What’s for supper? Vol. 382: All hands on deck

IS it Friday? Apparently it is Friday! Happy Friday. Today, the last kid has her last day of school (the other schools let out last month, last week, and earlier this week, respectively).

We’ve had hot, sunny weather all week, and countless numbers of ceremonies and little parties and I don’t even know what else, and I’ve been spending every spare minute working on the pool deck, and it just this minute started raining. Which is good, because I have been neglecting my garden in favor of working on the deck. 

We had some quick but delicious meals this week, with a real summery feel to them. Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY

Saturday was Sophia’s graduation! Little Baby New Year, all done with high school. 

Our first kid to graduate from Catholic high school. And that’s six out of ten kids done with high school!

After graduation she went to a friend’s party, and then we went out to eat, to the restaurant of her choice. Which was CHILI’S, because we have raised her right. Then we got ice cream, and I picked ginger ice cream, which is now on my list of things to make this summer. So refreshing. I want to make ginger ice cream with coconut, and mango ice cream with pecans, or some combination like that. 

SUNDAY
Roast beef sandwiches with swiss and chimichurri

Sunday after Mass I made some chimichurri

Jump to Recipe

and got started on the deck, and Damien cooked the roast beef. I attached three legs with carriage bolts on one side and screwed a big X, to reinforce it.

I didn’t bother trying to make the legs even because the ground is so uneven. Just literally leaning into that whole situation.

I’m using all salvaged wood, so a lot of the work is removing old nails and screws and extra bits of wood, and also I’m determined to do as much by myself as possible, so everything took a million billion years, and I truly don’t know what I’m doing, andI disturbed an awful lot of angry ants, so by the time it was dinner, boy oh boy, did that sandwich taste good.

Damien cooked the meat by seasoning it very heavily, like absolutely crusty, with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and then he sears it in hot oil with a bunch of whole garlic cloves. Then he roasts it at 350 for about 45 minutes, and begins checking it for doneness. We like it quite rare, and it turned out juicy and tender and perfect. 

The chimichurri was also excellent.

Jump to Recipe

It’s like the flavor equivalent of if a toddler who just took a bath and escapes from his mother and goes and rolls around in the newly-mowed grass, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to him. 

MONDAY
Scrambled duck eggs with sausage on homemade biscuits

I prepped the biscuit dough in the morning, mixing the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the eggs and milk in another, and I shredded the butter on a box grater and then froze it. (If I’m going to make the dough right away, I freeze the butter first, and then grate it directly into the dry ingredients.) 

Jump to Recipe

Spent some more time on the deck, drilling out the holes for the leg bolts. I couldn’t put the legs on yet, because the deck still needed to be flipped, and I didn’t want it to be too heavy. I also worked on leveling out the ground to seat the post bases, close enough so you can jump off the deck into the pool, but not so close that it damages the pool. 

As I dug and measured and dug again and measured again and cussed and dug, I started having some massive flashbacks of the neverending pool prep we did a few years ago, when we kept digging and digging, trying to find some magical, mystical strata of ground that was not rocky (so it wouldn’t ruin the pool floor) but level (so the pool wouldn’t tip over), and every time we removed a rock, it turned out to be a GIANT ENORMOUS BOULDER, and when we got it out, ope, look at that, the ground wasn’t level anymore. And we DID truck in sand to level it off, but somehow it wasn’t that simple, and I remember it taking something like seventeen years to finish. So that’s why I want to do the deck myself! Because if I’m gonna suffer, at least I’ll only have one person mad at me (myself). 

So about half an hour before dinner I rushed in started sausages cooking, and threw the biscuit dough together, and baked twelve enormous biscuits. They turned out with a wonderful texture, just pillowy soft inside with a thin, crackly, buttery shell on the outside

but they tasted like straight baking soda. I have no idea what happened. Same recipe I always use. Is it because I broke up the assembly process? Is it because the butter was frozen? No idea. But I scrambled up a bunch of eggs and had the kids make orange juice, and it was a good enough meal.

After dinner I did get the kids to help me flip the deck over into the bases, and then while they held it, I attached the other three legs. 

Not! Quite! Straight! But pretty close. And, unlike me, more stable than it looks. 

TUESDAY
Tacos

Totally Unremarkable Tacos.

I took this picture of my taco resting on the arm of the living room chair, and you can see the piles of projects the kids brought home and boxes of miscellaneous stuff cleared out of the laundry room so Damien could work on the dryer and the living room not having been cleaned because I have been working on my deck and not yelling at people to clean more, and just THINGS AND STUFF EVERYWHERE. It’s fine. All manner of things shall be fine. But as you can see, it seemed like too much work to put salsa on. Startin to get a little tired. 

WEDNESDAY
Italian sandwiches, chips, watermelon, birthday cake

Tuesday, Dora and her friend came over to belatedly celebrate her birthday. I scurried around getting the sharpest wood scraps out of the yard, and made a bunch of meat and cheese platters

and we had nice sandwiches

and Clara made a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. Sadly, she ran out of time and wasn’t able to complete her plan, which was to recreate the Carvel cake that Kelsey Grammar and Jenna order to pull the misspelled cake refund con. So the cake just said FRAJER and we all had to just sort of sit with our choices in life. 

I heard it was delicious, though, unsurprisingly. Clara’s very good. 
And if I may toot my own horn for a mo, I’m sometimes pretty good at buying birthday presents

It was a book from her childhood, which we have been trying to remember the name of for years and years and years.

It’s about an alligator, and whenever I described it, everyone always thought I was talking about Lyle Lyle Crocodile. No! Not Lyle! I know I sound like the guy who is convinced there is a little mouse with a big hat, and he goes very fast, but no, NOT Speedy Gonzales. He’s a mouse! Anyway, she liked her present. Phew. 

I also did some laughably bad work on the deck, reinforcing the legs on the other long end

It was just one of those “all it has to do is not fall down” moments, and I think I arrived. The X I made on the first side has one plank on the inside of the legs crossing over the plank on the outside , but this second side of the deck is too close to the pool wall, so it had to — you know what, never mind. I’m the one who has to live with this; why should you get involved? It’s fine. 

THURSDAY
Poke bowls, potstickers

Thursday I attached a ladder to the short end of the deck

and reinforced the legs a bit more, replaced a few planks on top, annnnd started removing the side of the existing lifeguard station thingy on the other short end, with the intent of making it all into one big deck. Which wasn’t the original plan, but what is, these days? 

This may or may not work out. But it may! I added a fairly chimpy joist to join the two platforms, and now I need to buy some hardware to reinforce that, and then I can start adding to the floor, and putting up a railing. 

