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What’s for supper? Vol. 450: Two pies for every girl

Happy Friday! Brr, it’s cold. Boo, I’m fat. I finally dragged myself up on the scale because I figured I was thinking about it constantly anyway, and I might as well know what I’m thinking about, and it was . . . not great. It was three pounds less than the number I was very afraid of, so I’ve got that going for me. I gained most of it after I broke my toe, which is a ridiculous reason to gain weight, but there you go. 

This is the part where I’m supposed to announce that I’m launching a new plan to get back in the saddle and really do the work because I’m worthy of the effort, but in all honesty, who knows. It’s cold. It’s dark. I bought some bigger pants that fit better, and I drank some water today. Who knows. 

Anyway, totally unrelatedly, I need to tell you about my  adventures in the pie trade.

Right before Thanksgiving, I advertised on Facebook marketplace and some local groups, and got orders for eleven pies. I ended up making apple, mini apple, pumpkin, mini pumpkin, coconut custard, blueberry, and chicken pot pies. Then also, right before that, I made a cranberry curd tart and five mini apple pies for the school get-together. 

And then I tied my apron on one last time and made seven pies for our family: Two apple, two pumpkin, one pecan, one coconut custard, and one cranberry curd tart with walnut crust.

I’ve never seen so many pies, much less baked so many! It was just wall-to-wall pies all week long, and they were all — well, the ones I sold, anyway — as fancy as I could make them. I made a quick video to show how to make roses, which is actually really easy. For the record (for myself next year, really), here is the pecan pie recipe I used; here is the cranberry curd tart recipe; and here is the coconut custard pie recipe. I won’t include the walnut crust recipe because it turned out weird. 

I did make a profit (I think. I didn’t look too hard, but I do have a wad of cash now), and Damien suggested I use it to buy a freezer to make my life easier next time I do this. (I was shuffling things in and out of the fridge and stashing stuff in coolers, and it was not pretty.) So now I’m skulking around the used freezer market, looking for something dented and energy inefficient, so it won’t break in 18 months. 

And I’m trying to work myself up to mentioning pies on Facebook again, to see if anyone wants a Christmas pie. Or maybe a cheesecake! I do make good cheesecake. I struggle with decorating it in a way that looks professional, but I saw a thing where someone dropped colored batter onto the unbaked top and then used a toothpick to drag it into a design, and then baked the design right into the top. I could do that!

We did some fairly successful dragged-design cookies for the bake sale. Well, we were starting to get the hang of it, anyway. 

(Note Benny’s “mistletoe and kiss” design.) 

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention, we also made a million cookies for the tree lighting bake sale (a fundraiser for a trip Benny’s going on). I made a triple recipe of my reliable no-chill sugar cookie dough.

Jump to Recipe

I cut out large cookies, cut windows into them, and filled them with crushed Jolly Ranchers, which made pretty little stained glass-effect when baked.

When they were cool, I iced them.

I have a pretty bad tremor, so icing design is not really my forte, but they mostly turned out nice. With a few vaguely obscene exceptions. Anyway, we ended up with 55 cookies and they all sold, so that was a relief. 

One other thing that turned out nicely: I used the Sally’s Baking Addiction recipe for sugared cranberries, and oh, they turned out pretty, sparkly and frosty. Here they are drying, next to some freshly-filled chicken pies.

I put some on the cranberry tarts and a few to dress up the pumpkin pies. I also tried sugaring some mint leaves, and that turned out less pretty. A flatter leaf, like basil or even bay leaves, would have been better, because I could have let it dry flat. 

We had a really nice Thanksgiving! Most of the kids were able to come, and there was just so much laughing and goofing around, it was a delight. We had a pretty straightforward menu: Turkey, stuffing, and gravy that Damien made, and mulled cider, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, roast brussels sprouts and butternut squash with bacon (I drizzled them with honey and pomegranate molasses, ooh!), dinner rolls, and cranberry orange muffins that I forgot to add sugar to, and everyone said they actually liked it that way.

I had made everyone pick out a poem to read out loud after dinner, and then of course we had pie, and ice cream and whipped cream. Everything was yum dot com, and I love my family dot org (because we are a non-profit).

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

By the time Saturday came around, people were pretty burnt out on Thanksgiving food, so we had Aldi pizza. It was just a regular day of shopping and chores, as far as I can recall. The recent past is a real mystery to me these days. I was, however, thinking of the time that I made an elaborate blown egg Christmas ornament for my high school boyfriend’s parents, and they said it was beautiful, and I said well, I didn’t have anything better to do, and they said, oh.
Yeah, I remember that pretty well. 

SUNDAY
Turkey sandwiches/Thanksgiving leftovers

Sunday I cut up the remaining turkey and we had sandwiches, or just whatever. Now that I think of it, I was sick and didn’t go to Mass, so probably I just schlumped around all day. 

We did paint the Jesse Tree ornaments. We usually do this as our day-after-Thanksgiving tradition, but this was our first free day. 

Haven’t gotten any greens for the advent wreath yet. Advent comes at you fast!

We also ate the very last of the pie!

And that’s enough pie for a while. I am thinking about Benny’s birthday cake, though, which I will be making Sunday, presumably in someone else’s oven, as you will see. We have two birthdays in the second half of December and two in the first week of January. And that’s why St. Nicholas and St. Lucy are on their own.

I am, however, thinking of making blintzes for Hanukkah this year. 

MONDAY
Hot dogs, onion rings

Monday I did the shopping for the Angel Tree thing, and it was fun to buy little kid presents and clothes again! It’s been a while. We all got home super late, so I just cooked the hot dogs and frozen onion rings.

I actually love hot dogs, and I think it’s crazy that the kids don’t. Fancy-pantses, alla yez. 

TUESDAY
Roast beef sandwiches, chips, lemon blueberry soufra

On Tuesday, we got our first real snowstorm of the season, and the kids had a snow day, hooray!

I had splurged on some roast beef because the rest of the menu for the week was mostly leftovers. I followed the first part of this recipe from Sip and Feast I dry brined the meat for 90 minutes, then blasted it at 500 degrees for 15 minutes, then turned the oven down to 300 and kept cooking it until it was rare. Then I wrapped it up and let it sit for a while before slicing, AND THEN THE OVEN BROKE. 

We had just replaced the heating element in March, so I’m kind of annoyed that it broke already (possibly something dripped on it and caused it to overheat in one spot in a way that wore it out prematurely), but I have to admit, that was THE luckiest timing for a broken oven. We’ve had ovens break right in the middle of birthday parties, on Thanksgiving, and on Passover, and this is so vastly preferable. Supper was already made, and also Thanksgiving was already made, and all those pies were already baked. I really can’t blame the poor thing for crapping out!

Anyway, the one sad thing was that I had been planning a fun little dessert surprise. I had a package of phyllo dough because I had changed my mind about making spanakopita for Thanksgiving, and also some leftover blueberries from the pies. So Staša clued me in to this lovely stuff called soufra. 

Soufra is Greek for “ruffle,” and you make this dish by brushing butter on sheets of phyllo dough, and then folding them into pleats and arranging the pleated dough in a spiral in a pie plate. In this recipe, you bake the buttered, pleated dough for ten minutes, then pour a custard over the top and then sprinkle it with blueberries, and bake it again. I was following this simple and clear recipe on Instagram, except I didn’t have orange extract, so I used almond. I also didn’t have heavy cream, so I used half-and-half, but decreased the amount. Also I was using duck eggs, which are considerably bigger than large chicken eggs. So I guess I should say I “followed” this recipe. 

But, did I mention, the oven broke? This is how I realized it was broken: Because the soufra started to brown, and then stopped. So I ended up pouring the custard on anyway, covering the pan with tinfoil, and roasting it for half an hour or more (the upper heating element still works). This just wasn’t getting me anywhere and the center just wouldn’t set, so I reluctantly decided to microwave it. This took way longer than I expected (maybe 18 minutes all together), but it finally firmed up. 

I think I took this pic after the broiling but before the microwave. It swelled up more, and a lot of the berries popped in the microwave.

So this poor soufra was not as crisp on top as I think it’s supposed to be, and parts of it kind of bulged out unexpectedly (you know how things bulge in the microwave), but it was actually still so good. I was afraid it would be flabby and rubbery because of the microwave, but it was just tender and pleasant. And pretty! We served it warm with the last of the vanilla ice cream from Thanksgiving, and it was very popular. 

There are many, many kinds of soufra, sweet and savory, so I’m very glad to know about it. I think it would be ahhhhhmazing with rhubarb. And I’m thinking about things like sausage and onion, too. It came together very fast, but looked like I had worked hard. 

Oh, so for supper, I had been hoping to toast my roll for the roast beef sandwiches, and also maybe melt the cheese over the meat. But I may have mentioned, the oven was broken. So I tried using a kitchen torch. 

This . . . sort of worked. But not really. But it was still an incredibly delicious sandwich (I had tomatoes, provolone, and horseradish sauce on mine),

and I’m absolutely using this method for roast beef in the future. Someday I’ll follow the whole recipe, which is supposed to result in roast beef like you get at the deli. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken/turkey noodle  soup, crock pot banana bread

Wednesday I dragged the turkey carcass out of the freezer and made soup, adding some diced chicken breasts that were left over from the chicken pot pies. I had been intending to make challah or something to go with the soup. But, oops no oven. My first choice for non-oven bread would have been naan, but I knew I was gonna be home late again. So I went with this slow cooker banana bread. I was pretty skeptical, but I figured banana bread is supposed to be really moist, so maybe it would be good. Here is how it went in:

You heat up the slow cooker for a few minutes, and then put the batter in and let it cook on high for 2.5 to 3 hours. I actually ended up letting it go for 3.5 hours, so it was pretty burnt on the edges. But it was still delicious!

I threw in some pecans left over from Thanksgiving, and it was very fine banana bread. I’m so pleased to know this is an option — both for times when I can’t use the oven, and times when I want a quick bread but I won’t be there to take it out of the oven. Yay, new things! 

The soup was perfectly fine. It was very simple, just broth, meat, carrots, onions, noodles, and pepper. 

It’s so dang dark these days, I really struggle to get a normal photo. I struggle with lots of things. This is the darkest month, right? It starts getting lighter pretty soon, dot argh. 

THURSDAY
Gochujang bulgoki, rice, cucumbers

I had been intending to heat up a chicken pot pie I made before Thanksgiving (I accidentally made too much filling for the two pies I sold, so I made a third one and froze it), but even thought Damien ordered the replacement heating element as soon as I told him we needed one, it isn’t going to be here until Monday. So I stopped at the store and got some pork and cucumbers, and in the morning, I made a gochujang bulgoki sauce. 

My original plan was just to marinate the chops and then broil them, but as I was staring glumly at the cluttered windowsill and thinking how unfair it was that the ground is covered with snow and we still have flies in the kitchen, I spotted a kitchen gadget I forgot I had bought a few months ago. It’s basically an oversized pencil sharpener with a handle, and you twist the carrot around, and these long, ruffled ribbons emerge.

I guess you are supposed to roll them back up to make flowers, but I decided to leave them unfurled, cut up the pork in thin strips, and made bulgoki. I skipped the onions and just set the pork and carrots marinating together. 

I did attempt to put the cucumbers through the vegetable sharpener, too, but they didn’t fit, so I just cut them up. This gadget will come in handy for when we make our New Year’s Eve shushi! You could probably also make potato flowers, if you cut the potato into a cylinder first. I guess parsnip flowers. 

We had to stop on the way home to buy boots for THREE kids, and GET THIS. We did it! It took, like, twelve minutes and everyone is happy. And the kid who didn’t get boots because she didn’t need boots isn’t mad! I cannot believe how easy I get off sometimes!

So when we got home I pan-fried the meat and cooked the rice in the Instant Pot, and it was a delicious meal. 

You can eat the meat/vegetables and rice with lettuce, but I had bought a bunch of nori when the international market shut down, so we had that. More food in little bundles, I say! Yum yum. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

We made it, pals. I did manage to get the nativity scene set up last night. If you happened to drive by our house before it snowed and you noticed where I tossed that wreath I bought, please let me know. As soon as it warms up a little, I’ll dig for it, but I don’t know where to dig! 

I just remembered something funny. Right before Thanksgiving, I stopped at the store for some bread flour to make dinner rolls. Then I made the pies for the family, and I was like, “oh look, a brand new sack of flour!” and dug in. But of course it was bread flour. Let me tell you, those pie crusts were FIRM. Ha! Oh well. 

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No-fail no-chill sugar cookies

Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.

Servings 24 large cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.

  3. Add egg and extracts.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.

  7. Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.

  8. Let them cool completely before decorating!

Print

Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)


Ingredients

  • 1.5 pound boneless pork, sliced thin
  • 4 carrots in matchsticks or shreds
  • 1 onion sliced thin

sauce:

  • 5 generous Tbsp gochujang (fermented pepper paste)
  • 2 Tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 5 cloves minced garlic

Serve with white rice and nori (seaweed sheets) or lettuce leaves to wrap

Instructions

  1. Combine pork, onions, and carrots.

    Mix together all sauce ingredients and stir into pork and vegetables. 

    Cover and let marinate for several hours or overnight.

    Heat a pan with a little oil and sauté the pork mixture until pork is cooked through.

    Serve with rice and lettuce or nori. Eat by taking pieces of lettuce or nori, putting a scoop of meat and rice in, and making little bundles to eat. 

A ruthlessly practical to-do list for December

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m not going to tell you what trending decor you need to buy to make your house look both WOW and NOW for Christmas this year. I’m not going to tell you what you absolutely need to pull piping hot from the oven while wearing themed oven mitts in order to make your children’s life magical rather than tragical. And I’m not going to give you any tips for sculpting your bod so as to show up at the office party looking like that baddie everyone’s . . . mogging on. Mogging about? 

