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What’s for supper? Vol. 427: PRODUCE!!!

Happy Friday! If you read closely, you will notice that pizza shows up not once,

not twice,

but three times

this week. The reason for this is that pizza is delicious [winks and says bon apetit]

But there were a few days we managed to escape its saucy and seductive charms, and so the other major theme of the week is FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. That is to say, produce! Because it is spring! And also, I have a little story to tell. 

One afternoon, I was parked along the street, waiting for a kid to come out of school. It was a fine, sunny afternoon, and I had a bunch of other kids in the car, including one who was learning how to read. She saw a delivery truck with letters on the side, and asked, “Mama, what does ‘p-r-o-d-u-c-e’ spell?” So I turned my head to say, in a loud voice so she could hear me in the back of the van, “Produce.” But it happened that a teenage boy was passing by my open window right when I turned my head, so I startled him by inexplicably shouting “PRODUCE!” right in his face. 

He jumped and scurried away, and I laughed pretty hard at this poor kid, and kept on laughing about it as we drove around town picking up kids and dropping them off and doing this and that. 

And then.

We got everything done and were finally headed home, and as I passed through the downtown, you’ll never guess who I saw. Yes, it was that same poor baffled kid whose face I had yelled in half an hour before. So I did the only thing my heart would allow me to do do: I drove up next to him, rolled down the window, and screamed as loud as I could “PRODUCE!!!!!”  

I should be sorry. But I’m not. That poor kid. 

Anyway, we sure did eat a lot of fresh produce this week. Produce!

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and pizza

Okay, no produce on Saturday, but that’s not what Saturdays are for. There were not tons of leftovers, especially since I was setting aside the leftover chicken for Sunday; so we got a couple of Aldi pizzas and all was well. 

But speaking of leftovers: Before I went shopping, I had a little tantrum about how much the car smelled like garbage, so I did a thorough investigation, and it turned out to be garbage. See, last time I was at Millie’s house, her son said he was gonna throw out anything I didn’t want, so I emptied her pantry into a laundry basket, and then I ran out of room, so I emptied the rest into what I thought was a clean trash can. I was planning to bring them to Vincent de Paul, but instead of course I drove around with them in the heat for a week, and guess what? That trash can wasn’t empty! It had garbage at the bottom. Which turned into juice and leaked out all over the back of my car. 

So I got a knife and cut the carpet out, and I have no regrets. I also used baking soda and soap and hot water and bathroom tile cleaner with bleach, and scrubbed the hell out of it, and if you’ve ever done a job like this, you will know that . . .it still smells a little bit like garbage. But less every day. 

Anyway, one thing made me laugh: No disrespect, not even a tiny little bit, but here are some of the foods I found in her pantry:

It’s like she was shopping at some special Old Lady Market that you don’t get admitted to until you’re at least seventy years old. Cheddar cheese soup. CREAM OF SHRIMP. DID YOU EVEN KNOW THIS EXISTED? Bless, as my southern friends would say. 

SUNDAY
Chicken quesadillas, chips

Like I said, on Sunday I used the shredded chicken which was leftover from last week’s “enchilada bowls” to make quesadillas with. I also went to the flower farm and used my mother’s day gift certificate, did a bunch of yard work, made supper, and then sorted all the clothes Corrie dragged out of her room last week, and also, yes, brought the non-garbage-smelling basket of food to Vincent de Paul. so I felt pretty accomplished by bedtime. 

MONDAY
Pasta primavera

Here comes the produce. 

I more or less followed this recipe I found on Reddit “from Sirio Maccioni’s Le Cirque.”  It wants you to blanch the broccoli, zucchini, asparagus (from my garden!!), green beans, peas, and sugar snap peas individually. I can see the sense in this, because vegetables are different densities and take different lengths of time to blanch properly. 

On the other hand, I didn’t wanna. So I just dunked it all in boiling water for three minutes, and then dumped it in ice water, then drained it. 

It truly is a pain in the ass of a recipe, and you end up using four different pots and pans. Truly a dinner for which you will want to bring all your mise en place skills into play. 

But dang, it was delicious.

I had half-and-half instead of heavy cream, so I just made a little flour roux, and that worked fine. The vegetables I blanched together all willy-nilly turned out great. Nothing was overcooked or undercooked, and I had zero regrets. This recipe calls for toasted pine nuts, and that was a very pleasant little subtle addition. 

I think maybe one of the kids ate it, but that’s about what I was expecting. I just have to make this dish every 2-3 years and get it out of my system. 

TUESDAY
Waffles, sausage, eggs, fruit salad

Even though I have started selling duck eggs on the side of the road and sometimes make as much as $4 a week, I still have a surfeit of duck eggs; so I used a bunch of them for homemade waffles. 

Some decent breakfast sausages were on sale, and I cooked those, fried up a bunch of eggs, and made a fruit salad with watermelon, strawberries, grapes, and blueberries. 

A very pleasant meal. The fried eggs are chicken eggs, because that’s what the people want. 

WEDNESDAY
Greek chicken salad, cram

I guess the pasta primavera made me feel like it was the 80’s again, which got me thinking about Greek salad, but I got mixed up with the endless salad bar at Papa Gino’s, and narrowly avoided bringing home sesame seeds, orange jello with mandarins suspended in it, cottage cheese, and rock-hard croutons. 

Instead, I heavily seasoned some chicken breasts with lemon pepper seasoning and garlic salt, roasted that, and cut it up, and served it on salad greens with kalamata olives, feta cheese, and cherry tomatoes. And ranch dressing, because I forgot to get anything else. 

It was fine. You know what would have made it a really nice meal? Some soft, puffy, golden pita bread.

You know what I made instead? Cram. 

You KNOW I’ve made pita bread before. I have no idea what happened this time, but yowza, it was terrible. It was Corrie who said it tasted like cram, and I can’t argue with that. It sure wasn’t lembas cake. 

Anyway, here’s my salad bar and cram dinner. 

It was fine. I’ve had worse. 

THURSDAY
Rubber chicken/pizza

Thursday was pizza #2, because Damien and I went to the NH Press Association dinner and left pizzas at home for the kids. And Damien won TWO awards, first place for Investigative Series and second place for Community Service journalism. I am so proud of him!

They serve the same buffet every year: salad and rolls, butternut squash ravioli, roast potatoes, green beans, and chicken, with some kind of cream cake for dessert. I’m not complaining; I just think it’s kind of funny that someone decided this was the ideal menu and must never be altered. Someone’s grandparents never took them to the Papa Gino’s endless salad bar, and it shows. 

This being a collection of journalists, I was sitting next to someone with a flask of Irish whiskey in his breast pocket, but I settled for a can of ginger ale. This was after two weeks of no sugar, and it absolutely kicked my ass. I fell asleep on the way home and woke up very confused and sick, and went to bring my eggs in from the roadside cooler and one pack was missing! I was so mad that someone would steal my eggs! Who does that?!? Then I realized someone had also left money in the money jar. So, like, someone bought some eggs. This doesn’t happen often, and it took me by surprise. 

The next day I woke up with a terrible ginger ale hangover. All are punish’d.

FRIDAY
French bread pizza

YES, PIZZA. I bought several baguettes and some sauce, and any minute now I’m gonna get up and make a batch of mozzarella, and make pizza with that. Today was the last half day of school for all but one kid, who has one last lingering orphan day on Monday, for some reason. This morning I dropped off the kids and then went to the doctor to see what the heck is wrong with my ankle, because it turns out hoping it will go away by itself for six months is not best practice, even if you ice it at night. 

I got X-RAYS, which I LOVE. I just like seeing my bones. They’re so beautiful! I asked the x-ray tech if I could see them, and he was very pleased to show them to me. He said he thinks bones are beautiful, too, and he just thinks it’s really neat that he can see people’s skeletons, which is how I would hope an x-ray tech would feel. 

As maybe you can see, there is no fracture, hooray! The doctor said probably a sprain that triggered achilles tendinopathy, and I just need to wear a brace for 4-6 weeks, which is fine. She didn’t say “go away, you giant dumb baby, and stop wasting everyone’s time,” which is what I always assume all doctors are going to say. 

Anyway, I picked up the kids and we got home and I basically insisted they watch the dumbest TV show they could think of, because it is summer vacation. I feel like I had something funny to tell you, but I didn’t write it down, so now it’s gone. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 426: You may want to write this down

Happy Friday! I didn’t have anything extra on my calendar this week, and it was sunny every day, so I was able to just . . . do the things I am in charge of, and it was immensely satisfying. 

You know what else is satisfying? Food! Especially when you are hungry! I don’t know if other people have made that connection, or if I just invented it.

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and taquitos

Looks like some bo ssam, spiedies, chicken pie, and pizza pockets, plus of course taquitos. 

Note the peppers! A bona fide vegetable!

The family is not nearly as enthusiastic about Leftover Buffet Saturday as they were when I inaugurated it, but I still absolutely love it as a weekly staple. It saves money (I generally spend less than $10 on Saturday meals), it saves time and mental energy (I always know what’s for supper!), and it doesn’t force me to clean out the fridge once a week, but it sure encourages it. And I have a much easier time throwing out Perfectly Good Food if it’s been given a second chance and still didn’t get eaten. Very Marie Kondo, with a lot fewer nameless ziplock bags of sludge lurking in the back of the fridge. So I’m pretty proud of this new thing I invented: Eating leftovers. Feel free to copy this idea. 

SUNDAY
Omelettes and hash browns

Sunday I did the thing I’ve been threatening to do for weeks now: I cleaned Corrie’s room. First I sent her up to bring down one big bag of trash and as many clothes as she could find, and try to put all the books in one spot. Then she went to a birthday party and I went in and did the fling zone method I invented, and I listened to the first two of “The Fall of the Aztecs” episodes of The Rest Is History. I’m not a big podcast person, just mainly because I’m a late adopter in general, and don’t want to rush into any new fads. But The Rest Is History is FANTASTIC. Incredibly entertaining and compelling episodes about people, places, and events you may never even have thought to wonder about, and all rigorously researched and frequently very funny. Damien often plays it in the car when it’s his turn to bring the kids to school, and it is not exactly PG, but in general I would be comfortable playing it for kids ages 10 and up. 

So that took probably three hours, including removing the old bunk bed and putting a single bed in. Well, first I had to repair the bed, because it was Millie’s old bed (it’s a really pretty white wooden bed with spindles at the head and a sea shell carved on it), and I couldn’t get it out of her house, so I ended up uh sawing it in half. The actual repair was fast, but it took me FOREVER to figure out which piece went where, somehow. (There were four pieces. I’m just. . . not good at some things.) 

I knew this would take all day, so I planned a quick meal: Frozen hash browns and omelettes with your choice of cheese, Canadian bacon, and mushrooms. Nobody picked mushrooms. 

I use about three eggs per omelette, but I speed it up by cracking all the eggs into a bowl and beating them, and then measuring out about half a cup of beaten egg per omelette.

They were not delicate and beautiful, because I was TIRED, but they tasted fine. 

Perfectly fine. I lay down for a while and kept thinking about how tomorrow, I was going to put together a pen for the new ducks, so they wouldn’t keep getting stuck in the stream and need Damien to come get them, but then freak out like lunatics when he does come get them. Eventually I realized I was expending so much mental energy thinking about it, I might as well go ahead and do it.

We have an old trampoline frame, which I put together upside-down and then stretched chicken wire around it and fastened it with zip ties. Easy peasy. By the time they ducks are big enough to jump over the fence, they’ll be big enough to roam freely but still come home at night, and we won’t need the pen. I highly recommend having an old trampoline frame in your yard! You can use it to make an enclosed garden, too. 

MONDAY
Pizza

Monday I planted a ton of flower seeds finally, and I potted a bunch of pansies in hanging buckets from Aldi, and made a little flower area — a garden, I suppose you could call it. This week, you may have noticed, I’m in the business of inventing things that definitely haven’t already existed for millennia — in front of the deck

Daisies and day lilies transplanted from elsewhere in the yard, and clematis seeds in the pot on the left. I feel like I also planted some kind of seeds between the lilies, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see. Life is so exciting when you routinely hide your own actions from your conscious mind. Either way, it won’t matter, because any seedlings I plant will get eaten by rabbits.

But I had fun. I finally got to use my new Japanese weeding sickle I got for Christmas, and dang, that thing is useful in about six different ways. It’s also one of the few tools I put the little plastic sheath back onto when I’m done, because dang, that thing is sharp. (Yes I cut myself.) I’ve also been using my hori hori knife a lot. I really think the Japanese are onto something. 

