Deadspin – SIMCHA FISHER

What’s for supper? Vol. 418: HowBowDah Sunday

Happy Friday! This is the time of year when I recall that you can take the family out of homeschool, but you can’t really take the homeschool out of the family.

Maybe you think I mean that we’re all still hotly in pursuit of wisdom and wonder and the free exploration of the wide world of ideas, but actually it’s just that we all still feel that going anywhere is optional. So this week, we sure had a lot of no school and half school and why bother going back to school days. I just cannot bring myself to care. They can all read and some of them can drive, and I think they even brush their teeth.

SATURDAY
Leftover delite

Featuring last week’s chicken noodle soup and chicken biryani, and frozen buffalo chicken.

I am really, really struggling with how much food to make these days! We have anywhere from five to nine people at dinner, and the best I can do is have plenty of snacks on hand if I didn’t make enough, or attempt to serve everything twice if I made too much, and then be at peace with throwing stuff away and/or ignoring people who are huffy about whatever. The ducks and dogs have also had quite a varied diet lately.

SUNDAY
Steak, mashed potatoes, asparagus

They were selling whole eye of round roasts for cheap again, so I got the biggest one I could find, and thought possibly we could squeeze three meals out of it. Meal #1: Steaks. Because it was Laudate Sunday or Gaudate Sunday or HowBowDah Sunday, and Damien makes really good steaks.

I also made five pounds of mashed potatoes and two pounds of asparagus. I made the asparagus in the oven under the broiler. I spread it in a pan and drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt, and just gave it about eight or ten minutes, until the stems were slightly soft and the tips were frizzled. Served with lemon wedges, absolutely delicious.

MONDAY
Steak salad

Monday Damien cooked the rest of the meat and sliced it, and I served that over salad with strawberries, crumbled blue cheese, and toasted almonds. I also found a little bit of leftover homemade mozzarella, so I cut that up and served it, too. Slightly weird combination (my preferred fruit to go with steak is either pears or peaches), but I was trying to use up what we had in the house + what was on sale.

I served it with biscuits from a can and those were pretty popular. The bag of green material you can see on the left is a sandwich bags of pepperoncini that I had in my purse for reasons.

Sophia got home from visiting a friend in the evening, so I went to pick her up at the Amtrak station.

And there is still nothing more exciting than hearing a train come in. Trains are one of humanity’s greatest inventions, and I wish I were on one right now.

That evening, it was day 7 of the duck egg incubation period. They are in a sort of sci fi-looking heated dome.

The tray under them rotates occasionally, so they get turned like a mother duck would do for them if ducks were good mothers, which they are not; and they are fed by tanks of water to keep the air humid. After seven days, you set them on a light and see if you can spot developing ducklings.

All four were duds!

You’re supposed to be able to see veiny patterns developing, but all we could see was a shadow lump. Either these eggs were never fertilized, or they didn’t start developing for whatever reason. So we tossed them, and started over the next day.

I was a little more upset about this than I expected to be! Things are just . . . not turning out, lately. No ducklings, no money, no sun porch, car still broken, entire country in flames, and so on. I don’t think the peach pits or garlic or carrots I planted in the fall are coming up. But of course alles fleisch ist wie Grass anyway, so what do you expect. I did get back to my weird little caryatid

She’s sadly not as zaftig as her ancient sisters. Somebody give that girl a chicken cutlet with extra cheese. Anyway, I’m trying to actually finish projects, lately, rather than do 80% of them and then get another idea, so I’ll keep chipping away at her. Maybe I’ll make her into a creepy lamp.

TUESDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

Tuesday I faced the reality that we had eaten all the meat, so we just had quesadillas with cheese and optional jalapeños. I guess I didn’t feel like that was photo-worthy, so one must imagine a quesadilla and me, happy to eat it.

On Tuesday, I baked a cake for Irene’s birthday the next day! The cat did step on it a few times, but only after I had wrapped it in plastic, which I thought was very gracious of him. Damien also cut and pounded the chicken for Wednesday’s dinner.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken cutlets, birthday cake

We had yet another doctor appointment, and now we are all freaking all caught up with our freaking shots and meds and everything! While we were out, Damien made a huge batch of his magnificent chicken cutlets and sauce. You pound the chicken, dust it in seasoned flour, dredge it in egg, and then coat it in breadcrumbs and parmesan, gently fry it in oil, and then put a basil leaf on each piece, cover the basil with a slice of provolone, and then top that with a scoop of hot marinara sauce, so it all melds together into one scrumptious, savory treat.

The sauce was absolutely tremendous. You know when marinara sauce gets that kind of purple underglow, deep down? That’s what this one had. So good.

Irene had requested a Batman cake, and I showed her a few pictures, and she said this one looked good:

but could I make it look kind of Van Gogh?
Just kidding, she did not say that. But I did it anyway!

I really just do not have the hang of fondant. I do okay with small pieces that I can cut or mold, but the part where you roll out a smooth sheet and lay it over a cake and it comes out looking all crisp and level? That part is so hard!

I did happen upon a new idea for cake decor, though. I wanted to have the bat logo standing up, but the cake was already starting to slump, and I was afraid it would collapse under anything heavy, and I didn’t have any candy or cookies or extra cake to build it up, anyway. We did, however, have some of those baby rice rusks in the house. They are very light, and if you’re careful, you can shape them. So I broke apart a few to form an oval

and welded it together with candy melts. Then I made the bat logo with fondant and stuck it on with water, and to the back I added a couple of supports with more rice rusks and candy melts.

The bats are also fondant, obviously, stuck onto skewers with little blobs of candy melt. Eight bats and eight stars, because she is 16.

She liked it!

Whew. She liked all her presents and we had fun. Whew.

THURSDAY
Leftover chicken cutlets

Thursday, oh man did we have leftovers. The plan was to make spaghetti and serve the leftover chicken on top, but there was SO much, it didn’t feel necessary to add pasta.

I just covered them with tinfoil and heated them in the oven to remelt the cheese, and it was extremely delicious.

Yum.

FRIDAY
Fish tacos

So far, Friday is my day to see how many different medical supply companies I can talk to, but the catch is, nobody can help me or will admit to having heard of me. But I have plenty of other stuff to think about. I did go stomping around in the woods and figure out which trees will work for Corrie’s treehouse.

I ordered a used copy of Tree Houses You Can Actually Build, which is an encouraging title. I was talking to Damien about the DIY videos I had been watching, where guys are like, “oh yeah, you just have to dig down four feet and use pea gravel after you anchor the truss lines to equilibriate the torque, so your cantilevers are all flush with the joist retaining extrusions, and then you can start to put in the floor.” I was like, “Ohhh, these are people who DON’T want their kids to fall out of the tree” and Damien was like, “But there are lots of things I don’t want our kids to do” So yes, I bought the book, but we shall see.

Also, now that the sun porch plans went kaput, I realized that I only wanted a sunporch in front because I felt like I needed to replace the porch we tore down. And we need a place to store a few things, and I thought it would be nice to also get a place to start plants, and maybe even a place to hang out when it’s too cold to be outside.

But when I had time to think about it, I realized there’s just not a lot of sun on that side anyway. So HOW WOULD IT BE if we just build a simple little portico in front, maybe put in a nice little path and some flowers, and then build a greenhouse in the back, where there IS sun, and where the building code would be less stringent because it would just be a little freestanding structure, and not part of the house???? Maybe I’ll do that! Maybe I’ll put a hot tub in it! Maybe I’ll fall out of a tree! Maybe the medical supply company will actually call me back. Maybe I’ll stick myself back together with candy melts. Maybe I’ll just get on a train, and that will be that.

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, poor old lady. Off she goes.

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

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

AND YET.

SATURDAY
Lasagna, cannoli dip

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

He also made a mini lasagna for Millie.

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

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

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

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

SUNDAY
Leftovers featuring lasagna; taquitos

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

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

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

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

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

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

let those lumps rest for half an hour,

and then shape the bagels and boil them,

add toppings, and then bake them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Vermonter sandwiches, fries

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

A tasty freaking sandwich.

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

So obviously they had ice cream cones.

WEDNESDAY
Gochujang pork ribs, rice, sesame broccoli

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, raw veg

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Pancakes?

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

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

This is five gallons of sap:

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

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

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

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

In closing, yes, Corrie fits inside the big pot

and yes, she still looks like Baby Hermes.

Well, goodbye!

5 from 4 votes

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400.

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

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

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

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

Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish.

What’s for supper? Vol. 395: Agrodolce

In haste! In haste! For this has been the week of countless appointments (well, seven: doctor, pediatrician, ob/gyn, neurologist, and three dentist) but only one car, plus Cub Scouts, and the school just called to say that one child forgot her lunch. I thinks she’s just gonna have to develop a sudden liking for school pizza.

But still, happy Friday! Friday is Friday. Here is what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Chicken wraps and chips

This is a meal that started out decent and has slowly devolved, and I think this is about as low as it can go before it turns into absolute bachelor chow. The first iteration was delicious crunchy saucy buffalo chicken tenders, shredded lettuce, blue cheese, and ranch dressing. Then I started getting non-buffalo chicken tenders, which are cheaper, and adding the buffalo sauce, and skipping the blue cheese because not everybody likes it. This time, I got those awful frozen “chicken fries,” sloshed on some ranch dressing, and then didn’t realize the buffalo sauce didn’t have a little hole, and got a buffalo flood.

It was honestly still pretty good, and I’m only pretending I’ll do better in the future. It’s hard when your kids don’t like hot dogs. What are you supposed to do on weekends? Nobody knows. Thow some scallions on there.

SUNDAY
Ragu on pasta, zucchini agrodolce, bread, salad; cheesecake with peaches

Sunday, Clara and her boyfriend came over, so we did make a nice meal. I made zucchini agrodolce (= “sour sweet”) following this recipe from Sip and Feast. It’s a leetle bit time consuming, but so worth it; and it’s good cold, and great the second day, so you can make it ahead of time.

You make a little sauce with red wine vinegar, water, sugar, red pepper flakes, chopped garlic and sliced red onions. Then you fry up the zucchini pieces in olive oil and sprinkle them with kosher salt

and then you mix it together, cool, and chill. Wish I had fried them a little browner, but oh well.