I’m old, I don’t know what I’m talking about. 

I do dearly love giving advice, though. So as it is Giving Tuesday, here is my best, most practical advice for how to have a pretty good December. (Some of this is geared toward big, chaotic families and Catholics, but not all.)

1. If you’re planning to give money to someone who needs financial help, do it ASAP. A splashy last-minute miracle is nice to get, but what’s really nice when you’re poor is knowing that certain things — a present, a Christmas meal, or the electric bill — will be covered. 

2. If you live on the dark side of the Mason-Dixon line, start taking Vitamin D gummies every day, and keep it up until Spring. It may not make a dramatic difference, but it may help you feel a little more energetic and less sad as the darkness grows. Gummies are more expensive than pills, but I’m far more likely to remember to take gummies because I am a big baby. 

3. For the storage-poor among us who buy a mountain of presents: Clear a corner of the house now, for storing the landslide of Amazon boxes we are about to receive. If you have to, stash your regular clutter in a trash bag and deal with it later. I’m not a spreadsheet person, so I keep a running email in my drafts folder to keep track of what I have ordered, where I ordered it from, and what has actually arrived. Or you could tape a piece of paper to the wall, and attach a pen to it with a string, and really commit to keeping it current. Just do something other than stashing things here and there and keeping a running tally in your head, for that is the path to heartache and lost presents and horrible last-minute trips to Target. 

4. If you just had a baby or you’re sick, you don’t have to travel to anyone else’s house. You just don’t. It’s a normal, human, reasonable thing to say, “Oh, sorry, we can’t do that” and just keep saying it, and following through. Let your [insert irrational relative] be mad! What are they gonna do, arrest you? If you’re the husband/dad, it is YOUR JOB TO STICK UP FOR YOUR WIFE LIKE JOSEPH DID FOR MARY. Protect her and defend her and ask her what you can do so she can put her feet up at least a little bit on Christmas, and really do it, even if you don’t get why she cares about it. Your wife is more important that your [insert irrational relative].

5. If you’re feeling overwhelmed about all the Important Traditions you have accrued, ask the people you’re in charge of which ones they actually care deeply about, and see if there’s anything you can weed out. You may be surprised. But also ask yourself which ones you care about, because your preferences also matter! But also, consider delegating responsibilities — and then preparing yourself to be okay with results that are not exactly how you would have done it. In any case, a group conversation about expectations ahead of time in a calm, neutral way is almost always helpful for managing anxiety and overwhelm about big plans. 

6. If you’re using NFP, get ready to see your weirdest chart ever in December. Stress and a poor diet and lack of sleep will do that. I have no further advice; I’m just telling you you’re not alone. 

7. Consider doing screen-free hours for Advent if you can. This year, we are doing screen-free evenings from 7-10:00, Monday to Thursday; and then Fridays are for family movies (and weekends are whatever). This routine really tamps down Christmas frenzy and gives us time we didn’t realize we had, to do nice things like read books, pray as a family, listen to music, do crafts, or just sit around and yack; and it helps some of us sleep better. 

8. If you have little kids who will be getting dressed up, sort out tights and dress shoes now, and put them away. Also maybe write on your calendar on Dec. 24 where you put them away. So many, many things will be going on right before Christmas, and shoes and tights are always the first casualties. If you care about what your older kids are going to wear, have them pick an outfit and show it to you well in advance. Consider not caring, though. 

9. Christmas light timers are actually pretty cheap, and they are so worth it. Time and energy spent trying to make yourself get up and turn on the lights, or get up and turn off the lights, is time and energy you cannot spare. Buy the automatic timer. 

10. Buy more scissors and more tape now, and hide them. But don’t hide them so cleverly you can’t find them. And buy batteries!

11. If you’re going to take pictures at Mass of everyone in their nice Christmas clothes, and you want them to look even minimally cheerful and alert, take pictures before Mass, not after. Not only will there be less dishevelment and sulky expressions, your conscience will be more likely to allow you to say things like “You’re going to smile in a normal way in the next three minutes, or you’re going to meet a helicopter of fists” before Mass than it will after you’ve received the Body of Christ. 
Alternatively, just lean in to the whole Terrible Family Photo thing. You are who you are, so why struggle? Think of it as doing society a favor, so other people don’t feel like they have to live up to a photoshopped, studio-quality life. 

12. If you’re going to Midnight Mass with kids, wear thick poofy jackets even if it’s not cold. This is more decorous than sleeping bags, but it serves the same purpose. 

13. Build the thing ahead of time. That Barbie Dream House is going to take longer than you think to put together. Consider setting captives free before you wrap them, by which I mean cutting the 496 little plastic loops keeping toys in place in their packaging. Kids want to play with their new stuff right away, and there’s nothing more stressful than trying to make that happen while they shout at you. 

14. Get to confession during Advent. Just do it! Do a lame, half-hearted, grumpy confession if that’s the best you can muster, and let Jesus do the rest. Then, whatever else is going on, you’ll be able to say, “oh, but we got to confession, yay!” 

15. Disposable goods are your friend. Think about Christmas breakfast. Think about the stickiness. The crumbs. The spilled drinks with pine needles in them. Christmas is a really great time to use at least disposable tablecloths, even if you’re not a disposable tablecloth kind of person normally.
Relatedly: A little eggnog goes a long way. Consider buying little shot glass-sized Solo cups to encourage more digestible portions.

16. If you don’t use reusable wrapping (we don’t, because I think tearing open presents is fun), make sure trash bags are on your final shopping list. Then when you’re opening presents, have one person be designated to grab the wrapping paper, give it a thorough shake to dislodge any Barbie shoes or instruction booklets or teeny little allen wrenches, and throw it away right away. 

17. This sounds dumb, but have a plan for the day after Christmas. Even the most spiritually attuned family feels a sad little let-down after a highly anticipated event, so it’s a great idea to establish some kind of relaxing “day after” tradition — something easy to achieve, like watching a movie or listening to a certain album. Traditions are very powerful for making people feel secure and cared-for, and the predictability almost matters more than what it actually is. 

IN CONCLUSION! Do as much as you can ahead of time, try not to be too hard on yourself, and get to confession. Happy Advent! 

 

A bunch of gifts our ten kids liked, as far as I can tell: The 2025 list!

Here we go! This is my tenth annual list of Christmas present ideas. It used to be that I’d only include things I could wholeheartedly endorse, because I had witnessed my kids using or playing with these gifts. But now they are older, and they don’t spend their whole entire lives in the living room where I can see them! So, this is my best guess about good presents. Caveat emptor, and read the reviews. Everything here is under $100, and most of it is under $50.

Here is last year’s list of 50 gifts or so, and here is the monster master list of the previous eight years, organized by category. That one has presents for kids of all ages, starting with babies.

This year, I’mma start with something I received, that I’ve been enjoying a lot:

Cheese-making kit

 

I have used this kit to make delicious mozzarella many, many times, and I really enjoy it. You just need to supply the milk (a gallon for about a pound of cheese), and I also recommend getting a pair of kitchen gloves, because hot cheese is hot. I also recently started using silicone molds, like this skull one, 

 

to make cheese in amusing shapes, and that is also fun! There are silicone molds in just about any shape a person could desire. 

Disc swing

Not the most deluxe one out there, but it’s sturdy, easy to put together (my ten-year-old did most of it), and a nice generous size for the price, and it’s on sale right now. You can rig it to swing back and forth, or to swivel. 

The Office DVD set 

I actually got this as a summer family TV show (for teens and up), and it was much cheaper than I expected for an entire series. If you haven’t watched it in a while, this show really holds up. 

The Arkadians by Lloyd Alexander

And we have arrived at our first gift that I don’t really know if the kid liked or not! It’s set in ancient Greece and it’s by Lloyd Alexander (author of the Chronicles of Prydain), so it seemed like a safe bet. 

Training sais 

For a kid who’s a TMNT Raphael fan. They’re shiny and heavier than I expected for the price. 

Batman face wallet

Slide your ID in this wallet that has a little cut-out, and you become Batman. It has styles for vertical ID’s, too, for people under 21. Goofy but well-received. Who doesn’t wanna be Batman? 

Cowboy Bebop complete serAs I understand it, this is a groundbreaking and seminal series for anime fans, and it has interesting music.  

Spongebob first 100 episodes

I think this is the last DVD set on the list! I have a long-standing grudge against Spongebob because I could tell when my kids had been watching it, because of how visibly stupid they had gotten. But I have to admit, it’s funny stuff. (Are you happy, Ashley and Stacy? I admit it! It’s funny.) 

Handheld label maker

You might be SURPRISED at how much fun the right kid will get from this thing. It has a million options for fonts and pictures, and I found it a little overwhelming, but my ten-year-old got the hang of it right away, and everything and everyone, including some docile guests, have been labelled ever since. 

Itty Bitty Hellboy Plush and Itty Bitty Hellboy Abe Sapien Plush

Goofy little plush versions of characters from the excellent Hellboy books/movies.
 

The Lost Library

A book that came highly recommended for ages 9-12, but I haven’t read it myself. A mysterious little free library guarded by a cat appears in town, and leads to adventure. 

LEGO Batman keychain light

I actually bought this to go on a charm bracelet, because I apparently don’t know what three inches means. Anyway it’s sturdy, the limbs move, and it has a bright little light and a keychain. If your kids are not as obsessed with Batman as mine are, there are other keychain minifig lights of many, many other characters. 

Pokemon charm bracelet 

I got this as a starter charm bracelet, and then filled it in with lots of other various charms from Michael’s and Etsy. This is a nice present for making a kid feel like you really know and understand them, because you can find charms of EVERYTHING they like. 

Wood carving set

A decent starter set for beginning carvers. It comes with a nice little roll case to store the tools in. The tools are quite sharp! It does not include any instructions (or at least the one we got didn’t), so a kid who wants to know exactly what to do might be a little overwhelmed by this. 

Japanese hand saw

This was on my wish list, and I love it. The teeth are very sharp and the way the handle is shaped makes it easy to grip and manipulate in tight spaces, and you get a lot more leverage than with a hacksaw. Useful for carving or for carpentry. Japanese tools are super. 

Japanese weeding sickle

Speaking of Japanese tools, here’s another one that I requested and am enjoying having! This one is for the garden, and it’s also super sharp and really handy for smaller hacking and gouging jobs. The handle is light, but it’s a sturdy tool, and very useful. 

Might as well mention the hori hori knife I also have, even though I think it was on a previous list. 

I can’t find the listing for this exact knife (actually I have two different ones, and I like them both!) but they are all priced around $15-$30, so I don’t know how much it matters which one you get. It’s excellent for bulb planting (it has the soil depth markers right on the blade) and root excavation, as well as any number of other dirt-stabbing jobs you might have. One edge is serrated, and the whole thing is slightly curved, so you can stick the knife into the soil and then twist, and get what you want. An ingenious garden tool with many uses. 

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger


I was reading and enjoying this book, but lost it, so I haven’t finished it yet! It’s set in the not-so-distant, horribly believable dystopian future. His first novel, Peace Like a River, was tremendous, and then his second one, So Brave, Young, and Handsome was a huge disappointment; so I figured it was worth a shot. As his writing tends to do, it creeps right up to the edge of being precious and overly self-aware, but it was undeniably fascinating and gripping, and I hope I find it so I can see what happens. 

The Mousehole Cat

This is a book I only recently became aware of, but apparently it’s beloved. I got it because I was trying to get other people on board with the idea of making a stargazy pie, and that didn’t work, but we sure love the book. It’s a rare children’s book that really appeals to a childlike mind, but doesn’t talk down to kids. A sweet and satisfying story with pleasant pictures. It says ages 2-6, but I think some older kids will find it appealing. 

Batman sheet set and Batman comforter and pillow case

Back to Batman!  The sheet set is black and white and is a somewhat understated pattern, and is microfiber

and the comforter 

is not super heavy, but it is reversible, with a pattern of bat logos on one side and the man himself on the other. 

The Unofficial TikTok Cookbook

This SEEMED like a good idea, and maybe it will be a good idea for someone on your list! I think the problem is that the thing that makes you want to try making a viral recipe is seeing it online over and over and over again, so having it in a book kind of takes the edge off. It did get good reviews, and the recipes are supposed to be quick and easy. 

I did hedge my bets and bundle it with this book:

The King Arthur Baker’s Companion

and I stand by it. King Arthur recipes are well-written and reliable, and this would make a good present for someone who’s learning to bake or who already knows, and wants a solid collection of recipes. 

Batmobile model kit

Part model, part puzzle. Does not need glue or tools. Reasonably easy to put together, but it’s nice looking, and would not be out of place as a present for a teen or adult Batman fan. 

Tiny apothecary bookshelf insert kit

This is one of these little models that’s designed to be tucked in between books on a shelf, so it looks like you’re seeing into a little world. Kid said she likes it, and the instructions were reasonably easy to understand, but some of the parts didn’t fit together right. So not suitable for a perfectionist or easily frustratable person. There are several other designs, all pretty cool-looking. 

TMNT 3000-piece puzzle

As described! It has different TMNT styles over the years. 

Batman lighted mirror

Good heavens, more Batman. This is a mirrored bat logo with a light behind it for the wall, and you can change the color with a remote. It’s really more of a light than a mirror, and really more decor than lamp, but it’s cool!

Tree bookshelf

A cute little bookshelf. Comes in several colors. It doesn’t hold a ton of books, as you can see from the picture, but the benefit is that it fits into a narrow space. I vaguely remember putting this together, and I don’t remember crying or running away from home, so it must be reasonably easy to assemble. 

Azul game

I think we forgot to play this? I guess we’ll try it over Thanksgiving vacation. It came highly recommended, and it’s very pretty. It’s a strategy game, for ages 8 and up, for 2-4 players, and takes 30-45 minutes to play. 

