baking – SIMCHA FISHER

What’s for supper? Vol. 423: A week of winging it

Happy Friday! I remember the days when I used to huddle on the toilet with my laptop, getting as much writing done as I could while the kids were occupied in the bath. Now my kids are older, my time is more and more my own, and I’m sitting here drying off from the incredibly rowdy sink bath I just gave the ducklings, trying to get some writing in before, I don’t know what, the end of the month, or the end of the world.

The whole week has been something of a rowdy sink bath, which I guess means it got the job done, but it wasn’t necessarily the kind of thing that would make people want to eat in my kitchen.

Actually I ended up with some pretty tasty meals, considering the lack of planning. And the surfeit of ducks.

Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

Damien is slowly recovering, but he’s been SO sick with bronchitis, and dang, that man does a lot around the house. Which I try to notice when he’s doing it, but I REALLY notice it when he’s not doing it. So I made the executive decision to skip the dump run this week and just do the Walmart shopping, and then we went to Moe’s college graduation! Summa cum laude, with a special award in literature!

The speakers were truly terrible (Jodi Picoult, who basically just bragged about how some people couldn’t handle it when she wrote “erection” in one of her books, so thanks for that, Jodi), but we’re extremely proud of Moe. The next day he moved to his new apartment, and the next day, he started his new job as youth librarian at a public library! But on Saturday, we went and got yummy Chinese food with the graduate, and the kids at home had Aldi pizza.

SUNDAY
Burgers, chips

Sunday was Mother’s Day, Damien (still quite sick!) was rushing to finish fixing Moe’s brakes, and the kids were helping him move, so I had a very satisfying afternoon uprooting some chokecherry trees that were threatening a baby lilac

and then we had a tasty meal of burgers and chips, with coconut custard pie for dessert.

Yeah man. Nothing like a burger after yard work. Like I said on Facebook, the kids gave me truly excellent presents, not least of which was seeing everybody pitching in to help each other out because they love each other.

Good stuff. Good kids. Good day.

MONDAY
Pasta with spicy spinach sausage sauce (?)

I went shopping again on Monday and picked up a little food without a clear plan. Got home and made a sauce with what we had.

I squeezed about a pound of hot Italian sausage out of its casings and browned that up, then added some diced onion and a lot of roughly-chopped garlic. Then I added oregano, a lot of paprika, and a little cayenne pepper, a can of pureed tomatoes and a can of crushed tomato and a big slosh of red wine, and then I cooked in a big bag of baby spinach until it was all cooked down.

I mixed it up with a few pounds of cooked penne, and served it with freshly-grated parmesan on top. I wasn’t really sure if people would like it, even though it smelled fantastic, so I made four big loaves of french bread.

Here’s my recipe for that:

Jump to Recipe

I proofed the dough in the slow cooker set to “keep warm,” and it came out super puffy, which is fine with me.

People scoff at puffy fluffy American-style bread, but you know what? It is puffy and fluffy, and some people are into that! You know, one time someone referred to me as “that great whale of a woman,” and it really stuck in my head. I guess I have a certain sympathy for sort of loosely-shaped, warm and blobby creations, be they whales or women or loaves of bread. Or be they whatever.

Anyway, it was a nice meal, although a little spicier than I meant it to be.

I did like the combination of the paprika and the spinach. I started abruptly loving spinach during my first pregnancy, and I have never looked back.

TUESDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, chopped salad

I had a bunch of chicken thighs and decided it would be worth my while to skin and bone them to make these wonderful sandwiches, so I prepped that before we had to get a kid to not one but two medical appointments. Which turned out to be mighty frustrating, so I was glad we had a delicious supper.

The recipe calls for whole shishito peppers, but I had a bunch of red, orange, and yellow bell peppers instead, so I just cut them into big slabs, browned them up a bit in the seasoned oil that the chicken had cooked it, and then finished them under the broiler.

Isn’t that beautiful?

The sandwiches were tasty as always. I used Tony Cachere’s seasoning on the chicken, and I guess some kind of bulky rolls, and we had the roast peppers, raw red onion, melted American cheese, and BBQ sauce.

One of my all-time favorite sandwiches.

I had a couple of bags of some kind of Southwestern chopped salad kits that were on sale that I kept forgetting to serve last week, and they turned out to be kind of a coleslaw-style mix of chopped cabbages, with crunchy tortilla strips and some sort of shredded cheese, and I guess chipotle dressing. They were fine.

WEDNESDAY
Sausage potato asparagus soup, french toast casserole

Wednesday I had a bit of a dilemma: I had to make supper, and yet I had not gone shopping for supper, and the only reason a moth didn’t fly out of my wallet was because I couldn’t find my purse. So I mooched around the kitchen a bit and found: Sausage I bought for pasta but didn’t cook, some very old potatoes, an old onion, and some more asparagus from the garden,

and a leftover loaf of fluffy puffy french bread. And a stray pouch of instant mashed potatoes. And a lot of duck eggs, of course. This felt PLAUSIBLE.

It wasn’t exactly soup weather, but it’s not hot yet, either, so I settled on soup.

I browned up the sausages and cut them into coins, then added some butter and threw in a bunch of garlic and diced onion and cooked that until it was soft. Then I fixed the mashed potatoes with milk, rather than water, plus extra milk, and added that, plus a bunch of chicken broth and a lot of pepper. Then I threw in the potatoes and the asparagus (chopped into pieces), and kept it simmering until the potatoes and asparagus were soft.

Really very fine soup! Hearty and full of flavor, and the asparagus made a nice herby counterpart to the spicy sausage, and added some good texture, too.

I knew the kids weren’t gonna go for it, and they also don’t like duck eggs that are identifiable as eggs — i.e., they will eat them baked into things, but not scrambled or fried or as omelettes. So I tore up the french bread

and made a french toast casserole with milk and duck eggs, vanilla and sugar, with butter dotted on top, and more sugar and some cinnamon. Baked until firm. (Actually I baked until the top was firm but the inside was still a bit gooshy, so we just popped it in the meekrowahvay.

All good! We got home quite late on Wednesday, because a kid needed a prom outfit, which we miraculously found at the Salvation Army. Well, it’s maybe less of a miracle and more of a situation where the kid has a very specific style, which perhaps I cultivated in her by shopping a lot at the Salvation Army, and also she’s a bit of a weirdo. Anyway, I really liked the soup.

I cut up the potatoes that were too sprouty even for soup, and set them to dry so I could plant them the next day. I also saved out the sprouting eyes I cut out of the firmer potatoes, and I planted those, too, plus another sprouting onion I found. I’m not sure what-all will come up. We will see!

THURSDAY
Roast pork ribs, corn on the cob

Thursday I did a ton of gardening. I carted around so much compost, and I got my pumpkin seeds and corn and potatoes planted, and I repaired and added a bunch of fencing.

The fence is constructed more or less in the same way as I put meals together this week: It may not be pretty, but it does the trick (in this case, the trick of keeping hungry ducks and wild rabbits out). I also confirmed that I have THREE peach seedlings growing! Last fall we extracted the seeds from inside the peach pits from my tree and planted six of them in pots in the ground, so I’m really happy with this. I have been keeping an eye out to see if any of the HUNDREDS of peach pits that fell to the ground had sprouted spontaneously, and they haven’t! I guess they’re like the ducks: They can probably manage to reproduce on their own under the right conditions, but a little help comes in handy.

Then I had a medical appointment I was kind of dreading, but it went better than expected, and then I charged into the supermarket on the way home and brought home a truly random assortment of foods that I thought could be served quickly. Thursday ended up with a pretty coherent meal: Roast pork ribs (salt and pepper them heavily, put them on a pan with drainage right up under a hot broiler, and flip them once) with BBQ sauce, corn on the cob, and salt and vinegar chips.

Maybe not the most nutritionally balanced meal known to mankind, but it took about 20 minutes to throw together. Really sweet corn, yum.

FRIDAY
I don’t really know

What I have is frozen shrimp that was on sale, and some cucumbers. I always think that surely, surely the kids must secretly like shrimp, because who doesn’t like shrimp? But they really just don’t. Damien is also neutral on shrimp at best. I think I might saute shrimp for myself and cook rice in chicken broth to pacify the kids, and they can have ramen or peanut butter or whatever. And cucumbers!

It’s a half day because of Teacher Appreciation Week, so I gotta change out of these wet duck bath clothes and run and get the kids and pick up a present for a kid’s friend, and then we have, you’ll never guess, a medical appointment, and Damien is gonna cover adoration while I take the kid to that, and then he will pick up the other kids who have a full day because nobody appreciates their teachers. I feel pretty strongly that I am forgetting something, but I guess it will just have to be a surprise!

Tomorrow I gotta go shopping, and we gotta get caught up on the dump, and I gotta go to confession, and Lucy is going to the prom, and Corrie is going to a birthday party, and then Damien and I are seeing Stephen Malkmus! Lena gave him two tickets and he asked me out on a date, and I said yes even before I remembered I had a bunch of coupons for free frosties at Wendy’s. So, quite a Saturday for the Fishers. I may or may not be driving to Rhode Island on Sunday.

And that’s-a my story! If you’re a teacher, I appreciate you, even if I didn’t even briefly consider signing up to bring in finger sandwiches or mini cupcakes.

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

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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.
Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

What’s for supper? Vol. 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

Jump to Recipe

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,

Jump to Recipe

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!

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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.

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

Just mix it all together, you coward.

