Tag: ice cream pie

What’s for supper? Vol. 413: Erasmus B. Dragon

Happy Friday! Sorry for the interruption with the website last week, and thanks a lot, OBAMA. 

We have been on February vacation all week, and there has not been one single day when I’ve been sure what day it is, except I knew for sure that the month was almost over and I had cleverly arranged for all my writing deadlines to cluster together in one giant, unfortunate . . . cluster.

But, food! I’ll just do a few quick highlights from the previous week, because I tried a few new recipes. 

One day we had
Bacon potato soup and french bread.

The french bread is, of course, not a new recipe

Jump to Recipe

but I got cute and made sixteen little personal loaves, rather than four big ones. 

Because it’s such a simple recipe, I ventured outside my comfort zone and just added flour until the dough looked right, rather than meticulously measuring it. I’m trying to give myself credit for knowing how to do things I’ve done a thousand times before.

Turned out great! At least with bread.  

The soup was more or less following this recipe from Sugar Spun Run, and maybe it’s the My Fitness Pal talking, but I had a really hard time feeling like a recipe that includes bacon, all the bacon grease, milk, heavy cream, sour cream, butter, AND CHEESE (and additional cheese, bacon, and sour cream for the top!!!!!) really truly needed as much butter as this recipe called for. So I used a little less butter. I turn sideways, people question where I went. 

It’s one of those soups where you cook it for a while, then put half of it in a blender and puree it, and then add that back into the soup. I’ve only recently become familiar with this technique of soup made out of itself, and it’s pretty good. Quite a rich, thick soup. 

I did add a bit of cheese to the top, along with a little chili powder and chopped scallions, but mostly to add color, since it was quite beige.

I’m not gonna lie, this is a ridiculously delicious soup. The kids did NOT like it, though. They really resent when I serve bacon in any other form besides, you know, baconform. Which I understand! But also, sometimes I want to make things that I like.

We also had, let’s see, meatball subs, tacos, cuban sandwiches with beans and rice, and another new recipe: Ginger chicken from a site I haven’t used before, The Woks of Life. He gives very specific instructions for each ingredient, and it was pretty easy to follow, although I fudged a few things (mirin instead of Shaoxing wine, one kind of soy sauce instead of two, and onions instead of shallots), and my sauce didn’t come out as dark as his. Most likely I rushed it, which is the story of my life. 

But YOU GUYS, it was still SO GOOD. 

Tons of flavor, tender and gingery, wonderful comfort food. I think just about everybody liked it, which almost never happens. Corrie even requested it for her birthday meal (although she later recanted that in favor of . . . well, you’ll see). 

I also made some quick sesame broccoli, which is just broccoli sprinkled with sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, pepper, ground ginger and garlic, and sesame seeds, and then roasted. Very easy and popular. 

We spent part of the week getting ready for Corrie’s party (I have now decluttered every single room downstairs, and one room upstairs!). I made a paper mache pinata in the shape of a dragon egg (which, if you’re not familiar, is the same shape as a balloon) and some kind of half-hearted decorations (a “mystical cave entrance” in the living room doorway largely made of brown shipping paper twisted into vines and tacked onto the wall, with some green and purple foil easter grass thrown in).

The big thing was the DRAGON CAKE. I’m proud of this one. 

First I baked the cake layers. I almost always use box cake mix for younger kids’ birthdays, because they care a lot more about the look of the cake than the flavor, and their parties include so much candy and snacking that, by the time we get to cake, no one’s palate is especially fine tuned. 

So then I made a batch of rice krispie treats, and smooshed it together as compactly as I could, and formed it into a dragon-ish shape. I was very proud of remembering to form it on top of the pan I had baked the top tier of the cake in, so I knew it would fit onto the finished cake. 

It would have been smart to put a layer of parchment paper under it to keep it from sticking, but I didn’t think of that! It did stick a bit, but not disastrously. 

I made the dragon on Thursday for a party on Saturday, so it would have plenty of time to dry and get stiff. I also put a cup under his chin to prop it up while it dried, because it was droopy.

On Friday, I attached edible gold foil to the belly, chest, nose horn, and tip of the tail with frosting, and then I used hardening cookie frosting (comes in a pouch at Walmart) to attach a row of spikes from the top of his head to the end of his tail. The spikes are black candy melts cut into triangles. I made a feeble attempt to put them on in size order, but mostly just shoved them in there.

Then I made the wings! I had the bright idea to use fruit rolls. I cut up some plastic straws, laid them out, stretched the fruit rolls over one side and then flipped them over and stretched another layer on the other side, and trimmed each wing into scallops; and then I used a kitchen torch to seal the edges up so they wouldn’t come apart.

I put a wooden skewer inside the long straw, to make it more rigid, and to make it easier to anchor in the dragon’s body. These also got laid out overnight to stiffen and dry out, so they wouldn’t droop. 

I tried several different ways of covering the dragon’s body, with frosting, scales, etc., and finally reluctantly settled on fondant, which I haven’t used much before. This was nerve-wracking, because at first it looked like he was just wearing a big red sweater.

and truly, I say unto you, it took KIND OF A WHILE to get him all covered and smoothed. But I kept going, and when I molded it a bit and added claws and some details with black icing, it looked okay!

