Tag: ducks

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

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

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

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and taquitos

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

Note the peppers! A bona fide vegetable!

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

SUNDAY
Omelettes and hash browns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Musakhan and taboon

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

I had mine outside. 

And then I went inside and had some more!

WEDNESDAY
Regular tacos, chips and salsa

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada rice bowls, black beans with spinach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle casserole 

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

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

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

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 425: Two pies for Millie

Happy Friday! Before we get to the food, I want to acknowledge the passing of my beautiful friend Millie, age 90.

She had a rough couple of last months, but rallied so much at the end, everyone thought she was getting better. She visited her grandchildren and ate a lobster, and then she died in the night. 

I really loved her, and she loved me. I don’t know if you could say we knew each other deeply, but we felt strangely sympatico and enjoyed each other a lot. Please pray for Millie and her family! 

Okay, Millie would totally agree it’s time to talk about food now. Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

We had tons of leftover chicken because two of my brothers and two of my nephews had been over on Thursday. In fact they came back in the evening after dinner on Saturday, so we had them a total of three nights! I haven’t seen my brother Jake or his kids in years, and it was pretty great. Sonny has literally never been happier. I don’t know what it was, but he feel hysterically in love with Jacob and stayed dialed up to eleven the whole time he was here. They were incredibly good sports about it. 

The cat was not. I guess he felt left out, and sulked in the bathroom much of the time, and only started gracing us with his presence again a few days ago. It’s so funny. When I was growing up, cats were mainly decorative creatures that you didn’t interact with much. I was not prepared to even be aware of this much of the emotional life of animals! 

SUNDAY
Pork spiedies, fries, berry crumble

Sunday of course we all went to Mass, and then after we had some final donuts and the fellers started their long drive home, I got some pork marinating for supper,

Jump to Recipe

then roped the kids into moving some rocks around for me, and I started rearranging the garden in front of the house. This involved excavating and moving a giant granite post and digging up many dozens of day lilies, and I don’t really have a clear plan yet, but I certainly did dig up a lot of day lilies. 

The plan is to make the path diagonal to the door, rather than perpendicular to the house. I thinnnnnk I’m going to build a sort of permanent stone wall/planter under the double windows on the right, and then fill everything in with shade perennials. We do have a lot of rocks. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this.

Supper was spiedies. The pork is cut into chunks and marinated — and if you do this recipe, do try to get fresh mint, because it really makes a difference! — and then you roast or grill that along with a bunch of pepper and onion chunks. 

Actually I made two pans, and roasted the meat in one and the veg in the other, and then combined them. I mention this so you don’t think it’s okay to crowd the pan. 

Then you toast some rolls and spread them with mayo, and pile on the meat and vegetables. 

Ohhh. So good. 

It was ice cream sundaes for dessert, and I got a little offended at how much they wanted for a little bottle of caramel sauce, so I tried that Instant Pot recipe for caramel sauce. You take the labels and tops off the cans of caramel, cover the tops with tinfoil, put them on a trivet, and add water around the cans, halfway up. Then you close the lid and pressure cook for 40 minutes. You’re supposed to do a quick release, but I forgot I was making caramel, so it did a natural release. 

So, the important thing to know here is that one of these cans turned out to be fat free sweetened condensed milk. God alone knows what that could possibly be made of, but I certainly didn’t buy it on purpose. But when I read that you were supposed to take the labels off anyway, I surrendered to my fate and just cooked them both. 

When I took the tinfoil off, it was pretty obvious which was which. 

Or, it was pretty obvious that they were two different kinds of condensed milk. Hmm. 

Anyway, you let them cool for a bit, then add some vanilla and beat it up until it’s smooth. One was a little lumpier than the other and wasn’t getting smooth fast enough with fork beating, so I threw them both in the Kitchen Aid and whisked them together. 

And that was the most delicious caramel I’ve ever eaten. It tasted like Werther’s. I guess probably I’ll be just buying regular sweetened condensed milk, but I’ll definitely make this again. 

Note: When it cools, it gets a little blobby, so if you want caramel that oozes, you should warm it up. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, vegetables and dip

Monday I sat myself down and sternly reminded myself that, harsh and unjust as it may sound, someone who wishes to call herself a writer, and in fact who wishes be paid for writing, must actually write something at some point. So I wiggled and whined and complained and got up to clean a bunch of stuff, but eventually ground out a couple of essays. 

It was Memorial Day and the kids were home, and there was lots of fresh whipped cream left over from the sundaes, so I figured I might as well make dessert with all the berries I got because they were on sale. I can’t find the recipe I used, but I seem to remember I fudged it anyway, and then I got confused with the struesel topping and didn’t use enough flour, and by the time I figured that out, it had already gone pasty, and was not going to be streuselly at all. 

However, you can’t really go wrong with blueberries and strawberries with something sweet baked onto the top. 

It turned out just about every person living in that house had been helping themselves to the big bowl of whipped cream in the fridge, which I can’t complain about because I didn’t tell them not to, and also because I ate about half of it myself, so there was only a little bit of fairly deflated cream left, and it was actually the perfect companion to my hot berry splat

It was splatty and DELICIOUS. Man, I love berry season. 

TUESDAY
Fish tacos, guacamole and chips

Tuesday we had a meeting, and it turned out that Damien and I were not actually needed, so we ended up just chilling in a waiting room for an hour, and it was actually lovely. 

Got home and made some quick guacamole 

Jump to Recipe

and we had fish tacos with batter-fried fish from frozen, sour cream, salsa, guacamole, cilantro, lime wedges, and — not shredded cabbage, because they didn’t have cabbage (#aldistyle), so instead I put out one of those bags of chopped Asian salads, which is mostly cabbage. 

We haven’t had fish tacos for a while, and they were great. 

Didn’t even notice the rogue carrot shreds. 

And yes, I wrote another essay. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken pie with bacon 

Wednesday was the day I found out Millie had died. I had been meaning and meaning and meaning to go see her, but I wasn’t even sure if she was home or at the nursing home, so I called her house and no one answered, so I called the nursing home, and they put me through to her room, but no one picked up. So I figured I would just go. But I didn’t want to come empty handed, so I made a couple of mini pies for her, hoping she’d be well enough to eat them. She loves chicken pie. 

Here’s my chicken pie recipe. It really outrageously savory and tasty. It has bacon, leeks, potatoes, and chicken. (I’ll put my recipe for pie crust below the chicken pie filling recipe.)

Jump to Recipe

I cut out little feathers for the top of the crust, brushed them with duck egg yolk, and baked them up. Very pretty. 

Then I went to the nursing home and they were like, yes, she’s here, no, we can’t find her name, no, she’s not here, we’re sorry, we don’t know. And I got a pretty bad feeling, so I called Millie’s daughter, and that’s when I got the news. She was so apologetic that they hadn’t called, if you can imagine — I’m just the neighbor! — but I think they actually did, and I didn’t pick up because I didn’t recognize the number. 

So, well, I pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and bawled for a while. Then I went to the chapel and said a decade for Millie. I still had time before I had to get the kids, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I mooched around a thrift store and found a Lady and the Unicorn tapestry pillow which I was pretty sure Clara needed, and I was right about that. 

It turned out she was still at work, so I traded her the pillow for a bunch of fresh baguettes, a day-old sourdough loaf, and some pastries. She went with me on the school run and I was pretty glad to have some company. Then we all went home and, well, ate bread steadily until it was supper time. Like it says in the Bible, when you are sad, eat bread, and then pie. I think it’s in Proverbs. 

The pie was gorgeous. 

The potatoes were a tiny bit underdone, though, so I put it back in the oven and finished it up. Man. Really nice crust, too – thin and flaky. 

It didn’t exactly hold together as a solid, but I don’t know if that’s what you want in chicken pie anyway. 

That evening, I was potting some flowers and some of Millie’s children came over with some beautiful handmade items from her house — a quilt, some sets of placemats, and two quilted bags. Lovely. They invited me to come in and pick out anything else I might want. So I went over and it turns out she had an entire room I didn’t know about, and it was absolutely stuffed with every conceivable kind of fabric. I had to laugh because she always talked about how cluttered her house was, and I always said it didn’t seem that cluttered to me; but I guess the whole time, even if she didn’t go in there, she could FEEL that other room. I know she had plans for all of that fabric, too. Quilts, bags, clothes for her grandkids, clothes for her grandkids’ dolls, and so on and so on. I have never met a more hardworking person in my life. 

Really wish I had gone to see her one day sooner. I really do. If there is someone you have been meaning to visit, please go ahead and do it now!

THURSDAY
Bo ssam, rice, steamed broccoli, pickled carrots and radishes

On Wednesday, I got a hunk of pork brining for bo ssam. On Thursday morning, I took a look at the schedule and realized it was going to be a DOOZY, so I started the pork cooking in the Instant Pot, rather than in a low oven. I also threw a bunch of carrots and radishes in the food processor and started them quick pickling. 

Then I duct taped myself to my computer and wrote another essay. Also got the kids to Mass (Ascension Thursday is still on Thursday in our diocese!), took a kid to a meeting at the school she’s transferring to, got cash for a field trip, went back to Millie’s house and got a dresser, and picked up the kids, and we had a schedule complication where a kid had to be at a place and she was okay with being early but not THAT early, so we launched Operation Kill Time Without Spending Money, and lurked about at the park for a while. I did lose Corrie, because of course I did, but then we found her, and got home. 

My friends, that house smelled of FEET. Very bad feet, like malevolent. Feet that want you dead and damned. I was kind of baffled, because the windows are open and yes, we have teenagers, but we also had teenagers yesterday and it didn’t smell like this yesterday. So I did some sniff-sleuthing, and figured it out. 

It was the pickled radishes. 

I have made pickled radishes before! They just smelled like vinegar! I have no idea what happened here, but BLURGH. 

I mean, yes, I ate them. In the car, on the way to the art gallery, because goodness knows it didn’t already smell bad enough in my car already. 

Also I had two hampers full of canned goods from Millie’s pantry, because I am gonna bring them to Vincent de Paul, but first I have to make sure they’re not eleven years old. 

Oh, so the bossam was actually not that great. It came out of the IP kinda dry and tough, and I was a little low on brown sugar, so when I put the last little topping on and put it in the oven to glaze up, it was a little lackluster

and I mean that literally. It usually comes out of the oven absolutely GLEAMING. And I forgot to get lettuce to wrap the meat and wrice in. But it was fine. 

Oh, I forgot to link to the recipe. Here it is. I don’t usually make the extra sauce; I just do the salt and sugar brining, and then the brown sugar-cider vinegar-salt thing for the top. And usually it turns out great! 

