Tag: garden

What’s for supper? Vol. 483: Smooth dinner, smooth brain

Happy Friday! Happy nopioid day to me! Warning: This post has some scar pics in it, plus a lot of complaining, so don’t read if it you hate that! 

There have been some freaking UPS AND DOWNS this week, but I am completely off rotten old oxy, and yesterday they took all 41 staples and one super itchy lumbar stitch out, and just now I did the thing where I greeted the dog by pretending to kick him to death (which he likes! He thinks it’s funny!) and I suddenly realized I would not have been able to do that a couple of days ago. My sense of balance is back! 

I have never been so cared for in all my life. I remember several years ago taking a baby to the ER for croup or strep throat or something, and the nurse noticed my throat was stitched together (just had a thyroidectomy), and she was like, “. . . are you OKAY?” and I was like, “. . . SURE” because I really didn’t have a choice! That was some year. That was the year we lost our apartment and our car died and my husband’s job was laying people off and I was pregnant and the OB/GYN noticed I had what may or may not be thyroid cancer, but the biopsies were inconclusive and I couldn’t really think about any of that because I had to find a new apartment, and let me tell you, some of that process was a little demoralizing We ended up moving in with my poor old parents, and all I remember about the trip there was that we brought the very last food we owned, which was half a box of Kix, and when I drove away from our old place I had an aquarium full of fish strapped into the front seat, and when we got to our new place, there was only a little water and one fish left, and I never did find the missing ones.

ANYWAY, what I’m trying to say is life sure has changed, and I haven’t done a damn thing for the last two weeks except accept help, listen to music, nap, cry a little bit, and eat peaches. Damien has been stupendous, not only keeping up with everything, but making sure the kids are getting little treats and everything is calm and stable, and telling me repeatedly that every crazy thing I say is normal and understandable. My friend Elisa send a fun package of little crafts I’m doing to keep my hands busy, which helps a lot. My friend Sadie came over, I think my sister Rosie is coming this weekend, my kids’ teacher and principle each sent a yummy dinner, and the dad of one of Corrie’s friends stopped by with a gift card to the local pizzeria. Damien has been making excellent dinners — buffalo chicken wings, roast beef sandwiches, homemade spaghetti sauce, all kind of great stuff. Elijah’s going to come over and make homemade pizza this Sunday. 

I myself have been sticking mainly to soup, smoothies, and peaches, because my jaw and mouth muscles took quite a beating. I somehow missed the whole smoothie phenomenon when it first took civilization by storm (some of you probably don’t even remember life before smoothies!), but Damien got me a ton of Greek yogurt and frozen fruit, and so far none of it has been specifically named in a recall, so that’s been working well for me!

Very smooth indeed.

When I was still in the hospital, my poor peach tree split. Damien knows how much I love this tree and how much I’ve been looking forward to the big year B harvest, so before he even told me about it, he got some special tree wax and straps and put it back together. It did lose a lot of branches, but he did such a good job, and I think it’s gonna make it.

Look at this beauty. 

I went out yesterday afternoon and gathered up a nice little harvest.

When Clara and her boyfriend were over last week, they gathered up hundreds of fallen peaches, dumped the spoiled ones in the compost heap, and started blanching the salvageable ones. I was able to throw a bunch of peeled peaches in the blender and now I have a little stock of peach puree socked away for winter! It seemed super, super important at the time, and I’m grateful everyone humored me with this important peach work.

My garden is actually doing so well. I picked a ton of basil, coated it in olive oil, and froze that, too. I think the eggplants are beyond saving, and all my lettuce bolted, but there is tons more basil, tons of green tomatoes still marching along, and so much corn just begging to be picked. The pumpkins are still smallish but numerous, and the carrots and potatoes can be dug up any time, I guess. The grapes are also having a crazy good year, and I think maybe we will do some harvesting this weekend and make a little juice. Or just let the birds have them, I don’t know.

One of the mixed flower patches I planted has actually started growing flowers. Not a ton, but maybe there will be more next year. I think it’s mainly annuals coming up, and maybe the perennials will show up later.

The other mixed flower bed I started only has a few flowers, but it does have tomatoes and squash growing because I added plenty of compost, so that’s something! I also–

okay, I am making it sound like I’m up and about and doing projects and getting work done, and truly, I am not. I am mostly just lurking around in bed, and I do like one thing per day just to keep myself from going nuts. Sometimes that one thing is picking flowers.

Sometimes it’s just heating up soup and eating it in the most repulsive way imaginable because my lips and cheek are still leading a life of mystery and unpredictability. Yesterday was the first day I took only one nap, instead of two or three or four or six.

That being said, I did happen to notice that Marvin, the apple tree, is having an incredible year for some reason. We have never done one single thing to care for this tree, except to name it Marvin, which isn’t much; and it’s always understandably produced a medium harvest of truly terrible apples. But this year, they are tons of them, and they look NICE (relatively). No idea why. So the other day, I got to that typical stage of post craniotomy recovery where you find a free 8 ton hydraulic jack on Facebook marketplace, and you happen to know that your husband could really use one for his ancient SUV, and he’s already out driving around to pick up kids, so you set up a pick-up for the jack because you love him, and also SECRETLY, your plan is to steal his old scissor jack and use it to make a CIDER PRESS. 

Basically you just have to built a rough wooden frame with room inside for a bucket, and a little stack of wood the same diameter as the bucket, and the jack on top of that. You fill up the bucket with apples and start cranking the jack, and it compresses the apples, the juice runs out the holes in the bottom of the bucket, and you need some kind of catch basin obviously. It’s possible this is a dumb idea and I should not do it, but I have a few weeks to think about it, anyway! The kids LOVE cider, and goodness knows I have plenty of wood scraps from the treehouse

(which I don’t think Corrie has gone in even one time since I finished it, OH WELL). I also have a giant metal pot with a spigot built into the bottom, which I got on the side of the road and have been using as a rain barrel. I have no idea what it was originally for, but I think it would work great as part of a cider press. 

Anyway, I talk big, but I was smart enough to stop myself from contacting the new restaurant down the road to tell them I’m really good at making cheesecake if they want to make a deal; so probably I will be smart enough not to make a cider press. But who can say. 

The truth is, now that I am off oxy and my mind is pretty functional again, even though the worst is over, and I’m truly so so glad I don’t have cancer or any real permanent disability, I am now capable of mentally addressing it all, and I am having a wee bit of trouble processing what the hell happened to me. The time in the hospital was really rough, and even though Damien came every day, it was scary and lonely 

and the pain there and the first week back home was . . . well. It was something that made me feel slightly but probably permanently different about human experience and our relationship to God.

This next picture is a pretty good illustration of how amazing and optimistic I felt when they finally let me go home, haha:

So I am a little upset, off and on. So, I’ll build a cider press if I want! Do not argue with me about that! Not that you would! You are all very nice. 

But really, the pain is just worlds better now, and that is an unspeakable relief. It’s just a medium to bad headache now, and a lot of numbness, plus some rather entertaining sensations as the nerves in my cheek, tongue, lips, and jaw either wake up or regrow, and my whole left side from my neck up is still kind of a mess. And my ear is blocked up and loudly crackling, and they said whatever was in there was probably too deep for a normal cleaning to take care of, but oh well. I still haven’t gotten the pathology report back, but I’m really expecting it to be clean. And my eye works again! I didn’t even realize how bad it had gotten before surgery, because it went haywire gradually, but getting rid of that tumor really fixed it. 

I am going to ask someone to take me to Supercuts this weekend so they can give me an identical undercut on my other side, because why the hell not.

The hair in the spot they shaved is growing in white, as you can see here from a pic taken shortly before I got the staples out

so I might as well even that out and have some fun with it.

The swelling is taking its sweet time to go down, and I’m still giving Surgeon General of Beverly Hills vibes

but I am VERY VERY HAPPY TO HAVE THOSE STAPLES GONE. They were starting to make me so angry! And yes, I’m incredibly grateful I’m not doing radiation or chemo right now. As yucky as this has been, it could have been SO so much worse. I was sorta kinda getting ready to maybe die on the surgery table, so I’m just . . . I’m working on stuff. 

In a couple of weeks, Damien and I are going to Boston so he can [pause to catch breath from surge of wifely pride] accept his award from The New England First Amendment Coalition. Gosh, I am so happy about this. They only bestow three awards per year, and last year’s winner of the Freedom of Information Award was The Boston Globe. This year, it is my husband. 

They are putting us up in a swanky hotel and it is going to be FUN. 

Okay, thank you for listening to all of that! Or skimming, or just clicking and then sighing and closing the tab! I get it! Let’s all go have some soup.

More than many potatoes

My garden, if I may say so, is doing great this year. I added many native perennials to my flower beds, but my pride and joy is the food I am growing. My peaches, apples and grapes are bounteous, my pumpkins are unstoppable, carrots are coming in strong, my sweet corn is putting out tassels ahead of schedule, and my various basils, eggplants, garlic, cucumbers and dill are doing yeoman’s work. Even my rhubarb, strawberries and asparagus are still producing a bit, well past their allotted season. 

But for a real thrill, I go and gaze at my potato plants, which are dying. This is good. This is what you want to see at this time of year. A few weeks ago, the stems were sturdy, and the leaves were thick and lush, and when I watered them, they danced and bounced under the shower. But after briefly flowering, the blossoms are now gone, and the leaves are taking on a dusty look, drooping and tired. Soon the leaves will start to fray and dry up, and then they will go brown. That’s how I will know it is time to harvest.

And getting to the point where it is time to harvest is the whole point of growing potatoes. The trick is not to get overly attached to the intermediary stages.

The other trick is understanding that all stages are intermediary stages. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 479: It is Monday, my dudes

Sorry for not getting this out on Friday! But I assure you, it is Monday. I can tell because I’m on my backup to the backup computer, and it took my all weekend to figure out how to persuade it that I UNDERSTAND simchafisher.com is a suspicious website, but I really do want to go there anyway. Hope this finds you same.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m living in a somewhat preachy folk tale where the slovenly vegetable-hating housewife gets taught a lesson by the fairies, and, through a complete deprivation of fresh vegetables, she comes to understand just how much she really actually enjoyed fresh vegetables. Except the fairy in this case is RFK Jr., and, instead of magic, he uses, well, sorry about that mental image. What I’m trying to say is, I picked some lettuce from my garden and I’m going to eat it for lunch, and I am EXCITED.

It alternated between very hot and pouring rain last week. It turns out that when it’s really hot outside, and I can’t make salads, I just make various kinds of sandwiches. Here is what we had last week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus pizza and loaded potato skins

‘Twas another super long shopping turn with multiple side quests and pick-ups and drop-offs, but I must have had some steam left when we got back, because I did a little harvesting of the last of the rhubarb, plus some lupine seeds from my most magnificent lupine beast, and some zinnias and wildflowers. 

Big year for Queen Anne’s Lace! It is everywhere, and very tall. 

I also dug up the rest of the garlic, because I was tired of thinking about it. 

We lost a duck on Saturday. It was poor little Dolly, the one who struggled to get out of his egg, and who never really caught on how to live right. Poor thing! He did have lots of companionship his whole life and had a fine share of sunshine, grubs, green grass, fresh water, and butterflies. Vaya con Dios, Dolly, you little dope. Sorry we thought you were a girl when we named you. 

A few days later, another duck went missing. Sometimes they go on adventures and spend the night outside, but this one hasn’t come back yet, so it’s not looking hopeful. These are the perils of having free range ducks. I think it’s still the best life for them, because they have the stream and the woods and so much mud and tasty bugs at their disposal, but there are perils! 

That evening, Benny and I went paddling out on the pond. I left my camera in the car, so just imagine the New Hampshirest thing you can imagine as the sun goes down.

We were planning to explore the little St. Francis chapel on the other side of the water, but someone was doing a maternity photo shoot, which I was fairly slow to catch on to, oh well. Sorry, lady. 

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, chips

Sunday after Mass I finally got the rest of the garlic hung up to cure

and chopped up and froze the rhubarb. This time I remembered to string it first!

Then I made a little progress on Corrie’s treehouse! This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to real carpentry. A treehouse built around a single tree needs four diagonal braces to support the platform, and the braces need to be cut to fit inside the corner of the frame.

This is my first one. I ended up getting better as I went! But they all seem to be doing the trick. I used my little Japanese pull saw, which I love. 

It looks a little Dr. Seussy, but that’s to be expected. (I did add some nails to the bottom end after I took this picture!) 

For supper, I asked Elijah to roast some chicken breasts with olive oil, salt and pepper, and Irene to cut up some tomatoes, and then I picked a bunch of basil and made a balsamic vinegar reduction — super simple, just two cups of balsamic vinegar and one cup of brown sugar, simmered until it was about half the volume. 

Cut up some mozzarella and some baguettes, and it was yummo.

I hope I remember to do a balsamic reduction and grill some peaches, when the peaches are finally ripe! That will be lovely with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Gosh, I was busy on Sunday. At some point during the day, I baked some brownies and some lemon squares, because after supper, when it got dark, it was OPERA NITE. We watched the 1987 Met production of Turandot, which none of us has ever seen before. It has Luciano Pavarotti and is conducted by James Levine, with incredibly lush, intricate sets by Zeffirelli. I didn’t recognize the other names, but it was Eva Marton as Turandot, and her voice and presence were wonderful; but even with the spectacular costumes, we struggled a bit with accepting her as the most beautiful princess in the world. But Leona Mitchell as Liu was heartbreakingly good. 