What’s for supper? Vol. 415: O bagels! O fortuna!

And a happy Friday to you! It was all fortuna, no tuna, this week. Just now I changed out of my pajama pants into my yoga pants, and I’m working in bed. I am grounded for the day because Damien got up revoltingly early to drive the girls to the train station, whence they (including Damien) are headed into NYC to see famous J-Hope’s famous solo concert; and they are spending the night. But while we were on our way to school, the universe, sensing that my husband was out of town, playfully lit up all the lights on my dashboard

I’m no expert, but I interpreted this as “turn around and go home,” so I tried to, but the car started losing power, so I turned on the hazards and tried to go to the mechanic, but it died at the fence company which is just down the road from the mechanic and also from our house and which, in fact, GPS claims IS our house. Like Instacart will send groceries there and everything, unless I make a really big fuss.

So Damien called AAA from the train in NY and I called Elijah at home, who is driving Damien’s car because his car is broken and Damien drove Sophia’s car to the train station, and I emailed the schools and said we were having a Fisher Flop-out, and I begged for an adoration substitute, and eventually everyone got where they belonged, but not before I vented a little emotion at the poor tow truck driver, and expressed how frustrating it was to break down so close to the mechanic. I said I considered pushing my car, but seeing as it was uphill, I didn’t think I would make it; and he said, and I quote, “Pawbly nawt.”

But I’m on a gratitude kick lately, so I thanked God that I had remembered my phone (which I forget about half the time), that it wasn’t horribly cold out, that we had AAA, and that Elijah was home so he could rescue us, and that I had decided to change out of my robe and into a jacket this morning, so when the fence guy came out to find out why we were parked there, I only looked like a partial nutcase. (On the fact that I was still wearing my fuzzy pink flowered pajama pants, I was prayerfully nuetral.)

Anyway, poor old lady. Off she goes.

It may be the alternator. But it may just be the battery! Pawbly it’s the battery.

Well, here’s what we ate this week. And please note, we’re not really great at eating simply and frugally for Lent. We have other skills, like accumulating cars. We now have six cars parked in front of the house most days, and you’d think that would mean we always have a way to get where we need to be!

AND YET.

SATURDAY
Lasagna, cannoli dip

On Friday night, Damien made a stupendous lasagna, following this labor intensive but incredibly rewarding recipe from Deadspin. Look at this gorgeous beast.

He also made a mini lasagna for Millie.

(It’s not actually as tiny as it looks here!) The lasagna was a delayed birthday dinner for Elijah. SO GOOD.

and let me tell you, I made an attempt to calculate the calories for this thing, but my phone started shaking and sweating, so I just called it a day.

Eljah requested cannoli for dessert. Actually he requested Cosmic Brownies, but I said he could aim a little higher for his 21st birthday dessert. (Recall he had a cake last week, on his actual birthday.) Then I couldn’t find cannoli shells anywhere in town, so I got cannoli chips, ricotta cheese, AND cosmic brownies. (This is important later.)

I blended together what cream cheese I could find, a bunch of ricotta, a bunch of powdered sugar, and some almond extract, and served that in ramekins with the cannoli chips, along with maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles. I swear I took a picture, because I arranged it nice and fancy-like, but it has vanished.

SUNDAY
Leftovers featuring lasagna; taquitos

Sunday we had probably half the lasagna still left over, so that was the star of the show. I also bought frozen taquitos and the served a few leftovers, but mainly we were all there for Lasagna, Continued.

I brought Millie’s lasagna over and she gave me a bowl of bread pudding with raisins in it.

It tasted exactly like the bread pudding my mother used to make, and I haven’t tasted it since I was a kid. This gave Millie much delight, and me too! It happens that this is a few days after the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death, so if you think of it, please send up a prayer for her. With raisins!

In the afternoon, on a whim, I decided to make bagels. I have only tried making bagels once before, and I grievously misread how much water to use when boiling them, so they turned out pretty rough. But I did get from that day one of my favorite pictures ever:

Just . . . look at us. The chair with the back broken off. The laundry basket full of pots and pans. Something that appears to be an inflatable foil rocket on the floor. And the toddler who is having the BEST DAY OF HER LIFE, AGAIN. It just needs a chunky couple making out in the corner and a dog furtively lapping out of a mug of beer, and it could be one of those Flemish peasant paintings where people are doing whatever the hell they want.

This batch of bagels, we didn’t have QUITE that much fun with, but they turned out somewhat better. We followed the King Arthur Baking recipe, except I had light brown sugar instead of dark. You make the dough, let it rise for 90 minutes, cut it into lumps,

let those lumps rest for half an hour,

and then shape the bagels and boil them,

add toppings, and then bake them.

Benny helped me shape the bagels, which you do by rolling the dough into a ball, poking your finger through the center, and then twirling them around in the air. We quickly learned that it is possible to twirl them too long, and/or too violently! Luckily, the floor is spotless. Just kidding, we threw that one away.

We made a double recipe and made sixteen (well, fifteen) bagels, poppy seed, sesame seed, plain, and salt.

They were not as puffy as I would have liked — hard to imagine slicing these to make a sandwich! —

— but still pretty great piping hot from the oven. I love doing a little baking on a Sunday afternoon.

You can see they were fairly flat, but the texture inside and out was great, and everybody liked them and said I should make them again. Not sure how to make them puffier. Any ideas?

MONDAY
Kielbasa, potato, brussels sprouts sheet pan dinner, oatmeal bread

For supper, we had an easy peasy one pan dish with red potatoes, brussels sprouts, and kielbasa. I cooked it halfway, then drizzled it with a sauce made of honey, mustard, minced garlic, and red wine vinegar, and finished cooking it. This is two pans’ worth heaped into one pan:

This looks faintly Flemish, too, come to think of it.

I usually just serve one-pan dish on its own, but for some reason I felt it really needed a side dish, so I made this quick oat bread, which I chose because it was simple, but which you could make if you’re looking for gluten-free recipes (it uses ground-up oats instead of flour). It was . . . fine.

I undercooked it (the missing chunk in the middle is where I cut a piece to see if it was done), but for some reason decided to finish it in the microwave instead of the oven., which . . . worked . . . but there is a reason people don’t do that. But I don’t know how much better it would have been if I had baked it properly. Pawbly would have been decent with some butter or jam on it.

Honestly, I look back on this week and it’s like watching an old home movie, and you watch your past self careening around and you’re like, “oh, wow, look how crazy and silly we were back then!” Except this was four days ago. I’m not complaining! It’s been so beautiful out, with a thaw every day, and I’ve been getting fresh air and feeling pretty lighthearted, actually.

But I’m not being . . . streamlined, in my activities. Not streamlined at all.

Anyway, you really can’t argue with hot fresh bread, and it was a decent meal.

Monday is also the day we discovered we had several desserts in the house. See, usually we have dessert on Saturday and Sunday, but in Lent, we just have it on Sunday, and spend the extra money bumping up the food pantry donation. But we got confused and bought two desserts for the weekend, and then we realized Elijah needed a birthday dessert, and then I also bought those previously mentioned Cosmic Brownies as a birthday bonus. And then we forgot to eat them. So there we were on a Monday with Klondike Bars, some kind of ice cream things, and Cosmic Brownies in the house, in Lent.

So I told the kids if they could come up with a liturgically plausible reason, we could just eat it anyway. So Lucy looked up some saint that starts with a C, I forget who, and then they ate Klondike Bars. It’s called the Domestic Liturgical Living and it has ice cream in it.

TUESDAY
Vermonter sandwiches, fries

Everybody likes Vermonter sandwiches! Roast chicken breast, thick slices of sharp cheddar cheese, sliced green apple, bacon, and honey mustard dressing. The kids like this on ciabatta rolls, but they didn’t have any, so we had sourdough bread. You can see I was in a bit of a hurry because I was so hungry, so I kind of clobbered mine together, and also skimped on the honey mustard, sadly.

A tasty freaking sandwich.

Then, incredibly enough, it was St. Seraphina’s day or something. Here is Benny, making the case.

So obviously they had ice cream cones.

WEDNESDAY
Gochujang pork ribs, rice, sesame broccoli

I knew Wednesday was going to be a busy day, so I actually got those pork ribs marinating on Tuesday; and then in the morning on Wednesday I cut up the broccoli and set up the rice in the Instant Pot. So Wednesday afternoon, I got home late and just pushed the rice button, started the ribs roasting, and threw the broccoli in the oven right at the end, and everything finished cooking at the same time. Just about every other single thing in my life is out of control, but gosh darn it, I know how to plan a meal.

The ribs were marinated in gochujang, honey, brown sugar (why both? I forget), roughly chopped garlic, and soy sauce. The broccoli was soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Good freaking meal.

Wednesday evening, Irene pointed out it was the one-week anniversary of Ash Wednesday, so we had Cosmic Brownies. Listen. It’s a fine balance.

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, raw veg

Thursday I took Millie to the eye doctor and the DMV so she could get her license renewed. She is 92 and not the worst driver I’ve encountered, not by a long shot. The worst driver I’ve encountered is from Massachusetts. Really just anyone from Massachusetts.

I had made some kind of mistake when buying bread, and we only had a little sourdough, so I made half the sandwiches with sourdough and half with regular sandwich bread, and then also I used pre-sliced Aldi provolone, forgetting that that ish just does. not. melt.

So they were not the world’s greatest sandwiches, but friend-os, when you are counting calories and it is dinner time, even the worlds not-greatest sandwich tastes pretty freaking good. Also, pickles don’t count. Have some pickles!