I haven’t yet decided what to do with the one long end that you see when you look straight at the pool. I have some pallets I could just attach to it, to make it more finished, kinda like this, but two of them

Or I could just attach some kind of other wood. I’m really trying to use just salvaged wood and only buy hardware, so I dunno. I may just save it for another year. My plan is to build steps to replace the ladder next year, and I’m going to stain it when I’m done building this year. 

Dinner was blessedly simple. I had remembered to take the ahi tuna out of the freezer in the morning, and although the cat did find it and start nefariously dragging it across the house like an absolute cartoon character, it was double bagged, so it survived. I started some good rice in the instant pot, got Clara to cut up a bunch of mangos, chopped up some sugar snap peas, and diced up some ahi tuna. So we had rice, tuna, mango, pea sprouts, sugar snap peas, and those spicy chili lime cashews from Aldi, and also the hot sweet Polynesian sauce from Aldi. 

It was SO spicy, but incredibly tasty. What an entertaining treat this meal is. 100% mouth party time.

I wasn’t sure there would be enough food, so I grabbed a couple of bags of frozen potstickers from Alid and just boiled ’em. Everyone was pleased. 

FRIDAY
Not actually sure

Last Friday (after I shared last week’s food post), I made lemon garlic shrimp on pasta, and it turned out spectacular.

I used this Sip and Feast recipe and I’m probably gonna make this exact thing again this Friday, because this time the other store had a sale on shrimp and I’m not made of stone. The recipe has a couple more steps than I would do if I were just throwing it together on intuition, but it’s totally worth it. Every flavor just popped right out, and the texture of the shrimp was absolutely perfect. 

Sophia is talking about celebrating the honest-to-goodness start of summer by taking the other kids out for pizza, and if that doesn’t pan out, there is tuna in the house, so there will be something for every palate. 

Oh, last Friday was also the feast of the Sacred Heart, so I also made something I’ve had my eye on for a while: Coeur à la Crème, following this recipe from Mon Petit Four. It was really quite easy, and I think I will make it every year for the solemnity. I need to work on the presentation, but I did achieve that Catholic What-The-Hell-Am-I-Actually-Eating feel.

and everybody thought it tasted good. I thought it would be like cheesecake, dense and heavy, with a light garnish of fruit, but it was actually kind of reversed: A thick, intense fruit compote on top of an airy, not-too-sweet creamy heart. Very pleasant. 

I didn’t have blackberries the recipe called for, so instead I made a compote with about a pound of strawberries and a pint of blueberries, to which I added two or three tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of water.

I simmered it for a bit and mashed it from time to time, and then mixed in a good slug of lilac jelly; and then I spooned out some of the liquid and mixed it with a few tablespoons of cornstarch, and added that back into the sauce, cooked it for a bit longer, and then took it off the heat and let it cool until dessert time. 

I don’t think I mentioned what the lilac syrup tastes like! It’s lovely. It does taste floral, but different from rosewater (which I don’t really like). It is sweet, of course, and a little bit citrusy, but not cloyingly sweet, and it just has a bright, lively but not too intense flavor, faintly like blueberry but brighter. I really like it, although it never completely gelled and is more like a very thick syrup than jelly. I think next year, I will put some of the lilac petals into the food processor and put them into the jelly, to give it a little more body. 

Oh, so I made a double recipe of the cream part, and one was in a large silicone heart mold, lined with cheesecloth as the recipe suggested. The rest, I made in small heart molds sprayed with cooking spray, and they did not come out at all. We had to spoon them out. Lesson learned! 

I also learned you can help your cream cheese achieve room temperature by not going shopping until the very last minute, and panicking a bit on the ride home

But like I said, it was hot and sunny!

And now, like I said, it is raining, so I can’t work on the deck, but can only sit here and think happily about not having to water my poor, neglected garden. I think I put 500 miles on the car this week, just to-and-fro-and-to-and-fro, and I’m so happy about today finally being the last day of school, you cannot imagine. I bought Corrie a wooden crow call for some reason, so we have that going for us. 

While I have been doing my completely voluntary deck and bridge projects, Damien has been incredibly busy with far less glamorous projects: The dryer, of course, and his car, and my car, and Moe’s car, and Lena’s car, and now today the dishwasher, and I’m almost certainly forgetting some stuff. The things that man has taught himself how to do just blows my mind. Somebody should make him some shrimp, at the very least. 

Chimichurri

Dipping sauce, marinade, you name it

Ingredients

  • 2 cups curly parsley
  • 1 cup Italian parsley
  • 1/4 cup dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Whir until it's blended but a little chunky. 

  2. Slowly pour olive oil in while continuing to blend. 

 

moron biscuits

Because I've been trying all my life to make nice biscuits and I was too much of a moron, until I discovered this recipe. It has egg and cream of tartar, which is weird, but they come out great every time. Flaky little crust, lovely, lofty insides, rich, buttery taste.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups flour
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 8 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, chilled
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups milk

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar.

  3. Grate the chilled butter with a box grater into the dry ingredients.

  4. Stir in the milk and egg and mix until just combined. Don't overwork it. It's fine to see little bits of butter.

  5. On a floured surface, knead the dough 10-15 times. If it's very sticky, add a little flour.

  6. With your hands, press the dough out until it's about an inch thick. Cut biscuits. Depending on the size, you can probably get 20 medium-sized biscuits with this recipe.

  7. Grease a pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

What’s for supper? Vol. 290: The secret ingredient is Manischewitz

WELL WE HAVE COVID. Pretty mad about it. Feels like the flu. Not pleasant, but nobody’s going to the hospital. Two of the other kids had it last week and another one has it now, plus me. Feeling very lucky we were able to cancel a bunch of stuff and lay low so we can just collapse like bunches of broccoli and ride this out. And feeling very glad for the vaccines, without which this would have certainly been a lot worse.

We did have some good meals this past week. Read on!

SATURDAY
Passover!

We had a great Passover. We had three guests and everyone worked together to put together a pretty seder table

and the food was great.
Gefilte fish, chopped liver

Jump to Recipe

chicken soup with matzoh balls

plenty of charoset

spinach pie bites

and I didn’t get pics, but cinnamon garlic chicken and roast lamb 

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–both very easy and tasty. 

And then we washed up real quick and went to the Easter Vigil! Did not get many pictures. Benny and Corrie wore matching yellow dresses with frilly shoulders, and Clara put their hair up in crown braids, and I put yellow flowers in their hair. I sure wish I had gotten pictures. 

