Tag: food

About 50 easy things to do with pork chops!

Here’s the promised pork chop post from Friday’s “What’s for Supper?” post. Some nice ideas here, collected after I asked Facebook what to do when I had a bunch of thin pork chops and no exotic ingredients.  Sorry about the terrible formatting. Today, I let the computer win.

Oh, and here’s what I finally ended up making: just regular frickin’ pork chops:

The secret ingredient is frickin.

The secret ingredient is frickin.

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ABOUT 50 EASY THINGS TO DO WITH PORK CHOPS

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Salt, pepper, dip in flour, shake off the excess, and cook in a frying pan.
Flour keeps them moist, and gives them color. Add some butter to the oil while they’re cookingOne of my boys’ favorite meals is when I bread & fry pork chops. I serve it with rice & a sweet/sour sauce of equal parts brown sugar, soy sauce, & ketchup. Kind of Asian & really yummy (though the breading & frying takes a while).1/3 oj, 1/3 soy, 1/3 italian dressing. pour over chops, let them soak. When you’re ready in the evening, Broil chops. Serve with sauteed apples and a salad. Pork chops with delicious pineapple marmlade is insanely good. Orange works, too. Anything citrus, really, perks it up beautifully.

My Grams always made chops with sauteed onion, cream of _____ soup (usually mushroom, but whatever you have on hand works–unless it’s chicken…a little too Frankenstein for me. wink emoticon ). She’d cut up potatoes and add them once the chops were browned, and then pour in the soup, and slow-cook on the stove top for a while–long enough for the potatoes to be done anyway. DELICIOUS.Some Italian dressing and lemon juice. Crockpot. Make some rice. Microwave frozen vegetabkes.
Balsamic vinegar, honey and shallots – just sear them, remove, throw bv, shallots and honey in and let bubble for a few minutes. throw chops back in and cook a little more. Done. There are kinder, gentler ways of doing this recipe but who has the time?Balsamic dressing mixed with Dijon mustard
Smother those suckers

Season as you like, brown both sides in a big skillet, add a couple of sliced onions and let them saute a bit, add lots of beef broth, simmer for 20-30 minutes, add a little cornstarch/water and boil to thicken the juice a little. serve with rice. Family favorite here smile emoticon (the onions are the key to the flavor)
Soy sauce, garlic and ginger (fresh, if you can!)Sliced apples, cinnamon, alcohol of choice (beer, wine, etc), butter, sage or rosemary. Serve with egg noodles or rice.
Dip in egg, bread crumbs and pan fry on each side just to brown, cook spaghetti, put pork chops on top of noodles and pour red sauce over top, bake 350

serve cereal.Cereal, the other other white meat.

Dice an onion and slice a bell pepper (not a green one) if you want to use one up. Slice up a few stalks of celery (1/2 cup or so) Layer chops, onion/pepper/celery, and one can of diced tomatoes in a large skillet and sprinkle dried parsley, salt, pepper and a few dashes of gar
lic (you can add a clove of garlic with the onion if you have fresh, instead) over top. Simmer for one hour on stovetop. (If you want to double, you can do it in the oven in a 9×12 at 350 for an hour, but it’s better on the stove…I’ve done two skillets before!) Serve with rice. We call it “Pork and Veggies.”

brine them for an hour in salt water in the fridge, then just salt and pepper and pan fry or brown them in the pan and finish in the oven.

You have soda (Coke) in the house? You can cook it down to a great glaze and then fry the chops in it.

 Sweet and Sour Pork III Recipe You can sub out the pinapple for other fruit. We did mango, but I bet almost anything would work in a pinch.

Smothered Pork Chops Recipe
Here is an simple way to make sauteed pork chops smothered in a scrumptious gravy.

Fry up some onions, put the chops in a baking pan, mix the onions with some cream of mushroom soup and 1/4 cup of milk, pour it over the chops, throw it in the oven covered at 350 for an hour. serve with rice.

I was going to make slow cooker ranch porkchops. Google the recipe. You know, if this baby ever stops screaming.

Do you keep minced garlic on hand and onions? Cook together with a bit of salt and pepper, some oregano and Rosemary. Then remove and cook two cups of basmati rice (you want basmati because it cooks pretty fast). It will retain the flavor of the chops and is delish.

This is one of my husb’s favorites: pound them even thinner, dip ‘em in raw egg, roll ‘em in bread crumbs, add any seasonings you want (I usually add garlic and onion), and pan-fry them for a couple of minutes and voila! A dinner that everyone will eat. If the kids are willing to wash their hands, they can do the prep and that makes them happy too.

Chopped apples and a little cinnamon bake them together.

Baked with cream of mushroom soup spread over them, serve with rice.
Soak em in honey and whiskey and grill them.

My mom always just cooked them in some butter and put garlic salt on them, served with veggies and mac & cheese. It was cheap and easy.

I do something like this with thin boneless skinless chicken breasts. Delicious.

Parmesan-Crusted Pork Chops : Giada De Laurentiis : Food Network
FOODNETWORK.COM


Marinated Baked Pork Chops Recipe
Pork chops cook in a tangy marinade of soy sauce, Worcestershire, and ketchup-15-minute prep!

Salt and pepper, a can of cream of mushroom soup, and some sliced mushrooms and onions… it’s easy — takes about a half hour — and it makes a gravy too!

2 cloves garlic chopped, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 cup soy sauce…marinade for as long as possible (the longer, the better it tastes), and fry up in oil about 4 minutes on each side.I am a terrible cook and my picky kids will actually eat this.

Just pan fry them after coating in flour, salt, pepper. Yum.


Pork Chops with Apples and Onions

Slice some potatoes up as thin as you can, mix with a can or two of cream of mushroom soup, add some garlic and paprika, stick the chops down in the soup on top of the potatoes and cook for 1 hr. All you need to add is a salad or whatever veggie you have around.

Fr Leo FOR THE WIN. I’ve used this maranaide for every form of pork, from skewers as recommended, to pork chops that I then cooked in a skillet, to crock pot.