I iced the cake with black and grey frosting, carefully set the dragon on top, and added more gold foil, gold coins, and gold chocolate eggs, and also a bunch of vanilla Oreo cookies that I had sprayed with gold spray.

AND HERE HE IS.

Five guests were able to make it, the pinata worked perfectly (didn’t fall apart too soon, but wasn’t completely impenetrable) and she had a wonderful time. 

Phew! We had Walmart pizza for supper and then collapsed like bunches of broccoli, respectively. 

Sunday, I had a profound desire to not go shopping, so we had our customary leftover buffet, plus a charcuterie board of whatever I could find in the fridge, which included some fancy things we got for Christmas, that I recently rediscovered when I cleaned my room. I sliced up the leftover french bread, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with flaked kosher salt, and toasted it

and it was a damn fine meal.

For reasons I can’t explain, I decided to make cake balls for dessert. I have never made or eaten cake balls before, and I found the process slightly gross (you bake a cake, let it cool, crumble it up, and scrunch it into dough with big gobs of frosting. Then make balls, chill them, and dip them in candy melt), but they did turn out looking cute and cheery.

I had one and was underwhelmed; but to be fair, I may have underbaked the cake, so maybe the whole thing was a little more damp than necessary. WHO AMONG US. Anyway, the kids liked them okay. 

MONDAY I finally went shopping, and we had
Buffalo chicken salad

Salad, buffalo chicken from frozen, shredded pepper jack cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, grape tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing. I’m being tiresome about calories, so I skipped the dressing on mine.

That night, Corrie made ice cream pies for her CALENDAR birthday, which, according to Fisher Rigamarole, is a distinct holiday from your birthday PARTY. 

She requested graham cracker crust, black raspberry ice cream, mini marshmallows, skittles, and gummy worms. She didn’t want any whipped cream or cool whip or cherries or anything. 

Tuesday
Market Basket subs, Doritos, bloomin’ onion, ice cream pies

On Tuesday we went to get her EARS PIERCED. Which was not fun, but she’s been wanting it done forever, and she’s very happy with the results. Then we went to get Market Basket subs. 

Are Market Basket subs especially good? Not especially! But we often get them when we’re going to the beach or on a day trip, so I guess they spell T-R-E-A-T. I have to admit, they’re cheap. They taste like Subway subs and cost what Subway subs should cost.

So we had that and chips and then I guess I felt weird not cooking anything, so I made some bloomin’ onions. You can use a knife to cut an onion into a blossom shape, but it’s way easier if you have an onion cutting device, WHICH I DO.

I made an attempt to take a soulful, romantic photo with one of my beautiful onion lotus blossoms, but I just ended up looking exhausted, which, by strange coincidence, I was.

I lost the recipe booklet that came with my onion machine, so I followed this recipe, which includes a nice zippy recipe for dipping sauce. 

Turned out pretty okay! I crowded the pan and was a little short on oil, but hey, the onion, she blooms.

Corrie had yet another wonderful day with most of her siblings over and lots of presents, including these incredible Bender fingerless mittens made by Lucy

And that was that! Whew!

WEDNESDAY
Instant Pot pork ribs, glazed carrots, cole slaw

Thursday I tried another new recipe: This Amy + Jacky Instant Pot recipe. Easy peasy. You mix up apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a few spices, and marinate the pork ribs in that for a while. Then you throw them in the IP and cook it on high pressure for 15 minutes, then let it natural release for ten minutes. Mine sat for somewhat longer than that because I was driving around (not to and from school, though! It’s vacation, so I was driving them to and from their friends’ houses), so they turned out a little unsightly

but I was excited, because I could tell how tender and juicy they were. You slather BBQ sauce on top and broil it up for a bit, and there it is.

I had made cole slaw in the morning (cabbage and carrots, mayo, cider vinegar, sugar, and pepper) and prepped some carrots to cook, so I put the carrots in the oven just before the meat went in, and it all came out at the same time.

The carrot recipe I used was this simple one from Recipe Tin Eats. This is a rare RTE recipe that does not turn out exactly as she describes, and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Hers are shiny and sticky, and mine are just kinda toasty. They’re easy and popular, though, so it’s worth making them even though they’re not spectacular. I wish I had remembered a sprinkle of cardamom, though. 

Anyway, I thought it was a great meal. 

and the ribs really were juicy and ready to fall apart with a slight nudge from the fork. 

For sure making this recipe again, at least until it gets warm enough for Damien to use the smoker again. 

THURSDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins

Thursday the older kids had their own plans, so I took Benny and Corrie out for an outing of our own. We hit a thrift store, a local place that does giant baskets of fries, the pet store, and a fancy candy store, and when I say my dogs were barking, I really mean it! I still had to make supper, and it was so late already, I figured I might as well forge ahead and make the meal I had planned, which was beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins. 

Yes, this is a weird combination, but I made it one time and certain people decided it was 100% ideal, so we’re locked in for a while. 