Unfortunately, my kids are simply too Gen Z to be able to tolerate the whole “Ping, Pang, Pong” thing going on in Turandot, and they also felt like Turandot was justified in killing everybody and keeping all her subjects in fear of torture constantly? So it was not especially well received. Oh well! They did like the snacks, and we watched it outside on the projector, which is fun. The actual moon, nearly full, was rising just as they were singing, “Perché tarda la luna?” so that was lovely.

We watched Act One, had a break for cheese and crackers

watched Act Two, had a break for brownies and lemon squares

and watched Act Three. It’s only about two hours in total. And that was Opera Nite! Another summer goal checked off the list. 

MONDAY
Beach food and McDonald’s

Monday we went to the ocean! Everyone made a sandwich and I packed up a bunch of chips and cherries, cookies and soda, and we went to dear old Hampton Beach. Perfect weather, sparkly water, decent waves. Everyone went in, and Corrie and I stayed in, and then uhhhh we almost drowned. This has actually been causing me a medium amount of anguish, because I’m having trouble sleeping because my arm hurts, and while I’m awake, my mind keeps replaying the scary part in the water over and over. I’m making progress! My siblings gave me some good tips for how to integrate what happened into my life, so it’s not just this chaotic scary thing that I can’t handle, but something that happened and turned out okay. But still, yeesh. 

What happened is we were out past the breakers, still shallow enough where we could touch bottom, and we were having a lovely time, bobbing up and down with the waves and periodically checking our position to make sure we weren’t getting pulled past this outcropping of jaggedy rocks. I truly felt like a little kid again, and was so happy and carefree, and Corrie was just in absolute bliss. Then suddenly Corrie goes, “Hey, the rocks are right there!” and dang, they were, and dang, we were suddenly a lot closer to them than we had been, and DANG, we COULDN’T GET AWAY FROM THEM. 

Corrie had a boogie board, so I grabbed her hand and told her to hold on to the board, and we kicked together. Every time a wave came, I shouted, “Let’s kick!” and we did, but we didn’t make any progress at all. My feet and hands were hot and I started panting and swallowing water, and I was getting tired so, so fast. Corrie was just excited and having a good time, and I didn’t want to freak her out, so I just kept saying, “We need to kick!” I waved my arm in between waves while holding her hand with the other one, but I kept swallowing water, and every time I turned around, the rocks were closer. 

THEN, this beautiful, serene water nymph in red appeared. She put an orange torpedo buoy in my hands and told me to hang on, and someone else was on the way. Then yes, a second beautiful, serene water nymph appeared and put a buoy in Corrie’s hands. And they just towed us right in. They kept telling me to hold on with both hands, but I could not get myself to let go of Corrie. I have had this dream, you see, probably twenty times over the last few decades, where I am with a child in the ocean, and we’re holding hands, and a wave comes, and … I let go. Then the wave recedes, and it leaves a shining empty beach, and the child is gone.

So, sorry, ladies, I did not let go, and probably that impeded our rescue, but anyway, this time I didn’t let go. 

Feaking ocean. I still love you, but sheesh. I guess that was a rip current. I’ve read this sign many, many, times

but when we were in the middle of it, I wasn’t thinking “oh, this must be a rip current. Good thing I know my options!” I was thinking “AGGGGGGGGG ::splut splut:: Oh AIEEEEEEE ::spit sputter:: AUGGGGGGG.” So, thank God for those lifeguards! They really appeared out of nowhere like divine apparitions, and they were so calm and kind, and as soon as we were on our feet and made sure we were okay, they just went back to work. 

Corrie just thought the whole thing was neat. I let Damien put me in a chair and wrap me in a towel and I cried a bit, then ate a bunch of cherries. I was so shaken up. I’ve been struggling a bit with “but what if I die?” thoughts lately, because of my upcoming surgery, and this did not help! 

Anyway, we went to the arcade and then got some beach snacks (I opted for a snow cone)

In the pic, I am wearing the bracelet Damien won for me at Ski Ball. Then we drove part way home, stopped for McDonald’s, and went the rest of the way home. What a to-do, my goodness. 

TUESDAY
Burgers and fries

Tuesday it rained most of the day, and I was so glad we had gotten to the beach while the weather was good. I spent a good long time sorting Benny and Corrie’s outgrown clothes. Bagged ’em up and immediately found someone on a buy nothing group who wanted them. 

Usually we are kind of the end of the line, clotheswise, and by the time we’re done with something, absolutely nobody wants anything to do with it; but Benny had a LOT of clothes! I didn’t even recognize some of them. Clothes just flow through our house in a never ending river.  

Even though it was raining, Damien grilled the burgers, and I just made a big batch of frozen fries, and I took this ultra glamorous photo

And that is finally the very last of the burgers I got for July 4th! Phew. That was a lot of burgers. 

WEDNESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, corn and zucchini salad

Wednesday it was absolutely pouring rain all day. Tremendous amounts of rain. I had a doctor’s appointment that was like “you are taking your meds wrong and are just asking for uterine cancer, and your blood pressure has crept up again, and we are out of meds for your reflux so I’ll order an endoscopy, but not until after your brain surgery, but in the mean time, here is a PT referral for your frozen shoulder.” I didn’t even get a sticker! Oh well, at least I didn’t drown. 

So I got home and heated up some chicken tenders, and for a side dish I made a little salad. I cut up a few zucchini into spears and seared them in olive oil

then did the same for some leftover corn cut off the cobs. Then I mixed it with Taijin seasoning and red onion. 

Really could have used some fresh cilantro, but it was pretty good. 

I took a truly terrible picture of supper (we had the chicken with buffalo sauce and pepper jack cheese on tortillas)

and that was Wednesday. 

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, baked potatoes, watermelon

It being the end of the month, I suddenly realized I have a job, and spent most of the day writing furiously. In the morning, I hacked up a pork shoulder and started pulled pork cooking in the Instant Pot. Here is my recipe for that:

Jump to Recipe

I didn’t find the apple juice, so I used ginger ale, and it turned out nice. This is your reminder that you can use your standing mixer to shred cooked meat, and it takes about four seconds.

An hour before supper, I threw a bunch of potatoes in the oven. When they were done, I toasted some buns, cut up some red onions, cut up a bunch of watermelon, and we had yummy sandwiches. 

Not sure if you can tell, but it was still raining. I was sitting under a tree and just decided to be wet. It is summer and I am going to eat outdoors, dammit!

FRIDAY
Pizza

I also spent Friday furiously writing, and miraculously got everything turned in that I really needed to! I did forget to take the pizza dough out of the freezer, so after adoration I just bought some thawed pizza dough and, this may surprise you, but then I made some pizza. And very good it is, pizza. 

Okay, phew that’s it!

Print

Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

  • fatty hunk of pork
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for browning
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2/3 cup apple juice
  • 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

  1. Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.

  3. Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.

  4. When pork is tender, shred.

What’s for supper? Vol. 478: Accidental pork fried candy

Happy Friday! This was not an illustrious week for us, food-wise, or really in any way, but at least it’s Friday. 

FRIDAY
Ice cream, then tuna noodle

Friday we did go see the Bellows Falls petroglyphs in the late afternoon, as planned. I’m more skeptical than I was that they are really ancient — at very least, I’m quite sure they’ve been touched up by more modern hands — but they’re still mysterious and beautiful, and we had a great time.

Irene, as usual, discovered a more direct route, while Benny, Corrie, Damien, and I wandered around and ended up having to scramble up a ridiculously steep rock face to see the glyphs.

We hung out for a while and enjoyed being there and seeing stuff. Benny did briefly make her Blue Steel face, but I am not authorized to share it, so instead here is us looking normal on the rocks.

Then the first group also found an easier route back up to the road, while Damien, Corrie, and I uhhhhh kind of almost died trying to force our way through a more direct path.

We all earned some ice cream, so we stopped at Dari Joy, then made our way back and had some tuna noodle or frozen pizza. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and taquitos

Saturday turned into the world’s longest shopping trip, and I forget why. I guess Benny needed clothes and Lucy needed to be picked up from work and I needed to go to confession, AND we needed food. Yeah, that’s what did it! 

Leftover delite, plus taquitos. That night, I baked Lucy’s birthday cake so I could decorate it on Sunday. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips; birthday cake

After Mass, I went on a spur-of-the-moment quest for a FREE SPINNING WHEEL.

I am not 100% sure if it’s an actual spinning wheel or a decorative replica. If it is real, it obviously has some pieces missing. But the wheel moves smoothly and it has been put together with care and without the use of metal hardware, so it’s a lovely piece regardless. This will be for Clara, so she can spin straw into gold, and/or donate it to the local theater troupe as a prop. Yay!

Then I made another batch of frozen coffee in the slushy machine. I think we have settled into a routine where Damien makes cappuccinos on Sundays through the winter, and I make coffee slushies on Sundays through the summer. This is called complementarity, and speaking of which, happy NFP awareness week to you. I am celebrating by not reading any of the articles where people daringly reveal the brand new information that NFP is HARD, because of CIRCUMSTANCES, and some people are simply brave and strong enough to choose a DIFFERENT PATH, and where is their TROPHY. 

Anyway, on Sunday afternoon, fueled with plenty of caffeine and sugar, I  finally got around to cutting Benny’s hair, which she’s been begging me to do. She claims this is her second ever haircut! I feel like that can’t possibly be true, but on the other hand, she sure had a lot of hair. 

Turned out super cute, but am I allowed to take a picture, no I am not. 

I also realized my cucumbers were languishing in their current position. Not getting enough water or light, and in constant danger of being smothered by galumphin’ pumpkins. So I dragged out that terrible bench I never got around to fixing, and now it’s a cucumber and dill bench, ta dah!

Lucy went to the beach with her friends for her birthday, and I decorated her cake, and then for supper, we had verily the worst grilled ham and cheese I’ve ever made. I don’t even know what happened. It was like one of those dreams where your hands don’t work and gravity is weird and everything keeps swooping around in front of you. It tasted okay, though. 

And the cake turned out cute! Here is the pic she sent me for inspiration:

and here is the cake I made:

It’s not often that some aesthetic style you’re trying to imitate lines up perfectly with your skill level!  She liked the cake, liked her presents, whew. 

MONDAY
Burgers, corn, french fries, watermelon

Monday is a bit of a blur. Corrie made some banana bread, which she’s been doing a few times a week this summer. It’s honestly the best banana bread I’ve ever had. Nothing fancy, just fluffy and moist and sweet, with a nice buttery crust. 

Here’s the recipe she uses:

Jump to Recipe

On Monday I went to Home Depot to buy sixteen bolts to replace the ones I installed on my clothesline, which are somehow a few inches too short, so the pipes are wobbly. I had put a sample bolt in my pocket so I would be able to compare it to the new ones, so I would definitely get the right size and not have to go to Home Depot again.

Then I changed pants, got to Home Depot, reached in my pocket, and sighed a big sigh. 

A BIG SIGH. 

However, while I was there, I got a sack of soil to firm up my gladioli, which had popped right out of the ground, and I also saw they had some non-poo lettuce for sale, so I snapped that up. They also had tomato plants for $1 each, and even though I swore of growing tomatoes long ago because it always just leads to heartache, I bought six of them, because, yanno, mother should I trust the government? (No.)

Got home and moved some basil around and got the lettuce in. 

I didn’t quite have room for six tomato plants, so I dug up the rest of my garlic a little bit ahead of schedule, and it looked good and ready. 

Certainly an improvement over last year’s garlic harvest, anyway!

I forced myself to do a little thinning on my carrots, but I know I didn’t do enough, oh well. I fed the tomatoes and made some quickie stakes for them. I had heard that you can trim suckers off your tomato plants and just stick them in the soil and they will turn into new tomato plants. So I did that, and they immediately died. 

Then I checked the four shoots on my peach tree that I was trying to propagate by air layering, and they were all also all dead. I was mostly relieved, to be honest, because I got a 99 problems, but a dearth of peaches is not currently among them. 

I guess we had hamburgers for supper. We’re still working our way through the frozen patties I got for July 4th. I hope I remember this when I’m shopping for next year’s party! I truly bought twice as much food as we needed, which is insane. 

We also had corn, fries, and watermelon. Nice summer meal, but I’m REALLY looking forward to being able to eat the corn I grew! 

Look: Tassels! We have tassels!

TUESDAY
Fire chicken, rice, roast string beans

Tuesday is “everybody has an appointment” day around here lately, so probably not the best day to try a new recipe. Definitely not the best day to try a new recipe that you don’t actually have, but which you need to buy a subscription to get, and then you get in a dumb little fight with someone about whether it’s morally worse to use AI to generate a recipe or to ask someone to give you a recipe that you haven’t paid for. The upshot is that I WINGED IT. 

What I wanted to make was the Milk Street recipe for fire chicken where all you have to do is broil the chicken in the oven, then move the pan onto the stove top and keep cooking it until the sauce reduces. The technique is pretty self-explanatory, but I didn’t have the proportions for the ingredients. So I just kinda threw a bunch of spicy things into a pan with some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, then broiled it for a bit, and then cooked it on the stovetop for a bit, hoping it would get thick and sticky, which it did not. 

Yes I crowded the pan. Of course I crowded the pan. I also burned it a little bit, which kind of aeorsolized the gochujang, which is not a thing you want to do unless you enjoy coughing. 

I made a pot of rice and briefly considered making tempura string beans, but most of the kids said they wouldn’t eat that, and my will to live was ebbing away anyway. So I roasted them with some sesame oil, salt, and garlic powder, and threw some sliced almonds in there. 

And it was not very good! The chicken was okay, and the string beans were pretty bleh. 