Food for the Soul » Blog Archive » Cola Pork Skewers

Rub them with olive oil, powdered ginger, rosemary and black pepper, then pan sear them.

I like them pan fried or broiled with nothing but salt pepper and dried thyme oh and olive oil

Here, all pork chops must be panfried, then pan gravy made from the drippings and butter, flour, and milk… And served with a heaping pile of bread and gravy. It is one of my favorite, if not it all healthy, meals.

Mix jam and a little creole mustard (or dijon or anything). Lay the chops out on a broiling pan, brush with mixture. Broil on one side (2-5 minutes max), flip, brush again, broil again (2-5 min max). Done!

Brush with oil, coat with a mix of half Italian bread crumbs and half Parmesan cheese, with a bit of garlic powder and pepper. Bake in foil lined pan at 350 for 50 minutes. So good, SO easy.

Pour a dab of Louisana Hot Sauce on each one both sides and spread it out thin and sprinkle sea salt, pepper and garlic powder over that and bbq.

Bake them with 5-spice or just salt and pepper, or marinate with soy sauce and bake. Slice into bite sized bits and set aside. Cook rice or brown rice the usual way. Set aside. Scramble some eggs a bit dry. Set aside. Sautee some bite-sized vegetables in oil and set aside. Mix them together in a pan, sauteeing with a little more oil until warmed together. Fried rice.

ooo thin chops… very easy: brush with BBQ sauce and put them on the grill, about 5min each side. If you prefer a very quick stove top choice, dredge in flour seasoned with salt, pepper, (cayenne pepper if you like it up a notch), rosemary, and saute in olive oil. also 5 min each side. By very thin, I assume you mean less than half an inch.

Crush juniper berries, salt and black pepper together, and rub into the surface. Bonus: juniper is gin flavour!

Salt pepper and Rosemary. Pan cook or broil.

Per 4 pork chops: 1c of chicken broth, 1t of orange zest, 1t of ginger, 1t of garlic all simmered. After simmering for a minute, toss in chops and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes and cook until soft

I use a pyrex dish and add sauerkraut, including liquid. real easy and good.


Asian Pork Chop Recipe • Just One Cookbook

What’s for supper? Vol. 3: so much pork

whats for supper

Yay, it’s Friday! Time for the What’s For Supper? round up, where you can share your inspired, inspiring, dull, or humiliating weekly menu, or pass along recipes, or find recipes, or just complain about food and feeding people and eating in general. Most of us think about food a lot, so why not talk about it here?

At the end of this post, you’ll find an InLinkz button, so you can add your post. Feel free to join in in the comments, too.

Here’s the inaugural What’s for Supper? post,
and here is vol. 2.

A few questions:

Is Friday the best day to post these? I leave the link-up open all week, so people can add to it whenever they like.

What about a question of the week? Something like, “What’s your favorite potluck dish?” or “What’s the best thing about cold-weather cooking?” or “Where are all these moths coming from, and should I just kill myself now, or what?” Or should I just keep it free-form?

And here we go.

Saturday
Domino’s terrible yet salty pizzas, Swiss Rolls, my brother-in-law’s homemade beer.

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Sunday
Kingston Pizza on the way home from the beach.

I’m linking to this restaurant not because the food was so outstanding (the fries were yummy, though), but because I feel bad that we drank bottled water from the van instead of ordering drinks, and I feel like we owe them. I had a cheesesteak. In Kansas, I met the inimitable Catharine Bitting, and I asked her why Philadelphians would let an empire rise and set on whether or not a candidate properly understands a cheesesteak. It’s just a sandwich, after all, yaas? She explained it’s because Philadelphians’ lives are so empty and miserable, they have nothing else to live for, so they focus all their energies on cheesesteaks.

Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about food, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Some of us spend kind of a lot of time thinking about food, and there is nothing wrong with that.

We had gotten about five hours of sleep all weekend, and so on Monday, I went shopping without a list. I just grabbed the panstless baby and lurched through the aisles grabbing anything that looked familiar. So the rest of the week looked like this:

Monday: Brats, potato chips, salad (a real one, not a “let’s say we had salad” salad), and five avocados that were right on the brink.

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Tuesday: Pulled pork sandwiches on onion rolls with red onions, spinach salad, and oven roasted potatoes.

We are close to being tired of pulled pork sandwiches, but we are not there yet! Aldi has these wonderful boneless half loins for $2.29 a pound, so I get a 4- to 5-pound hunk, put it in a shallow pan, pour a can of beer over it, salt and pepper it generously, cover it loosely with tinfoil, and chunk it in a 275 oven for a few hours. When it’s done all the way through, I slice or shred it with fork, knife, standing mixer, or whatever, and toss the fat to the dog so that he will continue to worship me as a god. The meat comes apart more easily if you work on it while it’s still hot. Then I throw the shredded meat right back into the beery juices

The beery, porky steam the fills the kitchen doesn't hurt, either.

The beery, porky steam the fills the kitchen all afternoon doesn’t hurt, either.

cover it with foil again, until it’s time to reheat it for dinner. It just gets better as leftovers, IF ANY. And I just use bottled BBQ sauce, because my homemade kind never thickens up enough. Go ahead, tell me what an inauthentic heretical pulled pork poseur I am. I can take it. I’m fortified with pork.

Re the potatoes, I was thinking, “Oh no, I just did oven roasted potatoes last week! Everyone will be bored reading about it again!” But then I remembered my kids really like oven roasted potatoes, so that settled that. I found a few envelopes of onion soup mix, so I used that for a quickie seasoning. It turned out not to be any faster or tastier than whatever seasonings I usually grab off the spice shelf.

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Wednesday
Sliced chicken breast served over salad and various raw veggies with bacon ranch dressing, and naan (from a mix that was on sale at Aldi).