Here is my beef barley soup recipe:

Jump to Recipe

which I threw together in record time. I was kind of puzzled as to why it looked wrong, but when you’re FORGING AHEAD, you simply don’t have time to fret over these things!

Anyway, it was tomatoes. I forgot the tomatoes. They’re more important than I realized, and the soup was a little sad without them! Oh well. 

When the soup was simmering, I started pumpkin muffins,

Jump to Recipe

and discovered I had used all the oil for frying the bloomin’ onions, so I used melted butter. They turned out with a nice, more textured top

but the inside had a slightly waxy feel that I wasn’t crazy about. So now I know.

(I took that picture because, as I was pulling the twenty-four muffins out of the pan, I reminded myself that there would be a grand total of four people at home for dinner, and WHAT IF THERE’S NOT ENOUGH FOOD. Waste! Fraud! Abuse! Somebody alert Department Of Gnawing Everything so they can come over and fix things by clogging up the toilets and shooting the dog.) 

FRIDAY
Poke bowls

Today I am facing a rash promise I made to take the kids ice skating this week, which you may or may not have noticed is almost over, and yet we have not gone ice skating yet. There are two ice rinks around here (one ten minutes away, one forty), and neither one seems especially interested in . . . letting people ice skate on them? So we are aiming for the 7-9:00 spot, forty minutes away. Yes, in the EVENING. Maybe the world will come to an end before that happens. Of course I was counting on that to rescue me from having to do the FAFSA, and that didn’t work out, so probably we will have to go ice skating.

Anyway, first we will be eating something approximating poke bowls. Gonna cook up a bunch of rice and probably sear some Walmart tuna steaks, and I have chili lime cashews from Aldi, mangoes, some kind of green sprouts, and various pink and yellow and brown sauces. 

Saturday will be a regular day, and then Sunday we are going to a museum and will be getting back very late on the night before the first day back at school! Which is a great idea! It was my idea! Hooray! Somebody call the department of paste, frog, and caboose! I have a fever and the only cure is more measles!

I actually think I do have a fever, so. We’ll see who’s ice skating whom. 

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.

5 from 1 vote
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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. 

5 from 1 vote
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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

  • 30 oz canned pumpkin puree
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup veg or canola oil
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  • 3.5 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • oats, wheat germ, turbinado sugar, chopped dates, almonds, raisins, etc. optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend. 

  4. Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice. 

  5. Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 386: What to cook when it’s too hot to cook

My goodness, it has been hot. So very hot. I know it’s not like Florida or Houston or whatever here, but in New Hampshire, we have made certain trade-offs. Our growing season is four days long! Sometimes in the winter, I have to scrape off the inside of my windshield!  Our heating bills are so high, we conserve energy by only listing two things in a joke, rather than the classic three!

And so we don’t expect to get frizzled for a week at a time like this. 

But that is what happened. So I tried my best to feed everyone without adding extra heat to the house with the oven or stove. Here is what we had: 

SATURDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, chips

I don’t really have a recipe for the olive salad. I think I used two cans of black olives, one jar of green olives, maybe a jar of kalamata olives, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and maybe some red onion. Maybe some jalapeños or possibly banana peppers. Probably some red pepper flakes. Those figured heavily into my meals this week. 

And then we just had, I don’t even know what, capicola, pepperoni, ham, provolone, maybe some prosciutto. And we had it on sweet Hawaiian buns.

Close enough. And no oven!

I do like these sandwiches, and I made tons of olive salad and just snacked on it all week. Mmm.

SUNDAY
Southwest chicken salad

I drizzled some chicken breasts with olive oil and sprinkled them heavily with Taijin chili lime seasoning, then broiled them. Cut it up and served it on salad greens with cherry tomatoes, shredded pepper jack cheese, and crunchy fried onions, with chipotle ranch dressing, and some of those “street corn” corn chips on the side. 

Very decent salad. It would have been good with that embarassingly-named Mexicorn, or even some beans, but it was nice as it was. 

MONDAY
Tortellini salad, crackers, watermelon

New recipe! I saw it on Sip and Feast and didn’t see how it could possibly be bad. I more or less followed the recipe, except I used capicola instead of sopressata, but I did have some nice peppered hard salami, and all the rest: Spinach, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, kalamata olives, and cherry tomatoes, and then the dressing is made of red wine vinegar, olive oil, honey, Dijon mustard, oregano, red pepper flakes, garlic, salt, and pepper. 

I cut a watermelon into chunks and put out some boxes of crackers, and it was a really good little summer meal.

 I would eat this way all summer if I could. I did snack on the tortellini salad for the rest of the week, along with the olive salad, and they both got better as the week went on. 

On Monday night, Benny and Corrie and I finally got around to doing this dumb TikTok recipe we saw, called Orange Milk Jelly. 

This consists of peeling some tangerines or clementines, impaling them on a straw or chopstick inside a bottle

then simmering together some milk, sugar, and unflavored gelatin and filling up the bottle.

I had a lot of extra milk mixture, but we didn’t have another bottle to use as a mold for another orange stack, so we cut up some peaches and put them in a ziplock bag with the rest of the milk. 