Monday I also found a NIB electric rotisserie on the side of the road, plus a vinyl countertop in great shape! Corrie also got some kind of wooden shelf thing that she feels will be useful. I don’t know where she gets these garbage-picking ways. Some people are just born pack rats. Probably a recessive gene. 

So, a ROTISSERIE. Just think of the meat we can slowly turn. We can eat like Hobbits! We can eat like Henry VIII! I can make SHAWARMA WITH THAT LAMB I’VE BEEN SAVING IN THE FREEZER. I remember when the kids were little, we would go shopping, and the three exciting things were: Free cookie, lobster tank, and “the chicken ride.” And now we shall have a chicken ride of one’s own. 

I also remember going shopping with my son, who was so incredibly terrible in the store that every time I got back I would tell my husband “I am never taking him out of the house again.” And now he is a children’s librarian. You never know. 

TUESDAY
Musakhan and taboon

On Tuesday, I got some chicken marinating in the morning and measured out the ingredients for bread, wrote a ton, and then did some extensive cleaning out of old flower beds. Then, with the gracious permission of Millie’s family, I dug up a white peony and a purple lupine from her yard and moved them into my yard.

The peony is doing great, as peonies tend to do. The lupine is not super happy about the move, but I think it will pull through. I had bought a bunch of crazy cheap perennials from the local garden club, and added those to this garden, so now it has tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and crocuses in the early spring, and then alliums, speedwell, some asiatic lilies, purple lupines, white and pink peonies, pink dianthus, purple garden phlox, siberian blue irises, and shasta daisies for the late spring/summer. I hadn’t really planned a pink, white, and purple summer garden, but it just worked out that way, and soon it will have a background of goldenrod, so that works out! 

The chicken was mousakhan, or Palestinian chicken. I use this Saveur recipe and I was a little sad because I was a short on sumac, which is an important flavor in this dish, giving it a wonderful sour-bright tang. I subbed in a bunch of lemon pepper seasoning, and it wasn’t quite the same, but not a terrible idea. 

Got home from the afternoon run and made the taboon dough. Here is that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

It has to rise for an hour, so while it was doing that I put the chicken in the oven and did a little more gardening. Then I rolled out the dough and stretched it onto a giant pan and baked it for about 12 minutes.

It was a little bit gummy, to be perfectly honest. I think I rushed mixing the dough. But still, piping hot bread with savory chicken on top, sprinkled with sizzling hot pine nuts and fresh parsley. Pretty, pretty good.

You just tear off what bread you want and then help yourself to chicken, and the juice from the chicken seeps into the bread and it’s pretty great.

I had mine outside. 

And then I went inside and had some more!

WEDNESDAY
Regular tacos, chips and salsa

Wednesday I decided to mow, and gave the pull string thing a mighty yank, and yanked it right out of the lawnmower. So instead of mowing, I tackled the area with the potting table (or, as I absentmindedly called it much to Corrie’s delight, “my plant desk”), where I have just been flinging basically everything yard-related all year. I threw out three bags of rotten crap, tossed some disreputable wood onto the scrap pile, organized my extensive collection of empty flowerpots, dragged a lot of old chickenwire out of the tall grass, and reconfigured the whole thing using that countertop I picked up. 

Pretty swanky! I need to slap something on the underside of the counter to seal the wood and make it last a little longer. There is, in fact, wood sealant in this photo, and it is a thing I may actually do, because it’s June, which is the month when I actually do things. 

Then I quickly made some very boring tacos. I had a “chub” of ground beef — the kind that is wrapped in plastic printed with a photo of meat, which is not as reassuring as they think — and added salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, and cayenne pepper, and we had shredded cheddar, salsa, and sour cream, and tortilla chips. Basic but fine. I was HONGRY. 

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada rice bowls, black beans with spinach

Thursday it suddenly got quite hot. When I get hot, I get angry, and suddenly the things I’ve been ignoring become intolerable, so I often end up doing gross and heavy jobs on the hottest days. Hey, it’s an ethos.

This time, I cleaned out the fire pit, which was all overgrown and kind of foul (SOMEBODY had pulled the old straw off the strawberry bed and just dumped it, and it was rotten and stinky and full of slugs); and then I was so sweaty and grubby I figured I might as well face the six tubs of broken bricks and gravel that I had deserted on the side of the patio when I made the patio uh two years ago and have been avoiding thinking about ever since. 

I thought maybe I could use the sand to fill in some eroded spots in the driveway, which is unfortunately uphill and on the other side of the house. So I did one load, then another, and then another, and then decided, you know, death comes for us all eventually, things fall apart, the driveway will erode, and what can one do, really. Definitely not drag any more of this shit up that hill, I don’t care what Kate Bush says. 

I complained about this problem I had invented until Damien suggested maybe the fire pit could use some gravel and sand, and that happens to be downhill. That man is brilliant. 

I also dragged the old plastic play house out of the blackberries and across the yard to the duck house

and was extremely proud of myself for inventing a system where you could store hay in a special little house that’s sheltered from the rain and conveniently located next to the animals, until a friend pointed out that this what’s commonly known as a “barn,” and I didn’t actually come up with it. Then Damien reminded me of the time when I was pretty, pretty tired and came up with the idea of plastic bowls.

Whatever! I am living life fully over here, enjoying my specially curated grass-adjacent flower area, my outdoor plant desk, and my weather resistant hay house, and if you people keep pushing me, I won’t tell you about the incredibly convenient portable food I once invented, which you can carry with you by, get this, affixing it to a piece of bread. It has lots of protein in it, because it is made of nuts, of all things, that you process in some way. I haven’t worked out the kinks yet, but I am thinking they could be blended up into something almost resembling butter. So it would be spreadable! Wouldn’t that be handy? I bet it would taste good, too. 

(This is a faithful rendition of an idea I actually had one time, when I was, yes, pretty tired, and invented peanut butter. You’re welcome.) 

Anyway, on Thursday I invented chicken enchilada bowls. I took some chicken breasts and seasoned them with Tony Cachere’s seasoning, on the principle that, if it’s orange and sprinkly, it’s probably more or less Mexican or whatever. I browned the chicken slowly in oil in a pan, and then shredded it in the standing mixer. Then I sliced up a ton of onions in the food processor and browned them slowly in the pan that I had cooked the chicken in. Then I mixed the chicken and onions together with a can of red enchilada sauce and put that all in the slow cooker. 

I also made a batch of black beans, and I threw some spinach in there, and left that to cook all day. 

Jump to Recipe

Late afternoon, I made a big pot of rice, and we had rice with the saucy, oniony chicken, beans, shredded cheese, sour cream, and corn chips, with lime wedges. PRETTY GOOD. 

I was pretty pleased with myself for inventing this entirely new dish. As I was writing it up just now, I went to add the new tag “chicken enchilada rice bowls” and discovered that I had already used that same tag.

Do you know what this means? I INVENTED IT TWICE. Science should study me. That’s how good I am. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle casserole 

Sophia volunteered to make dinner and this is what she wants to make, so I am not arguing. 

And that’s my week! Last night I dreamed I had signed a contract for a new book, and I came up with this brilliant plan of taking every essay I had already sold to this publisher, and just billing them for it again. Toward the end of the dream, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this wasn’t how you do it, and then I woke up. 

I tell you, between me and the ducks, there’s just not a lot of brain action around here lately. But it is Friday!

Print

taboon bread

You can make separate pieces, like pita bread, or you can make one giant slab of taboon. This makes enough to easily stretch over a 15x21" sheet pan.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups bread flour
  • 4 packets yeast
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

Print

Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 16-oz cans black beans with liquid
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1-1/2 tsp salt
  • pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Put olive oil pot of Instant Pot. Press "saute" button. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes until onion is soft. Press "cancel."

  2. Add beans with liquid. Add cumin, salt, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Close the lid, close the vent, and press "slow cook."

What’s for supper? Vol. 424: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Fire Cherry Bomb Pop eXtremes: Spice to Nice

Happy Friday! We are having a COUSIN day, which happens all too infrequently. My brother is up with two of his sons, and they and Corrie are happily working out the rules of some complicated board game. 

SATURDAY
Japanese food

Saturday was an uncharacteristically sociable day for the Fishers. Corrie had a birthday party, Lucy had her senior prom, for which she dressed in the way she saw fit:

and Damien and I went Out. Lena had bought tickets to Stephen Malkmus, but couldn’t make it, so she gave them to us. First we went out to eat at the new Japanese restaurant in town, and had some very delicious steak tips

then we got gelato and strolled around

and then it was concert time! Super fun. 

It has taken me almost 30 years, but I have finally warmed up to Stephen Malkmus/Pavement (whereas Damien has been a longtime fan). I do think about an hour was as long as I want to hear it at one time, though. It escaped me, previously, how sad some of the songs are. Being there live and letting the layers of sound reverberate around and seep in was really quite moving. What do you know about that!

Lucy’s prom was on a boat on a lake (they opted to spend their money on boat tickets, rather than on a bunch of balloon arches and streamers and bubble machines, and I think that was brilliant), and it rained and thundered the whole time, but they had a good time. We all had a good time! 

SUNDAY
Chicken on salad, strawberry rhubarb pie

Sunday I had to go shopping, and also did a bit of gardening. The original plan was to make a salad with chicken, almonds, and strawberries, but I had the first rhubarb of the season from my garden, so instead, I made some croutons to bulk up the salad (greens, chicken, toasted almonds, feta cheese, and croutons)

and then used the strawberries for a pie. I never have the proportions that any strawberry-rhubarb pie calls for, but it doesn’t really matter. I can’t find the recipe I followed, but it was a pretty simple one. I think it just used flour to thicken it. 

I made a big batch of pie crust

Jump to Recipe

and made one really big pie, with a very sloppy lattice crust

Not bad! I took this picture to show that you can leave the rhubarb in much smaller pieces than I previously realized, and it still tastes good. 

I love rhubarb so much. 

MONDAY
Pokish bowls

I had shrimp from something or other that I had defrosted but didn’t cook, so I wanted to use it today; but most of the family (bafflingly) doesn’t like shrimp. SO I bought some ahi tuna for poke bowls, which just about everybody does like. 
BHUT, I realized that the kind of tuna I’ve been serving raw is maybe not super duper the kind you are supposed to eat unless you’re trying to acquire a really close and personal group of friends, by which I mean parasites. Oops. 

So I looked up how to cook tuna, and it turns out you’re just supposed to sear it really quickly. I truly do not understand how this is safer than eating it raw, but this is what all the pictures looked like. (The kids requested just plain, no seasonings crusting the outside.)

However, I don’t see any signs that we have worms or anything, so I guess it’s fine? I don’t know. 

I also sauteed up the shrimp really quickly with a little Taijin seasoning, and I made a big pot of rice, and we had the fish and shrimp and rice, plus salt and pepper cashews, sugar snap peas, and mangoes, and sesame seeds. 

Delicious. I see that I also got some frozen pot stickers, which I don’t really remember, but that’s why I take pictures!

TUESDAY
Bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches

Tuesday was the day I decided to Do Something About The Egg Situation. We have a huge backlog of duck eggs, which the kids will eat if they’re baked into something, but if they’re still eggform, they don’t like them. 

So I cleaned out an old broken mini fridge, set it up on the side of the road with an ice pack, printed out and framed my PayPal and Venmo QR codes, and painted a big sign:

I am selling them six for $4 and $7 for a dozen, which is pretty cheap considering how big they are, but I sure have a lot of eggs! I’ve gotten a few sales, and I feel pretty good about it. 

For supper, Corrie helped me fry up a few pounds of bacon

and I fried up a bunch of chicken eggs in the iron frying pan. I rustled up a bunch of mason jar rings and sprayed them with cooking spray, just to keep the eggs a little bit contained. It worked pretty well!

I let them cook most of the way, plucked the rings off, and then flipped them briefly. 

Yummy sandwiches. 

Mine had American cheese, because sometimes that’s exactly what you want. 

WEDNESDAY
Carnitas, tortilla chips, beans and rice

Wednesday I made the fastest carnitas ever. I used this great recipe

Jump to Recipe

except I used Diet Cherry Coke and tangerines, and it’s such a great recipe that it still turned out great. I actually just let the tangerine peels cook right down and then mashed them into the meat, rather than fishing them out, and it was great. I spread the meat out on a tray and threw it under a very hot broiler for a few minutes, and oh man. Good stuff. 