For the chicken, Benny and I made a quick marinade of olive oil and lemon juice, with the Faithful Four: salt, pepper, oregano, and crushed garlic. She pronounced it “gross nemmonade,” and warned me that I would die if I ate it.

You will die.

You will die.

Duly noted. You let the chicken sit in the marinade for a few hours, then put it in a broiling pan under a high broiler for 15-20 minutes, turning once, until it’s golden brown. Let it sit for a few minutes (this lets the juice redistribute along the meat fibers or something) and then slice it. This meal makes me feel SO VIRTUOUS, I can hardly live with myself.

This is the first time I’ve made naan. I’ve never even eaten it before, so I have no idea if I did it right. Except I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to burn it.

They look okay, but some of it was naan-edible, ho ho ho.

They look okay, but some of it was naan-edible, ho ho ho.

I think I didn’t make them flat enough. They turned out more like pancakes, and didn’t have the bubbles I see in pictures.

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Thursday
Teriyaki pork chops, flavored rice, frozen peas.

I just glugged a bottle of sauce over the chops and let them sit a couple of hours, then put them under the broiler for a short time until they edges were crisp. The kids begged for flavored rice, so threw some bouillon cubes into the water (one cube per cup of water) before adding the rice. I did manage to cook the peas until they were hot, so that was a win.

Before I discovered the bottle of teriyaki sauce, I asked Facebook for simple pork chop recipes made with non-exotic ingredients, which Facebook was happy to provide! It’s a long list, so I will make it a separate post, which you can see here. 

 

 

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Friday
I have no idea.

Did I mention I never actually made a meal plan this week — just kept putting meat in the cart until it looked like I had enough meat? I’ll have to buy something on the way home from school this afternoon. Probably spaghetti, le sigh.

Don’t forget to check out the separate pork chop post! There are dozens and dozens of simple ideas there.

What’s for supper? Vol. 2, now with link up!

whats for supper

What’s for supper? So glad you asked!

Last week, I said:

While I’m no cooking jainyus, I do manage to feed twelve people, seven days a week, without spending a million dollars and without anyone getting rickets.

I’ll list our dinners and include any recipes that might be interesting, and I hope readers will share their menus and recipes, too, so we can all get some good ideas from each other. If there’s enough interest, I may start a weekly blog link-up.

There was interest! And tons of variety — and, best of all, absolutely zero meal shaming. So this week, I’ve added an Inlinkz feature, so you can link up to your own blog. If you don’t have a blog, just join in by leaving a comment.

If you link to your blog, don’t forget to link back to this post, please! Feel free to download and use the “What’s for supper?” image, above, in your post. (It’s pretty chimpy, but it will do for now.)

And now . . .  what’s for supper?

SATURDAY: BBQ at my sister-in-law’s house. I ate too much. It was good. I didn’t have a camera on me, so here is a picture of bacon that I took yesterday:

bacon

Too bad today is Friday, innit?

SUNDAY: Enchiladas, beans and rice. 

I like Pioneer Woman’s Chicken enchildadas (I made one tray with green enchilada sauce and one with red). I don’t bother browning the tortillas, though. These are excellent as leftovers. Ex. Cel. Lent.

I usually use the standing mixer to shred meat, but I couldn’t find the attachment; so I tried my lovely mezzaluna knife, and it worked great.

mezzaluna

Love that tool. It’s about as close to being a ninja as I will ever get.

Beans and rice: I was really rushing, so I just cooked up a bunch of rice, chunked in a few cans of chili beans and a few cans of diced tomatoes, and mixed it up with chili powder. I also made some plain white rice for boring people. (This is one of the compromises I am okay with making: If it’s almost no extra work, I will make a mild version and a spicy version of the same dish.)

MONDAY: Eat My Poo French Toast Casserole, oven roasted potatoes, watermelon.

Normally, everyone loves French Toast Casserole, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to use up stale bread. After Monday’s meal, all I can say is that this dish comes out better when you don’t spend most of the day ankle-deep in stinky basement water, ripping the skin off your hands on rusty old hose connections, wondering how long it would take the kids to notice you’re dead if you get electrocuted while you sort out the power cords for your collection of three sump pumps that work well enough to be scary, but not well enough to, I don’t know, get water out of the basement.

I also recommend not breaking lightbulbs all over the kitchen floor while you’re writing about dying babies; not having forgotten to buy sausages, and not having promised the kids you’d go to the beach when there’s mega thunderstorms predicted all day. I recommend that your laptop not choose this particular day to break, and that your blog platform not choose this particular day to refuse to upload images.

For a final touch, I recommend having something on hand other than rye bread, moldy wheat bread, and rancid eggs, or at least I recommend discovering before evening that this is what you have on hand. And — hold onto your butt, because this is top chef level stuff — I recommend that you not only turn the oven on, but also put the food into the oven at some point.

Garnish this dish with a heartfelt scream, such as, “THIS DAY CAN EAT MY POO!”

And that’s my recipe.

For oven-roasted potatoes, you scrub the potatoes (no need to peel them), cut them into wedges, drizzle with oil, and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and red pepper flakes, or whatever else sounds good. You can bake these in a medium oven, but they turn out best if you roast them under the broiler. Takes about half an hour if the pan is actually in the oven; considerably longer if not. You can also add chopped onions, yum.

Oh, and you can use the apple corer to cut the potatoes faster, as long as you don’t mind coming up with the occasional inapwo-pwo spud:

inapwopwo potato

 

TUESDAY: Chicken burgers and chips, possibly salad. Sure, let’s say we had salad.

WEDNESDAY: Picnic! All summer, I’ve been promising the kids we’d have a picnic at the beach. They started school on Thursday, so Wednesday was the day. We had turkey and salami sandwiches, pepper jack cheese, dill pickles, chips, root beer, and so much candy they couldn’t eat it all. 

THURSDAY: Bacon and spinach pasta, garlic knots, salad. 
The six- and 11-year-olds were in charge of cooking bacon, and the 8-year-old was in charge of pressing garlic.

lucy garlic

The three-year-old was in charge of cutting up an eraser. This picture looks fairly lovely, but within five minutes, they were trying to kill each other for hogging the garlic press.