Cat sweater

In case someone on your list has requested a cat sweater! It is a nice, soft cotton knit, not very heavy. 

Another cat sweater!

In case you are not really sure what kind of cat the person on your list had in mind. This one is a bit thicker and also pleasantly soft. I’m really glad they’ve stopped making kids’ sweaters so itchy. What was that about?

 
 
Actually we got the Pepsi pencil case from this same company, but that’s sold out and (I don’t know why this makes me laugh but) it says they don’t know if or when it will be in stock again. So maybe you would like this Pringles pencil case, instead. Reasonably sturdy and well-made, and comes in a few different flavors. 
 
 
 
Maybe people in this house could be a little quieter! Maybe they could, but they won’t! Maybe they can’t. Here is a white noise machine with 20 different, non-looping sound settings.  It plugs directly into the electrical socket, and also has a detachable USB cord, and it has a little light, volume, and a timer. 
 
 
 

Another game that came highly recommended, but it was for a kid who has moved out, so I’m not sure if he’s played it or not. It is for 2-4 players, ages 13 and up, and it says it takes 5 minutes to learn, 45 minutes to play. 

The Hidden Fortress DVD, Black and white, with subtitles
 
 
Directed by Akira Kurasawa, starting Toshiro Mifune, the only actor my mother ever admitted to having a crush on. This is an unexpectedly goofy movie, and the two bumbling peasants were apparently the inspiration for R2D2 and C3PO. 
 

Manual typewriters

(this photo is an example, taken from this listing on eBay)

We got manual typewriters for two of our kids for Christmas, and they were a big hit. You can find them for sale on eBay and Facebook marketplace and no doubt other places, and you can find the specific ribbons they need on eBay. I used to spend hours and hours of my time typing out the dialogue from Archie comic books all summer long, and I don’t even know why, except that it was fun. Typing is fun! Especially when the typewriter comes in its own compact little suitcase with a handle. One of the ones we got was military, because you know what? You can’t hack into a piece of paper. 

KitchenAid Immersion Blender

This is “Ice Blue” model, but it comes in several colors. Great for smoothies, very useful for soups in the pot. KitchenAid is still a great brand, but if you are thinking of giving someone a standing mixer, which is a wonderful present, I highly recommend buying an old used or refurbished one rather than new. I’ve had mine for almost 30 years, and it was refurbished when I got it! I hear about the new ones breaking after five years or so. 

 
 
We got ten of these for stocking stuffers. You squeeze the rubber mug and a rubber kitty pops out. Whoever decided to spell it “POP a Chino” should be arrested, but the actual toy is cute, and satisfyingly rubbery. I have a weak spot for Schylling toys, which are just pure toys, not intended to teach you anything.
 
 
 

Okay this one is really stumping me. It showed up as something I ordered around Christmas, but I have no memory of it, at all. Looks like it might be fun? It says ages 14 and up, “easy to learn, hard to master.”

As I get older, prepare for more and more lists of things that, according to my records, I definitely bought, but I have no further information, haha. 
 
 
I do remember this! Floppy and adorable, nice and roomy. It is made of “synthetic snowy owl fur,” by which they mean thin fleece. There are a number of other animal onesies at the venerable ABPTBAZ store. 
 
 
 
I’m including this even though it’s out of stock, just to remind you that you CAN buy a device that’s just for playing music and reading ebooks, and the parental controls allow you to keep the kid from accessing the [ptui] rest of the internet. Our particular child isn’t especially devious or tech-savvy, so I can’t say how easy it might be to defeat or subvert the parental controls, but there are lots and lots of parents who do want this exact thing and will give detailed reviews, so it’s an option! Feel free to recommend specific products if you’ve found something good. 
 
 
Perfectly fine earphones that have gotten constant use all year. Reminder that your child does not need studio-quality sound to listen to whatever ridiculous synthesized nonsense they’re probably listening to while they do the dishes. We got these because they matched the MP3 player, but they come in a bunch of different colors. 
 
 
You’re never gonna believe this, but I don’t remember anything about this game. I think I must have bought it hoping we’d play it over Thanksgiving vacation or something. I will admit it looks very much like something I, and I alone, would enjoy playing. Who wants to come over and play with me? If I can find it? 
 
 
 
This isn’t the exact model we got, but something along these lines. You put the coin in the right spot and Godzilla rises up out of the sea (box) making a noise (I don’t remember what the noise is, but I would guess “SKREEEONK”), snatches it, and sinks back down, and the lid closes. There are also versions of this concept with cats, monkeys, pandas, etc.. 
 
And now for some items not from Amazon!
 

Psychedelic Scarab earrings from Ravenstone gifts

Brass earrings with an iridescent finish, nickel-free, gorgeous, HUGE. For someone with very confident ears. (I will also say that if you, for instance, buy these well ahead of time and then somehow lose them but don’t discover this until almost the last week in December and need to reorder them real fast, this store is very accommodating and will get a second set to you very quickly!)

Bender earrings from TheFolksMadeIt

Am I thrilled that my ten-year-old latched onto Bender as a hero and role model? Not especially! Does she adore these earrings? Yes, she does. So there you go. At least it’s just his head, and not his shiny metal ass. (They’re pretty big, but because they’re 3D printed, they’re light.)

Hanging bat earrings from the fine folks at . .  sigh. . . Nightly Bloodlust. 

Nice li’l sleeping bats. 

 
 

A very specific present for a very specific person. They have many, many other styles from pop culture, and they come with a little metal chain and clip. My kids have some many charms on their backpacks, they sound like Jacob Marley coming down the hall.

NothingParticularMN earrings

The specific earrings we got (a Russian blue cat gazing at the moon) are sold out, but they do have earrings showing dogs of all different breeds. It’s kind of weird, because the earrings we got were a more abstract design, but it looks like what they’re selling now is more hyper-realistic styles? But maybe you know someone who would be delighted to have earrings that look just like their specific dog. You will probably find them here! 

Budgiezilla hoodie from TeePublic

As described. We somehow ended up with two different hoodies, each with a giant parakeet attacking Tokyo (not the same design, though!), but I don’t remember where we got the other one. We ended up giving them both to the kid and she wears both of them, so there you go. 

11th Doctor sonic screwdriver from Toynk

They certainly have a wide array of Sonic Screwdrivers!

AND FINALLY . . . 

Demonia “Slay-77” boots

These also come in black with red spikes, and plain black; but the pink and green ones are UV light reactive, so you tell me. I don’t know if Demonia boots are very well-made or if my kid is just really gifted at walking, but she DOES walk around in these, and she loves them. At least they have sensible grippy soles. 

And that’s it! That’s the list. Happy shopping, and good luck! 

 

 

 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 449: In which certain patterns emerge

Happy Friday! The last Friday before Thanksgiving. I haven’t even thought about our Thanksgiving menu this year, except that I have a new roll recipe I’m pretty excited about. Oh, and I may ditch the cranberry orange muffins and make cranberry lemon bars instead. 

So I guess we’ll have . . . 

Mulled cider
Spanakopita
Turkey with stuffing and gravy. Some years we make oyster sausage stuffing, but I think mostly I’m the one who likes it. 
Cranberry sauce from a can
Mashed potatoes
Dinner rolls
Maybe a mixed roast vegetable and bacon dish, or maybe candied sweet potatoes
Lemon cranberry bars
Apple, pumpkin, and pecan pie, maybe cranberry curd tart
Maybe ice cream. One year I made butternut squash ice cream with candied pecans, and it was pretty dang good, but you really can’t beat vanilla with pie. 

There, I guess I made the menu! I collected a bunch of those recipes here. We are only having immediate family over, and I have asked the kids to pick a poem to read after dinner and before dessert. We started this last year and it was more or less a success. 

Okay, on to this week’s food! 

SATURDAY
Leftovers for kids

and the grownups went out on a DATE. It was our intention to try the new banh mi place in town, which is supposed to be fantastic, but we got there at 5:45 and it was already closed! So we went to the newish Buba Noodle Bar. I had a short rib bao bun and bugoki yaki udon. Both completely scrumptious and super fresh, and even though it was very busy, the service was fast and friendly. The waiter strongly encouraged us to try the coconut ice cream, but I explained we were going to the movies and I wanted to eat a tremendous amount of popcorn, and he understood. Clara and Wesley turned out to be at the theater, too, and we yakked for a while, and then found seats on opposite sides of the theater, as is fitting. 

We saw Frankenstein! We both enjoyed the heck out of it. Just every little bit of it was delicious and gripping and exactly what movies were meant to be. I feel like maybe this is the movie Guillermo del Toro has been trying to make all along. If you have a chance to see it in the theater, do! It’s long, but nothing feels extra or slow. My only quibble was I couldn’t understand everything Elizabeth was saying. But I got the general gist. Anyone who complains about this movie is living their life wrong. If you can’t see it in the theater, it’s definitely still worth watching on Netflix. 

And I did eat a tremendous amount of popcorn, and also Mike and Ikes and lemonade. What a lovely night. 

SUNDAY
Pork chops, risotto, Brussels sprouts slaw

Sunday after Mass, Damien and I went to two different pharmacies trying to get Covid and flu shots (the kids got theirs last week), but it kept not working out, so we went home unjabbed. 

I started some pork chops marinating, using this marinade from Recipe Tin Eats (In that sentence, I had the choice of either saying “marinating” and then “marinade,” or else “recipe” and then “Recipe.” Because if I don’t think about things that don’t matter, who will? And the answer is: Guillermo del Toro).

I had a pound of Brussels sprouts left over from last week, and they were right on the edge of going funky, so I really had to use them. So I made a Brussels sprouts slaw, and I thought it was quite nice, fresh but autumnal, with toasted almonds and dried cranberries, yum yum. In fact, if you are looking for a vegetable for Thanksgiving, this is more substantial than a green salad but less heavy than green bean casserole or whatever. Which I have never actually eaten, because it just doesn’t look good. 

I sliced up the Brussels sprouts in the food processor. I forgot how dainty Brussels sprouts can be when you slice them thin. They leave their peasant cabbage ancestry behind and turn into little green doilies, very pretty. 

I skipped the red onion. The dressing has maple syrup and dijon mustard in it, but it still tasted pretty bland to me, so I squirted in a ton of honey before I mixed it all together. 

Then I realized that, honey or no, the kids were not going to be happy with just pork chops and slaw for supper, so I made some Instant Pot risotto and kept it warm in the Instant Pot, which is not ideal, but still, risotto. 

Jump to Recipe

Then I roped a couple kids into helping me put the dang trellis up. Ye Ongoing Tragicke History of ye Dange Trellis. It’s not . . . the most secure engineering imaginable. But it is up!

See? Demonstrably not lying on its side in the dirt. Really, sincerely, thanks to everyone who was sympathetic and encouraging in the comments last week. It helped a lot, because I was not only discouraged about the project, I was embarrassed at how discouraged I felt. So, we got it up! 

When it was close to supper, I put the pork chops on a pan, poured the rest of the marinade on top, and broiled them; and we had a nice little meal. 

The recipe calls for grilling the pork chops so they get a crust, and broiling does not achieve that; but they still have a wonderful savory flavor and are incredibly juicy. I was very pleased with this meal altogether. It was just a very successful combination of flavors and textures. 

MONDAY
Ham, peas, mashed potatoes

Monday, Damien and I got in for an appointment to get our shots, and it was a relief to get that done. The pharmacist complimented me on thinking to wear a tank top under a cardigan, so he could reach my arms easily. I guess a lot of people turn up in turtlenecks or wetsuits, and then they’re surprised they have to strip down in the middle of the supermarket.

I discovered the ham I had bought on sale was one of those fancy spiral-cut hams, with the glaze and everything, hoo de hoo hoo. So I set that up to go into the oven, and I made five pounds of mashed potatoes and put those in the slow cooker to stay warm. 

And then I realized that, despite obsessive searching for weeks, I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to find free bricks on Marketplace, and it was only a matter of time before we got some real snow. So I went to Home Depot and bought 130 bricks, plus several bags of gravel and several bags of sand.

Damien got the ham in the oven while I was out, and when I got back, all I had to do was heat up some peas.

The kids were all pleased about supper, even though something weird happened to the mashed potatoes and they were kind of soupy and gummy by supper time. I really don’t know why that happened! They tasted fine; the texture was just really off. I dunno. 

Actually, I do know. I get frustrated that my mashed potatoes always have lumps, so I made these in the mixer, rather than mashing them by hand. I had it in my head that there was some arcane chemical reason not to do it this way, but they looked fine. But I guess I must have overmixed them, because they were not great! Oh well. Lumps it is. Maybe I am not cooking them long enough before I mash them. 

TUESDAY
Chopped Italian subs, fries

Tuesday I unloaded all the bricks and sand and stuff from Damien’s car, and the I figured, what the hell, as long as they’re out and I’m all gritty, I might as well do this project. 

I already had the area squared off, that I wanted to brick. So I 

. . . now look. If you are one of those people who does things the right way and can’t understand why anyone would not do things the right way, these next few paragraphs may not be for you. All right. 

So you’re supposed to dig eight inches down, then level and compact the dirt, then lay gravel, level and compact that, lay sand, lay bricks, and then sweep more sand in between the joints. 

I did . . . some of that. Okay? I dug down a certain number of inches

and I leveled it off, in a certain sense. You are supposed to set up stakes and stretch string in between them so you can maintain an even slope, and I went so far as to go inside and find some string and bring it outside.

All right? And then I spread gravel on and sort of rubbed it around with a plank of wood, and then I put a rubber mat on it and jumped up and down on top of it, which you really cannot claim didn’t compact it somewhat. And I’m sure anyone heading east on 101 around noon enjoyed the show.

Then I started laying bricks, and if they didn’t look straight, I hit them with a mallet. Then I put some more sand on top and swept it until my arms were tired.