We stuck these monstrosities in the refrigerator and walked away. 

TUESDAY
BLTs, ice cream pie

Tuesday was Lucy’s birthday, so Damien braved the hot kitchen and fried up a ton of bacon for the requested BLTs. She and her sisters made some ice cream pies in the morning so they would be frozen by evening.

If you haven’t made ice cream pies, you can shop for ingredients, but they’re also a good way to use up little bits of leftover this-and-that from various desserts. I usually start with a graham cracker (or Oreo) crust, but if they freeze long enough, you can make them crustless (or make a simple crust with graham crackers, sugar, and melted butter whirred in a food processor, pressed into a pie plate, and baked for ten minutes or so).

You mash up the ice cream in a bowl with a potato masher until it’s the consistency of soft serve, and then spread that in the crust, and festoon it with whatever you like, anything you might put on a sundae.  Then freeze it for several hours until it’s solid enough to cut into wedges. 

She requested blackberry ice cream and coffee ice cream, gummy bears and worms, Skittles, and mini marshmallows. That sounds like a weird combination, and it is! But she was happy.

Me oh my, another birthday. 

We also got the milk jelly thing out of the bottle by running hot water over the outside and shaking it violently. It did emerge in two parts — lovely, winsome-looking parts, if I may say so —

and we sliced them up, and they turned out looking exactly like in the TikTok

uhhh more or less. 

Guess what? They were not that great. I slightly burned the milk jelly part, so that was not great to begin with.  But it really wasn’t sweet enough to be a dessert, at least not for American tastes, so even if it hadn’t been burned, I think it would have been a swing and a miss.

But what about the peach blob! We blorped that out of its bag, and sliced it up into sort of flabby biscotti shapes

What can I say, it didn’t win any prizes of any kind. Don’t forget, I burned it. And now I can stop thinking about it! Which is why you do TikTok recipes. 

WEDNESDAY
Hamburgers, veg and dip or hummus, chips

Damien made the burgers outside on his cinderblock grill. And very good they are, burgers that somebody else made outside. I forgot to take a picture, even though my veggie platter was very pretty and the burgers were very juicy. 

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, collard greens

It was shaping up to be a very drivey day, so I started some pulled pork in the morning. It had cooled off a little bit, so I didn’t mind searing the meat on the stovetop before putting it in the Instant Pot to get tender. Here’s my recipe, which is a warm, spicy, cidery kind of pulled pork with lots of cloves and cumin and jalapeños.

Jump to Recipe

Then I ran out to the garden to get some collard greens. We keep having super hot, super humid days with short spells of pounding rain, and then it just goes right back to being punishingly hot and humid again. This is apparently paradise for snails, and they are everywhere. There may or may not be some snails in this picture. I picked off as many as I could find and then I gave up. 

But I can understand why the snails wanted to eat those collards. They are nice and tender, very unlike the tough, rubbery collards you get at the supermarket, so I wasn’t too fussy about removing every bit of stem.I just pulled off the thickest ones and rolled up the leaves to cut them into ribbons

I use this vegan recipe for collard greens, which calls for liquid smoke, just because I rarely have smoked meat or ham hocks or whatever. I cooked the onions and garlic, cider vinegar, greens, broth, pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and paprika in a skillet and then transferred them to the slow cooker to cook the rest of the day.

You know collard greens are ready to eat when they look like something that makes the plumber say, “Well HERE’S your problem right here.”

 But man, they are delicious. 

The pulled pork was quite nice, too. I served it on kaiser buns with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce

and woof, that was a pretty spicy meal! The air had cooled down enough that I wasn’t mad to be sweating over my dinner, though, and it was nice to just have an Instant Pot pot and a crock pot crock to wash up. 

FRIDAY
PBJ

Or something. Damien is taking a bunch of the kids to the beach with friends for Part II of Lucy’s birthday, and Benny has a library lock-in thing, and I think the few still at home will just have to struggle by with whatever we can scrounge. 

And I will be packing! The main thing I did all week, besides sweat and complain, was to write and write and write to get ahead, because on Saturday we are leaving for VACATION. We don’t manage this every year, and I can’t even actually remember where I got the $$; but back in the winter, I rented a house on an ISLAND, that is only accessible by FERRY, and where the natives DISCOURAGE TOURISM, and I remember there being SEA GLASS. So I am pretty excited!

(Burglars, there will be people staying at the house, so don’t bother breaking in to steal our . . . our very valuable and expensive, uhh . . . . . you know what, go ahead and look around and tell me if you find anything good.)

Okay, that’s a wrap! Don’t burn any milk jelly while I’m gone!

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Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

  4. When pork is tender, shred.

What’s for supper? Vol. 203: Custody of the pies

Every Lent, I try to work out how to write an entire post about food on Fridays without being a complete monster. I futzed around with some html code for a while, trying to get the food pictures to be blurred out with a button that says “remove custody of the eyes” that you can click to see the food, but it stopped being funny long before I figured it out. So here’s some food, you suffering bastards. 