We had a bunch of leftover rice from the poke bowls, so I sauteed up some garlic and onions, then a whole bunch of spinach, a can of kidney beans with the liquid, and a bunch of jarred salsa, plus cumin and chili powder and maybe some paprika. It was excellent. 

I had my carnitas with sour cream, salsa, and plenty of cilantro, and it was such a nice meal, I skipped the chips. 

THURSDAY
Oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, chips, strawberry shortcake

Thursday two of my brothers came over! I haven’t seen them for such a long time. 

We had oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, chips, and strawberries on angel food cake with whipped cream. I forgot to take any pics of dinner, but it turned out pretty great. Very satisfying on a cold, drizzly day. Here’s the chicken recipe:

Jump to Recipe

and it was definitely the right call to do store-bought cake and canned whipped cream, so I could use up all my energy yucking it up with my brothers. 

I also got a fairly insane alternate dessert from Aldi: 

Fire Cherry Bomb Pop eXtremes: Spice to Nice. I don’t even know what this could be, but I’m anticipating some kind of cinnamon situation, like Atomic Fireballs? We haven’t eaten them yet, so I will report back. I am grateful that I don’t have the job of coming up with completely new kinds of food every six weeks, though. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

My brother and his kids were very good sports about camping out in the living room with the dog, who is hysterically in love with them, but mostly my brother, and the dog is . . . well, he’s getting confused about what kind of emotions he’s feeling, but they are quite intense. So that’s exciting for everybody. 

And in the time it took me to finish this post, the game has gone the way of so many board games, alas. Maybe we need some Fire Cherry Bomb Pop eXtremes: Spice to Nices to smooth things over. 

5 from 1 vote
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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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Carnitas (very slightly altered from John Herreid's recipe)

Ingredients

  • large hunk pork (butt or shoulder, but can get away with loin)
  • 2 oranges, quartered
  • 2-3 cinnamon sticks
  • 4-5 bay leaves
  • salt, pepper, oregano
  • 1 cup oil
  • 1 can Coke

Instructions

  1. Cut the pork into chunks and season them heavily with salt, pepper, and oregano.

  2. Put them in a heavy pot with the cup of oil, the Coke, the quartered orange, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves

  3. Simmer, uncovered, for at least two hours

  4. Remove the orange peels, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves

  5. Turn up the heat and continue cooking the meat until it darkens and becomes very tender and crisp on the outside

  6. Remove the meat and shred it. Serve on tortillas.

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Beans and rice

A good side dish, a main course for meatless meals, or to serve inside carnitas, etc.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups uncooked white rice
  • 1 15-oz cans red or black beans, drained
  • 1 20-oz can diced tomatoes with some of the juice
  • 1 diced jalapeno
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 small red onion, diced
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • chili powder
  • cumin
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Cook rice. Add rest of ingredients, adjusting spices to taste. If it's too dry, add more tomato juice. 

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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.

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 422: Habemus papam! Let’s eat!

I can’t even think of a lame food pun for the title, that’s how excited I am! But before we get back to chattering about the pope, here is what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and french bread pizza

Not a very sumptuous collection of leftovers,

so I splurged a bit on these frozen pizzas that everybody likes. Damien and I also polished off the last of the butter chicken, and I can report that it used its time in the fridge very well, just getting more delicious. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, vegetables

Honestly it says “vegetables” on the blackboard menu, but I don’t think that really happened. My personal vegetable consumption has gone way, way up, but I haven’t managed to drag most of the rest of the family into that, yet. 

I did have my first asparagus harvest, though! 

You’re supposed to wait three years before you start to pick it, so that’s what I did. Now I’m wishing I had planted more! But I’m very glad I got this started. When I first started gardening, I was all about bright, showy annuals. Then I started investing a little more in perennials. A few years ago, I started thinking about what I really wanted out of life, and laid in some long-term beds. It’s just a garden, but, yanno. 

Also Sunday, I spent a few hours lopping off blackberry canes and brambles. Of which we have thousands and thousands. Wicked, wicked things. 

I comforted myself by making some rice pudding. We had quite a bit of leftover basmati rice from last week, so I excused it from Leftover Day and basically followed this recipe except I skipped the raisins

because the kids don’t like cooked raisins. I should have left them in, because I DO like cooked raisins, and I was the one who ate most of the rice pudding. I mean I ate so much that I think I shouldn’t make it again for a year or so, until I grow up. But it was wonderful pudding. All four adult duck ladies have been laying every day, and duck eggs are SUPERB for baking. 

Speaking of superb, the new ducklings have been doing just great. They’re growing insanely fast — I mean like I leave the house for two hours and they’re visibly bigger when I get back.  Lots of videos on my Facebook page if you want to see their shenanigans! 

MONDAY
Chili verde, tortilla chips

Monday was Cinqo de Mayo, which is something I didn’t even know anything about until I was in college, and it felt very global and cosmopolitan to celebrate this exotic holiday by going to Applebee’s and encountering my first avocado. Then I started to hear about how “uhhhh, no, it’s not Mexican fourth of July, STUPID” and I was like, oh, sorry. Now apparently it’s considered kind of culturally gauche to mark it at all? I truly don’t know. I saw this and felt a kinship:

The moral of this story is, cultures may shift, but ham is forever.

We had no ham or cigarettes or Aquanet in the house, but I did take May 5th as an opportunity to make chili verde, which Damien and I love and no one else does, oh well. I roasted up the tomatillos,  peppers, onions, and garlic, and then put them in the food processor with cilantro, and because I hadn’t put on my contact lenses yet, I REMEMBERED TO WEAR GLOVES. 

This is half-dumb, because yes I protect my fingers from getting peppery, but if I’m not wearing contact lenses, my eyes water because of the onions; but it’s also half-smart, because if I’m wearing glasses, I can take them off and actually read the recipe. You may THINK that the solution would be to put on contact lenses to protect eyes from both peppery fingers and oniony fumes, and then to add reading glasses to I can also see small print. However, this is not taking into account that I have lost every single one of my reading glasses, and I’m really just not ready for a beaded lanyard tethering me to the necessary glasses nestling on my bosom all day like some kind of cartoon librarian. I’m not ready!

Anyway, here is the recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I made a slight tweak: I roasted the garlic in its skin, and then just squeezed the soft insides out into the food processor. It was a bit faster than peeling all that garlic before roasting it, and the taste was great. 

I cooked the chili all day and it turned out fab. It’s been chilly and rainy all week, and this wonderfully spicy meal was very warming, and produced a decent amount of broth without me having to add any beer or extra broth. 

Served it with cilantro, shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, lime wedges, and tortilla chips.  

Yum. I think the kids had Spaghetti-o’s. 

TUESDAY 
Pizza

Tuesday were two rather draining appointments and then day 2 of digging out blackberry root balls. Again, I say: HORRIBLE plants. See how bare the dirt in in the area where I was digging? 

That’s because blackberries won’t let anything else grow! Even wild mint, which is every gardener’s invasive nightmare, got chased out of this area. 

However, eradicating blackberries is great for working out any pent-up emotions you might be harboring. I had my shovel, my Japanese gardening knife, my pickaxe, and my heavy duty tarp, and by the time I put them away for the day, I was way to tired to feel anything except hungry. 

Happily, I had made three pizzas in the morning: One plain, one pepperoni, and one black olive. Sooner or later I will have to face the fact that we’re on the cusp of becoming a two-pizza family. I used to make SIX extra large pizzas. I do make more than we will eat for one meal, because the kids like leftover pizza; but we’re not keeping up, harrrrooo. (That was just a crooning sound of sorrow for the march of time.) 

Tuesday I also made a new garden bed! Look at that tremendous soil. 

This area is near the stream and also next to the compost heap, so you could probably live off the soil alone, without even planting anything. However, I am going to plant corn this weekend. 

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, cheezy weezies

Wednesday I cleared out my pumpkin patch and heaved a bunch of compost onto it,

and then I worked on the new fence a bit, and then I dug out more compost and ferried that over to the soon-to-be corn patch. 

I would apologize for filling a food post with so many photos of dirt, but I know you guys! You like looking at pictures of dirt! Also you can see that my wattle fence held up just fine over the winter. I would like to add more this summer, but I don’t know if I will have time. I suddenly have lots of projects planned. 

Speaking of projects, of course Wednesday was the beginning of the papal conclave! I got to watch the cardinals all taking their oaths in the Sistine Chapel, and that was very cool. We Catholics are so good at drama. 

On the way home from school, one of the kids wanted to open a bank account, which always takes a million years longer than I expect. But at least we finally got it done. And I did snap this attractive photo of the bank office, with a somewhat disconcerting corporate poster. 

They’re as stable as a squirrel, great. I couldn’t really complain, because it turned out the kid didn’t have any actual cash for the $10 minimum deposit to launch the account, and neither did I, and then they said well maybe it only needed to be $5, and then they said probably a dollar would be okay, so I found some change, and she deposited that. I made sure she understood that was her Christmas present this year. 

We just had hot dogs and cheezy weezies for supper, and again I had worked up quite an appetite with my pickaxe and my buckets! Crazy how delicious a hot dog can be when you’ve been working outdoors, not to mention watching a conclave and looking for spare change. 

Wednesday night, I started marinating the meat for Thursday’s dinner, because I knew it was gonna be a busy day. Damien has been sick all week, and when I say “sick,” I mean he’s LETTING ME DO THINGS FOR HIM and SLEEPING and TAKING MEDICINE. So you know it’s pretty serious. I think it’s bronchitis, and he’s starting to feel a bit better, but it’s rough. 

THURSDAY
Chicken shawarma, fresh pita, tiramisu

Thursday was when we were celebrating Moe’s birthday, which was actually the day before. In the morning, I started the tiramisu, which is usually one of Damien’s signature dishes. I followed the  recipe he uses, except maybe I can blame the conclave, because I got distracted and mixed together the custard and the whipped cream! So rather than six layers, there were only four. Gutted, as the brits say. 

All I could do was sift some cocoa powder over the top, put it in the fridge, and hope for the best. Then I prepped all the shawarma fixings, made some garlicky yogurt sauce, and that’s when the white smoke came out! Most of the kids were at school and Damien was still conked out, so I made the ducks watch with me.

This is very exciting for Shaq, Zippy, and Tulip, because they were born in that time period when everyone was briefly a sedevacantist, so they’d never had any pope before, much less one from Chicago with Hatian grandparents and a special affection for the poor in Peru!

I did drag Sophia, Elijah, and Damien in before Leo appeared on the balcony, and wow, that was exciting. Wow, wow, wow. Here’s my camera roll, when I found it needful to take multiple photos of the TV screen, because where else am I going to find a blurry picture of the pope?

Anyway, boy, that was a thrill! Still had to make supper, though, so quick quick I started the pita dough before I had to run out for the afternoon drive (and you can see I got a couple more pictures of our local church, which had already switched from black to yellow and white bunting).

I still haven’t really settled on a good pita recipe. I ended up using this recipe from Food By Maria, and no, I didn’t read it all the way through, what do you take me for. So I was a little dismayed to find that you have to let it rise twice, and the second rise is a full hour, and that each pita bread takes six minutes to cook. Actually I think I’ve made this recipe before, and probably found it by googling “simcha fisher pita,” but I still had no idea what it said. 

I started the meat cooking about an hour before dinner, and Moe and Clara came over and chatted with me while I fried the pita, and honestly, everything turned out great. 

Shawarma was delicious. I was out of red pepper flakes, so I put Aleppo pepper in, and also I couldn’t find the garlic press, so I put the garlic cloves in a bag and hit them with a meat tenderizer, and put in big smashed chunks. When I took the chicken out of the marinade, I fished out all the garlic and strewed that over the top, along with the red onion quarters. I think I’ll do all those things from now on! 

It was completely delicious. The chicken was so tender, it didn’t need to be cut up, but had turned itself into lovely little bite-sized chunks, and the generous onion quarters sort of cuddled themselves around the chicken, and it was just a real treat all around. 

The pita was also quite good. It did not separate into two layers, but it was chewy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and had a good, rich flavor. 

I’ll probably use this recipe again, even though it was a bit of a hassle. I did two pans at once, so it took me about half an hour to fry up twelve pieces. 

Supper was very jolly! I wish everybody could have made it, but it was a good crowd. 