Delicious. I’m not a huge zucchini fan, but I love this dish. You should make it before summer weather is over, because it’s a really great side.

Damien made his amazing ragù using the recipe from Deadspin. He used ground veal and pork, and it was savory and scrumptious as always.

We had a little miscommunication vis-à-vis bread, and I bought some, Damien bought some, and Clara brought some from her new job, which is at a bakery.

FINALLY ONE OF MY KIDS WORKS AT A BAKERY.

Lovely meal. (We also had a green salad, but I don’t think anyone ate it.) She also brought a bunch of bialys, which I haven’t had a bialy in probably thirty years. So nice.

For dessert, we had cheesecake, which I actually started on Friday, kinda.

So, the cheesecake! This is not a fluffy, airy cake; it is a rich, creamy, heavy extravagance. This is a proprietary recipe which I am not at liberty to disclose, and I understand why, because this cheesecake is a truly spectacular beast, and may not be safe to unleash on the general public. But I can give you some of the tips that were shared with me.

-First is that you put your ingredients out the night before you bake them. So in my case, I put them out Friday night, baked it Saturday night, and we ate it Sunday night.

-Do not over-beat the ingredients, because that will introduce air in.
But do scrape the bowl out a few times, including the bottom, as you mix it; or else you can pick it up on and drop it on the counter a few times after adding ingredients, to knock out any air.

-Wrap the pan in two layers of heavy duty foil and bake it in a water bath. Keeping the oven humid will reduce the chance of cracking.

-When it’s done baking, turn the oven off and leave the cheesecake in there until the oven is cool. Don’t peek; temperature changes cause cracks. Then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight (I leave it in the springform pan overnight).

I was exceedingly frazzled and distracted, so I made some errors, but behold: One little crack (and a few moon craters). Not bad. Last time I made this recipe, I over-baked it, but this time it turned out nice and pale and even. (This is a matter of taste; some people prefer a darker little skin on top.)

Sumbitch held up really well when I took the sides off the pan.

I wanted a peach topping, and I am down to frozen peaches now. Here is where I wish I had take the extra time to put in a little lemon juice or something to preserve the color when I was processing a million fresh peaches; but I didn’t, so we had darker peaches that were honestly a little bit mushy, because I left too much moisture in the bag and froze each batch in one clump, rather than chilling the pieces individually before freezing them longer term.

I more or less followed this recipe (just the peach topping part), which calls for pieces of peaches and also peach puree. I think maybe I made it the night before, so it could chill. Turned out quite good. It is not quite as thick as pie filling, but thicker than — well, a lot of things I make when I think I don’t need a recipe.

All in all, I was pretty proud of this whole project. It wasn’t too sweet, but full of flavor, and the texture was, frankly, immaculate.

Turns out Clara’s boyfriend doesn’t like cheesecake, though! It’s okay, we like him anyway. He brought us some cedar scraps, and I’m seriously thinking of taking up wood carving this winter. Maybe make some picture frames, or weird little ornaments that nobody wants.

MONDAY
Bruschetta with leftover ragu

Monday I knew we were gonna have leftover ragù, so I cut up a few baguettes, drizzled them with olive oil, and sprinkled them with salt, and toasted them in the oven. I heated up the ragù and set out the leftover cheese, and it was delightful.

Long live ragu!

I think Monday was the day my car started making horrible scronching noises.

TUESDAY
Roast chicken and baked potatoes

Monday night I got sick with awful vertigo, nausea, headache, and muscle pain, and I could barely get out of bed on Tuesday, which sucked. Damien did everything, including taking kids to appointments and roasting a chicken and baking some potatoes. I was too sick to eat, but it smelled good. I believe he roasted the chicken with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and a couple of lemon halves stuffed in there.

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, veg and dip

Wednesday I was up again and decided we all needed many more vegetables in our life, so I made a giant tray

and then I made a bunch of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. I usually use sourdough bread, but the store was out, so I did ciabatta rolls, which I think I prefer. I like knowing exactly where the sandwich ends. I used provolone, and put a little skim of mayo on the outside and fried them in butter

and them put them in a warm oven for ten minutes to make sure the cheese was all melted. I was absolutely starving by dinner time, so this tasted like an olympian feast.

Frickin ham and cheese, can’t beat it sometimes. Especially with pickles.

THURSDAY
Mexican beef bowl

Last week, top round roast was on sale, so I bought an extra for this week. Cut it thin and marinated it for several hours in this tasty little marinade

Jump to Recipe

I made a big pot of rice in the Instant Pot and quickly cooked the meat in a pan on the stove.

Sometimes I go all out with a million toppings for these rice bowls, but this time we just had the rice and meat, some corn and cilantro, sour cream, and corn chips. I think I also put out shredded cheese. Oh, and lime wedges.

A very fine meal.

I always spoon some of the juice from the meat over the rice, and it’s so good. This is a meal you can prep ahead of time and then throw together in fifteen minutes right before dinner time (well, if you have an IP or rice cooker). As I mentioned in my meal planning post, this kind of meal strikes the right balance between effort and convenience, for me. I almost always have more time and energy in the morning, so I do as much as I can then, and then supper is quick and easy, but doesn’t feel crappy.

FRIDAY
Salmon tacos with guacamole

I have some frozen salmon fillets that were super cheap at Aldi, and I sure wish someone would come over my house and cook them, but that seems unlikely. Probably I will just pan fry them with maybe some Tajin or whatever. I have some avocados, but I don’t know what state they’re in (I mean existentially, not geographically), so we’ll see if the guacamole materializes or not. I forgot to buy cabbage. I do have more cilantro and some salsa and sour cream.

People’s expectations are pretty low, and I feel a little bit like I have been put in a bowl and dropped repeatedly, to get all the air bubbles out, but not in the fun way. It’s just been an exhausting and discouraging week, and I’m not even the one has to go lie down in the driveway and look at . . . warped rotor drums, or whatever it is. I am simply too delicate for that sort of thing, and instead practice the womanly art of frying things in mayonnaise.

P.S. If you are my editor and are reading this, I am working on the things. I have been, and I am. I’m gonna sprinkle some cilantro on top and it will be great.

P.P.S. Damien brought in the forgotten lunch, because he’s a much nicer mom than I am.

P.P.P.S. Yes, it finally occurred to me that we might actually have covid. We do mask in medical settings, and the kids mask at work, so there’s that. Welp. Tomorrow will be kinder.

Agrodolce, indeed.

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. 349: Take that, Fürst-Pückler

Happy Friday! Today I am knee-deep in Dalekanium. This week, we had our big anniversary party (our anniversary is Oct. 25, but we had a party on the 15th), and now I’m buckling the heck down with Halloween costumes. First I managed to get incredibly sick for 24 hours, but I’m working my way past that now and made some progress on Dalek Sec:

This may look primitive to you, but I think my budget is roughly the same as what the BBC had to work with in 1963, so it’s fine.

This is for Corrie. Last year, she was Duck from Sarah and Duck, and Benny was Sarah.

Benny is a little fed up with being civil and well-behaved, and this year she’s going as Classic Green Goblin. More on that later!

So this week, we kinda front-loaded all the good food, and then I collapsed like a bunch of broccoli. We did not, however, have any broccoli. I just don’t like it very much, except one time when I was litle, my father took us to to a Japanese restaurant in New York City, and I didn’t know what to get, so they picked a tempura dish for me, and there was a single piece of each thing. I shall never forget that tempura broccoli.

Here’s what we did have:

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

Saturday I was busy cracking the whip, forcing my poor beleaguered children to do foolish things like sweep the hallway and clean under the couch cushions even though the guests might not even look under the couch cushions.

On Saturday I made two kinds of ice cream, the panna cotta, and the suppli.

I was planning pistachio ice cream, and I followed this recipe, which is a copy cat Ben and Jerry’s recipe. I only made one teeny error: I uh bought cashews instead of pistachios. In my defense, “cashew” has an “sh” in it, and “pistachio” has a “ch.” I honestly think that was what confused me. It doesn’t take much, on a good day, but on Saturday I had a migraine and I was more than half zombie. (Did I tell you I finally got a referral to a neurologist??)

My original plan, you see, was Neapolitan ice cream, which is supposed to be pistachio, vanilla, and strawberry, to kinda get the colors of the Italian flag, although AKSHULLY: “The first recorded recipe was created by head chef of the royal Prussian household Louis Ferdinand Jungius in 1839, who dedicated the recipe to Fürst Pückler. To this day, the German name for Neapolitan ice cream is Fürst-Pückler-Eis.”

Soo, I forged ahead with cashews. Take that, Fürst-Pückler. I added some almond extract and, at the last minute, threw in some white chocolate chips.

The other ice cream I made on Saturday was chocolate, and I just followed the Ben and Jerry’s recipe from their Ice Cream book.

Jump to Recipe

They actually have three chocolate ice cream recipes. This one uses both unsweetened baker’s chocolate and cocoa powder.

Then I made the panna cotta, and I made my second dopey move. I used this vanilla bean recipe, which I had made last time and it turned out so nice. So I infuse the cream, I make the special vanilla-rubbed sugar, I slowly bring the cream to the right temperature, I bloom the gelatin, I chill the cream, I’m going along, I’m going along, and I’m tasting it from time to time as one does, and every time I taste it, I think to myself, “Wow, it’s not very sweet, is it?” And every time, my entire response to this is, ” . . . . huh.” So I clear out the fridge and pour the panna cotta into styrofoam cups in muffin tins and close the door and feel very acccomplished, because that’s done . . .

. . . and then I see the bowl of sugar, still sitting there. That’s why it wasn’t very sweet! Light dawns on blockhead. I was in quite a panic, because I didn’t know what could be done; but a Facebook friend clued me in that you can re-heat gelatin, as long as you do it gradually. So I put the sugar into the pot, added one or two of the cups of cream mixture and made a little slurry and heated that a tiny bit, and then slowly added and very slowly heated and stirred the rest of the cream back in, until the sugar was dissolved. Then I put it back in the cups and back in the fridge. Whew.

Then the suppli!