I did not ruin the rice, hooray! And that was supper. Cough cough cough.

WEDNESDAY
Pork fried rice, potstickers

Wednesday I actually got a fair amount of writing done, and then Damien, Sohpia and I went to see The Odyssey in the afternoon. I reviewed it here. 

Before I left, I prepped a bunch of stuff so I could make fried rice when I got home. I chopped up leftover string beans and some zucchini and red onion and minced up a bunch of garlic and onion, and I found a bag of frozen pork, already cooked and chopped, in the freezer. I even pre-scrambled four eggs. Packed up everything in handy little mise en place dishes, covered them, and stuck it all in the fridge. 

That was a LONG movie, and then we had to stand in the parking lot and complain about it for a while, and then we had to get Corrie, whom we had dropped off at the library; so it was already after 7:00 when we got home. Turns out I forgot to tell the kids at home what the plan was, at all, so they were all in the kitchen hungrily yelling at each other, and Irene (remember what I said about Irene always finding the direct route) was grimly heating up some rice. It turns out they all thought (a) I was expecting them to make supper and (b) fried rice tastes like that because the flavors from the meat sort of seep into it, and you don’t have to add anything for a sauce. 

Here is my actual recipe for fried rice:

Jump to Recipe

and my technique is to lightly cook the garlic and onion, then add the vegetables, then the meat, then brown sugar and let that bubble and brown for a bit, then add the rice, and then finish it with soy sauce, fish sauce, and oyster sauce. My technique is not to dump everything in a pan and then stand there yelling. 

To be fair, it is entirely my fault for not communicating better, or at all, but I was a little distraught to have a pan full of hot, oily rice, raw garlic, ginger, and onion, and cold meat, plus cold vegetables that another sister had forcibly added to the pan despite the resistance of siblings.

So I did what any idiot would do: I told everyone to go away, then dumped a bunch of brown sugar on top of all of it, and heated it up, then shook some oyster sauce over it, and kept stirring. I thought it was working, too, until, as I sttirred, I started to hear a distinct clanking noise. Yes, there is was again: My fried rice was clanking. 

And that is how I made fried rice candy.  The sugar did melt a little bit, but then quickly crystallized into savory little chunks, and these got distributed all through the rice, and picked up some garlic and onion as they went. And I have to admit, the flavor of the meat sort of seeped into it!

I fished out as many clumps as I could find, and yes, I ate them. I was so hungry! Then I quickly boiled some frozen pot stickers, threw it all on the table, and ran away with my plate of food. 

The kids did ask later what those rocks were in the rice, and I told them it was a lucky prize, and they didn’t ask any more questions. And that was supper! 

Honest to goodness, it was not the worst fried rice I’ve ever had. I was hungry, though. 

THURSDAY
Ground beef doner kebabs, pita, yogurt sauce, tomatoes

Thursday was a bunch more writing. Moe was making supper, and we had some fairly elaborate plans, but you know, the cucumbers went bad, the herbs might have parasites, we ran out of time to make pita, and it turns out I didn’t super duper follow a recipe last time I made ground beef doner kebabs, and Moe was willing to do his best, but he’s never even seen doner kebabs, so it would be hard to fake it. So I tossed this recipe at him and told him to just skip the vegetable part, so he did it and also ran to the store for pita, and we had yogurt sauce and sliced tomatoes, and it was delicious. 

I am once again urging you to try the ground beef doner kebab thing, if you haven’t yet. It’s so easy and delicious. 

We watched The Sheep Detectives that evening, and it was entertaining and amusing. I’m not a huge fan of let’s get kids to confront death when they don’t want to stories, but this was sufficiently warm and reassuring that they pulled it off.  They did make a few irreverent jokes about God, but it’s not a huge feature of the story, and it does sort of balance it out with a plot point where the church saves babies in danger, and a priest humbly acknowledges that, because he took advantage of someone vulnerable, he considers himself “a bad shepherd.”  It was a little scary in parts, with the sheep being approached in the dark by frightening animals, and then being chased by dogs, but overall it was wholesome and well-crafted, with themes of self-sacrifice and devotion, and protecting the vulnerable and the outcast. It was a decent mystery, too, and I was surprised when the murderer was revealed. No deep thoughts, I just liked it well enough! The dialogue was better than The Odyssey. Which isn’t saying much. 

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips, watermelon

Corrie just showed me the eggplants are finally growing!

Little cuties. 

We have yet another appointment to get to today. We have an ailing duck living in the laundry room. We have plans for Opera Nite and a day at the ocean coming up. And I hope we have tortillas, because we’re supposed to have quesadillas for supper. Wish someone were in charge of planning meals and buying the necessary food items, OH WELL. 

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Banana bread or muffins

adapted from Quick Breads, Soups & Stews by Mary Gubser

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 ripe bananas, mashed well
  • 1/2 cup chopped nuts optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375.

  2. In one bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt together.

  3. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well in between. Add mashed bananas and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients and blend well. If you're adding nuts, fold them in.

  5. Grease 12 muffin tins or a loaf pan and pour the batter in.

  6. Bake 20 minutes or longer, until the top is slightly browned.

 

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Basic stir fried rice

This is a very loose recipe, because you can change the ingredients and proportions however you like

Ingredients

  • cooked rice
  • sesame oil (or plain cooking oil)
  • fresh garlic and ginger, minced
  • vegetables, diced or shredded (onion, scallion, peas, bok choy, carrots, sugar snap peas, cabbage, etc.)
  • brown sugar
  • raw or cooked shrimp, or raw or cooked meat (pork, ham, chicken), diced
  • soy sauce
  • oyster sauce
  • fish sauce
  • eggs

Instructions

  1. In a very large pan, heat up a little oil and sauté the ginger and garlic for a few minutes. If you are using raw meat, season it with garlic powder and ginger powder and a little soy sauce, add it to the pan, and cook it through. If you are using shrimp, just throw it in the pan and cook it.

  2. Add in the chopped vegetables and continue cooking until they are cooked through. If you are using cooked meat, add it now.

  3. Add the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until the brown sugar is bubbly and darkened.

  4. Add in the cooked rice and stir until everything is combined.

  5. Add in a lot of oyster sauce, a medium amount of soy sauce, and a little fish sauce, and stir to combine completely.

  6. In a separate pan, scramble the eggs and stir them in. (Some people scramble the eggs directly into the rest of the rice, but I find it difficult to cook the eggs completely this way.)

  7. If you are using cooked shrimp, add it at the end and just heat it through.

What’s for supper? Vol. 477: Parasite by the dashboard light

Happy Friday!

Today I am working outside

and feeling pretty lucky about it! But also pretty abashed that I haven’t gotten a food post done in A WHILE. I am sorry! We had our huge July 4th (well, 5th) family party,

 

My niece brought me something like fifteen different perennials from her garden, and I gave my BIL a peach sapling and his sister some potted mint, and I really love the plant swap as a new tradition. Also, at my sister’s suggestion, rather than reading the Declaration of Independence, we read the bishops’ beautiful prayer of consecration of the country to the Sacred Heart. And we had sparklers and pop-its and fireworks, glow sticks and temporary tattoos, tons of food, patriotic Jell-o, and most importantly, lots of family, and anyone who had an instrument brought it and played together. Just lovely. 

Then we had guests off and on for a week, and there have been . . . I don’t know, FAMILY SITUATIONS. Just all sorts of situations. God is merciful but life is complicated.

And now food is complicated, too! I sure wish I had decided to grow lettuce this year! But I didn’t! Oh well! 

Anyway, the week after the party, we just basically had hot dogs, hamburgers, smoked chicken wings, potato salad, watermelon, and chips in different combinations over and over, and honestly, nobody was mad about that. When we eventually ran through all the party leftovers and I was forced to actually make new food again, here’s what we ate: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus loaded potato skins

Looks like I had mac and cheese, potato skin, and a smoked chicken wing (and this was BEFORE they said not to eat vegetables. I did this of my own free will). The chicken, courtesy of Damien, was especially yummy. 

SUNDAY
Spiedies, cole slaw, guacamole

I think Sunday was when I became vaguely aware of some kind of food problem in the news, but I went ahead and made coleslaw with a bagged salad mix anyway. I also had some avocados that were rapidly aging, so I made guacamole, and we had kind of a weird combination of foods. 

My stupid arm is still being stupid, so I had Corrie do the heavy lifting — i.e., crushing the garlic for the marinade. 

Here is my spiedie marinade recipe

Jump to Recipe

The wild mint is plentiful, so I was generous with that. I also accidentally added four tablespoons of red pepper flakes instead of four teaspoons, and I fished out some, but then just decided to let it be hot, and that was a good choice. 

For vegetables, I cut up a bunch of sweet bell peppers, a few red onions, and a zucchini, and added it to the marinated meat chunks before broiling it. 

Usually I cook zucchini once a year, even though we don’t really like it, because there are only so many times you can walk past a vegetable that is SO CHEAP without putting it in your cart. But it was really good! Maybe I’ll make it twice this year. 

I toasted my roll and spread it with mayo before piling on the meat and veggies, and dang, it was delicious. 

Pork butts were 99 cents a pound, and this is a really great recipe for a cheap cut of meat. The marinade makes it beautifully tender, and it’s tasty and so easy. I make this with whatever vegetables are available, and it’s a rare dish that includes cooked vegetables but still tastes summery and (relatively) light. It’s a shame my family growing up didn’t (presumably) know about spiedies. I think my parents would have really dug them!

I also made the first ice cream of the summer, finally! I made a double batch of Ben and Jerry’s strawberry ice cream, but upped the amount of strawberries by 50%, and that was a good idea. 

Jump to Recipe

I also remembered that ice cream makers work a lot better when they’re not in a hot kitchen — or, if that’s the only spot available, if you run them inside coolers. 

It’s not stupid if it works!

Good ice cream. I want to make more, but there was a sale on ground beef, so that’s what’s currently using all the freezer space right now. 

Oh! But speaking of frozen things! For the past few years, I have rented a cotton candy machine for the July 4th party, because there are lots of little cousins, and cousins like cotton candy. Could not find one available for the life of me this year, and so I thought I’d rent a snow cone machine instead. Also all rented up! I finally found one forty minutes away, and kind of expensive, and I was on the verge of reserving it when I suddenly realized I could just . . . buy a slushy machine, for about the same price, and then we would have a slushy machine. So that is what I did! 

I did a bunch of research and what I really wanted was one of those absurdly huge double-barreled Ninja slushy things that makes a multicolored vat of slushy you can swim around it, but those are like a mortgage payment. So I settled on the 68-oz Iceman Shush-Ease, and although it makes less than I was hoping, we’ve all been pretty happy with it, and the kids have been using it nearly every day for weeks now.

I adore slushies, unreasonably much. The only thing I didn’t realize is that they will not freeze without sugar, so my daydreams of becoming effortlessly slim by existing mainly on frozen drinks all summer did not play out. (I have bought some allulose, which is the one sweetener that’s supposed to work in slushy machines, but I haven’t tried it yet.) The machine itself is very simple to use, and you can wash the sticky parts in the dishwasher, which I appreciate. So I was already quite happy with this purchase. 

Then on Sunday, I brewed a big pot of coffee and then chilled it for a while, then mixed it with half-and-half, sugar, and vanilla, and made a truly delightful drink. It was 3 cups of coffee, 1-1/2 cups of half-and-half, 1/2 cup of sugar, and 2 tsp vanilla, and that was the maximum amount that would fit in the machine. It turned out SO GOOD. Look how happy I am!

I went around feeling remarkably elated for quite a while after drinking this, and eventually realized that the extra caffeine and sugar in the middle of the day MAYBE had something to do with that. But also I just like slushies. I really do!

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, pesto pasta

Monday was when I realized, dang, we need to pay attention to this poo vegetable nonsense. Happily, my basil was overdue for a little harvest, so I picked a big bunch

and shoved it into the food processor with a few cloves of garlic, a stray garlic scape, some salt and pepper, a good amount of grated parmesan, and quite a bit of olive oil. Possibly red wine vinegar, but I don’t remember. Cooked a bunch of pasta, rinsed it cool, and mixed it up with the pesto, and it was tasty. 

I had my chicken burger with horseradish sauce, which is an underrated combo. 

This summer, we are having the kids make meals for the family again. It has been pretty gratifying to know that my adult kids all know how to cook and bake, and that they often google my recipes! I also frequently google my recipes! Because I can’t remember anything at all!

Corrie wanted to make bo ssam, and she was pretty delighted when she found out how to make the first part: You combine a cup of sugar with a cup of salt, and rub that all over the pork. 

I have to admit, it’s fun! She had less fun scrubbing the work area down afterward, but now she knows about trichinosis, anyway. 

Actually, she’s made bo ssam before, I think last year. I guess we both just forgot. 

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, mashed carrots

Here is my recipe for bo ssam. 

Jump to Recipe

Corrie got the meat into the oven around noon so it could cook for six hours. We usually have this dish with rice and lettuce, with raw fruits or vegetables on the side, but I was feeling pretty skittish about that. So we went through all the available vegetables one could cook, and she settled on . . . mashed carrots. 

I’m not gonna lie, they were not great. She boiled them until they were tender, mashed them, got tired of mashing and stuck them in a blender, then added some butter and cinnamon, then threw some sugar around with the greatest of ease, then remarked that she understands why I make other people clean the kitchen, because it sure gets messy. In conclusion, kids learn best when you let them discover things on their own. 

I was out doing something or other, (not cleaning the kitchen, apparently) but Damien sent me this dinner photo

The meat and the rice turned out great! The carrots were worse than they look!