Poor Damien has been driving around all week and went straight from Concord to the court house in Keene to the art show. Anyway, Lucy’s work was extremely cool, as usual. 

 

Blessedly, Sophia took the other kids to see the art show after they ate, and stayed to bring Lucy home afterward, because Damien and I were just about deconstructed with exhaustion. Damien’s been doing a million extra things this week — getting the pool into shape, performing minor surgery on one of the ducks, fixing the lawn mower, and so on. And just cheerfully agreed to figure out how to move the hose spigot to the outside of the house, so I don’t have to go in the scary basement. 

The baby ducks have been spending their whole day outdoors this week, and only coming inside for the night. They get along great with the big ducks! Coin immediately recognized them as Guys He Is In Charge Of, and busily herded them toward the pen where the food is. So I have no worries that they’ll do fine when they start spending their nights in the duck house. They need to grow some more grownup feathers, so they stay warm and dry enough. 

They still pile themselves on top of each other all the time, which cracks me up. They have NO concept of personal space, and basically live on top of each other as often as they can, despite having an acre of land to roam around on; but they are also apparently completely oblivious of each other. 

I am so very fond of these dumb, dumb creatures. We don’t know yet if they’re girls or boys, though. If there is one boy, that will be fine, in proportion to the number of females we have — but if there are two or more boys, we’re gonna have to figure some things out! 

Right now, Shaq and Tulip (the pekins) are still yeeping, and only Zippy has learned how to quack. Hilarious. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Today, I’m gonna go back to Millie’s house and get her bed, which feels A LITTLE WEIRD, but it’s a beautiful little carved wooden bed, painted white, and Corrie really needs a bed. Millie would be so absolutely delighted to know that she’s getting it. 

And we shall have spaghetti for supper. One of the kids mentioned that we are having spaghetti a lot lately. And she is right! We are. 

5 from 1 vote
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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

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

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

5 from 1 vote
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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup veg or olive oil
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup red or white wine vinegar
  • 4 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup fresh mint, chopped
  • 8-10 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 4-5 lbs boneless pork, cubed
  • peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, cut into chunks

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

    Mix up with cubed pork, cover, and marinate for several hours or overnight. 

    Best cooked over hot coals on the grill on skewers with vegetables. Can also spread in a shallow pan with veg and broil under a hot broiler.

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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Rebecca's chicken bacon pie

Ingredients

  • double recipe of pie crust
  • 1 pound bacon, diced
  • 4 ribs celery, diced OR one big bunch of leeks, diced
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 bunch thyme, finely chopped
  • 3 chicken breasts, diced
  • 2-3 potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 6 Tbsp butter
  • 6 Tbsp flour
  • 3 cups concentrated chicken broth (I use almost double the amount of bouillon to make this)
  • 2 Tbsp pepper
  • egg yolk for brushing on top crust

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425.

  2. In a large pan, cook the bacon pieces until they are browned. Take the cooked bacon out and pour off most of the grease.

  3. Add the onion and celery to the remaining bacon grease and cook, stirring, until soft. Return the bacon to the pan.

  4. Add the thyme, pepper, and butter and cook until butter is melted. Add the flour and whisk, cooking for another few minutes.

  5. Whisk in the chicken broth and continue cooking for a few more minutes until it thickens up. Stir in the chicken and potato and keep warm, stirring occasionally, until you're ready to use it.

  6. Pour filling into bottom crust, cover with top crust, brush with beaten egg. Bake, uncovered, for about an hour. If it is browning too quickly, cover loosely with tin foil.

5 from 1 vote
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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

  • 2-1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
  • 1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.

  4. Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.

  5. If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.

  6. If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!

  7. If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.

  8. You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.

5 from 1 vote
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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

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

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

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

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

 

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

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

But I was WRONG AGAIN. 

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

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet plus hash browns

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

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

SUNDAY
Butter chicken, basmati rice, cucumbers, naan

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

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

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

I love this butter chicken so much.

Somehow makes me nostalgic for my childhood back in India.

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas, chips and salsa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dinner was bagel sandwiches, 

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Caprese chicken burgers, tater tots

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Gochujang pork ribs, rice, quick pickled carrots

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

I have a recipe for pickled vegetables,

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

Yes! Someone had.

And you’ll never guess who that someone was. 

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

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

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

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

And did I mention? we have ducklings!

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

Peep peep! 

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Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)


Ingredients

  • 1.5 pound boneless pork, sliced thin
  • 4 carrots in matchsticks or shreds
  • 1 onion sliced thin

sauce:

  • 5 generous Tbsp gochujang (fermented pepper paste)
  • 2 Tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 5 cloves minced garlic

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

Instructions

  1. Combine pork, onions, and carrots.

    Mix together all sauce ingredients and stir into pork and vegetables. 

    Cover and let marinate for several hours or overnight.

    Heat a pan with a little oil and sauté the pork mixture until pork is cooked through.

    Serve with rice and lettuce or nori. Eat by taking pieces of lettuce or nori, putting a scoop of meat and rice in, and making little bundles to eat. 

5 from 1 vote
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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

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

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

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

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

What’s for supper? Vol. 361: Who then, my mother?

Happy Friday? I meant to put an exclamation mark, but I’ll let it stand. Up until yesterday, I kept seeing memes about how awful and long and exhausting January is, and I kept thinking everyone is being silly, and this is just a normal month; and then today I realized I’ve been feeling that way for four months, and all four of those months have been January. Bah. Boo. But at least it must be almost over, anyway.

[checks date]

WELL GREAT. 

Anyway, some of that January futilitism crept into my cooking this week, and despite making as much as my second-best efforts, everything turned out . . . basically tolerable. Oh well. I also wrote 40% of several essays and they all suck.

However, I did do a really neat interview with an artist yesterday, someone you may not know about, but should. So there’s something to look forward to! There’s always something to look forward to, even if it’s just bidding farewell and good riddance to the week. 

Here’s what we had, and it was all FINE:

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, chicken barley soup

We had lots of leftover soup from last week, so I reheated that and then burned every single grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Some of it was because I forgot to spread mayo on the outside of both sides of the sandwich, and some of them, I just burned for fun. 

I did get a few people who hadn’t done so before to try squeezing lemon juice over their bowl of soup, and they agreed it was very tasty that way. Here’s the soup recipe. Definitely worth making. Still plenty of winter left. 

s  t  i  l  l   p  l  e  n  t  y   o  f    w  i  n  t  e  r

SUNDAY
Gochujang bulgoki, coconut stringbeans, pineapple; kalakand

On Sunday, it just happened to work out that all my kids could come for dinner! So I was planning a big Indian meal, with vindaloo, coconut string beans, tomato yogurt salad, naan, rice, and dessert. But I did the thing I will apparently never ever ever stop doing, and I just skimmed the recipe, and discovered too late that you’re supposed to marinate the meat for at least eight hours. Soooo did some quick menu switches, and ended up with a half-Korean, half-Indian menu. I had little warning bells going off in my head that this was not a good idea, and I was right! Bah. 

The food was . . . fine. I made gochujang bulgoki with thinly sliced pork, matchstick carrots, and plenty of onion

Jump to Recipe

because that does need to marinate, but it can be just a few hours. I had much less gochujang (the actual fermented hot pepper paste) than I thought, though,

and it just didn’t hit the mark. Also I severely crowded the pan, so the meat was more braised than pan fried. It was tender, but just bland and slightly watery.

I decided to forge ahead with the string bean recipe I was originally planning to make, because they are Aldi string beans and you use ’em or lose ’em. But she called for cooking the string beans for twenty minutes, which is insane. It’s one thing if you want string beans cooked to a mush, which might work out for certain recipes, but she specified not to overcook, so they don’t lose their crunch. Insane!

I have since discovered that string beans in India are a different variety, and they are tougher, and do need a lot more cooking. So I did just cook them for a few minutes, and then added them to the mustard seeds heated till “spluttering” in hot oil (I love how many Indian recipes use the word “spluttering,” and I wonder if there is some cognate in some Indian language. 

Anyway, the result was . . . fine. 

Maybe I would have enjoyed them more if they had accompanied a dish with seasoning that made more sense along with the mustard seed, coconut, and jalapeno, but watery gochujang was not it. Boo. 

I made a big pot of rice and cut up a bunch of lettuce and also put out the last of the seaweed sheets from New Year’s Eve, and I did have fun making the little grabby bundles of seaweed, bulgoki, and rice

I do like some bundled food. 

Oh, it looks like we also had pineapple, which, again, was fine, but just . . . not quite the thing. 

There was enough food, anyway, so that was a relief, and everybody had a good time and I heard uproarious laughter coming from the dining room, so that was lovely. I was a little bummed about the meal, though, and then suddenly realized wait! I had made dessert!

The dessert was something called kalakand, which is a sort of sweet milk cake which you make with paneer, but not THAT kind of paneer; you are supposed to make your own paneer, which is soft set. OR, you can use ricotta cheese. It so happened I had a bunch of ricotta left over from birthday calzones, which is why I decided to make this recipe. 

It does say you will need to stir it longer if you use ricotta, and Swasthi was not kidding about that. It says “ten minutes,” and it took me at least forty minutes of stirring. 

Corrie had a friend over, and it was just as well I had to park myself in the kitchen and stir, because I could keep an eye on them, rather than ducking and covering, which is what my animal instinct tells me to do when these two get together. So I stirred that mofo forever and eventually decided that it was as thick as it was ever gonna get, and put it into a lined pan and pressed slivered almonds into the top. 

I let it chill in the fridge for several hours, and then brought it out after dinner with lots of caveats about how uncertain I was about the whole thing. 

People liked it, I think? I don’t think it came out right. It certainly wasn’t cake-like in any way. It helped that nobody had any idea what it was supposed to taste like. I suggested “Cheesecake Play-Doh,” and that got the most votes. 

In conclusion, I kept forgetting what it was called, and when I was searching for the recipe today (because I keep dozens of tabs open, but not the ones that I know I will need on Friday), I turned up this:

I don’t know what this song is about, and if it’s offensive, you have only your polyglotismo to blame.  

MONDAY
Regular tacos with pico de gallo

Monday was a day off, and I thought we all needed something a little more normal, so I just made regular tacos. Actually I sneaked a pound of ground sausage into the three pounds of ground beef, because it somehow worked out to be cheaper that way, and nobody noticed. 

I had the tomatoes I was planning to make into yogurt salad, so I made a bowl of pico de gallo with them. I was super tired and didn’t feel like chopping, so I just threw tomatoes, onions, and cilantro into the food processor, and then added some olive oil, salt, and some lemon juice, because I ran out of limes. 

It was fine. Everything is fine. 