The store was out of spinach (perils of Aldi shopping), so I got kale, instead. I cooked it up and it smelled like a dead squirrel, so I threw it out and served the pasta without it.

Garlic knots: Cut a ball (18 oz.) of store-bought pizza dough into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a snake, tie it in a knot, and pinch the ends together. Put on a greased, floured pan. Top each knot with a dab of butter or brush with olive oil, then sprinkle with garlic powder, parmesan cheese, and a little salt. Bake at 350 until they’re toasty. (I made 24 knots, which wasn’t really enough for 12 people.)

FRIDAY:  Pizza! Two black olive, two plain. Salad. I use frozen dough, because I can make pizza dough in the standing mixer or in the bread machine, but making enough for 12 just isn’t worth it to me.

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To link up, click the blue “add your link” button below. Don’t forget to link back to this post! Happy eating!

 

What’s for supper?

food irene

One of two things is happening here today. Either

(a) I’m launching a recurring feature sharing my family’s weekly dinner menu. While I’m no cooking jainyus, I do manage to feed twelve people, seven days a week, without spending a million dollars and without anyone getting rickets.

I’ll list our dinners and include any recipes that might be interesting, and I hope readers will share their menus and recipes, too, so we can all get some good ideas from each other. If there’s enough interest, I may start a weekly blog link-up;

or

(b) I’m launching a dumb, useless thing that everyone hates, and in a few weeks I’ll sheepishly kick some dead leaves over it and hope everyone forgets it ever happened.

Come onnn, (a)!

***

 

Our deal:

We’re busy people. I work from home, I have two pre-schoolers and eight other kids in three different schools, my husband works late most nights and has a long commute, the kids all have clubs and activities and jobs, and I spend two hours in the van on a good day.  I don’t expect myself to cook like someone who’s home all afternoon, or someone who has leisure in the evening, or someone who cares deeply and intensely about optimal diets. We can’t afford the farmer’s market, and our garden stinks.

I stay within a certain budget, but I no longer have to shop as cheaply as possible. It’s worth it to me to pay a little more for convenience or variety. We now have an Aldi nearby, which means that foods that used to be luxuries are now staples.

I don’t have a crock pot or a microwave, because I’m stubborn and I enjoy suffering.

I started making a weekly menu several years ago, planning and listing and buying only exactly what we needed to eat, because we were super broke and I had to make, say, $30 stretch for seven days. The menu habit stuck after our situation improved, and I’m glad it did. I hate hate hate grinding out the menu on Saturday morning, but I love always knowing what’s for dinner each night, and always having all the ingredients on hand.

General goals:

  • I try not to make any main dish more than twice a month.
  • I try not to serve chips more than twice a week.
  • I try to serve a vegetable with each meal. I am for produce in season, but frozen veggies are still veggies.
  • I try to serve three things at dinner, but two happens a lot.
  • I try to provide a balanced diet over the course of the week, rather than over the course of a day.
  • I try to make sure there’s always yogurt, cheese, pretzels, and fresh fruit in the house, so the kids can get themselves healthy snacks. This is especially important for kids who are picky about dinner, because I refuse to stress out about everybody eating dinner. 
  • I try to serve meals that at least half the family enjoys eating.
  • I try to get the kids involved with cooking when possible, even if it’s just peeling carrots or measuring out water for rice.
  • I let them have straight-up dessert, plus candy and maybe soda, on weekends, but loosely limit sugar during the week.
  • I try to make at least a few actual homemade-from-scratch meals each week, but don’t beat myself up for filling in the rest with semi-homemade or box-and-bag food.
  • I fail in each of these things repeatedly, but I try again next week, or next next week. It’s a constant slide and correction, slide and correction.
  • I try to remember that it’s just food.

 

How I make my weekly menu:

On Saturday morning, I write the days of the week on a piece of paper, and I make note of any upcoming events that will affect what food I buy (a birthday, which means the kid picks dinner; or lots of dentist appointments, which means I’ll be out of the house during the day; or an evening concert, which means we’ll need to eat early and clean up quickly; or a radio spot right at dinner time, so the kids need to be able to just heat and eat; etc.).

I write in easy meals for whichever days seem like they will be trickiest.

Then I look up online supermarket flyers and add a few meals based on what’s on sale.

At this point, kids start swirling around me, and, seeing food on my computer screen, they start shouting out meal names. I yell at them to leave me alone and let me drink my coffee, and then guiltily fill in at least one meal that they shouted for the loudest.

Then, if I can’t think of anything else easily to fill in the rest of the days, I go to Budget Bytes, AllRecipes, the NYT food pages, Epicurious, Good Eats, and Pioneer Womanfor inspiration, if not for actual recipes. (Sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, chicken! I forgot about chicken.”) Most of my staple recipes are from the Fannie Farmer cookbook, which I recommend highly as a comprehensive, clear, and encouraging resource.

Then I make a list.

Well, you guys know how to make a list.

***

Suddenly I’m nervous that you’re going to think, “Why is she telling about these dumb, boring, obvious, yucky foods?” Well, maybe I’m just trying to make you feel better, you fancy person.

Okay, here goes. This past week we had . . .

 

Saturday: Corn dogs and frozen french fries. We had an insane-o busy day and it’s a miracle I managed this much. Anyway, I like corn dogs. We had rice krispie treats for dessert because I was afraid someone might mistake us for people of good breeding.

Sunday:  Sesame chicken* (quadruple recipe) and white rice (5 cups uncooked rice).  I usually make sesame chicken with steamed broccoli, but I forgot to buy broccoli. This recipe is much easier than it looks, but don’t crowd the chicken! Also, put on the air conditioner, or else you will get hot and frazzled and will accidentally just throw the chicken in the garbage when you meant to transfer it onto a tray.  P.S. the most expensive part of this recipe is the sesame seeds. I’m going to look into growing my own sesame tree. I’ve made this recipe with inauthentic white vinegar, vegetable oil, and powdered ginger, and it still tastes fine.  Dessert: fancy Aldi cookies and orange sherbet, much to my husband’s dismay. (Whoever’s shopping turn it is gets to choose dessert.)