SATURDAY
Turkey bacon wraps, mozzarella sticks and jalapeño poppers

This was popular last week, so I made it again, even though I know this is a tactical error. It could be the most fabulous dish in the world, but if you make it too often, it becomes loathed. Still in the grace period, though. 

I had mine on a multigrain wrap with smoked turkey, bacon, spinach, tomatoes, lacy Swiss, and horseradish sauce. Lots of good sharp flavors. But I have not yet figured out how to arrange the fillings for a wrap in such a way that they are both photogenic and in the right order for wrapping and eating. 

I also bought some miscellaneous frozen snacky things and heated them up. I have to say, Aldi’s bacon has improved immensely in flavor, but their version of jalapeño poppers is nothing to write home about. The texture is bad and it just tastes harsh and slimy. No bueno. 

SUNDAY
Linguine with clam sauce, homemade bread, salad that nobody touched

I made Pioneer Woman’s recipe. It sure is easy, and it’s pretty cheap for a fancy-tasting meal, even if you use fresh lemons and parsley and heavy cream (which you should). Specially yummy with freshly-grated parmesan cheese, which Fishers can have for a treat. 

With some trepidation, I made French bread, hoping against hope that my initial success with this recipe wasn’t just a fluke. It wasn’t! The bread turned out lovely. I made up a recipe card for four loaves, with a few adaptations and reassurances. 

Jump to Recipe

I didn’t score one loaf deeply enough, though, and the poor thing sploded. 

My father came over, bearing a used glockenspiel. Yes, he asked first, and yes, I said he should bring it over, and that we wanted it. We do! We’re just … taking a little glockenpause for a few days now.

Oh, I had my heart set on making mango royale for dessert, but my little plebes requested ice cream pie, instead.

We made it with graham cracker crusts, two kinds of ice cream, chocolate and strawberry and butterscotch sauce, Frozen II marshmallows, and of course blobs of store brand kool whip. It was, of course, delicious. 

MONDAY
Beef vegetable soup; hot pretzels

I thought the kids were still bananas about beef barley soup, but I got a wilting, “oh, okay” response when I told them I was making it, so I switched plans mid-shopping and decided to make minestrone, but with beef. So it had onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, wine, pasta shells, beef, and mushrooms. The result was hearty, but a little incoherent, and the broth was thinner than I would like. 

Next time I’ll add some tomato paste and probably skip the mushrooms, and add peas. I wrote up a recipe card incorporating the changes I’ll make next time. 

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I sold it by calling it “Little Bear Birthday Soup.” 

This is the exact look I had on my face while I was serving it, too.

It went over okay. There was leftover bread and also hot pretzels. 

TUESDAY
Mardi Gras, and Corrie’s birthday!

We killed two birds with one stone and went to Chili’s. The original plan was to go to one of those Japanese restaurants where they put on a little show and cook things right on the table in front of you, but when I asked one of the kids if she wanted to go there, she said she wasn’t sure, because she doesn’t really like Italian food. So we went to Chili’s. 

The birthday girl ordered nothing but side dishes: Fries, steamed broccoli, mandarin oranges, and corn. 

We had a nice time! My kids may be goons, but they care about each other. 

And then sometimes spontaneously tell the entire plot of Gawain and the Green Knight while waiting for the food.

Then we came home and had some cake. Corrie had requested an Otis (from Milo and Otis) cake with a pink bow. 

I made the bow and tongue by putting Starbursts in the microwave for a few seconds, mooshing them into shape, adding details with a knife, and freezing them. I’ve been meaning and meaning to try my hand at fondant, but honestly, this seems just as good (as long as you can find the right colors), and it has to taste better. 

She was pleased with my efforts.

She was pleased, pleased, pleased all day long. 

She finally unwrapped the giant dinosaur we bought when it was on sale in December and have been hiding in our bedroom since then. We have a pretty small bedroom, and it also has a treadmill, a sewing machine, a folding desk, a heater, and miscellaneous heaps of garbage in it, so the oversized dinosaur was something of a trial for us all. I had to keep covering and re-covering it with a blanket, and it kept poking out. It got the point where Corrie would come in, see a piece of tail or snout sticking out, and go, “oops!” and cover it with a blanket herself, so it wouldn’t ruin the surprise. However, five-year-olds are magical and unpredictable creatures, and she was delighted with her surprise dinosaur, and promptly named it “Tall-y Tall.” 

The rule is that very intelligent, imaginative kids come up with profoundly dull names for their toys and pets. This is the way. (She also has a smaller dino named “Dino-dino.”)

Her other big present was a Super Corrie outfit she’s been longing for. I was up until 2 a.m., and there was a lot of this kind of thing

but I finished it, by gum! And she loves it. Her powers are Rainbow Powers and Flying (and, if you hit her in the right mood, really fast cleaning). 

(I hemmed it later in the day. I just needed to measure it first! The cape has a panel of sparkly blue down the back.)

Oh, here’s what I had at Chili’s. One of those miscellaneous American Buckets Of Shiny Food. It was good.

Ayyyy, Fat Tuesday. 

WEDNESDAY
Grilled cheese and cream of tomato soup

Ash Wednesday, of course. Grilled cheese and tomato soup from a can never tasted so good.