Then we had the tiramisu, and it was not a failure! I was afraid that, because the cream was mixed into the custard, the sweetness would be too diluted and it would taste bland; and I was afraid that I had mixed it so much that all the air would be knocked out of the cream and it would be thick and dense. Neither thing happened!

Pictures of tiramisu always look a little ghastly, for some reason, but here’s the inside:

Just so you can see how the lack of layers worked out. But it did set up nicely. Anyway, everyone liked it and I was so relieved.

Today is Moe’s awards ceremony, then tomorrow is his graduation, and then Sunday he’s moving to his new apartment, and Monday he starts his new job! Glad I got one last shawarma into the boy before off he goes. Harrrooooo. 

If you couldn’t tell by the Frog and Toad shirt and the Ferdinand the Bull tattoo, he’s going to be the new youth librarian at a public library. That was my father’s first professional job, too. He would have been very proud of Moe! I am. I’m proud of all my kids. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I have already made the mac and cheese, and we are out of milk so I made it with leftover heavy cream from the tiramisu, and I used so much cheese, I think it may be illegal. 

So, like I said, habemus papem! I don’t like every last thing I’ve heard and read about him, but I like an awful lot of it, and overall, I’m incredibly hopeful and excited. The way he speaks and the way he has comported himself so far is immensely appealing. I’m so ready for some good things to happen. And if it doesn’t, well, at least we have food. 

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Spicy Chili Verde

You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs pork shoulder
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for cooking
  • 2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)

For the salsa verde:

  • 4 Anaheim peppers
  • 2 habañero peppers
  • 4 jalapeño peppers
  • 4 medium onions, quartered
  • 12 tomatillos
  • 1 head garlic, cloves peeled or unpeeled
  • 1 bunch cilantro

For serving:

  • lime wedges
  • sour cream
  • additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.

  3. When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want. If you roasted the garlic in its peel, just squeeze the insides out and discard the peels.

  4. Put the tomatillos, peppers, garlic and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.

  5. In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.

  6. When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.

  7. Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.

  8. Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 421: Spwing gets sewious

Happy Friday! If you follow me on social media, you know this week was DUCKLING WEEK. Over three weeks ago, we put six eggs from our flock in the incubator (the first batch having failed). Our attempts at candling (holding the eggs over a light to see what’s inside) were inconclusive, and to be honest, I figured we were just drearily waiting out the clock and then we’d throw them away, because obviously they weren’t going to hatch and everything is terrible and nothing turns out. Very sad. 

But I was WRONG AGAIN. 

I’ll tell you all about it! But first, here is what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet plus hash browns

Some very fine leftovers, too. The oven-fried chicken from last week was still great, even if it looks a little gnarly in this photo. 

Looks like we finally polished off the last of the lamb, too. 

SUNDAY
Butter chicken, basmati rice, cucumbers, naan

Sunday I was planning a bunch of yard work, but it was cold and drizzly, so all I managed was to prune my peach tree. 

Peach trees are supposed to be shaped like cups, so first I clipped off all the growth in the center, so it would get plenty of light and airflow; then I clipped off anything that seemed dry or damaged. Then I lopped off some really high or heavy branches, to encourage it to make fruit where I could reach it, and not to get too weighed down. I really hate pruning, but it has to be done! I probably could have been a little more aggressive, but it’s definitely an improvement, and I’m less worried that the tree is going to split this year. I dearly love this tree and want to take good care of it. 

It really was nippy out, though, and starting to rain in earnest, and the warm kitchen was calling. I have been using this butter chicken recipe from Recipe Tin Eats, and it’s just about perfect, so I haven’t tried any other. The only change I made was to use my fancy garam masala that was a gift, and mmmmm it was nice. 

I love this butter chicken so much.

Somehow makes me nostalgic for my childhood back in India.

I made a big pot of basmati rice to go with it, and then felt it would be a shame not to have some fresh naan, as long as I was in the kitchen and had already wrecked the place up, not to mention it was chilly and drizzly, not to mention I really really love naan.

I generally use the King Arthur Flour recipe, and although it never rises as much as the recipe says it will, it comes out tender and pleasant. 

I made a double recipe, which is supposed to yield 16, but I cut the pieces bigger, so I got 12. I use an iron frying pan and cooking spray, and I wipe the burnt flour out of the pan with a wet cloth in between each piece. I also brushed them with melted butter before throwing them in the oven to stay warm. I sometimes don’t bother with this step, but it really makes them extra lovely. 

I was gonna make some kind of peanutty-coconutty cucumber dish, but considered my audience and just served plain cucumber slices. The butter chicken is not really spicy but it’s VERY rich, so it’s nice to have a cooling accompaniment with it. Excellent meal altogether. 

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas, chips and salsa

Monday morning, Damien discovered how to make me get out of bed in two seconds, rather than my customary 46 minute slither: He said one of the eggs was shaking! Sure enough, there was a little chipped section and you could even see a silly little orange bill poking out from time to time. 

I was just so amazed. I really thought those eggs were done for, but no! Most definitely somebody inside, trying to get out and get going. 

Here’s a short video of that stage. You can hear the duckling peeping from inside the egg, and you can hear little answering peeps from the other eggs!

It took quite a while. After about six hours of very slow progress, the tiny prisoner finally managed to crack the shell in a long line, and you can see the little yellow feathers sticking out (so we knew it would be a pekin, rather than a Swedish black cross. The only drake is a pekin, and two of the ladies are pekins and two are Swedish blacks). The hatching process was flurries of activity as the bill pokes out over and over, and then some long periods of just sort of pulsing and breathing, and then long periods of quiet resting, followed by another spasm of activity. Hard work!

Then fiiiiinally, finally, the little dude managed to get free! Poor little thing, he was exhausted. 

But he immediately wanted to be up and staggering around, with plenty of toppling over, extravagant stretching, and resting his poor head on the incubator floor. Elijah and Sophia were home and named him “Shaq,” because he is so mighty and powerful.  

The ducklings stay in the incubator for 24 hours after they hatch, to keep them warm and in a humid environment. It was lots of fun watching his down dry out and fluff up as he got stronger and steadier and more able to hold his head up. Within a couple of hours, he was helping himself to a little snack of his own discarded and rather goopy eggshell, bleh!

Eventually I had to make supper, and, feeling a little awkward with the duckling right on the kitchen island, I shredded up a rotisserie chicken and made quesadillas. 

Two other eggs had started to crack by this point, and we kept waiting for them to hatch, but after many hours of no apparent progress, we finally went to bed.

Here is Shaq, patiently waiting for some siblings to come out and play. 

TUESDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese, and sausage or ham sandwiches

Got up Tuesday morning and saw a ball of black fluff lying still in the incubator, and  it sure looked dead. But it wasn’t! It hopped up and started to muscle its way around! What a relief. Two ducklings!

We were expecting a Swedish black from this one, because the egg was somewhat smaller, and we were correct. I was thinking that his silly black and orange feet and black and orange bill were cross-breed colorations, but actually now I think those are within the normal range of Swedish black coloration. Anyway, he is definitely silly-looking. 

Corrie named him “Zippy,” and he is a bit of a punk and a troublemaker. 

The third egg was still slowwwwwly getting chipped away, and we could hear plenty of peeping, but it was starting to get a little nerve-wracking, and I was really worried that it would tire out before it could break through. But then FINALLY, finally, just before dinner time, baby #3 emerged. We actually got to see this one break out of the shell right in front of us. 

Another pekin! But he looked poorly, quite weak and tired from that long struggle. Also Zippy kept nipping and pecking at him, so I pulled Zippy out a few hours ahead of schedule and put him in the brooding box with Shaq. (The red light is from a heat lamp. Looks a little weird, but keeps them toasty warm.)

Dinner was bagel sandwiches, 

and once again I felt rather boorish, frying up a panful of fresh duck eggs about a yard away from a close relative.

Just all part of the rich tapestry of life. Good sandwiches, too. 

I was still worried about the third duckling. He was looking a little sturdier, but his eyes were still kind of swollen and he seemed like he needed to rest a lot more than the others did, so I fed him a little warm sugar water from a spoon before bed. 

and that is pretty much the cutest thing I’ve ever been a part of in my life. Then we went to bed and hoped for the best.

WEDNESDAY
Caprese chicken burgers, tater tots

Wednesday morning, three healthy ducklings! Shaq and Zippy had worked out their differences and were snuggling happily, and #3 was looking fluffy, alert, and wonderful. 

He’s such a sweetie. It had been determined that this duck was Benny’s to name, and so when the kids got home, she settled on “Tulip,” which is perfect. 

Wednesday was a rigamarole as usual, but it turned out there was no catechism, so I got home not insanely late, and we had tater tots and chicken burgers, which I gussied up with tomato, basil, and cheese on baguettes with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. We had sliced provolone and also a bit of that homemade mozzarella left, which was yum. 

AND I ATE MINE OUTSIDE. I think this is the first time it’s been warm enough for that. Quite delightful. Except that I had a chance to take a good long look at the space between the patio and the house, and I couldn’t help but notice that there were three Christmas trees there. Which is not very House & Garden of me. Also, way more blackberry bushes than I wanted to be seeing. 

THURSDAY
Gochujang pork ribs, rice, quick pickled carrots

Thursday it was warm and lovely, and after I got supper started, I decided it was time to wage serious war on the blackberries. Wild blackberries are good to eat, but they’re aggressively invasive, and they choke out anything else you want to grow; and the canes are absolutely bristling with really wicked thorns, and even if you avoid them, they reach out and grab you as you pass by., and I’m not making that up! They reproduce by seed, cane, suckers, tip layering, and by any passing idle thought, and anything you to do them just makes them stronger and angrier.

I tell you, between this and the ducklings, and the dog getting millions of ticks on him, and the cat going berserk for reasons of his own (mouse in the house, plus general neurosis. He did catch the mouse eventually; neurosis still flourishing) it’s been quite a week of nature in all her wondrous works! Quite a week.

I had done a bit of blackberry lopping on Wednesday, but I devoted several hours to it on Thursday. It really is more a matter of control than eradication, but if I manage to get them to grow more in a different spot and less right next to the patio, I’ll be happy. My plan is to dig up as many root balls as I can, and then keep clipping them throughout the spring and summer whenever they come up, and then to put down a tarp in the fall, and starve them of light and moisture. It won’t work, but that’s what I’m going to do. (I’m not opposed to herbicides in the right situation, but this area is too close to my gardens and the ducks.) 

I’m sure this is way more than you want to know about blackberry suppression, but the truth is, I can’t find my reading glasses, so I really don’t know what I’m writing. It’s anyone’s guess. 

Anyway, for supper I made a gochujang marinade for a bunch of boneless pork ribs

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and set that to be saucy, and then I got some carrots pickling. I can’t find the cutting disk for my food processor, and all I had were baby carrots, so I was reduced to hand-shredding baby carrots on the grater, and it was not ideal. I ended up chucking them in the food processor and pulsing it a few times, so we basically had pickled carrot nubbins. STILL DELICIOUS.

I have a recipe for pickled vegetables,

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but I didn’t bother looking it up. I put together 1.5 cups of water and 1.5 cups of white vinegar and 1/4 cup sugar and probably 1/2 tsp salt, and heated it up and stirred it until the sugar dissolved. Then I let it cool, then added the carrots. 

Before supper, I got a pot of rice cooking, drained the vinegar off the carrots, and broiled the pork. I turned it once and basted it with the leftover marinade, and oh man, that pork turned out spectacular. No camera filter here; just the afternoon sun and the glory of gochujang. 

Sweet and spicy and a little sticky on the outside, and really juicy on the inside. I found some crunchy noodles and it was a very nice meal. 

Then I suddenly got clobbered by an inescapable nap. The kids had gone to a movie and when they came home, I was just waking up, and they asked if there was any pork left. What? Yes, definitely?? There were like ten ribs left over. 

But wait. Had anyone cleared that plate of ten succulent pork ribs off the table after dinner?

Yes! Someone had.

And you’ll never guess who that someone was. 

Ah well. So the kids went back out to get themselves some frozen pizza, and we all agreed that Sonny is a very charming and winsome guy, so we won’t murder him. Then we pulled some more ticks off him and took the ducks out for a little frolic, and I dunno, guys. Maybe it’s just the nap talking, but I think it’s a beautiful life. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Today we’ve had multiple doctor appointments, unrelated to the violent stomach bug that seems to have come for a visit.