TUESDAY
One-pan kielbasa, red potato, Brussels sprouts; challah

The kids have been agitating for kielbasa, so I made this one-pan meal

Jump to Recipe

(well, two pans of it), except I used Brussels sprouts instead of cabbage, and rather than serving the sauce along with the meal, I cooked the food for 20 minutes, then added in the sauce, switched the pans and finished cooking it for another 12 minutes or so.

It was super cold out, and I kept thinking about fresh, hot bread, and I had some work to avoid, so I made challah. 

Jump to Recipe

I made a double recipe, which is what I usually do, but usually I make one batch in the standing mixer and one batch by hand. It’s not dumb if it works! But for some reason I decided to make a double batch all in one bowl, with the very predictable result that it spurted jets and fountains of flour all over the kitchen. 

Then I put the bowl to rise on top of the coffee maker, which is the warmest spot in the house right now, and then I completely forgot about it. So it rose plenty. 

Oops. I wisely decided I was in no mental state to make another attempt at a four-strand braid, which I try from time to time, and it always makes me cry. I just divided the dough monster in half and then cut each one into four balls, then rolled out three and made a big braid, and cut the remaining ball of each batch into thirds and made it into a smaller braid to lay on top. I let them rise again, brushed them with egg wash, and then baked them. 

They turned out pretty!

I made them with duck eggs, including a duck egg for the egg wash on top. You will never find an eggier egg than duck eggs. 

I couldn’t find the poppy seeds, so as you can see, I used sesame seeds on one. Which made me think of this quick little bit from You Don’t Have To Be Jewish:

 

If I didn’t clip it right, the whole album is here, and the bit in question starts at about 20:17. 

Anyway, it was an okay-to-pretty good supper. The bread was a tiny bit underdone, so it was a little damp in the middle, but just a tiny bit; and even though I switched the meat and potato pans, one got a lot crisper than the other. But it was fine. 

Fine, I tell you! 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday I didn’t even feel like messing around one tiny bit, so I just made three pizzas, one cheese, one black olive, and one pepperoni. I took a picture so I would remember what we had

A perfectly fine pizza, with pre-shredded cheese that doesn’t taste like anything, and I couldn’t find the garlic powder or the block of parmesan. It was so cold in the kitchen that the dough didn’t 100% defrost, so the crust was a little bit CLAGGY. But I managed to stick to my meal plan for once, so it tasted pretty great anyway. 

THURSDAY
Glazed ham, baked potato, mysteriously spicy mashed squash

On Thursday morning, I remembered that we still had leftover coconut string beans in the refrigerator, so I put them out for the ducks, who were incredibly rude about it. 

Possibly angry at me for making their children into challah, but I don’t think so. We have to run and get the eggs in the morning before these dopes step on them and crush them. 

On Thursday morning, driving the kids to school, I turned on the classical music station and tried to guess the nationality and era of the piece that came on. I guessed German, 1820. And guess what! It turned out to be Karl Maria von Weber, written in 1815! I felt SO SMART. Then the dog turned on the hazard lights and I couldn’t figure out how to turn them off, so I had to pull into a parking lot and watch a short YouTube video. 

If you are wondering, the hazard light button is the giant, centrally located button with the big “HAZARD” symbol prominently displayed in red, which is why I couldn’t find it. Probably my Instant Pot gasket is in the glove box, where I put it while not reading all the way through the vindaloo recipe and buying the wrong kind of beans. 

Anyway, Thursday was the day we were supposed to have the bulgoki, but I had already used the meat, and I had Corrie with me at the store when I was shopping for a replacement; and if you take Corrie to the store with you, you’re going to come out with ham. 

So I got a big spiral-cut ham with a glaze packet on sale, and she pushed really hard for peas and mashed potatoes, but nobody felt like peeling potatoes, and I felt like I had to assert some kind of authority, so we had baked potatoes and mashed squash.

I usually cook the squash in the Instant Pot to save room in the oven,

Jump to Recipe

but when I was dealing the challah flour explosion, I also decided to thoroughly clean the IP top and had hidden the gasket from myself, so I shoved things around and just cooked the ham, baked potatoes, and squash  all at 400, which is not the right temperature for any of them. My motto is, if we can’t all be happy, then we’ll satisfy justice by all being miserable.

I sprinkled some baking soda and sea salt on top of the squash before roasting it, and it came out perfectly nice

and then I grabbed some butter and some spices that were handy: Cinnamon, cayenne pepper, salt, and scooped out the flesh and started adding lots and lots of cinn– ope, actually that was cayenne pepper. Wuite a lot of it. Corrie advised me to cover my mistake by also adding lots and lots of cinnamon, so that is what I did. I skipped the sugar because you really don’t need it with a decent squash. Some nutmeg would have been nice, but it didn’t seem like the time to rummage through little tippy bottles, so I just mashed that mofo and set it out. It was actually pretty good! Spicy! For some reason. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Just mac and cheese. I’m sure it will be fine. 

When I insisted on making squash instead of peas, I told Corrie that I only recently started liking squash. In fact, the very first time I had mashed squash was in the hospital, right after giving birth to her, and it was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. And from then on, I’ve had a thing for butternut squash. So it was really her fault. The rest of the kids then turned on Corrie in anger like Joseph’s brothers, because she was the cause of their cruel, heartless mother sometimes making mashed squash for dinner and not making anyone eat it or anything. I am truly a monster! Next time I’ll feed them all to the ducks. Then we’ll see who gets mashed. 

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Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)


Ingredients

  • 1.5 pound boneless pork, sliced thin
  • 4 carrots in matchsticks or shreds
  • 1 onion sliced thin

sauce:

  • 5 generous Tbsp gochujang (fermented pepper paste)
  • 2 Tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 5 cloves minced garlic

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

Instructions

  1. Combine pork, onions, and carrots.

    Mix together all sauce ingredients and stir into pork and vegetables. 

    Cover and let marinate for several hours or overnight.

    Heat a pan with a little oil and sauté the pork mixture until pork is cooked through.

    Serve with rice and lettuce or nori. Eat by taking pieces of lettuce or nori, putting a scoop of meat and rice in, and making little bundles to eat. 

 

5 from 4 votes
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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

  1. 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. 

 

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Challah (braided bread)

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups warm water
  • 1/2 cup oil (preferably olive oil)
  • 2 eggs
  • 6-8 cups flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1.5 tsp yeast
  • 2 egg yolks for egg wash
  • poppy seeds or "everything bagel" topping (optional)
  • corn meal (or flour) for pan, to keep loaf from sticking

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, dissolve a bit of the sugar into the water, and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir gently, and let sit for five minutes or more, until it foams.

  2. In the bowl of standing mixer, put the flour (starting with six cups), salt, remaining sugar, oil, and eggs, mix slightly, then add the yeast liquid. Mix with dough hook until the dough doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, adding flour as needed. It's good if it has a slightly scaly appearance on the outside.

  3. (If you're kneading by hand, knead until it feels soft and giving. It will take quite a lot of kneading!)

  4. Put the dough in a greased bowl and lightly cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm place for at least an hour, until it's double in size.

  5. Grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle it with flour or corn meal. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll three into "snakes" and make a large braid, pinching the ends to keep them together. Divide the fourth piece into three and make a smaller braid, and lay this over the larger braid. Lay the braided loaf on the pan.

  6. Cover again and let rise again for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350.

  7. Before baking, make an egg wash out of egg yolks and a little water. Brush the egg wash all over the loaf, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or "everything" topping.

  8. Bake 25 minutes or more until the loaf is a deep golden color.

 

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Instant Pot Mashed Acorn Squash

Ingredients

  • 1 acorn quashes
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbsp butter
  • 2 Tbsp brown sugar
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Instructions

  1. Cut the acorn squashes in half. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt on the cut surfaces.

  2. Put 1/2 a cup of water in the Instant Pot, fit the rack in it, and stack the squash on top. Close the lid, close the valve, and cook on high pressure for 24 minutes. Do quick release.

  3. When squash is cool enough to handle, scoop it out into a bowl, mash it, and add the rest of the ingredients.

What’s for supper? Vol. 343: Duck eggs and fox nuts

Happy Friday! Today I am here to make you feel relatively stable and sane. 

Here’s what we ate:

SATURDAY
Regular tacos

Nothing to report. I took this picture mainly to remind me what we ate on Saturday, but best practice is to include lots of photos in the post, so here ya go.

Oh, I guess I actually have to report that I wasn’t paying attention when I sprinkled in the hot pepper flakes, and a lot of people made “wooooo!” sounds when they tasted the meat, which I took as a compliment. 

SUNDAY
Pizza

Sunday was freeeeeaking hot. I made myself do some gardening anyway, because I know that, by the time it’s time to plant bulbs, I’m going to have strep throat or tendonitis or the cold robbies something, and I won’t be able to manage it. So I prepped the little patio St. Joseph garden, which had gotten to look like this:

and now it looks like this

Now it just needs to get a little colder, and I can stuff the mulched area full of daffodil, tulips, and crocus bulbs. This will be nice in the spring, but it’s mostly to give me something to think about all winter, so I don’t kuh-kuh-kuh-kay em ess. 

I’ve also been gathering cosmos and marigold seeds. I’ve been deadheading my marigolds several times a week, and putting the heads up to dry for a week or so, and then pulling the seeds out, which is fun. LOOK how many seeds I have. 

And there’s more to come! Next year, I will have an UNSPEAKABLE amount of marigolds. 

Then, after gardening, it was time to make pizza! One olive, one pepperoni, and one arugula and prosciutto. I guess it’s time to make up a recipe card for this pizza. Here you go: 

Jump to Recipe

I actually had a mix of arugula and spinach, and I have to say, I prefer just arugula for this pizza. It stays a little snappier in texture, and the peppery flavor is nice. I also couldn’t find the olive oil. We have had a week of Everything Breaking, and one of the more minor things that broke was the shelf where I keep all my bottles, daily pills, and most-used measuring cups and spoons

Just came crashing down,

and it’s proved strangely difficult to put it up again (as you can see by the variety of screws, anchors, and adhesive whatnot on display now). So everything is here and there and not to be found, which is aggravating.

Despite these handicaps, it was still very delicious pizza. I did not hold back with the parmesan.

I had two pieces and didn’t really want a third, but I really, really wanted some more pizza crust, which I mentioned wistfully, so Damien got another piece and ate it except for the crust, which he offered to me. Find yourself a man who etc. etc.

MONDAY
Burgers and brats

Monday, Labor Day, we executed a plan we had . . . sort of worked out. That is to say, we’d been planning to do it for about a week, and had thought about the details up to a point, but maybe not quite as granularly as we mights have. Which is to say we left five hours later than we meant to, and it turns out two kayaks and a canoe are not really enough boats to get ten people to an island, unless your husband is willing to paddle back and forth a ridiculous number of times, dragging empty kayaks behind him.

