buffalo chicken drumsticks

What’s for supper? Vol. 466: Oh toum, where is thy victory?

Happy Friday! I don’t think there was a single day this week when I knew what day it was. Which is why I put every single thing down in my calendar, so I don’t get confused. Unfortunately, I have an incredible knack for entering things on the right day of the week, but the wrong month. So I’m constantly getting notifications like, hey, remember that scholarship deadline? Yeah, that’s gone. Yo, happy one month anniversary of the time you said you’d bring in muffins and didn’t! Also, alert: that lab order has officially expired, and unfortunately you are now dead.

The good news is, these notifications don’t bother me at all, because I somehow accidentally turned off my ringer and the battery died, and my phone is carefully tucked in between some dish towels where I set it down for a second and then just walked away

Did I mention I don’t have any cognitive impairment? This is just what I’m like. This is what peak Simcha performance looks like!

But seriously, I so, so appreciate all the many kind messages, prayers, and donations folks have been sending. We are all doing pretty much fine and chugging along. My special intractable schwannoma headaches are ramping up again, but what can one do. Oh actually, probably surgery. I’m waiting to hear back about that!

And here is what we had for supper this week!

SATURDAY
Leftovers and stuffed potato skins

Just a regular day of chores and shopping. I also did a big Egg Reconciliation. Duck eggs can sit on the counter unrefrigerated for quite some times, as long as you leave them unwashed; but I was running out of counter space! So I scrubbed them all

and then carefully dropped them into a pitcher of water. The ones that sank and lay flat were the freshest, so I boxed those up and sold them to the Chinese restaurant down the road.

None of them floated (which they do when they’re really stale), but about half of them tipped up a bit on one end, which means they’re not super fresh, but still edible. So I separated those and froze them

, without any specific goal except to stop thinking about eggs for a while. Perhaps I will make a pavlova for Mother’s Day. I really like pavlovas!

The shopping turn kid chose stuffed potato skins for the leftover supplement, and there was tons of other food leftover.

I also heated up the last of the chicken soup with matzoh balls, and it was yummy one last time.

SUNDAY
Pizza

Actually I must have done the egg thing on Sunday. Anyway I remember hoping to get some other kind of big project done on Sunday, and then not doing it. I did make a yummy pizza.

I spread half the cheese on the pizza, then adorned it with prosciutto. Then I put the rest of the cheese on and baked the pizza, then topped it with arugula dressed with lemon juice and pepper. Yummo.

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken drumsticks, garlic knots, raw veggies and dip

Monday I just roasted a bunch of drumsticks with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then tossed them in bottled buffalo sauce and put them back in the oven to reheat saucily while I made some garlic knots with the leftover pizza dough. (I bought three balls of pizza dough out of habit, but there were only FOUR people home for supper, so I made a mere two XL pizzas.) And a nice robust vegetable platter.

I was gonna roll the baked garlic knots in melted butter, but everyone was super hungry, so I just served them right out of the oven.

Solid little meal, easy peasy.

TUESDAY
Pulled pork on waffle fries, raw veggies

Tuesday was a very drivey day, so I started the pulled pork nice and early. Here’s the recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I found a replacement Instant Pot for cheap on Marketplace, so we are pressure cookin’ again, hooray!

Sonny and I got some stream time. Poor Sonny, he drives me absolutely bonkers when he’s inside. He’s just so gross and smelly and dumb and in the way. But we get along so well outside. He chills out and becomes a noble and sedate enjoyer of nature, and also yearns to protect me from biting ducks, which is endearing. I guess he has just learned to accept that I kind of hate him when he’s inside, but when we’re outside, we’re best friends, and that’s just how it is.

Anyway, it sure is purty down there. We’ve had a lot of sudden bursts of rain lately, so a pretty good haul of pottery and bottles had washed up on the banks. I like to collect these and put them in a pile by a tree, and admire lichen. I guess probably I’m the one who chills out when I get outside.

In the afternoon, I gave a kid a driving lesson, and we set a new record for how close you can zoom past a tree without actually hitting it. Also thrilling in its own way, a new light came on on the dashboard. Alas.

But supper was delicious. I cooked a bunch of waffle fries and sliced up some red onions, shredded the meat, set out some BBQ sauce, and we had tasty pork bowls.