THURSDAY
Hamburgers with mushrooms, chips, veggies and hummus

Nothing much to report. I had a carton of mushrooms left over from the soup, so I sliced them up and sautéed them in olive oil for the burgers.

I, virtuous, skipped the chips. 

FRIDAY
Pahster, I guess.

We have been on vacation this week, but my car has been in the shop, lying back and having money poured into it, so we didn’t go anywhere or do anything, and anyway, the first week of Lent is always a tricky time to go vacationing. It was okay, though! The kids just lurked about harassing each other and throwing popcorn and orange peels on the floor, and it was kind of nice. I like those kids. I wish they would eat my soup, though. 

 

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French bread

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

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Instant Pot Everything Soup

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • 1 med onion, diced
  • 3 carrots diced
  • 1 lb mushrooms, sliced
  • 28 oz canned diced tomatoes with juice
  • 2 small cans tomato paste
  • 2.5 lbs chuck roast
  • 1.5 cups red wine
  • 6 cups beef broth
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • 3 med potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 1 cups water
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Put the onions, carrots, and olive oil in the pot and press "sauté" and then the "+" button until it reads 10 minutes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are slightly soft Add pepper to taste.

  2. Add beef and press "sauté" again, stirring occasionally until beef is slightly browned.

  3. Add the rest of the ingredients, including 3 cups of water. Stir to combine the tomato paste. Close the top, seal the vent, and press "soup."

  4. Quick release, but be ready for a bit of spraying!

What’s for supper? Vol. 132: Girls like shwarms of things, don’t they?

Can you believe we’re not on summer vacation? That’s crazy, right? One more week! Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Boy cookout

Our eighth grader wanted an end-of-year party, and since he has not recently angered us, we agreed. Damien got a bunch of cheap hot dogs and pre-made burger patties, all the chips in the tri-state area, and a million sodas, plus water balloons and squirters. A bunch of boys came over and it was a howling success, literally. I got no pictures because I couldn’t trust those crumbs not to squirt my camera.

SUNDAY
Sugar rub chicken, grilled mussels in wine sauce, chips

Beautiful man makes beautiful chicken. Here’s Damien’s sugar chicken rub:

Brown sugar 1.5 cups
White Sugar .5 cups
Chili powder 2 table spoons
Garlic powder 2 table spoons
Salt/Pepper
2 tsp chili pepper flakes

Last week’s grilled chicken was good, but maybe a little too charred, so this time, he shoved all the coals to one side, and set the chicken on the other side to cook slowwwwwwly:

Did it come out better? OH MY YES.

But before we even laid eyes on these lovely thighs, we flexed our mussels. That doesn’t mean anything, does it? Damien scrubbed the mussels, discarding the despondent ones, and laid them on the grill until they popped open.

Then he mixed them up with a swanky sauce of half a bottle of white wine, the juice of many lemons, twelve vats of melted butter, and two sweet, darling red onions.

Hot damn, they were good. Tender meat, tart sauce, so good. I was gonna take a picture of one of the mussels opened up, but this is a family blog.

It was another beautiful, golden weekend. We got some good runs in. I got a lot of overdue planting in — a plum and nectarine tree, some gladioli, some tomatoes in their own little fenced playground. The kids picked out tomatoes called, no kidding, “Lemon Boys.” I even mulched, like a fancy person! We cut down the old fence and put up a new fence. I paid the kids to lug rocks, and now we have a new fire pit and a strange, lumpy spot where the old fire pit used to be. My husband pretended to agree that this plan made sense. The first firefly moved into the living room. We ate outside and drank domestic beer. A golden weekend.

MONDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, fruit salad in DORAMELON

Monday was Dora’s birthday, but her party was the next day. However, we had a stray watermelon, so I carved it up, and added sliced mango and strawberries to the cubed watermelon.

As I’m carving it, Irene comes by and says indignantly, “How come you didn’t make one of those for meeee on myyyyyy birthday?”
I said, defensively, despite myself, “Because it didn’t occur to me! I think of things when I think of them! And anyway, your birthday is in April! They weren’t even selling watermelons then!”
She says, “Yes, they were.”
Me: “They were?”
Irene: “Yeah. You made me a watermelon pirate ship, remember?”

Irene, in happier times

Creep! They’re all creeps. Several others came by and made their creepy watermelon demands, so I ended up promising all of them, one by one, that when it was their birthday, I’d make them each a watermelon with “Dora” carved in it, too. Fair’s fair.

We had muffaletta sandwiches, or some approximation thereof. All I could find was sourdough bread, and there were no complaints. I bought honey ham, genoa salami, a little prosciutto, pepper salami, hot capocollo (I checked the package, and that’s what it says. Not capicola), hot calabrese, hot richard, and provolone.

Then, I put one jar of giardiniera vegetables, a can of black olives, and a small jar of green olives into la bella machina, gave it a few whirs, and we had olive salad. Hot damn.

It’s a party on bread, confetti and everything! Some of the kids also put mayo on their sandwiches, but I thought the olive salad covered all the bases, sandwich-wise. I suppose you could drizzle it with olive oil, if your olive needs had not yet been met.

