Tag: gardening

What’s for supper? Vol. 429: Bao chicka bao bao

Happy Friday! The heat has broken and we are all back in humanform, more or less. Hope you are same. 

It was the second full week of my car being in the shop. I have hope of getting it back Monday, which may or may not make me less crazy.

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers, pork fried rice, mozzarella sticks

I had a ton of pork left over from last week’s char siu, so I chopped up about 1/2 of it and put it in some quickie fried rice. Here is my basic fried rice recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I did use fresh ginger and garlic, which is always worthwhile, and also chopped up some sugar snap peas. Corrie helped me make it, and confided in me that she likes cooking because she just likes being in the kitchen. ME TOO. 

The shopping turn kid chose mozzarella sticks for the frozen food supplement, and it looks like we had that, fried rice, reheated quesadillas, and a smidge of spaghetti carbonara. 

Very important to stay carbohydrated in the summer, ho ho. 

SUNDAY
Pork buns, rice, watermelon, spicy cucumber salad

Sunday was when it really got hot in earnest. Our parish had a Corpus Christi procession after Mass, which I dearly love, but last time we did it, one of our kids fainted, and this time, I’m wearing an air cast, and one kid was already melting down and the rest of us were just sort of melting in general; and you can tell yourself, “Hey, if the priest can do it in several layers of synthetic fabrics, I can, too!” and that’s true, but that doesn’t mean it’s smart. So we went home. 

I gathered up all the fans we could spare and tried a new recipe: BAOZI. Pork buns! You know that feeling of sitting in a Chinese restaurant and they bring the bamboo steamer over just for you, and you take the top off and inside, all snuggled together, is happiness in bun form? I wanted that. 

So I chopped up the last bunch of leftover char siu

(THREE MEALS with this pork! I’m gonna do this more often — cook an extra bunch of char siu and save the rest for another meal or two. Here’s the char siu recipe I used, by the way) and then started making the dough. 

I returned to dear Nagi for the bao buns recipe. It’s a very different kind of dough from anything I’m used to making: It calls for a cup of corn starch per two cups of flour, and then you let it rise for two hours, and then you mix in baking powder. This results in a really pillowy soft and tender dough.

I was doubtful I had chopped the pork filling up small enough, because it seemed kinda soupy, so I threw it in the food processor, and it came out a bit more cohesive. 

It wasn’t until later that I realized I completely forgot to cook the filling! Duh! Don’t ask me why I thought a mixture with cornstarch in the sauce didn’t need to be cooked. I guess I figured it was already such a weird recipe, all bets were off. This is the kind of thinking that led me to do what I thought was just shrugging my shoulders and trusting the directions when I was in seventh grade in Mrs. Dakin’s sewing class, and I was making my very first skirt and I had cut out two bell-shaped pieces of fabric, and it said to sew the long edges together. That’s what it said!

So . . . I sewed the long edge to the long edge on one piece, and then I sewed the long edge to the long edge on the other piece. And ended up with two extremely skinny skirts. THAT’S WHAT IT SAID, MRS. DAKIN. So that’s what I did.  

Anyway, that’s how I learned how to use a seam ripper. 

Anyway, I watched the video of how to shape the buns a few times, and then did my best. Some of them turned out nice

Some of them less nice! But I made a double recipe and ended up with 24 good-sized, if not good-shaped, buns. 

I did make a couple of videos showing the process — one in normal time, one speeded up), if you want to see what it looks like when someone is making bao buns for the very first time! It would absolutely have been easier if the pork mixture had been cooked properly, but it wasn’t super hard.

For some reason when I use my bamboo steamers, every other single time, I have put off making liners until the kitchen is already steamy and I’m a little hysterical, and I end up just smashing something in there, and it doesn’t go well. So this time, I didn’t do that! Earlier in the day, I traced the steamers onto parchment paper, cut the circles out, and then folded them like paper snowflakes and snipped out steam holes. So the whole process went better. 

I have two large steamers and one small one, each with two layers, and I was able to steam all 24 buns in at the same time. 

Ladies and gentlemen, they were excellent. EXCELLENT. 

They were cooked perfectly, incredibly light and fluffy inside with a beautifully tender, satiny outside. 

The ones in the smaller steamer were, predictably, a little crowded, but they still steamed up fine. 

The only photo I got of the inside is not actually a great example; it’s one that got a little squished. Most of them were loftier than this. 

It does show that there’s not quite enough filling, though, which is the only thing I will do differently next time (besides actually making the filling right!). I think everyone liked them, and it was overall a great success. Yay!

As you can see, I also made rice, cut up some watermelon, and made a quick cucumber salad. Great meal. 

The cucumber salad is a super easy side dish that I really like. It’s piquant and refreshing, and you can make it as sweet or spicy as you like.

Here’s that recipe: 

Jump to Recipe

And that’s my story! Yay bao buns! Yay for future us, who will definitely be having more bao buns. 

MONDAY
Honey mustard kielbasa, potato, and brussels sprouts 

Monday was actually so terrible. I think it was in the high nineties, and I understand that’s normal for some of you, but our houses are not designed for that, and our bodies are not used to it, and also the air conditioner was stuck in the attic for various stupid reasons. So we sat in front of fans and ate ice pops and went in the pool, which, now I’m embarrassed to say that it was a terrible day, because that doesn’t sound so bad! 

What happens is, when it gets hot, my brain scrambles, and I get tearful and irrational and just generally intolerant of life. It’s not great. I did make supper, however. I made a kielbasa, red potato, and brussels sprouts one-pan meal. 

Here’s that recipe: 

Jump to Recipe

The recipe says “cabbage,” but I finally wised up that I’m the only one who likes cabbage, so now we have it with brussels sprouts. 

I made the honey mustard sauce, cooked the food for about 15 minutes, then drizzled the sauce over it and shoved it back in. Usually I stir up the food before or after adding the sauce, but it was so dang hot, I just let it be. It turned out so much better that way! The sauce had more of a chance to permeate the food where it was, and it developed a really lovely little glazed situation, with the outer leaves of the brussels sprouts getting a little crunchy char. 

Delicious. 

Eventually I will get around to updating the recipe card.

You can also make this with broccoli for the vegetable. It’s your life! 

TUESDAY
WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER

Oh mercy it was so hot. It was one of those days when you go in for a five-minute check-in with your kid’s therapist and 30 minutes later, she’s handing you tissues and reassuring you that parents’ mental health is a legitimate part of the treatment plan. SIGHHH. 

For supper, I decided I would cook some chicken in the Instant Pot, because that doesn’t heat up the kitchen much. But guess what! I plugged it in, and all the lights started flashing and it started beeping in a really ominous way. It’s probably just a sensor that needs to be cleaned, but that involves taking the bottom off and messing with electronics, which is not recommended when you’re suffering from profound brain scramble.

So Damien said he would come home with charcoal and grill the chicken  when he got back. But guess what! I had stuffed the freezer with so much ice pops and bananas and stuff that there was no room for the meat, so I left it in the fridge, and when I opened it, I discovered it had gone bad.

No matter, I could switch to pork.

But guess what! The pork had also gone bad. 

You know, I feel that you should be able to buy pork and chicken on Saturday and keep it in the fridge until Tuesday, and it should not go bad. I don’t feel like that’s unreasonable. But nevertheless. 

So, we did something I almost never do: I told everyone to just find something for supper. I myself had a couple of PBJ sandwiches, and I truly don’t know what everyone else ate. I was grateful the kids are old enough that I can do this, but mainly I was just miserable because it was so hot. 

I think it was that evening that Elijah pushed through our various personal difficulties and got the air conditioner unstuck, and Damien got that set up in the living room, and WHEWWWWWWWWW. 

WEDNESDAY
Grilled pork ribs and chips

Wednesday Corrie had her pal over, and while they played in the pool, I got caught up on some gardening. It had dropped down to a temperature where I had to take breaks and drink water in the shade every half hour or so, but it didn’t feel like the sun was screaming at you as soon as you stepped out the door, so that was nice! 

Then when Damien got home, he brought pork chops and grilled them. Here is the dog, acting as Remote Supervisor with Extreme Longing. 

I just seasoned the chops heavily (and I mean HEAVILY) with salt and pepper, and Damien grilled them to perfection. 

I think we had chips for a side. Perfect. 

THURSDAY
Roast chicken and pasta salad

Thursday I had a post-heat-wave surge of energy and did I guess a landscaping project in the front of the house, although that seems like too professional and grandiose a description for what I did.

I had a wheelbarrow full of day lilies I had dug up several weeks ago. Every week or so, I threw a little water on them, and let me tell you, those mofos are tough. They actually produced flowers while they were in the wheelbarrow, without any soil besides what was clinging to their roots. So I did truck up a bunch of compost from the back yard and spread it on a bare spot, but I realized that might be overkill, so I just basically threw the lilies onto the spot where I want them to grow (one side of where the porch used to be), and I think they’ll be fine. 

Then I dug up a bunch more lilies and also moved them. Then I dug up and moved a bunch of rocks, and then, without a real plan, I dug up a giant concrete block that used to be in front of the porch, and was just sort of hanging out in front of the porchless house. 

You can see that, since we tore down the porch and then I realized we couldn’t afford a sunroom, we’ve been using a pallet on cinder blocks as a front stoop, which is a little demoralizing. And meanwhile, this cement block is marooned next to the driveway, getting tripped over. 

I could budge it with my shovel, but I most definitely couldn’t move it myself. So I bribed two teenagers and slowly, tediously, maddeningly inefficiently, WE MOVED IT. 

First I levered it up with a shovel, and one of the kids would jam a rock under it. 