I’m not too proud to tell you that I think this would have been even tastier with some horribly orange, dangerously salty fake cheese melted, or possibly extruded, over the top. But it was very good without, as well.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken shawarma, pita, toum

Wednesday I spent almost all day cooking, for some reason. I was planning two meals with chicken thighs, but had thriftily bought ones with bone and skin, so I spent a good long time processing about eight pounds of thighs, much to Sonny’s intense interest. (Unfortunately this was Inside Dog, so I hated him, and did not give him any chicken. Also, even though I hate him, I had actually given him some pork yesterday, which he promptly threw up, and I HATE that.) I set aside eight of the most intact ones for the next day, and set the rest to marinating.

Yes, oh yes, it was SHAWARMA DAY. Here is my oven shawarma recipe

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Then I made a double batch of pita dough. Last week’s pita was a little disappointing, so I reverted to this recipe, which is a little more labor intensive (more ingredients, and the frying process is longer and slightly more complicated), but it’s really worth it, and easy enough once you get into the rhythm. Anyway I made the dough and let it rise for an hour and a half, and then I put it into the fridge because it was too early to do the second rise.

AND THEN, I made some TOUM. I have never heard of this Lebanese garlic sauce before, but I saw a video and it looked magnificent. I settled on the Serious Eats recipe, which calls for a cup of garlic cloves. This turned out to be about two-and-a-half heads of garlic, which I peeled with the aid of one of those little silicone tubes lined with nubbins.

The recipe says you should split each clove open and cut the germ out, but life was passing me by, so I skipped that. You pulse it up in the food processor with some salt, and then add some lemon juice and make a paste. Then, with the food processor running, you start slowwwwwly adding three(!) cups of oil,

alternating half cups of oil with the rest of the lemon juice and then with ice water.

I’m so bad at adding things slowly, and even though I read the little explanation about emulsification and whatnot, I really just wanted to dump the whole amount in. I just had to keep thinking about that part in The Witch of Blackbird Pond where Kit gets mad and dumps all the cornmeal into the pudding at once, and the family has to eat lumpy corn pudding and that was all that was for dinner, and she feels so bad; and that gave me the fortitude to keep it at a slow drizzle. In this way, I avoided the harsh approbation of my dour and exacting uncle, at least for one more day. But oh, ’tis a weary task. What would grandfather think, to see me this way?

Well, I whipped it and whipped it, but it was still kinda soupy, and even though I’ve never had or seen toum, I was pretty sure that wasn’t right. Happily, the recipe says if this happens, you can just pull most of the toum out of the food processor, whip up the rest with an egg white until it’s fluffy, and then add the rest back in. Worked great!

I can’t really think of anything with a similar texture. It’s light and fluffy, but . . . I guess unguent is the word? But not really. It’s definitely not greasy, and not exactly creamy. One thing we can all agree about: It is GARLICKY. One little dab of it lights your whole head up like an emergency flare. Wow! I was delighted.

Then I made some normal yogurt sauce (Greek yogurt, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt), because People Don’t Like Change, and they had been looking forward to this meal and I didn’t want anyone to be sad. Then I put a bunch of stuff in bowls.

and heaved my sorry self outside to deal with the giant smashed window. NOT a window of the house, I hasten to add. Just one of those gigantic windows I lugged home last year — or was it the year before? — to make into a sunporch, and then didn’t do that. I had dragged one into the back yard and leaned it up against the old bunkbed,

thinking I would surely figure out some way to make this into a little greenhouse. Then came a mighty wind, and we got this:

The good news is, it is safety glass, so there were not super sharp shards of glass everywhere. The bad news is, broken safety glass collapses into millions of teeny little bits when you so much as breathe on it, even if you don’t have ultrasonically powerful garlic breath. Also, I had set this up on an area of the yard where I had made an attempt to do some landscaping, by which I mean I dumped thousands and thousands of little rocks there, back when we were digging up the ground for the pool and had to move thousands and thousands of rocks.

I did kind of enjoy this “mighty whale breaching out through the arctic ice” effect

but most of the rocks are much smaller, very effectively trapping the glass bits in between them, so the glass sinks into the dirt buuuuut you can’t reach it.