Here’s my Facebook status from when we got home:

Before Mass, we ran to the basement to go to the bathroom and saw the pastor, wearing his vestment with the gold thread and the big red gems, coming out of a utility closet with an armload of toilet paper for the women’s bathroom. Mass was 2.5 hours. Lots of adult catechumens. Beautiful chant of the exultet. Candles. The creation story. Ludicrous music from the guitar choir, complete with bongo drums. Babies squalling. Baptism, bells, incense. That one couple that clings to each other the whole time like they’re on a lifeboat from the Titanic. And at the end, the pastor announced that that nice guy from youth group is entering the seminary. More bells. My feet are killing me. The Church is such a mess, but from here, it looks to be thriving.

SUNDAY
Easter!

Easter dinner is wonderful because we can get another crack at all the delicious Passover food, but I’m not stressed out and exhausted with the seder and Easter Vigil plans. A lovely plate, as you can see, with plenty of horseradish. 

MONDAY
Pizza

Monday I went shopping, and started packing up all the special Passover plates and fiddly little wine glasses and whatnot. Aldi pizza was called for. I took a chance on a bacon chicken ranch pizza, and it was fine.

TUESDAY
Taco Tuesday! 

Damien made tacos and they were delicious. 

WEDNESDAY
Leftover lamb, horseradish, maztoh, fresh mozzarella, chopped liver, string beans, roast beef, chimichurri

Seemed like the last day I could reasonably try to set out any Passover food, so I made a this-and-that dinner with plenty of roast beef and a big bowl of chimichurri. 

Chimichurri is fantastic. Spring in a bowl. I made it with Italian parsley and regular parsley, basil, dried oregano because I couldn’t find fresh, plenty of garlic, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and olive oil and wine vinegar. 

The roast beef turned out great, nice and rare and tender. Damien made it, and I asked him not to season it too heavily, because the chimichurri was pretty intense.

We also had fresh mozzarella, raw string beans, horseradish with beets (which just tastes like regular horseradish, but it’s a startling disco color), and matzoh. I briefly considered making bread, but just thinking about it made me tired, so I skipped it. (In retrospect, I was starting to get sick on Wednesday, but assumed I was just a bad person who fails to make bread for her family.)

And it was perfect. 

Perfect!

Before I went to bed, I marinated the big fatty pork picnic I bought so we could have Chinese pork roast the next day, and that was a good idea. 

THURSDAY
Char siu, rice, raw broccoli

So, so the marinade for char siu is very easy. You can add garlic or ginger if you want, but you can keep it super simple and just use these liquid ingredients and have it done in no time. 

Jump to Recipe

I looked up my recipe, and it just said “wine,” which is not helpful. Red wine, white wine, sweet, dry, rice wine, what?? Then it occurred to me that we had half a bottle of Manischewitz lurking on the counter, and I certainly wasn’t going to drink it. It’s heavy, sweet, and sticky purple, and I realized it would be perfect for this pork roast, which wants a nice glossy, glazy, dark red exterior. 

So the meat marinated about 14 hours, ant then I put it the oven at 11:30 — actually, I asked Damien to do it, because I was suddenly feeling an irresistible urge to go lie down. I had a nice argument with myself about whether I was just pretending to be sick and refusing to work because I’m terrible, but eventually I fell asleep, so that settled that. The meat cooked for five hours, and then for the last hour, you add the marinade back into the pan and baste it every ten minutes. It’s a pain in the neck but SO WORTH IT.

Look at my beautiful grisly glossy char siu with the Manischewitz marinade!

Look!

Look.

And it was so moist inside, and so tender it just absolutely collapsed. 

We used the basting marinade as additional sauce for the meat and rice. Just so good.  

Just about the whole family enjoyed this dish, which was very gratifying. 

Then I started getting unmistakably sick, and I retreated into the bedroom and that’s where I’ve been ever since, except for going out to get a COVID test.  So I guess I need to isolate until Monday. Damien’s been bringing me tea and vitamin C drops and taking care of everything. Please pray no one else gets sick! We now have four people isolating in our little house, and that really is the maximum amount of isolation we can physically manage before it becomes meaningless. 

FRIDAY
Hamburgers, fries

‘Tis meat Friday, because it’s within the octave of Easter. We did eat a lot of large hunks of meat this week, so we’ve got that going for us. 

Next week is vacation, which is kind of good because we can all safely be sick and not miss school, but kind of a bummer because there goes our vacation. OH WELL. Somehow we’ll manage. 

 

Chopped liver (chicken liver pâté)

A very rich, pungent, velvety pâté made with cheap and humble ingredients. Spread it on crackers with a little horseradish, or add it to your banh mi. It freezes very well (but takes a while to defrost, as it is dense).

Ingredients

  • 2 to 2-1/2 lbs chicken livers, rinsed and trimmed
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 onions
  • 1 quart chicken broth
  • oil for frying the onion
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Put the livers, the raw eggs in their shells, and one onion into a pot with the chicken broth.

  2. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for an hour. (This part looks very weird, but don't lose heart.) Drain off the broth and set aside the livers, onion, and eggs. When the eggs are cool enough to handle, peel them.

  3. Chop the other two onions. Set one aside and fry the other one in oil until crisp.

  4. Using a meat grinder or a food processor, grind up the livers, the boiled eggs, the boiled onion, the fried onion, and the raw onion.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and chill. It should be moist and spreadable. If it's too dry and crumbly, add a small amount of oil.

 

Tom Nichols' Grandmother's Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

  • boneless leg of lamb
  • olive oil
  • garlic powder
  • garlic salt
  • oregano

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 325.

  2. Slash the meat several times, about an inch deep.

  3. Fill the cuts with plenty of garlic powder.

  4. Slather olive oil all over the meat.

  5. Crust it with garlic salt. Sprinkle with all the oregano you own.

  6. Cover meat loosely with tinfoil and cook three hours. Uncover and cook for another 30 minutes.

 

Chimichurri

Dipping sauce, marinade, you name it

Ingredients

  • 2 cups curly parsley
  • 1 cup Italian parsley
  • 1/4 cup dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Whir until it's blended but a little chunky. 

  2. Slowly pour olive oil in while continuing to blend. 

 

Chinese pork roast

Marinate the meat overnight, and leave six hours for cooking. Serve over rice

Ingredients

  • 10 lbs pork
  • 3/4 cup soy sauce
  • 3/4 cup hoisin sauce
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 3/4 cup sweet red wine
  • 1 Tbsp Chinese five spice

Instructions

  1. Mix the marinade ingredients together and marinate the meat overnight.

  2. Drain the marinade and put the meat on a pan with a lip. Cook at 300 for five hours. Cover with tinfoil if the meat is cooking too quickly.

  3. After five hours of cooking, pour the reserved marinade over the meat. Every ten minutes for an additional hour, baste the meat.