Then I levered it up from the rock, and they would stick more rocks under it. Then two of us would lever it up from those rocks, and the second kid would stick more rocks in. It was just a couple inches at a time, and I’m so incredibly impressed at how much these kids mostly kept their remarks to themselves until I had my back turned. They are really very great kids, and this was a really dumb and dangerous project!

So eventually we managed to lever it up until it was nearly vertical, and I dug a little trench on the other side, and then we hooked a strap around it and the two kids pulled on one side and I pushed on the other, and we flipped it.

You can see by the rocky bottom that no one has ever moved this block before, and it was poured directly onto the ground when they made it. Which is the normal and sensible way to do things. 

So we all took a little break and then we repeated the process, and flipped it again, so this time it was right side up.

I DID measure it, and I was aware that it wasn’t high enough to make a step to get to the door. But I figured it would be better than what we had before. 

What I didn’t anticipate is how far from the door it would end up. Even though we had spent the last hour or so straining our muscles to the limit to move it as far as we did, I was convinced we could just sort of nudge it into place to get it the final ten inches or so.

I was wrong! It’s that freaking last mile problem! 

But it was already 4:45, so I just shoved some cinder blocks in there so no one would break an ankle in the gap, and ran inside to make supper. I put some chicken drumsticks and thighs on a pan, drizzled them with olive oil, and seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cumin, and roasted them at 450. 

Again: Usually when I roast chicken parts, I will put it on a rack and flip it halfway through cooking. Instead, I elected instead to take a shower and just let the chicken cook. And guess what, it was perfect. The meat was super juicy, the skin was wonderfully crisp, and yeah, I’m gonna do it that was from now on. 

I also made some unremarkable pasta salad. I cooked some farfalle, drained and cooled it under cold water, and dumped on a bunch of Italian salad dressing, some crumbled feta, and some basil from the garden. Perfectly adequate. 

Sad to say, I didn’t find anything especially interesting in the dirt where we were digging. There are usually some vintage beer cans or sometimes a limb from some long-defunct cartoon show

or some mysterious bits of hardware or old-fashioned tools or pottery. Once one of the kids found a key from a door on a ship! This time, all we got was a knife and two spoons.

So, I totally understand forks and whatnot ending up in the back yard. You were eating out there, kids were playing, you were shaking out a tablecloth, and so on. These things happen. What I don’t get is how they end up in the front, where there is very little besides a driveway and then the road. What happened? What was the mechanism? I can only imagine a George Booth-type guy going, “It’s a beautiful night, hon. Want to step out front and throw some cutlery around?” Maybe it was really hot. Things happen. 

In any case, by evening, it was so chilly, I wore a sweater to water my garden. New Hampshire weather needs to access its uncrazy side. 

My gardens are doing okay, considering I wasn’t planning to do any gardening this year. 

Corn, pumpkins, and rhubarb:

I have since planted some more corn, since this came up kind of sparse!

Here’s my poor strawberry patch, that I really neglected and it shows:

and we have garlic, onions, basil, and potatoes over here, with two peach saplings in buckets:

and a few eggplants I threw in late, and which I couldn’t find any more fence to protect, so they look like dangerous criminals in an old dog crate:

and my mostly-marigold mixed seeds are chugging along. This is about half of them:

and I planted tons of zinnias, nasturtiums, and tithonias in pots, and some other stuff that I can’t remember. I also planted some broken peony roots and a bunch of lupine seeds, with no luck yet. They may just need a while, so I’ll keep watering them. 

The two $2 dry pomegranate sticks I got on clearance at Walmart are leafing out nicely! Kind of excited about that. 

Pretty good year for all the old stand-byes, the mock orange, the stella d’oro, the roses, the hydrangeas,

and the catmint. I managed to wreck all the sunflower seeds I had saved, but I got a volunteer anyway!

I will resist giving a report on the rest of my flowers, as I’m even boring myself at this point. I do have a little mystery on my hands, though, that maybe some of you knowledgeable folks can help with. The little tree in front, that grew up from the root stock after the apple tree got eaten? I still don’t know what it is. 

My best guess is Red Baron Crabapple. It did have deep pink blossoms in the spring, and the leaves were dark red in the spring, but I don’t recall it turning orange in the fall. Also the fruit is kind of inconclusive. 

I tried cutting it open to see if it has five chambers or a pit, and it was, as I say, inconclusive. I guess we’ll find out! 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Regular old, begular old pizza. Goodness, what a long post this turned into. And a long week. But it’s Friday! Last Friday, I managed to complain about someone else in adoration in such a way that my neurodivergent friends are mad at me and Facebook took my post down for threatening violence. So that’s the bar to clear this week. Excelsior. 

 

Print

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.

Print

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)

Print

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400. 

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

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

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

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

    Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 428: There must be … fifty ways to stretch a meatball

Happy Friday! Let’s hop to it! Here’s what we ate this week: 

Oh, but first, last Friday I made something I don’t normally: French bread pizza. I got store-bought bread but made homemade mozzarella , which is very soft and mild. 

The kids love frozen french bread pizza, so I thought the homemade version would be popular. I WAS WRONG. Why? Who knows. Oh well! 

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet (?) 

I have no memory of Saturday’s dinner. Damien and I went to the No Kings rally, and I must have made supper at some point?  Here’s a collection of signs I saw. 

Possibly my favorite:

Huge crowd, great energy, no violence or litter or unpleasantness, just an extremely diverse crowd of people, including lots of people who were pretty clearly at their first protest. I got my picture in the local paper!  We’ll definitely be going again. 

SUNDAY
Chicago-style hot dogs, fries

Sunday I went shopping and then we had a low key father’s day, with a few of the big kids coming over for supper. We had Chicago-style hot dogs, which are supposed to be on poppy seed buns, which I couldn’t find; but we had mustard and then “dragged them through the garden” with pickle spears, fresh tomatoes, chopped onions, pickled peppers, and celery salt. I skipped the pickle relish because I didn’t think anyone would eat it. 

Looks like I ran out of room before I put any peppers on, actually. 

I made some brownies from a mix (and the kids did not miss their chance to torment me about having bought brownie mix on purpose for the first time in my life, after a long and tragic history of being incredibly stupid about brownie mix for some reason). Ice cream on warm brownies topped with hot fudge sauce, mini M&Ms, whipped cream from a can, cherries. 

Unsophisticated and delicious. Americans really get some things right. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, raw vegetables

Monday I suddenly found the giant pile of scrap wood in front of the house intolerable, so I flung it onto the other, even gianter pile of scrap wood on the side of the driveway. Follow me for more curb appeal tips. I’ll fling you, too. 

In the afternoon, I started some pork marinating for Tuesday. Corrie helped with this. This recipe has a certain appeal for her:

namely, that I used an entire tube of red food coloring. Walmart was selling sets of food coloring for like fifty cents, so I bought uhhh all of them. In anticipation of the day when food coloring becomes outlawed but we won’t have the energy to fret about birthday cakes colored with beet juice because we will all have polio!

Then we had grilled ham and cheese and veggies. 

Also on Monday, Clara stopped by to pick up Benny for play practice, and dropped off a sample of the tarts she had made for the cast. 

It is a graham cracker poppy seed and ginger crust filled with grapefruit curd tart and topped with basil-infused whipped cream. All made from scratch, and, as far as I can tell, a recipe she invented.  I’ve been off sugar all month, but I made an exception, yes I did. I nearly wept at the marriage of flavors. It was like, I don’t know, pirouetting through a garden.

TUESDAY
Char siu, rice, pineapple

Tuesday I was still in a bit of “MUST ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING ACCOMPLISHABLE” frenzy, so first I sternly informed myself that, if I were really ever going to upcycle all those animal feed bags, I would have done it before we had eighteen of them. 

So I listed them on a “buy nothing” group, and a capable-looking woman claimed them right away. These are actually really useful items! You can use them to insulate your bird coop, lay them down for a weed barrier, use them to line a compost bin, fill them with dirt and grow potatoes, use them for outdoor trash bags (I actually do this), or make a few modifications and turn them into sturdy tote bags. Or you can just list them on Marketplace and say hail and farewell. 

I also sorted through a couple of bags of seeds I saved last summer. It was mostly marigolds, but also zinnia and something I couldn’t identify, plus lupines, and some rose hips I gathered on the island we visited last summer.

I broke open the lupine pods and set the seeds to soak, and I cut open the rose hips

and put the seeds in a bag in the fridge. Then I took my vast collection of plant pots and filled them with compost, and planted all the rest of the seeds, and sternly instructed them to grow. Accomplishable!

I actually forgot about the lupine seeds until this minute, so I hope they haven’t soaked too long. 

Speaking of soaking, though, I was extremely pleased to remember I had been marinating that pork for 24 hours. I had followed this char siu recipe from Recipe Tin Eats which has you basting the meat every half hour or so. It turns out MAGNIFICENT. 

Just perfect. Super easy, and mainly an investment of time. The pork is tender and juicy, but not shreddy like pulled pork. Just lovely in thin slices. I cut up a few pineapples and cooked a big pot of rice, and it was a great meal. 

There is quite a bit of leftover pork, so get ready for pictures of leftover pork. 

WEDNESDAY
Meatball subs, cheezy weezies

Wednesday, I spotted the glorious spectacle of one of my teenagers planning a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with the two youngest kids. I’m trying to be better about not sharing too many photos of them, but believe me, it melted my gorgon heart. My kids are turning out pretty great. 

In sadder news, we are at the point in our history where it’s exciting when ground beef falls to $3.49 a pound, and we still have eight people in the house. So I put on my thinking cap and combined a few pounds of ground beef with a few pounds of ground turkey that is cheap at Aldi, plus some breadcrumbs, which I normally use in meatballs, plus a bunch of leftover cooked rice. (I also mixed in a bunch of beaten eggs, a ton of Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder.) I got fifty good-sized meatballs out of it. 