And you know what? It looks . . . better! It really does. 

I swept in as much sand as I could into the cracks and then left it to settle. 

And I actually felt not-terrible about it. It’s starting to come together! We need to patch that gaping wound in the siding over the door, and wash the siding, and fix the parts of the trellis I broke, and there are other various things that need to be done. But it’s better, and there is less of a slope in front of the door, which will be very helpful when it gets icy out there. And the mail lady has a spot to leave packages (she has been putting them in the wheelbarrow), and most importantly of all to me, I will have something to decorate for Christmas. 

Here’s a before and after, so far:

and I’m laughing to myself because it sure does look different! I am not at all convinced that it’s an improvement! But it looks different! Well, there is no chipmunk living under the porch anymore, anyway, because there is no porch. So we’ve got that going for us. And there’s a heck of a lot more light in the dining room and kitchen. 

It’s just a long project, that’s all. A long project. It will pay off eventually. Or not. 

Anyway, after laying the bricks I suddenly got reeeeeeeally tired. I guess it was the vaccines settling in. Just really dopey and slow and creaky, like way more than usual, even taking brick-laying into account. So I was glad I had already prepped supper. 

I tried that thing that was trending on TikTok like four years ago: Chopped Italian sandwiches. I chopped up a bunch of ham and salami, peppered salami, and pepperoni, and provolone, tomatoes, and lettuce. I tried using the giant cleaver I bought on clearance when the International Market closed, but I guess you need to sharpen it, because it sure didn’t chop very much. So I just used a knife. 

You’re supposed to mix everything together with some kind of Italian dressing, but I knew the kids were going to be skeptical of something new anyway, so I just did meats in one bowl, cheese in another, and so on, and let people dress it as they liked.

For mine, I mixed all the stuff together with some of that hotsy totsy sandwich pepper spread, and I put it on a toasted bun.

I thought it was DELICIOUS. It was, of course, just an Italian sandwich, but it was just more fun to eat. I did manage to contain the filling more after I took this picture, and got it all shoved into the roll, and used plenty of the hot sandwich spread.

And then I fell asleep, and it was the greatest nap the world has ever seen. Just pure delight. It was worth getting vaccine autism and tentacle creature blood clots just for that nap. So nice. Then I woke up for a while, and then I went back to bed. 

WEDNESDAY
Hamburgers, chips, vegetables and dip

Wednesday it was Damien’s morning to get up with the kids, and I was sooo deep asleep and having a really dumb dream when I finally became aware that (a) my phone was ringing and (b) this is something I needed to respond to in some way. 

It was Damien. What happened was, when he tried to turn onto School Street, he felt a pop and the steering went out, and he had to wrench the car off onto the side of the road. So he had the big girls walk the little girls to school, but he needed me to come get him.
 
So I got up and while I was scraping the windshield, I locked the keys in the car. But I found a spare and drove out and picked the big kids up, and also the dog who was also there because of course he was, and brought Damien his wallet, which he forgot, and he called AAA and I went to bring the kids to the other school, but! A giant construction vehicle was tipped on its side in the intersection.
 
 

So we took a detour and ended up in an unfamiliar neighborhood and then, with no warning, the road ended in a foot bridge over a stream! So we turned around and this time we went way, way, way around, and I dropped the kids off and emailed the school about why they were late, and got coffee and went home. Apparently it was a single nut in the steering that broke.

So I was sitting in the living room telling Sophia about our crazy morning and Damien texts me, “Are you coming?” Ahh crap. Turns out he thought I was coming to meet him in Keene, and I thought I was meeting him in Marlborough at the mechanic. So I run out the door, and then he texts me never mind, he will meet me at the mechanic. But by this time I am already in Keene, so I turn around and go back, and  . . . eventually I and my car and Damien and his car and the tow truck and the dog all ended up in the same place, and then we went home. 

Greatest day of Sonny’s life. Every day is the greatest day of his life, but this was outstanding. 
 
I don’t really remember the rest of the day. They fixed the car. We had hamburgers, chips, and a vegetable platter with dip for supper. And that’s-a my story. 
 

THURSDAY
Omelettes and homemade dinner rolls

Thursday I was planning to make omelettes and biscuits, but I’m really the only one who is enthusiastic about biscuits. So I thought I might test out a dinner roll recipe I saw, and if it was good, I could use it for Thanksgiving. It is this recipe from Handle the Heat.

Speaking of heat, I went to grab the cooking spray to grease the bowl to set the dough to rise, and I was wondering why the cap was so hard to get off. Here is why:

I didn’t even know we had butane in the house! And I don’t know why it was on the counter next to the cooking spray! But I am pretty glad the cap was hard to get off! Yeesh. 

Anyway, paying slightly closer attention to life in general after that, I followed the directions scrupulously, made the dough, set it to rise for ninety minutes, formed the rolls, and then put them in the refrigerator. 

You don’t have to refrigerate them — you can just let them rise a second time and then bake them — but its very convenient to be able to pause the recipe this way. She said letting them do a slow second rise in the fridge actually improves the flavor; and this way, I could bake them right before dinner. So I took them out of the fridge again around 4:00 when we got home, preheated the oven, and brushed them with egg. Looking very promising, right? 

Into the oven they went, for about 25 minutes. 

You guys, they turned out SO GOOD. 

You brush them with melted butter when they come out of the oven, and they’re incredible. Soft, rich, and lightly chewy on the inside,

with this tissue-thin fragile buttery crust on the outside, with a little crunch on the bottom. Absolutely perfect dinner rolls. 

I made omelettes to order (I had leftover ham, tomatoes, and shredded cheddar in mine) and we had that with the hot rolls, and it was delightful.

The omelettes were a complete mess, but they tasted good. 

So, these rolls are definitely going on the menu for Thanksgiving! I have never found a roll recipe I really like, so this is awesome. 

I spent most of the day working on the Christmas present suggestion list, and I’ll have that up soon, probably Sunday. I tried to get the kids to remind me of presents they had gotten each other, so I could include them too, because I remember that some of them were so creative and wonderful. They reminded me they were mostly things like a 2002 Buffy the Vampire Slayer calendar they had found at Puggy’s. Truly thoughtful and very well-received, but not necessarily presents you’d recommend to anyone who is not a Fisher. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

I bought two balls of pizza dough. Two! I didn’t even know they came in such a low number! Here’s the amount of pizza I was making just five years ago:

I feel like there’s no way two pizzas is gonna be enough food, but deep in my heart, I think it probably is. Or maybe we will starve! Always a possibility. 

The plan for today was to go pick up a load of free bricks around 11:00.

Oh yes, a big load of free bricks, the beautiful old clay kind, came available in a nearby town immediately after I finished laying the Home Depot ones I bought! So I’m getting them and I don’t even know what for. I’ll think of something! Maybe we’ll eat them if we run out of pizza. 

Update: Damien’s car has gone bad again, and my car is in no shape to carry a load like this. Dang it. I told the lady she should let the next person in line have them, and I haven’t gotten up to the part where I’m relieved because I didn’t really have a plan anyway, but I’m sure I’ll get there soon. Another long-term project! We’ll get there.

Print

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

  1. Turn IP on sautee, add oil, and sautee the onion, garlic, salt, and sage until onions are soft.

  2. Add rice and butter and cook for five minutes or more, stirring constantly, until rice is mostly opaque and butter is melted.

  3. Press "cancel," add the broth and wine, and stir.

  4. Close the top, close valve, set to high pressure for 9 minutes.

  5. Release the pressure and carefully stir in the parmesan cheese and pepper. Add salt if necessary. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 447: Mark me down as phojascent

Happy Friday! Let’s get the heck to it! Here’s what we ate this week. 

Oh wait! I forgot I haven’t showed you Halloween costumes yet. Okay, we had one Chestburster (from Alien):

one Rarity: 

one Red Hood: 

one Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist:

and of course one Bender, complete with cigar:

The three older kids made their costumes completely on their own (and at the last minute, I should add. The original plan was for them and two friends to be different versions of David Bowie, but that fell apart, sadly; so they had to throw these together). Benny made her entire Edward Elric costume by herself except for the shirt (which is a T-shirt with duct tape on it), including that incredible articulated arm; and Corrie made her entire Bender costume except for the body, which I started and she finished. She was particularly proud of her tidy little robot feet, which stayed on all night.

So I would say the costume torch has officially been passed! It stopped raining in time, they got tons of candy, and everyone was happy. Whew. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and mozzarella sticks

Just a regular shopping and chores day, as far as I can recall. I was in a state about the messy house, so I gave the kids pre-cleaning assignments while I was out, and they really did them. This big kid thing is pretty great. 

For supper, we had leftovers, and mozzarella sticks for the frozen food bonus. Looks like I chose chicken soup with rice, caprese salad, and honey battered chicken. 

It was a non-HDO All Saints Day, and I’m ashamed to say we did absolutely nothing to mark it. Sorry, saints. 

That evening, I had already told the kids we’d be doing a deep cleaning on Sunday, so before bed I made an apple pie and the dough for soul cakes, so we’d be able to still have some good food after a busy day. 

SUNDAY
Beef pho, apple pie

When we got home from Mass, I got some broth going for pho, and cut out and baked the soul cakes. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

These are not super sweet, and are kind of spicy and old-fashioned tasting, and they are much much better when they are fresh out of the oven and still soft. 

I did tell kids about the history of soul cakes (kids would go door-to-door singing a song begging for cakes, and they would pray for someone’s soul in return. This is apparently the origins of trick-or-treating), and then I said they had to pick someone dead and pray for them, and then they could have one skull cake (an un-prayed-for soul) and one winged cake (a soul released from purgatory). They were very relieved with this deal, because they thought I was going to make them sing. 

Then oh boy, did we clean. The kids tackled the living room, dining room, kitchen, stairs, and landing, including floors and woodwork, and I did the “tool area,” which is the geographically lowest point of the house and collects so much miscellaneous junk and just plain dirt, you wouldn’t believe it, and it was also full of pieces of dog food the dog likes to fling around just to keep his spirits up. It had gotten to the point where, just to get from the kitchen to the back door, you had to writhe around like you’re doing the merengue. But not in the fun way. 

So while the kids did their part, I cleaned and organized and swept and scrubbed furiously and sorted ruthlessly, and got rid of something like 200 dresses that I was finally ready to admit nobody fits into anymore. Some of them were dresses all eight of my girls have worn! I was very brave.

(Actually, I remember talking about this before — getting rid of clothes that have heavy nostalgic value — and a younger mom was like, “oh no, are you saying it never gets easier?” and I was like, “Yeah, sorry, it just stays hard.” But it turns out it does get easier! I think it’s probably the Prozac, honestly. Also I do that goofy “thank you for your service” thing if I have to get rid of something with especially fond memories attached, and it really helps!) 

I shan’t show an “after” picture of the area I cleaned, because it will look too much like other people’s “before,” but it’s a massive, massive improvement. You can just walk through it like a normal human being. Hooray!

The kids also did a great job cleaning, and it feels so so much better in here. 

It also smelled great, with the pho broth simmering away. Here’s the recipe I followed. Real pho is made with a bone broth, but I honestly figured I was already pushing my luck with an unfamiliar food, so I figured this would be sort of entry-level pho, and if they liked it, we could go from there. A phojascent soup, if you will. Beef is a big treat these days, so I was pretty excited about that part. 

In the morning, I had put the hunk of beef in the freezer and asked Damien to sharpen a knife for me, and I sliced the meat up as thinly as I possibly could

(it’s much easier to cut thin if it’s slightly frozen) and prepped a bunch of toppings: Scallions, cilantro, thinly-sliced onion, lime, jalapeños, and Thai basil. 

Right before supper, I turned up the heat on the broth and quickly cooked some thin rice noodles. I tried to keep them in nest shapes, but they just unwound and merged, oh well. 

The idea is everyone gets a piping-hot bowl of broth with noodles in it, and then you add the thinly-sliced beef right into your bowl, and it cooks right in front of you. Then you put whatever you want on top. I chose everything, plus some sriracha. 

Here’s my bowl, before the meat has entirely finished cooking. 

Some of the kids were uncomfortable with the rareness of the beef (it did cook more than in the picture above!) so they put their bowls in the microwave, and that did the trick. 

Holy wow, it was delicious. I know this is dreadfully inauthentic and so on, but it was so good. Light and savory at the same time, and delightfully filling. I think almost everyone liked it, which hardly ever happens! We’re definitely making this again.

I glazed and baked the pie in the afternoon, and it was still warm after supper, so that was also popular. 

This is probably the flakiest crust I’ve ever made. I ended up freezing the butter for way longer than I usually do (usually I chill it for half an hour or so, and then grate it into the flour and salt), but this time it was really frozen solid. That must have been what made the difference. 

Here is my pie crust recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

Works every time!

MONDAY
Butter chicken, basmati rice, terrible flatbread

Monday I was a little annoyed at myself because I was planning butter chicken, and I had bought chicken thighs with the bone and skin on, so I had to process all that. Sonny was . . . . the opposite of annoyed. He was enraptured. I didn’t actually even give him any scraps, because there has been entirely too much throwing up in this house lately, but I think he still enjoyed the afternoon. Just being near meat is good. He’s kind of into the whole agony/ecstasy thing. 

I had my own little agony going, because I had bought a sack of chappati flour

but the “gluten free” part didn’t really register with me until I made the dough, according to the instructions on the bag. Like, when I’m cooking new foods, I always keep an open mind. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to look like! Or maybe it’s my fault, because this is my first time!

Well, sometimes it’s just because it’s gluten free, and that’s just a sad state of being. The dough is on the left here: 

As you can see, I decided to go in a different direction, so I made a double batch of this sort of generic no-yeast flatbread from Recipe Tin Eats. That’s the dough on the right. 