  4. Let the roast rest for ten minutes before carving.

 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 255: I’m in the zarn

I was kind of blah about writing this post today, but as I went through my photos, and gosh, we had some pretty good food this week. We had several meals where leftovers were successfully rolled into the next meal, which is always gratifying. Is it weird that I’m enjoying this food all over again by writing about it? That’s okay.  

SATURDAY
Burgers and chips

Nothing to report, but tasty.

Cooked outside, eaten outside, and you can see I haven’t killed my mother’s day flowers yet. 

SUNDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw

I don’t remember what I put in the slow cooker with the pork. I think some ginger ale and misc spices. I was planning to serve it with bottled sauce, so it really just needed to shred, not taste like anything in particular. I had mine with Carolina-style sauce, red onions, and jalapeños, and it hit the spot. The sweet, citrus-y sauce was great with the sharp onion and spicy jalapeño.

Cole slaw was real simple, just cabbage and carrots with a dressing of mayo, cider vinegar, a little sugar, and pepper. I use half a cabbage and just throw the rest away, which feels terrible, but it’s just bowing to the inevitable. Yes, I know I can compost it. I won’t, though.

MONDAY
Chicken caesar salad with fresh duck egg dressing

I mentioned how much I like duck eggs last week. Well, my friend Roberta brought over some more, and I made some VERY POWERFUL caesar salad dressing with them. Duck egg yolks, fresh garlic, kosher salt, fresh lemon juice, a little mustard, and tons of freshly-grated parmesan, anchovies, and vegetable oil. 

I accidentally bought anchovies wrapped up around capers, but it didn’t seem like the time to be cowardly, so I threw them all in there, along with the fish oil. You are supposed to mix together most of the dressing ingredients and then slowly drip the egg yolk in one drop at a time, but life is short. I just put everything in the food processor. 

Jump to Recipe

I swear, if you put a fuse in this thing, you could blow up a city block.

I roasted up the chicken breasts with some basic seasonings and served it with Romaine lettuce, the dressing, some more shredded parmesan, and something called parmesan crisps, which I guess is fried cheese? They’re pretty good, but they put, like, eight in a bag. I know I’m giving my kids food issues when I say “okay, everybody gets four,” but that’s how it worked out. 

Anyway, the salad was delicious.

Big hit. There was way too much dressing, and I ended up throwing away the extra, because I’m brave enough to eat raw duck egg yolk, but not for more than 48 hours. 

TUESDAY
Roast beef, chimichurri, garlic knots, raw veg, etc.

Now this was a lovely meal. I suddenly remembered about chimichurri, which made me think of roast beef, which made me think of garlic knots, and then it just went from there. 

We ended up with those three elements, plus raw broccoli, raw sugar snap peas, some lovely cheddar left over from Opera Nite, and some crackers, and some feta, and some beautiful dry salami, and of course some last-chance duck egg caesar salad dressing. Everyone loved this meal. I have no idea who ended up with what, but there was something for everyone. 

I made the roast beef by giving it a heavy coating of kosher salt, pepper, and onion powder, and sloshing some red wine over it and cooking it uncovered for maybe 40 minutes in a 375 oven. It came out lovely and rare and juicy. 

The garlic knots were from frozen pizza dough. Chop into 12 pieces, roll into snakes, knot and pinch, and top with butter and garlic salt, and bake at 350 for 11 minutes or so. You can also bake these first and then roll them in melted butter, and maybe some parmesan, but I prefer this less-greasy type.

Oh, the other thing is that my food processor broke. The little tab that activates the motor snapped off, and there is no workaround that didn’t sound like an electric shock to me. So I tried making chimichurri in the blender, which only reminded me that I hate all blenders and think they should be illegal. In my madness, I then tried making chimichurri in the standing mixer with the whisk attachment. I knew it was stupid, but I just had to try. (Do not try this.) So finally I just put it in a bowl and chopped away for a very long time like a peasant. Of course it worked fine. Chopping works.

(I did have some regrets about being the kind of person who doesn’t bother to cut the stems off parsley, though. You can get away with that if you use a food processor! Anyway, my friend Tina is very graciously sending me her extra Cuisinart, and I’m SUPER EXCITED. Oh, the things I will process!

Anyway, if you don’t have chimichurri in your circulation, you really should. It goes on all kinds of foods and makes them taste like a summer day.

Jump to Recipe

The recipe is very adaptable to what kind of herbs you have and how spicy you like it. 

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, pasta salad, leftover broccoli

Damien made the sandwiches. He not only puts mayo outside the sandwiches before frying them in butter, he puts mayo on the inside of the bread, for purposes of having more mayo. Did I mention he’s lost 65 pounds this year? He should write a book.

The pasta salad was nice. I used farfalle, and just threw in the rest of the chimichurri, plus some leftover salami and red onions and feta, and some sun dried tomatoes, and some sea salt. 

It really could have used a little brightening up with wine vinegar, but I was too lazy to open a bottle. 

THURSDAY
Chicken drumsticks, risotto, salad

Bit of a crazy day. I was super distracted, and I have no idea what I did, but the Instant Pot kept beeping and burning and not cooperating, and I kept accidentally eating leftover pasta salad even though it was almost supper time.  The risotto ended up quite creamy and delicious, but I had no idea what I would find when I finally opened the lid. (It’s a good recipe, I was just in another zarn.*)

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The drumsticks were uninspired, just salt and pepper and olive oil, roasted on a tray with drainage until they were done. Hey, hot food!

This picture makes me laugh. I couldn’t figure out how to position a lone drumstick so it didn’t look like it was pointing at something. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle

At the kids’ request. (For those not in the know, this is a casserole of canned tuna mixed with cream of mushroom soup and egg noodles, topped with crushed corn flakes and potato chips, served with a dressing of ketchup and mayonnaise. If you know, you know.)

I forgot this is the feast day, though: Sacred Heart. I feel like it would be contrary to the spirit of the day by serving meat that happened to be all the meat we have leftover in the fridge, but on the other hand, meat. It’s a struggle. What are you all having? 

*This is a family joke I just remembered. There was some song that went, “It’s so hard to love you / when you’re in another’s arms” and some kid misheard it as “in another zarn,” which they took to mean “not here.” So whenever we saw someone spacing out or mentally absent, that became “in another zarn.” But I think I can truthfully say I was mostly in the zarn this week!

caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Just mix it all together, you coward.

Chimichurri

Dipping sauce, marinade, you name it

Ingredients

  • 2 cups curly parsley
  • 1 cup Italian parsley
  • 1/4 cup dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Whir until it's blended but a little chunky. 

  2. Slowly pour olive oil in while continuing to blend. 

 

Instant Pot Risotto

Almost as good as stovetop risotto, and ten billion times easier. Makes about eight cups. 