I documented it because I’ve never stretched meatballs with rice before. So here is a picture of raw meatballs with rice. 

I’m giggling at how not-round they are. What the heck was I doing? Probably thinking about some other food. I’m always thinking about food. 

Anyway, unless I’m being fancy, I generally bake meatballs in the oven on a rack. Then I put them in a crock pot with sauce and keep them warm until supper. 

They turned out great! You really couldn’t taste the rice. You could see it

but otherwise they were completely normal meatballs. So, phew! Take that, expensive ground beef!

I spent the rest of the day tearing around doing various tasks I’ve been putting off, culminating with sorting through every last one of Corrie’s stuffed animals, packing up half to put in the attic, moving a dresser from the dining room into her newly-clean closet, and hanging a net for the rest of the stuffed animals. 

And here was my vibrantly-colored reward.

You can see in the background the trash can, brimming with exactly four items I was allowed to throw out: A pilled dollar store Christmas stocking, an especially ratty snake, a box with a shattered plastic lid, and a one-legged dinosaur with no head. Everything else Must Be Saved. I really can’t blame any of my kids for being pack rats, because I honestly had a really hard time throwing away that dinosaur. It was a dinosaur with :::memories::::. 

The super glue is to hold my brain in. Keeps falling out. 

Oh, but this made me laugh. I did Google how to stretch ground beef, but I made a small but significant typo, resulting in this response:

Normally I loathe and despise anything AI, but this time I felt kind of bad for it. It tried so hard to make sense of my question. “It seems there might be a slight misunderstanding . . . ” Story of my life, pal. 

THURSDAY

Spaghetti carbonara

Thursday it suddenly got really hot, and I was having some doubts about my plans to serve carbonara. Then it turned out three of the kids were going out for dinner with their friends, and one kid was at work, and of the two kids at home, one doesn’t like carbonara and one is neutral on carbonara, if you can imagine. To me, carbonara is still one of those things you go around telling people about, and possibly making them come over and admire!

So I was a little flummoxed about how to proceed. Was it sweating over a frying pan and steaming up the kitchen for a meal that only a few people even wanted?

The answer is: Yes, if it’s carbonara. I ended up saving out several pieces of bacon for the weird kid who doesn’t like it at all, and making two pounds of spaghetti with the rest. And you know what, it was the best carbonara I’ve ever made, and everybody liked it! 

And I had mine outside, feeling very wealthy indeed. Earlier in the week, I broke the mower and Damien fixed it and then I broke it again and he fixed it again, so I had done a bunch of mowing and weeding and mulching over the week, and dang, it’s so pretty out there in June.

And it was not too hot for carbonara! For some reason pasta with tomato sauce feels like a cold-weather dish, but you can be sweating all your limbs off and still feel good about eating carbonara. 

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

Regular old quesadillas, perfectly fine.  I’m hoping against hope that the mechanic will finish my car today. It’s been in the shop all week and I truly don’t know if the bill is going to be a “well, we’ll just tighten our belts for the rest of the month” situation, or more of a a “Merciful Lord, please make someone dumb enough to give me a loan” deal. Oh the suspense! At least we have June. And leftover pork! 

Print

Meatballs for a crowd

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 8 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

  2. Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.

  3. Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.

  4. Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve. 

Print

Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

 

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

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

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

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and taquitos

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

Note the peppers! A bona fide vegetable!

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

SUNDAY
Omelettes and hash browns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Musakhan and taboon

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

I had mine outside. 

And then I went inside and had some more!

WEDNESDAY
Regular tacos, chips and salsa

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada rice bowls, black beans with spinach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle casserole 

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

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

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

Print

taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Print

Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 422: Habemus papam! Let’s eat!

I can’t even think of a lame food pun for the title, that’s how excited I am! But before we get back to chattering about the pope, here is what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and french bread pizza

Not a very sumptuous collection of leftovers,

so I splurged a bit on these frozen pizzas that everybody likes. Damien and I also polished off the last of the butter chicken, and I can report that it used its time in the fridge very well, just getting more delicious. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, vegetables

Honestly it says “vegetables” on the blackboard menu, but I don’t think that really happened. My personal vegetable consumption has gone way, way up, but I haven’t managed to drag most of the rest of the family into that, yet. 

I did have my first asparagus harvest, though! 

You’re supposed to wait three years before you start to pick it, so that’s what I did. Now I’m wishing I had planted more! But I’m very glad I got this started. When I first started gardening, I was all about bright, showy annuals. Then I started investing a little more in perennials. A few years ago, I started thinking about what I really wanted out of life, and laid in some long-term beds. It’s just a garden, but, yanno. 

Also Sunday, I spent a few hours lopping off blackberry canes and brambles. Of which we have thousands and thousands. Wicked, wicked things. 

I comforted myself by making some rice pudding. We had quite a bit of leftover basmati rice from last week, so I excused it from Leftover Day and basically followed this recipe except I skipped the raisins

because the kids don’t like cooked raisins. I should have left them in, because I DO like cooked raisins, and I was the one who ate most of the rice pudding. I mean I ate so much that I think I shouldn’t make it again for a year or so, until I grow up. But it was wonderful pudding. All four adult duck ladies have been laying every day, and duck eggs are SUPERB for baking. 

Speaking of superb, the new ducklings have been doing just great. They’re growing insanely fast — I mean like I leave the house for two hours and they’re visibly bigger when I get back.  Lots of videos on my Facebook page if you want to see their shenanigans! 

MONDAY
Chili verde, tortilla chips

Monday was Cinqo de Mayo, which is something I didn’t even know anything about until I was in college, and it felt very global and cosmopolitan to celebrate this exotic holiday by going to Applebee’s and encountering my first avocado. Then I started to hear about how “uhhhh, no, it’s not Mexican fourth of July, STUPID” and I was like, oh, sorry. Now apparently it’s considered kind of culturally gauche to mark it at all? I truly don’t know. I saw this and felt a kinship:

The moral of this story is, cultures may shift, but ham is forever.

We had no ham or cigarettes or Aquanet in the house, but I did take May 5th as an opportunity to make chili verde, which Damien and I love and no one else does, oh well. I roasted up the tomatillos,  peppers, onions, and garlic, and then put them in the food processor with cilantro, and because I hadn’t put on my contact lenses yet, I REMEMBERED TO WEAR GLOVES. 

This is half-dumb, because yes I protect my fingers from getting peppery, but if I’m not wearing contact lenses, my eyes water because of the onions; but it’s also half-smart, because if I’m wearing glasses, I can take them off and actually read the recipe. You may THINK that the solution would be to put on contact lenses to protect eyes from both peppery fingers and oniony fumes, and then to add reading glasses to I can also see small print. However, this is not taking into account that I have lost every single one of my reading glasses, and I’m really just not ready for a beaded lanyard tethering me to the necessary glasses nestling on my bosom all day like some kind of cartoon librarian. I’m not ready!

Anyway, here is the recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I made a slight tweak: I roasted the garlic in its skin, and then just squeezed the soft insides out into the food processor. It was a bit faster than peeling all that garlic before roasting it, and the taste was great. 

I cooked the chili all day and it turned out fab. It’s been chilly and rainy all week, and this wonderfully spicy meal was very warming, and produced a decent amount of broth without me having to add any beer or extra broth. 

Served it with cilantro, shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, lime wedges, and tortilla chips.  

Yum. I think the kids had Spaghetti-o’s. 

TUESDAY 
Pizza

Tuesday were two rather draining appointments and then day 2 of digging out blackberry root balls. Again, I say: HORRIBLE plants. See how bare the dirt in in the area where I was digging? 

That’s because blackberries won’t let anything else grow! Even wild mint, which is every gardener’s invasive nightmare, got chased out of this area. 

However, eradicating blackberries is great for working out any pent-up emotions you might be harboring. I had my shovel, my Japanese gardening knife, my pickaxe, and my heavy duty tarp, and by the time I put them away for the day, I was way to tired to feel anything except hungry. 

Happily, I had made three pizzas in the morning: One plain, one pepperoni, and one black olive. Sooner or later I will have to face the fact that we’re on the cusp of becoming a two-pizza family. I used to make SIX extra large pizzas. I do make more than we will eat for one meal, because the kids like leftover pizza; but we’re not keeping up, harrrrooo. (That was just a crooning sound of sorrow for the march of time.) 

Tuesday I also made a new garden bed! Look at that tremendous soil. 

This area is near the stream and also next to the compost heap, so you could probably live off the soil alone, without even planting anything. However, I am going to plant corn this weekend. 

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, cheezy weezies

Wednesday I cleared out my pumpkin patch and heaved a bunch of compost onto it,

and then I worked on the new fence a bit, and then I dug out more compost and ferried that over to the soon-to-be corn patch. 

I would apologize for filling a food post with so many photos of dirt, but I know you guys! You like looking at pictures of dirt! Also you can see that my wattle fence held up just fine over the winter. I would like to add more this summer, but I don’t know if I will have time. I suddenly have lots of projects planned. 

Speaking of projects, of course Wednesday was the beginning of the papal conclave! I got to watch the cardinals all taking their oaths in the Sistine Chapel, and that was very cool. We Catholics are so good at drama. 

On the way home from school, one of the kids wanted to open a bank account, which always takes a million years longer than I expect. But at least we finally got it done. And I did snap this attractive photo of the bank office, with a somewhat disconcerting corporate poster. 

They’re as stable as a squirrel, great. I couldn’t really complain, because it turned out the kid didn’t have any actual cash for the $10 minimum deposit to launch the account, and neither did I, and then they said well maybe it only needed to be $5, and then they said probably a dollar would be okay, so I found some change, and she deposited that. I made sure she understood that was her Christmas present this year. 