TUESDAY
Chicken shawarma, ice cream pies

For her party, the child wanted shawarama. That’s a can do. They had these weird boneless chicken legs in five-pound bags for $4.99. Not being made of stone, I bought three bags, even though I’ve never heard of boneless legs before. It’s a little weird.

I had a recipe that called for two pounds, which I had scaled up to eight pounds, and then I tripled it for fifteen, and . . . it was a lot of meat. We had to marinate it in a garbage bag. I mean, it’s just a bag. So what if it’s called “garbage?”

We set it to marinate Sunday night, actually, and I don’t know what happened, but, because the food processor makes things a little too easy, we ended up with enough onion to fill a minor league stadium. You could have marinated meat in the smell alone.

Here’s the marinade, a simplified version of the NYT recipe. This is enough marinade for about eight pounds of chicken and four or five red onions:

1.5 cups lemon juice
2 c olive oil
4 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
1 Tbs red pepper flakes
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbs minced garlic

When you’re ready to cook, oil a rimmed pan and lay the chicken and onions on with a little of the marinade. Cook at 425 for about forty minutes, until the edges of the chicken are crisp. Let it cool a little and then slice or break it up. It should be ridiculously tender.

We served it with triangles of pita bread, black and kalamata olives, wedges of tomato and cucumbers, feta, fresh parsley, and plenty of yogurt sauce. Here’s the yogurt sauce recipe:

32-oz tub of full fat Greek yogurt
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt and pepper
2 Tbs. minced garlic

Sadly, I got zero pics of the shawarma or the ice cream pies, which Dora made with mini graham cracker crusts, ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, jimmies, candy, and cherries. She made individual pies so it would be easier to tote up the carbs for Lucy. I do love my kids.

WEDNESDAY
Nachos

I threw together chips topped with ground beef and taco seasoning from envelopes, shredded cheese, and salsa and sour cream on the side. I started to take a picture and said, “Ohh, this doesn’t look very good.” So the kids helped it look better.

Thanks, kids!

THURSDAY
Korean beef bowl, rice, peas

I made a quintuple recipe of this old standby. Thursday afternoon sorely tried my patience. Sorely. I was terribly grateful for how easy this dish is. Cook up de meat, put in the stuff, done. Pot of rice, choppy-uppy-scallions, done. Sesame seeds. I put out peas on the side for no particular reason.

Here’s a pic from previous times:

This is also a good meal to make in the morning and keep in the slow cooker all day. All the better if you make rice in the Instant Pot. Put them food robots to work!

FRIDAY
Pizza

Five large ones. See if I don’t.

***

I’m gonna skip the carbs this week, because there were so many meals I didn’t write down. At one point during the week, Lucy had a frozen pizza, two marshmallows, and a popsicle for dinner, because we knew how many carbs there were in a frozen pizza, two marshmallows, and a popsicle. And that’s how you diabetes!

What’s for supper? Vol. 130: Spiedie trial

I don’t know which of you bastards put a hex on me, but nothing I cooked came out well this week. Also my best cow went dry and the tallow kept lumping on me no matter how I boiled it. And I lost my best mob cap. But I did go running every single day this week, seven days in a row! Now I have a . . . strained toe tendon? Or something? This doesn’t mix well with lots and lots of driving. Ow. But still, I ran.

Here’s what we ate, carb counts at the end:

SATURDAY
Chicken strawberry salad with almonds

I seem to remember my husband made this while I . . . did something important. Probably lay down. I think he roasted the chicken in the oven, the served it with mixed greens, sliced strawberries, feta cheese, toasted almonds, and balsamic vinegar. This dark picture doesn’t do justice to how pretty this meal was, even if the almonds did get a little over-toasted:

It was not easy for me to make the transition to seeing fruit as a natural part of savory meals, rather than as dessert, but once you put balsamic vinegar on fresh strawberries, you’ll never go back.

SUNDAY
Spiedies, peppers and hummus

I couldn’t find my excellent spiedie marinade recipe, so I made one up, and it just wasn’t as zippy.

2 tsp red pepper flakes
red wine vinegar 1/2 cup
1.5 c oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt and pepper
1.5 tsp mint
1 Tbs minced garlic
2 Tbs sugar

I think I’ve used one with lemon zest in the past. This was good, just not amazing. I cubed a boneless pork loin and set it to marinate early in the day, and then the kids put it on skewers (soaked in water to keep the meat moist) and my husband grilled it in the evening.

We served it on toasted rolls with mayonnaise, and had raw peppers and hummus on the side.

Operation Enough With The Chips All The Time proceeds apace.

MONDAY
Hot Dogs of Many Nations, nacho chips, grilled corn, watermelon

We didn’t want to trivialize the memory of our fallen heroes by grilling hamburgers, so we had hot dogs after the parade, instead.

I put out an assortment of toppings: Ketchup, mustard, relish, sauerkraut, chopped cukes, grape tomatoes, diced onions, pickled pepper rings, blue cheese, celery salt, sliced pickles, buffalo sauce, and chopped scallions, if I remember correctly, which I never do.  Several of the kids had a Chicago hot dog, which is  yellow mustard,  pickle relish, onion, tomato, pickle, peppers, and celery salt.