Monday:  Hamburgers, fried red onions, potato chips, and raw sweet peppers and baby carrots with hummus. (This is a “kids heat and eat” dish, because I was on the radio.) We use about 3 lbs. of 70/30 ground beef for the 11 of us. I’ve found that the easiest way to make hamburgers is to make the patties really flat, season them, and lay them on a two-piece broiler pan, so the fat runs off. Put the broiler on “high” and flip the burgers once.

Tuesday: slow-cooked pork tenderloin* (about 5 lbs), two loaves of beer bread, and an enormous basin of salad. I don’t have a slow cooker, so I just put the pork in the oven at 250 and covered it with tin foil. I also ran out of baking soda, so I used this baking powder+cream of tartar substitution, and it turned out great. The pork sauce is savory and fantastic, if you like salt, which we do. When it gets colder, I’ll make this dish with mashed potatoes.

Wednesday: Giant Pancake with chocolate chips, and scrambled eggs. The chocolate chips are because it’s still summer vacation, hoop de doo.  I had plans to cut up a pineapple, but I got mad and tired, and went to bed with a handful of eggs, instead.  The pineapple went bad, too bad. Giant Pancake is just pancake mix, you add water, you throw it in a shallow pan and chuck it in a 350 oven until it puffs up. Everyone gets a giant wedge and they tell Daddy “DUESS WHAT? WE HAD TATE FOR SUPPER.”

Thursday: Nachos!!! Three giant trays of tortilla chips, layered with ground pork and beef cooked with a few envelopes of taco spice, refried beans, corn, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole*. (Our guacamole is: avocados, fresh garlic and tomatoes, onion, jalapenos, cilantro, lime juice, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes.)

Friday: Tuna noodle casserole and salad. This is the guilt dish that some kids were begging for, although I will admit, I like tuna noodle. I got a frozen pizza for Damien, who never did become reconciled to this dish.  Our tuna noodle is: cooked egg noodles mixed with six cans of drained tuna and a three cans of condensed cream of mushroom soup. Put the mixture in a buttered casserole dish, and top with crushed potato chips and corn flakes. Bake at 350 until the topping is toasted. Serve with dressing made from ketchup, mayo, and vingar. Tell people online that this is what you eat. Take a bow, you prince among chefs.

*I recently discovered that you can crush garlic without peeling the individual cloves. I can’t believe I didn’t know this. You have to pick the peels out in between crushing cloves, but it’s SO much faster than peeling first.

***

Now you know! And I’d love to hear what you’re eating at your house this week. Remember, everyone has different priorities and situations, so don’t feel like you need to be fancy or fascinating. Whatcha got?

Hunger and Help: Are Community Fridges the Answer?

people-850097_1280

 

The community fridge not only feeds the hungry, but helps cut down on waste. In the United States, recent data suggests that as much as “133 billion pounds of food … [or] 31 percent of the total food supply” is wasted in a typical year, rather than going to feed someone —  a waste which Pope Francis said is “like stealing from the table of the poor and the hungry.”

But food safety laws prevent communities in the U.S. from setting up community refrigerators like the one in Spain.. A couple of UC Davis students ran afoul of these laws when their community refrigerator was shut down after a few months of food-sharing last year. 

Read the rest at the Register.

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Ten pleasures that Gwyneth Paltrow will never know

Gwyneth_Paltrow_avp_Iron_Man_3_Paris_2

2. The invisible, celebratory fireworks that explode in your head when the credit card machine says, “APPROVED.”

Read the rest at the Register. 

Simcha’s favorite passover recipes that will have you schvitzing under the eyeballs

In the past, I’ve written about the emotional and spiritual experience of celebrating the Passover seder as Hebrew Catholics.

passover

This year, I’d like to talk about what’s really important: THE FOOD.

We do not keep kosher, and we don’t clean the house of chametz (leavened bread), and we don’t follow the special, even stricter “kosher for Passover” rules. The foods we prepare for Passover are symbolic and nostalgic, as well as delicious; but I wouldn’t serve them if we had a rabbi for a guest! We serve some homemade and some store bought food.

To keep this post from getting too long, I’ll post all the recipes on a separate page. Click on the names of any of the homemade foods below to get to the recipe page. Here’s what’s on the menu:

 

WINE

For the full Jewish American experience, you should at least know what Manischwitz tastes like.

horror

I’ll save you some trouble: It’s completely awful. With every swallow, you will feel like a giant hand made out of hot syrup is squeezing your brain to death. MD 20/20 (here listed as #3 in the top five Bum Wines) is only marginally better. So unless you’re keeping kosher, which you’re not if you’re coming to me for recipes, then go ahead and just have whatever goyishe red wine you actually enjoy drinking (for cheap and drinkable, I’m partial to Yellow Tail). The seder is supposed to be a spiritual exercise, but not a penitential one.

 

CHICKEN SOUP WITH MATZOH BALLS

You know what schmaltz is, right? It’s anything corny, sappy, sentimental, and overdone (but you secretly love it)

But literally, schmaltz is rendered chicken fat. That’s the secret ingredient in what is sometimes called “Golden Chicken Soup.”

Chicken_fat

That tightness you feel in your chest is just your heart being happy!

Talk about “beaded bubbles winking at the brim!”  You want to give the flavor ple-e-e-e-e-e-enty of time to develop — all day, at the very least. You know it’s almost done when the air in the kitchen is shimmering with a golden, chickeny haze. If you can walk through the room and not come out smelling like a happy childhood in Eastern Europe, keep simmering.

Some years, the matzoh balls turn out fluffy and airy; some years they stay small and rubbery with a dry nut of undercooked matzoh meal in the center. Every year, they all get gobbled up.