We just had hot dogs and cheezy weezies for supper, and again I had worked up quite an appetite with my pickaxe and my buckets! Crazy how delicious a hot dog can be when you’ve been working outdoors, not to mention watching a conclave and looking for spare change. 

Wednesday night, I started marinating the meat for Thursday’s dinner, because I knew it was gonna be a busy day. Damien has been sick all week, and when I say “sick,” I mean he’s LETTING ME DO THINGS FOR HIM and SLEEPING and TAKING MEDICINE. So you know it’s pretty serious. I think it’s bronchitis, and he’s starting to feel a bit better, but it’s rough. 

THURSDAY
Chicken shawarma, fresh pita, tiramisu

Thursday was when we were celebrating Moe’s birthday, which was actually the day before. In the morning, I started the tiramisu, which is usually one of Damien’s signature dishes. I followed the  recipe he uses, except maybe I can blame the conclave, because I got distracted and mixed together the custard and the whipped cream! So rather than six layers, there were only four. Gutted, as the brits say. 

All I could do was sift some cocoa powder over the top, put it in the fridge, and hope for the best. Then I prepped all the shawarma fixings, made some garlicky yogurt sauce, and that’s when the white smoke came out! Most of the kids were at school and Damien was still conked out, so I made the ducks watch with me.

This is very exciting for Shaq, Zippy, and Tulip, because they were born in that time period when everyone was briefly a sedevacantist, so they’d never had any pope before, much less one from Chicago with Hatian grandparents and a special affection for the poor in Peru!

I did drag Sophia, Elijah, and Damien in before Leo appeared on the balcony, and wow, that was exciting. Wow, wow, wow. Here’s my camera roll, when I found it needful to take multiple photos of the TV screen, because where else am I going to find a blurry picture of the pope?

Anyway, boy, that was a thrill! Still had to make supper, though, so quick quick I started the pita dough before I had to run out for the afternoon drive (and you can see I got a couple more pictures of our local church, which had already switched from black to yellow and white bunting).

I still haven’t really settled on a good pita recipe. I ended up using this recipe from Food By Maria, and no, I didn’t read it all the way through, what do you take me for. So I was a little dismayed to find that you have to let it rise twice, and the second rise is a full hour, and that each pita bread takes six minutes to cook. Actually I think I’ve made this recipe before, and probably found it by googling “simcha fisher pita,” but I still had no idea what it said. 

I started the meat cooking about an hour before dinner, and Moe and Clara came over and chatted with me while I fried the pita, and honestly, everything turned out great. 

Shawarma was delicious. I was out of red pepper flakes, so I put Aleppo pepper in, and also I couldn’t find the garlic press, so I put the garlic cloves in a bag and hit them with a meat tenderizer, and put in big smashed chunks. When I took the chicken out of the marinade, I fished out all the garlic and strewed that over the top, along with the red onion quarters. I think I’ll do all those things from now on! 

It was completely delicious. The chicken was so tender, it didn’t need to be cut up, but had turned itself into lovely little bite-sized chunks, and the generous onion quarters sort of cuddled themselves around the chicken, and it was just a real treat all around. 

The pita was also quite good. It did not separate into two layers, but it was chewy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and had a good, rich flavor. 

I’ll probably use this recipe again, even though it was a bit of a hassle. I did two pans at once, so it took me about half an hour to fry up twelve pieces. 

Supper was very jolly! I wish everybody could have made it, but it was a good crowd. 

Then we had the tiramisu, and it was not a failure! I was afraid that, because the cream was mixed into the custard, the sweetness would be too diluted and it would taste bland; and I was afraid that I had mixed it so much that all the air would be knocked out of the cream and it would be thick and dense. Neither thing happened!

Pictures of tiramisu always look a little ghastly, for some reason, but here’s the inside:

Just so you can see how the lack of layers worked out. But it did set up nicely. Anyway, everyone liked it and I was so relieved.

Today is Moe’s awards ceremony, then tomorrow is his graduation, and then Sunday he’s moving to his new apartment, and Monday he starts his new job! Glad I got one last shawarma into the boy before off he goes. Harrrooooo. 

If you couldn’t tell by the Frog and Toad shirt and the Ferdinand the Bull tattoo, he’s going to be the new youth librarian at a public library. That was my father’s first professional job, too. He would have been very proud of Moe! I am. I’m proud of all my kids. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I have already made the mac and cheese, and we are out of milk so I made it with leftover heavy cream from the tiramisu, and I used so much cheese, I think it may be illegal. 

So, like I said, habemus papem! I don’t like every last thing I’ve heard and read about him, but I like an awful lot of it, and overall, I’m incredibly hopeful and excited. The way he speaks and the way he has comported himself so far is immensely appealing. I’m so ready for some good things to happen. And if it doesn’t, well, at least we have food. 

Print

Spicy Chili Verde

You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs pork shoulder
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for cooking
  • 2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)

For the salsa verde:

  • 4 Anaheim peppers
  • 2 habañero peppers
  • 4 jalapeño peppers
  • 4 medium onions, quartered
  • 12 tomatillos
  • 1 head garlic, cloves peeled or unpeeled
  • 1 bunch cilantro

For serving:

  • lime wedges
  • sour cream
  • additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.

  3. When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want. If you roasted the garlic in its peel, just squeeze the insides out and discard the peels.

  4. Put the tomatillos, peppers, garlic and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.

  5. In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.

  6. When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.

  7. Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.

  8. Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

Print

Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

Print

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. 

All seasons have their purpose: The eremetic art of Margaret Rose Realy

Margaret Rose Realy isn’t really an artist, she insists, even though her paintings of flowers, clouds and the Sacred Heart hang in houses all over the world. She isn’t a natural author, either, even though she’s written four books: “A Garden of Visible Prayer,” “A Catholic Gardener’s Spiritual Almanac,” “A Garden Catechism,” and “Planting with Prayer.” 

“The only reason I did it is because God asked me to,” she said. 

Listening to God is one of the few things Realy, 70, will admit to being skilled at. She is, in some ways, a professional: She’s a Benedictine oblate, associated with a local monastery in Michigan, who has lived an eremitic life marked by silence, solitude and prayer for many years. Realy follows the rule of St. Benedict, which she calls “a gentle rule.” 

The silver-haired, soft-spoken woman whose chronic health struggles have made it harder and harder for her to move seems like mildness personified. She is a master gardener and says that working among flowers has brought her closer to God. Her gardens are a form of “gentle evangelization.”

But do not mistake Realy for a sentimentalist. Her docile manner veils a soul on fire with passion, courage and fierce trust.

Realy speaks quietly of her physical pain, and just as quietly of her harrowing personal history of abuse and neglect; and she speaks of her desire to see her abusers again in heaven. 

“I can’t wait to know who God really meant them to be, who they were supposed to be,” she said. “I still want to love them, and I still want to know that love, and give it.”

 

Beauty and grace are like seeds that God has planted in even the darkest and most tormented souls, she said. It takes a terribly strong conviction to refuse forgiveness from God.

“I don’t think hell is as full as we might like to think it is.”

Again, do not mistake Realy for a pushover. Many of her paintings are sweet and simple depictions of the beauty of nature. But some, like her Sacred Heart series, are a disciplined exploration of something she didn’t understand and didn’t want to face. 

“I was highly repulsed by some of the older Sacred Heart images, this graphic, gory mass. It was beyond my ability to connect to it,” she said.

The images were so gruesome, they pushed her away from Jesus. So she pushed back. She prayed, pressing the Lord for an explanation of this distressing devotional. He told her to paint. 

She obediently began to depict the Sacred Heart, but “bound up in nature,” intertwined not only with thorns but with vines and buds. 

“I was drawing the Sacred Heart in a way that wasn’t frightening. Drawing closer to what it means to have a heart so sacred (that) our Lord was willing to let it stop beating,” she said. “It was drawing closer to the heart of Jesus for me, who has experienced much violence in my life.”

Realy’s post-traumatic stress disorder used to make the sight of a crucifix intolerable. Now she embraces it. That turn marks the time when she began to converse with the Lord “casually, personally.” 

She does say the Rosary and other formal prayers. But she also simply speaks God. 

“And I listen, of course,” she said. Using something like the Gestalt “empty chair” technique, she is ready to hear answers that aren’t verbal. 

‘What am I supposed to do now?’

Her faith began to grow many years before she took up a paintbrush, in a physically active season of her life, full of backpacking and canoeing. The beauty of the natural world drew her to the Lord, and she returned the favor by throwing herself wholeheartedly into gardening and teaching others how to do it. 

But her physical challenges began to mount, until a debilitating bout of pain and inflammation landed her in bed for five days. When she got back on her feet, she headed to adoration to hash things out with God. 

“I sat down in a pew, and said, ‘Lord, you made me a gardener.’ I was crying, ‘I can’t do this anymore. You know I can’t do this. What am I supposed to do now?’… Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

What’s for supper? Vol. 380: How does Scooby Doo end his prayers?

Happy Friday! And goodbye, May. You were a good May. 

Yesterday I cleaned out the laundry room, because I got a free dryer on Facebook Marketplace and we’re gonna have to take the back door off to get it in, but we can’t reach the door because there is so much misc in there. Getting something for free made me feel like the universe was out of balance, so I recklessly posted a bunch of stuff to give away myself, so today I get to drive around dropping off pots of butternut squash starts and bags of kid clothes that I suddenly worry are absolute garbage, but I can’t tell because I have nostalgia. 