The other part of the plan was that we would visit the island, then go get ice cream, and then get home at a normal time and have a little cookout, but I had already made various other errors during the week, and already used up some of Monday’s burger meat to compensate for those errors, but was then so overwhelmed by Boat Happenstances that I forgot this had happened, so, you know whattt, mistakes were made. Basically Dora was at our house for three hours playing with the cat and waiting for us to get home and give her a burger, and she eventually gave up and went home, and then the rest of us went and got ice cream in the dark, except for me because I was still in a swim suit, because my clothes were sopping wet because I have forgotten how to get in and out of a boat without falling in the water; and Damien went home and cooked not-quite-enough-burgers in the even darker, and the rest of us went home and ate them. Good thing it’s just labor day and not a real holiday!

Anyway, while we were on the island, we met a family with a little girl named Elise, maybe four years old, who was VERY ADAMANT THAT WE REMEMBER HER. Her name is Elise, and don’t you forget it. She blew us several kisses as her somewhat weary-looking mom paddled her away. They, too, seemed to be running a bit behind schedule on this, the most laborious of holidays. 

TUESDAY
Tuna and shrimp poke bowls, tropical fruit, and caramelized lotus pods

This was quite a delicious meal. Last time I made poke bowls, they were so good, I saw no reason to try any other variation, so I just recreated them: A big pot of rice, raw ahi tuna cut into little chunks, shrimp sautéed in chili oil with minced garlic and a little lime juice,

and chili lime cashews, and pea shoots and raw sugar snap peas, and some Polynesian sweet hot sauce. 

Boy, it was good. I also made a platter of watermelon, mango, and papaya, which accidentally formed itself into an Eye of Sauron, but was mostly harmless

The other thing was the lotus pods. Also known as — no, not monkey nuts. Foxnuts. Wow, if you knew how many things I had to stop and look up today, you would wonder if I were still fit to be Senate Minority Leader. Anyway, Clara gave me a couple packets of lotus seed pods,

and I thought the most popular thing to do would be to candy them, so that’s what I did, forgetting for the moment that I’m an idiot and do really poorly with caramelizing anything. 

So I followed this recipe, mainly because I had bought some jaggery quite a while back and really wanted to use it. The author, Ruchi, introduces her page by saying, “Welcome to my incredible food paradise! If you are passionate about food, this is the right place to explore exquisite recipes. From tasty starters, delicious meals, and blissful sweet delights, here you will find everything to please the gourmet in you.” Which, I will be honest, I was just not in the mood for. My therapist wants me to keep a food journal, and write down how I feel and what I think when I eat more than I plan to, and even though I am passionate about food, getting welcomed to an incredible food paradise by Ruchi with her foxnuts is just not helping anything.

I mean, yes, I realize that, as usual I realize that [waves arms dramatically like an exasperated orchestra conductor], I’m the one choosing to do all of this, but it still pissed me off. All of it. The cooking, the new recipe, the fox nuts, the therapy, everything. Whatever. If you had seen me trying to get out of a kayak while everyone was watching, maybe you would alter your opinions of exactly how much I’m in control of my actions. 

Anyway, I fucked up the fox nuts. I burned them, and then I added coconut and burned the coconut, too. Then I switched pans, to get away from the burny taste a little bit. That wasn’t a terrible idea, but then I still had to get the jaggery to the right temperature, and I’m really just awful at making candy, and it was also extremely humid out. So I ended up with this:

It may look like a platter of snacky bits, but it’s all one solid piece. You can break off individual pods, but they were hard as rocks. YES I ATE THEM ANYWAY. What do you take me for. 

And it was a delicious meal. What’s that? How did I feeeeel while I was eating it? I felt great! Eating makes me feel great! That’s why I do it all the time! Stupid question. Boring conversation anyway [shoots food journal].

WEDNESDAY
Kielbasa, potato, Brussels sprouts with honey mustard sauce

Wednesday, I somehow managed to forget that I had to make dinner altogether until it was almost five o’clock. This is what’s called “learning moderation.” And that’s what sheet pan meals are for! 

Every time I make this meal, I veer further and further away from a recipe. This time, I preheated the oven to 425 and trimmed and halved three pounds of Brussels sprouts, sliced five pounds of red potatoes (that were mysteriously the same price as yellow potatoes), and three ropes of kielbasa. I spread all the pieces of everything on two big sheet pans, drizzled it with oil, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and chunked it in the oven for twenty minutes. 

While it was cooking, I mixed up a bunch of honey, some wine vinegar, some salt and pepper, and some stone ground mustard (after floating the idea that stone ground mustard is the boba tea of mustards, which is disgusting but kinda true), and decided I was too lazy to crush up any garlic. When twenty minutes was up, I poured half the sauce over one pan, and then decided I wanted to take a pretty picture in the afternoon light, so I poured on a little more

and then realized I didn’t have enough left for the second pan. So I just drizzled on a bunch of honey and glopped on some mustard and swazzled on some wine vinegar on that one, mixed everything up so it wouldn’t stick, and threw both pans back in the oven, switching the top and bottom pans. Cooked it for another ten minutes or so.

When it came out, I mixed both pans together to even out the sauce situation

Maybe it was the boba mustard or maybe it was the “oops, I forgot to eat today,” but this was a very popular meal, even among husbands who don’t really like kielbasa. 

Wait, that can’t be it, because we had lunch! We had lunch of DUCK EGGS.

That’s right, Wednesday was the second day SOME of our pets started to finally pull their weight around here. 

Not them.

To be fair, I don’t think even I would eat a dog egg. Fox nuts, yes. But I have my limits. 

Gosh, I just talk talk talk. Anyway, our dear lady ducks, the interchangeable Fay and Ray

finally started to lay eggs on Tuesday,

and they did it again on Wednesday  

and again on Thursday

so I guess it’s gonna be a thing! What do you know about that! I was halfway convinced they were either just do-nothing ducks, or else laying secret eggs in the woods somewhere, and we were never going to find them; but they actually just lay them demurely in the hay in the corner of their duck house first thing every morning before breakfast. Amazing. 

On Wednesday, I made fried eggs for lunch for me and Damien. Fresh eggs are always head and shoulders above supermarket eggs. They just cook up better and the whites are fluffier. Duck eggs are like that, and they’re also bigger than chicken eggs, and the yolks are extremely rich. 

I was so proud of the ducks, I gave them some watermelon, which they devoured with great splurting violence. One of these days I will give them some cherries or beets or pomegranates, and I will film it in low light, and I will win a Sam Peckinpah award. 

THURSDAY
Mexican beef bowl again … OR WILL I???

Everybody liked it last time, so I’m a-makin’ it agin. Actually we had leftovers from the steak and cheese subs last week, so I stashed it in the freezer, with the intention of using the power of Worcestershire sauce and lime to thriftily transform it into Mexican beef bowls.

Jump to Recipe

But I took a look at how much meat it is this morning, and, through the magic of not wanting a repeat of Monday, I realized it it’s not as much meat as I thought! Need more. 

So I was dropping the kids off at school and thought I would just quickly nip into the supermarket for a little more beef, so I asked the kids if I could shop dressed the way I was. They said, “With your shirt inside out?” This was news to me, because I thought I only had my skirt on inside out. I then became aware that I also had no shoes on, and also no underwear. FOXNUTS! 

UPDATE: I wrote the above paragraph on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, it was in the 90’s and super humid, more than one person was mad at me (???) because we had to pick up a kid at soccer, and my desire to not cook several different foods had reached a tipping point, so I just got Aldi pizza.

No ragrets.

FRIDAY
Salmon tacos

Regular fish tacos with cheapo fish sticks was the plan, but sometimes having a kid who works at the fish counter pays off, like when they can text you about a flash sale because someone ordered way too much salmon.  So I picked up a big filet and I am going to try Ina Garten’s recipe for roasted salmon tacos, which looks pretty tasty. I have everything but dill, and there are even some cucumbers very ready to be picked from the garden right meow. As soon as I get off the couch. 

Just one duck egg this morning! Maybe somebody had a bad dream. 

Oh, last chance to enter the giveaway for the new Tomie dePaola book. 

Okay, I really think that’s everything. Going to adoration this afternoon, bringing all yer lousy intentions with me.

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Prosciutto arugula pizza

Ingredients

  • oil or butter and flour for pan
  • pizza dough
  • sauce
  • shredded mozzarella
  • olive oil
  • 4-5 garlic cloves, sliced thin
  • rosemary (fresh or dried)
  • prosciutto, torn up
  • arugula
  • fresh lemon juice
  • Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 450. Grease and flour the pizza pan, stretch the dough over it, pierce it with a fork, spread the sauce, sprinkle the cheese as usual.

  2. Spread the garlic and a little rosemary on the cheese. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil if you like. Cook as usual.

  3. While it is cooking, make a salad of the arugula, lemon juice, and a little olive oil, plus salt and pepper.

  4. When the pizza comes out, lay the torn-up prosciutto over the top and throw the arugula on top of that. Top with parmesan cheese. Let it sit for a few minutes before slicing, to let the arugula wilt slightly.

 

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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

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. 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. 334: Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Happy summer! This is the week that always starts to feel like real summer to me, because the big family party is over and we get going on all the other stuff we haven’t quite had time for, mainly lounging around, eating ice pops, and watching Buffy. 

I didn’t get a WFS out last week, because of all the running around, so the quick version is: I don’t remember. Probably really easy, fast, boring stuff; except one day we had 

Kielbasa, Brussels sprouts, and potatoes sheet pan dinner with honey mustard sauce

I have stopped consulting a recipe for this meal.  (Here is one if you want, though! Jump to Recipe

I had three ropes of kielbasa cut into chunks, three pounds of Brussels sprouts halved, and probably three pounds of potato wedges with the skin on, tossed with salt and pepper and olive oil and spread on a sheet pan, and I cooked them at 425 for about 20 minutes. I mixed up a sauce from a bunch of dijon mustard, honey, balsamic vinegar or maybe wine vinegar, and pepper, kosher salt, and crushed garlic, then drizzled the sauce on the food

and stirred it up, and slid it back in the oven for another maybe 10-15 minutes until it was a little browned.

Sorry, not really a recipe, but you can just make it according to your taste and then cook it until it looks done. 

I used to make this meal with wedges of cabbage, but the kids vastly prefer Brussels sprouts. I also used to make it with the sauce to dip, but now I do the “cook, then add sauce and finish cooking” thing, and it comes out flavorful and keeps everything from drying out. Great summer meal, easy and hearty. 