So . . . I’ll just say I tried lots of different ways to clean it up easily, and there is no such thing. And I’m not gonna rent a shop vac, because the only thing that would make this project worse would be spending money on it. So I settled for putting on my goatskin gloves and just gloomily grabbing up handfuls of glass and throwing them in a tub, over and over and over and over again. I did this for quite some time, and there is still a lot of glass out there. And of course in my foot.

I’m gonna have to get out there with a shovel and excavate the whole thing, which I’m not super excited about. Also, it has since rained very hard a couple of times, so the tub and bag full of glass bits are also now full of water.

HOWEVER, after the school run I got home, cut up the pita dough and started it on its second rise, cut up a bunch on onions and sprinkled them over the meat and got that cooking, and ALL WAS WELL. BY WHICH I MEAN DELICIOUS.

The method for this pita recipe is to fry on one side for 30 seconds, then on the other side for 30 seconds, then brush both sides with olive oil and continue cooking for five minutes, flipping it every minute or so. I made eight pieces (I doubled the recipe and just made really big pita), and it did take quite a while, but man, they were yummy.

They puffed up so nicely in the pan, and came out really fluffy and chewy, with little crisp bits and a rich flavor. Excellent.

It was all excellent.

Sadly, nobody else would even try the toum! (Nobody except Damien said the food was good, either, but I’ll kill them about that later.) So I ended up with quite a bit of it leftover. It took so much time and effort to make, I decided to go ahead and offer it on my town Facebook page, and it got snapped up right away! So that was nice. The woman who picked it up even gave me a dozen eggs from her chickens, and several heads of garlic from her garden. I’m growing garlic this year, but it’s nowhere near ready to harvest.

Anyway, the meal was just great and I was very proud of myself. A very satisfying way to turn the day around.

THURSDAY
Spicy chicken pepper sandwiches, cheese curls

Thursday I suddenly got a bee in my bonnet about one of the bedrooms upstairs. I knew supper would be easy, so after I did my calisthenics (I’ve been doing calisthenics lately, I don’t know why) I lumbered upstairs with a bunch of garbage bags and tore into the mess. Six bags of laundry and three bags of trash later, it looked a little better up there! I was powered by the sound of Tom Holland’s spectacularly horrible southern accent. I will never, ever, ever once again be embarrassed when an American tries to do a British accent. Seriously, it will make you feel like you are going insane.

Damien volunteered to pick up the kids, and he also got a bunch of cleaning supplies and my prescriptions, and I was able to stay home and push through to start scrubbing the walls and ceiling (don’t ask), and I got so much done.

Eventually I called it a day, took a shower, and then threw together some chicken sandwiches with the thigh meat I had prepped the day before. It’s basically this recipe from Sip and Feast, except I use Tony Chachere’s, and I had cubanelle peppers instead of shishito, and kaiser buns instead of brioche rolls. Neither one is necessarily an improvement; it was just what I happened to have. This is a wonderful sandwich, though, and I think you should make it soon.

With some pointed prompting, the child thanked me for cleaning her room, and then I slithered off to bed. Well actually first I handwashed some dishes, because the stinking dish washer broke. But then Damien fixed it! I guess it was some food and grease had gotten into the control panel or something, which is strange, because the children certainly always rinse the dishes before loading them, as they have been instructed to do. A mystery.

While I was cooking the chicken, the dog came over and horked up a Brillo pad. Then he lay down and looked regretful for a while, then he went back to hoping intensely for some chicken. Which I did not give him, because, dude.

FRIDAY
Tuna sandwiches, possibly risotto

Today Damien is working on my car, and he also got a new coil or something for the water heater (we’ve been taking lurkworm showers for a while now, which is kind of discouraging), and also a pipe for the basement, because when the kitchen sink pipe broke, it leaked dirty kitchen water into the dirt basement floor and you know what, that is probably why we have so many flies. HOWEVER. We’re gaining on them, I feel. The flies, the appliances, the children, the mess, the everything. Superabimus, or something like that. Anyway, when I was cleaning I found six pairs of scissors.