I also made a big vegetable platter which I don’t think anyone even touched.

It looks pretty good to me right now, though. Do I recommend processing a bunch of food photos on a Friday in Lent? Not really! Well, it depends what your goals are, I guess.

Thursday night I more or less finished a captive ball carving. I didn’t make measurements or anything, but just winged it, so the “ball” is pretty blobby-shaped, but the kids were impressed anyway. It makes a pleasant “slock-slock” noise when it slides back and forth. I cut myself three times and had to sand a blood stain off part of it, so you could say the whole carving thing is going pretty well.

FRIDAY
Pancakes?

Damien, Sophia, and Lucy, as I mentioned, are off living the high life (?) in New York and won’t be back until late Saturday, so I figured no one could stop me from making pancakes for supper. I guess maybe I could make waffles.

The timing is a little silly because I don’t have any good maple syrup in the house, but I hope to later this weekend! Sonny and I have been collecting sap every afternoon and should have at least twelve gallons by Saturday, which should boil down to about a third of a gallon of syrup. Nights below freezing and days above freezing are when the changing barometric pressure really pushes the trees to start getting their sap flowing.

This is five gallons of sap:

It tastes like water, but you can discern the sugar if you focus!

Damien dragged his old wood stove out of his office for me before he left

and yesterday, on the way to pick up the kids from school, someone had put three pots on the side of the road with a “free” sign. Really BIG pots, all with lids! Note the seltzer can for scale.

So they just need a good scrubbing and I’ll probably use the smaller two for boiling sap. I am not sure what the biggest one with the heavy duty spigot was used for. Any ideas? I’m thinking of turning it into a heated water dispenser for the ducks, but I haven’t decided yet.

In closing, yes, Corrie fits inside the big pot

and yes, she still looks like Baby Hermes.

Well, goodbye!

5 from 4 votes

One-pan kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato dinner with mustard sauce

This meal has all the fun and salt of a wiener cookout, but it's a tiny bit fancier, and you can legit eat it in the winter.

Ingredients

3-4 lbs kielbasa
3-4 lbs red potatoes
1-2 medium cabbages
(optional) parsley for garnish
salt and pepper and olive oil

mustard sauce (sorry, I make this different each time):

mustard
red wine if you like
honey
a little olive oil
salt and pepper
fresh garlic, crushed

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400.

Whisk together the mustard dressing ingredients and set aside. Chop parsley (optional).

Cut the kielbasa into thick coins and the potatoes into thick coins or small wedges. Mix them up with olive oil, salt, and pepper and spread them in a shallow pan.

Cut the cabbage into "steaks." Push the kielbasa and potatoes aside to make room to lay the cabbage down. Brush the cabbage with more olive oil and sprinkle with more salt and pepper. It should be a single layer of food, and not too crowded, so it will brown well.

Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the food as well as you can and roast for another 15 minutes.

Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish.

What’s for supper? Vol. 409: Lucid cooking

Happy Friday! Sorry so late! I’m running so late today. First I slept extremely late, woke up, and decided to go back to sleep and try having a lucid dream; and the thing I chose to do with my powerful mind was go into the community house basement rummage sale and discover a box of antique toothpicks, and when I opened the box, I found both toothpicks and a tooth inside. Just like I planned.

Then I decided I might as well get up, and then I ran to Home Depot for some unthreaded off-white 1/2″ PVC T connectors, because Damien is at the point in his project where he know he needs one now, which means he’ll be glad to have five within an hour.

Yes, the piiiiiipes frozzzzzzze despite all our normal New England precautions, and then theyyyyyy burssssssst despite all our thawing efforts. So he has been down there in the crawl space for two days, putting new pipes in, and insulating everything in sight. Gentlemen, if you are wondering what women want, they want someone who can fix things and also be a nice guy to his family while doing it. This is what we want.

And we want water, which we will have by the end of the day! In conclusion, winter is stupid, but my husband is my hero.

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet with pizza pockets, homemade apple sauce, tapioca pudding

We had our usual assortment of reheated goodies, plus pizza pockets.

It was Corrie’s Shopping Turn, and part of the deal of Shopping Turn is that you get to pick the two weekend desserts. (You also get to pick the weekend “Silly Cereal,” and you get lunch at your choice of drive thrus; and you get to influence the snack purchases for the week, plus you get to pick the pot sweetener for leftover buffet.)

But we somehow forgot to pick dessert! But! I had done some fruit decluttering in the morning, and had started some apple sauce cooking in the morning.

For applesauce, I quarter the apples and put them into the slow cooker along with the peels and cores, with a little water and let it cook all day. (I had a ton, so I filled up the Instant Pot, too.)
When they are mushy, I run the apples through a food mill

(the only tool I’ve ever found that works for this job) and add a little butter, some cinnamon, and sometimes some sugar or honey, sometimes not.

I myself would eat warm homemade apple sauce for dessert, but not everyone feels that way. But! I had also picked up a box of tapioca on a whim, and I thought MAYBE if I made some tapioca pudding, and we had warm, cozy, homemade applesauce and warm, creamy, fluffy tapioca pudding, that would be a nice dessert for a chilly, blustery day?

Well, I WAS WRONG. Damien and I had actually signed up for an hour of adoration for 40 hours of what have you, and then we went out for pizza. So we came home as the kids were eating dessert.

I said, “Oh, how did you like your grandma dessert?”
One kid said, “Yeh.”
One kid said, “Meh.”
And one kid said, “Never do this again.”

So I won’t! But I ate most of the tapioca pudding all by myself, and, right or wrong, I have no regrets.

SUNDAY
Marry Me Chicken, french bread

I ran across this recipe from Sip and Feast, and it looked incredible. I don’t think I’ve had a bad recipe from this site yet, and this one was also a win.

I could tell it was one of those dishes where you would want some bread to sop up the extra sauce, so I started some dough for this basic french bread recipe.

Jump to Recipe

It was quite chilly in the kitchen, so I sprayed the crock pot with baking spray, put the dough in, and set it to “keep warm.”

Started like this:

and an hour later we had this:

A successful rise, I would say! It actually baked a tiny bit on the bottom, because it really ran out of room (this is a recipe for four long loaves, so it was a lot of dough). I rolled out the loaves and set them for a second rise, this time on the stove top with the oven on and slightly opened.

Ideally, I’d bake the bread right before dinner and have piping hot bread along with the main course, but I’d never made this chicken before, so I figured I’d play it safe and get the bread baked and then focus on the chicken. You see? Wisdom. Or whatever.

The bread turned out sightly pale, but it was baked PERFECTLY inside. Extremely fluffy and soft

with a really thin, crusty crust. Probably could have given in another, like, 2.5 minutes in the oven and gotten a crisper crust, but I’d rather err on the side of not overbaked.

Then I started the chicken! I had such insanely pneumatic chicken breasts that I cut them into thirds, lengthwise, and beat them flat with my marble rolling pin. Which I took a picture of, so I might as well share it.

Then you salt and pepper the chicken breasts, dredge them with flour, and then you sear the chicken in the oil you have drained off the sun-dried tomatoes.

Oh, my mother would have loved this recipe.
When the chicken is done, you take it out and add a little more tomato oil to the pan, and brown up sliced garlic

and then add the sun-dried tomatoes, then white wine, then chicken stock

then cream

then baby spinach

and then freshly-grated cheese

You cook this sauce down a bit to thicken it up, and then you add in the chicken, and let it all enjoy each other’s company for a while.

And that’s it! You serve it with some fresh basil on top, and YES, I was glad to have fresh bread to sop up that incredible sauce.

My photos did not turn out great! It looks a little bit ghastly, actually. But it was actually fabulous. Rich and fresh and just delightful, absolutely dancing with flavor. It was fun to make, too. Most definitely adding this in to the “special treat” list of dinners. It wasn’t horribly expensive, but it took a lot of active cooking time, because you have to let it cook in between each ingredient addition. Totally worth it, but not a weekday meal!

MONDAY
Mexican beef bowls, black beans

Monday was Inauguration Day, and the kids had the day off for MLK Jr. Day, and I sort of muscled Elijah into taking them sledding, which we haven’t done yet this year. I wanted a really popular, hearty meal (to warm up the kids and to cheer up the grown ups), so this was pretty good.

Here is my recipe for the beef marinade, which I truly love.

Jump to Recipe

It’s very rich, and the little sparkle of lime juice is very pleasant.

I also started some black beans cooking in the Instant Pot.

Jump to Recipe

and when they were done, I moved them to the slow cooker and used the Instant Pot to make a big bunch of white rice. So we had rice with the meat and gravy on top, plus beans, cilantro, corn chips, sour cream, some corn I blackened a bit in a pan, and lime wedges.

Always a very popular meal. I originally put my beans in a dish that a child then revealed was the dish that used to hold gerbil food, and that was less popular, with me.

Pretty sure it was the same kid who (completely unmaliciously, probably unconsciously) did this to my kitchen candle

This is the candle I use to heat the tip of a knife to make drainage holes in milk jugs for my winter sowing. Which I’m not doing this year. But STILL. Leave my candle alone!

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, veg and dip, cheez balls

Tuesday I listened to the news until I got the sudden urge to tear apart the refrigerator, scrub everything down, throw out half our food, and reorganize everything.

