Friday! We made it! Nobody has to make a lunch for tomorrow! What bliss.
Speaking of lunch, let me tell you about an excellent lunch I’ve been making for myself pretty often these days, because it’s cold and drizzly and I crave deeply nourishing foods:
Heat up a pan, spray it with cooking spray, and throw on two or three big handfuls of spinach. Cook it a little bit to slightly wilt it. Then crack two eggs into it and continue cooking lightly until the whites are firm but the yolk is still runny. Grind some fresh pepper and sea salt over all.
Eat with a side of cherry-on-bottom Greek yogurt, and a large green apple cut up slowly with a paring knife.
I don’t know why, but this is just a restorative meal, a lunch of great balance. It’s also less than 400 calories for kind of a lot of food. You could grate some parmesan over the egg while it’s cooking, but you don’t need to.
I spent most of the week being sick and complaining about being sick, and dragging myself off one couch only to land heavily on the other, so nothing super inventive happened in the kitchen this week. Still, we had some decent meals, including one final homegrown vegetable (Brussels sprouts).
SATURDAY
Spaghetti and Marcella Hazan’s three-ingredient red sauce
Yum.
Damien shopped for and made this. Always unreasonably delicious. Just tomatoes, butter, and onions.
Jump to RecipeI always say this, but it really does taste like there’s some kind of meat involved in this sauce. But nope.
SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries
Damien shopped for this and put it together. Also yum.
Red pesto, so nice.
MONDAY
Hamburgers, chips
This is the third picture in a row that was actually taken some previous month or year, because I was too tired to take pictures of my actual food this week. For shame! From now on, only authentic Nov. 2022 food photos.
TUESDAY
Chicken cutlets with leftover red sauce, raw broccoli and dip
I cut the chicken breasts in half lengthwise and soaked them in seasoned milk and egg. Actually I languished on the couch and begged Elijah to do it for me. Then sometime when dinner really began to loom, I heated up the leftover red sauce from the other day, heated up some oil and butter, dredged the chicken in seasoned panko crumbs, and fried those mofos
and we had chicken cutlets with sauce.
Quite good. I felt like the chicken should have had provolone and basil, or else pasta, or else it should have been on a sandwich, but it was pretty tasty. Panko is certainly your friend. We had plain broccoli on the side, and talked about fried breaded broccoli and how, yes indeed, people do that. People do whatever they want. I had broccoli tempura at a Japanese restaurant in New York City when I was very little and I never forgot it. I forget why we were in New York City, but I remember that broccoli. We were probably talking about some other meal while we were eating it, too.
WEDNESDAY
Meatloaf, roast butternut squash and baby Brussels sprouts
We got our first snow, finally, on Wednesday. Just enough to get the kids wound up, and then it turned to rain. That was my cue to go outside and finally harvest the Brussels sprouts
which, and this is crazy, I planted six months ago. I just looked it up: May 20, and harvested Nov. 16. I’m not gonna say I put a ton of work into them, but I did keep them watered, and I did fertilize them, and put up a little fence to keep Mr. Nibbly Rabbit away, and then a mere six months later, there I was, bringing in a grand harvest of an entire pint of Brussels sprouts, some of them somewhat larger than a pea.
Of course the real benefit to this crop was checking on it every time I went out and getting excited at the progress they were making, and laughing at what silly plants they are
and being glad something was still growing when everything else was dead or dying. Brussels sprouts actually get a little sweeter if they’re exposed to a light frost or two. Ain’t that the way.
So this is how many Brussels sprouts I grew for my family:
Can you even imagine making a garden that would actually feed your whole family all year ’round? CAN YOU? I simply cannot. But the sprouts were sweet, and tiny and tender. I cut some butternut squash in thin little wedges so it would cook quickly, and tossed it together. I drizzled it all with olive oil and sprinkled it with brown sugar and kosher salt and a little hit of wine vinegar, and roasted it at a high heat, and it was nice.
The meatloaf was fine. A good dollop of Worcestershire sauce in there makes it pretty tasty, and yes, I spread ketchup on the outside before cooking it.
Jump to RecipeThe secret to meatloaf is not making it too often, so people still get excited about it.
THURSDAY
Chicken tortilla soup, toasted tortilla strips
You’ll never believe this, but it was cold and drizzly on Thursday. Soup to the rescue! I like this soup because it has plenty of flavor, but you don’t have to go through a whole song and dance. It’s easy to make when you want a hot soup because you’re feeling poorly, but you’re feeling poorly and you don’t feel like cooking much.
You just jam them everything in the food processor and puree it
(that’s garlic, onion, jalapeño, cilantro, some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce from a can, and several fresh tomatoes)
and then you heat up some oil in the Instant Pot (or obviously you could do this on the stove top) and thicken up that purée for a little bit. Then add some water and toss in your hunks of raw chicken, and cook it until the chicken is done. Pull the chicken out
shred it up
and put it back in.
At this point you’re supposed to add in tortilla strips, which are supposed to be corn, which thickens up the soup. But I don’t like corn tortillas, so I used to use the flour kind, then I started using nothing, and then I started making crunchy tortilla strips instead. And this is how I always make it now. It doesn’t thicken the soup, but it bulks it up, and it adds texture and flavor, and it’s just fun.
You cut up a bunch of tortillas into strips, spread them in a shallow layer on a pan, toss with oil, sprinkle heavily with chili lime powder, and bake at 350, stirring every 10- 15 minutes, until they are toasted.
I aways heap too many in there so they don’t all get toasted and some of them stay chewy. Guess what, I like them that way. I like chewy, gummy, floppy things. There is a part of me*, especially when I am tired and blue, that would probably just eat flour paste all day long. Maybe I would put it in the microwave, but maybe not.