Not to get too edifying on your asses, but I did realize that, as long as I’m going to be digging up a big swath of dirt to clean up all that glass near the patio, I might as well plant something there. It gets TONS of sun, and I might just get one of those giant pouches of mixed seeds and dump it in. Gotta have some fun somehow!

Don’t forget, make the sandwich!

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Clovey pulled pork – fatty hunk of pork – salt and pepper – oil for browning – 1 cup apple cider vinegar – 2/3 cup apple juice – 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact – 1 onion, quartered – 2 Tbsp cumin – 1 tsp red pepper flakes – 2 tsp ground cloves 1) Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper. 2) Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides. 3) Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours. 4) When pork is tender, shred.

Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

fatty hunk of pork
salt and pepper
oil for browning
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup apple juice
3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
1 onion, quartered
2 Tbsp cumin
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.
Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.
Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.
When pork is tender, shred.

Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more.
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

What’s for supper? Vol. 419: A masterful gambit of one’s own

Happy Friday! What’s new with you? I’m making notes on how to build a tree house, and now I know what a lag bolt is! I’m carving a sleeping bat, that’s not turning out very well! I’m driving around town surreptitiously taking photos of people’s porticos, so I can figure out how to do ours, or maybe I’m just being creepy!

We started a second batch of duck eggs incubating and Damien and I both think we see something happening this time. Duck shells are pretty thick, so it’s hard to say, but Coin has literally one job and we’ve definitely all seen him doing it (ducks are not known for their romantic finesse), so I do believe we’ll have ducklings eventually.

Until then, here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Taquitos, quesadillas

It was Saturday Leftover Buffet, but last week was already half leftovers built into the menu, so we didn’t have a lot to draw on. I got some frozen taquitos and made some quesadillas, and that was that.

SUNDAY
Mexican beef bowls, corn bread, tres leches cake

Sunday was Lena’s birthday! She requested Mexican beef bowl, and I was happy to oblige, because it is yummy. I sliced up the meat and got it marinating in the morning (I used London Broil, but this marinade is pretty acidic, so it should tenderize some pretty tough cuts if you give it long enough). Here is that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Made a big pot of rice, blackened some corn, shredded some cheese, chopped some cilantro, and fried up some sweet red peppers, and we had it with sour cream and lime wedges, and black beans.

Frickin delicious.

Here is my basic bean recipe:

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I had two cans of black beans from Aldi. One turned out to be a dirty dirty lie!! But I didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to save the can, so I guess I’ll miss out on their “twice as nice” guarantee, alas. I always make too many beans anyway, so we had plenty.

I also made a pan of corn bread, which is probably what made me forget to serve the corn chips I got. I just followed the cornbread recipe on the cornmeal package

It was fine. I used to make corn bread CONSTANTLY, but I think mostly just Damien and I eat it, so I don’t usually bother.

For dessert, we had a tres leches cake – or a collection of them, really, employing I don’t even know how many milks altogether. Damien and I have apparently been dealing with stress by buying half and half and also requesting that each other pick up some half and half, so we had your three milks right here:

except that this recipe doesn’t even use half and half; it uses condensed milk, evaporated milk, milk, and heavy cream. Which is four milks, tres notwithstanding. To add to the confusion, Corrie’s class baked bread and made butter at school, and she brought home some of the butter in a sandwich bag, and proceeded to extrude and devour it all the way home. We’ve been tussling over her lunches lately, and she finally wore me down enough to acknowledge that a small container of Greek yogurt does, in fact, have quite a bit of protein for a kid; and from there, she concluded that Good Ol’ Cousin Butter must be even healthier than yogurt, because it’s even thicker! I started to argue with her, but quickly realized that I don’t really know what protein is. But I’m fairly sure she’s eating the yogurt, and not just bringing it to school and throwing it away. So that’s a win. She could absolutely beat me in a wrestling match, so maybe I shouldn’t be pushing protein anyway.

The only other time I made tres leches cake, it was extremely soggy, so this time I tried Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I made it the night before, and ended up sort of draining a lot of liquid off in the morning and then continuing to refrigerate it until evening. Then I topped it with the sweetened whipped cream and berries. It was good!

I guess this is just never gonna be my favorite cake, but this time was a vast improvement over last, anyway. It wasn’t screamingly sweet, and the cake part was very moist but not disintiningratingly wet.