Suppli, also sometimes called arancini, are breaded, deep-fried balls of risotto with a center of melted mozzarella. We ate them just about every day in Rome for lunch, where you could get them for 1,000 Lire (about a dollar) in 1995, which is when I spent a semester in Rome (Damien’s class was a couple years after mine).

It’s a time-consuming recipe, but eminently worth it.

Jump to Recipe

I sprang for arborio rice, which I don’t always do, and the risotto came out so mild and creamy, I could weep. I let it chill, added egg, and then formed it into balls with little cubes of fresh mozzarella inside, then rolled them in panko crumbs. They sort of slumped because the risotto was so creamy; but I chilled them overnight and by the time it was time to fry them, they held together nicely.

Then that was enough for one night.

SUNDAY
Antipasto platters, suppli, fettuccine and ragu, bread, ice cream, panna cotta with berries

Sunday Damien made the ragù using this amazing Deadspin recipe. It was heavy on the veal this time, and it was superb, as always.

I started the other two kinds of ice cream in the morning: The cherry vanilla (just vanilla ice cream with maraschino cherries thrown in, plus some almond extract and a little of the syrup from the cherries), and the grape sorbet. I had frozen some grape mash from when we processed all those millions of Concord grapes and all week I have been trying to think of a joke for this picture, but I got nothing

Feel free, like if you want to show it to your doctor or something, I don’t know.

Anyway I managed to make the grape sorbet and the cherry ice cream without incident, and stowed them in the freezer to firm up for evening. Then the only thing I had to still make was the bread. Easy! I can make bread!

Jump to Recipe

I decided four loaves would probably be enough, so I made a big batch of dough, and, because it was a little chilly in the kitchen, I turned on the oven for a few minutes, then turned it off and put the dough in there to rise.

Then I forgot I had done so.

Then

I asked Damien

to preheat the oven for me,

so I could bake the bread.

AND THAT IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE BREAD. I realized ten minutes into it what I had done, and it was definitely too late. The only good thing I could think was that this was the third idiotic thing I had done (first the cashew pistachio ice cream, then the sugarless panna cotta, and now the half-baked bowl of dough), and three is the magic number, so surely I was done being stupid!

I had a tiny little bit of stupidity left in me, though, so I thought, “Well, as long as I have this dough, it couldn’t hurt to try baking it and see what happens.” So I clawed out the part that was still dough-like and made it into balls and baked it like rolls.

When I say “like” rolls, I mean . . . well . . .

In my defense, that’s about what I expected. And I did throw them away! Didn’t even feed them to the ducks.

By this time, it was starting to smell pretty great in the house because of the ragù, and it was time to sit down and have some fun making antipasto trays. I don’t even know what-all I got. Just this and that, some cured meats and olives and fresh and pickled vegetables and various cheeses.

and breadsticks, and a bunch of grapes and clementines

and I made a bunch of bruschetta out of store-bought bread, and all the kids came and brought more bread just for eating, and they brought flowers, too.

The suppli fried up REAL nice (I think I ended up with about 30)

Our friends Sarah, Tiffany, and Theresa came and we all got to just sit around and eat and talk and laugh and it was so nice.

Oh, and the panna cotta turned out fine! Everyone liked it. I meant to macerate the berries, but I forgot, so I just threw them on top, and it was great.

So, happy almost anniversary to us. I wish I had gotten more pictures!

As long as I’m going on and on and on, I might as well tell you about my patio chairs. I got them FREE on the side of the road, and then I found cushions at Walmart on clearance, and don’t they look nice?

Whew.

MONDAY
Leftover pasta and ragu

Monday, naturally, we had tons of leftover food, so I bought some more pasta on the way home and we had ragù again, which no one was mad about, believe me. It’s so good.

TUESDAY
Aldi pizza again

Tuesday was when I had to admit I wasn’t just tired after the party, I was really sick. I dropped Corrie off at school and realized I wasn’t in any shape to drive home, so I parked in the school lot and fell asleep in the car for forty minutes, then crept home and slept most of the next 24 hours. Damien got pizza and managed everything else.

WEDNESDAY
Rotisserie chicken, salad, and leftover antipasto

Wednesday I felt half human, so I just napped a bit and then picked up some rotisserie chickens and cut them up, and pulled the rest of the leftover antipasto elements out of the fridge

and I had a nice little girl dinner

Do you see how thick they cut the prosciutto, though? I forgot about this. I wasn’t watching, and they cut it like ham! I was so annoyed. I had been planning to make some kind of prosciutto-wrapped fruit slices for the party, but when I opened the package, it was impossible. Oh well. Pickled vegetables make everything better.

THURSDAY
Burgers and chips

Thursday I was like, oops, the person who is me has still not gone shopping this week; so I got some hamburger meat, and we had burgers.

Look at me, I had sugar snap peas instead of chips. I’m kind of furious at how slowly I’m losing weight, but it is coming off. Slowly. (Don’t ask me how I can eat panna cotta and prosciutto and still be furious about how slowly I’m losing weight. I just can, okay?)

FRIDAY
I have no idea. Noooooo idea. I don’t even know what food is. I should have saved those rolls.

I would seriously rather eat those than come up with something new for nine people to eat. Take that, Fürst-Pückler.

Oh, you know what? I never said, but the cashew white chocolate ice cream was really good. I may make it on purpose sometime.

Suppli (or Arancini)

Breaded, deep fried balls of risotto with a center of melted mozzarella.
Make the risotto first and leave time to refrigerate the suppli before deep frying.

Ingredients

12 cups chicken stock
8 + 8 Tbs butter
1 cup finely chopped onions
4 cups raw rice
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup grated parmesan cheese

To make suppli out of the risotto:

risotto
1 beaten egg FOR EACH CUP OF RISOTTO
bread crumbs or panko bread crumbs
plenty of oil for frying
mozzarella in one-inch cubes (I use about a pound of cheese per 24 suppli)

Instructions

Makes enough risotto for 24+ suppli the size of goose eggs.

Set chicken stock to simmer in a pot.

In a large pan, melt 8 Tbs. of the butter, and cook onions slowly until soft but not brown.

Stir in raw rice and cook 7-8 minutes or more, stirring, until the grains glisten and are opaque.

Pour in the wine and boil until wine is absorbed.

Add 4 cups of simmering stock and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally until the liquid is almost absorbed.

Add 4 more cups of stock and cook until absorbed.

If the rice is not tender by this point, keep adding cups of stock until it is tender. You really want the rice to expand and become creamy.

When rice is done, gently stir in the other 8 Tbs of butter and the grated cheese with a fork.
This risotto is wonderful to eat on its own, but if you want to make suppli out of it, read on!
TO MAKE THE SUPPLI:

Beat the eggs and gently mix them into the risotto.

Scoop up about 1/4 cup risotto mixture. Press a cube of mozzarella. Top with another 1/4 cup scoop of risotto. Roll and form an egg shape with your hands.

Roll and coat each risotto ball in bread crumbs and lay in pan to refrigerate.

Chill for at least an hour to make the balls hold together when you fry them.

Put enough oil in pan to submerge the suppli. Heat slowly until it's bubbling nicely, but not so hot that it's smoking. It's the right temperature when little bubbles form on a wooden spoon submerged in the oil.

Preheat the oven if you are making a large batch, and put a paper-lined pan in the oven.

Carefully lower suppli into the oil. Don't crowd them! Just do a few at a time. Let them fry for a few minutes and gently dislodge them from the bottom. Turn once if necessary. They should be golden brown all over.

Carefully remove the suppli from the oil with a slotted spoon and eat immediately, or keep them warm in the oven.

Jerry's Chocolate Ice Cream

This is the more textured chocolate ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's ice cream recipe book. It has a rich, dusky chocolate flavor and texture. Makes 2 quarts. This recipe requires some chill time before you put the cream mixture into the machine.

Ingredients

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2/3 cup cocoa powder
3 cups milk
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups heavy or whipping cream
2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Melt the unsweetened chocolate. I used a double boiler, but you can use a microwave if you're careful. Whisk in the cocoa and continue heating until it's smooth. It's okay if it's clumpy. Continue heating and whisk in the milk gradually until it's all blended together. Remove from heat and let cool.
In another bowl, whisk, the eggs until light and fluffy. Gradually whisk in the sugar and continue whisking until completely blended. Add in the cream and vanilla and continue whisking until blended.
Add the chocolate mixture into the cream mixture and stir to blend. Cover and refrigerate for about three hours, or until it is cold.
Use the cold mixture in your ice cream machine. I used my Cuisinart and let it churn for thirty minutes, then let it cure overnight.

5 from 1 vote

French bread

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

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.
Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.
Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.
Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).
Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.
Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.
Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.
Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.
Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

What’s for supper? Vol. 242: Vindaloo! Couldn’t escape if I wanted to!

Hey! Didn’t get a food post out last week, but I have a decent excuse this time: We got about forty inches of snow

and lost power for three days. We had a drought this summer, so the trees are brittle, and tons of them fell on power lines, including the ones right across the street from us.

We have a well, which is run by an electric pump, so that means we also didn’t have water for those days, and that means we had to buy water (in the next town, because the stores here were closed, because the power was out) to flush the toilets. Yes, you can melt snow to get water to flush toilets, but if you’ve actually ever done this, you’ll know it takes about a roomful of snow to melt down into about three cups of rather smelly water, which is not enough to flush two toilets that ten people have been using; and also, if you are trying to keep your house warm, I do not recommend bringing in a roomful of snow to melt, with a heat source that you do not have! Everything was like that: Yes, there is a sort-of kind-of solution, but is it better? Unclear. The dog, at least, had a wonderful time. He always has a wonderful time.

Anyway we survived by the light of candles and light sabers,

and we didn’t have any babies or toddlers, so that made it easier. I had just bought a ton of comforters on clearance, so we had plenty of bundling material. We even lucked out in that I hadn’t done the weekly shopping yet when the power went out, so all we lost was a pack of ground beef. And we are now the proud owners of a small but decent generator, and all my baby trees survived, and we’re very, awfully tired of board games and turkey sandwiches.

The power came back on last Friday, which was St. Patrick’s day, and our bishop did give a meat dispensation, so we popped out and put together a nice meal for that: Irish breakfast with all the parts we actually want, so no blood sausage or anything dyed green, but sourdough toast, fried mushrooms, beans, roast tomatoes, roast potatoes, bacon, and eggs fried in bacon fat.