So we had that going for us. I’m still trying to get the kids to go along with this system where produce goes in the doors, for high visibility, and bottles and jars go in the bottom drawers, for easy access, but it’s a losing battle. Which is apparently my favorite kind.

In keeping with this sentiment, I dropped off my car for inspection, pointed out where I had put it back together with zip ties, and asked them to just do whatever was one step up from zip ties. I love our mechanic. They totally understand us. And get this: When I take my car in, and then Damien and I show up together to pick it up, they talk to me about it. Because it’s my car!

For supper, we had buffalo chicken wraps, for which some of my kids have an almost baffling level of enthusiasm. Tortillas, ranch or blue cheese dressing, buffalo chicken (or sometimes I just get regular chicken and serve it with buffalo sauce), shredded pepper jack cheese, shredded lettuce, and crispy fried onions from a can. I forgot to get tomatoes.

It really is a good wrap. I like it as a salad, too, but there is less general enthusiasm for that in this house.

I also made a giant, rather festive platter of broccoli and sweet peppers that I meant to serve along with the beef bowls.

And I put out one of those barrels of Cheez Balls or whatever they’re called. Quite an orange meal, overall.

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday was when the pipes froze and burst. Here’s the dog’s water dish in the morning:

The duck’s water thawing thingy also broke, and the stream is frozen over, so I gave them a big pot of hot water to enjoy, and they really did. Whatever else you can say about ducks, they do know how to enjoy themselves. The turtle’s heat bulb also broke! I got him a new one, and it was really hard to tell if he appreciated it or not.

My car was done, and it cost sighhhhhhh a little less than $600, which is better than more than $600. I also had to get my driver’s license renewed. Last time I did this, I was half zip ties myself, so I was looking forward to getting a new picture. The old picture:

I guess this new one is better?

Making you get your picture taken after waiting at the DMV for forty minutes is the equivalent of when you go to the doctor and they take your blood pressure, and it’s a little high, so they review all the things that are wrong with you, and then they weigh you, and then they re-take your blood pressure, and GUESS WHAT? That didn’t help! OH WELL. (Actually my blood pressure is fine these days! Normal! If that don’t beat all.)

We had pizza for supper, and I made it early in the day but forgot to cover it, so the dough got kinda crusty and unpleasant, but oh well. Pizza’s pizza. Nothing fancy, just one cheese, one olive, and one pepperoni.

THURSDAY
Chinese(?) soup, rice, potstickers

Thursday I defrosted the pork filling that was leftover from New Year’s Eve dumplings, with the intention of making nice little meatballs with it. I have done this several times, and it usually works? But this time it did not.

The meat just fell apart in the pan, so I decided to just fry it up in a big slab, and then divide it into bite-sized pieces. Which also didn’t really work, but I was in too deep.

I made a big pot of chicken broth, simmered some fresh garlic and ginger in it, then added in the pork, which was already seasoned and had cabbage and carrot shreds in it. Then I broke up some seaweed sheets in it, and shook in a bunch of soy sauce and some sesame oil, and some chopped scallions, and let it simmer for a while.

It was not terrible! It tasted persuasively Asian. I made a pot of rice and cooked some frozen pot stickers

and it was a decent meal. But I told the kid who cleared the table not to bother saving the soup. It was fine, but I didn’t think anyone would want seconds.

I had actually bought some tofu and planned to fry it up and put some cubes into the soup, but I couldn’t get the package open. So now we live tofu another day. (This joke implies that I pronounce “tofu” like “too-foo,” which I do not.)

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese, tomato soup, pickles and chips

And a nice, easy, pleasant meal to round off the week (or, to eat while you quickly finish up your food post; your pick).

Damien is finishing up the pipe repair, and we have water again! He’s still down there insulating the hell out of everything. (Obviously we already have insulation down there, and pipe insulation, and heat tape, but that was some cold snap.)

And now my story is all told. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see what’s inside this box of toothpicks.

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!

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

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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.
Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

1 cup lime juice
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup olive oil
1 head garlic, crushed
2 Tbsp cumin
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp paprika
2 tsp hot pepper flakes
1 Tbsp salt
2 tsp pepper
1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together.
Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.

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

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."
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. 407: Model citizen

Happy Friday! Today has been my week to slowly come back to life. A little yoga, a little writing, and actually, in retrospect, kind of a lot of cooking and baking. As I was reviewing my photos for the week, I noticed the theme was ORANGE, plus yellow and red. You could do worse in the middle of January.

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, chips

Usually Saturday is Leftover Buffet, but I had some thawed boneless skinless chicken thighs that needed to be used ASAP, I forget why; so after I shopped, I made these sandwiches from Sip and Feast.

It’s a few steps, but doesn’t take any particular skill, and you get a tremendous payback in flavor and texture. You season the chicken thighs, brown them in oil, and lay sliced cheese on them and cover them. While the cheese is melting, you cut the tops off a bunch of shishito peppers and blister them quickly in a pan, and slice up some red onion. Serve it all on soft brioche buns with BBQ sauce. Just delicious and delightful.

Saturday night, I made a double batch of King Arthur Flour Chewy Cranberry Orange cookies, which I made for the first time before Christmas. They are super easy (everything just gets dumped into one bowl) and very cheery, friendly cookies. Doesn’t look like I took any pictures, but they turned out very similar to the pic on the site, which tells you how easy they are! I did end up baking them for a slightly shorter time than recommended, based on past experience.

SUNDAY
Rotisserie chicken/Chili’s

On Sunday, we were supposed to go to my sister’s new baby’s baptism. The kids were too sick to go, so I bought a couple of rotisserie chickens, fries, and raw vegetables for them, and planned for me and Damien to go to the baptism, then go out to eat. But I woke up with a rotten sore throat, which is no kind of gift to bring to babies across state lines. Boo! I want to see my family!

However, I soon realized that we were actually sitting pretty for the day. Damien and I had gone to the vigil Mass on Saturday, so — get this, people with little kids: On Sunday morning, my son got everyone up and dressed, and took them to Mass in his car, and what I did was stay in bed, not get dressed, and slowly sip coffee. Incroyable.

I milked this situation as long as I possibly could, and then realized that, because I was home on Epiphany, I could mess around with some king cake. Baking when you really don’t have to and you’re not in a hurry is a very different experience from, well, every other kind of baking.

We usually have some kind of cream cheese-filled king cake on Mardi Gras, so I tried something different: Rosca de Reyes. I’m on a King Arthur Flour jag, so I used their recipe, which is supposed to look like a crown with jewels.

I made a double recipe of the dough, and then decided we really needed candied orange peels, so I made up a bunch of those, using this Epicurious recipe. You cut the ends off, score it into quarters, and remove the peel and pith.

Then you, uh, eat all the peeled oranges. Because you are sick, and need the vitamin C.

I actually used a ruler to cut the peel into 1/4-inch slices, because I have made peace with the fact that I shrimply cannot eyeball fractions of an inch.

You simmer the sliced peels in water, rinse them twice, and then simmer them in sugar water for 45 minutes.

Pretty pretty. Note: I doubled the amount of oranges, but used the same amount of sugar and water for simmering, which worked fine.

Then you drain the peels again and toss them with more sugar and spread them out to dry. At this point, I finally read to the end of the recipe and discovered the peels are supposed to dry for 1-2 days, which, oh well. I did pop them in a low oven for half and hour and they turned out great. I LOVE candied citrus peels. Gotta make more.

Back to the sweet bread! You let the dough rise, then roll it out, slather it with melted butter, and fill it with cinnamon, sugar, orange or lemon zest, and whatever else you like. What I had was some slivered almonds, dried cranberries, lemon zest, and something called tutti frutti that I got from the Indian section of the International Market

and I was pretty pleased with the combination.

You roll the dough up like for cinnamon rolls, and form them into a ring around a center, like greased ramekin, to keep the shape.

I put most of the candied orange peel on, but then decided to take most of it off before baking. You are supposed to snip vents all around, which I did, but didn’t make them big enough, so they partially closed up. I did stuff some candied orange peels into the vents, which was a good idea. And don’t forget to add a baby, or a dry bean, or something for someone to find!
Then you brush the bread with egg wash and bake.

And they turned out great!

Very pretty, shiny, and bright.

Would have been absolutely splendid if I had some candied cherries to decorate them with, but I was pleased.

I overbaked them a tiny bit, which I always do, and it was pretty finicky getting the piping hot bread rings off the piping hot ramekins, but overall, a success. I strewed the rest of the orange peels over the top when they came out of the oven.

Tender inside, halfway between bread and cake, rich and medium-sweet.

Nobody found the dry bean I hid inside, and then I went back for seconds before bed and found it in the last piece, so that was a little anti-climactic. The person who finds the bean (or baby or whatever) is supposed to throw a party on Candlemas, and if anyone does that, it will probably be me, so there you go.

Oh, so for supper, Damien and I figured we had already been planning to eat out, so we splurged and Door Dashed Chili’s, and then locked ourselves into our room and ate it without taking any pictures. Long live Chili’s.

Cheers Beer GIFfrom Cheers GIFs

Not gonna lie, the rosca de reyes was a lot of work, and I probably won’t make it again. I guess when it comes down to it, sweet bread isn’t really my favorite. I’d rather either have regular bread, or else something much sweeter. I do want to try one of those star-shaped epiphany cakes, though, because dang, those are pretty.

MONDAY
Pork nachos

I had made a double recipe of king cake just out of sheer habit, but we only ate one, so I brought the other one to Clara’s place, which gave me a chance to finally see her apartment. It’s very nice. Full of light and pretty things, and it smelled good.