And another day we had

Taijin chicken with scallions, mango, hot pretzels

This was supposed to be a NYT recipe, buuut I forgot to buy oranges, and you’re supposed to add orange zest and juice. So instead, I looked around furtively, opened a can of mandarin oranges, smushed up the contents, and dumped it into the sauce. 

The original recipe calls for 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sea salt, 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 cup orange juice, 1 tsp orange zest, 3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce and 1/4 cup adobo sauce, 6 garlic cloves, 2 Tbs. olive oil, and 1 Tbsp Taijin, which is the ingredient that caught my attention in the first place, but which we turned out to have two almost-empty bottles of, along with only a small can of chipotle chiles and only a little honey.

I also broiled this in the oven, rather than grilling it; so it was basically a Ship of Theseus recipe at this point.

But honestly, it still tasted fine. Kinda citrusy, quite spicy. If you like the taste of Taijin, you will like this chicken. It didn’t knock my socks off, but it was easy and tasty.

(I threw in some scallions, as directed, but those didn’t fare very well under the broiler, and weren’t terribly appealing.) For sides, I cut up a bunch of mangoes and served the hot pretzels I was too tired to cook the other day.

A decent if slightly weird meal.

SUNDAY
Independence Day Party!

I spent most of last week scurrying around finishing the infamous patio, (which I am sitting on right now, and let me tell you, it is birdy and lovely)

and getting all the other stuff ready for the party, knowing all along that it was going to rain all day. I did have the option to change the party to Saturday, which was supposed to be sunny and hot, but not everyone could make it. Argh!

Eventually I decided it made more sense to have a family party with rain and all the family, then a family party with sun and lots of people missing. It was a good choice! It did rain quite a bit, but we had two canopies and a tarp, 

and my sister brought another giant tarp which two of my brothers-in-law set up like a giant tent. 

Easy for me to say it was the right choice, since I didn’t have to drive home long distance in soggy clothes, but it seemed like everyone had a nice time. I love my family and I’m so glad we get together like this every year. I didn’t put up my father’s monstrous (in size, I mean) American flag, because of the rain, and we forgot to read the Declaration of Independence, but it was still a very good party.

Glow sticks, snappers, sparklers, fireworks, shiny necklaces, and the dog got bossed around by so many little girls, which is his heart’s desire.

Our July 4th menu is not very exotic; we go for volume, rather than novelty. Damien cooked hamburgers and hot dogs, veggie burgers and tofu dogs, and three racks of pork ribs

Jump to Recipe

This year, in addition to the rub he usually puts on them before smoking, he sprayed them with cider vinegar as they cooked. They were done a long time after the rest of the food,

which actually worked out great, because it had gotten a little chilly by then, and we were all ready for a second course, and it was pretty great to sit by the fire gobbling up sizzling, tender ribs

I made potato salad and bought I think 18 bags of chips, and made several big platters of raw veggies. My brother’s BF also brought some delicious spicy peanut noodles, which everyone loved. We had watermelon, which we shared with the ducks, and for dessert, the traditional red and blue Jello cups with Kool Whip

as well as ice cream cups and brownies, which Benny made.

And then candy after the fireworks, to ease the pain of the party winding down. 

Bunch more photos here if you want to take a look.

MONDAY
Leftovers

Monday we were all smooshed into a paste of exhaustion, so I cooked the leftover hot dogs and set out some cold ribs and that was perfect. The town fireworks we were planning to go to got rained out and postponed until July 28, to my great relief. 

TUESDAY
Burgers

Tuesday we went with some friends to The Caterpillar Lab, which we’ve been meaning to do forever. If you’re anywhere in Southwest NH and looking for a way to spend an hour or two, this is an excellent little free visit, fascinating and educational for kids and adults.

We saw amazing things unfolding right before our eyes, on the counter at eye level, and also magnified on a big screen; and the staff was very chill and well-informed and ready to answer questions and chat about what we were seeing. There were lots of things for the kids to touch, and I liked how it was set up in a beautiful way, including a long wooden table set with decorative bottles, each holding a green branch with a different kind of caterpillar living on it, with an informational card on the table. Sort of reminiscent of a Victorian curiosity cabinet, but with things you could handle. A very pleasant and exciting way to spend a rainy morning. 

(I actually have a bit of a moth and butterfly phobia, which I have been working on, but there was nothing flapping around being horrible and out of control, so the experience was well within my tolerance zone. Very different from a butterfly garden, for instance, which is a nightmare for me.) 

Then we came home and played Forbidden Island, which I reviewed here.

Damien bought more meat and cooked more burgers.

We ate late and they were absolutely scrumptious. Definitely starting to get that vacation feel. 

WEDNESDAY
Aldi pizza

Wednesday Benny hosted a tea party, with animal crackers topped with Kool Whip, hot dog ends on toothpicks, and candy, and of course tea

and then we went to the library, and Damien brought home Aldi pizzas. Then I went on the library website and looked up their actual policies, and discovered that, newp, I’m not imagining it, the librarian is actually being a jerk to our family and possibly breaking the law. So we’ll see about that. Humph. (This is why, don’t talk to me about “ohhh, if only WXMYN could be in power, THEN we would see an end to all this terrible CORRUPTION! You give women a teensy tiny bit of power and they will find a way to abuse it. Which is not to say that women shouldn’t have power! Just don’t expect it to magically fix corruption.)

THURSDAY
Italian sandwiches

Thursday it was HOT HOT HOT (for New Hampshire), so I finally broke down and put in the air conditioner

Then I couldn’t put off shopping any longer, so I got some sandwich ingredients, and then when I got my other work done, I took four of the kids to the town pond, ahhh.

They swam for a while, and played Parco Molo, and then we had Italian sandwiches, cherries, and cheezy weezies. 

What a lovely spot it is. I opened my Merlin app and it picked up something like twenty different birds. I did some actual reading from an actual book (The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, who is so unkind to some of his characters), and wow has my life gotten easier than it used to be. 

FRIDAY
Fish tacos

Moe and his lovely GF and I think Dora are coming by for dinner, and we’re having fish tacos (just frozen batter fried fish fillets) on tortillas with shredded cabbage, sour cream, limes, salsa, and I guess guacamole.

Jump to Recipe

Am I forgetting something? Maybe I will make some lime crema. 

Jump to Recipe

I started some ice cream this morning, but it was so hot in the kitchen, the first batch (made with that Neopolitan trail mix from Aldi) didn’t freeze properly, so I turned on the AC and I’m currently making the second batch (strawberry with a little lime) in the cooler room. 

The ducks are frolicking in the sprinkler

the birds are singing, lots of things are blooming, I’m sitting in the shade in my own yard for the first time ever, and if this ain’t the life, I don’t know what is!

***

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sugar smoked ribs

the proportions are flexible here. You can adjust the sugar rub to make it more or less spicy or sweet. Just pile tons of everything on and give it puh-lenty of time to smoke.

Ingredients

  • rack pork ribs
  • yellow mustard
  • Coke
  • extra brown sugar

For the sugar rub:

  • 1-1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp white pepper

Instructions

  1. Coat the ribs in yellow mustard and cover them with sugar rub mixture

  2. Smoke at 225 for 3 hours

  3. Take ribs out, make a sort of envelope of tin foil and pour Coke and brown sugar over them. close up the envelope.

  4. Return ribs to smoker and cook another 2 hours.

  5. Remove tinfoil and smoke another 45-min.

  6. Finish on grill to give it a char.

 

5 from 1 vote
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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

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

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

 

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Lime Crema

Keyword Budget Bytes, crema, lime, lime crema, sour cream, tacos

Ingredients

  • 16 oz sour cream
  • 3 limes zested and juiced
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. 

Recipe Notes

So good on tacos and tortilla chips Looking forward to having it on tortilla soup, enchiladas, MAYBE BAKED POTATOES, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

 

5 from 4 votes
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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

  1. 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. 

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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

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

Make the ice cream base:

  1. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.

  2. Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.

  3. Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

  1. Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.

  2. 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.)

I’ve got a heart like a duck

The first time we almost bought a duck was 25 years ago, when my oldest daughter was a toddler, and very duckling-like herself. The one bright spot in our awful neighborhood was an agricultural supply shop that occasionally had ducklings, and they were so charming and appealing, we almost got one. But even dumb as we were, we had to admit that people who live in a one bedroom apartment with no yard whatsoever should really not own livestock. So we forebore. For 25 years, we forebore.

But look at us now! We have no end of grass, and our ducks are thriving in the back yard. It is finally the right time. I’ll tell you a little bit about it, because I’m openly pressuring you to consider whether it might be the right time for you, too, to get a duck or four. They are quite low-maintenance, at least so far, and they are a delight. 

We have four Pekin ducks that we ordered from our local Agway supply center. We ordered them in February for $12 each, and they arrived in the middle of April when they were about a week old. We took them home in a little cardboard box.

They were unreasonably adorable. They looked exactly like a plushie or a cartoon of a duckling. 

They just ran around like maniacs going “PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP” or “WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB.” They liked being cuddled, and they would huddle up and fall asleep in your hand or on your lap, or sometimes scramble up your chest and crawl around behind your head.

They liked exploring,

but mostly they wanted to be together. If you ever separated one of them from the group, they would all set up a huge racket and keep it up until you reunited them; and then they would just huddle up together and go to sleep.

They are still kind of like that. They sleep together, and have a habit of piling themselves on top of each other, and resting their heads on each other.

As soon as we got them home, they started growing like crazy. I mean like crazy. They were visibly bigger day to day. First they were just round heads, round bodies, and little leggies and feet. Then their bodies started to get a little bigger and elongated. Then they got shoulders; they they got necks.

Then their legs and feet started to grow, and their heads changed shape. Their fuzzy yellow down started to turn whitish and real feathers started to grow in. There have been so many awkward stages in between. Sometimes the down-to-feather transition is very comical, and the new feathers look like place markers, like “tail goes here, insert tab B.”

Their feet grew faster than their bodies, just like on teenage boys.

Their feet still look a little big for their bodies, so I think they’re not quite full size yet. 

Their wings are also hilarious.  I feel guilty thinking so, but they look exactly like, well, you know, wings, like you could just snip them off and fry them up with hot sauce and blue cheese dressing. (I am not going to do this.) 

They’re starting to get some longer wing feathers now, so the shape of them is less naked, but they’re clearly still pretty useless. Every once in a while, the ducks will rear up tall and vigorously stretcccccch and FLAP-FLAP-FLAP their wings, and then fold and tuck them back behind them exactly like a fussy little man tucking his thumbs into his vest or something. It’s so funny. 