WEDNESDAY
Oven-fried chicken, corn dip and chips, watermelon, plum clafoutis

On Wednesday, Moe made supper. He opted to do oven fried chicken, which I was pretty happy about

Jump to Recipe

and also some corn dip, which is his recipe. I believe it is steamed corn, goat cheese crumbles, a little mayo, diced red onion, and “elote seasoning,” which I think is cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, and paprika, or something along those lines. It was great! Very pleasant. Served that with tortilla chips, and I scrubbed the heck out of a watermelon and then cut it up. Very yummy meal. 

I had bought a big bag of plums but felt ooky about them, so I cut them into quarters and made some clafoutis. If you have fruit in the house that you’re not feeling confident about eating raw (I know the recent guidelines are mainly to avoid lettuce, but FOR SOME REASON I don’t feel confident that we’re definitely getting the best advice right now about how to live our lives), then clafoutis is a wonderful solution. 

Clafoutis is just a baked fruit custard, no crust or anything. It’s super easy (takes literally five minutes to throw together, then about half an hour to bake) and uses only a few commonplace ingredients, and my family really likes it. Baked in-season plums are criminally underrated. They were SO sweet and tart, and absolutely gorgeous nestled in golden custard. I used almond extract, rather than vanilla, and that was a good idea!

I took the opportunity to use my big box of mini tart pans I got at the thrift store. I sprayed them with cooking spray and the mini clafoutis popped right out of the pans, no problem. I whipped up some heavy cream with sugar and vanilla and holy cow. So nice. 

I made a double recipe and baked the rest in its traditional shape, in a pie plate. 

Just excellent. 

Then the kids watched The Three Amigos outside on the projector screen, and it was a nice day altogether. 

I can’t remember if I told you guys about the projector. We aren’t doing any trips or big vacationy things or camp or anything this year, so I splurged a bit on this movie projector. We had to get a special adaptor cable so it would work, and I ordered this screen, and they all work great. I wish I had ordered different speakers, though. The ones I got are meant for a small space. But they work well enough for our purposes. Overall, I’m happy with this purchase, and the kids are using it frequently. I have mixed feelings about how much of a treat they consider sitting outside and watching Frasier, but I guess it could be worse. Frasier is a great show, don’t get me wrong! It’s just, I don’t know. They’re so avid about it.

THURSDAY
BLT’s, ice cream pie

Thursday was Lucy’s birthday, and she requested BLT’s. My first thought was to get safe lettuce by buying it from the local nursery, but they didn’t have much. So I just got some iceberg lettuce, stripped off the top five layers, washed the rest throughly in soap, rinsed it eleven times, and kissed it up to God. Also washed the tomatoes in soap. So I guess we’ll see how that turned out. 

I’m a little embarrassed at how much mayo I put on my sandwich. I guess I was mad about having to wash tomatoes with soap, so I addressed that by slapping on a lot of mayo. Follow me for more tips of healthy living in body and mind. 

Lucy and her sisters made a couple of ice cream pies with coffee and black raspberry ice cream, gummy worms, marshmallows, and M&M’s.

Another birthday, my goodness. She’s gonna have a little party with friends on Sunday, and I’ll make some kind of goofy cake for that. 

FRIDAY
???

The original plan for supper was tuna noodle casserole, but we are going to go to adoration and then over to Bellows Falls to see the mysterious petroglyphs!

Only a few of the kids came with me last time, when we first went to check them out, but this time, I’m hoping to bring more people. And, uh, hoping I can remember where they are. AND, I am hoping to have supper at Dari Joy afterwards. Maybe we will have ice cream for supper. 

Oh man, I have a ton more photos that I meant to include in this post. Let’s just do a quick round-up of Other Stuff This Week!

First up: Leetle babbby cucumbers! I have about ten cucumber plants and they are finally making cucumbers. They’re so fierce and prickly when they’re tiny. 

Next, here are my corn and potatoes. The corn is so tall and robust this year. The potatoes leaves are starting to die back, which means they’re putting all their effort into the actual potato, rather than the greens. EXCITED. 

I planted a bunch of dill as companion plants with the cucumbers so we could make pickles, but I forgot how fast dill grows, and it’s probably gonna be all done long before the cucumbers are ready to pick. So I picked a bunch of it and put it in a jar of vinegar, and I’ll just use that to make brine when the cucumbers are ready. 

Here’s the first garlic! About a third to half of it looked like it was ready to dig up, and I was getting so impatient, so I went for it. Looks pretty good! I just need to dust it off a bit and then let it cure for a few weeks. I am kind of hoping the rest is bigger than these, but these are good. The individual cloves are nice and big, which is what matters. I hate when you have a big head of garlic made of little slivery cloves. 

Here’s one of my flower gardens. I totally forgot that I had planted some bright pink bee balm last year, so that was a pleasant surprise!

My galumphin’ pumpkins. Tons of flowers and a few little pumpkins starting to pop up. EXCITED. 

I gave blood, woo!

Well, this next one is me checking out how goofy my hair looks in two buns. I decided (a) it does look goofy and (b) I don’t care. It’s less pressure on my head than a single bun or ponytail, and I can do what I want. 

Ugh, this is the sky in the morning the other day. We got tons of smoke from Canadian wildfires this week. The sky has returned to blue today, though, thank goodness. 

Here’s a very important photo demonstrating, if you missed this viral hack from like eight years ago, how to make a large amount of toast in the oven. 

And finally! One of many, many slushies I consumed this month. This one is made from a bottle of spicy lemonade I got at Aldi, and guess who likes it? JUST ME. 


And that’s-a my story! 

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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. 

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

  • 1 pint fresh strawberries
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 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.)

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bare bones bo ssam

If you really want to knock people's socks off, look up My Korean Kitchen bo ssam, and make all the sauces and sides. This is a pared-down version, and I use this meat in many ways. Mostly, I just serve it with lettuce and rice and some kind of simple fruit of vegetable for a side, and it's fabulous. Start it the night before, let it cook all day, and you get maximum flavor for minimum effort.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup salt
  • big pork shoulder, preferably with a a bone and a nice fat cap
  • 7 Tbso brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp cider vinegar

Instructions

  1. Mix together the cup of sugar and cup of salt, and rub it all over the pork. Let this brine at least six hours. I usually do it overnight, and put it in a ziplock bag in a bowl in the fridge.

  2. Turn the oven to 300. Put a double layer of tin foil over a pan, to make clean-up much easier. Set the pork on the pan, fat side up, and cook it, uncovered, for about six hours.

  3. Combine the brown sugar, cider vinegar, and Tbsp of salt. In the last ten minutes of cooking, crank the oven up to 500, take the pork out, and spread the brown sugar mixture on top. Put it back in the oven and cook it until it's got a glistening crust.

  4. Serve with lettuce and rice to make little wraps.

 

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Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

What’s for supper? Vol. 474: And I alone scaped to tell thee

Happy Friday! This week has been an insane mix of medical emergencies, yard work, milestones, and of course potato chips. So many potato chips. If this sounds like your jam, read on. 

SATURDAY
Panic food/hospital food

Saturday I got back from shopping and Damien was just getting back from the dump, and we found the one kid who was home crying in horrible pain. I immediately thought appendicitis. So we went to the hospital and they said oh yeah, it’s appendicitis, but we don’t do pediatric surgery here. So Damien went with the kid in the ambulance to the big hospital an hour north, and I ran home to get some extra clothes and a sandwich, and then followed in the car. 

I will spare you the tale of how many turns I missed and which new issues with the car cropped up along the way, but the rest of the evening and night and following morning were not great. So we languished in the second ER for many hours, waiting to hear when we could get the surgery. We were doing better than a lot of other people there, let me tell you. 

A kind nurse interceded for us and around midnight we finally got moved to the PICU, which was much nicer. Surgery in the morning. I went to brush my teeth and in came the attending doctor and said they had presented it to her like it was definitely appendicitis, but when she looked at the actual reports, that was far from clear. So we got an MRI at around 3 a.m. and that too was NOT GREAT. Poor kid. Back to the room, kid is all worked up and can’t sleep, everything is beeping, eventually we doze off.

SUNDAY
Wendy’s 

Around 7 a.m. the surgeon bursts in and shouts “YEAH NO THIS ISN’T APPENDICITIS NO SURGERY SORRY FOR THE BACK AND FORTH THANKS” and leaves. I was having a nice dream about a bear and had no idea what the hell was going on. Eventually the previous doctor comes back and fills us in some more. They don’t know what it is. We will be staying at least another night while they keep running tests.

Kid is really unravelling at this point, more from hospital aggravation than from pain. Every single person that comes in tells me something slightly different about what is going on and what is likely to happen next. Time passes, people keep pushing on the part that hurts, everything is still beeping, and about eleven consultations later, they say it’s almost definitely not appendicitis, but we don’t know what it is (possibly a burst cyst, possibly inflammation of lymph nodes from a virus), but white blood cell count is now normal and we can go home if we want to. Which we do! So that is what we did. Eventually. We got Wendy’s for dinner on the way home. Kid shares amazing stories of ambulance and MRI and shows off her IV bruise. Damien and I collapse like bunches of broccoli. 

MONDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, fries

Monday, kid sleeps in, naturally, and wakes up feeling so much better, thanks be to God. I did very little that day. Ain’t no tired like “home from the PICU” tired, especially when you keep thinking about how you went right up to the brink of a kid getting surgery they didn’t need. And I don’t think anyone did anything wrong! It was just an ambiguous situation.

During my afternoon errands, I did buy some ice cream sundae things to say thank you to the kids at home for being so awesome and taking care of everything while we were away.

Supper was muffaletta sandwiches. I threw a bunch of stuff in the food processor – black and kalamata olives, a few jalapeno slices, parsley, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and red pepper flakes – and made a little tapenade, I guess.

and we had soft rolls with ham and various salamis and whatnot, and cheese. And fries. 

I don’t know why my dinner looks like someone plated it with an air cannon, but it was yummy. 

TUESDAY
Dino nuggets/Italian food

Tuesday was Lucy’s last day of school, and Benny’s 8th grade graduation! I suddenly realized we were supposed to bring a dish to share, so I was very glad we had meat and cheese and tapenade in the house. I put together a little platter with all those things, plus some string beans, grape leaves, and pita, and garnished it with chive blossoms, and it was not bad.

Graduation was nice. It’s a small school and they keep it short. Benny was radiant.

And that is the ninth eighth-grade graduation we’ve been to! 

Afterward, she chose a local Italian restaurant for her graduation celebration meal. We had “gondola bread” which is just toasted bread with garlic and melted cheese on it, very yummy. I had a big antipasto salad, and some kind of cake soaked in orange syrup. All delicious. 

WEDNESDAY
Tacos

Wednesday was the last day of school for Benny and Corrie. One more kid to go. I looked at the weather report and saw that we were supposed to get rain starting on Thursday and then every day basically until the end of the world. So I figured it was my last shot to do something about the spot where all that horrible wood used to be. I figured I’d rake it a bit and then scatter some seeds, boom, done. 

Five hours later, I had cleared the scraps, tilled the soil and dug up a bunch of root balls, dragged over some felled trees for borders, mulched the edges, laid a tarp to prep a spot for a path to pave later, dug up five loads of compost from the heap and spread it on the new spot, and THEN I scattered the big pouch of wildflower seeds I had bought. I guess I had some leftover hospital angst that needed working out, and this was the perfect job for that.

This is what it looked like before the junk guy came:

and here it is after I got through with it:

Feeling fairly smug about that!

Then I dashed around doing this and that garden task. I had built up some furious sweaty energy by this point, so I mowed down a bunch of blackberry bushes on the other side of the house, and tore up some soil and broadcast the other big pouch of seeds I had bought. But I had my doubts about the soil, which has been degraded by blackberries.

So at some point during the day — and hospital confusion segued straight into end-of-school-year confusion, and I shrimply do not know what time it is, what day it is, or where I am supposed to be, but I just keep moving — I bought some humus and manure, and spread that on top of the seeds I had just planted, and rustled it around a little bit. I have no idea what I’m doing, but it sure is green around here, so probably something will grow. It started to rain just as I was finishing up, which was immensely gratifying. 

Oh, and then I made some tacos real quick. 

You can see that the tabletop is . . . somewhat improved. This is a wrought iron table that is supposed to have a glass top, and we DID have a glass top, but it broke. Then I miraculously found a free replacement, and that broke, too. At some point I made a tabletop out of wood, and painted it; then a few years later, I had the brilliant idea to use natural objects as stencils and paint it again. This looked, of course, terrible; and then the wood started to warp and splinter, and it’s been a really really bad tabletop ever since.  At some point during the week, I stormed angrily (?) into Home Depot and bought a sheet of some kind of plastic stuff that I guess you are supposed to use on walls to protect them? I don’t know. It turned out not to be stiff or thick enough to work as a tabletop on its own, so I just laid it over the existing wooden one, and it’s . . . . . . . . . . . . somewhat improved. And that’s-a my story. If you happen to have a 48″-round piece of tempered glass that you’re not using, please just roll it in my direction. I have need of it. But actually the plastic is fine. It’s fine!

THURSDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Thursday it got murderously hot. I was expecting cool rain, but guess we are alternating rain and high heat, which is not ideal, but what can one do. I had bought some PVC pipes and zip ties last week, and on Thursday I finally drilled holes in the ends and lashed them to some T posts, because I want a second and third arch for my new grapevines to grow up, so eventually we will have a little shady canopy of leaves over the entrance to the stream. 

It was not to be. It was a good idea in theory, but the way I set it up, the tension was too much, and the pipes snapped. 