But otherwise, Monday was super duper vacation is really really over now day. It began with my car inexplicably falling off itself.

What appears to be blood in the grass is just spray paint from some Halloween costume project. But it fits.

I’m pretty sure this is a job for zip ties, but it’s been too freaking cold outside to really deal with it, so I’ve just been driving like a model citizen, so as not to attract any unwanted police attention, because you are required to have two license plates in this state. Also because my driver’s license expired. I’ll deal with it! I’ll get to it! Model citizen!

In keeping with the general tone of day, I grimly hurled a hunk of pork into the Instant Pot and added, I don’t know what, cider vinegar, cumin, salt and pepper, chili powder, and pickled jalapeños and a bunch of the juice, and pressed the “meat” button. When the meat was done

I shredded it and made two pans of nachos, one with just chips, meat, and cheese, and one with cheese and also some kind of horrible melty jar cheese stuff, more japapeños, and a bunch more cumin and chili powder.

and served it with salsa and sour cream.

And it wasn’t that good! The kids ate almost none of their special mild weenie tray, and I just bundled it all up in tin foil and put it into the fridge until it’s time to throw it away this weekend. And so Monday passed.

I see from my camera roll that Monday was also the day I locked myself in my room and tried out this lip plumper that I ordered right after having hernia surgery and turning fifty. I won’t be sharing the pictures, but my conclusion is that some lips are probably fine as they are. Especially if you’re otherwise a model citizen.

TUESDAY
Beef barley soup, artisan bread

Tuesday it was still cold and horrible out, and I sure wasn’t making much progress with the million looming deadlines I have, so it seemed like a soup and bread day. I had bought a bunch of beef when it was on sale, so I made a huge pot of beef barley soup

Jump to Recipe

which is always nice. Then, although I’ve had no success with this in the past, I decided to make some of that “artisan bread” (which always sounds like a euphemism to me, like “sandwich artist” or “sanitation engineer”) which you don’t have to knead and which you bake it in a dutch oven, which I don’t have. I thought it might work out this time, though, because I discovered that Nagi of Recipe Tin Eats has a recipe, and Nagi is the last honest person on the internet, and writes out her recipes so they are actually useful. Stuff like “Dough will be wet and sloppy – not kneadable, but not runny like cake batter” and she tells you in the recipe where to look in the video, to make sure you’re doing it right. I feel like Nagi is on your side, in a way that no one else is. And she has such cute little hands.

Anyway, I made the dough, and it was wet and sloppy, not kneadable, but not runny like cake batter

and let it rise for about three hours while I went out to do the afternoon school run and errands. When I came back, it had doubled in volume and was wobbly like jelly and the top was bubbly, just like Nagi said.

I did the alternative to the dutch oven instructions, where you flop the dough onto a hot pan and then immediately fill another pan, below it in the oven, with boiling water, and then slam the oven shut and let it steam while it bakes.

Turned out great!

Crusty and crunchy on the outside, tender and chewy on the inside

Everyone liked it. Nagi does it again! Next time I’ll form the dough so it’s piled up a little higher and I get a slightly rounder loaf, but it was great as it was. The flavor is plain as can be, but it’s so simple and easy, and you can’t beat piping hot homemade bread with a big pot of savory soup.

This recipe fit in perfectly with my typical weekday, where I have a little time in late morning, and then I’m out of the house for several hours, and then I’m home about forty minutes or half an hour before we want to eat. She also includes instructions for making the dough the day before and refrigerating it overnight before you bake it.

I made a very large pot of soup, intending to enjoy it again over the weekend, but tragically, it got left out overnight. Memory eternal, soup.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken biryani, naan

Wednesday I had an irresistible urge to make chicken biryani. I was planning to open Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni, and see how it matches up to the recipe I usually use, but couldn’t find the dang book. So I went back to this basic, reliable one from Simply Recipes , but I goosed it with some of the wonderful biryani masala mix my friend Marissa sent. Normally I make the recipe as directed and then transfer it to the slow cooker for several hours, which is the only way I’ve ever been able to get fully and evenly cooked rice for biryani. So I got up to this point,

which you can see has the chicken, spices, golden raisins, and liquid, but no rice yet, but also no room for rice. So I nervously took a chance and moved it to the Instant Pot, added the rice, and set it to high pressure for six minutes.

Then I got distracted for a long time and forgot I was making supper, so I don’t really know how long it was until I checked on it, but when I did, it read “BURN,” which the Instant Pot does randomly, sometimes when it’s burnt beyond rescue, sometimes when it’s just whatever and fine. So I released the pressure with great trepidation, and . . . it was PERFECT.

Dang. This is such tremendous food. So fragrant and comforting. I had bought some naan on the way home, and brushed a little melted butter on top and warmed it up in the oven, and topped the biryani with chopped cilantro and both toasted almonds and chopped up salt-and-pepper cashews, it was delightful.

Looks a little off because I was eating it by the light of the Christmas tree, but believe me, it was top notch. At first it seemed like it might be too mild, but the flavor built and warmed with every bite, which tells me I did it right! Biryani forever.

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, salad, pasta salad

Thursday I finally got Christmas packed up. I stripped the tree and threw it out the window (this was more fun when we used to live on the second floor, but it’s still a satisfying little ritual) and got everything all wrapped up and packed away, and vacuumed up forty metric tons of pine needles, and ruthlessly threw out a lot of tacky crap that we never use.

It was a good day to be busy all day and have an easy meal for dinner: Chicken burgers! Yay.

I didn’t really have a plan for a side dish, but there was enough this-and-that in the fridge

that it was pretty easy to throw together a decent pasta salad.

Cilantro, back olives, canned diced tomatoes, shredded parmesan, diced raw peppers, and salami, and then some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

A very pleasant meal. I had my chicken with horseradish mayo.

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I can just feel how much cheese is in this house, so we really need to have some lavish mac and cheese. I don’t really have a recipe; I just make a bunch of white sauce and then throw in whatever cheese I have, plus some hot sauce and sometimes some mustard. I mix that with cooked macaroni, pour into a buttered casserole dish, and top it with buttered panko bread crumbs and bake until you can hear it sizzling, and you cannot deny, that’s good stuff.

And now I have to actually do that, and then run off to adoration. I’ll pray for yez all! Model citizen over and out.

5 from 1 vote

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

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.
Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.
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.
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.
Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.

What’s for supper? Vol. 403: Nagi knows

Happy Friday! Since it is apparently indeed Friday. There has not been one single day this week when I knew what day it was, so why start now?

I will begin with an abject failure from last Friday, which I hadn’t yet made when I wrote last Friday’s post. It was French onion pasta, and the recipe included fresh thyme, white wine, tons of freshly-grated cheese, and all kinds of lovely things. How could it go wrong?

I still don’t know, but wheeee-ew. The recipe said to make sure you measure the liquids carefully so it didn’t turn out soupy. So I did, and it did. So I spooned off quite a bit of the liquid before baking it, and apparently that’s where all the flavor was? But also, it was still soupy.

Doesn’t look terrible in this picture, but believe me. It was terrible. It tasted like the water you use to wash actual food. Man! Oh well.

Anyway, on to what we had this past week:

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet

In the morning, I drove into Nice New Hampshire and picked up a ton of windows from a guy who was converting a porch into a room.

The windows themselves are great (I think I got fourteen total), and also — and this may be something only cheapskate DIYers will understand — it was encouraging to get in on these materials so early in their life. Lots and lots of free and cheap windows are described as “collected to build a greenhouse but decided to go another route,” and that is . . . a little alarming. Because I am building a greenhouse/porch/solarium. But things will be different for me! I will collect windows, but I will not go another route! Probably!!

Then I went shopping, and we had leftovers for supper. I added taquitos, but there were so much leftover food, we didn’t really need them, and then Clara stopped by with some day-old baguettes from the bakery she works at. I myself mostly had the Middle Eastern Meatballs with yogurt sauce and Jerusalem salad, and also more day-old bread than you might think one person could even want.

I’m amazed at how well this planned leftover day is working out. Much less food waste, obviously, and the fridge is much tidier; and people are actually looking forward to it, either because you get a second shot at a nice meal, or because of the frozen food I add. Most of all, it’s super helpful to have a stress-free meal to count on after shopping on Saturdays.

SUNDAY
Nachos

Sunday we had nachos (I make really subpar nachos, and I just don’t care. They’re just chips, seasoned meat, jalapeños, and cheese. Salsa and sour cream on the side. It’s fine.

I also made Monday’s meal on Sunday. For whatever reason, I’ve been building up a supply of lamb shanks for the last several months, one or two at a time whenever they went on sale, and it was finally time to drag them all out of the freezer and do something. I decided on this curry recipe.

I will tell you ahead of time that it was a tiny bit disappointing. It had all the right spices in it, but the end flavor was just kind of muddy, and the lamb was not nearly as tender as I hoped. It was good, just not great!

Anyway, I had fun making it. First I browned up the lamb

much to the dog’s interest. And I do mean MUCH

and then I made a paste out of all the spices

then browned up some onions and other spices

then you add a bunch of chopped tomatoes and the spice paste

and also chicken broth and coconut milk, and then you put the lamb in. I let it simmer for several hours and then packed it into the fridge for the night.