@simchafisher660 delicious protein crumbles for the ducks #ducks #pekinducks #ducklings #pekins ♬ original sound – simchafisher

 

We chose Pekin ducks because they are hearty, friendly, and relatively smart about predators (meaning they will run away, rather than just stand there going “duh” when something wants to eat them). They make good pets and don’t get sick a lot, and they’re okay in cold weather; and they’re too fat to fly. When you think “duck,” it’s probably a Pekin duck you’re imagining. 

Here is what they look like now, a little over a month later.

They have thighs and chests and everything!

Let’s see, what else might you want to know? 

Other equipment we bought for the ducks: A big sack of protein crumbles (the same brand they’d been eating in the store, about $20 that lasts about ten days), a feeder, a watering tray, a heat lamp to keep them warm, especially at night or if they got wet; several giant packs of pine shavings, and a big plastic tub. That was enough for the first month or so.

When ducklings are with their mother, she grooms them with her oils and waterproofs them; but when they’re on their own, they’re not really ready to go swimming right away, so we resisted the urge to toss them in the bathtub when they were little. But we did give them a tupperware tub with some holes cut in it for water when they got to be a few weeks old, because they needed to be able to clean their nares (nostrils) out.

These ducks are the most disorderly creatures on the face of the earth. Utter agents of chaos. You put them in a box of clean, fresh pine shavings with a little tub of a food and a little drinky-drink of water, and within three minutes, the water is gone and the tub is upside down, half the food is sprayed all over the place, and two of the ducks are soaking wet and standing on their brother, and the fourth one is running around in circles meeping his head off, and there is a giant turd on his back. What happened? Nobody knows! MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP!!!

Oh! Let’s talk about duck poop! My friends, if you are not okay with duck poop, I mean really, truly okay with duck poop, then do not get a duck, not even a little bit. They poop . . . . . . . . . . . so much. Like you have never seen any living creature poop this much, and you probably never imagined it was possible. And maybe you are thinking to yourself, “Oh, if they poop that often, it’s probably like a newborn baby, where it’s so fast and so constant and so pure, it probably doesn’t even small that bad.” NOPE. If you are indoors, it smells like Satan threw up in a microwave! It is so heinous! You (by which I mean your husband) will change the pine shavings twice a day, and it will still smell like someone has done something illegal to a corpse and then concealed it in a sauna for several months. It’s just the stenchiest, and I don’t think I would have been able to handle it if I had been pregnant.  

They do slow down with the pooping as they get older, but I’m not kidding when they say that if you have these creatures indoors, you will KNOW IT. Outdoors, it’s fine. I honestly don’t even smell them when I sit by their pen in the open air. It’s just kind of comical how fluffy and angelic and etherial their down is, and they gaze at you with this blank, innocent expression, and all the time they’re producing this criminal stank.

The upside is, their poop is so liquidy, you can put it (or the shavings or hay or water it’s mixed into) directly onto your garden, and it’s supposed to be amazing for the soil. Most animal manure has to be composted or rotted for a while, because it’s too high in nitrogen or something, but not duck manure. I quickly got in over my head with composting information, but I did mix an awful lot of duck-smelling pine shavings into my raised beds this year, so we’ll see how that works out. 

When we first got the ducks, you could hold one in each palm of your hand.

Now, just over a month later, it’s all you can do to catch one of them with both arms while they run away, squawking, and wrestle to stuff them into their duck house because they don’t WANT to go to bed and it’s not FAIR.

The kids are learning to wear long sleeves when they handle them, because the little claws tipping their webbed feet are no joke, and can really scratch you up. They like us and they know us, but they’re not especially placid creatures. I would classify them more as “hysterical morons.” 

One of them, EJ, is quite a bit bigger than the others, and I suspect he is a male. EJ has a paler, pinker bill than the rest, who have orange beaks (that doesn’t seem to signify anything in particular; it’s just how we can tell he’s EJ). Coin, the other somewhat larger, feistier one, had a bald spot on the side of his head, which has transformed into a lighter feathered spot that is fading as he turns all white. The other two, Fay and Ray, are smaller and more docile, and are harder to tell apart.

They’re much more amenable to being picked up and snuggled.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve been able to tell them apart. Today I bought some colored plastic bands to put on their legs, so that should help. 

We still don’t know if they’re male or female. The males have tail feathers the curl up and over fancily, but the female duck butts are more plain. Our ducks are still growing their adult feathers in, so it’s too soon to say.

I would be delighted if we got some eggs eventually.  Pekins lay about 3-5 eggs a week starting at about 20 weeks of age (so around August, I guess). Duck eggs are large and rich and delicious. But honestly, we mainly got the ducks as pets, and also as a way to get used to having poultry. I figured once we had ducks for a while, it would be easier to transition to getting chickens, which really would be for the purpose of having eggs. I’m not especially interested in chickens, but fresh eggs are freaking fantastic.

Oh, another change they’ve been going through is learning how to quack! EJ started quacking first, and it was just exactly like when an adolescent boy’s voice starts to crack: Startling, unexpectedly deep, and pretty funny, and clearly not in his control. Some of the other ducks have started mutter-quacking more and more, and now they “peep” and “weep” about half the time and quack the other half. Hilarious. They quack a lot, but they’re not very loud. They do set each other off, and if one quacks, they all quack. Sometimes they quack at the wind. 

When we’d had them for about a month, they were so big that they had begun to squabble with each other in their tub at night, and were panting because they were too hot indoors, but kept spilling their water so they had nothing to drink. So it was time to move them out! Damien built a lovely solid duck house. 

A duck house just needs to be a big, secure box to protect them from weather and predators, that is off the ground so their feet don’t get too cold, and had some ventilation so their humid duck breath doesn’t make it moldy in there. It has a slanted roof so the snow will slide off it, and it has a giant door in front for opening up to clean it out, and smaller door inset in that, for the ducks to go in and out on a ramp (but we need to add some kind of grips to help them get up and down). The floor is covered with hay that needs to be changed once a week. It’s painted inside, and we still need to paint the outside. 

Pekin ducks are quite cold tolerant. You mainly have to give them straw, and protect their feet from getting too cold (which is why the house is raised up on cinder blocks). When it gets below 20 degrees this winter, we’ll move them into a dog crate in the basement, which is unfinished but heated.

Their duck house is surrounded by an old upside-down trampoline frame with chicken wire zip-tied onto the legs. Ducks are not clever escape artists, so this is enough to keep them enclosed, and they’re very happy to eat grass, hunt bugs, and scrabble in the mud. They are in sight of the house during the day, so we can keep an eye on them, and we put them into their duck house at night, to protect them from predators (raccoons and skunks, and occasionally coyotes, foxes, bears, and anything else that might wander through. We have a highway on one side of the house, but conservation land on the other, so you never know what might be in the yard). 

They also have a kiddie pool for drinking, splashing around, and washing themselves, and a tray for their protein crumbles. We have also been giving them more and more kitchen scraps, like peas, kale, lettuce cores, and strawberry tops. They go absolutely bananas when they eat. Like the Cookie Monster, but even more so. It’s like they’re blind and in a panic and the food is running away and there are sirens going off. And then they just suddenly lose interest and stroll away, with a streamer of kale dangling casually off their head. They’re so entertaining! 

We don’t plan to give them meat, because it can make them a little mean, but they do love bugs and worms. Boy do they love worms.

They love to splash the water out of their pool and make mud. They are constantly making themselves filthy and then washing and fluffing themselves. It’s a full time job, which is good because I don’t think they can read or anything.

There is absolutely zero brain power in them. They’re so dumb, they’re not even dumb. Like, you wouldn’t call a bunch of dandelions or a sky full of clouds dumb, and a bunch of ducks exist in the world in the same way. They’re just a little force of nature, and they are what they are. For some reason, this makes them very soothing to watch in action. I like to just sit down on a rock and watch them duck around. Sometimes they give me a little duck side eye, which is hilarious. 

The other animals adapted to the ducks very quickly. The cat took one look at them and just decided, yeah, this isn’t happening. This was smart, as the ducks work as a team and would have beaten the crap out of him, even when they were little. It’s hilarious, though. He won’t even look at them. He goes outside and literally looks anywhere besides in their direction. 

The dog ADORES THEM. He thinks they are his AMAZING FOUR NEW BEST FRIENDS and they SMELL SO INCREDIBLE and they DEFINITELY WANT TO SEE THE COOL STICK HE FOUND and SOMETIMES THEY BITE HIS FACE HA HA GOOD ONE DUCKS and LET’S HAVE ANOTHER SMELL. He is constantly begging to go outside, and as soon as you open the door, he rushes right over to the ducks. Just can’t get enough of them. They either ignore him or jump at him and bite his face. They have never been scared of him. They don’t especially dislike him, but they’re not as impressed as he thinks they are.

The parakeet has started imitating their peeps when he wants attention. The lizard just keeps his own council. Never know what that guy is thinking. 

And I think that’s it! Go ahead and ask me anything. I love these ducks. Not one second of regret so far. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 326: Wads for supper

All week long, the kids have been asking me why it is raining. I don’t know why they’re asking me. It’s not like they think I know anything. The truth is, I made it happen, partially because I like to suffer, and partly so I could make soup one more time before summer. But I didn’t tell them that; I just made the soup, so we could all suffer. (It was delicious soup!)

SATURDAY
Fried chicken caprese sandwiches, Aldi Cheetos

I bought one of those enormous sacks of miscellaneous chicken breasts suspended in frozen wads of broth, with the intention of doling them out over three meals. It actually worked, to my surprise (I was expecting doom and disaster, as usual). This chicken is actually okay, as long as you’re using it as a sort of raw material, like tofu or polymer clay, rather than as a centerpiece. 

Saturday we had chicken caprese sandwiches. If I have actual fresh chicken breasts, I will roast them with oil, salt, and pepper, but I thought these chicken wads needed more help than that. So I dredged them in eggs and milk and then seasoned panko crumbs, pan fried them, and then put them in the oven for a while to make sure they were done all the way through. 

I served them on ciabatta rolls with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and of course mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. Not spectacular, but fine. 

I haven’t really started my garden yet (we can’t plant anything but the heartiest things until May), but I’m already feeling the freedom of knowing I have decided not to grow tomatoes this summer. Homegrown tomatoes bring me nothing but grief, and hardly any tomatoes. I’m just going to excuse myself this time, and grow mostly flowers, plus a bunch of vegetables that don’t have all this weird cultural “oh yeahhhh, this here is the good life” baggage. I’m planning rhubarb and asparagus and strawberries and maybe some eggplant, probably various squashes and pumpkins, and I think some Brussels sprouts made it through the winter. And flowers! 