However, the apple trees are flowering, the tulips I planted are about to join the daffodils, my strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, and garlic are all coming up nicely, and I’m thinking of putting in basil, pumpkins, eggplant, and maybe corn and potatoes this year. I got a free bench off Facebook marketplace, and I’m going to give it a nice coat of paint and drag it down to the stream this weekend. I’m hoping to get back to the treehouse this weekend, and I have some exciting plans for a shade garden in the front of the house. 

And did I mention? we have ducklings!

All three apparently healthy and fit. Even though I’ve seen it twice before, I cannot believe how fast they are growing. We have put the incubator away for the year, because that was quite enough excitement for one spring. 

Peep peep! 

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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. 

5 from 1 vote
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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.

What’s for supper? Vol. 417: It’s all good

Happy Friday to you! To me, it is Friday when my car is still in the shop, AGAIN, and my wallet is still lost, and I just found out that, when I use a specially gentle and kind voice to wake up my teenagers in the morning, that is ANNOYING.

But nevertheless, it is Friday, and when I look out most of my windows, I can’t even see any snow. So it is, as the tow truck driver said, “all good.” 

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers ala Yum Yum

We had some very fine leftovers this week, and very abundant ones, too, so I didn’t buy the customary frozen food supplement. The two main popular items were meatballs from St. Joseph’s Day, and corned beef from St. Patrick’s Day. 

I sliced the corned beef really thin and microwaved it, just like me auld da used to do back in county Donegal. Then I toasted some pumpernickel bread and had a sandwich with corned beef, sauerkraut and yum yum sauce.

Not exactly a reuben, but extremely tasty. 

I was a little flummoxed about how to tell My Fitness Pal about the meatballs and the corned beef and so on, and that is how I discovered that this app does, in fact, have a maximum number of calories you can enter. 

It also tells you how much you will weigh if you consume that many calories for five weeks.

Really good to know. Thanks, M.F. Pal. 

SUNDAY
Waffles, sausages, OJ, peach crisp

Sunday, I had a burning desire to Use Up Things, partly because we were having something of an “Oops, No Money” week and thrift was called for, and partly because we just have so many things, and I wish to have fewer things. 

So I used up a bunch of duck eggs and made dozens and dozens of waffles, and served them with the maple syrup I made last week, sausages on the side. PRETTY NICE. 

Here is the waffle recipe I use, from Quick Breads, Soups, and Stews by Mary Gubser. 

Earlier in the day, I went out to take down the jugs and bottles collecting sap from the trees, and you know what, they were all full again. So I did one last boil, this time all the way to 220 degrees F. After it boils, you let it sit for a few minutes

and then you whip it up and press it into molds, and that is maple sugar candy. 

Just a little treat I like to call “GOSH I’m glad I’m not trying to live off the grid or we would starve within a week.” 

I also rooted through the freezer and found the last two bags of peaches from last summer! One smelled a little off, so I tossed it. The other, I made into peach crumble. 

As far as I can remember, I heated up the peaches with some corn starch, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla, and then made a streusel topping with flour, butter, brown sugar, salt, and look I don’t really remember what I did. They turned out okayish and now there are no more peaches in my freezer, hooray! I doubt this year is going to bring such an avalanche of peaches like last year, but if it does, I’ll still be excited, and I’ll still freeze a bunch, and I’ll still drag my feet and have some hanging around until next spring. And I still won’t write down my recipe. 

Speaking of spring! Look what arrived!

These are eggs laid by our own gals. In a few days, we’ll be able to tell if they’ve been fertilized or not. If they have, they’ll stay in the incubator, warm and humidified, getting turned regularly, and in 28 days we should have some lovely homemade ducklings. We decided not to get chicks (as in chickens) this year, because the incubator is enough excitement. 

MONDAY
Beef and broccoli on rice

Monday, Corrie had a doctor appointment in the morning, and I kept her home, so I had myself a kitchen assistant. I found some beef I had stashed in the freezer and cut it up, then showed Corrie how to peel and mince garlic and ginger and cut broccoli florets, and then I ran out to do my afternoon errands. 

Came home and finished the sauce and got some rice going, and we had easy beef and broccoli from Damn Delicious. 

Corrie was very proud of herself, as is appropriate! The flavor is really good, but I always forget how thin the sauce comes out. It has you add water, so next time I hope I remember to skip that. 

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips

Tuesday was supposed to be biryani day, but Sophia was planning a train trip and really wanted grilled ham and cheese before she left, so I was happy to switch the menu up. 

Tuesday is also the day I tried to fill out forms that required a kid’s birth certificate, and not only could I not find it, I had somehow lost the file cabinet it’s stored in? So eventually I found that, but the birth certificate was not in it. So I said FINE, I’ll order a new one. All I have to do is show them a picture of my driver’s license. Which . . . I have lost, because I lost my wallet. 

I would make a “ho ho, middle aged women be disorganized” joke, but I have always been like this. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken noodle soup, mozzarella sticks

Wednesday was supposed to be soup and bread day, but I got into Super Accomplishment mode in the morning and got a ton of stuff done, which was great, but I forgot to get any bread started. 

So in the early afternoon I made THE world’s fastest soup (I sauteed some carrots, onions, and celery in oil with salt and a lot of pepper, then added some cubed chicken thighs and about a gallon and a half of chicken broth and some parsley and set it to simmer, and when I got home, I dumped in a bag of noodles and cooked them. 

Using the very last cash in the house, I picked up some mozzarella sticks on the way home. 

No regrets. It was a chilly, drizzly day and this meal absolutely hit the spot. 

THURSDAY
Chicken biryani, naan

Thursday theeeeee car broke down again. Last time it broke down (yes, less than two weeks ago) they said it was probably the alternator, but it turned out to be just the battery! So they put a new battery in, all great! Except the exact same thing happened again, so I’m guessing it really is the alternator. 

I’m not gonna lie, after the adrenaline work off from scampering around to get people where they needed to be (school, other school, other school, work, and train station), I had a pretty low moment, feeling like I am just . . . too old for this. All of it. I should have a car that runs, and I should know where my wallet is, and I shouldn’t be on a first-name basis with the tow truck guy. 

But it actually worked out well, because I was put into a slough of despond where I really couldn’t avoid thinking hard about certain situations, and I concluded that OF COURSE I AM NOT GOING TO FRICKIN BUILD A SUN PORCH THIS SUMMER. Ever since the fall, I’ve been kidding myself that it was going to work out, but one thing after another nibbled away at any money I tried to salt away, and there are other, far more important things to deal with, and it’s just not the right time. I know I make a big deal about Forging Ahead, but it’s no virtue to be persistent when it’s so clearly a dumb idea. I’m sad but not devastated, and I feel at peace about this. 

(Probably it seems like I’m making a big deal out of this, but I don’t think I’ve gone a single day in the last six months without thinking about my future sun porch. I’d have three guys out to give me estimates for excavating jobs, and I’ve been looking into home equity loans so we can maybe replace the roof, as well, and also there’s a bunch of gardening stuff I didn’t do because I was expecting to be too busy with my sun porch. And it all just went poof. For now! We have a whole year to make it happen next year.) 

However, I had cleverly run home after the car broke down but before the train station, and made THE WORLD’S FASTEST BIRYANI. Oh I was so proud of myself. I think start to finish, from cold kitchen to full crock pot, it took me 32 minutes to make. 

I used this simplified recipe, which I modify by doing all the steps and then putting it in the crock pot to cook for several hours, so the liquid gets absorbed and the rice gets cooked. This is the only way I’ve ever had success with biryani!

Then when I got home, I felt a very strong urge to make naan. So I made a double batch of this recipe from King Arthur Flour. And gosh, I wish I knew what I did different, because it was the lightest, puffiest, prettiest naan I’ve ever made. 

We had run out of butter and ghee, so it’s just bare and unadorned, but look how lovely those bubbles are. 

AND YES, ONE CAME OUT WTH A HEART IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Which I gave to Damien, but not before I took a picture. 

I made sixteen. It’s a pretty quick recipe. Five minutes to throw the dough together, an hour to proof it, twenty minutes to cut it up and let it rest, and then just a few minutes of frying for each piece. 

I did use the iron frying pan this time, but I hedged my bets by adding a little cooking spray in between every few pieces of naan. I also had a damp towel handy to wipe the burned flour out of the pan in between each one. This makes a HUGE difference, and I don’t know why more recipes don’t warn you to do this. 

See my naan! 

The biryani was absolutely delicious. I chopped some cilantro and toasted some almonds in the microwave, and together with the piping hot bread, it was such a great meal. 

Then we watched an episode of Deadwood when the kids went to bed. I don’t know if you’ve seen this show, but holy cow, it’s so good. Not for the faint of heart, but it’s just excellent TV. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti 

Friday I scheduled two doctor’s appointments (yeah, we are making sure we are all caught up on all our shots, for REASONS), and what do you know, I had also scheduled two parent-teacher conferences that same morning. I would say I need a secretary, but I’m sure I would just hire some idiot, and we’d be right back where we started. 

Well, if you are the praying sort, maybe put in a request that I find my wallet. I have pulled apart all the rooms I remember being in last time I had it, and it’s just . . . gone. It has my driver’s license, debit card, and credit card in it, plus a few other items, and I’m starting to think I somehow dematerialized it? Or, like, sleepwalked down to the stream and threw it in? Or maybe it’s in the Instant Pot. Maybe I’m using the Wallet-in-Pot method, and it will turn out to be the easiest, juiciest, tenderest wallet you’ve ever eaten. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 416: San Salami

Happy Friday! I went HOMEMAKER BERSERK this week. I know it’s Lent, but I can’t help it. It’s spring, there are a ton of feast days and birthdays, and I’m just being muscled around helplessly by the general optimism in the air like a mouse by a cat. Look, if you didn’t like that sentence, you can have your money back.

Last Friday I collected the last of the sap from the maple trees, tromped around in our tiny woods and collected a ton of dead branches, and started boiling sap. 

And I do mean started. I was using Damien’s little wood stove that he used to have in his “office” (a converted ice fishing shack), and I guess it would work to heat up a small, enclosed space, but it did not do a great job boiling sap.

I sat out there for over three hours feeding dry wood into the stove, and I never got the sap to boil. (I know it has a large surface area, which makes it slower to boil, but that’s the point: You’re trying to evaporate as much as possible, so that’s why it’s in a pan instead of a pot! I did cover it until it started to steam.)

It was pretty nice out there, anyway, but I was a little disappointed. I packed the remaining sap into some snow and put the batch I had heated into the fridge. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers?

Saturday Damien and the girls were still in NYC, so I was pretty busy doing chores. I actually went a little crazy (by which I mean I attempted to reach levels of cleanliness that other people consider a baseline) and took apart the recycling bins and scrubbed them out, scrubbed the wall and floor in the kitchen where they sit, and also took two large baskets of rusty ice skates to the dump. I had put them on the side of the road in the fall when we tore down the porch, but astonishingly, nobody wanted two large baskets of rusty ice skates, and while I was working on admitting this to myself, it snowed and kept on snowing, soooo they’ve been frozen in place until this past week. Phew, that felt good. 

On Saturday the door to the duck house fell off. We knew it was going to happen eventually, so that was a bit of a relief, too. But I forgot to buy bigger hinges, so we had to just sort of barricade the door back on in the evening

creating the impression that we are terrified of ducks. Which is not completely off base. 

SUNDAY
Chicken Caesar salad

Sunday after Mass, I took Benny and Corrie to the second largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the state, which was, well, it’s a small state. It was a cute parade, and it even stopped raining for most of it. 

Then I made my second attempt to boil sap, this time on the propane fire pit on the patio. This was equally unsuccessful, and then I ran out of propane anyway, and it started raining again, so I put the sap back in the fridge again, and worried about the outdoor sap buckets because it was getting pretty warm and some of the sap was getting pretty old. 

However, we got an egg! Our first duck egg of the year. They started laying MUCH sooner last year, but who knows why a duck does what she does. Definitely not the ducks.

First egg was a doozy:

It was a double-yolker, and I used it to make caesar salad dressing.

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I roasted some chicken breast and grated some parmesan cheese, and made a bunch of croutons with stale bread cubes toasted with melted butter, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. 

A fine meal. That dressing will wake you up!

MONDAY
St. Patrick’s Day and Syrup Day!