Very tasty, because how could it not be. I got cherry tomatoes this time, rather than attempting to roast slices of large tomatoes, which are insanely fragile. I mean who isn’t these days, but the cherry tomatoes was a good idea.

SATURDAY
Hot dogs and smile fries

I actually love hot dogs. The kids act like it’s some terrible thing when we have hot dogs for dinner, because they are barely American, possibly barely human.

SUNDAY
Antipasto plate, pasta and ragu, garlic bread, vanilla bean panna cotta with fresh fruit

Sunday was St. Joseph’s day. We usually have a big Italian feast with several courses, but we were still sort of in shambles from the power outage, so we kept it on the modest side. I put together two big antipasto plates with various cheeses, cured meats, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and fruit

and yes, I was worried I hadn’t bought enough food.

But I had.

Damien made a wonderful ragù with veal, pork, and pancetta. Wow, it was good. Like especially good. He uses this recipe from Deadspin, but it comes out different every time, and it was so savory and lively.

We had a bunch of bruschetta for the antipasto, and garlic bread for the pasta. And Italian ices, and then also for dessert, I made something I’ve been wanting to try forever: Panna cotta. I used this recipe from Serious Eats and started infusing the cream and milk with vanilla bean pods the night before.

You rub the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar, which feels very fancy. Then in the morning, I bloomed some unflavored gelatin powder in milk with vanilla extract, warmed up the cream, scraped the insides of the vanilla bean pods into it, and whisked in the gelatin mixture and the vanilla sugar. Then I just poured it into ramekins, covered them with plastic wrap, and let it chill for the rest of the day.

Shortly before dinner, I mixed a little sugar with blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I didn’t want them to break down a lot, so I didn’t do this far ahead of time. When it was dessert time, I ran a knife around the inside rim of the ramekin and then slammed them upside down on a saucer, and they came out well. Topped with the sugared fruit, plus some slices of mango, and oh it was so pretty

We also had some kind of fragile almond cookies on the side, I forget what it was called.

I’ve never had panna cotta before, but it was a wonderful texture, silky smooth, and very creamy and refreshing. The vanilla bean specks had gathered at the bottom, so they were strewn all over the top of the glossy turned-out panna cotta and looked very elegant.

Some of the kids opted to keep theirs in the ramekin and just eat them like cup custards. This is also a normal way to serve them, although people like to make them in glass containers, even wine glasses, if they’re going to serve them this way.

So, very pleased with this foray. Damien, who isn’t a big fan of custards and such, thought they were great. I see many kinds of panna cotta in our future! You can put whatever you want in there.

MONDAY
goblin food

Monday I served a truly terrible meal of very burnt chicken nuggets, a wad of very underdone hash browns, and dried-out leftover pasta.

This kind of meal can be made more appealing by taking pains to make the table attractive. You can achieve this look by not clearing away yesterday’s dessert trash. Follow me for more etc. etc.

TUESDAY
Reubens, chips

Tuesday there was still corned beef on sale, so I threw a few hunks in the Instant Pot for a few hours, and we had the meat sliced on toasted marbled rye bread with thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut.

Wish I had run the whole sandwich under the broiler to melt the cheese, but it was still quite delicious. I really don’t miss boiled dinner at all. Corned beef is great, but it needs to be squashed in among other tasty things, not just lying there like a cadaver.

WEDNESDAY
Pork vindaloo and rice, pineapple

I was having a conversation about real mindfulness with my family — about the experience of deliberately standing as nothing but a witness — and the tremendous sense of gratitude that often arises when you’re able to shift into this mode. I realized this happens to me often while I’m cooking, which explains why this isn’t really a recipe blog, per se, but more of a food experience appreciation blog (as well as a big family slice of life blog). And it explains why I often forget to taste while I’m cooking, which I have frequently felt very guilty and stupid about. It’s because I’m not thinking about the end result, but just feeling overwhelmed with the beauty of the things passing through my hands, the colors and sensations and smells and patterns. This does not make for the best food, necessarily, but it makes my life better!

Anyway, Indian food is very conducive to this kind of experience. Just assembling the ingredients almost always puts me in a different frame of mind. Everyone had been sick for several days with a nasty head cold one of the kids brought home, and I was very optimistic about knocking that out, at least while we were actively eating, when I saw what was going into the marinade for this pork vindaloo

This isn’t even as many peppers as the recipe called for (I was doubling it), but it was all I had. So it’s guajillo peppers, garlic, ginger, cinnamon sticks, tamarind paste, cumin seeds, cloves, peppercorns, and turmeric, sugar and kosher salt. The recipe calls for white vinegar, but I only had cider vinegar.

It’s quite easy. You just make a paste out of all the ingredients above. You just bash them all together until they’re a sticky paste, and then marinate cubes of pork in it. The recipe calls for pork butt and also pork belly, but I just went with the butt. As I often etc etc.

Marinate a few hours

and then add some water and simmer it up along with sliced onions for a few more hours, and then that’s it. You serve it with rice, and throw some cilantro on top.

OH IT WAS GOOD.

Immensely tender, and the sauce was spicy, yes, but not blast-your-head-off spicy. Just enough to make your nose tingle. It was also tangy and a little bit fruity and a little earthy, and wonderfully nourishing and warming.

I had a second helping of rice with just the sauce with little fragments of meat it in, and it was a joy. Wonderful recipe. The kids liked it! This may have been because I really talked it up ahead of time, and purposely acted very excited and happy about it, and mentioned many times that it was called “VINNNDALOOOOO,” but it’s not the kind of thing that they usually like.

I also cut up a few pineapples that were hanging around, and that was not the absolute ideal side, because they were extremely acidic. Mango or something a little more mild would have been better. But it was a wonderful meal all the same. Vindaloo! Knowing my fate is to be with you!

If you use the recipe, be sure to save it, as Bon Appétit only gives you a certain number of free views.

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada bowls

Thursday we had school conferences right before dinner, so I prepped everything ahead of time, and we had an unsophisticated but tasty hot meal waiting for us, and everyone liked it.

I dumped a bunch of chicken legs in the Instant Pot with a can of red enchilada sauce and some diced tomatoes and chiles, and pressed the “poultry” button. When it was done cooking, I fished the chicken out, pulled the meat off the bones, and transferred it to the slow cooker along with the tomatoes and enough of the sauce to keep it from drying out.

I chopped a bunch of scallions and cilantro, sautéed some frozen corn in olive oil to give it a little char (it’s dumb, but everyone loves it this way) and put that in a bowl, and set out shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, corn chips, hot sauce, and Taijin seasoning. Then I set up the Instant Pot again with rice and water. When I was on the way home, I texted one of the kids to press the “rice” button, and when I got home, I heated the corn in the microwave.

Boom, hot dinner, with cheese.

One of the kids told me, “Jolly good meal, mother. I said that in a silly way, but I meant it.” When a kid stops to make sure you know they’re sincere, you know they’re sincere.

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just pizza. No tricks!

And I still haven’t written up Corrie’s under the sea cake! I think I will have to give it its own post, as it was quite a journey. It is the reason I happened to have unflavored gelatin in the house for panna cotta.

Oh, one more thing, I got a big sack of flattened rice, something I just found out about (by seeing it on the shelf), which I haven’t had a chance to use yet, but I’m pretty excited about it.

Apparently it is parboiled, so you barely need to cook it, and Indians use it for all kinds of things: A quick, cozy breakfast, savory or sweet, a side dish with vegetables and potatoes, or you can fry it, or you can do whatever you want. It’s healthier than white rice because it hasn’t had as many nutrients polished away.

What’s for supper? Vol. 241: Troubles with soup are better than troubles without soup

Happy whatever day it is! I didn’t do a food post last Friday because, I forget why. Oh, because I was complaining about the pope. Anyway I wanted to share the results of a recipe from the previous Friday. It’s sabanekh bil hummus, Palestinian spinach and chickpea soup. I followed the recipe from Saveur and it was deeee-lectable.

You saute some onions in olive oil, and then you toast some spices (cumin and coriander) and then grind them, then add them to the onions along with some garlic, plus allspice and nutmeg, and pepper, and cook a little longer, then add chickpeas and stock. (It called for vegetable stock, but I had chicken.)

THE SMELL.

Simmer for about half an hour, add in fresh baby spinach, fresh lemon juice, some kosher salt, and a little more olive oil. Look-a here, now.

It was so good. The earthy spices combined with the bright lemon juice and the tender chickpeas and spinach made it a surprisingly interesting dish, considering it’s just broth with chickpeas and spinach. Damien and I absolutely loved it. Definitely adding it to the Friday rotation.

I’m kind of mad about this, but I’m now fully converted to the notion that fresh ingredients are worth the trouble. Sometimes you just plain don’t have the time or energy, and then it’s a blessing to use convenience foods! It’s fine, it’s not a moral issue! But if you can grind spices and squeeze lemons and crush garlic and chop herbs, oh man. Do yourself a favor. It eventually stops feeling laborious and extravagant and just feels like the normal way to cook, and it elevates your flavors so much.

Of course I still buy bouillon powder, rather than making my own stock, and I still routinely buy frozen pizza dough and so on. Let’s not be silly. I know you’ll agree that I draw the line at exactly the right arbitrary spot. I KNOW YOU’LL AGREE.

Damien and I were both insanely busy all week. Just tons of writing, and we had two birthdays, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t even remember. Also Sophia went to Rome with her high school class, and we had to get both cars fixed (my car was doing something that was causing people to stop me and say, “Excuse me, do you know your car is–” and I would have to sigh, “Yesss, I am aware,” and I drove around like that for over a week before I had a chance to get it fixed. So penitential, much litany of humility. Damien’s car was fine, except for the brakes, pff), and Lena taught the dog to roll over, which was more emotionally fraught for the whole family than you might expect. Also the dryer broke, and I hit some lady’s mailbox on the way home from band. I really kranged it good, and it was very cold out, so it shattered, so I had to knock on her door and say, I’m sorry, I hit your mailbox, and there was a very old, unclothed man sleeping in the living room with purple old his legs sticking out. Probably can’t really blame the dog for that (I do not take him to band).