My favorite: Blue cheese, buffalo sauce, and scallions.

I think it’s actually supposed to be chives, but whatever. It’s yuhm.
We like grilling corn on the cob slowly right in the husks, which makes it immensely sweet and juicy, but I forgot, and had the kids shuck the corn. So Damien grilled it anyway, and we buttered it, then sprinkled it with chili lime powder.

It was supposed to be ice cream pie for dessert (you mash up ice cream with a potato masher until it’s soft and spreadable, then spread it in a graham cracker crust, and dress it up with chocolate sauce, peanut butter, marshmallows, whipped cream, candy, sprinkles, nuts, cherries, whatever, and then freeze for a couple of hours) but we forgot to make it, so we just had ice cream.

TUESDAY
Taco Tuesday

I didn’t take any pictures. I did add the chili lime powder to the meat, and it made it much brighter and more interesting. I was also starving because we had the final high school concert of the year and ate super late. I also added chili lime powder to a can of refried beans I had for lunch the next day. I keep thinking it’s not very good, but then I keep using it, so I guess I like it.

WEDNESDAY
Cobb salad

This is a cute meal. I took my biggest pan and arranged stripes of chopped bacon, sliced avocado, halved hard boiled eggs, grape tomatoes, chopped cucumbers, chopped Romaine lettuce, and diced chicken.

It was okay. I made the chicken in the instant pot and basically just steamed it in lemon juice, which made it kind of damp and lemony, which is not my absolute favorite way to enjoy chicken. Oh well. I left my feet in the picture to prove that I’m not one of those fancy food bloggers who doesn’t have feet.

THURSDAY
Pork ribs, coleslaw, some kind of rice thing

The pork, I seasoned generously with salt and pepper and put it under a hot broiler in a pan with some drainage, and turned it once.

I planned to make biscuits, only my planning didn’t extend to having flour in the house, so I decided to make risotto instead, which doesn’t really go with coleslaw, but it didn’t matter because I was also out of parmesan cheese, so it wasn’t really risotto.

I sauteed two diced Vidalia onions in olive oil with salt and pepper and a tablespoon of minced onion in the Instant Pot, then added four cups of white rice, and stirred it up until the rice was opaque. Then I added eight cups of chicken broth, closed the lid and valve, and set it on high for seven minutes, then did a quick release. Heck, everyone ate it. They kept asking me if it was flavored rice or brown rice, and I kept telling them to shut up.

FRIDAY

It seems we have some kind of effing potluck to go to. We were supposed to have scrambled eggs and hash browns, which is not all that great, but at least we wouldn’t have to talk to anyone or put pants on. Effing potluck. What do you recommend that requires almost no effort on my part and that pairs well with a bad attitude?

And now for the carbs:

SPIEDIES:
roll – 39 or 40

pork: 0

2 tsp red pepper flakes 2g

red wine vinegar 1/2 cup: 8 Tbs
1.5 c oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt and pepper
1.5 tsp mint
1 Tbs minced garlic]
2 Tbs sugar: 25.2
——-
2g per Tbs, 2 Tbs per kebab
hummus: 2 Tbs, 4g
1/2 yellow pepper: 6
marinade: 4
l’oven Deli roll: 39
—–
53
dessert:
ice cream 2/3 c rocky road Hannaford: 23
choc sauce1 Tbs: 12
1/3 cup marshmallows: 11.5

3 Reese’s peanut butter mini cups: 15

2 maraschino cherries: 4
_____
65.5
supper and dessert: 118.5

HOT DOGS:

1 hot dogs: 3

1 frankfurter buns: 21
2 Tbs ketchup: 10
mustard: 0
2 Tbs chopped onions: 8
5 grape tomatoes: 1.55
pickles: 0
1/4 cup chopped cucumbers with skin: 4
corn on the cob: 17
chili lime powder: doesn’t want
butter: 0
11 nacho chips: 15
watermelon, 1 cup equivalent: 46

COBB SALAD:

chicken cooked in lemon juice: 0

romaine lettuce: 1
avocado: doesn’t want
5 grape tomatoes: 1.6
bacon: 0
cukes: .5
hard boiled egg: 0
balsamic vinegar, 2 Tbs: 8
11.1 carbs
12 tsp iced tea powder (3 c): 54
total meal: 65.1

PORK, COLE SLAW, RISOTTO:

pork, salt, pepper: 0

cole slaw:

1  head cabbage -72 g
1 cup mayo -1.3 g
1 1/2cup white vinegar -0 g
1/2 cup.lime juice 8.23 g
10 carrots 8 g
1 cup sugar- 200 g
Total carbs: 289.53

risotto:
rice 4 cups uncooked: 576

chicken broth 8 cups: 4

olive oil: 0

2 vidalia onions: 32

garlic minced 1 Tbs: 3 g
salt and pepper: .5 (1/2 tsp pepper)
rice: 615.5 for ten cups of cooked risotto

about 61.55g per cup