So it’s not a thick soup, but a kicky broth with plenty of chicken. You top it off with a good handful of crunchy chili lime tortilla strips, and some of them get soaked with broth and some of them stay crunchy; plus chopped scallions, sliced avocados, cilantro (or parsley if that’s what you have), shredded cheese, and sour cream.
Truly a great soup for when you’re sick. I made it pretty spicy, and it cleans out your head like a son of a gun.
FRIDAY
French toast casserole, OJ
I planned this meal to make myself deal with how much bread is building up in the house. So far it’s gotten to the stage of me hearing the kids blame each other for not doing anything about it, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not sustainable.
French toast casserole is just you tear up your old bread and soak it in egg and milk and some sugar, and a little cinnamon and vanilla if you like. Butter a pan, pour it in, maybe dot it with butter, maybe sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top, and bake at 350 until the custard is cooked. Serve in wedges with syrup or jam.
Here’s a rather arty photo, from back when stone fruit was in season:
Today what’s in season is I have is a can full of ashes from the wood stove, that I’m saving to spread under the peach tree for next year. Ah well, it’s almost Advent.
*my mouth, I should hope
Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup
Adapted from twosleevers.com. This is a very flavorful chicken soup. It has a little hotsy totsy burst of spice with the first taste, and then the more complex flavors come through slowly. Magic.
It's fairly brothy, and then you heap up all the garnishes you want on top.
This is a little over a gallon of soup.
Ingredients
- 2 med onions
- 1 lb (4 medium) tomatoes
- 5 cloves garlic
- 3 chiles in adobo sauce plus some of the sauce
- 1 jalapeño pepper (include seeds for more heat)
- 1 bunch cilantro
- oil
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- water
- salt to taste
- garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, tortilla strips, chopped scallions
Instructions
-
Cut the onions and tomatoes into chunks so they will fit in the blender or food processor. Put the onions, tomatoes, jalapeño, chili pepper and sauce, garlic and cilantro into a blender or food processor and blend it until it's a thick sauce. You may need to do it in batches, or just keep poking the big pieces down so everything gets blended in.
-
Add enough oil to the Instant Pot pot to cover the bottom. Press "sauté" and let the oil heat up for a few minutes.
-
Pour in the tomato mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes, until any liquid is mostly absorbed. You may need to press "sauté" again to keep it hot.
-
Cut the chicken breasts into pieces and put them in the pot. Add six cups of water.
-
Close the top, seal the valve, and press "pressure cook," then the + button until it goes to 20 minutes. When it's done cooking, let it naturally release for 10 minutes, then release the remaining pressure manually.
-
Open the top and fish out the chicken. Shred it and return it to the pot. Add salt to taste.
-
Serve the soup with garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, tortilla strips, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, and chopped scallions.
Meatloaf (actually two giant meatloaves)
Ingredients
- 5 lbs ground beef
- 2 lbs ground turkey
- 8 eggs
- 4 cups breadcrumbs
- 3/4 cup milk OR red wine
- 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
plenty of salt, pepper, garlic powder or fresh garlic, onion powder, fresh parsley, etc.
- ketchup for the top
- 2 onions diced and fried (optional)
Instructions
-
Preheat oven to 450
-
Mix all meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and seasonings together with your hands until well blended.
-
Form meat into two oblong loaves on pan with drainage
-
Squirt ketchup all over the outside of the loaves and spread to cover with spatula. Don't pretend you're too good for this. It's delicious.
-
Bake for an hour or so, until meat is cooked all the way through. Slice and serve.
Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce
We made a quadruple recipe of this for twelve people.
Ingredients
- 28 oz can crushed tomatoes or whole tomatoes, broken up
- 1 onion peeled and cut in half
- salt to taste
- 5 Tbsp butter
Instructions
-
Put all ingredients in a heavy pot.
-
Simmer at least 90 minutes.
-
Take out the onions.
-
I'm freaking serious, that's it!
Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup
Adapted from twosleevers.com. This is a very flavorful chicken soup. It has a little hotsy totsy burst of spice with the first taste, and then the more complex flavors come through slowly. Magic.
It's fairly brothy, and then you heap up all the garnishes you want on top.
This is a little over a gallon of soup.
Ingredients
- 2 med onions
- 1 lb (4 medium) tomatoes
- 5 cloves garlic
- 3 chiles in adobo sauce plus some of the sauce
- 1 jalapeño pepper (include seeds for more heat)
- 1 bunch cilantro
- oil
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- water
- salt to taste
- garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, tortilla strips, chopped scallions
Instructions
-
Cut the onions and tomatoes into chunks so they will fit in the blender or food processor. Put the onions, tomatoes, jalapeño, chili pepper and sauce, garlic and cilantro into a blender or food processor and blend it until it's a thick sauce. You may need to do it in batches, or just keep poking the big pieces down so everything gets blended in.
-
Add enough oil to the Instant Pot pot to cover the bottom. Press "sauté" and let the oil heat up for a few minutes.
-
Pour in the tomato mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes, until any liquid is mostly absorbed. You may need to press "sauté" again to keep it hot.
-
Cut the chicken breasts into pieces and put them in the pot. Add six cups of water.
-
Close the top, seal the valve, and press "pressure cook," then the + button until it goes to 20 minutes. When it's done cooking, let it naturally release for 10 minutes, then release the remaining pressure manually.
-
Open the top and fish out the chicken. Shred it and return it to the pot. Add salt to taste.
-
Serve the soup with garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, tortilla strips, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, and chopped scallions.