Meanwhile, the other door to the laundry room decided to take itself off, and now randomly sort of LOOMS at people, when all they tried to do was open it. It’s okay, because the kids avoid using that room anyway (it’s our second bathroom, if you’ll recall), because the dryer makes a horrendous squealing noise, and the overhead light flickers kind of menacingly. It does have a little whiff of Gitmo about it, but how long does it take to pee? Big babies. Anyway, we got a new dryer. Well, an old dryer. It’s fine. All manner of things shall be fine. 

So here’s what we had this week: 

SATURDAY
Chicken nuggets, raw peppers, chips

Shopping day! The plan was chicken burgers, but they didn’t have any, so I got nuggets. I haven’t had a chicken nugget for years. They were really pretty good.

I had a sweet chili sauce with mine and actually really enjoyed this meal. 

SUNDAY
Oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, spinach

Sunday I bullied my family into putting the big bridge pieces into place!

You may recall that one big wooden piece tried very hard to kill me and Lena last time I worked on this project. Well, it took seven people to lift each of the two long pieces, which is why progress has been so slow. We each grabbed a support plank and shuffled forward like pall bearers, and at one point, when I pulled my foot out of the muck, part of my sandal refused to come along. But it was just an Aldi sandal, and already smelled of ducks. A small price to pay. 

Here is what the marsh looked like before, with just the cinderblocks in place:

and here is how it looks now:

Progress! Still needs some work, obviously. I need to stain some parts (the undersides are all done, though), and fill in a few gaps, and get some more cinderblocks to level it off more, and I need to figure out what kind of transitional piece to add in the front, so you don’t have to step up onto it. You can’t tell from this picture, but the ground slopes pretty sharply down from the arch to the first bridge piece. I have a little set of stairs I might half-bury in the dirt, to get to the first piece. 

But it’s SOLID. The cross pieces distribute the weight, and they’re resting on dry ground and/or on cinderblocks, and when you walk on it, there’s no wobble, and it’s all up out of the wet. I’m very pleased. 

I also moved the big arch back a bit, to open up the entrance, and added a second arch (it’s hard to see, but it’s there). I have a couple of baby grape vines I’m gonna plant, and the plan is to eventually make a canopy of vines from one arch to the other. In 5-10 years, it’s gonna be just gorgeous. It’s already gorgeous. My plan is always to enhance what’s good about what’s already there, because it’s a lovely, lovely spot. 

So! It’s usable and I can do the rest without dragging anyone else into it. The other big thing I want to do before summer vacation starts is to build a very simple little deck using the rest of the wooden pieces I got along with the bridge pieces.

I know they sell hardware specifically for attaching legs onto platforms, so I figure if I just think hard about weight distribution and kind of overbuild everything, I should be able to make something functional, and less awkward than the lifeguard station we currently have. 

Sunday I also cleared out my other raised bed, topped it up with lovely compost, made a little support tipi out of last year’s sunflower stalks, and planted my sugar snap peas. 

I think it might be too lightweight, but I can always reinforce it with actual sticks at some point. I’m going to put collard greens in the rest of that space, I think. There are some leftover Brussels sprouts that survived the winter, but they already bolted and I think I’ll just rip them out.

I think it must have been Sunday that I finally got the rest of my vegetable starts in the ground. I’m a little unsure about what’s what, because I didn’t weatherproof the labels (next time I’ll use popsicle sticks and pencil!), but I am pretty sure I have pumpkins, butternut squash, I think two kinds of eggplant, and possibly cucumbers, one of those birdhouse gourds, and also garlic and basil in another spot. 

It’s all a little too close together, because I meant to expand the bed more than I ended up doing. Oh well. They can fight it out. 

No strawberries yet (soon!), and I can’t pick asparagus until next year, and I accidentally let the rhubarb bolt, so I didn’t get much this year. But overall, I am pleased. Gotta finish that wattle fence! 

Oops, I forgot to talk about food. Good thing my yard is INCREDIBLY INTERESTING, so you don’t mind. Well, we had oven fried chicken. I started soaking the drumsticks in milk, eggs, and salt in the morning, and then I dredged it in seasoned flour and started cooking it about an hour before dinner. Melt butter and oil in a pan, lay the chicken down, turn it after a while and let it continue cooking, and voila. 

I love this recipe. The meat is juicy and tender, the skin is crackly and tasty. I think I honestly prefer it to deep fried chicken, and whoever did clean-up that night definitely preferred it. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

We also had corn on the cob and just plain raw spinach. 

Fab warm weather meal. I didn’t even add butter to my corn or dressing to my spinach, because everything was so fresh and nice. 

MONDAY
Cookout!

Monday was Memorial Day and we met not one but two boyfriends of daughters. What a to-do! We expected quite a few more people to show up for the cookout than could actually make it, and it did rain like crazy, but we had a nice day anyway, if somewhat lower-key than expected. 

I made an incredibly bland potato salad

and then I went a little crackerdog with the fruit salad and made a watermelon swan boat

and Damien grilled up a ton of burgers, and we just had chips and soda and ice cream.

Damien reconfigured his Interchangeable Cinderblock Meat Altar Situation, and now it has more air circulation and more even heat.

He is talking about making an Interchangeable Cinderblock Smoker Situation, too. You may think we’re complete rednecks, but we actually buy our cinderblocks NEW, so you tell me. 

TUESDAY
Cookout part 2!

Tuesday I cooked the hot dogs we decided not to bother with on Monday, and we basically just had that meal again, with different meat. No complaints. 

Also on Tuesday, I drove the kids to school and every single person who stepped into that car made the same “urk” noise, so I decided it was Time To Find Out What That Smell Was. Got some trash bags, got a pack of baby wipes, set up some music, and prepared myself to launch into a long, arduous search into every nook and cranny to root out the mysterious source of the odor. 

I open the door, and right there on the floor is this.

Maybe we are rednecks after all. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork ramen

Wednesday I went on a bit of a cleaning rampage and cleared out the mountain of scraps and flowerpots and bits of fencing and old rugs and broken tools that I’d been flinging onto the back stairs. I didn’t take a before picture, but this is the after:

Okay, yes, we are definitely rednecks. I see it now. But we’re rednecks who try! Gonna try to get a dryer up those stairs, that’s what we’re gonna try.(Yes I know I need to do something about all that unfinished wood. It’s on my list. It’s on my list!)

Wednesday I put about three hundred sunflower seedlings into the ground, from seeds I gathered from last year’s most successful flowers. I want PHALANXES of sunflowers this year. I have a long row of them in front of the marsh,

a little sprinkle by the pool where some day lilies appeared, a few next to each light post around the patio, and a line of them in front of the trash enclosure. I also moved the last of the cosmos and zinnia seedlings into pots and found spots for them. I think everything I planted over the winter has a home now!

For supper, I had a hunk of boneless pork whatnot, so I sharpened up my knife and cut it really thin, then pan fried it a little bit, then added a bunch of Chinese five spice and a little soy sauce and finished cooking it. Made a giant pot of ramen, soft boiled some eggs, and served it all up with chopped scallions, sugar snap peas, and spinach, and crunchy noodles. 

Delightful. I am steadfastly refusing to find out what good ramen tastes like, because the kind that comes in a case and shrink wrapped in orange plastic is cheap and we like it, and I don’t want to ruin that. 

THURSDAY
Pork gyros

Thursday, I cannot even begin to explain how the universe tried to thwart me. Really unprecedented levels of attempted thwarting! I knew it was gonna be a busy day, even pre-thwarting, but I had already cooked all the easy meals for the week, so I started in and prepped pork gyros first thing in the morning.

Here’s the marinade recipe, which is pretty basic but tasty, and it does make the meat super tender

Jump to Recipe

and I made a big bowl of yogurt sauce

Jump to Recipe

Oh! And I finally got to use my mother’s day present from Clara, which is a handmade juicer. 

Works GREAT. The ceramic pointy thingy takes way more pressure than plastic, and the spout poured very smoothly, which is harder to design than it looks. She’s getting really good.

Then thing started to go a little bit south. But the upshot is that, against all odds, I got Millie’s replacement fall detection sensor set up and tech support APOLOGIZED TO ME AND SAID I WAS RIGHT. So there! And I was only a few minutes late to the school concert, which they were actually calling a “song showcase,” for reasons which are not entirely clear to me, except that I would not have called that a concert, either. I did get there in time to hear one of the kids say into the microphone, “And [kidname], [kidname], and [kidname] will be our socialists” and the music teacher leaped like an antelope over to that microphone and said, “SOLOISTS.”

This happened mere minutes after our golden haired god hero was unjustly and outrageously convicted on 34 bogus felonies in a banana republic-style kangaroo court with an upside down flag!!!! So IT’S ALREADY HAPPENING TO OUR CHILDREN, just like he warned us. But we did not listen.

The good news is, the gyros were great. A complete mess, but still very delicious. 

I made the mistake of trying to open the pita and fill it with meat, rather than rolling the meat up in an intact pita; and I completely forgot to gather fresh mint; and the fries were underdone. But it was extremely late and we were so hungry, and it tasted heavenly. 

FRIDAY
Ravioli

The ravioli I promised but did not deliver last week! But accidentally bought sauce for twice, so now we have so much effing sauce! Maybe I can put it on a buy nothing group. Maybe I’ll put myself on a buy nothing group. 

I do have these chive blossoms

that are clearly at their peak. I’m not a big fan of infused oils – the bacteria threat worries me – but I think I may try frying them. 

Oh! But last night I found a WHOLE OTHER JAR OF MARIGOLD SEEDS.

I may actually offer those on buy nothing, because I don’t know if I have it in me to till anymore ground this year, and every spot that’s open is already sprouting to the max. 

Like I said, a good May. Really good May. 

 

Print

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.