MONDAY
Lamb curry, rice, pita, pomegranates

Monday, the kids had the day off, and I think Moe and Clara stopped by for supper, but I can’t even remember which day that was. I started the lamb heating up a few hours before supper, and made a big pot of basmati rice. I soaked it first, and that really added to the light, feathery texture of the rice, so I’ll be doing that going forward. Gosh, I love basmati rice.

A few hours before supper, I started some naan. I am not entirely happy with the various recipes I’ve tried, so this time I went with the Recipe Tin Eats version, which doesn’t include yogurt, but does include a little egg and ghee.

Friends, Nagi was right again. It turned out so good. Much fluffier than any other naan I’ve made, and it had a nice flavor, too.

I couldn’t find my iron frying pan, but this double-walled steel one worked fine. I wish I had been a little more assiduous about wiping the burnt flour out of the pan in between naans, but I will still very happy with the results.

So then it was supper time! Rice was ready, naan was ready, and I had cut up some pomegranates and some cilantro, and all I had to do was combine the two pots of lamb curry into one very large, brimming pot and carry it into the dining room without–

never mind. I sloshed a little bit out, slipped in it, and sloshed a lot of it out. But didn’t drop any actual meat! But sheesh, what a mess. You can see, this is a fairly greasy recipe, which is one thing I wasn’t crazy about. I think you can see my actual slipping toe marks, which is kind of funny.

ANYWAY, it was good, though!

Pretty good. Like I said, a little muddy, and just not as flavorful as I was hoping, considering how many THINGS went into it. There was a lot left over, and I cut the meat into pieces and returned it to the masala sauce, and I’m kind of looking forward to Saturday. It was fun having some of the big kids over, anyway. It’s very jolly when they’re here.

TUESDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese, sausage sandwiches; OJ

Over the weekend, Damien pushed really hard and got the porch debris to the dump, which was a huge relief. On Tuesday, I got out there with a rake and got the small bits, so it looks much more respectabiggle out there. I found a very old bone which I’m about 87% sure is a chicken bone.

In the late afternoon we had the pleasure of watching Moe read some of his short stories at an event at the college. He won a creative writing award and also recently got an internship with a publisher, and it was hard to say what was more gratifying: Hearing his excellent work, or hearing everyone say nice things about him!

Then we got home and had bagel sandwiches. I tried the oven rack toasting method again, and had slightly more success with the bagels than I did with bread, because they are more rigid

Turns out the kids are much more willing to eat duck eggs if you scramble them than if you fry them! Good to know.

I don’t really blame the kids for feeling a little icky about eating the duck eggs. You spend enough time witnessing the ducks’ personal habits, and you start to feel a real need for some kind of buffer. I get it. Lucky for me, the main thing I care about is eating, so I love duck eggs, despite What I Know.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken drumsticks two ways, vegetables and dip, chips

In the morning, I drove into Sticksville and picked up a beautiful heavy door, only $20. The lady says, “I’m sorry I can’t help you lift it; I’ve hurt my back” and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m just rushing around lifting as much heavy stuff as I can before I have surgery myself” and she says “What kind of surgery?” and I said, “Uh, hernia.” and we just kind of looked at each other like, well, bitches be crazy.

Then I got home and tried to do some writing, and then got an irresistible urge to, uh, plant a bunch of marigolds for the turtle to eat.

I have an awful lot of seeds hanging around, and seeds go through my kitchen constantly. Last year I did some winter sowing (starting seeds inside jugs outdoors, like miniature greenhouses, so they are somewhat self-watering and are already hardened off and start to germinate earlier), which is a nice way to get through the dark part of winter. But I’m having fun finding edible plants I can grow right now. The turtle has been very active and adventurous lately, and is enjoying the geraniums and pansies I put in his tank.

I roasted a bunch of chicken drumsticks with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then I made two sauces: One with honey, mustard, and lemon juice, and one with buffalo sauce and melted butter. Then I divided the chicken and mixed half with one sauce, half with the other.

I did this in the morning, and then I had the kids start heating the chicken up in the evening while I was out, and by dinner time, there were two tasty chickens from which to choose. Also veggies and dip and chips.

Pretty popular meal. It was only a tiny bit of extra work to do the two kinds of sauce.

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, tomato soup with rice

Thursday is an absolute blur. In retrospect, I was starting to hatch a migraine (WHICH, I should mention, are much rarer than they used to be! Emgality has really made a difference), and it was one of those days where I had to think about where to put my foot for every step I took, etc. You know, just living is a lot of work sometimes.

So for supper, we just had grilled ham and cheese on sourdough bread, and I heated up some condensed tomato soup with milk, and I put leftover basmati rice in mine.

I absolutely love cream of tomato soup with rice in it. Makes you feel like you’re sitting in someone’s lap.

FRIDAY
Ravioli?

I feel like it might be ravioli. For lo, the migraine has come into full power and I don’t know much. But at least we have windows! Lots and lots of windows, and surely everything will work out, one way or another. Or maybe we’ll go another route.

Speaking of which, I stopped interacting with Twitter about a month ago, and yesterday I finally started up with Bluesky. It’s nice! It’s like Twitter used to be, and lots of people are making a conscious effort to be friendly and pleasant and not horrible. If you’re there, let’s connect!

What’s for Supper? Vol. 378: In which nobody goes to the emergency room

In haste! In haste! For today is a half day, and I have to go get my punkass kids. It is the final day of teacher appreciation week, and I love that they’re topping it off by making all the kids go away. Truly the gift from the heart.

Speaking of gifts from the heart, this week having been mother’s day week, I decided to make all foods that I like this week. It was a very tasty week! But also very stupid, as you will see.

SATURDAY
Hot dogs, chips

Well, I do like hot dogs, but this was more about convenience on a shopping day. But I do like hot dogs. And convenience!

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries, lemon meringue pie with strawberry compote

Damien shopped for and put together these excellent sandwiches (toasted baguettes with red pesto, olive oil, and vinegar, with provolone, prosciutto, capicola, sandwich pepperoni, tomatoes, and fresh basil), and made fries

and Clara made some wonderful pies, using my pie crust recipe

Jump to Recipe

and the filling and meringue from Sally’s Baking Addiction,

plus, as you can see, a layer of homemade strawberry compote between the lemon and meringue

Absolutely splendid. Perfect. I wish I had gotten pictures from the morning, when she made it, because by dessert time it had gone the way meringues tend to go, but it was still airy and wonderful.

All the kids came over, and showered me with thoughtful and delightful presents. I spent most of the day following my heart, which meant working on my bog bridge. I worked on it off and on throughout the week, when I had 45 minutes to spare and it wasn’t raining, and it’s almost ready to put in place! I AM VERY EXCITED. In fact, at one point I got a little over-excited. As you will see.

MONDAY
Fajita beef bowl, pineapple

London broil was on sale, so I got a bunch and sliced it up thin and marinated it most of the day in this yummy marinade

Jump to Recipe

I did all the prep work in the morning: Sauteed some sweet peppers, roasted some corn, chopped cilantro, cut up some limes, and found the shredded cheese, sour cream, and corn chips, and I prepped the rice in the Instant Pot. Sometimes we also have black beans with this dish, but we just had them last week and I just wasn’t bean ready yet. We also usually have chopped scallions, but I forgot.

Before dinner, I cranked up the broiler and (to be honest, slightly over)cooked the meat

and I piled up my bowl with rice and meat and toppings and ate outside with the birdies.

Oh, I also cut up the pineapple I meant to serve last week. Lovely meal, very popular.

TUESDAY
Two pizzas, not three

On Tuesday, I was super busy all day with I don’t even remember what, so I as soon as I got home in the afternoon, I made three pizzas very fast. One olive, one half plain and half Hawaiian using the leftover pineapple from Monday, and one pepperoni using leftover pepperoni from the Italian sandwiches. We had a lot of pepperoni left, so I was pretty lavish with the toppings on this.

Feeling very brisk and accomplished, I preheated the oven, set the pizzas on the counter, and asked Elijah to put them in at 5:10. Then I went outside to work on my bridge.

I was slapping wood stain on as fast as I could, and even though I was increasingly covered with wood stain and blackfly bites, feeling pretty great about life in general, when Elijah comes out and says, “You don’t have to come inside or anything, but how many pizzas are there?”

I say there are three. I’m the tiniest bit annoyed, because it’s not like it’s a big kitchen or something. Three extra large pizzas, pretty much front and center, can’t really miss them. Definitely three pizzas.

He says, “Okay, I can only find two. And there is an empty pan.”

So of course I go inside, and he is correct. Two pizzas which are now in the oven, and one pizza pan, still on the counter, with smears of grease and flour on it.

WHAT COULD HAVE POSSIBLY HAPPENED TO IT?

What indeed.

Now, you know I’m sharing this story because the dog did not die. I will also confess that we did not take him to the vet. If we took that dog to the vet every time he ate something stupid, we’d be investigated by GoFundMe for an implausible number of emergencies.

And to be honest, we weren’t 100% convinced it was the dog who made the pizza disappear. First we searched all over the house in case it somehow . . . left. Which sounds dumb, but it was very strange! The pan was there, the pizza was gone. We thought of the cat, who does steal whatever food he can carry and has no conscience at all. And we thought of, uh, other possibilities

And the dog seemed fine! He wasn’t bloated or uncomfortable or acting like his butt was any more haunted than usual.

But we couldn’t think of any other place the pizza might have gone, besides down his gullet. He does have very poor impulse control, even for a dog.