SUNDAY
Spicy pulled pork on tater tots with cheese

First I started some focaccia dough for Tuesday. I saw all those beautiful focaccia loaves people made over the pandemic, with little garden scenes picked out in vegetables, but I never got around to trying it. But Sip and Feast promised an easy, no-knead recipe that is best if you start it fermenting several days in advance, so that’s what I made. 

So much olive oil, goodness! I made a double recipe. 

So I put that away in the fridge, rested on my laurels for a minute, feeling domestic goddess-y and accomplished thinking about how Tuesday’s dinner was already halfway done, until I suddenly realized we also needed to eat something today. Boo.

But, pulled pork is easy. It was a bit of a strange combination in the slow cooker, but here is what I did: First I cut the pork into hunks, seasoned it heavily with salt and pepper, and browned it in oil. Then I put it in the Instant Pot with a can of Cherry Coke Zero, three clementines cut in half and squeezed, a few big dark reg, glossy guajillo peppers, a handful of little orange arbol peppers, a heaping tablespoon of cumin, and a bunch of oregano. I left all the seeds in the peppers, and just tore the tops off.

Then I pressed “meat,” which just makes me laugh. Do it! Go be meat! Away! and left it alone to think about life for the rest of the day. 

When it was almost time to eat, I pulled out most of the clementine rinds and about half the peppers, and shredded the meat.

I drained the liquid, but ended up adding some back into keep the meat moist while it was heating back up while I cooked some tater tots and shredded some cheese and sliced some onions.

I had my pile of food in this order: Tater tots, then shredded cheddar cheese, then hot pork to melt the cheese; then cool onions and sauce on top of that.

It was really good. Not a delicate or sophisticated dinner, but REALLY GOOD. I did a bunch of digging and heavy yard work on Sunday, and this was a fine reward. 

MONDAY
Cobb salad

On Monday I drove an hour and a quarter to a super Newhampshirey-ish place to pick up a free load of bricks, and let me tell you, it was a lot of bricks! A! Lot! 

I haven’t figured out exactly how many I will need for my patio, but if the answer turns out to be “quite a few,” I may have arrived. I did start digging, and I’m gonna do a lot more digging this weekend, when it stops raining. 

For supper: Chicken wads, day 2! I broiled them with oil, salt, and pepper and served them in slices with salad greens, chopped bacon, hard boiled eggs, red onions, leftover croutons from last week, shredded cheese, and those crunchy fried onions that come in a pouch.

Nice little salad, much protein. I had mine with ranch dressing. This isn’t strictly speaking a Cobb salad, which is supposed to be laid out in cute little stripes and is supposed to have avocados, tomatoes, and I forget what else — I think chives, and probably some other kind of dressing. Get off my back, man! Cobb salad  sounds better than “wadd salad!” 

TUESDAY
Sausage and kale soup, focaccia bread

Tuesday it was time to take the dough out of the fridge, that had been lurking there since Sunday afternoon. It needed 3-4 hours to rise, and then you just spread it in a pan, let it rest a little bit and then re-spread it, and then let it rise a little more, and then you can decorate it and bake it. 

I was rushing a bit and hadn’t really made a plan for how to decorate it, so I just grabbed what I could find, which was grape tomatoes, radishes, scallions, some garlic scrapes, red onions, and kale.

I thought the design turned out pretty (well, one did. The other one was kind of lame), but I didn’t know how well it would hold up in the oven. 

I actually baked it for slightly less time than it recommended, but one pan was still slightly burned, and the other was right on the verge. 

Still pretty, though! The dough is very stable as it bakes, so the design stays where you put it. I call it a success. 

Although the truth is, if you ever want me to do anything, anything at all, just offer me hot tomatoes baked into fresh bread. I will walk off a cliff with my eyes wide open, if I think there’s hot tomatoes baked into fresh bread at the bottom. 

It had a thin crust and was quite chewy, and the inside had very large air holes

(which I imagine was the result of letting it ferment for three days). I’m not a big focaccia expert, but I think this is how it’s supposed to come out. 

Guess what? Most of the kids wouldn’t even try it, because it had kale on it. Honest to goodness. Kale isn’t even that big of a deal. I feel like it’s like Sriracha sauce or Mondays or the word moist: NOT EVEN THAT BIG OF A DEAL. It’s just that people keep talking and talking about it, until everyone’s like, “oh my gosh, KALE, what is it even for, it’s garbage, only insane aliens would be in the same room with it!” Like, it’s a leafy green, it has a mildly sweet taste, and you can put it in salads or soups or whatever you want. It’s kind of dense, but who the fuck isn’t. People need to settle down about kale. 

Anyway, then I made some soup, also from Sip and Feast, with sausage, potato, cannellini beans, and kale. Very simple, easy li’l soup, tastes nice. I took a bunch of extremely blurry pictures for some reason. 

I grated some parmesan and set that out with the soup and the piping hot focaccia

and everyone stared at it and went to get some ramen or frosted flakes. I’m actually only pretending to be mad. I ate most of both loaves of focaccia myself. Can’t be mad. Too full of focaccia, here at the bottom of my cliff. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken fried rice, steamed pork and mushroom dumplings

On Wednesday, Elijah made supper, hooray! He took a cooking class last year and has a few recipes he likes. 

It was tasty if basic,with rice, onions and garlic, some frozen veg, chunks of chicken, scrambled eggs, and soy sauce. 

But nothing can beat that wonderful flavor of someone else making dinner, let me tell you. And we also got a lot of mileage out of “you telling me ELIJAH fried this” etc etc.

I stopped at the Keene International Market and picked up some frozen pork and mushroom dumplings, which I steamed in my nice little bamboo steamer,

and I served them in one of the dozens of dishes Clara brought home from pottery class. 

I’ll tell you, one minute you’re wiping bottoms, pouring juice all day long, and begging them to stop eating crayons, and then next minute you’re eating the dinner they cooked you off the pottery they made by hand. And looking the other way while they eat crayons, because you know everyone is on a journey. 

But seriously, Clara brought home some amazing pottery. 

 

and we don’t even have crayons in this house. 

THURSDAY
Koftas, yogurt sauce, Jerusalem salad, pita

Thursday I made what probably can’t really be called koftas, because they’re round instead of sausage-shaped, and broiled in the oven rather than grilled or roasted on a spit, and not on sticks. They were, however, juicy and delicious and to me they tasted middle eastern. 

I mixed about five pounds of ground beef, five eggs, and then just started slamming in anything that smelled like it belonged in a hot tent: sumac, coriander, paprika, cinnamon, onion powder, garam masala, za’atar, and salt, and a big handful of fresh mint from the yard. Then I discovered I had used up all my breadcrumbs on the chicken on Sunday, so I made about six pieces of toast, and then microwaved them to really blitz the moisture out, and then ran them through the food processor. 

When it was almost time to eat, I cooked the meatballs on pans on racks in a 450 oven for about 25 minutes.

I also made a bunch of yogurt sauce with fresh garlic and fresh lemon juice and kosher salt, and I made a nice Jerusalem salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh mint, fresh flat-leaf parsley, a little red onion, fresh lemon juice, and salt. And that was it! A simple but nicely balanced meal. 

I briefly considered making pita or maybe making taboon bread, but we still had leftover focaccia, so I just stopped at the store and bought some pita. 

FRIDAY
I think we are having quesadillas. Truly, I hated this week. Everyone was fighty and bighty, especially me, and it rained a lot, and I forgot about a bunch of forms I was supposed to fill out, and even though the sack of chicken wads worked out, it made me mad all week. The more I think about it, the more it was clearly the chicken’s fault. 

However, the ducks are growing nicely. EJ has started quacking, not just peeping, and Corrie has been great with them. They’re huge! Almost ready to live outside.

And I think the sun is going to come out this weekend. Literally, I mean, and also maybe figuratively; who can say? And I do have a lot of bricks. And ducks. Oh, and I fixed the What’s for supper volume numbering. Well, I didn’t fix it, but I got back on track. It went: 323, 324, 325, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 242, 243, 244, 245, 11. But now we’re back on track. Quack! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 245: Got any duck food?

Happy Friday! But first, a word from the ducklings:

PEEP.

Seriously, that’s what they say. Peep peep! Peep peep peep! Or sometimes, Weep weep! Weep weep weep! 

They’re terribly shy, as you can see:

and they don’t fit in at our house at all. 

It’s quite sad, how neglected they are.

They still only eat something called “protein crumbles” and they are VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT and also VERY EXCITED ABOUT GETTING FRESH WATER and then they fall asleep. AND THEN THEY WAKE UP AND PEEP PEEP PEEP!!! and then they fall asleep again.

And that’s duck news! We had something a little more elaborate than protein crumbles this week, as follows: 

SATURDAY
Burgers and chips

Cooked outside! It’s finally warm enough, hooray! Damien cooked the burgers outside and they were juicy and delicious. 

Speaking of outside, I have such big plans for our yard this year. I’m moving the garden beds I built (and really kicking myself for putting rocks on the bottom layer for drainage. I PUT ROCKS IN THE DIRT. On purpose!!!) to the other side of the yard, and planning a little patio encompassing the St. Joseph garden and the young peach tree. It is going to be so bougie, you will throw up, I’m telling you. Cannot wait. Those tacky cafe string lights and a little propane fire pit and everything. 

SUNDAY
Spinach salad with hot bacon dressing; matzoh brei

New recipe! I slavishly followed this recipe from the delightful Sip and Feast, which hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Well, I used about twice the amount of bacon it called for, actually. The salad is baby spinach, red onion, mushrooms, and chopped bacon, and you mix it with a hot dressing made of bacon fat, olive oil and wine vinegar, sautéed minced shallots, honey, dijon mustard, salt and pepper, and a little grated cheese. 

So the spinach wilts a bit when you pour some of the hot dressing on, and then you toss it and let people add on more dressing if they want. Oh land, it was so good. 

I sprang for good ingredients, thick bacon, freshly-grated cheese, actual shallots, and so on, and it was just wonderfully savory and tangy, with a fantastic array of textures. It was easy to make, and tasted like it came from an expensive restaurant. I only wish I had sliced the mushrooms thinner. They were a bit too chunky and sort of interrupted the flavor party, but only slightly. 

I also made matzoh brei for those who wanted it. Matzo brei is a weird little recipe that everyone should know: You take a sheet of matzo, break it into chunks in a bowl, and pour hot water over it. Let it sit for thirty seconds or so, and then press the water out. Then beat up two eggs, stir in the drained matzo, and fry the mixture up in some hot oil, turning once, until the edges are crisp.

People sometimes eat matzoh brei with jelly, or cinnamon and sugar, or any sweet breakfasty way you can think of; but I vastly prefer it savory. It’s so good just with salt and pepper, hot out of the pan, with the little morsels of still-crisp matzoh poking out of the egg. 