Print

Marinade for pork gyros

Marinate thinly-sliced meat for several hours, then grill over the coals or broil in the oven. Serve wrapped up in pita with cucumbers, tomatoes, french fries, hot sauce, and yogurt sauce. This marinade is enough for about five pounds of meat. 

Ingredients

  • 4 medium tomatoes diced and smashed a bit
  • 2 onions grated
  • 2 Tbsp oregano (or a large handful of fresh oregano, chopped)
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 3/4 cup lemon juice
  • 2 Tbsp paprika
  • 12 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
  • kosher salt and pepper
Print

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. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 367: I knead you so badly

Happy Friday! We’ve been eating a little too well for Lent. Don’t tell my bishop. Or, actually go ahead and tell him. I went and got fired from the diocesan magazine already last week, so do your worst. (I don’t really know why it happened, other than that I am annoying. It’s fine. Something else always turns up, and I can go be annoying to a slightly different subset of readers, inshallah.)

Anyway, here’s what we had this week, which was February vacation for most of the kids:  

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips

Usually, for grilled cheese, I buy a few loaves of sourdough bread that comes in very large pieces, but they were out of them at Aldi, so I got some pleasant-looking Italian loaves that seemed likely. Dinner time comes along, I open the bag, and here is what the individual slices look like:

and I’m like, huh. Possibly I’m a pervert, but this feels slightly awkward. Maybe they will look more normal if I put mayonnaise on them

Ah well, we’ll just call it theology of the body and fry ’em up. 

Yes, they all looked like this. 

So everyone got one and we also had pickles and let us never speak of this again. Definitely not to the bishop. 

SUNDAY
40 garlic whole chickens, orzo al limone

I have mentioned in the past how allergic I am to cooking whole chickens, because we had them SO often when we were super poor and they used to be like 49 cents a pound, and I just feel so gloomy and oppressed by whole chickens now. But I’m trying really hard to shop the sales, so I made a tremendous penitential Lenten effort and bought two whole chickens for cheap, which I prepared using this recipe for 40 garlic clove chickens. 

You melt butter and oil in a dutch oven and brown the chickens on all sides, take out the chicken and drain off some of the fat, and stir in the garlic cloves. Yes, we peeled 80 cloves of garlic.

In fact, it was after we peeled about 65 cloves of garlic that I more carefully read the recipe I was going to use, and discovered that it calls for unpeeled garlic. So I quickly switched to the recipe I linked above, which doesn’t specify. No, I will not read to the end of a recipe before starting it! You can’t make me!!

So then you put the chicken back in along with a little water, and lemon juice, salt, thyme (it calls for dried but I had fresh), and pepper, cover the dutch oven, and bake it in the oven for 90 minutes.  I don’t actually have a dutch oven, so I browned the chicken in a pot and then transferred it to a giant oven pan, covered it with tinfoil, and then put a second pan on top. 

Good enough! When I opened it up, the chickens were [Danny Kaye doing his drooling Clever Gretel voice] nicely cooked. 

I cooked them breast-side-down in “humble frog” position, because I knew the skin wasn’t going to be the star of this chicken anyway, and I really wanted the meat to be juicy. It was not the most visually stunning chicken I have ever met, but it was extremely juicy and full of flavor. I actually used quite a bit more lemon juice than it called for, and I have no regrets.

Before I made the chicken, I started on the orzo. I was using this recipe from delish, and if it sounds tasty to you (and it will), I recommend taking a screenshot, because they limit how many free page views you get. I assemble the ingredients and knew this would be a winner. Just look:

It’s basically the same as risotto. Sauté some garlic, then lemon zest, and oops, I threw my chives in there too soon 

then add your orzo with salt and pepper and toast it a bit. Then you add chicken broth, a bit at a time, so the orzo slowly absorbs it.

Yeah man. 

When it’s cooked, stir in the cheese (it called for Pecorino Romano, but I had parmesan) and the parsley, lemon juice, and chives. 

I actually cooked the orzo first and then put it in the slow cooker, and then got to work on the chicken.

They were SO nice together. 

Some asparagus or spinach would have put this meal over the top, but it was pretty great as it was. The cloves of garlic were as soft as boiled potatoes, so what I did was just fork-mash them onto my chicken 

and we were all in garlic heaven. “We” being the chicken and the orzo and me. 

The orzo is amazing. I loved it so much. It was rich and creamy and cozy, but also piquant and sharp with the garlic and lemon and herbs. Some of the kids did not like the texture, probably because they are used to risotto and it’s not the same. But Damien and I thought it was great. 

On Sunday, I also did some winter sowing, which is something I only recently discovered. The idea is that you can start seeds outdoors in late winter even if it’s cold and snowy out, because you’re planting in milk jugs that act as little greenhouses; and then when the frost is past and your seedlings are big enough to transplant into the ground, you don’t have to harden them off, because they’re already acclimated. I have never successfully hardened seedlings off, because I take it too personally and all I can think is that nobody ever carried me in and out and in and out because my little leafies might get cold. 

You cut the milk jugs about four inches up from the bottom, leaving the last bit intact for a hinge. Fill the bottom with seed starter material, plant your seeds, water, and put the top back and tape it shut. That’s it. 

I was delighted to find a sack of seed starter I had bought on clearance last year, so I got out my saved seed stash and did three jugs of eggplants, three of pumpkin, and two butternut squash; and I did two jugs of morning glories for my friend Millie, who is in the nursing home again. And I got some more spiles and tubing for maple sugaring! But I used up all the milk jugs, so we have to build up some more supply before I can get going on that.

MONDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, fruit salad

Monday I went to see Millie in the morning. If you could keep her in your prayers, please, I’d appreciate it! She’s going to be 90 the first week in March and she’s hoping to be able to get back to her house and garden soon. 

I had some boneless, skinless chicken thighs I had stashed in the freezer when they were on sale a few weeks ago, and I made these wonderful sandwiches that everybody likes. They come together really fast. You just season the chicken thighs with Cajun seasoning — actually I used Tony Chachere’s, which is creole, but close enough — and then pan fry them on both sides. While they are cooking, you cut up some shishito peppers (just cut the tops off) and slice some red onions. When the chicken is done, you blister up the peppers in another pan, and lay some American cheese on top of the chicken and put a lid on it so it melts. 

(I didn’t actually cook the chicken this close together; I used two pans, and then transferred the chicken to one pan for the cheese treatment.)

Layer the chicken, peppers, and onions on brioche buns, with BBQ sauce top and bottom. Boom, amazing sandwich.

I just love this sandwich because it’s so SIMPLE. One bottle of spice, one step with the peppers, easy sliced cheese, bottled sauce. You really couldn’t improve it if you made it complicated and fiddly (although I’m sure Sam Sifton would like to try). 

You can see that I made a fruit salad, which we haven’t had for a while. Strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and kiwis. Nice to have some color. 

TUESDAY
Beef barley soup, french bread

Beef was on sale, so I got a likely-looking hunk and made some soup. Garlic, onion, and carrots, chunks of beef, tomatoes, beef broth, mushrooms, and barley, and plenty of pepper. So good. 

Jump to Recipe

This is the soup I sometimes make in my head when I can’t sleep. 

While that was simmering, I thought it was high time to test out my lovely new marble countertop, which I purposely installed lower than the rest of the counter, to make it easier to knead dough. (I’m kind of short; I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this.)

IT WAS PERFECT. Made such a difference. I never realized I was struggling with dough on the higher countertop, but now that I have a lower one, it was so much easier. 

Here is the simple french bread recipe I use:

Jump to Recipe

It makes four long loaves — or, in this case, three long ones and three shorties, because I was sending some food over to one of the kids. 

I do love rolling the loaves out. Zoop!

Then I set them for a second rise and managed to drop BOTH pans as I was moving them, so they got kind of wadded up, but they baked up well enough. 

They had a really nice thin little shattering crust on the outside, and they were soft and tender on the inside. Good stuff. 

So we had the soup and the bread

and at this point I’m just dragging the narrative out because I have more pictures. 

And now I’m done!

WEDNESDAY
Korean beef bowl, rice, raw veg, crunchy rice rolls

Wednesday we had a bunch of errands – haircuts and what have you – and I started supper late, but it was a quickie: Good old Korean Beef Bowl. I had bought extra ground beef when it was on sale for the Super Bowl, and this is a fast, easy recipe, even if you do go for fresh garlic and fresh ginger, which I did. 

Jump to Recipe

So I put the cooked beef in the slow cooker, and made some rice in the instant pot, cut up some cucumbers and took out the packages of crunchy rice rolls I had been saving. 

Tasty little meal. The beef has sesame seeds and chopped scallions for garnishes. I don’t know why I feel the need to point that out, but there you are. 

On Wednesday I cut up the leftover chicken and made a simple chicken salad (just mayo, I think maybe lemon juice or cider vinegar, salt and pepper, celery, and green apple), and then I made soup with the rest of the carcasses, just so as not to waste it. I had a brainwave and realized I could freeze it all and get a jump start on Passover cooking this year! I really hate making the chicken soup some years, so I’m delighted to have this already done. I will need to add parsley and dill, but it already has the chicken, carrots, celery, and onion in it. 

THURSDAY
Pizza

The kids had mainly been playing board games all week (including Dixit, which was a Christmas present, and turned out to be a hit) for vacation week, but I did promise/threaten a trip to an art museum; so five of the kids and I went to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester. Great stuff. Admission is reasonable (one adult, two students, two youth, and a kid got in for $35) and their descriptive cards are good, providing enough context and explanation to help you see, but without leading you too much. They have a really solid, varied collection for a small museum.