I did manage to get the one stinking maple tree tapped finally, though. It’s a long story and probably nothing will come of it, but I really hate not finishing projects, so I’m forging ahead. Look-a here, now!

I’m sorry I keep saying that. I’ve been listening to funk music lately and it stuck, for some reason.

SATURDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Words cannot describe how long ago that Saturday and those hamburgers were.

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese

We had these sandwiches on ciabatta rolls. I really hate cooking with an iron frying pan, but it does come in handy for laying on top of a puffy sandwich and weighing it down when you’re trying to get cheap Aldi cheese to melt.

MONDAY
Southwest chicken salad

I drizzled some chicken breasts with something called elote seasoning, which seems to be mostly chili powder, salt, and dehydrated cheese powder, and roasted the chicken, and served the chicken slices over mixed greens with shredded cheddar, some corn sautéed in olive oil, and chipotle ranch dressing, with corn chips.

I feel like there were beans, but maybe they remained in the realm of hypothesis. Anyway, it was a good salad.

TUESDAY
Lasagna, Mars cake

Tuesday was Elijah’s birthday celebration, and he requested Damien’s amazing lasagna, which he makes using the Albert Burneko recipe. Absolutely stupendous. Creamy cheese sauce, ultra savory tomato sauce with meat, just fab. I always get a terrible picture of this lasagna because, once he sets it on the table, no power on heaven or earth can slow me down.

It weighs about 87 pounds and it’s so good.

I also made a Mars cake. Elijah likes Mars a lot, and I thought it would be nice to throw together a little fondant Mars Perseverance Rover with wheels that turn and a little gum paste Ingenuity helicopter with a rotor that spins, how hard could it be??

Well. I took a chance and broke away from my filthy box cake ways and used the King Arthur “Simple and Rich Chocolate Cake” recipe and it was exactly that, simple and rich (and chocolate, and cake. And a recipe. You guys, I’m so tired). And the cake turned out very well! I made a simple frosting with butter, a little salt and vanilla, powdered sugar, and milk, and the Mars part was pretty enough.

Then, well, things got out of hand a little bit with the robots

What can I say, an attempt was made. The good news is, he turned down my original idea, which was a galaxy mirror glaze cake with a surprise Mars-shaped heart baked right into it. So like when you cut space open, there’s Mars inside! Just like in real life! So we didn’t do that, which is good, because I can’t do that. Instead, we had the robuts, held together with toothpicks. They would have been better if he had let me put candy eyeballs on them, but I learned just in time that he actually feels strongly about robots and eyeballs. Look-a here.

WEDNESDAY
Tacos

Man, it’s a good thing I wrote this down, because I don’t remember this at all. What a week. I fell asleep on the couch so many times.

THURSDAY
Mussakhan and taboon bread, tabouleh

This I do remember. This is the second time I have made this meal, recipe also from Saveur, and it was just as popular this time. It’s quite easy, but packs a huge punch with flavor. You just have to get your chicken parts and onions marinating several hours ahead of time, and then you just roast it up.

Just before it’s done, you fry up some pine nuts and toss them over the top of the sizzling hot chicken, which you have lavishly spread over the piping hot taboon bread,

Jump to Recipe

which you have whipped up a few hours before dinner because you believe in yourself. Actually I timed it a little wrong and the chicken was ready a few minutes before the bread, so people started eating it before I could put it on the bread. A minor disappointment, soothed by the implied compliment that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on that chicken. I still had my chicken on bread, and I spooned up plenty of the lovely sumac-laden roasting juices to ladle over the tender, dimpled taboon.

This meal is so good, you can’t imagine. The chicken is so juicy and the mixture of spices is just heavenly. You got the happy salty little bread cloud floating underneath and it’s really just hard to stop eating.

I also picked up a few boxes of tabouleh, already mixed with seasoning, so you just had to pour hot water over it to wake it up, and then I added some chopped tomatoes and cucumbers and feta cheese. I ate, uh, kind of a lot of that, too, even though it was just boxabouleh.

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular old pizza, whew.

Oh, I was planning to tell you about the whole other cake, but I guess that belongs in next week’s post! I mean this week’s post. I did start it on Thursday. Well, next time, I’ll tell you allll about it. It just about killed me.

And now it’s Tuesday. We got a massive dump of snow, the power is out, and I guess we are going to have corn flakes and melted snow for supper.

taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.
While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.
Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.
If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.
Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

What’s for supper? Vol. 320: Cat, dog, hen, only each of us is all three of them

Happy Friday! Because it was somehow actually cheaper than continuing to have my old phone, I got a new phone with a fancy new camera, I haven’t had much chance to play around with it yet. That’s not true; I’ve had lots of time. I’m just stupid and easily intimidated by technology. What I’m trying to tell you is some of the food photos turned out a little weird and overly dramatic this week. You’ve been warned!

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Little brown meal

That is what my parents used to call it when they were super poor in the kibbutz in Israel and all they could afford was, I think, hard boiled eggs and eggplant? That doesn’t make sense, though, because those things aren’t brown. Anyway, my father refused to eat either of those foods for the rest of his life, so they must have had them a lot. “Little brown meal” for us is when you’re all about delivering nutrients and that’s really your only goal.

On Saturday, that meant pizza rolls, two kinds of taquitos, and smile fries or whatever you call these misbegotten things formed from mashed potatoes in the very bowls of hell. (Don’t get me wrong; they’re delicious. But they’re not exactly food.)

When I say the kids liked this meal, you can believe I am telling the truth. I truly shudder to think how often I would have to serve it before they would refuse to ever eat it again.

SUNDAY
Vermonter sandwiches

We just had these a few weeks ago, but the kids suggested it and I didn’t have any other bright ideas, and boneless skinless chicken breast was $1.49 a pound. If you missed it last time, this sandwich is sourdough bread or ciabatta rolls, roast chicken breast, bacon, slices of Granny smith apples, slices of sharp cheddar cheese, and honey mustard.

And now for the world’s most dramatic Vermonter Sandwich photo:

Eh? Eh? It looks like it’s about to knock the casting director’s socks off with “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going.”

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas, guacamole and chips

These were fine. Boneless skinless chicken thighs were also $1.49 a pound, and normally I would do something tasty and middle eastern with them — in fact I have a number of tabs open, begging me to do just that, but [impulsively cuts Monday’s throat with my demon barber razor] I HAVEN’T THE TIME. So I roasted up the chicken with some oil and Taijin, sliced it up, and made a bunch of quesadillas and then burned most of them, oh well.

The guacamole turned out pretty well, though.

Jump to Recipe

I have gotten out of the habit of keeping limes in the house, though, because I cut out my evening cocktail, so I had to use bottled lime juice. I also tried one of those rocking garlic press things that everyone keeps telling me will change my life, and I can say definitively: Meh. (That is an affiliate link even though I’m not actually recommending it, because what if you don’t listen to me and I earn a commission anyway?) It left behind some sort of garlic sheets — like the outermost layer of the clove — that I couldn’t get it to crush no matter what, so I really didn’t end up saving myself time or effort in the end. Is there a trick to this? I just went back to my trusty old squasher press, which is slow, but it does work.

TUESDAY
Italian wedding soup, garlic knots

Tuesday was supposed to be taco day, but it just felt soupy. Italian wedding soupy!

Jump to Recipe

I had a large pitcher of turkey bone broth in the freezer from the Thanksgiving carcass, so I defrosted that (and it looked quite photogenic in the process, let me tell you. Check out that ring of schmaltz)

and I made a bunch of little baby meatballs with ground pork, lots of freshly-grated parmesan, fresh garlic, fresh parsley, even freshly ground salt and pepper, and of course some eggs and breadcrumbs; and I fried them in batches in a little olive oil.

I blooped the fried meatballs into the broth, added a bunch of torn-up kale, and let it simmer all day; then about half an hour before dinner, I added some ancini de pepe and cooked it until it was soft.

Little more pepper and that was it. A little parsley and parmesan on the top.

Darn it, I underseasoned the meatballs. It really could have been a wonderful soup, but it was merely okay. The broth from the turkey was very nice, and the kale made the broth a lot greener than I was expecting. It doesn’t aways do that, so I don’t know what that was about. I mean like the color really got into the liquid. I dunno.

I also made garlic knots using premade pizza dough. Usually I made the knots and top each one with a pat of butter and a sprinkle of garlic powder and salt, and then just bake them at 450 for (I have no idea, I don’t know how long anything bakes, sorry) but this time I baked them bare. Then I melted a stick of butter and mixed it with garlic powder and salt and poured that over the hot, baked knots and tossed them up, and holy cow, that was excellent.

I believe it was Staša — you know Staša –who suggested this method.

I had baked the garlic knots a greased pan sprinkled with fine corn meal, and some of the corn meal got mixed up with the butter and added a little texture to the whole thing. Gonna do it this way every time. Some fresh parsley would not have been amiss, either.

WEDNESDAY
Tacos and corn chips

Just boring, nothing to report.

THURSDAY
Chicken cutlets with basil and provolone; homemade ice cream

Benny’s birthday! She asked for one of Damien’s specialties, the delicious Deadspin recipe for breaded fried chicken cutlets smothered in provolone with a secret fresh basil leaf, topped with a scoop of wonderful homemade red sauce.

I didn’t take a photo, but here is a previous one:

Full confession, I gobbled up my chicken and then went back and just got a bowl of sauce for seconds. I love that sauce so much.

She’s going to have her party this weekend, which is going to be ancient Egypt-themed with a sphinx cake, so she asked for just ice cream on her actual birthday. She wanted M&M and then, knowing I can’t have chocolate, requested a batch of strawberry so I could have some. (I have kind of mixed feelings about how thoughtful it is to request that I go out and buy strawberries, process and macerate them, and make ice cream, because she wants me to be able to eat ice cream; but on the other hand, I ate it, and it was delicious).

I used the Ben and Jerry recipe for both batches.

Jump to Recipe

(For the M&M ice cream, I just made the sweet cream base, as described in the recipe, and didn’t do the strawberry part, but instead stirred in some M&M’s after the ice cream was done churning, before putting it in the freezer to solidify. I froze the M&M’s for a while before stirring them in, to keep them from blurring when I stirred them in.)