The danger is that the dough would expand in his tummy and do terrible twisty things to his innards, or that it would produce alcohol and poison him from the inside out. Soooo Damien stayed up until 2 a.m. observing him. That makes nine full hours after the dog apparently ate the raw pizza. He did burp. And that was all.

Friends, this is the almighty power of a boxer’s digestive system. You can judge us if you want for not taking him to the ER, but Sonny himself would give you some side eye for that.

Well, maybe not a side eye, because his eye placement doesn’t really allow for that, but he would do his best. Sonny always does his best. As do we all.

WEDNESDAY
Sweet spicy Korean meatballs, sweet pepper lo mein

New recipe! I came across this recipe for gochujang meatballs with apricot glaze and couldn’t look away. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I used fresh ginger instead of powdered. Super easy, and it was fab. Tasted like party food. You just mix up the meatball ingredients and bake them, and then roll them around in the heated glaze which is just three ingredients, and serve.

I had already served rice that week and I was planning to do it agin, so rather than making rice as a side, I made a vegetable lo mein, as you can see. I usually make lo mein with linguine or fettuccine, but this time I had some very thin Chinese noodles I had grabbed at the International Market. They boiled up in no time, like two minutes, which was fun. I did my easy lo mein sauce

Jump to Recipe

I sauteed up some minced ginger and garlic, then added the leftover sweet peppers, then a little mirin, then the noodles and sauce and heated it all up. Delicious. The whole meal came together, start to finish, in like 45 minutes (moving fast).

Definitely making these meatballs again. They tasted like party food. They would also be good, maybe even better, with ground turkey.

THURSDAY
Chicken biryani, giant taboon

I’ve had biryani on my mind for a few weeks, so today was the day. This recipe calls for chicken thighs, and that really is the superior kind of chicken for it, but what was on sale was chicken ribs, so that’s what I used.

I also used actual basmati rice, which I sometimes am too cheap for. I had forgotten this, but it cooks up much faster than short grain white rice; so if you struggle with getting the rice cooked all the way through with biryani, it definitely helps to have the right rice! Anyway I anticipated undercooked rice, so I made the biryani in the morning and put it in the slow cooker for the rest of the day, which generally takes care of any chompy rice by dinner time.

Turned out great. This being Mother’s Choice week, I did not omit the golden raisins, which the kids don’t like. But they’re easy to pick out, so that’s what they did.

And maybe I went around after dinner and ate up all the little plump, savory, leftover golden raisins on their plates, who can say. Maybe I’m the one who ate the pizza!

(I did not.) So, the chicken breast was a little bit dry, as I expected. Still a wonderful dish. I keep thinking I might try a different biryani recipe, but everyone likes this one, so why.

At the last minute, I decided to make a Giant Taboon. My naan is kind of hit or miss, mostly miss, and it was too late to start it anyway, but taboon is fast and easy and delightful. Five minutes to put the ingredients together, an hour to rise, ten minutes to rest the dough, and 10-15 minutes to bake. I called everyone down for supper, and then I pulled this lovely pneumatic lady out of the oven:

I made it with a big rolled lip out of force of habit, because I usually make tabboon to go along with mussakhan (Palestian chicken with sumac and red onions) and you serve the chicken right on top of the bread

and I like to make a little lip to keep the juices in. Aghh, I gotta make mussakhan again. It’s so good.

Oh, I’m almost at the end of the week and I didn’t tell you about my leetle misadventure with wood. The short version is that I had already cut away the rotten wood, replaced it with sound wood, and attached cross pieces on, and stained the underside; and also retrieved the pieces I already laid into the swamp before I realized I really needed to stain them. So then I wanted to flip the two long pieces over so I could stain the other side; but I couldn’t do it the horizontal way, which is easier, because I didn’t want to snap the cross pieces off

So I did what any mother would do: I dragged the kids into it. Four of us hoisted up one short end and carefully walked our hands down until it was basically standing on its end. Then I was like, “Okay, now just me and Lena, and everyone else get out of the way, and Lena, you stand to the side, because it might leap out!”

You know this is a dumb story. Dumber than the dog eating the whole raw pizza, because his excuse is that he is a dog, whereas I am a college graduate and this was a very dumb idea.

So we gave it a big shove, and of course it did leap out, but not like I expected, and it thwacked both me and Lena so hard that we both fell down and its fwiggen lucky we didn’t both have multiple broken bones. Do you want to see my leg??

Well, I just spent kind of a long time trying to figure out how to insert some code for one of those “click to see image” things, but I’m too full of raw dough, I mean I can’t figure it out, but for some misbegotten reason I really want to show you my leg, which isn’t even that bad. Lena’s is much worse. I’ll put the image at the end of the recipes, and if you are really motivated, you can scroll all the way down and see my leg. I find bruises fascinating, and this one kind of looks like a leaping rabbit. Madeline would be proud.

Oh, so then the long piece was somehow suspended in the air like this

I slapped a bunch of stain on it and dragged a tarp over it just as it began to rain, because I may be an idiot, but I’m not really sure how this sentence is supposed to end.

Damien promised that, when I was ready to flip the second long piece over, I should call him and he he would come over and say, “No, not like that! You’ll get hurt!” (He also said he would help flip it over.) This is what you call traditional marriage roles, and I didn’t even have to become a football player to figure it out.

P.S. The dog did go to the vet today for his shots, and they confirmed that he is fine, and just likes pizza. Who among us.

FRIDAY
I don’t know.
I was planning tuna boats, but Moe and Eliora are coming over, so maybe I will take it up a notch. Or maybe not! Maybe I will throw some wood at them and pretend I thought they ate the pizza. This is MY WEEK, and I can do what I want! Which always turns out well.

Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

1 cup lime juice
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup olive oil
1 head garlic, crushed
2 Tbsp cumin
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp paprika
2 tsp hot pepper flakes
1 Tbsp salt
2 tsp pepper
1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together.
Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.

5 from 1 vote

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

Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.
Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

1 cup soy sauce
5 tsp sesame oil
5 tsp sugar

for the rest

32 oz uncooked noodles
sesame oil for cooking
add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.
Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.
Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.
Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.
Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

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

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.
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.
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.
Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.
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.
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.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

WATCH OUT, HERE COMES A PICTURE OF MY LEG

Probably not as bad as you were expecting, with all that build-up. But doesn’t it look like a rabbit?

What’s for supper? Vol. 371: St. Joseph’s Pizza!

Happy Friday! I’m going through my food photos and noticing that we are not doing great with the part of Lent where you don’t eat a lot. But really, there are two whole other important pillars of Lent. To wit: Praying, and giving alms. And those are going very, you know what, mind your own business.

Here’s what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Chicken burgers, chips

Saturday I went shopping, of course, so we just had chicken burgers and chips for supper. I did make a second batch of maple syrup, even smaller than the last one, though.

Annnd I may have overcooked it a skosh.

I was planning an Irish breakfast for Sunday, which was St. Patrick’s day. But I couldn’t find sourdough bread at either supermarket, so I decided to try making my own. In my usual thorough researchly fashion, I Googled “sourdough bread without a starter” and clicked on the first recipe that popped up. Started the dough and set it to rise in a warm spot (in the box of socks in the laundry room, which is over a heating vent) overnight.

I also, feeling very pleased with myself for all the things I was getting done, put both ice cream bowls in the freezer for the next day.

I also rented a pickup truck for the next day, so I could pick up an amazing offer from Facebook marketplace: Two docks, one 8×8 feet, one 16×4 feet, and the long skinny one had a handrail!!! Free!!!! And only about half an hour away.

The reason I wanted these was because I’m planning to build a bog bridge over the swampy area of the yard so we can get to the stream more easily. I had thrilling plans of using the long dock as a sturdy entrance point to the bridge, and the square one as a sort of floating deck halfway there, and I was thinking of adding birdhouses and solar-powered lights and geraniums in terra cotta pots, and a couple of tasteful deck chairs, and it would be such a lovely little project that would really transform that part of the property, and I was feeling incredibly lucky to have been the first one to jump on the offer, and they were really well-made, solid docks with no rotten wood, and it was all coming together!

You can probably tell, based on how excited I am about this, that it all went to hell. It really, really did. Read on!

SUNDAY
Irish breakfast, maple walnut ice cream

Sunday we went to Mass, I started some maple walnut ice cream going, using the syrup I had made yesterday, which I warmed up in a pot of water until it was soft enough to stir. (Here’s a similar ice cream recipe, and just ignore the part about coconut cream, and instead add 1/4 cup maple syrup, and then stir in some chopped walnuts after you churn it)

Jump to Recipe

I also made a batch of chocolate chip ice cream (same base, but add chocolate chips). Jammed those in the freezer and headed out to get my wonderful docks.

Okay. So. I really can’t stand to revisit every last horrible detail, but it included a woman screaming “STOP!” and a man shouting, “What are you DOING??” and then when we got past that part and found the right field instead of the Very Wrong Field, there was a long spell where Damien and I were standing in the rain in that field, coming up with every last possible scenario we could that might possibly end up with us loading up these docks and bringing them home.

When we got to the part where I suggested going back home, getting our mini chainsaw and as many teenagers as we could find, and then using all our might to load the hacked-up pieces of dock into the truck and making maybe five or six trips to get it home, and then returning the pickup truck to U-Haul on time, we just kind of looked at each other and said, ” . . . Yeah, no.”

It was sad. It was tragic. But the fact is, we really needed a winch and a flatbed for this job. I did call a flatbed company and had a short argument with the dispatcher, but when they finally called back, I missed the call, and that was the final chapter in a long and stupid story called “It Was Just Not Meant To Be.”

