
-
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
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Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.
Yogurt sauce
Ingredients
- 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
- 5 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)
Instructions
-
Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc.
Hi Claire!
It’s so great to hear from you too. Alas–about seven years ago I thought I’d put in a few extra hours a week at our local Catholic school for a bit of extra $, and I feel like it has swallowed me whole. The nice thing is that I now have 250 kids instead of 8! hahaha. I DO love them. They are adorable. I just told them that I won’t sub anymore for the rest of the year because I might explode from a lack of a life.
I had no idea that Catholic schools are so filled with drama –some of the craziest sh** I’ve ever seen in my life apart from my crazy family on both sides. It’s the adults, not the kids. This is why Jesus grabbed that kid and said “Hey! Be more like him!” to the squabbling grown ups.
Yeah–our Lucas is proof that the Holy Spirit exists. While we were sipping our adult beverages at night instead of saying the family rosary, we got a little holy roller out of the equation. Maybe that’s the secret. He’s studying to be an engineer but went to stay at a monastery in in Vienna for Spring break. He is the first person in the history of Harvey Mudd (where he is a junior) to get them to allow a student to study moral theology at the Angelicum. Hahahahaha. We love it.
I hope your family is doing well!
You are hysterical!!!!! And I absolutely love the name Lucas. If I had had another son, that would have been his name. Those kids at the Catholic school are so lucky to have you!
We are doing well. My son Jeffrey just turned 17. I’ve been homeschooling him since the pandemic. He has been working as a church organist for almost two years, currently at his second parish, a beautiful historic church with a real pipe organ, which is a dream come true for him. When he graduates next year, I’ll have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up!
You son is 17! Wow. They grow at light speed…..I can hardly grasp it. I remember all the grannies that warned me about that in the grocery store now.
I love that your son Jeffrey is a musician. There is something mystical about music. I’m afraid I didn’t give the art of learning how to play an instrument enough emphasis in the formation of my children, but I’ve always felt that it was slightly out of reach with budgetary considerations. Interestingly enough, it was an essay about teaching himself how to play the piano that won Lucas a spot at his college. When he comes back from Rome he will be at an internship in L.A. building micro nuclear reactors. It’s a company that just got tons of millions of backing. All of this computing the world is doing requires massive energy farms. Bewildering. Is it safe? As a Mom, I can’t say that I don’t always feel worried about EVERYTHING. This is why God gave me so many kids. It keeps me from hyper focusing on any one thing… because….I can’t!
A very kind pastor at the Dominican Church in SF taught me this prayer on the Feast of Divine Mercy:
LORD Jesus I trust in you
Lord JESUS I trust in you
Lord Jesus *I* trust in you
Lord Jesus I TRUST in you
Lord Jesus I trust IN you
Lord Jesus I trust in YOU
Thanks be to God, it has helped a lot.
Amen!
My sixth kid who is studying at the Angelicum this semester was there at St. Peter’s for the white smoke. He and his friends were absolutely jubilant in the pictures he sent me. I love that.
We left him a message tonight saying: “Invite him to dinner!!!”
It’s a long shot but the Angelicum is where Pope Leo earned his degree in Canon Law.
That’s amazing Anna Lisa; what a great opportunity for your son! (And I was so excited to see your name in the comment thread. It’s been a while! I hope you and your family are well.)
I didn’t realize how unsettled I was not having a Pope until we had one again. Relief.
Also, I didn’t know it’s frowned upon to celebrate Cinco de Mayo now. I’ve been celebrating it–with food–for about twenty years now, since I moved from Arizona. I do not plan to stop. It’s fun. Why not have more fun in our lives, right?
I am excited for the new Pope. My brother-in-law graduated from ‘Nova the same year, ’77, but he was pre-med and their paths didn’t cross. I also didn’t know much about Cinco de Mayo until I was totally an adult – my kids corrected me when I called it “Mayo,” like what you put on a BLT – well, I had French in high school, what can I say? Congratulations to Moe! A lot happening all at once, and all good. My late sister and brother-in-law were librarians with the City of Philadelphia and I am the recording secretary and hospitality co-chair for our local Friends of the Library group and always glad to see a new generation come to work at a library! My spirit animal or totem is the squirrel (amazing how much squirrel merchandise is out there…and half of it is in my house now…) but unless by “stability” they mean the way they can sit on a branch and not fall, I do not think of stability when I watch a squirrel dash into the street and then change its mind about which way to go. Not reassuring in a banking context, although they do squirrel things away for the future – is that what they meant? I am guessing/hoping you are sleeping well with all that yard work!
It’s funny how we can know so many Villanova grads who have no recollection of Pope Leo. Even the math and engineering majors who you think would’ve shared classes with him. My speculation is that the people we know who went to Villanova in the seventies were all Philly and Delco kids who commuted to school. I don’t think I actually know anyone who lived on campus from that time frame – it seems the resident students all returned from whence they came – Pope Leo included!
I’ve also heard that Pope Leo is a very humble and reserved person, so that could be a factor in his lack of notoriety among Villanova alumnae.
You may be on to something!
A brief update: I’ve recently run into a bunch of people who knew Pope Leo back in the day when he spent his summer working on the grounds of St. Denis in Havertown, PA. “A quiet young man” is the word on the street.
Love it!
Yes! I too am hopeful and happy and glad there is food.
I heard a homily last week about why May is the month we celebrate the Blessed Mother. I’m a convert, so maybe everyone already knew this, but it really changed how I thought about it. He said that springtime is a time of new life and hope. Now, I knew about the new life thing, but he really leaned into the hope bit. Spring is when all the good things you’ve been watching for appear, and humanity perks up and looks around and realize that the promises of seed and soil are all true. Winter is when we live our faith, but spring is when we see it. All that time humanity was shivering in the cold and the dark, waiting for the serpent’s head to be crushed, and then Mary arrived one warm morning and showed us all the Light.
Anyway, I thought of that when Pope Leo XIV stepped out to greet us. What a lovely season to begin.
Congratulations Moe! The library science game is no joke and it’s a real feather in his cap to be employed right after graduation.
Your soil looks amazing! I never thought I’d be jealous of someone’s dirt, but here I am. We’ve got clay, clay, and more clay.
Grease the lamp posts! The new Pope is a Villanova grad! Practically a local boy here in Philadelphia. (Fun fact: My sister in law contemporaneously received her Mathematics degree with Pope Leo at Nova but has zero recollection of him. We were wondering if he might remember her though since not too many girls major in Math, especially back then).
Simcha,
You are amazing! I have been meaning to tell you that for ages.
I’m almost eighty so my head spins when I read your emails.
Yes, we are happy to have Pope Leo while we still mourn Pope Francis.
Blessings
Lynda
I totally agree Lynda. I was so sad to learn of Pope Francis’ death the day after Easter (although I’m sure it was a grace for him to die at that time), and I still miss him, yet I’m so thankful for Pope Leo.
I’m so incredibly excited about Pope Leo! What a beautiful, historical election right in the middle of the Easter season!