This is the best way to approach a box of matzoh:

@simchafisher660what’s in the box?♬ original sound – simchafisher660

 

Oh nooooo! That can’t be kosher! Better find another box.

(I’m not really on TikTok, not really. Just trying to figure out where to put the ten thousand little duck videos I now have. I did notice that, after finally managing to retrain myself to turn the camera sideways to take videos, I guess now you’re supposed to not turn it sideways for TikTok. Whatever! Shame on you! Where’s my cane!)

I also made some ice cream, and it turned out weird, and I don’t know why.

I made the same recipes I’ve used many times, Ben and Jerry’s strawberry ice cream, and Ben and Jerry’s sweet cream base with M&M’s stirred in. They just didn’t freeze in the ice cream maker, and so when I put them in the freezer, they came out a few hours later more like ice milk, with shards of ice surrounded by fast-melting cream. The taste was fine, but it just wasn’t ice cream. I have no idea. An ice cream mystery. The only thing I can think of was the cream was a little old, but it smelled and tasted fine. I dunno.

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas with spinach and caramelized onions

I had four chicken legs, which I skinned, drizzled with oil, and sprinkled heavily with Tajin seasoning, then roasted. 

Then I shredded the meat. I forget why, but I found myself with a little extra time before dinner, so I sliced up about five onions and caramelized them. Then I made up quesadillas to order. Only a few people chose all the available options (chicken, cheddar cheese, fresh spinach, and onions) but those who did were rewarded with a tasty treat indeed. 

Quesadillas are something I never had or even heard of until I was in college. I realize these aren’t authentically Mexican or whatever, but they’re delicious. What do you like to add to yours, besides cheese? 

TUESDAY
Corn dogs and chips

Tuesday was Corrie’s little play, in which she was Mother Rabbit. She told Peter and the others to stay out of Mr. McGregor’s garden, but did they listen? THEY DID NOT. 

How the tables have turned, Mother Rabbit.

It was super cute, but between having to be in another town at 5 and various other people needing to be in yet another town and picked up in another town, respectively, at 5:30 and 6, it was beginning to look a lot like corn dogs. 

I love corn dogs. If corn dogs were the only thing America had ever invented, it would be enough. That and Magic Eraser. 

WEDNESDAY
Banh mi

I planned banh mi for this week because I thought we’d have leftover chopped liver to put on the sandwiches. But I forgot to tell the fridge-cleaning kid not to throw the leftover chopped liver away! It was a liver tragedy. Luckily, banh mi on its own is still delicious. 

Speaking of liver tragedies, I gained a bunch of weight when I started taking Lexapro for PMDD back in November or December. It works great for PMDD, which is actually life changing, but I gained 15 pounds, and that was a bummer, but, now I’m finally tapered off Lexapro (I’m trying Prozac) and it is time to get my punk ass in gear again, by which I mean I can’t just wander around the house eating everything I find and saying “ooh, I hate these meds, they make me gain sooo much weight.”

What I’m trying to tell you is that, I’m really trying, and by the time dinner came around, I was SO HUNGRY, so possibly that’s why these sandwiches seemed so good. 

Another possibility is that they were just damn fine sandwiches. Maybe both things can be true.

I marinated the meat for about four hours, and I cut up a bunch of cucumbers, chopped up a bunch of cilantro, did a quick pickle of some carrots and radishes.

Jump to Recipe

I actually pickled the carrots for a few hours, then just before dinner, I re-used the brine to pickle the radishes, which I had sliced very thin

but not before having a larf over the branding 

I mean, yes, I paid for them, so I should hope. Next time, ask me! I will come up with a better name! Sunny Day Radishes! Fatso’s Radishes! Chompsville Radish Farm! Mrs. Rabbit’s Radish Party! Those are all better than what they actually went with. But nobody asks me. 

Anyway, pickled radishes will turn a pretty salmon pink if you let them sit for a couple of hours,

but if you slice them thin (I used the long, flat holes on the cheese grater), they do take on flavor right away.

I set out mayo, sriracha, and sriracha mayo. I forgot the jalapeños, but nobody complained. We again had a sort of rolling dinner because everyone was going to and fro all evening again, so I toasted a length of french bread and heated up some meat in the microwave, then assembled my sandwich, and it was just perfecto. 

I only had half the amount of fish sauce the recipe called for, and you know what? It was better. So I have amended the recipe to show that.

Jump to Recipe

I also used more pepper, just because I was having fun turning the crank, I guess, so I amended that in the recipe, too. I am a whimsical food god and with a careless swipe of my finger will change the recipe of banh mi at will, just try and stop me. If you are still reading, put an X here   [     ] yes  [     ] no

THURSDAY
Fancy ramen

My plan was to serve ramen the day after the banh mi so there would be leftover pickled vegetables, but they all got eaten. Oh well. 

I had some boneless pork ribs and sliced them into strips, sautéed them in chili oil, and then doused them with soy sauce when they were almost done cooking. 

I ended up with that, some nice sprouts, plus shredded cabbage left over from last week’s fish tacos, spinach left over from the vast quantities of spinach I buy every week because I’ve become a spinach fiend, some crunchy noodles, some boiled eggs, and various sauces and some sesame seeds.

 

It’s a decent meal. 

I like to line the bowl with spinach and pour the hot ramen on top of that, so there is a tasty treat waiting at the bottom. I really am a spinach fiend.

One of these days I’m actually going to make a good ramen broth, rather than using the little packets, but I know it will spoil us all, and we won’t be able to go back, and then I’ll lose another easy meal, and I’m not ready for that! Don’t take away my protein crumbles! Peep peep peep!

FRIDAY
Mac! and! cheese!

Just because it’s been a while. 

In closing, let me say: PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP! Hope you are same.

5 from 1 vote
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Pork banh mi

Ingredients

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

Veggies and dressing

  • carrots
  • cucumbers
  • vinegar
  • sugar
  • cilantro
  • mayonnaise
  • Sriracha sauce

Instructions

  1. Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can. 

  2. Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight. 

  3. Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler. 

  4. Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

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

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

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

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

“Free on Craiglist” and other words of doom

Can we get some credit for how many stupid ideas we don’t act on?

We have a trampoline, but not an in-ground trampoline.
We have zero life-sized, purple hippopotamuses rescued from defunct mini golf places, despite a clear opportunity.
We have many broken chairs and couches, but none of them has been packed with topsoil, covered with chicken wire, and planted with grass seed to make living lawn furniture.

We have a washing machine drum flower planter for our statue of Mary

but we do not have a permanent porch fixture made from the industrial-sized colander that wouldn’t fit through the door, much less in my sink.

And we still don’t have any damn ducks. Not a single khaki campbell duck, noted for its high egg production, paddling happily in an in-ground (free on Craigslist!) hot tub in harmony with a booming population of meat turtles.

We do have a beloved canoe

($100 on Craigslist! Billed as “The world’s ugliest canoe,” and so it is). But we do not have a large, ungainly, unrealistic project boat sitting stupidly in our yard as a testament to our inability to turn a thing down just because it’s free on Craigslist.

UNTIL NOW.

This fine vessel was free on Craigslist

and we’re fixing to drag it down to the stream, chain it to some trees on either side, and sit back while our kids enjoy the greatest childhood known to mankind since that kid got stuck on that island with that horse.

There are a few issues. One is that the boat is gutted

We are about 73% sure this happened because someone started renovating and then realized it was too much work, and not because it is a murderboat. (I’m sure that head-sized compartment I can’t bring myself to open is just full of maps and sunblock. I’m sure of it.)

So we need a floor. Gonna lay some slats across it, then fit a board over that, screw everything down, and voilà . It just needs to be sturdy and safe,

not seaworthy or lovely.

The second issue is that the boat is in the yard, but the stream is in the back back back backyard, over the grass, around the firepit, through some thorns, across the Dead Marshes, and on the other side of a sturdy bank of trees and rocks and maybe some barbed wire I’ve been meaning to take care of.

But the boat has already more than paid for itself, in two distinct ways.

One is that my husband and I both learned how to use a trailer hitch.

 

The Craigslist ad said “Dont want to answer questions just want it gone,” so no one (sober) was available to help us mount the boat trailer (free on Craigslist!) to the vehicle.

It seemed simple enough, though: You stand there shouting at your husband, “Back-back-back-back-back-back-back, keep going, keep going, a little this way, this way, this way, back-back-back-back-back, keep goNO STOP!!!!!” until the ball part is perfectly situated under the trailer thingy.

Then you shove it with your foot a little, wind the crank until it’s all lined up, clamp the clamp thingy, hook up the chains, remove the wheel blocks, and . . . you are good to go? I guess?

So off we crept, and O YE GODS AND O YE LITTLE FISHES, what a horrible noise it made. It was a noise to freeze the marrow in your bones, a grinding, scraping, clattering, screeching squeal that proclaimed to all ears within fifty miles, “Here indeed are people who should not have a boat!”

We just kept going. I asked my husband if he wanted me to look up the hand signals for right and left; but for some reason, traffic was doing a very good job of avoiding us all by itself.

We made the perilous turn off the dirt road onto the highway. Only another mile or two until we reached home. At this point (and this is the second benefit of boat ownership we’ve already enjoyed) we had each lost about fourteen pounds of weight through the sheer isometric exercise of clenching every muscle in our bodies in abject fear.

My husband fixated mainly on the boat breaking loose, roaring freely down the highway, and crushing an unsuspecting mailman flat. I, though, couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel when we hit a downhill slope, the hitch snapped, and the boat came charging through the rear window to devour us like an avenging whale.

What happened instead was that the horrible sound got even more horrible, until we couldn’t stand it anymore. My husband pulled over to a shoulder, and gathered his courage to softly asked that fatal question: “Is it supposed to be making that noise, do you think?”

I muttered through aching teeth, “Well . . . I think that little wheel in the front . . . is not making contact with the ground the whole time . . . and the noise we’re hearing . . . is when it is making contact. So maybe if we turn the crank, we can make it move . . . .”

I was going to say “down,” so that the wheel would be on the ground the whole time we were driving.

And then it hit me: That little wheel is not supposed to be touching the ground. It’s just there to hold the trailer stable while you load your boat up, and then you’re supposed to crank it up out of the way. Our only clue that this was so: This wheel is about five inches across, and about as sturdy as your average rollerblade wheel, and is very clearly not intended for highway travel. I’m sorry, did you not get the word? We are people who should not have a boat.

So we skipped out of the car and cranked that sucker up as high as it would go, got back in, and cruised home as silently and smoothly as if the boat were already in water. Which it will be, as soon as we figure out how to get it across the yard.

 

Hey, we didn’t bring home any ducks. That has to count for something.