Alas. The truth is, my grapevines are not going to need support for quite some time, so it’s okay that this is not done yet.

The pond (you can just see the edge of it to the left of the chair in this picture) is full of frogs and tadpoles, so that’s fun! And allll the flower seeds and bulbs and tubers I planted last week are coming up, and so are my potatoes, corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, dill, garlic, eggplant, and basil. And a few stray potatoes I planted last year and apparently did not harvest, oops. 

I heard a gardener say that it may seem obvious, but remember only to plant food you want to eat. He’s right, it’s something I need to be reminded of! I do like all those things, though. I’ve also been munching on asparagus right out of the garden, it’s so tender and sweet. We didn’t get much this year because a vole chewed up a lot of the roots, so I’m just picking a spear here and there and eating it. The strawberries also got dinged pretty bad, but we are getting a few. They are everbearing and sometimes take a while to get going. Who among us. 

Anyway, we had a bag of premade hamburger patties in the freezer, so Damien grilled those up and they were yummo. As were the chips. 

FRIDAY
Tuna and chips

Yet another super drivey morning. Honest to goodness, I cannot remember the last time I spent this much time in the car. It’s just been nonstop half days and parties and special events and rehearsals and “oops they let us out early” and job orientation and writer’s group and field day and I don’t even know what. We opted out of a lot of stuff in May, so I guess we’re paying for it now! The stuff will always get you in the end. 

Speaking of getting you, I pulled out my garlic scapes yesterday. This is my second time growing garlic, but my first time doing it right, so I’m pretty hyped. I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with the scapes yet, but aren’t they neat?

I left one growing on the plant, to see what it looks like when it flowers. I guess I need to wait a few more weeks until the remaining leaves turn brown and floppy, and then I can dig up the garlic. EXCITED. 

Lucy’s Graduation is tonight. It will be outside and we have been told to expect light rain and high heat, so maybe I’ll just save some time and pass out now. Except then I would miss dinner at Chili’s, which is the spot she has her heart set on for a graduation celebration. I have resolved to stay conscious so I can order something that comes with a side of beans. Their beans are surprisingly good, and I don’t care who knows it. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 472: In which I (Persephone) have high hopes

Happy Friday! I hope spring is being good to you. We’re supposed to get down into the 30’s the next couple of nights, but HIGH thirties, so I’m just gonna throw some blankets around in my garden and hope for the best. I had a wonderfully outdoor week and got tons of yard work done, and took a bunch of things too personally, and made some very good food, and some that was just okay, and now I’m gonna tell you all about it. 

SATURDAY
Pancakes, sausage, OJ

Saturday after shopping, I went to pick up one of those gliding benches that someone was giving away. It needs work (new seat slats, sanding, and painting), but nothing hard or expensive. 

Will I ever get around to this? Impossible to say. But I might! I think it will be great down by the stream. 

Damien drove over to go fishing with Moe and got back late, and I took the opportunity to make breakfast for dinner. We used to go through an entire box of pancake mix for our family, but our family is so teeny tiny these days, I figured we’d only need half. Then I realized pancake mix boxes have also gotten teeny tiny, oops. So an entire box was just barely enough! It’s also possible I ate more raw batter than I realized. I am truly a freak for raw batter, and nothing that can be done about this. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

The shopping kid chose pizza pockets for her fun food to supplement the sad leftovers, which was a tactical error because part of the leftovers included last Saturday’s pizza pockets.

But somehow we survived, and right after supper I badgered everyone into driving to Westmoreland, where there was going to be a free summer event of some kind. The details were a little skimpy, so I tried to keep expectations low. 

But even if I had hyped everyone up, I don’t think we would have been prepared for . . . EL PULPO MAGNIFICO.

As you can see, it is a giant flaming octopus! It’s tentacles, eyes, and mouth move, and the man inside the octopus manipulates the flames (which also come out of the top of its head) in time to the music he was playing. It. was. tremendous. I loved it so much. Here are some pics of the evening,

 

and I also shared a few videos on Facebook and Instagram.  One of the videos got — let’s see, 46,000 views on Instagram, and I got a bunch of followers who . .. . might have the wrong idea about what kind of account this usually is (ducklings).  

MONDAY
Hamburgers, potato salad, con on the cob, chips; strawberry rhubarb crisp

Monday was, of course, Memorial Day, so we had the day off school. I have been desperately in need of more exercise. I can feel my joints rusting together day by day. But my stupid arm just won’t get better, so I can’t really do yoga or weights or any of my regular things. So I resorted to taking a WALK, like a CHUMP. 

It actually turned out really nice.

Of course it did. Walking is nice, and I live in a nice place. This hill is up behind my house, so I didn’t have to go anywhere to get there. Got home and discovered that it was exactly one mile, half uphill, so a pretty perfect workout. I decided I would start every day this way, with a pleasant, invigorating walk.

Then I didn’t do that even one more time. But I might! 

New Hampshire is it is full of mossy stone walls meandering through woods. You might wonder why they bothered to build walls between trees, but of course they did not. A hundred years ago, they had felled all the tree, and this was all pasture — mostly for sheep. There were way more sheep than people, and NH exported fleece and wool all over the world. Then someone figured out how to mass produce cotton, and that was pretty much the end of the wool boom. The trees grew back in the pastures, the farms fell down, and all that is left is the stone walls. On my walk, I did spot some stone foundations left from the houses that used to stand off the road. Sometimes you will also spot daffodils in the middle of the woods, and that is a sign that some human once lived there. 

Anyway, the weather was wonderful all week. We have started putting the baby ducks outside during the day. They’re big enough that they don’t need their heat lamp all the time, and they love marching around in the grass, fighting with buttercups, and struggling in and out of the little wading pool. And they still like being whistled too. 

 

Then it was parade time! Our town was founded in 1776, so we’re having a big anniversary along with the country itself. I mean, relatively big. This is the biggest memorial day parade I’ve ever seen here. Also the cutest. 

Only Benny and Corrie and I wanted to go, and we were rewarded with free ice cream afterward. (Again, quite an exceptional thing for this little town!) 

Got home and made some potato salad. The last few times, I made a version that seemed extremely yummy to me, but the kids felt very different indeed! It’s not like I put raisins in it or something, or capers or something, sheesh. Anyway, I made the dressing with mayo and cider vinegar, a little olive oil, salt and pepper, celery, and hard boiled eggs. 

Then I started prepping dessert. My beloved rhubarb plant is having a wonderful year, although I have concluded that I have an evergreen rhubarb, and it’s just not going to turn red. Some of them are like that. Slightly disappointing, although the flavor and texture are great. I more or less followed the Smitten Kitchen recipe. Here it is before I put the topping on:

I baked it right before supper, so it would still be warm when we ate it. 

Elijah came over, Damien cooked hamburgers and corn on the cob on the grill, and we had a lovely, chill dinner. 

After supper, I whipped up some heavy cream, and dessert was lovely. 

If I had one rhubarb-related wish other than for redder rhubarb, it would be that I could get my crumble topping to brown up better. It always turns out pale, for some reason, and I don’t know why. Anyway, it tasted good! 

I think I will cut up a bunch of rhubarb and freeze it, so I can make a compote or something at some point. That seems like the kind of thing I would be happy to suddenly remember I have in a few months. 

That evening, I started a big pork shoulder brining with a cup of salt and a cup of sugar. 

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, lettuce, rice, pineapple

Tuesday was chock-a-block full of appointments and whatnot, which is why I planned bo ssam, which is very hands-off. I was up early and cut up some pineapples. Then I got a little sidetracked, because I keep seeing reels about propagating pineapples at home. You’re supposed to twist the tops off and then peel off the bottom leaves to expose the root nodes. I had no idea these were under there! Here is one unpeeled, and one peeled:

Look at those root nodes!

I had no idea. Anyway, I trimmed the rest of the fruit off and set the tops in water, and now we’re waiting for roots to develop. 

Dreaming about the day when, a mere four or five years from now, I might get another, very small pineapple or two from these tops.

Then I remembered I was actually really busy, oops, so I got started on stuff I actually had to do. Threw the pork in the oven around 12:30, and then had some appointments, and when I got home, I got my pumpkin seeds into the ground in my hugelkultur bed, and then made a spot for cucumbers and dill next to it. I dragged a torn trampoline mat over to keep the weeds down, then filled eight pots with compost and set them up in front of Damien’s trailer office. 

Then I planted a dozen sprouting potatoes in one bed, and then weeded and composted another bed and got most of my corn in! 

SATISFYIN’.  I think Tuesday was the day I cut things so close, I didn’t have time to take a shower before going out, so I just washed my hands feet and put on a long skirt to hide my grubbiness. By the time I got home, I just had to start some rice cooking in the Instant Pot, and then put a little extra sauce on the pork for the last ten minutes or so. I finally made up a recipe card for my cheater’s version of bo ssam, so here’s that: 

Jump to Recipe

The pork came out gorgeous and tender, juicy and wonderful, as always. 

Probably could have left it in the oven a little longer to crisp up the top some more, but I was HONGRY. 

Tasty meal, productive day. This “being outside” thing is great. 

The older I get, the more pronounced becomes the difference between winter me and summer me. I love New Hampshire, I love the ice and snow and those brilliant, glittering winter skies, and I’m deeply wedded to the idea that having real, distinct seasons is existentially important, and spring and summer are all the sweeter because of how fleeting they are. 

At the same time, phew, I am SO much happier when it’s warm out. Here is a real question, specifically for people who have moved from a cold climate to a warm climate. Does the euphoria of being able to be outside all the time wear off? Or do you get used to it, and stop appreciating the sunshine after a while? I never though I’d even consider living anywhere besides New England, but the idea is creeping in, and the Persephone thing is getting kind of old. It does help to take vitamin D and get exercise throughout the winter, but it’s a struggle still. Winters are really getting hard, and we just kind of shut down. I don’t know. 

Well, on Tuesday Damien had to go cover some kind of event, and he was gone all afternoon and evening, boo. After clean-up, I sat the kids down and started reading the new encyclical to them, so there. On Tuesday, we read the introduction, and I liked it, and they did not. 

WEDNESDAY
Not sure what to call it but wow it was good

Wednesday the plan was some kind of bi bim bap situation. But I utterly succumbed to Being Outside, and just did that all day. I must have been doing gardening and yard work, but I was so wrapped up in it that I didn’t even take pictures; so just imagine a lot of green, green, green. I think I mostly did weeding and organizing, because I was getting mad at myself for working so hard on growing beautiful flowers, and then having my own view ruined by tubs of garden tools, old tarps tumbled and flapping around, heaps of scrap wood, chairs on their sides, etc. My phone says I walked over two miles just trotting back and forth in my yard making things look better, so that tells you how much crap was lying around!

I think I also potted a bunch of stuff in the front yard — a big, deep purple lupine, some double impatiens, a clump of dahlia tubers, and two holy basil plants to frame the door. Last year I planted some cinnamon basil in my herb garden and I kept pinching the flowers off and the plants got huge and bushy. Then discovered I don’t like the taste at all, so I demoted them to a decoration and moved them to the front door. Every time we went in or out, we got a little whiff, which was very nice (I like the smell, just not the taste)! So I hope they will do as well this year. The ferns and hostas are thriving, and the daisies and alliums I put in are blooming just as the tulips and daffodils die off, so I’m pleased. 

It’s still a baby garden, but I have high hopes. 

By supper time I was tired and starving and sweaty, and truly did not want to cook. So I just cut up a watermelon I meant to serve on memorial day, and some broccoli I meant to roast on Tuesday, and then I found some leftover rice and leftover pineapple, and I cut up the leftover bo ssam real thin. And it looked very promising. 

I served everything cold. I put my plate together and then threw some bottled yum yum sauce on top, and then sprinkled some furikake over that, and went outside to devour it like a goblin. 

My heavens, it tasted like the best food possible. Just wonderful.  I may serve this exact combination of foods on purpose next time. 

After supper, I noticed that my biggest lupine is blooming! This is from the plant I dug out of Millie’s garden last year. 

As it turns out, this is the one year-anniversary of the day she died. Say a prayer for dear Millie! She would be very proud of me for my garden this year. There are actually lupine seedlings all over the place this year, front and back of the house. I don’t know if they’re from the plants I put in, or if it’s just a lupinous kind of year, but I’m not mad! 

Damien had another long dumb event to cover, and he was gone most of the day again, alas. Wednesday evening, we sat down and started to read chapter one of the encyclical, and then I basically quit mid-word. I thought it would be a good project because I know they care about AI, and the pope is no nice and whatnot, but phew, it just wasn’t landing.

Then I mildly horrified the kids by getting a little emotional while I explained my struggles in getting them educated as adults in the faith, and we ended up agreeing that I will open a new Word document and they will be added as editors, so they can anonymously contribute questions or complaints about religion, and we can start from there. WHAT CAN ONE DO. I was gonna say I am doing my best, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, I’m trying somewhat, sometimes. What can one do. Tricky times. 

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, salad

Thursday I had nothhhhhhhing on my calendar. I actually did some writing for once, and then back outside I went. I cut down a bunch of saplings from the woods and got some twine and a staple gun, and made a trellis for the cucumbers to climb up. 

I also planted some dill seed in each pot. They are supposed to be good companion plants for cucumbers, and by the time the cucumbers grow, the garlic should be ready to harvest. Corrie and I plan to make pickles! 

Then I did this and that, and dumped out some old pots of soil and repotted a few things and weeded and whatnot, and, feeling competent and optimistic, I decided to finally start prepping the hill behind the patio for a big wildflower garden. I knew some wild blackberries had popped up again, and I was feeling a little grim about that, but I knew I could deal with it.