Easy peasy, but I managed to splatter cream all over the whole kitchen somehow. I was thinking about how annoyed I would have been if someone else had made it and then claimed not to know how it happened, but honest to goodness, I have no idea. I did clean it up, though! I live my life as all the characters in the Little Red Hen, simultaneously.

Yes, this is a Brideshead reference and a Shakespeare reference and a Little Red Hen reference all in one, FOR NO REASON. So far no one has discovered a use for my brain. I have been on Lexapro for over a month and it still does shit like this.

FRIDAY

Uh I forgot to plan or buy anything. May possibly have been hoping the world would come to an end before supper. I don’t know, what are you having? Maybe we will have leftover ice cream. Maybe we will have eggplant and hard boiled eggs. Maybe the world will come to an end.

If not, here’s my little reminder that I have that monster list of recommended gifts! I’m about 18% done with shopping, myself, if that makes you feel any better.

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

Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two.
Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.
Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly.

5 from 1 vote

Italian Wedding Soup with pork meatballs

Lots of variations to this pleasant, nourishing soup with little meatballs.

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

4-5 lbs ground pork (can mix in some ground beef or turkey)
5 eggs
2-1/2 cups bread crumbs
4 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 Tbsp oregano
1 bunch fresh Italian parsley, chopped fine
1 to 1-1/2 cups freshly-shredded parmesan
1/2 cup butter for frying

For the soup:

3 lg carrots, diced
1 lg onion, diced
8 cloves garlic, minced
16 cups chicken broth
3 cups white wine
3-4 cups raw kale, torn into pieces
2 cups uncooked small pasta like ditalini
pepper
more parmesan and Italian parsley for garnish

Instructions

To make the meatballs:

Thoroughly combine all the ingredients (except the butter) with your hands. Form them into small meatballs. In a large, heavy pot, melt the butter and lightly brown the meatballs in batches. They do not need to be cooked all the way through, as they will continue cooking in the soup.

To make the soup:

Remove the meatballs from the pot. Put the onions and carrots into the butter and cook until they're slightly soft. Add in the garlic and continue cooking until the garlic is fragrant but not too browned.
Add the meatballs back in. Add the broth and white wine, the kale, and the pepper to taste. Simmer for several hours.
About half an hour before serving, add the uncooked pasta and turn up the heat to cook.
Serve with shredded or grated parmesan and coarsely chopped Italian parsley for a garnish.

Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

1 pint fresh strawberries
1-1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

For the ice cream base

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

Instructions

Hull and slice the strawberries. Mix them with the sugar and lemon juice, cover, and refrigerate for an hour.

Make the ice cream base:

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.
Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.
Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.
Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)

What’s for supper? Vol. 319: In which I rest on pie laurels

Hap the Friday! I didn’t do a What’s For Supper last week because of course it was the day after Thanksgiving, and I assumed you already knew what we were having for supper. We aren’t amazing turkey leftover wizards anyway, so the following week wasn’t too spectacular. How about if I just do the highlights of the last two weeks? Who will stop me?

Here’s some of what we had the last few weeks:

Pulled pork, cole slaw, french fries, Hawaiian rolls

Damien made this yummy pulled pork using the Deadspin recipe. For me, pulled pork is what you make when you have lost all interest in life and yet there is this hunk of meat to deal with, so you conceal it inside some kind of pot as quickly as possible and then pull it out at dinner time when it’s too late for anyone to get away; but Damien took a lot more trouble over it, and it showed.

The next day, Damien also made a gigantic lasagna or possibly two lasagnas, also from Deadspin.

Somewhat less photogenic, but ravishingly delicious. This recipe requires you to make a ragù and a béchamel sauce and let me tell you, any time I have to use the ålternate keybœard twïce in a sêntence, you know it’s going to be tæsty.

Beef barley soup and store bought croissants

Yaas, beef barley soup. This one, I made, and it was a cold, drizzly day, just perfect for building up a hearty, heartening soup. Garlic, salt and pepper and olive oil, carrots and onions, beef broth and red wine, beef, barley, and then mushrooms.

Jump to Recipe

That was the week before Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving went great! I started baking on Tuesday. On Thursday, all my weird little chickens came home to roost, if temporarily

and my son’s gf also came over, and my brother and his bf, and we all had an excellent time, talking and laughing and shouting important opinions about obscure movies. Damien made the turkey injected and basted with white wine and lime juice and stuffed with sausage and oyster stuffing. I didn’t see or get a photo of it roasted, but here is the carving:

and he also made the gravy. He also made the mashed potatoes at the very last minute, because I put all the food on the table and told everyone dinner was served and then wandered around with a confused expression, and then he suddenly realized all I had done was boil a bunch of potatoes. So he mashed them and threw in a bunch of milk and butter, and mashed them, oops! Everything he made was scrumptious.

You can find the recipes for all my Thanksgiving foods here.

I did fully made candied sweet potatoes using this recipe from My Forking Life, and they turned out great. This recipe includes a little fresh orange juice, which is nice. I think next time I may include actual slices of oranges.

I had my annual internal query about what the difference is between yams and sweet potatoes. Sometimes I look it up and sometimes I don’t, but it doesn’t matter, because I never remember. So I thought about it for a while while I was cutting them up, and then I double-checked the bag, and it said “Mr. Yammy Sweet Potatoes.” So there you go.

I also made parker house rolls using my own recipe, and they turned out nice and cute,

hard as a rock, and dry as a bone, and just about tasteless, so I need to find a new recipe.

I made cranberry orange bread which was fine, a little dry

spanakopita triangles to start us off, which were delightful

and we had a cranberry sauce vortex!!!

and three pumpkin pies, and a festive pecan pie that turned out rather pretty

I learned how to make pie crust roses from this website. Good to know! Very easy.

and I was inspired to make an apple pie that turned out quite lovely.

Refrigerating the pie for half an hour before baking helps all the decoration keep its shape). I gave it a little egg wash and sugar sprinkle and it was nice

Although the apples inside were a little chompy, to be honest. Can’t have everything.

I also made a few quarts of vanilla ice cream, and a quart of butternut squash ice cream with curry candied nuts, following a recipe from Blue Apron. (I ran out of pecans and they were like a dollar each this year, so I made it with 3/4 walnuts.)

I really really liked the squash ice cream. It distinctly had all the flavors in the title — squash, curry, candied nuts — and it just worked. Really good autumnal flavor with just a little fiery edge from the curry.

And finally, Dewey brought a lovely dense, moist gingerbread made using the Smitten Kitchen recipe, plus a jar of heavy cream that the kids shook to whip up into whipped cream, so that was fun

Oh and I made a bunch of mulled cider with cinnamon stick and orange slices.

And that was Thanksgiving, and it was great!

Moving on!

Turkey ala king

When I was little, we had turkey ala king constantly, and I really loved it. I don’t know if it was the fun of having toast with dinner or what, but it felt like such a treat, and it was just so cozy and comforting, even with the mushy, muddy peas. So I was determined to recreate it, even though I knew in my heart that not many people would want it. I think my mother used to make it just by adding some cream of mushroom soup to leftover turkey, and throwing in some canned peas and heating it up; so I decided to elevate it by making a cream sauce with real cream, and adding fresh mushrooms, and using frozen peas (well, that’s not elevated very high, but it’s better than canned!).

And it tasted . . . fine.

I think I was the only one who ate it, except for also one kid who came home super late and would have gladly eaten microwaved roadkill. So I guess I got that out of my system. I’ll probably forget and try it again in five years or so, and rediscover that this is just an intrinsically medium-okay dish and I can just move on with my life.

Anyway, we used up the turkey.

I also threw the picked-over carcass in the Instant Pot with water and some carrots and celery, onions, salt and pepper, and a little cider vinegar. I would have added herbs and whatnot, but we were fresh out.

I cooked it on high pressure for two hours, and I got about a gallon of good, golden bone broth, which I put in the freezer for future souping.

Chicken broccoli stir fry and rice

Boneless skinless chicken thighs were on sale, so I cut it in strips and fried it up with broccoli spears, sliced mushrooms, and two bottles of teriyaki sauce, and served it over rice.

Right after Thanksgiving, I always jump at the opportunity to buy bottles of sauce, because it’s one of the few weeks of the year I know I won’t give myself a hard time about it. It’s normal and fine to buy bottled sauce. It’s there for a reason, and people should never feel guilty about it. Except me. I’m different, and I should feel bad.

And that’s it! Today I’m running away to go see the great and glorious Leticia Ochoa Adams speak, so I don’t really know what they’re having for supper at home! Spaghetti, I suppose. Maybe they can have nothing ala king.

5 from 1 vote

Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened.
Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.
Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley.
If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes.
Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.

What’s for supper? Vol. 316: All Fall

We made it through Halloween and the Spooky Triduum! Plenty of cozy fall foods this week, although no applesauce as of yet. Here’s what we did have:

SATURDAY
Vermonter sandwiches

By popular request. Your choice of ciabatta rolls or sourdough bread, roast chicken breast, bacon, thick slices of sharp cheddar, slices of tart Granny Smith apples, and honey mustard dressing.

Just an excellent sandwich. Nestle plate in among fabric paint and other craft materials because you are still frantically finishing up Halloween costumes.

SUNDAY
Spaghetti and ragù; garlic bread; blueberry and pumpkin walnut ice cream

Damien made this, following the Deadspin recipe. It turns out a little different each time. This time was a little spicy, and wonderfully — look, nobody likes it when I describe a meat sauce as “fluffy,” but the English language is just not helping me out. Here, have a picture:

If you’re thinking of pasta with a standard sluggish tomato sauce with some ground meat thrown in, think that no more. This is entirely different, and absolutely scrumptious.

The kids miraculously scooped out the pumpkins on Friday while we were out of town, sorted out the pulp and seeds, and cleaned up. I know! So over the weekend, they carved their pumpkins, and all I had to do was roast the seeds.

I spread them in shallow pans, drizzled them with oil and sprinkled them with kosher salt, then cooked them in a 250 oven, stirring them occasionally, and switching the pans once so they’d cook evenly, until they are crunchy but not burnt.