 

CHOPPED LIVER

If you can get your hands on one of these:

meat grinder 2

then do!  (The good ones are pretty expensive, new.) You could, of course, use a food processor, but there are few tactile experiences more fulfilling than turning a heavy steel crank and watching the velvety pate come churning out the other end. If, you know, you like that kind of thing. WHICH I DO.

GEFILTE FISH

I was never, ever, ever tempted to make this by hand. Apparently the authentic method is to buy a few live cod and pike from the fishmonger in the Bowery, dump them in your bathtub, and then on Friday morning you head in there with a club and WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK.
Then the real work begins. “Gefilte” means “stuffed,” as in “a fish stuffed with other fish”

gefilte fish whole

For those days when you have seven or eight hours to spend wrist deep in a fish that you have clubbed to death. So, we get it in jars.

gefilte fish jar

I prefer the Manischewitz brand — the other ones I’ve tried are sweeter. I prefer the fish packed in gel, rather than broth. We serve this on top of a sheet of matzoh with a dab of horseradish. It’s likely that, if you haven’t tasted gefilte fish by age five, you’ll never learn to like it. I’m okay with that. More for me.

CHAROSET

Best best best best best. Chopped walnuts, chopped apples, red wine, cinnamon, and sugar or honey.

charoset

The charoset is supposed to remind us of the mortar the Hebrew slaves used between bricks as they worked building Pharaoh’s cities. When I was little, this gave me the impression that maybe slavery wasn’t so bad after all, because best best best best best!

This is the year I finally bought what is apparently called a mezzaluna

mezzaluna

a sharp rocking knife, for chopping all those apples and walnuts. I like this tool very much. It’s heavy and quite sharp. And if this is the year that Elijah comes back and he turns out to be a zombie– wait, no, that’s inappropriate.

 

SPICED GARLIC CHICKEN

I don’t remember where I found this recipe, but it’s moist and yummy, and I only make it at Passover, so therefore it’s Passover chicken. You already know what roast chicken looks like, so here instead is a picture of something that is very, very important to our family:

garlic

We put the lick in garlic!

as well as to this particular recipe. And here is a gratuitous chicken joke:

Tevye: As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.
Mendel: Where does the book say that?
Tevye: Well, it doesn’t say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken.

 

SPINACH PIE

A vegetable dish for the times when you can’t bring yourself to say, “But we areserving something green! See? Olives!” It’s pretty, anyway, and doesn’t take much time to throw together, especially if you have a food processor. Bunch of vegetables shredded up, sauteed, mixed with egg and matzoh meal, and baked (no crust involved).

TSIMMIS

not to be confused with tsuris. I don’t actually make tsimmis, but I remember when my mother used to, and it gives me an excuse to tell this joke:

Two old friends reunite after many years. One brags about her children, their professional success, their beautiful houses, their talented offspring. The other one says, “Well, I don’t have any children.” The first one says, “No children? So what do you do for tsuris?”

Anyway, Wikipedia describes tsimmes as “Ashkenazi Jewish sweet stew typically made from carrots and dried fruits such as prunes or raisins, often combined with other root vegetables. Some cooks add chunks of meat.” Am I punchy, or is that hilarious? You can almost hear the sigh at the end. “Look, this is what we eat, what do you want from my life.”

 

ROAST LAMB

Some day, when we win a million dollars or a sheep farm, we’ll serve this as the main dish. As it is, we usually buy the biggest leg of lamb we can afford for the seder dish. Last year, the electricity went out just as we were putting the lamb in the oven, so we ended up grilling it outside

grilled leg of lamb

and it was magnificent. Gonna do it that way every year now.

EXTRAS

Two kinds of horseradish, olives, and dill pickles. We ground our own horseradish one year, and it was unbelievably strong. The air around the dish went all wobbly, and it made an audible snarling sound when you spooned it onto your plate. Call me a coward, but I’m sticking with the jarred kind. I’ve never really tasted bad horseradish, so I don’t have a particular brand to recommend. The red horseradish is just dyed with beet juice, but tastes about the same.

Also, don’t forget a little dish of blonde raisins. These are like raisins, only they areyellow. I know.

 

DESSERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

MACAROONS

macaroons

Not to be confused with macarons, which are an entirely different food! I always think I’m going to make these myself, but I always run out of time, so I buy them ready made. My favorite are the plain almond-flavored ones, but there are dozens of varieties.

HALVAH

Halvah is not strictly a Jewish food, but just a Middle Eastern one. It’s made of crushed sesame seeds, and I’m not gonna lie to you, it tastes kind of like sweet, gritty Play Doh.

halvah

I usually buy a few bars of it, some plain, some dipped in chocolate, and serve it in little slices. You gotta have it, but a little goes a long way.

CHOCOLATE MATZOH CRUNCH

Nice easy recipe. I didn’t grow up with this, but my kids go berserk for it.

SPONGE CAKE

We usually have two kinds of sponge cake made with matzoh cake meal and made poofy with tons of egg whites. We usually make two chocolate walnut cakes and two white ones. So nice with the slightly eggy crunch of the crust and the light, spongy insides.

JELLY FRUIT SLICES

fruit jell slices

 

possibly my kids’ favorite part of Passover.  These symbolic confections remind us of, um, the Land of Caanan, I guess? With fruit? Anyway, I like them, too.

***

Passover begins on the evening of April 3 this year. We always have our seder on Holy Saturday, regardless of when actual Passover is. Since Jesus’ last Passover seder with the disciples (the Last Supper) was on Holy Thursday, it almost works out this year! We usually spend Holy Week cooking and baking, and try to schedule things so the most fragrant foods are already made and in the freezer before we start fasting for Good Friday, because nobody needs to suffer that much.

Again, click here to get to the page with just the recipes.

L’chaim! Let’s eat.