It’s just flour, salt, butter and milk, and you fry it in an ungreased pan. I did try that, but I burned the hell out of it, so I tried greasing the pan.

Ladies and gentlemen, they still sucked. Really, just terrible, all twelve of them.I don’t know where I went wrong, but these were truly disgusting. I guess not as bad as they would have been if I had used the gluten-free chappati flour, which tasted of lentils and miscellaneous grit, but still inedible. Oh well! Anybody want an opened sack of gluten free chappati flour that has regular wheat flour sprinkled all over it because that’s how I bake? Let me know. 

The butter chicken was fabulous, luckily. I made a big pot of basmati rice and garnished it with cilantro, and it was just wonderful. 

I use the Recipe Tin Eats recipe, and I’ve never found a reason to try a different recipe. 

My site is being weird, so if the recipe link above isn’t working, here it is:

Butter Chicken

I also roasted the pumpkin seeds the kids had saved from carving jack-o’-lanterns. I did reserve the seeds from the one massive one, and I’m air drying those out to be planted in the spring. The rest, I lightly oiled, spread in a single layer, and toasted in the oven at 300 degrees, stirring them occasionally. I think it took about forty minutes. Then I sprinkled them with kosher salt, and they were yummo. 

And that was Monday!

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips

Tuesday, I was supposed to leave early and take a kid to a medical appointment far away, and I felt so sick and lousy that I just cancelled it. I’m working on introducing myself to the idea that I don’t have to force myself to do every hard thing that presents itself, but can sometimes take an easier route, like rescheduling an appointment. It feels weird, but it was definitely the right call. We had a simple supper of grilled ham and cheese with chips, and in the evening I started a big hunk of pork with its dry rub (a cup of salt and a cup of sugar, rub it all over, and bag it overnight). 

WEDNESDAY
Bo ssam with basmati rice, kiwi and mango

In the morning, I cut up a bunch of kiwis and mangos, which is just a lovely combination

and around 12:30, I put the brined pork in the oven. I do the bare bones version of this recipe,

okay, again the linking is not working. Ugh. Here is the link:
https://mykoreankitchen.com/bo-ssam/

So you rub a cup of salt and a cup of sugar all over the pork shoulder and let it sit overnight, and then you put the pork in a 300 oven for like six hours. Then just before you serve it, you crank the oven up to 500 and slather brown sugar, cider vinegar, and salt on the top, and let it brown up. 

I know I always say it, but this is the lowest-effort, highest-yield recipe I know. It turns out absolutely scrumptious every time, and you barely have to do anything. There is a sauce that goes with it, but I rarely make it, because it’s already so juicy and tender and good. 

I reheated the leftover basmati rice, and put out some lettuce leaves and the cut-up fruit, and wow, it was a perfect meal. 

The idea is you tear off some lettuce and use it grab up some rice and some shreds of meat, and you make a little bundle for personal gobbling. Repeat. IT’S SO GOOD. I like having fruit as a side for this meal, because the meat is outrageously salty, and it’s good to have something juicy to sooth the tongue a bit. 

Everyone likes this meal, and I deliberately made a giant pork shoulder so there would be leftovers for Thursday. 

THURSDAY
Pork fried rice and wontons

Thursday we had to get up early to get to a flu and covid shot clinic. Very relieved to get that done! Then we got donuts and I brought the kids to school and prepped supper. I cut up the leftover pork, defrosted some peas and a bag of cooked rice I had stuffed in the freezer last week, and chopped up some onions and garlic. Sadly, I had used up all the fresh ginger for the pho, so when it was time to cook, I had to use powdered ginger. 

Here’s my basic fried rice recipe:

Jump to Recipe

When I got home, I made a pot of chicken broth from bouillon and cooked some frozen wontons in it. 

Not a spectacular meal, but it was tasty and popular and cheap, and took probably 20 minutes to cook. My meal planning skills have been in overdrive lately, and it’s been really gratifying to make stuff ahead of time, and use leftovers, and so on. My big secret is not having little kids hanging off my legs while I cook. I cannot emphasize what a difference this makes. I do now have a dog doing his Y E A R N I N G thing in the kitchen while I cut stuff up, but it’s not nearly as disruptive as toddlers breaking and trying to eat glass while I have raw pork on my hands, for instance. Truly, I don’t know how I survived that long, long period of my life. No regrets, but no desire to do it again, either!

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Just reglear old spaghetti. 

I know I have a bunch of people who are waiting for me to get back to them, so if that’s you, I haven’t forgotten, I promise! Sorry about that! 

And that’s-a my story. Shall pray for you all at adoration in a few hours, if I manage to stay awake. 

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Soul cakes

Servings 18 flat cakes the size of large biscuits

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, chilled
  • 3-3/4 cup sifted flour
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp allspice (can sub cloves)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp cider vinegar (can sub white vinegar)
  • 4-6 Tbsp milk
  • powdered sugar to sprinkle on top

optional:

  • raisins, currants, nuts, candied citrus peels, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350

  2. Put the flour in a large bowl. Grate the chilled butter on a vegetable grater and incorporate it lightly into the flour.

  3. Stir in the sugar and spices until evenly distributed.

  4. In a smaller bowl, beat together the eggs, vinegar and milk. Stir this into the flour mixture until it forms a stiff dough.

  5. Knead for several minutes until smooth and roll out to 1/4 thick.

  6. Grease a baking pan. Cut the dough into rounds (or other shapes if you like) and lay them on the pan, leaving a bit of room in between (they puff up a bit, but not a lot). If you're adding raisins or other toppings, poke them into the top of the cakes, in a cross shape if you like. Prick cakes with fork.

  7. Bake for 20-25 minutes until very lightly browned on top.

  8. Sprinkle with powdered sugar while they are warm

 

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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

  • 2-1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
  • 1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.

  4. Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.

  5. If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.

  6. If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!

  7. If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.

  8. You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.

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Basic stir fried rice

This is a very loose recipe, because you can change the ingredients and proportions however you like

Ingredients

  • cooked rice
  • sesame oil (or plain cooking oil)
  • fresh garlic and ginger, minced
  • vegetables, diced or shredded (onion, scallion, peas, bok choy, carrots, sugar snap peas, cabbage, etc.)
  • brown sugar
  • raw or cooked shrimp, or raw or cooked meat (pork, ham, chicken), diced
  • soy sauce
  • oyster sauce
  • fish sauce
  • eggs

Instructions

  1. In a very large pan, heat up a little oil and sauté the ginger and garlic for a few minutes. If you are using raw meat, season it with garlic powder and ginger powder and a little soy sauce, add it to the pan, and cook it through. If you are using shrimp, just throw it in the pan and cook it.

  2. Add in the chopped vegetables and continue cooking until they are cooked through. If you are using cooked meat, add it now.

  3. Add the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until the brown sugar is bubbly and darkened.

  4. Add in the cooked rice and stir until everything is combined.

  5. Add in a lot of oyster sauce, a medium amount of soy sauce, and a little fish sauce, and stir to combine completely.

  6. In a separate pan, scramble the eggs and stir them in. (Some people scramble the eggs directly into the rest of the rice, but I find it difficult to cook the eggs completely this way.)

  7. If you are using cooked shrimp, add it at the end and just heat it through.

What’s for supper? Vol. 446: Whoopy once! Whoopy twice!

Happy Friday! HAPPY HALLOWEEN! The kids made their costumes almost entirely on their own this year. I made one component each for Benny and Corrie’s costumes, and the older kids did it all themselves. Sweet! I haven’t seen them all put together yet, but I will share when I do. (Honestly, I would have been a little sad if they had 100% taken over the costume-making.) 

Also this week, Damien and I (mostly Damien) FINISHED THE ROOF. Well, basically. Maybe not every little detail, but it is doing what a roof is supposed to do, and I’m pretty happy. Especially since we’re suddenly getting all the rain we didn’t get all summer!

I got pretty cook-y and bake-y this week, and a little bit spoooooky. Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Anniversary Indian food!

Saturday we got most of the shingles up, until we ran out of shingles. This was our anniversary; this is our anniversary picture. 

28 years! 

So we ran out of shingles, we gave up, cleaned up, and went out to eat at the local Indian restaurant, Royal Spice, which I heartily recommend if you’re anywhere in the area. They are SO nice and the food is SO good. We got the same fried vegetarian whatnot appetizer platter we always do, with the cute little stand that holds three kinds of chutney; and then Damien got some kind of lamb dish, maybe kadai? and I got a beef chettinad curry. Of course we both had rice and garlic naan. The waiter actually congratulated us on how much we ate (all of it). He said it made him happy. It made us happy, too! And it made my nose run. 

Then, in order to avoid going home, we stopped for ice cream. I was surprised to see how many other people were buying ice cream. It was nippy out! Maybe they were also avoiding their children. 

Oh, the kids had Aldi pizza. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers and chimichangas 

Sunday after Mass, I went shopping and Damien finished the roof! Here it is when we started taking it off a week ago:

and here is where we are almost done putting it back on.

Actually, darn it, the picture I was going to share is where it’s not quite done. I guess I’ll have to come back later. I would run out and take a picture now, but it’s raining right now and I am still in my payamas. 

The kids spent most of the day working on their costumes. The house is such a wreck, SUCH a wreck, you wouldn’t believe. Partly because of costume making, partly because we’ve been working on the roof rather than making sure kids actually clean, rather than just pantomiming it. But I’m holding off on a cleaning rampage until after Halloween, because we’re about to be hip-deep in candy wrappers. You have to let that happen for a few days, and THEN you can clean. 

MONDAY
Chicken tenders, caprese salad with skull cheese, french bread

Monday I suddenly realized that, if I was gonna use the silicone skull molds I bought on a whim, it needed to be this week. So I made a batch of mozzarella using my kit. I’ve taken to heating the cheese in the final stage longer than it says in the instructions, for a total of three minutes or more, and that has made it much stretchier and smoother. I also bought some kitchen gloves, and that helped a LOT. Because when you heat cheese, it’s, uh, hot. 

So I made a batch and planned to make individual skulls, but it doesn’t stay pliable for long, so I opted to just smoosh it over the molds in slabs.

I cooled it in water and then ice water for about fifteen minutes, and then peeled it off. SO SATISFYING. Here’s a little video of that. 

Then I cut the cheese into individual skulls, but I wasn’t happy with the square effect.

So I sort of grudgingly (not that the whole thing was anyone else’s idea besides mine) trimmed off the square edges with a paring knife, and I made a caprese salad.

I usually serve this salad undressed and let people add their own oil and vinegar, but the skulls looked much more defined after I splashed a little balsamic vinegar over them. 

Very pleased with this. 

Then I decided to try a balsamic reduction, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I can’t find the specific recipe, but I think it was just a cup of balsamic vinegar and half a cup of brown sugar or something, simmered until it’s thick and syrupy. I had pretty much the lowest-quality balsamic vinegar one can find (thank you, Aldi), and the recipe warned me that reducing it would make it even worse, but I liked it anyway, so there! I like good food, but I also like bad food, which has made my life much simpler. 

Then I decided we needed some fresh bread, so I made a big batch of french bread

Jump to Recipe

and decided to make twelve little loaves, rather than four big ones. They turned out pretty cute. 

Then when I got home, all I had to do was heat up some frozen chicken tenders, and we had a nice little meal. 

I told the kids on the way home that I had prepared a spooky surprise for supper, and they were incredibly impressed by the spooky caprese. I mean one of them took a PICTURE and sent it to her FRIEND GROUP. Let me tell you, you may think you’re over wanting to impress the cool kids by the time you’re fifty years old, but when you have four teenage girls in the house, it does sneak up on you sometimes. (I think they expected feetloaf, which they swear I have made in the past. I have not. I have made zombieloaf, which they were weirdly unimpressed by, and anyway who can afford ground beef?)

I keep seeing recipes for mozzarella where you just use milk, vinegar, and salt. The kit I got has rennet and citric acid. If you’ve done both, do you have any comment about the difference? The kit is plenty easy to use, and the cheese is great, but I like having options. 

TUESDAY
Ina Garten roast chicken, baked potato, mashed squash

Sometimes I look at my camera roll to remind myself what I did on a particular day, and it looks like I spent Tuesday morning noticing the pretty leaves in the back yard, the burgeoning trash heaps in various rooms of the house, the one fingernail I hit the hardest with a hammer, some fluctus clouds, people being dumb on social media, and misc. Eventually I got my ass in gear and got a couple of chickens roasting, using Ina Garten’s simple recipe again, minus the thyme and gravy.

Actually, wait, I had to take a kid to an appointment on Tuesday! I forgot. I always tell myself I’m so lazy and waste so much time, and then I look at my calendar, and . . . well, sometimes I am lazy and waste time, but sometimes I’m not and I don’t. It all evens out. 

Anyway, before the afternoon run I threw the chicken in the oven, and I prepped some potatoes and some butternut squash (I made a little video showing how to prepare it so it’s easy to cut and peel) and then ended up cooking it in the slow cooker anyway, so I didn’t really need to bother peeling it first! I just dumped it in the slow cooker with half a cup of water and set it to high, and let it go for probably three hours. Worked great. 

When I got home, I mashed it up with some cinnamon, a little chili powder, a pinch of salt, and a bunch of honey, and then covered it and put it in the oven to stay warm while the chicken and baked potatoes finished up. 

Chickens turned out lovely. I think you can see how crisp the skin is.

It’s kind of fun cutting the chickens up and out pops the heads of garlic and the lemons. Hello, boys! You did your job so well!

So it was a great little cool-weather meal of tasty chicken, mashed squash, and baked potato. Not the most artistic photos, but I was so hungry. 