I never know how long this takes because I always, always forget they are in the oven and almost burn them. Maybe forty minutes? I have no idea.

I had a slightly better handle on dessert. Blueberries were on sale, so I bought a few pints, planning to make ice cream, with lemon pound cake from a mix. But then I felt bad that I hadn’t made any kind of Halloween-themed meal or dessert, so I decided it was important to make pumpkin ice cream. (In the past, for Halloween I have made SPOOKY MEATLOAF

and once I made those mummy hot dogs

and you know, that was not a good use of my time. As usual, I’m the only one putting pressure on myself to come up with this stuff. Anyway, the ice cream turned out to be a great idea. I thought the two flavors would be terrible together (Watch: This Food Blogger Thinks Dessert Will Be Terrible But Makes It Anyway For Some Reason!), but they were actually great.

The blueberry was sweet and a tiny bit tart, and the pumpkin had all the comfy, custardy flavors of pumpkin pie, and somehow together they worked in the same way that peanut butter and jelly work together. They didn’t taste like peanut butter and jelly, you understand; it was just the same kind of combination. Fruity + earthy, or something.

I did also make the lemon pound cake mix, but overbaked it, and I was worried the lemon would not go well with the other flavors (I had bought it just thinking lemon + blueberry), and this time I was right. Should have just skipped the cake. Oh well!

Imma have to come back later and write out the ice cream directions. I used Ben and Jerry’s recipes for both, except that I doubled the amount of blueberries for one, and added walnuts to the other, and increased the spices a bit. They both use the basic sweet cream base and do not require cooking. I will say that double blueberry was too much, and the berries clumped together in a way that wasn’t completely pleasant, because the tiny seeds get a little gritty one you get a certain volume of blueberry (they were macerated but not cooked). Next time I’ll just follow the recipe! But the walnuts were an excellent addition to the pumpkin ice cream, and I stand by that. I may make this again for Thanksgiving, or possibly this butternut squash ice cream with candied curry pecans.

MONDAY
Chicken nuggets; candy

Halloween! Dinner is only there to keep child protective services away. The kids had parties at school and ate all kinds of nonsense, then we zipped home and hurried to get costumes on for trick or treating.

Benny and Corrie were Sarah and Duck

and I assisted them as Scarf Lady

Lucy, Sophia, and Irene were Doc Ock, Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle, and a robot

You can’t really tell, but the robot has three special features: It lights up in several colors, it has a little secret compartment for storing things, and it is wearing a fanny pack full of diabetic supplies for its sister, so as not to mess up her Doc Ock costume.

The other kids dispersed to various parties and promised me they would send pictures, but they did not!

TUESDAY
Bagel, sausage, egg, cheese sandwiches; caramel apples

On Tuesday I had an easy meal planned (bagels with sausages, egg, and cheese)

because everyone was exhausted and of course we had to get to Mass for All Saints Day, but I also suddenly couldn’t stand how there were apples all over the place, so I made caramel apples. We usually get the easy-peasy kind where you just stretch a sheet of caramel over the apple and warm it up to meld it on, but the boxes can be a little misleading, so I had two kits of the kind you need a candy thermometer.

Which reminds me of the last time we attempted this, which was one of my favorite Irene moments, when she was about seven.

Irene, stirring caramel: “We don’t want it to get too hot. Not hard ball. Or hard crack. Or . . . [peering at thermometer] fish donut.”

WELL, THAT’S WHAT IT SAYS. The adult world can be very confusing, and you just have to go with it, even if it sounds a little fish donut.

So I made about 20 apples.

They turned out lovely, but I surely did not have room for 20 sticky apples to cool and harden in the fridge, so I just left them out all afternoon. Usually our kitchen is about as cool as a refrigerator anyway, but we’re having a little warm snap, and by evening, the caramel had ooooozed its way downward until what I had was a panful of apples, each with its own caramel penumbra, sitting in a pool of caramel. Oh well! At least I got rid of the apples. Some weeks, cooking is like a game whose goal is to get rid of all the food.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken and salad; soul cakes

This was an okay idea that didn’t quite come off. I had the vague idea to serve a Greek-inspired salad with chicken. While I was out, Damien roasted some chicken breasts with plenty of lemon pepper seasoning, and I sliced up the meat and served it with a big green salad, black olives, feta cheese, pomegranate seeds, chopped walnuts, and cucumbers and tomatoes.

I think the tomatoes were the mistake. You really can’t have tomatoes on pomegranates in the same plate. They threw the whole thing off. Also I forgot to buy any kind of dressing, so we were forced to dig through the fridge and take our chances. Damien found some creamy Italian dressing, and I was trying to tell him that we also had some kind of vinaigrette, but I couldn’t think of the word, so I called it “greasy Italian.” Which goes to show that describing things accurately is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I also just this minute remembered that I bought pita chips to go with this salad, and totally forgot about them.

Regarding the pomegranates, I briefly considered looking up some clever TikTok idea for how to get the seeds off the rind in no time flat, but these things never, ever work for me. It’s always a video of some sun-kissed woman with shining, blue-black hair and a peasant blouse, standing in her garden going, “Oh, you cut up your pineapple with a knife, you DUMBASS? Try it like this!” and she grins at the camera and sticks a toothpick in the bottom, and all the pineapple just falls out into a basin in perfect little edible chunks and she eats one with very white teeth. Or else there is some perky dude with weirdly inflated biceps bopping around a spotless kitchen showing us how, when he wants 400 cloves of peeled garlic, all he does is make a little slit in the side and then tap it with a spoon, and the garlic absolutely cannot wait to scurry off and arrange itself into useful rows, all perfectly peeled and not a bit wasted. So I watch this stuff and it looks quite easy, so I imitate them exactly, and somehow slice the tips off my three favorite fingers, and then I have to explain to the ER nurse that I was trying to be like someone on TikTok.

So I decided to just cut the pomegranate into quarters and then just sort of scrabble at it until the seeds came out. And I got a bowlful that way.

And then I took a picture, so there.

OH, I also made soul cakes on Wednesday. I guess soul cakes are the original treats that people would give to beggars who would come to their house, and offer to pray for the souls of the dead in exchange for a cookie? I don’t know. I still had a shit ton of apples left, so I was getting ready to make applesauce when I suddenly remembered that the kids had asked about soul cakes, so that’s what I made.

Jump to Recipe

It’s a very quick recipe, and I do like the taste. They have a faint cidery flavor from the cider vinegar, and they’re soft and a little spicy, very nice. I cut out two kinds and told the kids they represented souls before and after being prayed for.

Raisins in purgatory, and then you upgrade to half a dried apricot when you go to heaven. That’s some high octane theology for you.

THURSDAY
Mexican beef bowls and beans

Everyone was pretty excited about this meal. I actually started marinating the meat the night before.

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I had already cut up the meat before marinating it, so I just fried it up in a giant pan along with the marinade.

Earlier in the day, I made a big bowl of guacamole

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and a pot of black beans. The beans were completely yummy,

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but I wish I had cooked them with the lid off for a little longer (they were in the Instant Pot on “slow cook” most of the day) to simmer off more of the liquid.

But all in all, a very tasty meal. I made a big pot of rice, put out salsa, chopped scallions, sour cream, lime wedges, and corn chips, shredded some cheese, and heated up some corn. Everyone found something they liked to eat.

Mmm, I think I will have leftover beans for lunch.

FRIDAY
Quesadillas

Lots of leftover fixins from Thursday’s meal, so I’m just going to make plain cheese quesadillas and people can dress it up as they like. I also bought some plantain chips, which I will no doubt forget to serve.

Happy Friday! If you want some apples, come over. I have a lot.

Soul cakes

Servings 18 flat cakes the size of large biscuits

Ingredients

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

optional:

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

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350
Put the flour in a large bowl. Grate the chilled butter on a vegetable grater and incorporate it lightly into the flour.
Stir in the sugar and spices until evenly distributed.
In a smaller bowl, beat together the eggs, vinegar and milk. Stir this into the flour mixture until it forms a stiff dough.
Knead for several minutes until smooth and roll out to 1/4 thick.
Grease a baking pan. Cut the dough into rounds (or other shapes if you like) and lay them on the pan, leaving a bit of room in between (they puff up a bit, but not a lot). If you're adding raisins or other toppings, poke them into the top of the cakes, in a cross shape if you like. Prick cakes with fork.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until very lightly browned on top.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar while they are warm

Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Put olive oil pot of Instant Pot. Press "saute" button. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes until onion is soft. Press "cancel."
Add beans with liquid. Add cumin, salt, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Close the lid, close the vent, and press "slow cook."

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

Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two.
Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.
Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly.

What’s for supper? Vol. 314: The sound of stroganoff

Happy Friday! Before we go any further, I have to show you last Friday’s lo mein. I posted the WFS post before I made dinner, so there was no photo, but it turned out so good. I made the basic recipe but added shrimp, zucchini, yellow bell pepper, and matchstick ginger.

Fabulous. Here’s the recipe in case you need it.

Jump to Recipe

Very easy and fast. I usually use fettuccine for the noodles, and that makes it cheap, too. I think I got everything at Aldi except the rice vinegar.

Okay, on to this week! Here’s what we had.

SATURDAY
Burgers, chips

Not tired of burgers and chips yet. Especially when Damien cooks them outside.

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries

On Sunday we went apple picking, and then stopped at my parents’ graves to say a decade and plant a bunch of crocuses. Very glad to see the two rose bushes and the lilac tree I planted in the summer are still alive!

Here’s a little album from Facebook because I’m lazy.

Then we came home and had Italian sandwiches. I had mine with plenty of red pesto, yum yum.

Damien got an extra package of prosciutto for later in the week, as you shall see. I flubbed dessert (I had bought some Halloween-shaped rice krispie treat kits that you had to make and decorate spookily, which not even the kids felt like doing after a couple of hours in the car), but Damien had had the foresight to buy a sack of cider donuts at the orchard, which he put in the microwave for dessert, and they were delightful. I was feeling the teensiest bit emotionally bruised after the cemetery visit, and a hot sugary donut definitely helped.

MONDAY
Oven fried chicken, roast butternut squash, apple hand pies

The fried chicken I made a few weeks ago was so very tasty, but such a pain in the pants, so I took the advice of my friend Patti and tried oven frying it. It was quite good, and so much easier.