THEN
I
FOUND
SOME
BITTERSWEET. 

In my backyard, which is supposed to be my little haven. My deal (with who, I don’t know) was that bittersweet can be a menace in the front yard, and I will fight it and stay vigilant, but I will accept that it will always be with us. But this was in the back.

 
I didn’t cry, but I felt like my insides had turned to clay. Oh bad. Bad bad bad. I sat for a while, and then complained to Damien for a while, and then I found my Round Up and gloves and clippers and did what I could. I need something with a higher concentration of glyphosate, but it’s a start, anyway. BOO INVASIVES. Very boo. 

Obviously I couldn’t do any more gardening in that spot, because the herbicide was still fresh. So I showered good and made supper, which was grilled ham and cheese and salad.

I was a little nervous about serving sandwiches without chips or fries, which is pretty de rigueur around here, but nobody said anything.

I ate outside, and had the wonderful consolation of realizing that my peach tree, which yielded something like eleven peaches last year, is absolutely LOADED with tiny little fruitsies this year. 

I was hoping that would happen! Big year, little year, that’s how it goes. But I didn’t want to count on it. But yeah, we’re off to a fine start!

At some point during the day, I went to Home Depot and got some long, flexible PVC pipes, which I intend to use for grape arbors in some way. The details in my mind are still foggy, but PVC is cheap. Maybe I will paint it green or something, maybe not. I have some tall T posts and some zip ties, and all the clearance grapes from Walmart that I shoved in the ground are putting out leaves already, so I don’t see how this can fail. The vision is a tunnel of leaves at the entrance to the boardwalk over the marsh. I’m trying not to slip into “maybe they will accidentally lobotomize me at the end of the summer, but at least I will leave a grape arbor as my legacy” thinking, but it’s possible some of that has been happening, who can say. Anyway, PVC is cheap.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

I really really need to finish up some essays I started, but I want to be outside! Wah! Boo! I actually already got a considerable amount of writing done this week. But I also have a bunch of mystery bags of gladiolus bulbs I bought for a song at the town garden club sale, and it occurs to me that a long line of glads in front of the house would be gorgeous. Possibly not enough to make up for the fact that the kids saw a bunch of paper bags on the table and thought someone had brought pastries, but still, very pretty. 

This Sunday, we’re expecting a visit from an enterprising young man who went door to door letting people know he hauls junk. What it was that brought him to our door, in particular, it’s impossible to say; but I’m hoping that (a) he’ll give us a quote that’s about the same amount as the money I’m expecting to get from the guy who’s going to haul the Yukon away as soon as we get the replacement title, and (b) I have the emotional fortitude to tell him to haul away ALL the junk, and that I won’t be a crazy little freak and try to hold onto a bunch of it because it might come in handy.

Damien has to cover RFK Jr. coming to NH and talking about Lyme disease. I am crossing my fingers that a giant tick comes and eats him live on camera, but I would settle for . .. . well, I’ll settle for whatever I can get, I guess. Ain’t that the way. 

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bare bones bo ssam

If you really want to knock people's socks off, look up My Korean Kitchen bo ssam, and make all the sauces and sides. This is a pared-down version, and I use this meat in many ways. Mostly, I just serve it with lettuce and rice and some kind of simple fruit of vegetable for a side, and it's fabulous. Start it the night before, let it cook all day, and you get maximum flavor for minimum effort.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup salt
  • big pork shoulder, preferably with a a bone and a nice fat cap
  • 7 Tbso brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp cider vinegar

Instructions

  1. Mix together the cup of sugar and cup of salt, and rub it all over the pork. Let this brine at least six hours. I usually do it overnight, and put it in a ziplock bag in a bowl in the fridge.

  2. Turn the oven to 300. Put a double layer of tin foil over a pan, to make clean-up much easier. Set the pork on the pan, fat side up, and cook it, uncovered, for about six hours.

  3. Combine the brown sugar, cider vinegar, and Tbsp of salt. In the last ten minutes of cooking, crank the oven up to 500, take the pork out, and spread the brown sugar mixture on top. Put it back in the oven and cook it until it's got a glistening crust.

  4. Serve with lettuce and rice to make little wraps.

What’s for supper? Vol. 468: In which we feel the (freezer) burn

Happy Friday! The world hasn’t ended yet, so let’s talk about food. 

This week we found ourselves in a bit of an Oops No Money situation, so I cleaned out the freezer and built my menu around what I found, which is good practice anyway, from time to time. It was a little weird, and the predominant flavor of the week was “freezer,” but it was not terrible overall, and I’m happy to have more space in my freezer!

Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Leftovers, Hot Pockets

On Friday, I had gone to try to pick up a free clothesline set-up someone was giving away. I’ve been wanting a new clothesline situation for a while! I love hanging up clothes to dry in the warm weather, but I’m a little fed up with my current set-up, which is rope stretched from the swing set to the apple tree, with involvement by the grill. So that Fresh Linen scent always had a faint undertones of Old Hamburger. 

Here is the one I was picking up. 

Nice, right? I’m going to set it up in the spot way off to the side of the yard, where we used to have a garden. That was back when we had a bunch of little kids, and my main priority was keeping the main yard clear so they could run. That spot has since returned to weeds and brambles, but a good mowing should clear it fine. 

I brought some lubricant spray and a set of socket wrenches, but was not able to get it taken apart, except for sawing the wood base off. So I sprayed the joints again and promised to be back the next day. 

On Saturday, I went shopping and then went back for the clothesline, with an obliging Damien, who brought more tools. He couldn’t get it apart, either, but realized it would actually fit on top of the car, if’n we don’t drive too fast. So that is what we did. Yay! 

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, peas

Sunday a bunch of us were coughing too much to go to Mass, so I slept in, and then tragically dragged myself over to the Area of Broken Dreams, I Mean Glass. Spent a couple hours vacuuming. Got glass in my hands and feet.  Eventually decided the ground was glass-free enough for the likes of us, and turned my attention to the remaining blackberry canes between the patio and the house. I did something I rarely do: I used Round Up. It was a sunny, breezy day, and I kept it far away from anything we or the animals might eat, and it was very satisfying! Sometimes you just have to get the jug of poison out. 

I also managed to lose my phone pretty early on in the day. I am a shameful phone addict, and it was very disconcerting! Everybody was looking everywhere, and we just could not find the thing, which was crazy because I hadn’t gone anywhere, except trotting back and forth and back and forth in the yard. I knew the ringer was on because I had been listening to music. The screen is pretty badly cracked, so by the time I went to bed, I assumed that even if I eventually found it, it would be a goner. 

But I had a really nice afternoon because Elijah came over, and he sat and chatted with me while I murdered blackberries. It’s awfully nice when your big kids come back and chat. 

MONDAY
Fish or shrimp tacos, chips and salsa

Monday morning I made one last futile search for my phone, and, just so I could say I looked everywhere, I ripped open up a bag of wet dirt and broken glass. It was, of course, not in there.

Then I dragged that out and ripped open a second bag of wet dirt and broken glass underneath the first one, and . . . there was my phone. AND IT STILL TURNED ON. It’s not even in a case! I am very impressed. 

It was April vacation this week for most of the kids, so after I got some work done in the morning, Benny and Corrie and I went to the park. This is a lovely park with a playground, and also big rocks to scramble around on, a fishy pond to look at, and, to my sorrow, a big hill with an intriguing area at the top.

So we went up the hill and got a neat view of the town, and discovered there is some kind of secret grassy amphitheater situation up there. I had no idea!  We goofed around a bit and took turns trying to roll a tire all the way down and up again without it tipping over. I’m describing this because these world-weary children, alas, will not let me share pictures of them anymore. But we had fun, and it was sunny and lovely, very late April. 

Came home and made some guacamole, heated up some venerable frozen fish, and then I sauteed some rather elderly frozen shrimp. I guess I minced up some garlic and sauteed that, then added the shrimp and I’m guessing lemon juice, salt, hot pepper flakes, and it looks like some cilantro. 

I don’t remember, but it was tasty. 

I had mine with shredded cabbage, more cilantro, guacamole, and lime juice. I really love shrimp tacos. Yum yum. 

Then Damien got the glass out of my foot, phew. The number of things he has gotten out of my foot, my word. 

TUESDAY
Pork empanadas, cassava fries, rice

Tuesday we had an appointment in the morning, and we were running late because I had to take a phone call just as we were leaving. Then my car wouldn’t start! This stuck in my craw a bit because we had just gotten it back from the garage, where we had dropped $840. It’s just sad, that’s all. Oh well. Oh well! oh well.

I was already fretting a bit because the upshot of the phone call was that a big story I’ve been working on fell through. Blah. But I had to go, so I took Damien’s car, and when I got home, I moped a bit, and went down to the stream to see what I could find. The water is low, and there’s all kind of interesting stuff lodged in the banks. 

I have a growing collection of porcelain and interesting glass, and absolutely no plans for it. I just like collecting it. Check this thing out: 

I don’t know what it is, but it’s clutching a marble!

Then I prepped supper. First I started thawing the frozen cassava, then I cooked up some ground pork for empanadas. 

I myself would have gone for a version with olives and capers, but I was hoping to not be the only one in the family who ate supper, so I stuck with a more tame version. I kinda based the seasoning off this recipe, but I didn’t have everything, so I just wung it. I rolled out each dough disc a bit, added a couple of spoonfuls of seasoned meat and a little shredded mozzarella (because that is what we had! Don’t @ me!)

wet the edge of the dough and crimped it shut. I made 18. Then I cut up the thawed cassava into fries and rolled them up in a towel to get them really dry. 

I was feeling a little argy bargy about various things, so it seemed like a good time to throw together a new garden bed. This is a spot that gets a good amount of sun, but I’ve never tried to grow anything here before, and I really didn’t feel like digging. So I decided it would be a hugelkulturish garden. I lugged over a bunch of fallen trees and scrap wood for a border, then laid down some cardboard on the weediest spots and piled on some old logs and branches

then a bunch of dry stalks from last year’s sunflowers, and then I cleaned out the duck house. We have been doing the deep litter method over the winter, which basically means you just keep adding fresh layers without cleaning out the old ones, and then clear it all out a few times a year. So let me tell you, the smell was SPECTACULAR. 

So I heaped all that shit up on top of the other material, and I think if I dump a little soil on top, I should be able to grow something here. 

My original plan was to plant corn there, but I think that will need a more stable base to support tall corn stalks, so I will probably do pumpkins instead, or something else that doesn’t mind lying down. 

I couldn’t quite bring myself to take a shower before deep frying, so I just changed my clothes and washed my arms real good, and starting deep frying the empanadas. They did turn out crisp, flaky, and yummy, 

and the cheese inside was melted. They did end up tasting unexpectedly Italian. Disconcertingly similar to Hot Pockets, really. But I thought they were pretty good. I served them, and then used the same hot oil to fry all the cassava.

I have never eaten cassava, don’t know how to prepare it, and don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like. I still don’t! These cassava fries were . . . fine. They tasted somewhere between potatoes and, I don’t know, zucchini. Very fibrous and starchy, without much flavor. I salted them when they came out of the pan, but the salt just kind of bounced off. I ate it because I had gone to the effort to make it, but I think my relationship with cassava ends here.

Anyway, it was definitely hot food, and I sure was hungry. 

Then I took a shower! Phew. 

WEDNESDAY
Penne with meat sauce, garlic knots

Wednesday the tow truck came to drag away my poor old car. I had another meeting, so I took Damien’s car and got back feeling fairly argy-bargulous again, so I assembled some tools, and Corrie and I managed to get most of the old bolts off the clothesline base, and then knock the remaining rotten wood off with a sledgehammer I think I will need to cut the remaining three bolts off, and I do need to buy new bolts, so that was as far as we could get for the day.

Then I turned my attention to Corrie’s tree house, which so far consists of some pieces of wood stuck to a tree.

I made an attempt to drill some holes so I could secure the planks with lag bolts, but the drill bit was very warped, and I didn’t get anywhere. 

Instead, I got a shovel and started digging up some stuff to fill in my garden in front. It’s less shady than it used to be, because the porch is gone, but it’s still in shadow a lot of the day. I got some false hellebore, two kinds of ferns, and a patch of pretty pink and white wood anemone and crammed them into the ground. The lupines I planted last year made it through the winter, and I think this will be a really pretty spot in a year or so!

For supper, I just cooked up some more pork (I forget why I had so much ground pork in the freezer, but I sure did) and threw it in some jarred sauce, and cooked up a bunch of penne.

I also found a stray ball of pizza dough, so thawed that and made it into garlic knots. I baked them and then tossed them with melted butter, garlic powder, salt, and parmesan cheese. 

They were a little rubbery, but who the heck knows how old that dough was, so it was whatever. They got et. 

That night, the kids asked if they could have a fire, and I told them I had used up all the firewood to make my garden, and also felt incapable of getting up. So they went into the woods and gathered more wood, and built themselves a fire, roasted marshmallows, were nice to each other, and even presumably put the fire out afterwards! 

THURSDAY
Pork ribs, roast butternut squash

Thursday, you’ll never guess, I had a meeting, for which Sophia kindly let me borrow her car. And I just did not get a lot else done. I was really, really tired. Damien was out of town all day, and Sophia took Lucy to a job interview and Benny and Corrie to the movies. I thought I was alone in the house, but just spent my wild and precious hours of solitude eating pop tarts like a goblin and making trouble on Facebook, and sort of slogging around getting very small things done, like filling my weekly pill box and moving clutter around. I feel bad it was such a boring, at-home vacation, but at least the weather has been nice. Whatcha gonna do. I did fix Corrie’s swing. Oh, and she gave herself an amazing haircut, and then her sisters helped her dye it blue. 