 

You can see I squeezed some of the garlic right out of its wrappers and ate them, yum yum

WEDNESDAY
Basic asian pork chops, rice, sesame broccoli

Wednesday we had another appointment and I didn’t get going on supper until it was later than I would have hoped. The original plan was bulgoki, but believe it or not, I can’t find gochujang anywhere in this town. I gotta order some. They did have it at the International Market, but to everyone’s sorrow, it’s closing. I’m so sad about this. They were awfully nice, and they carried foods that no one else did. 

I did stop by to pick up some bargains as they liquidate, and they were out of gochujang but they did have these cans of BBQ sauce.

The guy on the can seemed confident, so I opened it up and off, it looked so gross. It was a solid, gritty chunk swimming in orange grease. I thought maybe if I heat it up and whip it a bit, it would help. 

It did not!

It tasted like . . . something a dog who lives on the docks would eat with reluctance. I don’t know. But it smelled bad and tasted bad and life is short, so I threw it away and made a quick sauce out of soy sauce, brown sugar, and garlic powder, and marinated the pork chops in that. 

When I got home, I poured the leftover marinade on top and roasted them under the broiler

and they were perfectly good and juicy. They tasted like soy sauce, brown sugar, and garlic. No complaints. 

I roasted a tray of broccoli with sesame oil, a little soy sauce, and sesame seeds, and cooked a pot of rice, and there you are. 

Damien has been working away furiously on his car all week. It has many, many things wrong with it, and it’s been a huge project, so I was honestly just so impressed that, when he went out to buy some more tools and parts, he also came home with caramel apple wraps, because even when he’s stressed out and overworked, he’s a nice daddy and always thinking about those kids. 

I was still riding the high of the mozzarella skull success, so I got the idea to use the molds again and make some candy skulls (we always have candy melts in the house). I made the caramel apples real quick and then stuck the skulls and some sprinkles on the apples, and they were pretty cute. 

That night we watched The Invisible Man from 1933, and it was a hoot. If you’re looking for something to watch that’s a tiny bit scary but really mostly silly, and pretty short, this is a good one. I wasn’t expecting it to be funny, but it was!

THURSDAY
Hot dogs, chips, chicken soup with rice, crostini, skull cake

Thursday the menu said we were having hot dogs (I had been expecting to have to go to a third doctor’s appointment an hour away, but it got rescheduled, so I found myself at home with an easy meal and extra time), but when I fished the hot dogs out of the freezer, they just didn’t look great at all.

I mean they’re hot dogs, so it’s not like they spoiled or something, but they just seemed like Discouragement Food, and who needs that. So I looked in the freezer again and found some chicken parts, and made a simple soup. I cooked the chicken in water for an hour or so, then pulled out the chicken and sorted out the meat and bones and — man, you guys know how to make chicken soup, but I’m in too deep now! Let me tell you, the dog was INCREDIBLY interested in this part, and wanted me to know, I mean really really know, that if I NEEDED anything, like for instance if I needed someone to EAT SOME CHICKEN, then HE WAS HERE, and I should not hesitate to call upon him. What a guy.  

So I put the meat back in the pot and dumped in a bunch of chopped carrots, celery, and onion. Didn’t have any herbs in the house. Let it cook for several hours and acknowledged that it tasted hot, wet, and, if you used all your powers of concentration, slightly chickeny. So I added some concentrated chicken broth and bunch of pepper, and about an hour before dinner, I added a bunch of rice, and let that simmer until the rice was a little bit exploded. 

I sliced up the leftover bread from the other night, drizzled it with olive oil, and sprinkled it with garlic powder and salt, put it in the oven, and forgot all about it. So they were PRETTY CRUNCHY, but oh well. I did also serve the hot dogs and chips that were on the original menu. 

Ahem. 

In October, I’ll be host
To witches, goblins, and a ghost
I’ll serve them chicken soup on toast. 
Whoopy once!
Whoopy twice!
Whoopy chicken soup with rice!

You see, I am using my literature degree! I use it all the time. 

I also spent several hours writing an essay, then got to a point where I realized it was crap, I’m a crap writer, my mind is gone, I can’t do this anymore, I need to go get a job cleaning Greyhound busses, etc. etc., and decided to make a cake. 

I was actually originally thinking to use my skull molds yet again, and make jello skulls, but the only gelatin I had in the house is unflavored. I briefly considered making rosewater Jello skulls, but pivoted to cake, and then remembered I had bought a cake pan at a thrift store for $2. It’s for making spherical cakes (it’s two hemispherical pans and two silicone rings to hold them steady while they bake), and I thought I could somehow . . . carve it into a skull? 

Which I couldn’t, really, but I did cut out eyes and a nose, frost it, and then frost the ramekin it was standing on for the teeth part. I realized too late that it had a Dios de las Muertos look, and I could have really gone to town with flowers and stuff, but I ran out of time. 

Then I went back and reread my essay and it was actually fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine, so I took out the line that might get me sued and sent it off. So now you know, my creative process involves cake, and sometimes a frosted ramekin. Go ahead and jot that down. 

The kids were moderately impressed by this third spooky surprise, but after supper it was time to carve pumpkins, so we forgot to eat the cake, and it’s still sitting there on the counter, grinning at nothing and slowly drooping. Who among us. Anyway, now I know those pans work well, so that’s something! 

Oh and the soup was fine. Tasted like chicken. 

FRIDAY
Bagel, egg, and cheese

This is the first Halloween since 2010 that we’re not going to the Halloween Parade at the school. The youngest kids are both in middle school and they have aged out. Ah, me. The older kids are going out with their friends tonight, but Corrie is going trick-or-treating with me and Damien, so, phew. Also the rain just stopped, and it’s supposed to stay more or less clear tonight, PHEW. 

It just now occurred to me that, for the spooky caramel apples, I could have put the candy skulls on the apples FIRST, and then stretched the caramel sheets over them, for a potentially creepy “oh no, it’s coming through the walls” effect. Next year! 

Also, here’s something nice, that I totally forgot existed: Carole King singing Chicken Soup With Rice. 

Before I forget, here is my post about what we have for All Soul’s Day, which is Sunday. Not putting away the skull molds yet, let me tell you. 

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French bread

Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!

I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
  • 5 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive or canola oil
  • 10-12 cups flour
  • butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
  • corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

What’s for supper? Vol. 445: Follow the fellow who fixes your roof

Today’s food post will be mainly a roof post! That’s how it be sometimes. 

So, here we have a representative sample of some of the wood we pulled down from the roof. Just in case you were wondering why it seemed so urgent to do this project.

We’ve had a leak for quite a while, but we had a storm a few weeks ago and it busted right through the living room ceiling. So off we went. 

We started on Thursday of last week, and pulled off the old shingles, edge, and flashing, and opened up the eaves to see how bad the damage was. It was actually not as bad as we feared! But we did have a bit of a tough moment when we discovered that 2x4s are not actually two by four inches. I guess maybe you knew that, but we didn’t — mainly because the existing trusses were rough-cut wood that actually does measure 2×4.

So that added a few trips to Home Depot, and a lot of staring up at the roof and saying, “But . . .what? What??” 

This is a roof over the first story of the house only, but there is quite a steep drop-off in the ground on one side. I stuck mainly to the less-scary side, and Damien worked on the more-scary side. He discovered that whoever fixed the roof last ran out of flashing and used a bunch of metal newspaper printing plates from 1976, so that was kind of neat. 

There have been a few other spot repairs on the roof, we discovered as we tore layers away. Some of them looked vaguely familiar; some of them had clearly been done by other boneheads. I think it was on Friday that we realized we have been living in this house for almost 20 years, and it was really time to stop calling the previous owners “they.” As in, “I can’t believe they did it this way” and “I can’t believe they just left it like that.” Because, like I said, for twenty years, it’s been us. There is no they. They are we. 

I masked up and clambered around pulling all the horrible old moldy, mousy insulation out

It was also very much we who did a terrible job putting tarps down, so there were rusty nails and scraps of rotten wood and bits of chewed-up insulation all over the place, in among the tall grass and wet blackberry thorns and whatnot. So I wandered slowly and furiously around with a magnet for a while and got most of the nails and crap cleaned up, and redid the tarps, so there. I’m making it sound like I did most of the work, but actually Damien did most of the work. 

SATURDAY

Saturday, Clara’s boyfriend came over and did a ton of work replacing and shoring up trusses and laying down new decking, and talking us through the rest of the project. Then I went back to Home Depot for some more wood and dropped a 8×10 sheet of plywood on my foot and broke my little toe, which is something I like to do from time to time. My toe is now more or less pierogi-shaped and permanently grey, and the toenail grows in three distinct pieces. All just part of my feminine mystique. Then I went to Home Depot a few more times and also got pierogis, and we had that and leftovers for supper. 

I was a little bummed to be missing the No Kings rally, so I went out with a staple gun and gussied up my skeletons. 

So there. 

I think it was on Saturday that Damien fell off the ladder. He tumbled really well, and didn’t hurt himself, thank God. But it was a good wake-up call for us to both be super super careful! 

SUNDAY
Beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins

Sunday we went to Mass of course, and then stopped at the store for some meat and milk and whatnot to help us limp through the week without actually shopping.

Corrie has been aching to learn how to make her favorite meal of soup and muffins, so I gave her a very little bit of direction, and off she went making beef barley soup

Jump to Recipe

very much enjoying the process

My recipe calls for diced tomatoes, but she doesn’t like that, so she skipped it. 

Then she started on the muffins

Jump to Recipe

and everything turned out great!

Nothing like sitting down to a delicious meal you made yourself. 

Damien spent the day fitting plywood onto the roof for decking. It is, like everything else in our house, oddly shaped, so it took a long time! But he got it done and then absolutely swaddled and taped the heck out of it, because the rain was on the way. And it rained all night and into the next day, and man, that was nerve-wracking, listening to the rain fall. We both kept looking up at the ceiling, hoping and praying everything would stay dry. 

MONDAY
Roast chicken, peas, noodles

It did stay dry! Wonderful. While Damien worked on the eaves or something, I went back to Home Depot for nails or something. I think it was also Monday that we got the drip edge on. The days really blurred together this week. I did see a nice rainbow at Home Depot, so that was something. 

I roasted the chickens following Ina Garten’s super easy recipe. I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I just threw the garlic and lemons in there, and had the seasoned butter on the top, and they turned out absolutely scrumptious. No searing or flipping or basting or anything. They did take a little longer than expected, but it was worth the wait. 

We didn’t have much in the house for sides, so I just cooked some egg noodles and served them with butter, and heated up some frozen peas. Unsophistication at its best. 

I was looking at this plate and trying to think what it reminded me of. Then I realized: Toy food. It looks like toy food. 

Not a thing wrong with that! 

TUESDAY
Chicken quesadillas

I guess it was Tuesday we got the drip edge on. I don’t know. I’m probably forgetting a bunch of things we had to do. Damien had a bunch more carpentry to do, because the eaves and soffits and whatnot are in tough shape in spots. While he wrestled with that, I went upstairs and caulked the frame of the window (we suspect water is getting in under the siding from the window frame) and loosened up the siding around the window, much to the consternation of Maggie the Cat, who mostly lives in that room.

Then I swept all the crap off the roof, which was harder than you’d think! I don’t know if you’ve ever swept a sloped surface above your head, but it makes you feel like your arms are just about useless.

Then, o then, we finally started on the water and ice shield! This was exciting, because it meant the structural part is basically done, and also because it was going to rain again. It is fancy self-adhesive stuff, and BOY IS IT ADHESIVE. I guess I would kind of like to draw a veil over Tuesday, but the upshot is that we went up and down the ladder 923 times

and we kept at it and kept at it, and by gum we got that roof and part of the wall covered with high quality water and ice shield. 

and then it DID rain again that night, and the roof did stay dry. WHEW.

The kids made chicken quesadillas for supper. I purposely made two big chickens so there would be leftovers for that, and the kids did great. 

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday Damien and I were both just so freaking exhausted, we decided to just stick to our day jobs on Wednesday, and we both got some writing done. Damien has been going back and forth from working on the roof to doing all his regular work all this week – pretty amazing. That evening, we dressed up and drove to Concord for the tenth anniversary party for In Depth, which is one of the papers Damien writes for. The snacks were quite good, but we decided to stop at Burger King on the way home anyway. 

I had bought sandwiches, popcorn, and Swiss Rolls for the kids at home, so they didn’t have to cook. I think they spent the evening working on Halloween costumes. We got home late and collapsed. 

THURSDAY

Thursday we had school conferences, which I went to 

while Damien started in on the tar paper layer.

In the morning, I had fried up a bunch of Italian sausages, cut them up, and put them in the slow cooker to stay warm all day. So when we got home around 5, all I had to do was cook some spaghetti and then discover that yes, I had turned on the slow cooker, and yes, I had plugged it in, but! the power strip I had plugged it into was not plugged in. No.

I didn’t really think we needed to dine on All Day Room Temperature Sausage, so we just had plain spaghetti, and it was a little sad. But at least we had tar paper. 

FRIDAY

Friday Damien finished the tar paper and we started in on the step flashing between the roof and the house wall. For whatever reason, I got the heebie jeebies and couldn’t get myself to get up on the roof, so Damien ended up doing most of it.

Then we ran out of flashing, briefly considered putting the newspaper plates back up, and decided we should just go back to Home Depot. So I’m gonna do that after adoration, and he’s gonna finish putting them on, and we may or may not be able to get the waterproof tar sealant stuff on tonight. I don’t now what’s for supper, and I’m struggling to feel like this is my problem. I will probably pick up some tuna. 

AND THEN, the only thing left is to put the shingles on! And of course reattach the siding. And rebuild the soffits and fascia boards, and a few other miscellaneous things, and of course haul away all the debris. I’m sure in a few weeks, when it’s really truly done, we’ll feel proud and relieved, but man, this project has really taken it out of us. It’s only about 115 square feet of roof, and we’ve been thinking it would be sort of a test project to see if we could fix the whole main roof on the rest of the house in the spring, which, I don’t know. Maybe. It’s pretty high up there. Lotta roof. Much ladders. Keep hitting our thumbs with hammers. You know. 