 

***

Simcha’s passover menu, part two: just the recipes

If you’re here, it means you waded all the way through my last post. Good work!  Here’s your food!

passover lucy


Chicken soup (can be made ahead and frozen)

 

In a very large pot, put one whole chicken, chicken parts, or chicken carcass. Do not include giblets.
Add a quartered onion, 2-3 peeled carrots, a few sprigs of dill and a few sprigs of parsley.
Cover, bring to a boil, cover loosely, and allow soup to simmer for many hours.
Strain the soup with a colander and return the broth to the pot. When the chicken and veggies are cool enough, sort through them and add several handsful of shredded chicken back into the broth.
Cut the carrots into thin discs and add them, too, along with some bits of onion and herbs. Some people like lots of chicken and vegetables, some people like it to be just a tasty broth with a few bits and pieces in it — it’s up to you.
You may want to skim some of the fat off. If so, cool the soup completely. The fat will rise to the top and solidify, and you can scoop off as much as you like. Do leave some, to make the soup “golden!”
When you’re ready to serve the soup, heat it up (don’t let it boil) and then add salt and pepper to taste.

 

 

Matzoh balls (can be made ahead and refrigerated)

 

If you buy matzoh meal or a matzoh ball kit, there will be directions on the side of the box or can! Just follow them. This is time consuming, but quite simple.
Just remember to chill the batter before attempting to form the balls; and rinse your hands frequently.
And don’t crowd the matzoh balls, or they will be dense and rubbery.
I find that it’s easier to make the matzoh balls in a separate pot of chicken broth (made from bouillon) or water and then transferring the cooked matzoh balls into the pot of soup.
Don’t try to make them too many days ahead of time, or they will sit there sopping up the broth and getting all gelatinous and yucky.

 

Chopped liver (can be made ahead and frozen. Just remember to take it out of the freezer several hours before you want to eat! It’s very dense and thaws slowly.)

 

2 lbs. chicken livers, rinsed and trimmed
2 eggs
3 onions
2 cubes chicken bouillon
2 Tbs. vegetable oil salt and pepper

1. Put liver, whole eggs, and 1 whole onion into saucepan with a quart of water.
2. Boil, stir in bouillon, simmer 1 hr. Drain out water and set liver, onion, and eggs aside to cool.
3. Chop the other two onions. Set one aside.
4. Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the third onion.
5. When the liver is cool, grind it up together with the peeled eggs and the three onions.
6. Season with salt and pepper and chill.

 

Charoset (can be made ahead and refrigerated)

Peel, core, and chop three pounds of firm apples (like Cortland, Fuji, or Gala) into bits
Chop two cups of walnuts until they are about the same size as the apples
Add several Tbs. of sweet red wine and a few Tbs. of white sugar to taste. It should taste sweet, but more fruity than sugary
Add a tbs. or so of cinnamon.
Mix thoroughly and chill.

 

Sweet garlic and cinnamon chicken (can be made ahead, carved, and then frozen or refrigerated. You can reheat it or even serve it cold.)

Preheat oven to 500.
Mix together:
2 tsp salt
1 tsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/8 tsp. allspice
1/8 tsp.  nutmeg
1/8 tsp. cinnamon

Rinse and dry a 4 lb chicken
Rub the spice mixture all over the skin
Stuff the cavity with 5 cloves crushed garlic
Put the chicken breast side down on a rack in a roasting oven.

Roast 15 minutes.
Reduce heat to 450, roast another 15 minutes.
Baste chicken with pan drippings, reduce heat to 425, and roast another 30 minutes until the thermy reads 180.
Let stand 20 minutes before carving.

 

 Chocolate Matzoh Crunch (can be made ahead and stored in plastic wrap or an airtight container for good long time)
 
I just use this recipe from Epicurious. I was going to rewrite it so it seems like my recipe, but why? I found the recipe a little confusing, but then realized you’re basically just making caramel on top of the matzoh. Then you take it matzoh out of the oven and sprinkle chocolate on it. The caramel is so hot that it melts the chocolate while it sits there, and then you can spread it around. This looks nice with almond slivers or slices on it.
.
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Spinach pie (this can be frozen and reheated or served at room temp)

Preheat the oven to 350.
Grease a pie plate.
Cook one package of frozen or fresh spinach and squeeze the water out.
Heat a saute pan, add some oil, and fry up:
1/2 cup celery chopped or grated
1-1/2 cups grated carrot
1 cup diced or grated onion
When the veg are soft, add the drained spinach, salt and pepper.
Beat 3 eggs and add them to the veggies.
Add 3/4 cup matzoh  meal
Mix this all thoroughly, put it into the greased pie plate, and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until firm and very slightly browned.

.

.

Roast leg of lamb (you really want to cook this right before you eat it and serve it hot!)

The lamb should be at room temperature. Rub it with olive oil.
Score it all over with a sharp knife and stud it generously with slivers of raw garlic.
Salt and pepper all over. Add rosemary if you like.

Put it in a shallow pan and broil for a few minutes on all sides, then lower the temp to 325.
Loosely wrap the lamb in foil and continue cooking for an hour or so, depending on how big it is, until the internal temp is 135.
Let it rest for 15 minutes before carving. You can serve it with mint jelly if you must, but mint jelly is kind of disgusting. Just eat the lamb. It’s amazing.

 

Sponge cakes. Okay, I can’t find my recipes, so I’ll just link to some that look similar. You can usually find decent recipes on the side of the box of matzoh cake meal, too.

Chocolate walnut sponge cake

Lemon Sponge Cake

I refuse to worry about what my kids eat for dinner.

 

If you were a better mom, this would be your kid eating this beet.

Today, I’m making Zuppa Toscana. When I share recipes I’m trying, people often ask, “Will your kids really eat that?” The answer is: some of them, yeah. Some of them, no way. A few of them, maybe. And I am fine with that. I have two goals when I serve a meal: at least half the family should eat it, and mealtimes should be reasonably pleasant.

My policy is: I decide what to cook, and they decide whether or not to eat it.