Monday was actual St. Patrick’s Day. We decided to do corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes this year, rather than the full breakfast for dinner we do sometimes. This meal is more Irish American than Irish Irish, but so is St. Patrick’s Day, so there you go. (Apparently in Ireland, it was common to have cabbage with bacon, and the corned beef was for export, I think? But when they came to America, the Jews had lots of tasty corned beef brisket for cheap, so they went with it. Likely the Irish immigrants were eating imported Irish beef. 

I, for my part, decided to do this:

This is me wanting desperately to boil my sap, but also not wanting my newly-scrubbed kitchen to get all sappy. People will fight me and say that it’s not sap that condenses on the walls and runs down in light brown rivulets; what’s in the air is water vapor, and what I’m seeing is rivulets of my own kitchen filth. And they’re probably right! but either way, I didn’t want to see it; so I put up plastic and set a fan in front of the window and got to berlin’.

Actually first I strained the sap through some cheesecloth, to get the bugs and scraps of bark and whatnot out. Here you can see how clear the fresh sap is. It looks just like water.

And here is the bucket I was worried about:

If you are serious about syrup, you will not boil old, cloudy sap. It’s not dangerous (although the cloudiness is caused by bacteria); it’s just not gonna taste right. Some people will mix a little old sap in with new sap, and that masks the flavor. I decided to hang onto it and boil it separately, to see what happened. 

So here is the good, clear sap, after about eight hours of boiling. You just boil and boil and boil it, and keep adding more sap in as it evaporates and makes space:

Here is the finished syrup:

Lovely and absolutely delicious. It thickened up as it cooled. The dark spots are just coagulated syrup, which serious people strain out, but I do not. 

Then I boiled the bad sap up (I only had about five gallons, so it only took about three hours), and it did thicken up and get sweet, but has a faint, I don’t know, library paste taste to it? I am going to use it to make sticky maple walnut buns, I think. 

I didn’t get a good pic of the final syrup, because it was dark out by that time. But I decanted it into six jars, four for the older kids, one for us, and one for Millie, about four ounces each; and then about six ounces of second-rate syrup in a big jar. It needs to be refrigerated, because I didn’t do the whole sterile canning process. 

SATISFYING. So satisfying, altogether. I frickin did it. From tree to jug to bucket to pan to jar. I will probably make waffles this weekend for the nice syrup. Or, it’s, sigh, supposed to snow today and tomorrow, so maybe we will do sugar on snow. 

ANYWAY, I eventually got around to making dinner, and didn’t want to give up the stove space, so I made it in the oven. I just hunked the meat, five pounds of red potatoes, three pounds of carrots, and one cabbage in wedges, into a giant pan with some water, covered it loosely with foil, and cooked it at like 400 for about an hour and a half, which is not long enough, but corned beef is corned beef. 

There is plenty of leftover meat, so I will probably make Reubens this weekend.

TUESDAY
Chicken spinach quesadillas, chips and salsa

On Tuesday, I decided to prep Wednesday’s dessert. Wednesday was St. Joseph’s Day, and St. Joseph is our family’s patron, and I love him, and wish to cook and bake for him (us).

I decided to try a new-to-me recipe for Zeppole di San Giuseppe from Sip and Feast, a site which has given me so many great recipes. I remember the first time I made a choux pastry (this is before I ever saw The Great British Baking Show), and I was sure I had messed it up, because it’s so rubbery. 

But that’s how it’s supposed to look! I’m very glad to know you can make this ahead of time. I put it in a ziplock bag and tossed it in the fridge. 

Then I made the vanilla custard, and I used duck eggs, which are so rich and bright. 

Covered and refirgerated that, too. Duck eggs are big, and the yolks are proportionally bigger compared to the whites, so you can easily use two ducks for three large chicken eggs. 

Zeppole, if you are wondering too, is probably ultimately from the Latin “zippulae,” a little treat. There is a legend that, in Egypt, Joseph supported the family by selling nice little pancakes. There’s also a theory that “zeppole” comes from “zeppa,” meaning “stump,” or wedge of wood, and Joseph, carpenter, I dunno. Or possibly from “serpula,” like a coiled snake, and you make these pastries in a coiled pattern. I actually kind of love how etymology is often just a bunch of educated guesses, because people are weird and go wandering around the world making pancakes as they go, and talking about it to people who may or may not speak the same language. 

We were having chicken quesadillas for supper, and I made the chicken thighs in the Instant Pot. Just threw them in with some water and pressed the “poultry” button. When the meat was cooked, I drained and shredded it and added cumin, paprika, chili powder, and salt. 

I had my quesadilla with chicken, cheddar, and spinach. 

You can see how I was rushing – the cheese is barely melted! But I was starving, so they tasted great. Do you know, I had my first quesadilla when I was over twenty years old. I remember saying, “What’s THAT?” in a loud, obnoxious voice. It was guacamole, and I thought it looked horrible.  I hate to think what would have happened if I had been hanging around Abu Simbel and this bearded guy with a cute baby tried to sell me some pancakes. I would have been so rude. 

WEDNESDAY
St. Joseph’s Day!

The feast day began with three dentist appointments. We have been going to this dentist for something like eighteen years and I love her to pieces. I think it’s so smart to put a fun-house mirror in the waiting room. The kids find it very entertaining, but nobody has to touch it with their grubby hands. 

When we got back, Benny and Corrie helped me pipe the zeppole. 

The recipe says: “Pipe 3-inch circles in two layers, starting from the inside on the first layer. Leave a hole in the top of the second layer for the pastry cream. Make sure to leave at least 3 inches of room between each because they will expand during baking.” We made ours a little too small, but that just meant slightly daintier zeppole, and more of them!

While the zeppole were baking, the kids went to play outside WITHOUT JACKETS, because it is SPRING, and I got out the cheese-making kit Lena gave me for Christmas. 

I was a little nervous about the milk. It doesn’t have to be fancy organic milk or anything, but it’s not supposed to be ultrapasteurized, which is when they bring the milk to a higher temp than just for pasteurizing. I had one gallon of Aldi whole milk and one of Hannaford, and they just said “pasteurized.” They both turned out to be fine. 

And cheese-making turns out to be easy! There are a lot of steps, but nothing difficult. You just need to pay attention with the timer and the thermometer. Basically you heat up some milk, add some rennet (a tablet dissolved in water) and some citric acid at some point, I forget when; heat it up some more, and then let it sit. While it’s sitting, it magically separates into curds and whey!

Then you cut up the curds  

and slowly stir it while heating it again. 

drain the whey off

and heat and drain the curds it a few more times. I did it in the microwave, but you can also use a water bath. 

And then YOU HAVE CHEESE. You’re supposed to add salt and then stretch it like taffy and then shape it and put it in cold water, but I got confused and put it in cold water before I shaped it, so the first batch was shaped, uh, like this:

But very clearly cheese! Magic!!!!

Meantime, the first batch of zeppole came out of the oven and I was DELIGHTED with the results. So light and puffy! 

and they left these cute little rosettes on the parchment paper. 
 

I made a second batch (bigger ones this time) and put them in the oven, and then started a second batch of cheese. This one turned out prettier!

I think I needed to be a little faster stretching it, to get those little bumps out, but I was still delighted with the results. 

Benny and Corrie made some antipasto platters, and I showed them how to make salami roses. You just fold the slices of salami over a narrow-mouthed drinking glass, overlapping the slices, and then gently upend the glass and slide the salami rose off. 

If we have another baby, I shall name her Salami Rose. 

Didn’t they do a lovely job with the platters? Benny did the green ones and Corrie did the red. 

Damien, meanwhile, made probably the best sauce I have ever had. And I lived in Rome for three months. I truly cannot tell you how savory and delicious it was, and I’m very sad I didn’t get good pictures. He also made some tremendous meatballs, using this recipe, and sausage, and we had that with spaghetti. 

Dang, it was so good. A sauce to savor. Meatballs to remember. A dinner to dwell on. 

Lena and Moe came over for supper, which was super fun! Those big kids are turning out so great.

After we ate, I filled the zeppole with the cream filling, dusted them with powdered sugar, and topped them with fancy cocktail cherries, which were dark red and had a somewhat sour taste, very nice. 

I was pretty proud of these. 

For comparison, here is my first attempt at zeppole, a few years ago:

 Getting a star tip for piping sure makes a difference. And the Sip and Feast recipe is vastly superior to whatever I did the first time. I think those ones were also filled with instant vanilla pudding. But you know what, I remember being way to busy and tired to make zeppole, and I did it anyway. Yay past me! Yay present me! (Future me is on her own, though.)

I had some leftover pastry dough, so I piped this rather silly St. Joseph logo

and dusted that with powdered sugar, and we ate that, too! Buona festa! It was all great, all of it. Oh, I also made five loaves of garlic bread, because we are not savages. 

THURSDAY
Hot dogs and chips

Because Mama needs a break.

I actually love hot dogs. Mustard and sauerkraut, mmm. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

I’m a little torn with the pizza, because we have lots of yummy things in the fridge left over from St. J day — marinated peppers, artichoke hearts, fancy olives, nice parmesan, not to mention that wonderful mozzarella. Obviously I won’t be putting meat on, but I’m conflicted about the rest of it, because despite appearances, it is a Friday in Lent. 

Oh, but that reminds me, I didn’t tell you how the mozzarella tastes! It tastes great! Fresh and flavorful and creamy and light. You can make it firmer or softer, and you can skip the salt, and you can add all kinds of things to it (basil, prosciutto, etc.) when you’re shaping it, and make a log, or little pearls, or even cheese sticks. I’m so delighted with this kit. It comes with five or six rennet tabs, and you only use a quarter of one per gallon of milk. A gallon of milk makes, well, I forgot to weigh it, but it looked like over a pound of cheese to me. Anyway I see soooo much cheese in my future. The whole thing took like half an hour to make, and it was easy and entertaining. You can also make ricotta with this kit, which I haven’t tried yet. 

And that’s-a my story. Oh, except also I just ordered sighhhhh an incubator, because a certain child once missed seeing an egg hatch at school because of Covid a few years ago, and this has been an enduring and understandable sorrow, so Promises Were Made. I think if we do manage to hatch out some ducklings, we’ll have to name at last one of them Salami Rose. The rest can all be Joe.

Print

caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 12 anchovy fillets, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two large lemons' worth)
  • 1 Tbsp mustard
  • 4 raw egg yolks, beaten
  • 3/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Instructions

  1. Just mix it all together, you coward.

Fisher Family Mandatory Lent Film Party returns! #1: The Rabbi’s Cat

As we limp our way through another Lent, we’re continuing the annual tradition of gathering the kids for a movie on Friday nights. (This goes along with our other Lent and Advent tradition of going screen-free from 7:00-9:00.) The movie doesn’t have to be overtly religious, but it should have some spiritual theme (not necessarily Christian). We aim for movies we have reason to believe are well-crafted (a “good message” is not enough!), but if we miss that mark, we can at least talk about why it was bad, and whether there were any good parts. 

For reference, the kids at home are now ages 21, 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10. In a pretty naked appeal to the masses, I started this year’s Mandatory Film Party with a 2011 animated French film called The Rabbi’s Cat, directed by Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux, based on Sfar’s comics series. It is set in 1920’s Algeria, and is mostly in French, with nicely clear English subtitles.

Here’s a trailer:

Okay, so this is not a kid’s movie; but it’s also not quite as goofy as the trailer makes it look. It has some pretty graphic murder (although the victims had it coming), a little bit of obvious but not graphic nudity and sex (between married people who are dizzily in love), and I was a little taken aback at how horny the animators clearly were for the rabbi’s daughter, Zlabya. There is also a short, disturbingly slapstick interlude where one character explains through illustration how he escaped violent pogroms in Russia and stowed away to Algeria inside a crate of sacred books. 

I just mention all this for full disclosure, but the general tone of the movie is . . . well, the main character is a cat, who is very cat-like in his worldview. He leads a comfortable life as the coddled pet of the rabbi’s daughter, and gains the gift of speech after eating their parrot. He becomes obsessed with being bar mitzvah’d, initially for ignoble reasons, and the rabbi grudgingly agrees to teach him what he needs to know.

Through a series of friendships and encounters, the rabbi and cat end up setting out through the desert, with the starry-eyed Russian painter, an evil Russian exile, a learned Moslem sheikh, and a warmly self-assured black African waitress, under the combined flag with the Mogen David nestled into the Imperial two-headed Russian eagle, because the painter has a dream that, somewhere in Africa, there is a glorious city of black Jews where everyone lives in peace and harmony. 