And Lena liked it, which is the main thing.

Whew!

MONDAY
Quiche, onion soup

Monday, I really did use some of that half and half, and also a bunch of the eggs the ducks have started reliably laying. And so it was quiche day! Quiche is something else I used to make all the time, until we got pretty burnt out on it. But it was a chilly, drizzly day, and it SNOWED, and oh boy, a sunny, fragrant wedge of oven-fresh quiche really hit the spot.

I opted for pre-baked pie shells, and I made one quiche with diced ham and provolone (left over from last week’s chicken cutlets), and one with crumbled sausage and, feeling a little silly while I did it, some sliced-up Baby Bel cheese, which is apparently approximately fontina. (It was breakfast-style sausage, and that was the mildest cheese we had in the house.) I added salt and pepper and some parsley on top to both, and they turned out gorgeous.

I realized I’ve been over-baking quiche most of my life, so I didn’t do that this time! I just baked them until they were just set.

Here is my recipe

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and if you can find fresh eggs, it really does make a difference. Look how fluffy:

I also made some onion soup. We still had some Italian bread from something or other, so I cut that into large hunks and toasted it. I forgot I had a recipe for onion soup, so I wung it, but here is the basic recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I only had chicken broth, not beef, and I really prefer beef, but it was still pretty great. I like it with lots of pepper, and I really don’t like the thick crust of melted cheese on top that French onion soup is supposed to have, so I just served some freshly-grated parmesan on top. Big crouton, a few scoops of hot soup, and then the cheese. Did I mention it was a chilly, damp day, and have I mentioned how I feel about soup?

Delightful. I was surprised at how popular the soup was, although I did cook the onions for a long time, so they were sweet and friendly; and I did also add sugar.

TUESDAY
Honey mustard chicken, buffalo chicken, pasta salad, vegetables and dip

I think it was Tuesday that I finally got my car back. It needed an alternator, a transmission fluid hose, and a serpentine belt, so I was happy to have all that stuff done before I got stranded somewhere. Less happy to have to force myself to admit that, as soon as I got the car back, it started making a brand new sound. Fiddle dee dee. So I spent about 24 hours in denial and then brought the poor old thing back to the mechanic. And yes this makes the third time in 4-5 weeks I’ve had to bring it in. It’s still a good car. It is trying, I can tell.

In the morning I roasted a bunch of chicken drumsticks in oil, salt and pepper, and then while they were hot, I divided them and rolled half in honey mustard sauce and half in buffalo sauce. The honey mustard was half honey, half mustard, with the juice of a whole lemon, and some pepper; and the buffalo sauce was melted butter, a bunch of that Valentina hot sauce, and a bunch of paprika and garlic powder.

Then I made a big pot of pasta salad, which, and I guess this is the theme for the week, I used to make constantly, but haven’t made in quite a while. It was a real odds-and-ends salad from things I found in the cabinet: Pasta with red wine vinegar and olive oil, quite a bit of salt and pepper, garlic powder (rather than fresh, because I wanted it to cling to the pasta), and . . . let’s see. Black olives, marinated peppers, shredded parmesan, and then some things I got specifically for the salad: fresh parsley and the effusively-named “Wild Wonders” selection of multicolored cherry tomatoes.

I tend to under-season pasta salad, so I really went nuts with the seasonings, and it was good.

Chopped up a bunch of vegetables, and when it got close to dinner, I re-heated the two pans of drumsticks.

Nice little meal, although I wish I had saved out some of the sauces to juice up the flavor a bit toward the end of reheating.

I have been eating so many vegetables this week, it’s grotesque. (Mostly for lunch and snacks, in case you’re scrolling up and thinking, “THIS is what she considers a lot of vegetables??)

WEDNESDAY
Ham, peas, mashed potatoes

Wednesday we had the rest of the ham I had already cut into for the quiche. Wednesday is already always a little bananas, because we have STEM club and catechism after school, but everything is spaced out in such a way that I essentially have to circle the globe a few times in order to get everyone where they need to be. This week they added swimming lessons, so I also went to the Y, and I was a little frazzled, but seeing all those chipper, dripping little ten-year-olds stomping around in the locker room made up for a lot.