We don’t have food battles (or food cold wars). We don’t save plates of untasted food and keep serving them, meal after meal, until the child consents to take just one bite. I know that other parents have done some variation of this, in hopes that a child will eventually begin to develop a taste for some nutritious or delicious food. But I’ve found that learning to eat new foods is a lot like learning to read or learning to use the toilet: you can either teach the kid when he’s ready, or you can teach and teach and teach and teach a kid until he’s ready — but either way, it ain’t gonna happen if he’s not ready.

I guess it’s possible that an especially serene parent would be able to patiently, consistently insist that a child try some despised food ten thousand times; but I do not possess that serenity, and things would get ugly fast. I’m already warping my kids enough over other issues. I don’t need to add “But WHY don’t you like kale?” to the list. The table is no place for guilt trips or power struggles.

So, I bring a dish to the table, and I ask each kid individually if he wants some. They have to say either “yes, please” or “no, thank you” — no retching noises or horrible faces allowed. If they want it, great. If they don’t want it, I just move along. With this approach, and with the passive peer pressure of older kids visibly enjoying different foods, I’ve had kids refuse a dish fifty times, and then gradually develop a taste for it, with no prodding or nagging from me.

If they don’t want what I’m serving, they are allowed to fill up on side dishes or fix themselves toast, eggs, a sandwich, cereal, or leftovers.  A child as young as four or five can get himself a simple meal.

Wait, wait! Don’t I want them to be healthy? And don’t I want to avoid wasting time and money on cooking foods that no one will eat?  Sure. This is why I aim for meals that at least some of them will eat. But I don’t worry about each kid having a balanced meal three times a day. I don’t even worry about having a balanced diet each day. I take the week-long view: as long as they have a reasonably nourishing, balanced diet over the course of the week, that is good enough.

And sometimes kids will just eat one food for a long, long time. This is common, and it is fine. Just keep offering a variety of foods and not making a big deal out of it. Give your kids daily vitamins to make up whatever deficits are in their diet, and don’t keep a lot of complete crap in the house for them to fill up on.  They will survive, and there will be peace in your house. As long as your kids have energy and are growing normally, there is nothing to worry about.

There is (probably) something beyond picky eating called Selective Eating Disorder, where adults not only won’t but can’t get themselves to eat more than a few, bland, nutritionally questionable foods; but I’m 99% sure your kid is not developing this disorder. Keep this in mind: the eating disorder researcher in the article says “Kids are at greater risk of becoming picky adults ‘anytime the food environment is coercive or tense.’” So avoiding that situation should be your first focus if your child is a picky eater.

To sum up: offer variety. Don’t cater to them too much. Don’t make a big stinking deal out of it. Take the nutritional long view. And if they don’t like the tasty soup you made? More for you!

Image: Bill Branson (Photographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Cheap and Easy Christmas Things that Even You Can Do!

I assume you’re already doing all the religious stuff, and have already bought, made, figured out, or given up on gifts. Here are a bunch of other nice Christmasy things you can do pretty easily, using materials that you may actually have in your house and skills you can probably muster up even at this stage of your life.

 

SOMETHING SWEET TO EAT:

Fudge recipe that doesn’t require a candy thermometer.

fudge

Can be dressed up with various nuts, crushed candies, flavored chips (peanut butter, mint, butterscotch, etc.), but yummy on its own. There are also lots of other great recipes on that page, with clear instructions.

Also more of less foolproof, and without any exotic ingredients or equipment, but messy to make: buckeyes. I let the kids do this one, since it involves a lot of hand-mooshing of dough and unsanitary dipping in chocolate.

 

SOMETHING SAVORY TO EAT:

 

10857174_10152582632862029_1424889618274400515_o

Jew-for-a-day potato latkes that are great for Chanukah but don’t require any special Jew ingredients. I didn’t bother with the cheesecloth; I just squeezed out the potato shreds in a colander and added a bit of extra flour. So tasty and tender. Serve with sour cream. Leave time to go lie down afterwards.

 

SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO:

Christmas music that is free and won’t make you grind your teeth: The Boston Camerata never disappoints.

medieval feast

 

SOME DECORATIONS TO MAKE:

 

paper ornament

Neat Christmas decorations that require only some paper, a stapler, and some string.

The dog actually made this one, and he’s an idiot! That’s how easy it is! The dog couldn’t even find the stapler, so he used needle and thread. For a fancier look, try using this basic idea, but with lots of different sizes and shapes (giant to tiny), different cuts (straight, scalloped, etc.), with shiny, patterned, or regular paper, and hang them from string or ribbons or yarn, and add sparkly beads to the string. Instantly dresses up a room if you hang up half a dozen from the ceiling.

We also had fun last year gluing together various kinds of pasta for ornaments. Hot glue worked the best. These can be painted (metallic spray paint is great) or even colored with markers, but you can also get on board the “natural pasta look” train that is not actually a thing. We made wreaths, trees, angels, instruments, and all kinds of stars. We really did! But here are the ones I can actually find, to take a picture of, including the inevitable unfinished Dalek:

 

pasta ornaments

Just look on Pinterest for “pasta ornament” and you’ll see all the possibilities. Because it’s Christmas, I didn’t say “pastabilities.”

 

SOMETHING TO READ OUT LOUD:

 

A_Christmas_Carol_-_Mr._Fezziwig's_Ball

Full text of A Christmas Carol by Dickens from Project Gutenberg. I have never actually gotten around to reading this out loud to the kids, but it’s doable. It’s a long short story, not a novel. If you can find a copy of it anywhere, the 1951 movie with Alastair Sim is the best by far.

 

SOMETHING TO AVOID:

argy bargy

Contentious social media. Seriously, if you are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, you will not feel more peaceful and generous after spending time arguing about torture, racism, rape culture, or liturgical practices, so just close that tab and go find something nicer to do with your time. It’s not that these things aren’t important, and it’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just arguing about them is not going to help us get ready for Christmas. Save some argy bargy for the New Year! It’ll keep.