It’s our 28th anniversary tomorrow, and you’ll never guess, it looks very much like we will be spending most of it on the roof. Better than in the grave!

Well, goodbye! 

2 from 1 vote
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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion or red onion, diced
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 3-4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
  • 2-3 lbs beef, cubed
  • 16 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
  • 6 cups beef bouillon
  • 1 cup merlot or other red wine
  • 29 oz canned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
  • 1 cup uncooked barley
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened. 


  2. Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley. 

  4. If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes. 

  5. Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary. 

2 from 1 vote
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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

  • 30 oz canned pumpkin puree
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup veg or canola oil
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  • 3.5 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • oats, wheat germ, turbinado sugar, chopped dates, almonds, raisins, etc. optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend. 

  4. Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice. 

  5. Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 444: And don’t forget to put garlic on my grave

Happy Friday! in haste, in haste, for this is day two of me and Damien putting in a new roof, which we hope to finish by Sunday. It’s a small area, about 115 square feet, and only one storey up, but it’s something we’ve never done before, so I’m pretty impressed with us so far. (If you are wondering how one motivates oneself to take on a project like this, it helps to have no choice, and that’s my whole advice.)

Here is what we ate this week!

SATURDAY
Leftovers and I think pizza pockets

I myself had leftover chicken biryani with extra raisins and almonds, and it was yum dot com. 

SUNDAY
Vermonter sandwiches, fries

Sunday we made our annual trip to Wellwood Orchard in Vermont, and first we stopped at the cemetery to visit my parents’ grave. We said a decade and I planted some crocuses (I’ve planted various things over the last few years, including roses and lilacs, and they keep mowing them down. It’s very Claremont) and, just because I thought it was funny, some garlic. My parents didn’t agree on lots of things, but they certainly had similar views about garlic. (= It is good.)

We had a lovely time picking apples. Bunch of photos here: 

 

The kids are old enough that nobody insisted on each having their own separate little bag, so we got two half-bushel bags and filled them up, which is the same amount of apples as lots of little bags for about half the price. It’s a little late in the season, so there weren’t tons and tons of apples, but we did get some nice big ones. Nothing like a very in-season apple! It’s like a different fruit from what you get the rest of the year. 

For supper, we had Vermonter sandwiches, which is toasted sourdough bread, sliced chicken or turkey, sharp cheddar, green apple, bacon, and honey mustard. The meat I had was an entire frozen turkey breast (99 cents a pound, could not turn it down), but I made the mistake of slicing it first and then roasting it, rather than the other way around, so it kinda tried up. It was still semi-frozen in the morning and I really wanted to prep it ahead of time so we could eat as soon as we got back. But we all came home hungry, so it was fine. 

MONDAY
Honey soy chicken wings, coconut rice, sesame broccoli 

Monday the kids had the day off for Indigenous People’s day, and I fulfilled my promise to get to work on Corrie’s Halloween costume. 

Any guesses what this is going to be? She made the mask/head (not pictured) herself. 

She also made this unrelated mask

and was somewhat offended when I jumped in alarm, but then I showed her the picture, and had to agree, it was alarming. 

Supper was a great plan but turned out a tiny bit disappointing. Chicken wings were on sale (1.99/lb) so I got a bunch and made this marinade from Recipe Tin Eats. She specifically mentions that they are sticky, and that it can be very disappointing when chicken wings don’t turn out sticky, so she shows you how to achieve stickiness (pouring off the liquid from the cooked chicken, and then basting it with the marinade three times). I followed the directions exactly, but they really just didn’t turn out sticky. 

They were fine, just not amazing. 

I also made a bunch of coconut rice, also using a Recipe Tin Eats recipe. In this one, she promises it will be fluffy, not gluey, and I’ve made this recipe before and it really does turn out good. You make it in the oven. Then I made a tray of broccoli (just some sesame oil, soy sauce, I think garlic powder, and sesame seeds) and I didn’t really plan who was going to be in the oven when at what temperate, so it kind of baked, which is not ideal.

So overall, a decent meal, but I was bummed because I was expecting it to be spectacular. I made up for it by eating about a cubic yard of coconut rice. 

TUESDAY
Pizza

Tuesday I don’t even remember what I was doing — I think maybe I picked up a big bunch of materials at Home Depot, among other things — but I was completely exhausted by the time we got home from school, and I was so delighted with myself for having made three pizzas in the morning. So then I just about wept when Corrie reminded me there was an open house and pumpkin carving at the school at 5. But I got myself together and put my shoes back on and we went, and it was actually lovely.

 

I finally met her new teacher, who turns out to be a former homeschooler, so that explains a thing or two! (Like why they are reading Beowulf and why Corrie was researching the history of the Angles).

Damien got the pizzas in the oven and it was hot and ready when we got home, and then I collapsed like a bunch of broccoli. 

WEDNESDAY
Burgers, chips, raw vegetables

Wednesday I did a bunch of fall yard work. I composted some of the garden beds, planted a bunch of seed garlic and the nine peach pits we prepared, and mulched it all with duck hay. Still gotta mulch the strawberries, peach saplings, and rhubarb. Here’s a picture of what I did, because this post is kind of low on pictures!

Oof, it’s getting so grey and drab and chilly out there. 

I also did some more chimpy hardscaping in front, and planted a ton of spring bulbs in front and in back — daffodils, tulips, crocuses, alliums, and some kind of purple and orange fluttery-looking flower, I forget what it’s called. And mulched it all. 

Oh, do I hate planting bulbs in the fall. You’d think it would be an encouraging act of hope, staking out a claim for tomorrow, doing what you can to put your trust in a brighter future and so on. And it is that, but it feels awful, just futile. Fall is just tough. Everything is dead or dying, everything smells old and rotten, the birds are leaving, everything is leaning and weary and worn out. Plus I always manage to kneel in dog poop while I’m planting, and this year was no exception. But I got those mofos into the ground, and maybe they will even grow, who knows. 

I knew Thursday was going to be super busy, so I made supper Wednesday evening. 

Looking very promising. The recipe calls for boneless, skinless chicken thighs, but I was using turkey breast (the second whole turkey breast I got. This one was more suited for my purposes). 

THURSDAY
Chicken and dumplings

So Thursday we started on the roof. We didn’t completely know how damaged it was under the shingles, so I was pretty nervous about what we might find. We spread some tarps on the ground, climbed up, and started pulling the shingles and flashing away. It was nippy up there! Sunny but windy. 

About an hour into it, I heard traffic slowing down, and saw that cars were having to avoid my giant inflated fried egg that had blown into the road, and we decided that we are dumb enough to think we can do roofing, but we don’t need to compound that by getting sued by some driver who has whiplash because of our escaped inflated egg. So I climbed down and YOU KNOW WHAT? Climbing up a ladder is kind of scary, but nowhere near as scary as climbing down a roof and turning yourself around to get onto a ladder to climb down it! But I retrieved the egg, and we got all those shingles off

The roof underneath turned out to be rotten in the spots we expected, but quite a bit of it is sound. We talked to my brother, who is a builder, and he affirmed that we can definitely do this thing, and gave us some good advice about where the water is probably coming in and what to do about it. Very encouraging! I won’t share any pictures because I’m in no frame of mind for the internet to tell me we’re doing it all wrong.

I went out to pick up some more caulk and a tool to remove siding, and some more tarps, and then I picked up the kids while Damien started in removing the rotten wood. When I got home, I heated up the chicken I had made the previous evening.

I guess you would call it a chicken stew. It is this chicken and dumpling recipe from Sip and Feast, and when I got back, I made the dumpling dough, which calls for butter, milk, AND sour cream. This is an insanely rich recipe, and my only complaint is that I cooked the dumplings at least twice as long as recommended, and they still didn’t completely cook through, and were kind of damp. 

But I just had to serve it eventually, and it really was delicious

and, as I hoped, a very tasty, cozy, and nourishing meal after a chilly day on the roof. Damien and I thought it was great, although if I make it again, I may skip the peas. The kids were not impressed, and most of them didn’t even try it. Oh well! At this point, I’m storing up recipes to make again when it’s just me and Damien in the house. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Damien just went off to Home Depot for lumber, and when he gets home, we’re gonna start pulling out old mousy insulation, pulling off siding, waterproofing and caulking, and start rebuilding trusses and decking. We got our hands on a roll of high-end self-adhering water and ice shield, and, well, we are at the age when we’re pretty excited about that.

I also have a doctor’s appointment so my stupid doctor can tell me it’s okay to keep taking my medicine, because look at me, I’m still alive, which we definitely wouldn’t be able to determine vie telehealth. In anticipation of this visit, I have carefully arranged to gain ten pounds since our last visit, so I’m looking forward to this. 

I did find one final head of garlic in the garden, which I missed before. So, in answer to your question: Yes, I do think I’m the queen of the underground, but at least I’m willing to help with the insulation. And occasionally make undercooked dumplings. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 443: Take heart, for the Lord hath not focaccia

Happy Friday! And dang, it is COLD out there. I know some of you live in an alternate universe where it’s still summer weather, but here it is officially NIPPPY.

And you know what that means: Time to eat! (Same as warm weather, but I’m not on trial here.) 

Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with chicken three ways and burritos 

Sophia took Lucy, Irene, Benny, and Corrie to a con and they were gone all day, but Elijah (who moved out a few months ago) needed to go shopping, so we had a good old fashioned Elijah Shopping Turn. That was nice! I really love hanging out with my older kids.

The leftovers included a lot more chicken than I remembered cooking (fried chicken, chicken tenders from wraps, and garlic butter chicken bites), but it was all good. 

Because all the kids were out, I got to choose dessert. I grabbed some kind of disgusting spooky chocolate Twinkies for Saturday, and then I used some empanada dough discs I found in the freezer to make apple hand pies for Sunday. I did that Saturday night, because I knew we’d be gone during the day. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, Actual Doritos; apple hand pies and ice cream

But first, after Mass, Damien and I went on a two-hour drive to pick up Miss Maggie.

Her owner has a roommate situation that’s not working well with cats, so we’re fostering her for the long-term until that changes. She is absolutely gorgeous, and extremely chatty. 

Sonny thinks she is AMAZING, and misunderstood pretty badly when she hissed at him, and then she swiped at his face, and he thought that was ALSO AMAZING, and he continues to be AMAZED by her. Friday is a lot more cautious, and mostly just stares at her in awe, while she gazes at him with queenly contempt. 

When Maggie is upstairs, Sonny and Friday dash around the house like giant goobers, and then when she comes down, they suddenly get all awed and respectful. So I guess they’ve sorted it out? I hope they all learn to relax around each other eventually! But they’re not fighting, so that’s good. 

For supper we had grilled ham and cheese, plus brand name Doritos which were on sale. 

I also got a bag of taco seasoning flavored Doritos, and they tasted exactly like that. 

I baked the apple pies, and they truly didn’t turn out that great. The dough was pretty old, and I should have baked them at a higher temp, and the apples were also pretty old and squashy. Oh well! People ate it and no one complained. Just not my best effort. The ice cream helped. 

And that was the weekend! 

MONDAY
Chicken biryani, mango

Monday I really wanted to make some progress on the duck pond before it freezes, so I spent quite a bit of time hauling rocks from the stream to hold the liner in place. But first I got supper going. Chicken leg quarters were on sale, and there are VERY few things they are good for unless you’re holding a low rent Renaissance Faire or something; but they work great for biryani. 

I more or less follow this recipe, which yields a tasty but quite mild version. Except that I was out of ground cardamom, so I opened up a bunch of pods and ground up the kernels in my mortar and pestle. So one minute I tell Damien I’m just doing a quick easy meal, and then he comes in and I’m grinding spices like Strega Nona. 

Anyway, I followed the recipe as written, and then I moved it to the slow cooker. This is my big secret for success with biryani: You let it slow cook all day. I’ve never been able to get the rice and liquid proportions right otherwise! I also cut up a bunch of mangos. 

When I was really tired of hauling rocks, I went to the front of the house and dug out the dirt under the granite step. It was more or less where I wanted it, but it was wobbly and too far from the next step, so I got that squared away. 

So here’s the front entrance situation. I am in talks with the redoubtable Wesley to revisit the idea of building a portico.

I got that trellis for free at my favorite store, The Side of the Road. 

Then I scurried around doing little bits of yard work, and I finally cut the head off my one solitary sunflower, which was a volunteer. 

and an overachiever! You can bet I’m saving those seeds. 

Speaking of volunteers, did I show you this poppy that’s growing by the back steps?

No idea where it came from! I’ve tried to grow poppies in my garden many times, with no success, but I’ve never even tried to grow this color. I guess it just came from heaven. Or rabbit poop or whatever. Either way, I’m gonna save those seeds, too. 

So then finally it was supper time, and oh man, it was delicious. 

I was so hungry, I just took one quick photo, which, as you can see, was actually a video, oops. So here is a still from the delicious short film titled “Get In Mah Belleh.” 

TUESDAY
Garlic pork chops, baked potato, string beans

Tuesday I was planning to make soup and bread, but then I looked at the weather report and saw it was going to rain (finally! We are still in a drought) on Wednesday, so that would be a better day for soup and bread. But I knew I was going to be too busy Wednesday to make bread. So then I changed my mind another 523 times and eventually ended up making two full suppers on Tuesday. 

For Tuesday supper, we had pork chops, baked potatoes, and string beans that I just served raw, because I couldn’t get a straight answer on how people would like them cooked. 

I just broiled the pork chops, but I marinated them in the morning, more or less following the recipe for this marinade from Recipe Tin Eats, except I was rushing so I used garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, and I didn’t super duper measure anything, so it ended up tasting heavily of Worcestershire sauce, so I dumped in a bunch more brown sugar. 