The ham was pre-cooked, so I cut it into thick slices, put it in a pan, added a little water, and covered it with tinfoil, and shoved that in the oven in between trips, and when I got home, I made a giant bowl of instant mashed potatoes and heated up some frozen peas. It’s not sophisticated, but it’s an immensely satisfying meal. For best effect, garnish generously with extra tinfoil so it’s easy to wash the pan.

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, raw vegetables

Thursday, for reasons I don’t understand, I scheduled . . . everything. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, and then in the afternoon we had one of the most frustrating and unprofessional meetings I’ve had the displeasure of fuming through in many a year, and then in the evening was something I can only describe as a surprise science fair. I don’t know why they do these things to us. It can’t possibly be that they sent me several emails, pamphlets, and Class Dojo notifications, and I just ignored them. I also woke up at 3:30 a.m. and didn’t get back to sleep until after 6, and then my alarm goes off at 6:40, so by evening, in clinical terms, my ass was draggin.

For her contribution, Benny threw together a game of Astronomy Jeopardy to test the wits of the elementary school kids, and it turns out there are two secrets to a successful science project: (a) a very loud button kids can press, and (b) Benny.

I didn’t get a picture of later in the evening, when her male classmates came around to be questioned, and she made them put their hands behind their backs, kneel on the floor, and hit the buttons with their heads. I don’t know why she did this, but I believe they would kill a man if Benny told them to.

So I texted the kids to heat up some chicken burgers, and Benny and I had a slice of cold science fair pizza and went home to do evening chores, and I was feeling a little bit like I wanted a treat, and I suddenly thought maybe there was a stray Italian ice in the freezer! I rummaged around and, to my delight, way in the back behind some bagged corn and elderly fudge, I found one!!

No I didn’t.

So I had some dried mango and shuffled off to take a shower. Emerged to find that Damien had changed the sheets and made the bed and turned on my little lamp, so I put on my fuzzy pants and put myself to bed at 9:30. Pretty nice.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Friday Damien and Benny got up super early to get the . . . remote control submarine contest at UNH? I’m a little fuzzy on the details. This has been my experience as a woman in STEM my whole life: ” . . . Wha?” But as I said, Damien took the hit and they’re there now. I myself went and got some fasting blood work done, meaning I had to get the kids to school, go to the doctor, and THEN get coffee. No one has ever suffered more.

Will we get to stations of the cross at the church tonight? PROBABLY NOT. We did do it at home last week, and maybe we can do that again. I found this text written by Cardinal Ratzinger, and it’s so much more thoughtful and less goopy than any other stations I’ve found. I mean it’s no “Simcha has to drive to school without coffee,” but pretty good.

And that’s-a my story.

5 from 1 vote

Simple French onion soup

Serve with a piece of toasted baguette at the bottom of each bowl. Finish with cheese on top.

Ingredients

4 Tbsp butter
4 cups onion, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp flour
1 tsp white sugar
4-6 cups beef broth (can also use chicken broth or a combination of water and white wine)
pepper
parmesan or mozzarella cheese

Instructions

In a heavy pot, melt the butter and then add the onions. Cook very slowly over a low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the onions are very soft and somewhat darkened.
Stir in the sugar until dissolved. Stir in the flour and mix to coat.
Add the broth (or water and wine). Add pepper to taste and simmer for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer.
Serve with a hunk of toasted bread in the bottom of each bowl. Sprinkle cheese on top, and if you have oven-safe dishes, brown under the broiler to form a skin on top of the soup.

Quiche

Ingredients

2 pie shells
8 duck eggs (equivalent of 10-12 chicken eggs)
2 cups half and half
salt and pepper
1/4-1/2 cup meat/vegetables
1/4-1/2 cup shredded cheese
chopped parsley (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400
Poke shell with fork several times and bake on a shallow pan for 12 minutes or until slightly browned
Remove pie shells and lower oven to 350
Beat eggs and then beat in half and half, salt and pepper
Sprinkle vegetables and/or meat on pie shell, then sprinkle on cheese. Pour egg mixture on top. Top with extra cheese and/or parsley if you like.
Put the quiches in the oven, still on the pan, and bake, uncovered for about forty minutes until the middle is just set, not wobbly
Serve hot or room temperature.

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."

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.

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!