Interesting things happening in the contemporary art world! There is still a certain amount of “hoo HOO, I bet THIS transgressive bit of plastic really pushes your conventional little buttons, DOESN’T IT??” getting churned out, but also some far more interesting stuff. (Yes, I realize I opened this post with some penis sandwiches, so maybe I should shut my yap about who’s childishly transgressive. On the other hand, they were just sandwiches.) I was especially taken with two large works by Kara Walker, who will have an entire exhibit there soon, but there were other thoughtful, skilled, intriguing, moving contemporary pieces as well. I shared a few images on Facebook:

It is a small museum, so we did a thorough tour in two hours. Then we hit a few thrift stores just for fun, and then we got pizza and talked about art. Lovely day with my lovely kids. On the way there, they played an ice breaker game (“If you were an animal, what kind would you be? What is your favorite movie” etc.), but they played as different characters, so everyone had to guess who they were. Let me tell you, if we had run out of gas, we could have made it home under the sheer white hot heat of the quantity of in-jokes flying around. I had no idea what was going on, but they had fun. 

FRIDAY
Tilapia tacos and guacamole

I don’t really have a solid plan for this fish, but I’m tired of having it in my freezer. It was on clearance at Walmart quite some time ago, and I don’t want to look at it anymore. Hoping the avocados I got aren’t totally overripe by now. 

And I need to make a cake! A Squirtle cake! For tomorrow is Corrie’s birthday party. It’s going to be Pokémon-themed, and Sophia is making a treasure hunt and Irene is making a piñata. This has honestly been one of our nicest February vacations, despite some trials which, nay, I shan’t mention. Love seeing my kids enjoy being with each other. 

My other thing is that I’m a little frustrated with yoga lately, partially because I managed to injure both knees (one by falling on the ice, one by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING; the little fucker just started hurting for no reason, and now I go up and down stairs looking like I imagine Strega Nona would, on stairs), so I have started pilates. I kind of hate it, but it keeps my attention because you have to be SO SPECIFIC about what muscles you’re using, so at least it’s not boring. I did one random class on YouTube and then I found this lady, Banks (that’s how she refers to herself, as “Banks”), and I have done three of her thirty-minute core classes for beginners. Tough stuff, but I’m hanging on. She is very specific about what you’re supposed to be doing and how it’s supposed to feel, which I appreciate, and she’s not especially annoying. So, now you know everything I know. 

5 from 1 vote
Print

Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened. 


  2. Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley. 

  4. If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes. 

  5. Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary. 

 

Print

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.

 

Print

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. 

This potted plant life: Lessons on prayer for the new year

Let’s talk about prayer. Let’s talk about how January is a wonderful time to start or restart a habit of daily prayer.

But first, let’s talk about winter.

I’m not a big fan of this time of year. There are plenty of unpleasant things about the winter months where I live: The way the coldness makes you cold, the way the darkness is so dark, and the way the dark and the cold make you kind of stupid.

But the thing that really hurts is how all the green goes away. You look outside, and everything is gray and white and brown, and it’s just sad. I need green! This is why, of course, people have houseplants. Nothing livens up a living space like living things. It’s the obvious solution to my green starvation, right?

Not so fast. I’m an absolute plant assassin. I love having plants around, but I’m terrible at keeping them alive. If plants were people, I’d be on an FBI watch list for the sheer number of suspicious disappearances associated with me.

Take, for example, my little fig tree. I had put it outside on the patio over the summer, but then a frost came and I forgot to bring it in. The poor thing turned brown, all the leaves fell off, and it went from a luxurious, broad-leafed beauty to a dry stick in a pot. I was so sad.

But I’m telling you about it because I realized that I’ve actually learned a thing or two in the last several years — and what I’ve learned dovetails very nicely with what I’ve learned about prayer. Just as I suffer when there is no green outside, so too do I suffer when I don’t have a naturally flourishing relationship with God; and just as the solution to green starvation is having houseplants, the solution to spiritual starvation is prayer.

And if this metaphor doesn’t quite work out perfectly, just assume it’s because it’s dark and cold and I’m stupid. Not my fault!

I am the queen of letting plants dry out in between waterings. Then, when I finally do remember to do it, the soil has become so parched that the water goes straight through it and runs out the bottom. Depending on the plant, you can fix this by either flooding it with water from the top down, or putting it in a second pot of water and letting it absorb it from the roots, or you can give it little sips of water very frequently until it softens up and is ready to accept more.

But the point is: There are consequences to letting it get that dry. If you neglect it for long enough, you can’t expect to just leap back in and pick up where you left off. The same is true with prayer. If you’ve been out of touch for a long time, you might be able to reestablish contact by flooding God with your passionate prayers; or maybe you need to sit and quietly meditate for a long time; or maybe you need to start small with short, frequent prayers until your soul softens up and feels ready for more. But there will be a period of adjustment…Read the rest of my latest monthly column for Our Sunday Visitor

Welcome spring with A Garden Catechism!

Last week, we got almost forty inches of snow and lost power for three days. This morning, the pipes froze. So naturally, I’m thinking about gardens. And I’m warming my hands over the bright, glowing pages of Margaret  Rose Realy’s beautiful new book, A Garden Catechism: 100 Plants in Christian Tradition and How to Grow them. 

I’m lucky enough to call Margaret a friend, so she is the one I always ask if there is something mysterious popping up in my garden, and I don’t know if I should be happy or not. She always knows what it is. I also ask her if there’s an invasive bittersweet vine on my fence and I don’t know how to get rid of it, or if my irises aren’t blooming anymore and I feel like I should do something but I’m not sure when or how. I ask her whether my apple seedlings can be saved, and whether it’s too late to put lilacs in, and whether it’s worthwhile saving seeds from the marigolds I impulse bought at Walmart. Margaret always knows!

Now she has taken her immense wealth of knowledge and organized it into an eminently searchable book for the gardener who wants to cultivate a space that’s not only beautiful, but rich with Christian meaning. Each of 100 entries — organized into color-coded sections of flowers, herbs and edibles, grasses and more, and trees and shrubs — includes a large, lovely illustration by Mary Sprague, an explanation of the history and/or symbolic significance of the plant in Christianity, what theme of garden it might fit into (Stations of the Cross, Marian, Rosary, Sacred Heart, and so on), what it symbolizes, and several paragraphs of detailed practical information and advice about what it looks like, where and how it grows well, and how to care for it, and in some cases, how to harvest, display, and dry it. 

Each entry also has a column of symbols for cross reference. There are a total of six possible symbols for different kinds of prayer gardens, and thirteen possible symbols for different kinds of suitable landscapes.

That’s about two-thirds of the book. The rest of it is a sort of condensed master class in horticulture, including information on everything from how to evaluate a site and design a garden, how to test soil and fertilize, how to read plant tags, how to collect seeds and even how to water. 

Next comes an introduction rife with practical advice for how to arrange an outdoor space for a shrine, stations of the cross, prayer labyrinth, and more;

and there is a section on ‘development of intent,’ to help focus your thoughts and ideas about what you hope to accomplish by making a prayer garden. There are several pages on color theory, a section on making stepping stones, ideas for how to keep a journal, and a reference chart collating all the information about plants in the previous pages. 

The overall tone is gentle, encouraging, and wise, and every single page is absolutely bristling with practical, reliable information, and it’s thoughtfully arranged to be as easy to use as possible. The goal is to help you come up with a plan that is meaningful and appealing to you (and maintainable in the landscape you’ve chosen), rather than providing ready-made plans for you to copy by rote. It’s also fascinating and informative for someone who’s just interested in gardens.

The book would make an excellent present for someone just starting out with gardening, who could use some encouragement with a plant or two, but would not be out of place for a master gardener who will appreciate the comprehensive breadth of knowledge gathered in these pages, and is looking for inspiration for a new kind of project. The unique combination of horticultural knowledge and spiritual insight and cultural and historical research pretty much guarantees that that almost anyone who picks it up will learn something new. 

Margaret Realy is an advanced Master Gardener and a Benedictine oblate. She has written several other books, and her writing appears regularly at Our Sunday Visitor and at CatholicMom.com. This book would be a great place to get to start to get to know this warm, kind, and incredibly knowledgeable woman. Happy spring!

 
 

What’s for supper? Vol. 318: That’s the way the Brussel sprouts

Friday! We made it! Nobody has to make a lunch for tomorrow! What bliss. 

Speaking of lunch, let me tell you about an excellent lunch I’ve been making for myself pretty often these days, because it’s cold and drizzly and I crave deeply nourishing foods: 

Heat up a pan, spray it with cooking spray, and throw on two or three big handfuls of spinach. Cook it a little bit to slightly wilt it. Then crack two eggs into it and continue cooking lightly until the whites are firm but the yolk is still runny. Grind some fresh pepper and sea salt over all.

Eat with a side of  cherry-on-bottom Greek yogurt, and a large green apple cut up slowly with a paring knife. 

I don’t know why, but this is just a restorative meal, a lunch of great balance. It’s also less than 400 calories for kind of a lot of food. You could grate some parmesan over the egg while it’s cooking, but you don’t need to.

I spent most of the week being sick and complaining about being sick, and dragging myself off one couch only to land heavily on the other, so nothing super inventive happened in the kitchen this week. Still, we had some decent meals, including one final homegrown vegetable (Brussels sprouts). 

SATURDAY
Spaghetti and Marcella Hazan’s three-ingredient red sauce 

Yum.

Damien shopped for and made this. Always unreasonably delicious. Just tomatoes, butter, and onions. 

Jump to Recipe

I always say this, but it really does taste like there’s some kind of meat involved in this sauce. But nope. 

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries

Damien shopped for this and put it together. Also yum. 

Red pesto, so nice. 

MONDAY
Hamburgers, chips

This is the third picture in a row that was actually taken some previous month or year, because I was too tired to take pictures of my actual food this week. For shame! From now on, only authentic Nov. 2022 food photos.