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground sage
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 4 cups rice, raw
  • 6 cups chicken stock
  • 2 cups dry white wine
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • pepper
  • 1.5 cups grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 169: Biscuit moron makes good

Recently, there came about in the Fisher household an unusual convergence of a little money, enough time, and sufficient paperwork-filling-outness, and I signed the kids up for classes at the Y as I’ve been promising to do forever. So now, along with Shakespeare club, school paper, part time jobs, drama club, choir practice, and knitting club, we have gymnastics and rock climbing. What I’m trying to say is: Get ready for a lot of frozen chicken burgers.

SATURDAY
Roast beef sandwiches with chimichurri

$2.99 a pound! I got a couple of big roasts which Damien seasoned and seared, then roasted in the oven; and I made a batch of chimichurri (recipe card at the end), and we had it on rolls with Swiss cheese. 

It may please you to know that, because of my terrible, cumbersome system for transferring photos from my phone to my computer, I managed to email this photo of a roast beef sandwich to . . . someone who definitely didn’t ask for it.

SUNDAY
Lasagna, Irish biscuit cake

Confirmation day!

And a gratuitous picture of Benny with flowers in her hair. 

Confirmation kid picked Catherine of Bologna as a patron saint. She’s the patron of artists. We ordered a print of a painting of her by Cecelia Lawrence.

Lots more detail and depth in the print than it appears here. Her gallery is here, and you can order very reasonably priced prints by emailing her.

This led me to realize we hadn’t bought confirmation presents for the last two kids who got confirmed, so I ordered some. I gave one kid her present, and we had the following conversation:

Me: Here is your confirmation present. 
Kid: And it’s only a year late.
Me: Yes. You’re very gracious. 
Kid: Let’s talk about the other times you failed us!
Me: I can’t wait for you to have kids. I cannot wait. 
Kid: Maybe I’ll be a nun!
Me: Then I can’t wait for you to disappoint JESUS!
Kid: MAYBE I ALREADY HAVE!

Come, Holy Spirit. 

Anyway, Damien made this Platonic ideal of lasagna, just absolutely quivering with fresh cheese and basil and homemade sausage ragu. We were so starving when we got home, I didn’t pause to get a great picture, but it was spectacular. 

The boy asked for a dessert he had at a fundraiser one time, which turned out to be ridiculously easy to make: chocolate biscuit cake. Basically you crunch up a bunch of graham crackers and animal crackers, then make a simple sauce out of butter, chocolate chips, and condensed milk, mix it together, press it into pans, and refrigerate it, and slice it up. It makes sort of fudgy biscotti. I didn’t have any, but the kids said it was good. 

The internet calls it Irish, but they must mean Irish American. Anyway, good recipe to know if you need a treat but don’t want to turn on the oven. 

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas, corn, guacamole and tortilla chips

For my sins, my kids insist on pronouncing quesadillas “kwassadilllas” and guacamole “gwackamowl.” I’m sure I deserve it. Anyway, it finally stopped raining and I ate my food OUTSIDE!

I seasoned the chicken breasts with lots of chili lime powder and roasted and sliced them. A few people didn’t want chicken in the kwassadilllas. Corrie said she wanted hers plain, so I made her one with just cheese. Turns out she wanted it plain, as in just a hot tortilla. I SAID COME HOLY SPIRIT.

TUESDAY
Hot dogs, chips, snap peas 

Actually, I directed dinner remotely while crouching on metal bleachers and wondering when gymnastics class gets to be more than just flopping around; and Damien and I did so much driving, we decided to stay out in between trips and grab some dinner for ourselves. We landed at a little Thai restaurant, and let me tell you, those Thai people have some pretty good ideas. I had some kind of coconut curry with carrot, squash, pepper, melon, and squid, and it arrived in this . . . apparatus with a little candle in it.

Whee! It was delicious. I also had some kind of thing rolled up in rice wrappers with little basil leaves tucked inside. 

Lovely. 

WEDNESDAY
Omelettes, oven fries, salad

When I make my weekly menu, I think, “Oh, I’ll just put omelettes on Wednesday. Just eggs, easy peasy.” This is because I am somehow still not aware that making eleven separate omelettes to order is neither easy nor peasy, but actually takes eleven hours and your arms will fall off.

By the time I got around to making mine, I had lost my will to live, much less my will to make an omelette turn out pretty for the picture. But it was good. I had mine with cheddar, ham, and scallions.

THURSDAY
Pork sliders with coleslaw and spicy curly fries

New recipe. The idea is to serve thin slices of pork on fresh biscuits with a little honey and peach preserves, with coleslaw right in the stack. It’s actually a fine, tasty idea, the only hitch being that if someone came up to me and said, “Make a decent biscuit or I will kill you,” I’d be writing this from the grave. Please don’t give me your biscuit tips. I’ve tried all the techniques and all the recipes and all the special tools and and all the fresh baking powder and everybody’s grandmother’s no-nonsense methods, and I’m just a biscuit moron. That’s all there is to it. 

Yummy supper anyway, though.

I had a pork butt which I sliced as thin as I could and just sautéed it quickly in olive oil with salt and pepper. Basic tangy coleslaw with cabbage, carrot, mayo, vinegar, sugar, and pepper. 

I think you are supposed to pull the biscuit apart to make a top and bottom, but I just built up little open-faced sandwiches. I skipped the preserves and just put a little honey on the biscuit under the pork.

Next time, I’ll make this same meal but use Hawaiian rolls or some other soft roll. It was a great combination and nice and easy, very summery.

FRIDAY
They howled for tuna noodle casserole and I succumbed.

Damien is chaperoning a school field trip to a farm in the rain and heroically brought along Corrie, who heroically brought along her stuffed monkey and of course her ukulele. I’m headed out to pick up kid #1, who’s home from college for the summer! And that’s what it’s all about. 

Here’s a few recipe cards. I just linked to the recipes for the chocolate biscuit cake and the lasagna.

Chimichurri

Dipping sauce, marinade, you name it

Ingredients

  • 2 cups curly parsley
  • 1 cup Italian parsley
  • 1/4 cup dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Whir until it's blended but a little chunky. 

  2. Slowly pour olive oil in while continuing to blend. 

 

Coleslaw

Ingredients

  • 1 head cabbage, shredded
  • 2 carrots, grated
  • 5 radishes, grated or sliced thin (optional)

Dressing

  • 1 cup mayo
  • 1 cup cider or white vinegar
  • 1/2 cup lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Mix together shredded vegetables. 
    Mix dressing ingredients together and stir into cabbage mix. 