This turns out not to be accurate! But you can’t help but feel that they have sorta kinda meanwhile made a brotherly city in their weird little caravan, where everyone ardently believes what they believe, but makes room for other people’s lives? That makes it sound preachy, which the movie definitely is not. If anything, it is a little too comfortable sort of shrugging its cinematic shoulders and casually wondering who can say what’s possible. 

It’s odd, because it very explicitly brings up hugely contentious questions, like “Which is better, Islam or Judaism?” and “Who is a Jew?” and it just . . . shrugs. The people who can shrug survive, and those who can’t, don’t. But it does it in a way that feels real for the characters. It’s super comic book-y, but also hits on something very familiar and relevant: The question of how to sort through what is and is not indispensable about their identities, and their relationships with God and with each other.

The movie also has something on its mind about speech and language, but it’s not really developed, unless I’m missing something. The cat learns to speak, then loses that power after he obstinately invokes the name of God, who he doesn’t really believe in, to help the rabbi pass his French language test. Then the cat can mysteriously speak Russian, so he converses with the painter; and eventually he gets his speech back, and I forget whether this is before or after he has some kind of epiphany about God. It’s hard to say whether God is real in the movie or not, but he’s definitely real to some of the characters. 

I honestly can’t say whether my vagueness on various plot points is my fault for not paying close attention, or just because the film is so hard to pin down. But if it sounds like I didn’t like it, I’m telling it wrong. I cannot overstate how charming and entertaining and gorgeous and exciting the whole thing was, from start to finish. We absolutely just went with the ambiguities, because it was so fully a pleasure to see and hear, from the opening credits to the end. The music, the animation, the dialogue, the COLORS, and the way so many sequences were framed, were all a nonstop feast. And the colors! 

It was also very funny, with the whole family laughing out loud several times. There is also a completely unexpected cameo which I don’t want to spoil, but it was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on screen for some time. 

Was this a good Lent Film Party film? Ehh, maybe not so much, but it was definitely a movie worth watching. Best for kids high school age and up. (My kids are irreversibly corrupt already, so I didn’t feel terrible that the younger kids watched it.)

***

Next: We are thinking of watching A Hidden Life, but last year we watched The Tree of Life and every single one of us conceived a seething and enduring hatred of Terrence Malick. I have never been so disappointed in a film in my life. It had so much promise, and so much skill went into it, and it got such fervently great reviews, and it turned itself into a ludicrously trite and ambiguous vehicle for stock images that would have been at home in a commercial for Charles Schwab. Boy, did we hate that long, long movie. We bonded over how much we hated it.

And A Hidden Life is also very long. What should we do? Is this one more narratively cohesive? It is Tree Of Life-y, or is it different? If Tree of Life is 10/10 Malicks, how many would you rate Hidden Life?

I also bought a DVD of the miniseries Pope John Paul II, with Karol W(I ain’t lookin that up) played by Cary Elwes, about whom the kids broke my heart by saying, “Oh, he was in Saw!” rather than, “Oh, he was in Princess Bride!” (I told you they were corrupt.) So, tell me what you know about this miniseries, because it would probably be a two-nighter because of its length. It’s okay if it’s not a cinematic masterpiece; it just can’t be a turkey.

***

Oh, we watched The Rabbi’s Cat on Kanopy. Looks like you can also rent it on Apple TV+.

Here’s a list of the other movies we’ve watched for Lent in past years, with links to ReelGood so you can see where to stream them, and my review (if any):

Noah (2014)
where to stream 
My review

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
where to stream
My review 

Lilies of the Field (1963) 
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Secret of Kells (2009) 
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Saint Philip Neri: I Prefer Heaven
available via Formed
 (My longer review here)

The Miracle Maker (1999)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

The Jeweller’s Shop (1989)
available via Formed
 (My longer review here)

The Reluctant Saint: The Story of Joseph of Cupertino (1963)
available via Formed
(My longer review here)

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

Boys Town (1938)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

Fatima (2020)
where to stream
(My longer review here)

The Song of Bernadette (1943)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Ushpizin (2005)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Calvary (2014)
where to stream

I Confess (1953)
where to stream
(My longer review here) 

The Robe (1953)
where to stream
(My longer review here)

The Trouble With Angels (1966)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Babette’s Feast (1987)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Passion of the Christ (2004)
where to stream
(My full review here)

There Be Dragons (2011)
where to stream
(my longer review here) 

The Prince of Egypt (1998)
where to stream

 

 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 414: EVIL Friday to you

A few years ago during Advent, I found this in among Corrie’s papers:

And ever since then, every time I feel like I’m not quite hitting the right tone for some particular occasion, I think to myself, “Ah, evil feliz navidad.”

So, evil Lent to you! Or, wait, Evil Cuaresma! Here, on this, the very first Friday of Lent, is an illustrated list of all the food we ate, including Fat Monday, Fat Tuesday, and honestly Fat Thursday, including some incredibly juicy and delicious steaks! YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT. EVIL CUARESMA! 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with corn dogs and bulgoki empanadas

On Saturday, the kids were helping one of their siblings move, so I had no shopping buddy, which meant that EYE got to pick out the dessert, the weekend “silly cereal,” and the frozen food accompaniment for the leftover buffet. For dessert, I picked something called Lepre-cones

just strictly for the name. I myself would not try to market a quiescently frozen treat with “LEPRE” in the title, but that’s just me. My father used to sing a song about leprosy, with the line “there goes my eyeball, into your highball,” but that is all I can remember, and it seems like enough. 

To go along with the leftovers, I picked corn dogs, which most of the kids don’t like, but which Damien and I do; and something called “bulgogi empanadas,” which sounds like something I would make. So I had those two things for supper, plus some leftover rice, because it was Saturday and there are no vegetables allowed. 

The bulgogi empanadas tasted like school cafeteria beef stew stuffed into empanadas. Very sad. The corn dogs were great, though, because corn dogs are great. 

SUNDAY
Oddly sweet pizza

Sunday after Mass, for the last day of February vacation, we drove to Salem, MA to the Peabody Essex Museum, mainly to see the Flemish Masterworks exhibit. It was FANTASTIC. Lots of variety, nicely organized into sacred art, portraits, silly stuff, and landscapes, including sculpture, which I don’t usually associate with Flemish art. I just about passed out looking at a Rubens shoulder up close. Here’s some things that caught my eye. 

 

The rest of the museum was weird but good. They have a very wide variety of art, and they tend not to organize it by date, which is a little disorienting, but thought-provoking. Their art cards were not great, and I really wished for more information sometimes, but they weren’t too editorial, anyway. It is an extremely confusing building with not enough signs, and I spent about a third of my time lost, but I did keep accidentally wandering into interesting rooms, including lots of unexpected animals. Overall highly recommended – the museum, and especially this exhibit. It will be at PEM through May 4 and is traveling around the country. 

The Museum is in Salem, MA, which is THE Salem, of witch trial fame, and long ago, they decided that they were going to squeeze every drop out of that history in the tackiest way possible, which you have to admire. I mean it has all the gorgeous hand-carved colonial architecture and preserved cobblestone and quirky bay windows and whatnot, but also every last damn thing has a witch on it. Right next to the museum was the Witch City Mall, and we briefly considered getting pizza at the pizza place that was (witchily?) decorated with skeletons and a giant Frankenstein head, but it had such a heavy feeling of apathy and ennui, even for a mall, that we decided to look elsewhere. Those who are familiar with the Witch City Mall can tell me if we missed out on anything!

We ended up going to some pizza place in nearby Beverly, which serves NY style pizza. I think it was Siciliano Pizza or something along those lines. Anyway, we don’t get NY style pizza too often, and the kids were rather shocked by the thin crust and extremely sweet sauce. Is that typical? I was expecting the thin, crisp crust, but the sauce was SO sweet. 

We got one plain, one pepperoni, and one with tomatoes, feta, and spinach. The feta was also very sweet!

However, we were all Museum Hungry, so it was fine. Got home and collapsed, broccoli-fashion. 

MONDAY
Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans amondine

Back to school! And Damien reminded me that the heating element in the oven, which we replaced kind of a short time ago, broke again; so my plans to roast the giant eye of round roast beef I splurged on were foiled. (I asked about it on Facebook, but accidentally called it a rib eye, which is too splurgy for me, even for Fat Monday!)

ANYWAY, the upshot was that Damien just cut it into steaks and pan-fried it, and it was INSANELY DELICIOUS. 

Everybody got their own thick little juicy little half-pound steak, and I also made mashed potatoes and green beans amondine. I basically followed this recipe, which has you boil and blanch the string beans, and then in a pan, you melt a bunch of butter with thyme, garlic salt, and dijon mustard. I didn’t have dijon mustard, but I did have some of that stone ground whole mustard with the little popping seeds in it, and it was great. You add the string beans back into the butter and heat them up along with toasted slivered almonds (reminder that you can easily toast almonds in the microwave!) and a little more thyme. Yum. 

I really messed up the mashed potatoes, though. I just didn’t boil them long enough, but didn’t realize it until I had already drained the water out. So I tried to make up for their undercookedness by running them through the food processor; and when that didn’t go so great, I moved them to the Ninja blender and whipped the hell out of them. They did end up more or less smooth, but there was definitely Something Wrong with the texture. Oh well!

FAT TUESDAY
Dinner at the Winchester

Tuesday was Mardi Gras, and we have somehow established the tradition of going to Chili’s for Mardi Gras, so that’s what we did. I had some kind of chicken rice bowl thing and just about everyone else had some form of bacon burger and fries; and then we decided to do a “choose your own ice cream” adventure at Price Chopper. 

I picked Dulce de Leche Churro ice cream

and it was amaaaaaazing. 

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti

Wednesday of course was Ash Wednesday, and also a dentist appointment, and also time for certain people to freak out in for no apparent reason in a pretty spectacular fashion. Then we went home, had spaghetti, and remembered we were dust. 

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, vegetables and dip; birthday cake

Thursday was Elijah’s birthday, and he graciously postponed his birthday meal (which will be Damien’s special elaborate lasagna) until the weekend, but he and Sophia did make a cake. 

Twenty-one candles, count ’em. My stars. Between that and the thing at the dentist where we went to schedule Lucy’s next six-month check up and discovered that, in six months, she will be too old to see the pediatric dentist anymore, is. . . quite a thing. Last I checked, all my kids were either four, or nine, or possibly 11. But not older than that! (The other week, when Corrie turned ten, I said, “Wow, you’re a whole decade old!” and she said, “That sounds so old! Probably because ‘decade’ sounds like ‘decayed.'” So you can see she’s inherited my cheery outlook on life.) 

On Thursday I also had my very first stress test, just to rule out cardiac issues since my body is still being kind of a weird guy. My heart looks great, and the visit notes said I was in good shape for my age, which, I’ll take it.

But I was chatting with the nurses as I was on the treadmill, and of course we got to talking about kids, and I mentioned (and simultaneously realized) that I have four teenage daughters. And that was also pretty good to hear (even from my own lips) because I’ve been going around feeling like such an absolute LOSER lately, and I didn’t really know why. But that explains it! I have an acute case of teenage daughters. Who are delightful and beautiful, funny and smart and helpful, interesting and creative, but . . . it would be developmentally inappropriate for them to spend a lot of time thinking about whether they are constantly making their mom feel like crap, and I am happy to report that they do not do this! So we’ve got that going for us. Anyway, my heart is fine. I chased each kid down and hugged them individually the other day. That’ll show ’em. 

And soon it will be spring, for real. We’ve had quite a bit of thawing here, so the morning drive is full of brilliant fog banks as the snowbanks evaporate, and what’s left is a grimy, tired snow without much fight left in it. Most likely it will snow again, but it really is truly actually kind of almost spring, finally, almost.

I tapped my maple trees on Tuesday, with only the finest, most high-tech equipment

and they’re actually running really slow, for some reason. Some of them are not running at all, and I have no idea why. I tapped above a root, on the south side, with a slight upward angle, when the nights are cold and the days are warm. Nothin’. But I am getting some sap from a few trees, and I’ll boil what I get, and that will be that. Maybe next week will be better. Maybe they’re taking a gap year. A sap gap. I don’t know. 

