What’s for supper? Vol. 455: There’s a crack in everything. That’s how you get more cheesecake.

In haste! In haste! For I am very behind schedule, and in the middle of a bunch of things, and also not getting anything done. Surely, at least, I can write about food. Here is what we had this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover supreme, pizza pockets

Boy, Saturday seems like ages ago. 

SUNDAY
Smoked pork ribs, mashed potato puffs, vegetables and dip, strawberry shortcake

Sunday was Damien’s fake birthday (his real birthday was during the week, and we were too busy to celebrate). He spent the day making some incredible smoked ribs

Jump to Recipe

and I plunged back into the misty past and dug up a recipe I haven’t used since the early days of our marriage. It is from The Joy of Cooking,

and holy cow, this book is a trip. More on that later. 

The ribs turned out magnificent, as usual. He made three racks of ribs.

Corrie’s longing gaze speaks for all of us. 

They were incredibly juicy and tender, with a wonderful smoky, spicy, sticking coating 

I thought the mashed potato puffs came out great, and I thought they would blow the kids’ minds, but they found them adequate at best. Maybe they were expecting them to be like tater tots, and were not expecting the insides to be soft and creamy. Oh well! I had fun making them. Here’s the recipe. I think I made quadruple this amount.

Jump to Recipe

They are like extremely moist biscuits inside, like potatoes that are thinking about bread. I used instant mashed potatoes that were flavored with garlic or something, and I thought they were yummo. Cute, too. 

Probably you could make them more uniform with a cookie dough scoop or something, but I thought it was amusing when they fried themselves into these little bulbous shapes. 

For dessert, we had strawberry shortcake. Well, it wasn’t shortcake; it was angel food cake with macerated strawberry topping and whipped cream. But if you say “strawberry angel food cake,” people think you mean the cake itself is flavored with strawberries, and last time I tried that, it was CLAGGY. I was still a little gunshy after that cake, so I just bought a mix for angel food cake, and it turned out fine. 

Fine with DINOSAUR CANDLES, which is the best kind of fine. I mashed up some fresh strawberries with sugar and a little vanilla, and we topped it with freshly whipped cream. 

Not super photogenic, but delicious. And now Damien and I are the same age again!

MONDAY
Leftover pork with ramen 

Monday, I decided to see what kind of Valentine’s designs I might do for cheesecakes, which are selling fairly briskly. I tried a sort of heart design, overbaked the cake, and then cracked it while taking it out of the pan. 

So, tragically, we were forced to eat this one. Happy Valentine’s Day to us. 

For supper, I was planning ramen with some sort of Asian pork, but there was so much delectable smoked pork ribs leftover, we just had that, plus ramen. I stuffed a bunch of raw spinach in my bowl, ladled hot ramen over that, topped it with crunchy noodles, and just chucked the pork on top. 

Let me tell you, that’s the best thing that ever could have happened to that ramen. 

I spent most of the day de-Christmasing the house, and it felt pretty good. I packed things up in such a way that I will not be furious at myself next Advent, too. 

TUESDAY
Ina Garten’s roast chicken with potatoes

Tuesday I took a hard look at all the neatly packed and labelled Christmas boxes, estimated their volume, and admitted to myself that if I wanted them out of my dining room, I was gonna have to clear the landing off, because the mess was blocking access to the attic door, and the other access point has a whole other set of issues that I don’t even want to think about now. So, yes, clean the landing. 

For most people, a job like this would mean sorting books and toys, throwing out trash, and organizing, and giving it a good sweep. For our family, this meant picking up 4,000 Barbie dolls dressed in toilet paper dresses, stacking up dozens and dozens of canvases, sweeping up a bunch of broken glass, and of course moving the bunk bed where people have been storing their boxes and boxes of MISC.

Of course I got it partway down before I admitted to myself that there was no way it was gonna fit around that corner. I had already discerned that I couldn’t really take it apart. This bunk bed is so venerable, it’s been slept on by various children for something like 21 years straight, and the wood and the hardware had kind of melded together.

So, I sawed it in half! Then it fit down the stairs. I dragged it outside, and in the spring, I’m going to put it back together and make a little greenhouse with the giant glass panes I picked up back when I thought I was gonna build a sunroom. 