For supper, I defrosted and roasted some butternut squash from ages past, and then I roasted some pork ribs with salt and pepper. Damien got home and we ate dinner together, at the table. Then I realized that, oops, Irene has been home all this time. She was just upstairs. All afternoon I was remarking to myself, boy, those cats are so noisy up there, and you would think it was actually a person up there, boy! Sorry, Irene. 

Thursday evening, Damien noticed all six duck eggs were starting to crack! Very exciting. It’s hard work and takes a long time, and there was not much progress by bedtime, so we moved the incubator into our bedroom, because it would be a shame if the only ones there to welcome them when they hatched were a couple of naughty cats. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese and broccoli

No duckling action yet! Today is day 28, but as anyone who has waited for a baby knows, these things run on their own schedule. The cracks are a little crackier this morning, and Damien and Benny have both heard some muffled peeping. Just gotta be patient. 

Damien just fixed the kitchen sink pipe, and next on his list is the water heater and a third thing, I forget what. I still don’t have a surgery date. The axolotl is healthy and happy. I think we will have lots of peaches and lilacs this year. And that’s-a my story! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 439: We put the “disgrazia” in . . . everything.

Happy Friday! Today’s post will be about food, and gardens, and home improvement projects, and that’s it. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers

Especially lavish leftovers, since, incredibly, we still had some steak from last week. I’m struggling mightily to cook less food now that we only have seven people in the house, but, like I said, I’m struggling. 

While I was out shopping, Corrie made two loaves of banana bread. She’s getting really great in the kitchen! It turned out scrumptious, tender and moist. 

Here’s the recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

Sophia has also been baking more, now that the cooler weather has arrived. She made some really intense apple cider muffins with cider buttercream topping later in the week, but I forgot to take a picture. But three cheers for kids who bake! 

I myself made some pretty lousy applesauce. We had these lousy apples 

from our elderly apple tree, Marvin, which the kids feel sentimental about, so every year I make applesauce.

I washed all the spiders off, cut the apples in half, and cut out as many bad spots as I could manage. I took this picture:

because this was an especially large and pristine specimen. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to this tree to produce better apples. I’ve tried nothing, and I’m fresh out of ideas. 

I put the apple halves in two stock pots with about 3/4 cup of water and set them to simmer. Then I burned one! But I did not burn the other. I let it cook until the apples were soft, and then I put the pot in the fridge. (This is not a necessary step in the recipe; I just didn’t feel like dealing with it anymore that day.) 

Oh, also on Saturday, I fulfilled my end of a contract and dyed Corrie’s hair bright pink. She’s happy with it, but less enthusiastic about having her photo online all the time (sorry, kids. I have regrets), so I will just show you a photo of the dye we used

It is Lime Crime Unicorn Hair, and the color is “Juicy.” The label is the most egregiously illegible thing I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve squinted at a LOT of hair dye. But I have to say, this stuff adheres really, really well. The color is exactly as advertised (I did bleach her hair pretty light first), and it’s staying put so far. 

SUNDAY
Roast beef sandwiches with smoked gouda, garden corn, chips

The beef round eye hunks were still on sale, so we got another one and Damien seasoned and slow cooked it in the oven, and it turned out perrrrrfect. Very juicy and delicious. Unfortunately, the pictures I took make it look like something the plumber would hold up while saying, “Well, HERE’S your problem,” so I’ll skip photos. 

I splurged on some smoked gouda from the deli, and I also bought a jar of hot pepper sandwich spread

and oh man, that was a great combination. 

I see now that my table is gross. I’m not deleting the picture as an act of humility and penance in the face of the way I acted yesterday on social media. Anyway, really great sandwiches.

I picked the second round of corn from the garden, and Damien cooked it in the husk on the grill, and it was sweet and juicy and delicious. Lovely meal. 

Then it was time to make the apple sauce, as I’d been promising! So I set out to look for the foley mill, which I only use once a year to make apple sauce, but for which there is no substitute. Couldn’t find it in the island cabinet, but I did find a bag of rotten potatoes, so I threw that away and scrubbed out the inside of the cabinet. Then I thought, well, the other cabinet could probably use some cleaning, too, especially since it’s not even a cabinet, it’s just a ghastly conglomeration of wire shelving and milk crates and spidery misc. So I started pulling stuff out, and I DID find the foley mill, but then I got to thinking how much I didn’t want to go through that again next year, and how it wouldn’t be that hard to replace this chaos with some actual shelving, so I started looking for scrap wood, and then I thought for once I would treat myself and take some measurements and actually buy some wood specifically for this project, so I went to Home Depot and got back and settled in among the musty old double boilers, dusty candy molds, fusty wedding cake pans and bottles of terrible vermouth, and greasy pencils and bent measuring spoons that had slithered down into the gap, and I got going with the saw and the drill

and Corrie comes in and said, ” . . . I thought you were gonna make apple sauce.” 

I was! I mean, I am! This is the process! For some reason. 

Well, it took seven hours, and it’s not quite done. My pride will not allow me to show you photos of what the new shelves look like. They are level, and made out of real wood, and not likely to fall apart soon, and they are better than what we had, so that’s a win. I just can’t seem to take a picture where they don’t look like they were built by a Dr. Seuss bird, and possibly photographed by a second Dr. Seuss bird who is the first bird’s enemy. But I did fill two cartons with stuff to throw away, which is always nice. 

In my defense, I have built things out of wood before, but I’ve never built something that has to fit inside something else, and it involved more precise  measuring than is . . . customarily my style. 

Anyway, we delivered the bomb. I mean we found the foley mill. I mean I built some shelves. I mean we started making some applesauce!

MONDAY
Garlicky pork chops, homemade applesauce, baked potato

So Monday I actually finished making the applesauce. I spooned the cooked apples, peels and cores and all, into the foley mill. If you’re not familiar with this device, it’s basically a pot with a strainer for a bottom, and in the middle is a crank. When you turn the crank, a tilted blade forces the apples (or whatever) through the strainer, so only the soft, edible parts get pushed through the holes. Turning the crank also makes a spindle scrape the underside of the strainer, depositing the applesauce (or whatever) into the bowl below. It also has three little brackets so the mill stays in place over the bowl while you crank it.

Actually I have a picture!

Just a nicely-designed device. Of course you can peel and core your apples before cooking them, and then you won’t have to strain them out afterward; but it’s so much easier this way (assuming you’re not using a recipe that includes a trip to Home Depot), and cooking the peels along with the insides gives you more flavor and color (if you have nice apples!). Apples that are red, for instance, will result in a lovely dusty rose-colored applesauce. 

When I got it all cranked through, I put the apple pulp into the slow cooker with some butter, white sugar, and lots of cinnamon, and let that go all day. 

Pork chops were on sale, and I really struggle with cooking pork chops so they’re not dry. I thought Nagi might have a solution, and she did! She has a recipe called “Just a Great Pork Chop Marinade,” and even though it’s made with soy sauce, brown sugar, and garlic, she promised it just tastes savory, not Asian, and she was right. It also has dijon mustard, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. I marinated the chops for several hours, and then broiled them right up under the broiler (the recipe calls for grilling, which would have been nice). SCRUMPTIOUS.

I will absolutely be returning to this recipe. These are probably the juiciest pork chops I have ever made. 

I threw a bunch of potatoes in the oven for 40 minutes or so, and we had the pork, applesauce, and baked potatoes for a very fine fall meal. 

Someday the kids are going to have applesauce made from actual good apples, and they’re gonna realize . . . well, you know what, it doesn’t matter. They liked the applesauce, and this was a very popular meal. And I delivered the bomb. 

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps

Tuesday Damien and I and a kid spent all day on the road and at a largely useless and frustrating doctor’s appointment, so I was very glad I had planned an easy dinner: Buffalo chicken wraps. 

Or, I was glad until I realized I had planned it, but not actually bought any buffalo chicken. A small error! Damien gallantly zipped off to the store and bought some, and we had a late but popular meal: Tortillas with buffalo chicken, blue cheese or ranch dressing, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, shredded pepper jack cheese, and crunchy fried onions.

We still have a giant backlog of tortillas in the house, so get ready for more wraps. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken with chickpeas and piquant onions, Jerusalem salad, yogurt sauce, pita

Wednesday I made a dish I haven’t made for quite some time: Chicken with chickpeas. It’s a middle eastern-ish recipe and none of the steps are hard, but I’m always a little surprised at how many elements it has. I guess I have it in my head that it’s an INCREDIBLY SIMPLE meal, and it really isn’t. It’s just regular-easyish. 

Anyway, I got the chicken marinating, cut up the onions, and made the lemony onions side dish and the yogurt sauce and the Jerusalem salad. Tons of color!

I’ll put all those recipes at the end. Oops, I guess I don’t have a card for Jerusalem salad. Well, it’s just tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh cilantro and/or parsley, some olive oil, and lemon juice, salt and pepper. All of these dishes really want fresh lemon juice, if you can manage it. Bottled lemon juice always has kind of a stale stank to it, so if you’re going to use it in a dish that doesn’t get cooked, I always try to do fresh. 

Then when I got home, it really was very simple and easy to just chunk the chicken and chickpeas and onions into the oven. This recipe has you marinating the chicken in a spiced yogurt sauce, which makes the meat moist as heck, but even more importantly gives the skin a magnificent texture. 

The marinade kind of melds onto the skin and make it, like, chicken ultraskin. 

Sometimes I keep the chicken warm while giving the chickpeas some extra time in the oven to crisp up, but it was already super late and we were starving, so I just served it, along with some store-bought pita. I do like chickpeas with a little crunch, but soft and savory is also very good!

Really wonderful meal. 

On Wednesday I realized I had never picked the peaches from my tree, which is funny, because last year at this time, I was picking for the 476th time and blanching and freezing them as fast as I could, and still being neck-deep in peaches. I guess it’s pretty common for peach trees to be on a schedule like this. 

The peaches this year may be few but some of them are HUGE. 

This is not some kind of optical illusion photo. They’re the biggest peaches I’ve ever seen! They’re delicious, too, super juicy and nectar-y. I’m saving the pits from the biggest ones, and I’ll try to sprout them. Last year I used a method where you dry the pits for a few days, pry them open to get the inner seed out, and plant them in pots in the ground in the fall, so they get cold stratified and can sprout easily in the spring. 

I did this with six seeds, as I recall, and got two good seedlings, which are now in the ground and doing great. I have hopes of turning the side yard, which is currently overgrown with goldenrod and wild grapes, into a little orchard. Right now it has the apple tree, a very young peach tree, a valiant blueberry bush, and of course the ubiquitous wild raspberries. I would like a cherry tree, but I’ve struggled with fungus on cherry trees in the past, so maybe I will do a nut tree in the spring. Lucky me! Always something to look forward to. (The other new peach tree is by the duck pen, so eventually they will have some natural shade and, presumably, some windfall snacks. I’m not worried about them eating the pits because they routinely mooch around the existing peach tree, and they have figured out how not to eat pits! Which makes two things they have figured out. The first thing is screwing.)

THURSDAY
Rigatoni alla disgraziata with homemade cheese and homemade bread

Thursday I overextended myself, and I don’t even know why. I guess I was cooking my feelings, and also I had some pretty little eggplants from the garden that also wanted to be cooked. 

The plan was rigatoni alla disgraziata,

Jump to Recipe

which is a meatless but very hearty pasta dish. It is not difficult. You toast up a bunch of breadcrumbs in oil, and then take them out of the pan and fry up your eggplants in more oil. 

No need to peel them. But at this point I realized I didn’t have as much eggplant as I thought, so I added some diced onion. Then you add tomato sauce to the eggplant, then you boil up some rigatoni, mix the breadcrumbs into the eggplant sauce, and stir it all together with torn-up mozzarella, and top it with grated parmesan. I also tarted up the jarred sauce with some chopped tomatoes and fresh basil. 

I decided to make fresh mozzarella cheese for this, and that was a good idea, except I decided to make a double recipe, and I was unsure about the timing of the chemistry part of it when you’re making a double batch. I really struggled with getting the almost-finished cheese to a high enough temperature before stretching it. The stretching is what gives it that stretchy, string-like texture, but it’s really hard to stretch hot cheese without gloves! I don’t know why I don’t have gloves!

Anyway, the cheese tasted fine but was very grainy, because of the heating/stretching issue. 

I hope that, because it’s folded into the pasta and is supposed to melt a bit, it wouldn’t matter much, and it didn’t matter that much, but it was a little sad. I was a little sad. 

I decided to cheer myself up by making bread, and that was where I really went wrong. First the dough rose right out of the bowl and slopped itself all over the windowsill and floor, and then I decided to get cute and make twelve separate little loaves, and then I realized I was LATE, like “text your teenager and promise you have not forgotten them” late. So I zipped through the process as fast as I could, which, believe it or not, does not produce the highest quality of food.

The good news is, we ate so late, everyone was happy to see anything hot and ready. I did take some pictures, but they’re not great, and it was not a great meal. These are decent recipes which I recommend! Sometimes things just don’t come together, and we all live to fight another day. I did buy some gloves for future cheese. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular old pizza, no fancy tricks. And that’s-a my story. We live to fight another day. 

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Banana bread or muffins

adapted from Quick Breads, Soups & Stews by Mary Gubser

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 ripe bananas, mashed well
  • 1/2 cup chopped nuts optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375.