Early in a day, I let the chicken (drumsticks and thighs) soak in milk and eggs with salt and pepper. Then at dinner time, I put a few inches of melted butter and canola oil (half and half) in a couple of roasting pans in a 425-degree oven. While it was heating up, I rolled the chicken parts in flour seasoned with lots of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika. I put the chicken in the pans, skin side down, and let it cook for about half an hour, then turned it and let it finish cooking for another fifteen minutes or so.

Not quite as spectacularly crackly-crisp as pan fried chicken, but still crunchy and delicious, and moist and tasty inside. Will definitely do it this way again.

I wasn’t able to fit all the chicken in the oven pans, so I pan fried the extras, got distracted, and burned the ever loving hell out it. Completely black. Then I turned it over and, just to be fair, did the same thing to the other side. Then I threw it away.

I also made hand pies. Corrie loved the pumpkin empanadas from last week so much, and it made mornings so much easier when she had something tasty and homemade to grab for a car breakfast, so I decided to make pineapple empanadas with the rest of the Goya dough discs I bought. I’ll spare you the details, but I managed to ruin quite a lot of pineapple, and then light dawned on blockhead, and I realized we had 9,000 apples in the house. So I pulled out my lovely old fashioned apple peeler-corer-slicer and made apple empanadas, or really just little pies at this point. See my pies! See my pies!

Chicken and pies, Mr. Tweedy.

The pie filling was apple sliced and dusted with flour and sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and a little butter. I forgot salt. I folded them into the dough, cut some vents, and brushed the tops with egg, then sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon, and baked them on parchment paper at 375 for about half an hour.

I’m not gonna lie, I was also doing a lot of running around and shouting and waving my arms about something completely unrelated to food, while I was making 20 pies, and ruining pineapple, and rolling chicken in flour, and burning it, and burning the other side, and snatching apple peels away from the dog, and so on. It is an actual miracle that I get dinner on the table every day, even when I’m not all worked up about something, which I was. It’s like a Greek tragedy in there every day, I don’t know what goes on. But eventually everything got cooked, and I had it in my head that we needed butternut squash, too, so I chopped that up, drizzled it with honey and olive oil, sprinkled it with kosher salt and chili powder, and broiled it until it was a little blistered, and I guess we had pie for supper and squash for dessert, I don’t know. ἔξοδος.

TUESDAY
Beef stroganoff

Yeah! Stroganoff! Someone, and I’m very sorry I don’t remember who, posted this on Twitter

and the vision that was planted in my brain/still remains./And I haaaaad/ to make stroganoff.

I usually make stroganoff with ground beef, but honestly, it’s gotten so expensive that it was only like three dollars more to get a big hunk of roast. It’s called “budgeting,” sweaty. I followed the Deadspin recipe. These recipes are invariably delicious, but incredibly obnoxious, so I went ahead and made a card.

Jump to Recipe

I was very busy on Tuesday, so I did all my chopping and slicing and mincing in the morning,

and when dinner came, it all came together in a flash. It’s very easy, and is a great way to furnish yourself with enough calories to survive an eighteen month siege.

First you lightly fry the sliced meat in butter

And I was very determined that this stroganoff would turn out tender, not tough, so I fried the meat very lightly indeed. Then you remove meat from the pan and fry up the onions in more butter, salt it, then add in the garlic

then the mushrooms and tarragon and pepper.

This is the point where you add brandy if you have any, which I did not.

Then you put your meat back in, heat it up, blorp in an insane amount of sour cream, heat that up, adjust your salt, and that’s it.

While you are cooking this, you boil up a pot of egg noodles, and you serve the stroganoff over noodles.

So delicious. My only disappointment was I didn’t taste the tarragon much. I don’t use tarragon often, so I was looking forward to it. Maybe I should have saved some out and used a bit to garnish the top and bring up the flavor a bit. We all have colds, though, so it’s a miracle we can taste anything.

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Three pizzas, and I made the mistake of not making one plain cheese pizza. Oh, there was howling and complaining. I have heard the cries of my people, and next time I will make one plain cheese pizza.

This time, I, monster, made one pepperoni, one mushroom and olive, and one prosciutto and arugula (that’s what the extra prosciutto was for. That’s called building suspense. Look it up, sweaty). That third pizza was just remarkable. Fresh little curls of parmesan frolicking on top, so nice.

First you make an arugula salad: A few handfuls of baby arugula, the juice of a small lemon, a few drizzles of olive oil, and kosher salt and pepper.

Then you make a normal cheese pizza but spread plenty of thinly-sliced raw garlic on it, and some fresh rosemary if you have it (which I did not), and drizzle a little olive oil over that, and give it a little salt and pepper. Bake as normal, and when it comes out, spread it with torn-up prosciutto, and top it with the arugula salad.

It’s so good, it almost makes me mad. What the hell is this? Why is it so delicious? Who comes up with this stuff? Gosh!

THURSDAY
Kielbasa, potato, and Brussels sprouts

The kids were helping me make the shopping list on Saturday morning, and more than one shouted “Kielbasa!” They are prone to shouting things like “Kielbasa!” without meaning anything in particular by it, but I wrote it down anyway. But they were all pretty adamant that they didn’t want any cabbage, and they seemed to mean it. I don’t really know any kielbasa dishes besides the one-pan deal with potato, kielbasa, and cabbage, so I thought why not make the same basic thing but swap in Brussels sprouts, which people do like?

It turns out lots of other people have had this idea, including the New York Times. I followed an uncharacteristically simple recipe by them (well, they sort of sheepishly suggested tossing some mustard seeds and almonds in there, but they admitted that it wasn’t really necessary), and it turned out fine. I’m a fool and didn’t save the recipe when it let me in for a free view, but it’s just a basic sheet pan deal with potatoes, some kind of sausage, and Brussels sprouts cooked with olive oil, salt, and pepper for a while, and then you toss it with a honey mustard dressing and continue cooking it.

I used three ropes of kielbasa, two pounds of Brussels sprouts, and probably three pounds of potatoes (red would have been nice, but they were like a dollar a potato, so I just cut up some baking potatoes), and I think the honey mustard was four tablespoons of mustard and six tablespoons of honey. Something along those lines.

So I cooked it at 425, I think, for about 25 minutes, I think, stirred it one time and then drizzled the honey mustard on and finished cooking it, then pulled it out about twenty minutes later

I guess the almonds would have been pretty good, and it would have been good to use dijon mustard instead of cheapo yellow mustard, but it was fine as it was, and it certainly was easy. Maybe a tiny bit dry.

I think next time I will make extra honey mustard sauce for a little dipping after it’s cooked.

The original plan was to make King Arthur hot pretzels to go with this meal, but there was nothing anywhere near enough time for that. Next time!

Come to think of it, I do know another kielbasa meal: Jambalaya. Ooh, it’s been quite a while. I think I’ll make that next week.

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Just whatever.

And now! Next Tuesday is our twenty-fifth anniversary! We will be going out for a little outing at a later date, but for the day itself, we thought it would be fun to just cook a nice meal for the family. We like cooking together, as long as we’re not too rushed.

Damien is probably going to make Korean fried chicken, which is guaranteed scrumptious, and I am thinking of making a baked Alaska, probably with strawberry, coconut, and mango ice cream. You’re supposed to spread softened ice cream onto the cake in layers and let it freeze, so that will work well with homemade ice cream, which comes out of the machine soft anyway.

I have had baked Alaska only once, in 8th grade when our French class went to Quebec and were horribly obnoxious to everyone in the entire hotel and city and country the whole time, but never so much as when they wheeled out the baked Alaska. I am very sketchy on the details besides that everyone was screaming, especially my friend Becky, so if anyone has any more useful details or experience with baked Alaska, please share! We do have a small blow torch. It seems like the individual components are easy, and it’s mainly a matter of starting well in advance, sticking to the plan, and not panicking, and that’s how you earn the moment where you set it all on fire. Kind of like,,,, twenty five years of marriage.

Anyway, I may get someone else to make the cake part, because I’m not great with cake. I’m good with ice cream, though. And setting things on fire.

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

1 cup soy sauce
5 tsp sesame oil
5 tsp sugar

for the rest

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

Instructions

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

Deadspin beef stroganoff

The tastiest, coziest, most calorific cold weather comfort food known to mankind. You can make this with ground beef, but it's so good with thin, tender slices of beef. Please don't ask me what cut of beef to use, as I don't know.

Calories 500000000 kcal

Ingredients

2-3 lbs beef, sliced into thin, flat pieces
4-6 Tbsp butter
2 medium onions, diced or sliced thin
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup red wine (optional)
16 oz mushrooms, sliced
bunch fresh tarragon, minced (optional)
salt and pepper
32 oz sour cream

egg noodles that you will need to cook while you are making the stroganoff

Instructions

In a large skillet, melt most of the butter and cook the beef pieces very lightly, until they are just a little brown but still partially pink.
Remove the beef from the pan, put the remaining butter in, and put the onion in, and cook it until it's slightly soft. Sprinkle it with salt, stir, and add in the garlic and cook for another few minutes.
If you are adding wine, splash that in. Add in the mushrooms, tarragon, and pepper, and continue cooking until the mushrooms are soft and fragrant.
Add the beef and any juices back into the pan with the mushrooms, and heat it up. Stir in the sour cream and continue stirring and heating.
Add salt if necessary, and serve stroganoff over hot egg noodles.

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

Ingredients

Instructions

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Suppli (or Arancini)

Ingredients

To make suppli out of the risotto:

Instructions

Jerry's Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Instructions

French bread

Ingredients

Instructions

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taboon bread

Ingredients

Instructions

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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

Instructions

Italian Wedding Soup with pork meatballs

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

For the soup:

Instructions

To make the meatballs:

To make the soup:

Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

For the ice cream base

Instructions

Make the ice cream base:

Put it together:

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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Ingredients

Instructions

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Soul cakes

Ingredients

optional:

Instructions

Beef marinade for fajita bowls

Ingredients

Instructions

Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

Instructions

White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

Instructions

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basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

for the rest

Instructions

Deadspin beef stroganoff

Ingredients

Instructions

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