Well, they turned out great. Probably could have been in the oven a few minutes longer to give them a little caramelization, but they were really tasty. I’m so happy I found this marinade, because I have struggled my whole life to cook pork chops in a way that is easy but doesn’t make them dry and tasteless. This is it! 

Because it was gonna rain the next day, I pushed to get some more outside work done. I continued building up the retaining wall/heap behind the flower bed with cinder blocks and dirt, and I filled in the trench I had dug to level the granite step, and transplanted a bunch of flowers. 

I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this! I guess partly so, someday, I can reread these posts and fondly remember a time when I could still lug stuff. I do like lugging stuff. I feel like I’m my true self, when I’m lugging stuff. 

I hung up the sunflower to dry, because the seeds seem a little juicy still. This has resulted in some interesting vignettes when people sit in that spot. 

She looks like she’s getting a revelation, or possibly taking a shower. 

On the way home from school, I bought some bread flour and then made this focaccia dough, and put it in the fridge overnight. 

WEDNESDAY
Italian wedding soup, focaccia

Wednesday we had three dentist appointments plus something else, I forget what, and it didn’t actually rain all day like it was supposed to! But I was still happy to have a giant pot of soup all ready. I had made a double recipe of this Italian Wedding Soup from Sip and Feast, except I had ground chicken instead of ground turkey for the meatballs, and I skipped the escarole. If you ask me what escarole is, I could probably come up with a plausible answer, but it’s definitely not a piece of knowledge that I keep in the front of my brain. 

About four hours before supper, I greased up a pan and schlorped the cold focaccia dough onto it, and sternly warned everyone not to touch it even a little bit, not even for a funny joke. 

Shortly before supper, I finished the soup with the acine de pepe and the spinach, and I gently encouraged the focaccia dough to cover the rest of the pan (it was already almost there). I oiled it, dimpled it, and then attempted to make a design on it with tomatoes, onions, and parsley, but it was such a spectacular failure that nobody even realized it was supposed to be a design, so pretend I never said that!

Anyway, it turned out FANTASTIC.. 

Absolutely scrumptious, with a crackly bottom, airy inside, and a thin, chewy top. 

I’m a little ashamed at how much I ate, but it was really the best focaccia I’ve ever had. Most definitely using this recipe again. 

The soup was also very nice. 

An excellent meal overall. 

THURSDAY
Spaghetti with sausage sauce

Thursday I could really feel the cold coming, so I hustled to put together a cold frame for my two pomegranate plants. 

Look at them, enjoying their sunny little spa on the back steps! 

Here’s the side view. 

So luxurious. I had all these fricken windows I got when I was planning to make a greenhouse, so I’m glad to be using a few of them, anyway. Eventually my house is going to be 100% things I found on the side of the road and things I got for free from Facebook Marketplace, and then I can die happy, or anyway, die. 

Then I dragged Damien out to the duck pond and demanded he explain to me how to fix it. 

I could see that I dug it unevenly, but I was having one of those moments when I know there’s a really simple answer, but it’s, like, sealed in one of those blister packs and you can’t find scissors, and you end up gnawing on it and just making it worse. Mentally, I mean. You guys gnaw mentally, right?  

So he suggested I move the rocks on the far edge, lift the liner, and dig more — not wider, just lower; and then put the liner and rocks back. Which was obviously the answer. I just have some kind of obvious spatial awareness deficit disorder or something (O-SADD), and I couldn’t figure it out on my own! (Actually first he assured me he totally understood not being able to work out a simple problem, and he has offered repeatedly to dig it for me and lug rocks for me, but he’s been wrestling with car repairs for two weeks straight, so I’ve been trying to keep my project bullshit to myself.) 

So anyway I did dig, for quite a long time, until I had to acknowledge that there was a bunch of water in there, and my efforts to make the pond deeper were resulting in that water flowing into the spot where I was digging, which is what I WANTED, but, well. So I set up the pump, which promptly stopped working. So that was the end of that for the day. 

By this time I was all hyped up and desperate to accomplish something, and I found myself I guess building a new step for the front of the house. 

If I can pull this off, it will actually be great, because with the porch gone, it became evident that the front of the house actually slopes quite a bit, and when that freezes, we’re all going to slip and die anytime we try to go in or out. (Obviously we can shovel it and salt it, but it’s hard to keep up with. You will have to trust me; we will die.) 

So right now I’m batting around various ideas of what to make the new step out of. Possibly pea gravel, but probably bricks or pavers. I did go to Home Depot and price out pavers, but I don’t want to spend that much, and this whole project has cost me zero doll hairs so far, so I’d like to keep it that way. So I’m back to haunting Facebook Marketplace for freebies. I did find a good used pump for $20, and I’m getting that today, yay!

You may have noticed that the long granite step is not level. My plan for that is to pretend it’s not. 

Anyway, I made a quick and easy meal of loose Italian sausage added to jarred sauce over spaghetti, with leftover focaccia. 

Yum yum. 

FRIDAY
Bagel egg cheese sandwiches, OJ

Gotta bring a kid in for a job interview and then get to adoration and get the other kids, and then we have a lovely three-day weekend, which we desperately need! It’s supposed to rain, which we also desperately need, but I’m a little bummed because we were supposed to go apple picking. Maybe we’ll just pick wet apples.

Anyway, pray for me and I’ll pray for you! And let me know if you hear about any free bricks. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 442: Behold, the steamer cometh

Happy Friday! I don’t remember why, but I even though I was quite busy this week, I planned a menu with some heavy and elaborate meals. A foolish but delicious error, and we have arrived at Friday, safe and sound and full of butter. 
Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Kids leftovers; adults pizza

Damien and I have been ships passing in the night lately, so we ditched the kids and spent some time being ships having pizza together. Sausage and mushroom, very good. 

SUNDAY
Hot dogs, fries

Sunday I got a ton of yard work done. I lugged a dozen cinderblocks out from the back (in fact they were from Damien’s Amazing Interchangeable Cinderblock Meat Altar Situation, which he no longer uses because he now has a real smoker and grill) and made a little retaining heap (can’t really call it a wall) for the flower bed in front of the house, which I’m going to fill in with soil and ferns.

Then Damien and I moved the enormous granite post to make a front step. It’s . . . still a work in progress. 

Then I looked at the house and realized if I was gonna plant more in front of it, I need to fix the siding first. The spot where the porch used to be attached looked like this:

Easy peasy, don’t have to get on a ladder or anything, and I had saved a bunch of siding from the porch, so I had matching siding and everything. EASY PEASY, I tell you. An idiot could do this!

Well, and idiot could do something. This is what I did:

This is the kind of job where I say reassuring things out loud to myself in the hearing of my kids, because the mother’s verbalized self-talk becomes their own internal voice as they mature, or something. Anyway, I said loudly several times that I’m good at other things, and it doesn’t really matter that much, because I’m going to find some really tall ferns. 

Then I planted a few more perennials I had gotten on clearance and lost the tags for, so I have no idea what they are, but I wish them well. Then Corrie and I spent some very pleasant time sorting flower seeds I’ve been collecting all summer, and then we split open the pits from our modest peach harvest.

I was very happy that we managed to get intact kernels from some of the really monstrously big peaches. Our technique was to put the pit on its edge on a rock, insert a flat-head screwdriver in the seam, and tap the screwdriver until it split, and then pry it open the rest of the way with the screwdriver. 

Obviously peaches can grow from a pit that hasn’t been opened, but taking the kernel out and just planting that increases the chances it will sprout. This weekend, I’ll plant them in pots in the ground covered with used duck straw, and in the spring, we should have a few seedlings.

Sophia had the day off (she’s commuting to college and working), so she made some yeasted cider donuts stuffed with apple filling. Superb. 

The plan for supper was Chicago-style hot dogs, with all the chopped vegetables and celery salt and whatnot, but it just didn’t seem worth it, especially since most of the family was out helping Moe move to his new apartment. And especially since granite posts are really heavy, you guys. At one point I heaved so hard that that first my back popped and then my ears popped, and the the word “hernia” popped into my head, so I stopped heaving. So we just had regular hot dogs and fries. 

I did make some ice cream: Two batches of strawberry and one of chocolate, using recipes from the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream cookbook, which I highly recommend if you’re thinking of getting into homemade ice cream, which I highly recommend.

It was just supposed to be regular chocolate, but something went funny with the texture, and everyone assumed it was some kind of fancy chocolate chip

and I didn’t say a peep. 

MONDAY
Bacon chicken ranch wraps, chips

Monday was full of exhausting appointments, so I was happy to have an easy and popular dinner plan. I cooked some frozen chicken tenders and a few pounds of bacon, and served that on tortillas with chunkily shredded cheddar cheese, sliced tomatoes, and dressing. 

I had some kind of spicy honey mustard, but I think others chose ranch. It was pronounced “yum dot com.” 

TUESDAY
Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sorta-glazed carrots

Tuesday, you’ll never guess, we had another appointment. I was able to prep everything in the morning, though, so there wasn’t much left to do by suppertime. I started the chicken soaking in seasoned egg and milk for the oven-fried chicken

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and made some regular mashed potatoes, and put them in the slow cooker to stay warm. Then before supper, while the chicken was finishing up cooking, I made three pounds of glazed carrots in the oven using this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats. 

The chicken honestly looks kind of gross here, but in real life it was scrumptious, with real crackly skin and super-moist meat, full of flavor. I love this recipe. 

I made the carrots using bacon grease, and it did impart a very mild savory flavor, nothing to knock your socks off. These carrots are very popular with a couple people and everyone else thinks they’re okay.

WEDNESDAY
Garlic butter chicken bites, risotto, steamed broccoli

Wednesday I tried a new-to-me recipe from Sip and Feast, which combined four of my favorite words: Butter Garlic Chicken [and] Bites. 

It was a little time consuming, but that’s mainly because I made a triple recipe. It’s really pretty simple. You cut the chicken (boneless, either breasts or thighs) into chunks, season them, and dredge them in flour, and sear them in oil, and set that aside. Then you melt a ton of butter and cook a lot of garlic and red pepper flakes, then add a bunch of white wine and let the sauce reduce. Then you put the chicken back into the pan and heat it up. 

I wish I had seared the chicken a little darker, but wow, it was delicious. I mean how could it not be, with those ingredients. 

Earlier in the day, I made a pot of Instant Pot risotto. 

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I use more butter and cheese than the recipe calls for, but it’s good as is. Then right before some supper, I steamed some frozen broccoli. And it was a lovely meal. 

I didn’t count the calories because I’m a Lit major and I can’t count that high. 

THURSDAY
Bibimbap of sorts

Thursday I was very proud of myself for how fast I prepped supper. As soon as I got home from school drop-off, I chopped some vegetables, shredded and pickled some carrots, defrosted and sliced some meat, and set up the Instant Pot with rice, and set out sauces and sesame seeds, sprouts, spinach, and crunchy noodles, all in about eighteen minutes flat. 

I spent the rest of the day editing, and there was a huge amount of driving around doing this and that in the afternoon, but when I got home, all I had to do was press the “rice” button and throw the meat in a pan. When it was mostly cooked, I doused it with a lot of soy sauce and finished cooking it. Is this subtle or authentic or layered in flavor? No. But it was a damn fine meal all together, with lots of wonderful flavors and textures. 

Here’s the recipe for the pickled carrots:

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I honestly can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a meal this much. It’s probably because I got a lot of other things done that day, and I was especially relieved about having finished one project that’s been hanging over my head for months, and that added to my satisfaction; but also it’s just a damn fine meal. I like to put a layer of raw baby spinach on top of the rice but under the meat and fried egg, so the spinach wilts. Yum yum. 

It looked like there might be a frost that night, so I covered my basil, eggplant, and cucumbers, and picked the rest of the corn. I wasn’t expecting much (I had already done the main harvest, and these were the secondary ears of corn lower down on the stalk, and the corn from the second harvest that I shoved in the ground on a whim and didn’t bother to de-tassel), and it was indeed not much. 

For my own amusement, I lined them up in order of best to worst:

and then the other way around:

and that’s-a my corn! I read about corn development and I temporarily knew what had caused the various problems you see on the bad end of the corn spectrum, but I have since forgotten.  Maybe I should call in a prisoner that I’ve heard has some skill interpreting these things. (This is a Bible joke, but I’m too sleepy to finish writing it, sorry.)

Anyway, I think I’ll give this corn to the ducks, who have no skills of any kind, but they sure do like corn. 

In the evening, I drove out to pick up a chainsaw someone was giving away! I’m super excited. It’s my first chainsaw. I can tell the rest of the family is excited, too, because I heard one teenager say to the other, “Ho ho ho, now she has a chainsaw.” 

FRIDAY
Regular old spaghetti

ANOTHER appointment this morning, and that’s it for the week, whew. Because it’s Friday, but still. Whew. Damien and I were supposed to go remote camping for two days this weekend, but I think it’s our destiny to stay home and hang out, much to the dismay of the children, who were looking forward to . . .I don’t know what . . . when we go camping.  Poor things, it’s hard for them, because we’re so incredibly lax and undemanding when we’re home, it must be difficult coming up with some way to let it all hang out even further when we leave. I think they just watch MORE tv and eat ADDITIONAL candy. 

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Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

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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

  1. Turn IP on sautee, add oil, and sautee the onion, garlic, salt, and sage until onions are soft.

  2. Add rice and butter and cook for five minutes or more, stirring constantly, until rice is mostly opaque and butter is melted.

  3. Press "cancel," add the broth and wine, and stir.

  4. Close the top, close valve, set to high pressure for 9 minutes.

  5. Release the pressure and carefully stir in the parmesan cheese and pepper. Add salt if necessary. 

 

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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

For the brine (make double if pickling both carrots and cukes)

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved. 

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.