So I went home and cried a little bit, to be honest with you, because I really wanted those docks, and also I felt like I was the dumbest person in the world because nothing every works out, boo hoo hoo, and the maple syrup was all my fault, and I had forgotten to buy potatoes for the Irish breakfast, and then I fetched the dough for the alleged soda bread that had been rising for 20 hours, and it was . . . in keeping with the rest of my efforts that day.

HOWEVER, I baked what I had, and they turned out somewhat reminiscent of bread.

Damien made the bacon, and we actually had a really tasty meal. I roasted some mushrooms with — I don’t remember, probably garlic, salt, pepper, butter, oil, and then some lemon juice at the end, and I roasted some tomato halves with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

I cut the bread into thick little wedges

and I heated up some baked beans, and then I fried a bunch of duck eggs in bacon grease, and yes, all together it was delicious.

Even without potatoes.

But! The ice cream didn’t freeze! I don’t know why! Maybe my freezer is overstuffed and the bowls are not getting sufficiently chilled. What can one say. Begorrah. We definitely ate it anyway, but it was more like a thin milkshake than ice cream.

MONDAY
Mussel lo mein

Monday I was pretty ready to have everything go better, and it did. Aldi was selling pouches of cooked mussel meat for $3 a pound a while back, so I pulled those out of the freezer and let them defrost while I did yoga. My sprained (or whatever) ankle was finally feeling well enough to do a full class again, so that was nice; and the cat stole one of the bags of mussels but did not manage to open it, so that was also nice!

At dinner time, I boiled three pounds of linguine, and started the lo mein with minced garlic and ginger, then added diced red onion and sugar snap peas, and then the mussels,

and then I put in 2/3 of the pasta and the sauce, and it was a lovely lo mein.

I served the rest of the pasta plain, for people who prefer that.

The lo mein was so good. I adore this recipe. It’s so fast and easy, and just delicious, and you can put whatever you want in it.

TUESDAY
Pizza, cannoli

Tuesday I had to face the fact that, even though I love St. Joseph very much, I had just plain forgotten that it was his feast day. Most years, we do a big Italian feast, but we were pretty zonked this week, so I just made pizza.

I did make a pretty deluxe pizza for the wild card one (I generally make one pepperoni, one plane, and one wild card pizza): Fresh garlic, roast tomatoes (left over from the Irish meal), spinach, anchovies, artichoke hearts, and black olives.

Ahem:

I can see a new horizonUnderneath the blazin’ sky.I’ll be where the sauce is flyin’(Not Srebenica!)

Gonna be your mom in motionAll I need’s this bag of cheese.Take me where my future’s lyin’St. Joseph’s pizza!

Look, the original song doesn’t make any sense, either.

We also happened to have cannoli shells in the house, which Damien grabbed months ago because they aren’t always in stores, so you get them while you can. I made a basic filling (ricotta cheese, vanilla, cinnamon, and powdered sugar) and piped it into the shells, then decorated them with rainbow sprinkles.

Not actually very swanky (I didn’t have time to let the filling drain, so it was kinda wet), but heyyy. St. Joseph. Not Srebenica.

WEDNESDAY
Butter chicken, rice, dal

Wednesday was duckling day! We ordered them a while back, thinking they would arrive after Easter when things had “”””””calmed down a little,”””””” but in fact they came on Wednesday. Here they are, noisily waiting in the post office to be picked up

The last batch of ducks we got were named after some of Damien’s great uncles, E.J., Coin, Fay, and Ray; so these ones are named after my paternal grandmother, Annie, and her sisters Mickey and Bebe.

They’re a little confused

but quite winsome

Here’s a couple of videos from the first and second day, meeting the rest of the animals.

They are Black Swedish ducks, and their personalities are somewhat different from the last little flock we got, which are pekin ducks. They are less sleepy and more jumpy, and they already look more duck-shaped than the pekins did at this age. (The pekins were just fuzzy blobs for about a week, but these guys have discernible necks already.)

Last time, we got a straight run, meaning nobody had figured out yet what sex they are. We ended up with two boys and two girls, which is not ideal (there are some power struggles). So this time we paid extra to get them sexed, and these are all girls. They’re supposed to be friendly and cold-hearty and good foragers, and the shells of their eggs will be a darker, bluish shade. This is what they will look like as adults.

One of my upcoming projects is to make a better fence, because our current flock finds it very easy to escape, and they’ve been roaming all over the property and also off the property, and we’re not really sure if everyone else finds them as charming as we do. They do get plenty of exercise this way, and nobody has eaten them yet.

Anyway! Still had to make supper, and the menu said butter chicken and dal. I’ve never had or even seen, much less made dal before. I followed the recipe in Julie Sahni’s cookbook, except I think I had the wrong kind of lentils. It said yellow or pink, and I had ones that were kind of orangey and are called “football lentils.”

Anyway it was a super easy recipe. You just simmer the lentils in water with turmeric until they’re tender,

whisk them until they’re blended (that was fun), and then at the end, add some oil that you’ve browned a bunch of sliced garlic in.

I think it came out much thicker than it’s supposed to be — more of a paste than anything you could conceivably sip — but it was DELICIOUS.

The butter chicken is also so easy. You just have to start early (or the night before) so it can marinate, but then I followed this recipe from RecipeTinEats, except I accidentally bought vanilla yogurt instead of plain, so I used sour cream instead. Worked great. You just cook up the chicken, then put in your tomato, cream, salt, and sugar, and let it simmer a bit longer.

I ended up with a lot more sauce than we needed for the chicken (possibly it was thinner because it was sour cream instead of yogurt? I don’t know), but better too much than too little.

I sure wish I had some naan or some other kind of bread, but I was — well, to be honest, I was tired because I was so excited about the ducks. So I just made a big pot of rice to go with it. Set out some more cilantro and there it was.

Such a nice, lovely meal. I ate so much. Just about everybody likes butter chicken. The dal was not a huge hit, but I myself loved it, so I’m probably going to try again on a day when I can also make naan, and maybe I can talk them into it that way.

THURSDAY
Banh mi, Doritos

Thusday we had banh mi, which we haven’t had for quite some time, because the smell is a bit of a trial for some people who live in this house.

I made a very slight tweak in the marinade

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(running the cilantro through the food processor, rather than just chopping it up coarsely) and I liked it, so I’ll do it that way from now on.

I quick-pickled some carrots

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and did the ol’ glass-skull-full-of-pickled-carrots maneuver

I just cut up the cucumbers and left them unpickled, because there are so many sharp, attention-getting flavors in this sandwich already.

The meat turned out extremely tender.

I had my sandwich with pickled carrots and fresh cilantro and some sriracha mayo, but I forgot to add cucumbers and jalapeños. I did toast the rolls, though, which I don’t always bother to do.

Magnificent. This is truly one of the great lights in the universe of sandwiches. My only regret was the pickled carrots were too sweet, but (so) the kids liked them a lot. We also had Doritos, which were a surprisingly good accompaniment to this sandwich. Or maybe I just like Doritos.

Late Thursday night, we lost one of the ducklings. I mean it died, we didn’t lose track of it. They were only a few days old and I don’t really know what happened. It just happens sometimes. The other two seem pretty hale and hearty, and now . . . I have to figure out which name I should assign to the one who didn’t make it, which is an unforeseen pitfall of naming brand-new ducklings after real people!

Ah well.

FRIDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese sandwiches

Friday was Benny’s school conference (Corrie’s was Thursday afternoon), and we made a stop afterwards at a favorite thrift store, where Benny found an absolutely lovely, brand new dress that fits her like a dream, and I found eighteen matching tiny wine glasses for $4. Perfect for Passover, which we will be celebrating on Holy Saturday as usual. Which is . . . .coming right up, isn’t it. There isn’t much in the way of Passover food to be found in the supermarkets, because actual Passover isn’t for more than another month, but I’ll figure it out.

Deep down, I’m glad I’m not frantically trying to figure out what to do about the two docks that are in my driveway right now. It just took a couple of days to realize I felt that way.

It is snowing.

Ben and Jerry's coconut ice cream

Ingredients

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups whipping cream or heavy cream
1 cup milk
15 oz coconut cream

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.
Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.
Pour in the milk and cream and coconut cream (discarding the waxy disk thing) and continue whisking to blend.
Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

1 cup soy sauce
5 tsp sesame oil
5 tsp sugar

for the rest

32 oz uncooked noodles
sesame oil for cooking
add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.
Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.
Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.
Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.
Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

5 from 1 vote

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

5-6 lbs Pork loin
1/2 cup fish sauce
3/4 cup sugar
1 minced onion
1/2 head garlic, minced or crushed
2 tsp pepper

Veggies and dressing

carrots
cucumbers
vinegar
sugar
cilantro
mayonnaise
Sriracha sauce

Instructions

Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can.
Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight.
Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler.
Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread.

5 from 1 vote

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

Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved.
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.
Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

French bread

Ingredients

Instructions

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Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)

Ingredients

sauce:

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

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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caesar salad dressing

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One-pan kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato dinner with mustard sauce

Ingredients

mustard sauce (sorry, I make this different each time):

Instructions

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French bread

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

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Instant Pot black beans

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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Ingredients

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

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basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

for the rest

Instructions

taboon bread

Ingredients

Instructions

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Ben and Jerry's coconut ice cream

Ingredients

Instructions

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

for the rest

Instructions

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

Veggies and dressing

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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