  2. In one bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt together.

  3. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well in between. Add mashed bananas and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients and blend well. If you're adding nuts, fold them in.

  5. Grease 12 muffin tins or a loaf pan and pour the batter in.

  6. Bake 20 minutes or longer, until the top is slightly browned.

 

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Cumin chicken thighs with chickpeas in yogurt sauce

A one-pan dish, but you won't want to skip the sides. Make with red onions and cilantro in lemon juice, pita bread and yogurt sauce, and pomegranates, grapes, or maybe fried eggplant. 

Ingredients

  • 18 chicken thighs
  • 32 oz full fat yogurt, preferably Greek
  • 4 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp cumin, divided
  • 4-6 cans chickpeas
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 red onions, sliced thinly

For garnishes:

  • 2 red onions sliced thinly
  • lemon juice
  • salt and pepper
  • a bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 32 oz Greek yogurt for dipping sauce
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

Instructions

  1. Make the marinade early in the day or the night before. Mix full fat Greek yogurt and with lemon juice, four tablespoons of water, and two tablespoons of cumin, and mix this marinade up with chicken parts, thighs or wings. Marinate several hours. 

    About an hour before dinner, preheat the oven to 425.

    Drain and rinse four or five 15-oz cans of chickpeas and mix them up with a few glugs of olive oil, the remaining tablespoon of cumin, salt and pepper, and two large red onions sliced thin.

    Spread the seasoned chickpeas in a single layer on two large sheet pans, then make room among the chickpeas for the marinated chicken (shake or scrape the extra marinade off the chicken if it’s too gloppy). Then it goes in the oven for almost an hour. That’s it for the main part.

    The chickpeas and the onions may start to blacken a bit, and this is a-ok. You want the chickpeas to be crunchy, and the skin of the chicken to be a deep golden brown, and crisp. The top pan was done first, and then I moved the other one up to finish browning as we started to eat. Sometimes when I make this, I put the chickpeas back in the oven after we start eating, so some of them get crunchy and nutty all the way through.

Garnishes:

  1. While the chicken is cooking, you prepare your three garnishes:

     -Chop up some cilantro for sprinkling if people like.

     -Slice another two red onions nice and thin, and mix them in a dish with a few glugs of lemon juice and salt and pepper and more cilantro. 

     -Then take the rest of the tub of Greek yogurt and mix it up in another bowl with lemon juice, a generous amount of minced garlic, salt, and pepper. 

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

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Rigatoni alla disgraziata

A hearty, meatless pasta dish with eggplant, breadcrumbs, and mozzarella

Ingredients

  • 2 lg eggplants with ends cut off, cut into one-inch pieces (skin on)
  • salt
  • 3/4 cup olive oil, plus a little extra for frying bread crumbs
  • 3 cups bread crumbs
  • 3 lbs rigatoni
  • 6 cup marinara sauce
  • 1 lb mozzarella
  • grated parmesan for topping

Instructions

  1. In a very large skillet or pot, heat up a little olive oil and toast the bread crumbs until lightly browned. Remove from pan and set aside.

  2. Put the 3/4 cup of olive oil in the pan, heat it again, and add the cubed eggplant. Cook for several minutes, stirring often, until eggplant is soft and slightly golden. Salt to taste. Add in sauce and stir to combine and heat sauce through. Keep warm.

  3. In another pot, cook the rigatoni in salted water. Drain. Add the pasta to the eggplant and sauce mixture. Add in the toasted breadcrumbs and the shredded mozzarella. Stir to combine. Serve with grated parmesan on top.

 

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French bread

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

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

What’s for supper? Vol. 431: Not a bad record for this vicinity

Happy Friday! This week, we launched something I’ve been wanting to do for years: Kids Make Supper. That’s the snappiest name I can think of, but the concept is sufficiently thrilling to me. The kids all kinda sorta know how to cook and bake, but I wanted them know how to to plan and make an entire meal for the family. So this week, we started! With Corrie, whose natural habitat is the kitchen. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with French bread pizza

I honestly have no memory of Saturday. I suppose we went shopping. I remember making like three extra stops, but I forget why. 

Oh you know what, we had a great dessert, though, because I planned in advance! We had cherry-blueberry crisp with rhubarb ice cream. 

Now I do remember. On Friday I harvested my first rhubarb from my beloved rhubarb plant, which I put in the ground a few years ago, and whose mother plant is a descendent from a plant the nursery guy’s grandfather brought over on a boat from the old country. 

It never turned red, but it was definitely ripe. I made two batches of rhubarb ice cream more or less following this recipe from Zoë Bakes, except rather than reserving some of the rhubarb mix as a sauce to pour on top, I just folded it in to the ice cream after it came out of the machine. 

I also pitted a bunch of cherries. I had bought something like eight pounds of cherries because they were $2.49 a pound and I was powerless to do otherwise. 

Here’s what your hands look like if you’re having a good July: Garden dirt under your nails, cherry juice on your fingers. 

In retrospect, maybe I should have cleaned my nails before I started pitting cherries, but ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? (P.S. this line expresses one of the dumbest ideas ever. I just want that on the record.) 

So I did those things on Friday night, and then on Saturday afternoon, it was super quick to put together a cherry-blueberry crisp. The last few times I attempted a fruit crisp, it was definitely fruit, but definitely not crisp; so I tried a recipe with oats, and it turned out GREAT. 

The recipe calls for shredded coconut on the topping, but not everyone here likes coconut, so I skipped that. It was perfect as is. Mayyyybe a tiny bit too sweet, but nobody was complaining. The tart rhubarb ice cream really set off the juicy, syrupy fruit, and it was truly everything a summer dessert should be. I was very pleased. 

There’s enough rhubarb left on the plant to make one other thing, but I haven’t decided what, yet. 

I see from my camera roll that we also went to the pond on Saturday! Here is Benny catching a water lily I tossed to her. 

Oh what a life. 

SUNDAY
Grilled pork chops, smoked chicken wings, grilled corn on the cob

Damien is still learning the ropes of his new (to him) grill, which has a charcoal part, a propane part, AND a smoker. AND it’s next to the patio, which is nice! His old grill (the late great Interchangeable Cinder Block Meat Altar Situation) was marooned way off on the other side of the yard under the trees, and it was lonely. 

It’s under a tarp here, but you can see the new location. And see my pretty patio! Lots of stuff blooming, including a bunch of violas that seeded themselves in the cracks between the bricks; and lots about to bloom. 

Sunday we were supposed to go to the ocean, but one kid after another got sick. And each one was sick with a separate thing! Amazing. So we decided to be smart and stay home, and Damien grilled and smoked a bunch of meat and corn in the husk. 

I don’t think I’ve ever had grilled pork chops before. Man, they were delicious. Excellent spicy crust outside, juicy inside. 

For the pork, he made a marinade of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and a few tablespoons of brown sugar, garlic powder, salt an pepper. 
For the chicken wings, he made a sugar rub with lots of cayenne pepper and paprika, and then smoked them for a few hours; then he slathered them with BBQ sauce and grilled them long enough to make them sticky. SO GOOD. 

On Sunday, we also set up the tent Damien got last year for $5. It hadn’t been out of the bag yet, so we had no idea what to expect. 

It’s very nice! Much more spacious on the inside than it looked like it would be, and it’s just a very pleasant design, and does not smell weird or anything. 

It does have a rain fly; we just hadn’t put it on yet in this picture. Damien and I have both been tent camping before, but not together, so we’re going to do that this weekend. 

MONDAY
Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes MADE BY CORRIE

Corrie’s big cooking day! She really did it 90% on her own. I just supervised and clarified, and occasionally demonstrated.

First she made an egg, milk, salt, and pepper mixture for the chicken, and let that soak for a while. 

Several hours later, she peeled a bunch of potatoes, cut them into smaller pieces, and left them in a pot of cool water. Then she preheated the oven and put a stick of butter and a cup of oil in it.

Then she added spices to flour and dredged all the chicken in it

and carefully added the floured chicken, skin side down, to the hot pan of butter and oil. Then she started boiling the potatoes. 

About half an hour later, when it was sufficiently browned on the bottom, she flipped it. 

She did need some help for this part, because we were making so much chicken that you really had to get your whole arm into the hot oven, and it was tricky. 

While the other side of the chicken was cooking, she drained the cooked potatoes (again, I helped with this, because she’s just ten and that was a big pot!) and added milk and butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes, and mashed them.

And then the chicken was done, and she served her meal!

She was very proud of herself, and rightly so. Everything was delicious. And because it was her meal, we had No Vegetable. 

We went to the pond Monday evening, too! Lovely spot, and there was only one other family there, and for some reason they left when it started raining. 

TUESDAY
Koren beef bowl, cucumber salad

Tuesday we somehow had three separate medical appointments that couldn’t be rescheduled, so we divode and conquered. More or less. 

Got home, made a quick and tasty meal of Korean beef bowl

Jump to Recipe

over rice in the Instant Pot, and a simple cucumber salad. 

Jump to Recipe

and it was nice. I did take the time to use fresh garlic and ginger, which really pays off. 

This photo was taken on top of the hamper in my bedroom, which leads me to believe I was hiding from my family. 

WEDNESDAY
BLTs, salt and vinegar chips, sharky fruit salad, ice cream pie

A birthday! A birthday for Lucy.  She and Sophia and Irene made a couple of ice cream pies. One was a pineapple, for the TV show Psych (?) and I guess one was Homer 

and because she didn’t want a cake this year, I decided to make the most festive fruit salad I could think of:

I tried to make those banana dolphins, but the bananas were so ripe, the snouts kept falling off. She still liked it, though. 

All the kids got her weird and thoughtful presents and feted her throughout the day, and it was a nice time. 

Happy birthday, my deary dear. 

Wednesday night, we had a little tragedy, though. Bebe the duck never came home with the others. We tromped around in the dark for a while looking for her, but there was no trace. We hoped maybe she just wandered too far and was holing up under some leaves somewhere, but it did not seem likely.  

THURSDAY
Caprese chicken burgers, chips

Thursday we looked again for Bebe, but I guess she’s just gone. Probably a coyote took her. Poor Bebe, she was my favorite. All ducks carry on and make a ruckus for no reason, but Bebe elevated this to incredible levels. She was the loudest, rowdiest, silliest, bossiest, nuttiest duck ever, and I will really miss her!

Here she is, executing a classic Bebe move of wandering off from the flock, yelling at them, getting stuck in some branches, and then falling into the water. 

 

I hope she bit the hell out of whatever caught her. 

So on Thursday, I drove out to Spofford to pick up some SLATE. I am still a brick girl at heart, but gosh, slate is beautiful. 

I am going to use it to pave the area in front of the front door. It’s a similar process to laying bricks for the patio, but it’s a much smaller area, and the pieces of slate are much bigger than bricks, so I’m lying to myself that it’s going to be a simple and fast project. 

While I was gone, Damien and the kids got supper together. My garden is making SO much basil, it’s wonderful. 

I thanked Damien for always being so supportive of my projects, and he said, “I love your projects. Everything you do either increases the property value, or makes it completely unsellable.” And he’s right! Sounds perfect to me. 

I forgot to put the fruit salad away overnight and it’s been incredibly hot in the house all week, so I just fed the leftovers to the ducks. They were understandably slow to warm up to it., but eventually they ate it. The thing about ducks is, eventually they will eat everything. 

FRIDAY
Macarona bil laban 

Something new! I saw a reel of this and it looked tasty. I haven’t settled on a specific recipe yet, but it’s pasta in a garlicky yogurt sauce with fresh mint, with toasted pine nuts on top. It’s often served with spiced ground beef, but I’m just doing the meatless version for today. Prolly gonna make some plain pasta, too, so people have options. 

We had an exciting moment when my daughter texted us about a lost duckling at a local store

but by the time we texted back to say we would take it, Fish and Game had located the rest of the flock and reunited the family. Which is obviously the best outcome, but we’re a little disappointed. But then Damien pointed out that it’s a wild duck and would just fly away when its wings grew in, anyway! Our domesticated ducks are not built to fly, so we don’t have to clip their wings or anything. So, all for the best. Still. Le sigh. That is the other thing about ducks: Ducks come, and ducks go. Le sigh. 

Anyway, I think I’m gonna try digging up my garlic and see if it’s done yet. If it is, I’ll make supper with it! What a joy to cook with home-grown food. 

Also, wish us luck for our camping trip on Sunday! And look at us, trying new things in our old age! I didn’t expect that, but I’m digging it. But yes, we are going to bring a power pack and a coffee machine. Because we are old. 

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Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

 

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Korean Beef Bowl

A very quick and satisfying meal with lots of flavor and only a few ingredients. Serve over rice, with sesame seeds and chopped scallions on the top if you like. You can use garlic powder and powdered ginger, but fresh is better. The proportions are flexible, and you can easily add more of any sauce ingredient at the end of cooking to adjust to your taste.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar (or less if you're not crazy about sweetness)
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 3-4 inches fresh ginger, minced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3-4 lb2 ground beef
  • scallions, chopped, for garnish
  • sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.

  2. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.

  3. Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds. 

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spicy cucumber salad

A spicy, zippy side dish that you can make very quickly. 

Ingredients

  • 3-4 cucumbers, sliced thin (peeling not necessary)
  • 1/4 cup rice vinegar or white vinegar
  • 1+ tsp honey
  • 1 tsp sesame seeds
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1/4 tsp kosher salt

Optional:

red pepper, diced

  • 1/2 red onion diced

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Serve immediately, or chill to serve later (but the longer you leave it, the softer the cukes will get)