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese, tomato soup

And I am super duper looking forward to it. I love grilled cheese and tomato soup. Also I have been using My Fitness Pal to track calories for just over a month now, and let me tell you, something has happened to food in general in that time, because it tastes amazing.

I have tracked calories before, but not using an app, and for some reason, the little ring that shows how many calories I have left in the day is very motivating. Check back in six months and I’m sure I’ll be writing another affirming essay about how good it is to learn to be comfortable in a large body, rather than worrying about calories all the time. You know, I’m fairly full of sap myself. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 413: Erasmus B. Dragon

Happy Friday! Sorry for the interruption with the website last week, and thanks a lot, OBAMA. 

We have been on February vacation all week, and there has not been one single day when I’ve been sure what day it is, except I knew for sure that the month was almost over and I had cleverly arranged for all my writing deadlines to cluster together in one giant, unfortunate . . . cluster.

But, food! I’ll just do a few quick highlights from the previous week, because I tried a few new recipes. 

One day we had
Bacon potato soup and french bread.

The french bread is, of course, not a new recipe

Jump to Recipe

but I got cute and made sixteen little personal loaves, rather than four big ones. 

Because it’s such a simple recipe, I ventured outside my comfort zone and just added flour until the dough looked right, rather than meticulously measuring it. I’m trying to give myself credit for knowing how to do things I’ve done a thousand times before.

Turned out great! At least with bread.  

The soup was more or less following this recipe from Sugar Spun Run, and maybe it’s the My Fitness Pal talking, but I had a really hard time feeling like a recipe that includes bacon, all the bacon grease, milk, heavy cream, sour cream, butter, AND CHEESE (and additional cheese, bacon, and sour cream for the top!!!!!) really truly needed as much butter as this recipe called for. So I used a little less butter. I turn sideways, people question where I went. 

It’s one of those soups where you cook it for a while, then put half of it in a blender and puree it, and then add that back into the soup. I’ve only recently become familiar with this technique of soup made out of itself, and it’s pretty good. Quite a rich, thick soup. 

I did add a bit of cheese to the top, along with a little chili powder and chopped scallions, but mostly to add color, since it was quite beige.

I’m not gonna lie, this is a ridiculously delicious soup. The kids did NOT like it, though. They really resent when I serve bacon in any other form besides, you know, baconform. Which I understand! But also, sometimes I want to make things that I like.

We also had, let’s see, meatball subs, tacos, cuban sandwiches with beans and rice, and another new recipe: Ginger chicken from a site I haven’t used before, The Woks of Life. He gives very specific instructions for each ingredient, and it was pretty easy to follow, although I fudged a few things (mirin instead of Shaoxing wine, one kind of soy sauce instead of two, and onions instead of shallots), and my sauce didn’t come out as dark as his. Most likely I rushed it, which is the story of my life. 

But YOU GUYS, it was still SO GOOD. 

Tons of flavor, tender and gingery, wonderful comfort food. I think just about everybody liked it, which almost never happens. Corrie even requested it for her birthday meal (although she later recanted that in favor of . . . well, you’ll see). 

I also made some quick sesame broccoli, which is just broccoli sprinkled with sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, pepper, ground ginger and garlic, and sesame seeds, and then roasted. Very easy and popular. 

We spent part of the week getting ready for Corrie’s party (I have now decluttered every single room downstairs, and one room upstairs!). I made a paper mache pinata in the shape of a dragon egg (which, if you’re not familiar, is the same shape as a balloon) and some kind of half-hearted decorations (a “mystical cave entrance” in the living room doorway largely made of brown shipping paper twisted into vines and tacked onto the wall, with some green and purple foil easter grass thrown in).

The big thing was the DRAGON CAKE. I’m proud of this one. 

First I baked the cake layers. I almost always use box cake mix for younger kids’ birthdays, because they care a lot more about the look of the cake than the flavor, and their parties include so much candy and snacking that, by the time we get to cake, no one’s palate is especially fine tuned. 

So then I made a batch of rice krispie treats, and smooshed it together as compactly as I could, and formed it into a dragon-ish shape. I was very proud of remembering to form it on top of the pan I had baked the top tier of the cake in, so I knew it would fit onto the finished cake. 

It would have been smart to put a layer of parchment paper under it to keep it from sticking, but I didn’t think of that! It did stick a bit, but not disastrously. 

I made the dragon on Thursday for a party on Saturday, so it would have plenty of time to dry and get stiff. I also put a cup under his chin to prop it up while it dried, because it was droopy.

On Friday, I attached edible gold foil to the belly, chest, nose horn, and tip of the tail with frosting, and then I used hardening cookie frosting (comes in a pouch at Walmart) to attach a row of spikes from the top of his head to the end of his tail. The spikes are black candy melts cut into triangles. I made a feeble attempt to put them on in size order, but mostly just shoved them in there.

Then I made the wings! I had the bright idea to use fruit rolls. I cut up some plastic straws, laid them out, stretched the fruit rolls over one side and then flipped them over and stretched another layer on the other side, and trimmed each wing into scallops; and then I used a kitchen torch to seal the edges up so they wouldn’t come apart.

I put a wooden skewer inside the long straw, to make it more rigid, and to make it easier to anchor in the dragon’s body. These also got laid out overnight to stiffen and dry out, so they wouldn’t droop. 

I tried several different ways of covering the dragon’s body, with frosting, scales, etc., and finally reluctantly settled on fondant, which I haven’t used much before. This was nerve-wracking, because at first it looked like he was just wearing a big red sweater.

and truly, I say unto you, it took KIND OF A WHILE to get him all covered and smoothed. But I kept going, and when I molded it a bit and added claws and some details with black icing, it looked okay!

I iced the cake with black and grey frosting, carefully set the dragon on top, and added more gold foil, gold coins, and gold chocolate eggs, and also a bunch of vanilla Oreo cookies that I had sprayed with gold spray.

AND HERE HE IS.

Five guests were able to make it, the pinata worked perfectly (didn’t fall apart too soon, but wasn’t completely impenetrable) and she had a wonderful time. 

Phew! We had Walmart pizza for supper and then collapsed like bunches of broccoli, respectively. 

Sunday, I had a profound desire to not go shopping, so we had our customary leftover buffet, plus a charcuterie board of whatever I could find in the fridge, which included some fancy things we got for Christmas, that I recently rediscovered when I cleaned my room. I sliced up the leftover french bread, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with flaked kosher salt, and toasted it

and it was a damn fine meal.

For reasons I can’t explain, I decided to make cake balls for dessert. I have never made or eaten cake balls before, and I found the process slightly gross (you bake a cake, let it cool, crumble it up, and scrunch it into dough with big gobs of frosting. Then make balls, chill them, and dip them in candy melt), but they did turn out looking cute and cheery.

I had one and was underwhelmed; but to be fair, I may have underbaked the cake, so maybe the whole thing was a little more damp than necessary. WHO AMONG US. Anyway, the kids liked them okay. 

MONDAY I finally went shopping, and we had
Buffalo chicken salad

Salad, buffalo chicken from frozen, shredded pepper jack cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, grape tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing. I’m being tiresome about calories, so I skipped the dressing on mine.

That night, Corrie made ice cream pies for her CALENDAR birthday, which, according to Fisher Rigamarole, is a distinct holiday from your birthday PARTY. 

She requested graham cracker crust, black raspberry ice cream, mini marshmallows, skittles, and gummy worms. She didn’t want any whipped cream or cool whip or cherries or anything. 

Tuesday
Market Basket subs, Doritos, bloomin’ onion, ice cream pies

On Tuesday we went to get her EARS PIERCED. Which was not fun, but she’s been wanting it done forever, and she’s very happy with the results. Then we went to get Market Basket subs. 

Are Market Basket subs especially good? Not especially! But we often get them when we’re going to the beach or on a day trip, so I guess they spell T-R-E-A-T. I have to admit, they’re cheap. They taste like Subway subs and cost what Subway subs should cost.

So we had that and chips and then I guess I felt weird not cooking anything, so I made some bloomin’ onions. You can use a knife to cut an onion into a blossom shape, but it’s way easier if you have an onion cutting device, WHICH I DO.

I made an attempt to take a soulful, romantic photo with one of my beautiful onion lotus blossoms, but I just ended up looking exhausted, which, by strange coincidence, I was.

I lost the recipe booklet that came with my onion machine, so I followed this recipe, which includes a nice zippy recipe for dipping sauce. 

Turned out pretty okay! I crowded the pan and was a little short on oil, but hey, the onion, she blooms.

Corrie had yet another wonderful day with most of her siblings over and lots of presents, including these incredible Bender fingerless mittens made by Lucy

And that was that! Whew!

WEDNESDAY
Instant Pot pork ribs, glazed carrots, cole slaw

Thursday I tried another new recipe: This Amy + Jacky Instant Pot recipe. Easy peasy. You mix up apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a few spices, and marinate the pork ribs in that for a while. Then you throw them in the IP and cook it on high pressure for 15 minutes, then let it natural release for ten minutes. Mine sat for somewhat longer than that because I was driving around (not to and from school, though! It’s vacation, so I was driving them to and from their friends’ houses), so they turned out a little unsightly

but I was excited, because I could tell how tender and juicy they were. You slather BBQ sauce on top and broil it up for a bit, and there it is.

I had made cole slaw in the morning (cabbage and carrots, mayo, cider vinegar, sugar, and pepper) and prepped some carrots to cook, so I put the carrots in the oven just before the meat went in, and it all came out at the same time.

The carrot recipe I used was this simple one from Recipe Tin Eats. This is a rare RTE recipe that does not turn out exactly as she describes, and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Hers are shiny and sticky, and mine are just kinda toasty. They’re easy and popular, though, so it’s worth making them even though they’re not spectacular. I wish I had remembered a sprinkle of cardamom, though. 

Anyway, I thought it was a great meal. 

and the ribs really were juicy and ready to fall apart with a slight nudge from the fork. 

For sure making this recipe again, at least until it gets warm enough for Damien to use the smoker again. 

THURSDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins

Thursday the older kids had their own plans, so I took Benny and Corrie out for an outing of our own. We hit a thrift store, a local place that does giant baskets of fries, the pet store, and a fancy candy store, and when I say my dogs were barking, I really mean it! I still had to make supper, and it was so late already, I figured I might as well forge ahead and make the meal I had planned, which was beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins. 

Yes, this is a weird combination, but I made it one time and certain people decided it was 100% ideal, so we’re locked in for a while. 

Here is my beef barley soup recipe:

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which I threw together in record time. I was kind of puzzled as to why it looked wrong, but when you’re FORGING AHEAD, you simply don’t have time to fret over these things!

Anyway, it was tomatoes. I forgot the tomatoes. They’re more important than I realized, and the soup was a little sad without them! Oh well. 

When the soup was simmering, I started pumpkin muffins,

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and discovered I had used all the oil for frying the bloomin’ onions, so I used melted butter. They turned out with a nice, more textured top

but the inside had a slightly waxy feel that I wasn’t crazy about. So now I know.

(I took that picture because, as I was pulling the twenty-four muffins out of the pan, I reminded myself that there would be a grand total of four people at home for dinner, and WHAT IF THERE’S NOT ENOUGH FOOD. Waste! Fraud! Abuse! Somebody alert Department Of Gnawing Everything so they can come over and fix things by clogging up the toilets and shooting the dog.) 

FRIDAY
Poke bowls

Today I am facing a rash promise I made to take the kids ice skating this week, which you may or may not have noticed is almost over, and yet we have not gone ice skating yet. There are two ice rinks around here (one ten minutes away, one forty), and neither one seems especially interested in . . . letting people ice skate on them? So we are aiming for the 7-9:00 spot, forty minutes away. Yes, in the EVENING. Maybe the world will come to an end before that happens. Of course I was counting on that to rescue me from having to do the FAFSA, and that didn’t work out, so probably we will have to go ice skating.

Anyway, first we will be eating something approximating poke bowls. Gonna cook up a bunch of rice and probably sear some Walmart tuna steaks, and I have chili lime cashews from Aldi, mangoes, some kind of green sprouts, and various pink and yellow and brown sauces. 

Saturday will be a regular day, and then Sunday we are going to a museum and will be getting back very late on the night before the first day back at school! Which is a great idea! It was my idea! Hooray! Somebody call the department of paste, frog, and caboose! I have a fever and the only cure is more measles!

I actually think I do have a fever, so. We’ll see who’s ice skating whom. 

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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.

5 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. 

5 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.