TUESDAY
Chicken cutlets with leftover red sauce, raw broccoli and dip

I cut the chicken breasts in half lengthwise and soaked them in seasoned milk and egg. Actually I languished on the couch and begged Elijah to do it for me. Then sometime when dinner really began to loom, I heated up the leftover red sauce from the other day, heated up some oil and butter, dredged the chicken in seasoned panko crumbs, and fried those mofos

and we had chicken cutlets with sauce. 

Quite good. I felt like the chicken should have had provolone and basil, or else pasta, or else it should have been on a sandwich, but it was pretty tasty.  Panko is certainly your friend. We had plain broccoli on the side, and talked about fried breaded broccoli and how, yes indeed, people do that. People do whatever they want. I had broccoli tempura at a Japanese restaurant in New York City when I was very little and I never forgot it. I forget why we were in New York City, but I remember that broccoli. We were probably talking about some other meal while we were eating it, too. 

WEDNESDAY
Meatloaf, roast butternut squash and baby Brussels sprouts

We got our first snow, finally, on Wednesday. Just enough to get the kids wound up, and then it turned to rain. That was my cue to go outside and finally harvest the Brussels sprouts

which, and this is crazy, I planted six months ago. I just looked it up: May 20, and harvested Nov. 16. I’m not gonna say I put a ton of work into them, but I did keep them watered, and I did fertilize them, and put up a little fence to keep Mr. Nibbly Rabbit away, and then a mere six months later, there I was, bringing in a grand harvest of an entire pint of Brussels sprouts, some of them somewhat larger than a pea.

Of course the real benefit to this crop was checking on it every time I went out and getting excited at the progress they were making, and laughing at what silly plants they are

and being glad something was still growing when everything else was dead or dying. Brussels sprouts actually get a little sweeter if they’re exposed to a light frost or two. Ain’t that the way. 

So this is how many Brussels sprouts I grew for my family:

Can you even imagine making a garden that would actually feed your whole family all year ’round? CAN YOU? I simply cannot. But the sprouts were sweet, and tiny and tender. I cut some butternut squash in thin little wedges so it would cook quickly, and tossed it together. I drizzled it all with olive oil and sprinkled it with brown sugar and kosher salt and a little hit of wine vinegar, and roasted it at a high heat, and it was nice. 

The meatloaf was fine. A good dollop of Worcestershire sauce in there makes it pretty tasty, and yes, I spread ketchup on the outside before cooking it.

Jump to Recipe

The secret to meatloaf is not making it too often, so people still get excited about it.

THURSDAY
Chicken tortilla soup, toasted tortilla strips

You’ll never believe this, but it was cold and drizzly on Thursday. Soup to the rescue! I like this soup because it has plenty of flavor, but you don’t have to go through a whole song and dance. It’s easy to make when you want a hot soup because you’re feeling poorly, but you’re feeling poorly and you don’t feel like cooking much.

You just jam them everything in the food processor and puree it 

(that’s garlic, onion, jalapeño, cilantro, some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce from a can, and several fresh tomatoes)

and then you heat up some oil in the Instant Pot (or obviously you could do this on the stove top) and thicken up that purée for a little bit. Then add some water and toss in your hunks of raw chicken, and cook it until the chicken is done. Pull the chicken out

shred it up

and put it back in.

At this point you’re supposed to add in tortilla strips, which are supposed to be corn, which thickens up the soup. But I don’t like corn tortillas, so I used to use the flour kind, then I started using nothing, and then I started making crunchy tortilla strips instead. And this is how I always make it now. It doesn’t thicken the soup, but it bulks it up, and it adds texture and flavor, and it’s just fun.

You cut up a bunch of tortillas into strips, spread them in a shallow layer on a pan, toss with oil, sprinkle heavily with chili lime powder, and bake at 350, stirring every 10- 15 minutes, until they are toasted. 

I aways heap too many in there so they don’t all get toasted and some of them stay chewy. Guess what, I like them that way. I like chewy, gummy, floppy things. There is a part of me*, especially when I am tired and blue, that would probably just eat flour paste all day long. Maybe I would put it in the microwave, but maybe not. 

So it’s not a thick soup, but a kicky broth with plenty of chicken. You top it off with a good handful of crunchy chili lime tortilla strips, and some of them get soaked with broth and some of them stay crunchy; plus chopped scallions, sliced avocados, cilantro (or parsley if that’s what you have), shredded cheese, and sour cream.

 

Truly a great soup for when you’re sick. I made it pretty spicy, and it cleans out your head like a son of a gun. 

FRIDAY
French toast casserole, OJ

I planned this meal to make myself deal with how much bread is building up in the house. So far it’s gotten to the stage of me hearing the kids blame each other for not doing anything about it, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not sustainable. 

French toast casserole is just you tear up your old bread and soak it in egg and milk and some sugar, and a little cinnamon and vanilla if you like. Butter a pan, pour it in, maybe dot it with butter, maybe sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top, and bake at 350 until the custard is cooked. Serve in wedges with syrup or jam. 

Here’s a rather arty photo, from back when stone fruit was in season: 

Today what’s in season is I have is a can full of ashes from the wood stove, that I’m saving to spread under the peach tree for next year. Ah well, it’s almost Advent. 

*my mouth, I should hope

 

Print

Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Adapted from twosleevers.com. This is a very flavorful chicken soup. It has a little hotsy totsy burst of spice with the first taste, and then the more complex flavors come through slowly. Magic.

It's fairly brothy, and then you heap up all the garnishes you want on top.

This is a little over a gallon of soup.

Ingredients

  • 2 med onions
  • 1 lb (4 medium) tomatoes
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • 3 chiles in adobo sauce plus some of the sauce
  • 1 jalapeño pepper (include seeds for more heat)
  • 1 bunch cilantro
  • oil
  • 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • water
  • salt to taste
  • garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, tortilla strips, chopped scallions

Instructions

  1. Cut the onions and tomatoes into chunks so they will fit in the blender or food processor. Put the onions, tomatoes, jalapeño, chili pepper and sauce, garlic and cilantro into a blender or food processor and blend it until it's a thick sauce. You may need to do it in batches, or just keep poking the big pieces down so everything gets blended in.

  2. Add enough oil to the Instant Pot pot to cover the bottom. Press "sauté" and let the oil heat up for a few minutes.

  3. Pour in the tomato mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes, until any liquid is mostly absorbed. You may need to press "sauté" again to keep it hot.

  4. Cut the chicken breasts into pieces and put them in the pot. Add six cups of water.

  5. Close the top, seal the valve, and press "pressure cook," then the + button until it goes to 20 minutes. When it's done cooking, let it naturally release for 10 minutes, then release the remaining pressure manually.

  6. Open the top and fish out the chicken. Shred it and return it to the pot. Add salt to taste.

  7. Serve the soup with garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, tortilla strips, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, and chopped scallions.

 

5 from 1 vote
Print

Meatloaf (actually two giant meatloaves)

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground beef
  • 2 lbs ground turkey
  • 8 eggs
  • 4 cups breadcrumbs
  • 3/4 cup milk OR red wine
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

plenty of salt, pepper, garlic powder or fresh garlic, onion powder, fresh parsley, etc.

  • ketchup for the top
  • 2 onions diced and fried (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450

  2. Mix all meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and seasonings together with your hands until well blended.

  3. Form meat into two oblong loaves on pan with drainage

  4. Squirt ketchup all over the outside of the loaves and spread to cover with spatula. Don't pretend you're too good for this. It's delicious. 

  5. Bake for an hour or so, until meat is cooked all the way through. Slice and serve. 

 

 

Print

Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce

We made a quadruple recipe of this for twelve people. 

Keyword Marcella Hazan, pasta, spaghetti, tomatoes

Ingredients

  • 28 oz can crushed tomatoes or whole tomatoes, broken up
  • 1 onion peeled and cut in half
  • salt to taste
  • 5 Tbsp butter

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients in a heavy pot.

  2. Simmer at least 90 minutes. 

  3. Take out the onions.

  4. I'm freaking serious, that's it!

Print

Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Adapted from twosleevers.com. This is a very flavorful chicken soup. It has a little hotsy totsy burst of spice with the first taste, and then the more complex flavors come through slowly. Magic.

It's fairly brothy, and then you heap up all the garnishes you want on top.

This is a little over a gallon of soup.

Ingredients

  • 2 med onions
  • 1 lb (4 medium) tomatoes
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • 3 chiles in adobo sauce plus some of the sauce
  • 1 jalapeño pepper (include seeds for more heat)
  • 1 bunch cilantro
  • oil
  • 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • water
  • salt to taste
  • garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, tortilla strips, chopped scallions

Instructions

  1. Cut the onions and tomatoes into chunks so they will fit in the blender or food processor. Put the onions, tomatoes, jalapeño, chili pepper and sauce, garlic and cilantro into a blender or food processor and blend it until it's a thick sauce. You may need to do it in batches, or just keep poking the big pieces down so everything gets blended in.

  2. Add enough oil to the Instant Pot pot to cover the bottom. Press "sauté" and let the oil heat up for a few minutes.

  3. Pour in the tomato mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes, until any liquid is mostly absorbed. You may need to press "sauté" again to keep it hot.

  4. Cut the chicken breasts into pieces and put them in the pot. Add six cups of water.

  5. Close the top, seal the valve, and press "pressure cook," then the + button until it goes to 20 minutes. When it's done cooking, let it naturally release for 10 minutes, then release the remaining pressure manually.

  6. Open the top and fish out the chicken. Shred it and return it to the pot. Add salt to taste.

  7. Serve the soup with garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, tortilla strips, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, and chopped scallions.