White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

 

Pork sliders with coleslaw

I made these with biscuits, but you could use Hawaiian rolls or other rolls

Servings 1

Ingredients

  • Pork butt
  • salt, pepper, olive oil
  • cole slaw
  • honey
  • peach or apricot preserves
  • biscuits or soft rolls

Instructions

  1. Slice the pork thinly and sauté in hot olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper toward the end.

  2. Split biscuits or open rolls and spread with preserves. Add the pork slices, drizzle with a little honey, and add a small scoop of cole slaw.  

  3. Serve as little sandwiches or open faced sandwiches. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 162: It’s the chim churriest time of the year!

Here I am at the airport, waiting to fly to Chicago for the FemCatholic Conference! I can even list all the many things I’m looking forward do about this weekend. It’s going to be awesome.

But first, the food! Here’s what I’m having for lunch right now:

Bland, but not terrible. I did dribble tzatziki sauce all over my shirt. And here’s what else we dribbled on ourselves this week:

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, sweet peppers and dip

Nothing to report. I didn’t take a picture.

SUNDAY
Birthday pizza and cake

Yes, Corrie’s birthday! She asked for only one present: A Chompo bar. I know Chompo Bars have a soft nougat part inside, and there is a chewy caramel part around that, and the outside is chocolate with nuts; but Corrie said they are all chocolate with no nuts and with a green wrapper, and when you’re the birthday girl, you get to say what’s q-p-m and what’s c-r-n. So I printed out a wrapper and glued it to a Hershey bar

and she ate the whole thing herself, because she was the birthday girl.

She had also asked for a Puffin Rock cake, but without any puffins or anything on it.

I’m not gonna claim it wasn’t 40% tin foil, but she liked it. Bababa boo!

She also requested pizza and Abba. Can do.

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas, nacho chips

I coated the chicken breasts with olive oil, then dusted them generously with chili lime powder, and roasted them, then cut them into thin slices, and sprinkled it in with the cheese in the quesadillas. Quesadillas are awesome. They are another food I never ate until I was in college, or possibly in my 30’s. It just goes to show.

I forgot to take a picture of this as well, so here’s a photo of quesadillas of yesteryear, back when there was still a sun.

TUESDAY
Out for pizza!

Because it’s vacation, that’s why. We got almost all the way through the meal before Corrie discovered that one wall was entirely covered with mirrors.

WEDNESDAY
Fettuccine with ragù, garlic bread

Damien made this. He always uses this Deadspin recipe, but it turns out different every time! I liked this iteration a lot. Very tender but you could really taste the wine, and the anchovies could not be denied. It’s ground meat, milk, vegetables, a little tomato paste, wine, and misc. If you thought a pasta meat sauce needed to be red, prepare to be the wrongest person in the world, that’s all.

Clara made enough garlic bread to . . . I can’t think of something that you need a lot of things for. It was good garlic bread.

THURSDAY
Beef skewers with chimichurri, honey goat cheese, fig paste, cranberries, snap peas, and crackers

Some much-anticipated guests had their travel plans derailed, so that was a bummer, but we did have a good meal. This beef is much better threaded on skewers and grilled over the coals, but it was still far to Februaryish to send Damien out into the yard, so I just sliced the beef thin, doused it in olive oil and salt and pepper, and roasted it in the over right under the broiler.Then I just set out bowls of everything else and let people put together their own combinations.

Chimichurri:

Pickled onions:

Yum.

FRIDAY

Tuna noodle casserole again, because (a) it’s vacation and I will say yes to anything, as long as it’s not a lot of trouble, and (b) I won’t even be in the same time zone by dinner time!

Here’s some recipe cards:

Beef skewers

We used a cheap cut of oven roast and it turned out just great (but I'm sure steak would be good, too!). Serve with chimichurri and pickled onions for a wonderful treat. 

Ingredients

  • beef
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Soak wooden skewers in water for at least half an hour before skewering meat. 

  2. Slice beef across the grain into wide strips, trimming off fat if necessary. Thread them, accordion style, onto the skewers.

  3. Build the fire and let it die down to coals. 
    Just before cooking, drizzle the skewers with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then lay the skewers over the grill, turning occasionally, until they are sizzling. 

  4. Serve with chimichurri and pickled red onions. 

Chimichurri

Dipping sauce, marinade, you name it

Ingredients

  • 2 cups curly parsley
  • 1 cup Italian parsley
  • 1/4 cup dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Whir until it's blended but a little chunky. 

  2. Slowly pour olive oil in while continuing to blend. 

 

Pickled red onions

A nice side dish for beef skewers with chimichurri

Ingredients

  • 2 red onions, sliced thin
  • 1 cup chopped cilantro
  • 1 cup red wine or cider vinegar
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • water

Instructions

  1. Dissolve sugar into vinegar. Add onions and cilantro. Add water if necessary to cover onions. Cover and let sit for several hours before serving. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 149: Scrumble

In haste, for I am once again leaving for the weekend for purely social reasons!

SATURDAY
Brats cooked in beer, chips

Damien likes to make brats because they have almost no carbs and Lucy can eat as many as she likes without worrying about it. He boils them in beer and onions and then grills them, and very good they are, brats boiled in beer and onions and then grilled.

We did something else on Saturday, hell if I know. I guess we were carving pumpkins and sewing costumes and — oh yes, there was the town rummage sale. Last year, I got the day wrong, and we missed it, so the kids have been reminding me repeatedly throughout the year that I owe them a rummage sale. I owe them a rummage sale! More than once, I offered them a yard sale, but they said it had to be a rummage sale — yes, even if they rummaged around in the yard sale.

So we went to the rummage sale, and by some unprecedented miracle, everybody found something neat that made them happy. So we dragged all our stuff into the car, and everyone got strapped in, and I got my keys, and I said happily, “And now I don’t owe you a rummage sale anymore!”

And they said, “Yeah, but we were gonna go to that one anyway, so . . . ” So apparently, I still owe them a rummage sale.

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, carrots and dip

Sunday we went to the Pumpkin Festival. I’d long been promising to make caramel apples, and today was finally the day. I used caramel apple making as a bribe to get them away from the Pumpkin Festival, to be honest. So we get home and it turns out I bought the packets of powder, rather than those stretchy caramel wraps that are ten thousand times easier.

But a promise is a promise, so I gritted my teeth and started hunting for my candy thermometer, while warning the kids that I’m terrible at making candy and they would probably turn out awful. Happily, I couldn’t find the candy thermometer, at all. It happens I bought some ghost-shaped marshmallows in case I needed to bribe them to do something else; so I got them to agree that, if I melted down the ghost marshmallows to make rice krispie treats, then we’d have haunted dessert, and that was way better than caramel apples. Whew!