Gotta make sure the front of the house looks weird one way or the other, I guess. I’ll move it when there isn’t ice everywhere, trying to kill you. 

Oh anyway, I got some chickens in the oven in the early afternoon, using Ina Garten’s low effort, huge payoff recipe, with the thyme, lemon halves, and entire heads of garlic inside. I cooked it with carrots and onions, skipped the fennel, and added a bunch of quartered potatoes, including a separate pan with just vegetables. By the time we got home, the house smelled SO GOOD

and I was feeling pretty smug about having taken a big step toward making the upstairs livable again, and also having a gorgeous dinner ready. 

Well, it’s gorgeous in the pan. On the plate, you need to do a little more food styling than I was willing to do, because I was HONGRY. 

You will have to take my word for it that this was a deeply flavorful meal with crisply roasted vegetables and succulent chicken. And then, as is our tradition, Corrie pulled out the lemons and ate them, and I claimed the garlic. 

Also not gorgeous! It looks like I’m eating someone’s paw. But really, it was so good. I love this meal so much. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Nothing fancy, just pepperoni, olive, and plain cheese. The only notable thing was that I forgot to defrost the dough, so I thawed it in its bags in a bowl of warm water. Which worked, but I was putting too much faith in those bags, and the dough got all wet, bleh. It was fine, I just used tons of extra flour. Lesson learned. 

I also took a bunch of chicken leg quarters (always a tricky cut to know what to do with) and threw them in the pressure cooker with some chicken broth and a bunch of vaguely Mexican spices. When they were cooked, I drained the broth and put them in the fridge. 

THURSDAY
Chicken enchiladas, beans and rice, tortilla chips

Thursday I had a doctor appointment in the morning — we somehow scheduled FOUR doctor appointments this week — and was glad, when I got home, to have the chicken already cooked. I chopped up a bunch of onions and started them caramelizing, and shredded some cheese. 

When I am making enchiladas, I usually coat the chicken with spices and slowly pan fry it, and then shred the meat. This time, I shredded the cooked meat, mixed it with onions and cheese, and added a bunch of seasoning. Guess what? It wasn’t that good. The texture and the flavor were both inferior. Oh well. 

They weren’t bad. 

Just not that great. The beans and rice I mad was pretty blah, too. Oh well!

Not a terrible meal. I just know I can do better. 
Speaking of which, I also made a cheesecake for an order and somehow got, like, an entire eggshell in there. I have never done this before and I don’t know how it happened, but dang. I argued with myself for a while that maybe the customer wouldn’t notice or care, or maybe somehow the eggshell would have settled down to the bottom and would blend in with the bottom crust, but eventually I acknowledged that I really needed to remake it. 

I also made six mini cheesecakes, testing out some more ideas for Valentine’s day decorations. I was afraid they were browning too quickly, so I carefully covered them with tinfoil. Then I took it off, and dragged the tinfoil over the tops of every single last one, and ruined the designs. 

Soooo looks like the family has another cheesecake to eat. Actually a cheesecake and six mini cheesecakes. Very tragic. And then I made another cheesecake. 

FRIDAY
Ziti

Damien is taking a kid to the last doctor appointment of the week, and I’m, well, I’m making more cheesecake. I do make very good cheesecake, and people keep buying it. This is essentially how I am paying for my new terrible health insurance, and ain’t that America. 

Oh gosh, I forgot I was gonna say more about the Joy of Cooking! I think I will just do a photo dump of all the pages that caught my eye as I riffled through the pages. In no particular order, here is a little tour of a very different world. 

Remember this when someone waxes nostalgic about the past. The past was kind of gross, and a lot of work, and judgy, whew! I would probably eat Emergency Fish Cakes, though. I just pray I never find out if I have it in me to put on my boots and pull the skin off a squirrel. 

In conclusions let me say: Obviously, a classic salmi, fully accoutered, is only for the skilled cook whose husband is a Nimrod and has presented her with more than a single bird. If she is less well endowed, she will have to base her sauce on the backs, wings and necks of he bird that is being presented and eke out her Espagnole Sauce with veal stock. 

And don’t you forget it!