MONDAY
Chimichurri chicken and rice

I saw this one-pot recipe on Budget Bytes, but couldn’t quite bring myself to actually follow the directions, which looked like a lot of work. I just kind of glanced at it like oh yeah, chimichurri, yep, chicken, oh sure, rice, well, well, tomatoes. You’re supposed to cut the chicken into little bits and brown them up in oil or some shit, but I just chucked them in the Instant Pot for 22 minutes with some wine vinegar, then shredded it. I made rice in the Instant pot, then sauteed some onions and tomatoes, added the chicken to that, stirred the chicken into the rice, and folded the chimichurri in at the end.

It was tasty and filling, but not all that exciting. We had some ideas to fix it: We could have some kind of small pasta, like little shells or pastine, or even farro, rather than rice. Or, we could add beans and cheese and wrap it in a tortilla. What I ended up doing was eating the leftovers for lunch the next day with that universal savior, chili lime salt, and then I moved on with my life. Kind of waste of chimichurri.

TUESDAY
Instant Pot chicken tortilla soup and corn muffins

My friend Miriam sent me this recipe, which for once in my life I followed almost exactly, so I won’t bother making a separate recipe card. Normally I use Pioneer Woman’s recipe, which is also good, but different, with more distinct components. This was more brothy with a spicier, more complex flavor.

You blend up all the vegetables together first

then thicken them up in the pot, then add the liquids and chicken.

The hotsy totsy part puts on a little show, but then the rest of the flavors came through. In some spicy things, you take a spoonful that seems fine but then the slow burn creeps up on you. How? Food is magic.

Here’s the soup as just soup:

and here it is all dressed up in its finery, with tortilla strips, avocados, cilantro, and sour cream:

I burned the hell out of the corn muffins, because I forgot to set the timer

which was sad. I burned a lot of things this week. The kids gamely pulled the insides out and had corn muffin bits as a side.

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs and fries

Halloween, of course. We always have hot dogs on Halloween because that way I know they had at least a few cubic inches of protein-based solids in they begin filling every corner and crevice of their interiors with sugar.

You may ask, how did our diabetic kid do on Halloween? She did fine. She eats her candy a bit at a time and totes up the carbs and gives herself insulin. She’s amazing.

Oh, I’m in such a rush! I’ll have to put up the kids’ Halloween costume pics later.

THURSDAY
Pizza

Damien made the pizzas while I was . . . lying down? I don’t remember. We had two olive, two pepperoni, and one cheese. He started out slicing the olives, but ended up just scrumbling them to pieces with his fingers, which is what I always do. This is artisanal.

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle

And away I go!

What’s for supper? Vol. 145: If you give a mouse prosciutto

Lots of variety this week! Rich tapestry of life and so on. Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Hamburgers and chips

Saturday seems like so long ago. I think Damien bought and cooked the burgers while I . . . did something? You guys, he has this new job where he gets to do the work he likes, he gets paid more, and he’s home. He’s home for supper, home for track meets, home for bedtime. It’s fantastic. It’s the best thing that’s happened to our family in years and years, and I’m very happy!

SUNDAY
A CONFUSING FEAST

My daughter works at a deli. One afternoon, we had this exchange:

And that was all I knew. A present? Better than cheese? The suspense! It turns out that what she had was a pound of top quality prosciutto! But it was unsliced, as it was an end piece. $4 a pound for meat that goes for $14.99 a pound. Grocery bargains are my love language.

Prosciutto happens to be my other love language (I’m a bit of a polyglot, to be honest. Will also accept love via pork belly, steak, just about any variety of cheese, shrimp, pie, more cheese, crusty breads, soft breads, herbed butter, most fruits, all types of puddings, custards, and flans, creamy soups, clear soups, middle eastern food, Columbian food, Thai food, Greek food, anything with basil, anything with garlic, hot pretzels, fried pickles, cheese cake, smoked meats, raw oysters, sun dried tomatoes . . .

I’m sorry, I’ve lost my focus. We were talking about the prosciutto. I solicited recipes online, but eventually decided that just plain bruschetta would be best.

Bizarrely, two stores were out of baguettes, so I bought ready-made crostini with olive oil and flaky salt, and I sharpened my best knife and sliced the prosciutto as thin as I could, which was not very thin.

I had collected some creamy fresh mozzarella, and also some gouda, and huge clusters of juicy, dusky grapes. And we also needed fig paste. I had originally been planning to save this treat as an adults-only evening snack, but I had to admit that I had bought kind of a lot of food for two people, so I started planning a family meal around it.

It . . . kind of got out of control.

Oven roasts were still on sale, and as I previously mentioned, I scoff at rigid categories of cuts of meat. Someone had mentioned chimichurri, which I can’t believe I didn’t already know about. It turns out to be really easy to make. You just stuff the things in the food processor, run in a bunch of olive oil, and there it is.

So I sliced the meat into wide strips and threaded them accordion-style onto skewers for Damien to grill outside with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, to be dredged through the chimichurri.

And also a batch of pickled red onions in vinegar, sugar, and cilantro. There were also some lovely tender peas in pods looking for a home, so I set those out in a bowl just as they were. And some salami, and some herbed, braided mozzarella that I forgot I got. And a little bowl of just plain olive oil. And some wild grapes we found while we were gardening. And some more cheese that I forgot I got.

It may be the best meal I ever served. Technically this was a Mediterrani0-Argentinean Travesty with Cheddar and Peas, but it worked, my friends. It worked so well. The cheap meat with simple seasonings sizzling on their skewers with the lively, verdant chimichurri. The salty prosciutto with the creamy mozzarella on a bit of salty bread and a dab of dark fig paste. Cleanse the palate with a few fresh pea pods and grapes, then back for more meat, this time with pickled onions and cheddar. Oh, it was so good. Damien and I ate outside and shouted for the kids to bring us beer and napkins.

The only thing I have to add to this happy food story is that, when I type “chimichurri,” my phone thinks maybe I mean “chili horrible,” which I do not.

I also did a bit of gardening on Sunday, and we got sixty daffodil bulbs, forty irises, and a dozen fancy tulips into the ground. I always think gardening with children is going to be sweet and lovely and wholesome, and it always ends up being . . . not. There’s a lot of bitey ants and moldy mulch and falling on rakes and shouting. But we did get those bulbs in the ground, because I’m always willing to believe that spring will come again. Here is a pictorial version of how gardening starts and ends:

I also gave a kid a driving lesson, and we did not fall off the side of the mountain

and I bleached and kid’s hair and dyed it blue.

Child has SO MUCH HAIR. What a day!

MONDAY
Bagel sandwiches with fried eggs, pepper jack cheese, and ham.

I had in my arsenal two new cast iron skillets they had as a special at Aldi. Cooking in shifts to feed everyone is the bane of my existence, so I was pretty hyped at the idea of making everyone’s eggs all in one go.

Well, it turns out I’ve been spoiled by nonstick pans. I’ve completely lost the knack of cooking on cast iron. I’ll get it back! But these particular eggs were not top notch. Not top notch at all. I didn’t burn the bagels, anyway.

TUESDAY
Carnitas, beans and rice, tortilla chips, guacamole

My husband, who is from Los Angeles, raaaaved about this meal, which made me feel great! In the morning, I took a pork shoulder and put it in the slow cooker with a can of beer and let it go all day on low. At dinner time, I shredded it and sprinkled it liberally with cumin, chili powder, and salt, then spread it in a shallow pan and put it under the broiler.

My carnitas have always been bland in the past, and overly dependent on toppings, no matter what I cook the meat with. I like this method of deliberately cooking it bland and then seasoning it afterward. Works great.

For the beans and rice, I made rice in the Instant Pot, then added black beans, diced canned tomatoes and some juice, minced red onion, minced garlic, cilantro, salt and pepper, chili powder, and cumin, then reheated it. I meant to add some diced jalapenos, but I forgot. I wish I had written down the proportions, because it turned out so tasty and lively, which is not always the case.

For the guacamole: Four avocados, fresh tomato, diced fresh jalapeno, minced garlic, diced red onion, cilantro, salt and pepper, chili powder, and the juice of two limes. I usually mash half the avocados and chop the other half, but they were a little hard, so I sliced them very thin. Yum.

So then we had flour tortillas with sour cream, the seasoned meat, beans and rice, and guac all together. It was fantastic.

I’m very sad for my past self and my lackluster carnitas. Onward and upward.

WEDNESDAY
Salad with chicken, cranberries, cheese, and nuts

Not a thrilling meal, but decent. I cooked the chicken breasts in the Instant Pot on high pressure for eight minutes in just plain lemon juice. When it was cool, I sliced them and served them over salad greens, along with sliced almonds, dried cranberries, and crumbled feta cheese. I bought a bottle of “black garlic pepper vinaigrette,” whatever that is, but I forgot to try it. I also meant to add sliced Granny Smith apples, but didn’t even realize till this minute that I forgot that, too.

I seem to have forgotten to take a picture, as well. What was I doing all week? Not taking food pictures, I guess. Here’s an old pic of a similar meal:

My family will not eat salad greens as a side dish, but they eat tons of it if it’s part of a main course loaded salad. Works for me!

THURSDAY
English muffin pizzas, pepperoni and black olive

I again forgot to take a picture, but this is what sets me apart from other food bloggers, right? Other food bloggers would torture you with eleven photos of hand-pitted black olives and hand-cured pepperoni that they procured at the pepperoni ranch down the road, laid out artfully on a wooden trencher with lavender and quince hanging around for some reason, interspersed through seven paragraphs about how, on a jaunt to Iceland, they popped into out of the driving rain into an adorable little English muffin shop where the grandmother sat on a two-legged stool in the back, absolutely grinding the flour with her authentic gums while the patrons patiently hung around holding sacks under her jaw, and that’s why Icelandic kids don’t have ADHD.

Not me! I just wrote “pizza” and called it food blogging. In my defense, I did install a thingy so now you can pin images, if you’re into that. Flailing toward solvency, that’s my game.

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Easy, cheesy, glutenful: Mac and cheese. I use an Instant Pot recipe. If I’m feeling fancy and I feel like everyone’s blood glucose can take it, I transfer it to a buttered pan and put buttered breadcrumbs on top.

And now it’s almost 12:30 and I haven’t had breakfast yet. I’m loading up all these food pictures and absolutely dying. Gonna go grab some lunch and then get back to you with the recipe cards!

Guess who’s sitting on the couch next to me? My husband. He’s working from home today. You guys.

Chimichurri

Dipping sauce, marinade, you name it

Ingredients

  • 2 cups curly parsley
  • 1 cup Italian parsley
  • 1/4 cup dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Whir until it's blended but a little chunky. 

  2. Slowly pour olive oil in while continuing to blend. 

Beef skewers

We used a cheap cut of oven roast and it turned out just great (but I'm sure steak would be good, too!). Serve with chimichurri and pickled onions for a wonderful treat. 

Ingredients

  • beef
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Soak wooden skewers in water for at least half an hour before skewering meat. 

  2. Slice beef across the grain into wide strips, trimming off fat if necessary. Thread them, accordion style, onto the skewers.

  3. Build the fire and let it die down to coals. 
    Just before cooking, drizzle the skewers with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then lay the skewers over the grill, turning occasionally, until they are sizzling. 

  4. Serve with chimichurri and pickled red onions. 

 

Pickled red onions

A nice side dish for beef skewers with chimichurri

Ingredients

  • 2 red onions, sliced thin
  • 1 cup chopped cilantro
  • 1 cup red wine or cider vinegar
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • water

Instructions

  1. Dissolve sugar into vinegar. Add onions and cilantro. Add water if necessary to cover onions. Cover and let sit for several hours before serving. 

 

4 from 1 vote
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Slow cooker carnitas

Serve on tortillas with sour cream, guacamole, beans and rice, salsa, cilantro, or whatever you like.

Ingredients

  • 1 pork shoulder
  • 1 can beer (or soda)
  • cumin
  • chili powder
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Put pork shoulder in slow cooker with beer. Cook on low for five hours or more, until pork falls apart when poked. 

  2. Preheat broiler. 

  3. Shred meat, mix together with spices, and spread in a thin layer on a shallow pan. Broil for a few minutes until meat is slightly crisped.  

  4. Serve on tortillas with whatever additions you like. 

 

Beans and rice

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

 

White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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Instant Pot macaroni and cheese

Adapted from a CopyKat recipe

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds raw macaroni
  • 2 tsp hot sauce
  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 3 Tbsp yellow mustard
  • 2 cups milk
  • 2-3 pounds cheese of your choice
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1-2 cups buttered bread crumbs for topping (optional)

Instructions

  1. Put macaroni in Instant Pot with enough water to barely cover. Put hot sauce, and mustard on top and mix it well. Mixing may be superstitious; not sure. 

  2. Set IP to high pressure for six minutes. Do quick release. 

  3. Drain any excess water. Add milk, butter, and cheese, and mix until macaroni is coated. 

  4. Serve as is; or butter a pan and pour the macaroni into it, top with buttered bread crumbs, and heat in oven until breadcrumbs are toasted.