Tag: Kids Make Supper

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

Happy Friday!

Today I am working outside

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

 

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus loaded potato skins

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

SUNDAY
Spiedies, cole slaw, guacamole

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

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

Here is my spiedie marinade recipe

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

It’s not stupid if it works!

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, pesto pasta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, mashed carrots

Here is my recipe for bo ssam. 

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

Just excellent. 

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

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

THURSDAY
BLT’s, ice cream pie

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I gave blood, woo!

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

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

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

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


And that’s-a my story! 

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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup veg or olive oil
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup red or white wine vinegar
  • 4 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup fresh mint, chopped
  • 8-10 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 4-5 lbs boneless pork, cubed
  • peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, cut into chunks

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

    Mix up with cubed pork, cover, and marinate for several hours or overnight. 

    Best cooked over hot coals on the grill on skewers with vegetables. Can also spread in a shallow pan with veg and broil under a hot broiler.

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

  • 1 pint fresh strawberries
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1-1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

For the ice cream base

  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
  • 1 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Hull and slice the strawberries. Mix them with the sugar and lemon juice, cover, and refrigerate for an hour.

Make the ice cream base:

  1. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.

  2. Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.

  3. Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

  1. Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.

  2. Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)

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bare bones bo ssam

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

 

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Oven-fried chicken

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 445: Follow the fellow who fixes your roof

Today’s food post will be mainly a roof post! That’s how it be sometimes. 

So, here we have a representative sample of some of the wood we pulled down from the roof. Just in case you were wondering why it seemed so urgent to do this project.

We’ve had a leak for quite a while, but we had a storm a few weeks ago and it busted right through the living room ceiling. So off we went. 

We started on Thursday of last week, and pulled off the old shingles, edge, and flashing, and opened up the eaves to see how bad the damage was. It was actually not as bad as we feared! But we did have a bit of a tough moment when we discovered that 2x4s are not actually two by four inches. I guess maybe you knew that, but we didn’t — mainly because the existing trusses were rough-cut wood that actually does measure 2×4.

So that added a few trips to Home Depot, and a lot of staring up at the roof and saying, “But . . .what? What??” 

This is a roof over the first story of the house only, but there is quite a steep drop-off in the ground on one side. I stuck mainly to the less-scary side, and Damien worked on the more-scary side. He discovered that whoever fixed the roof last ran out of flashing and used a bunch of metal newspaper printing plates from 1976, so that was kind of neat. 

There have been a few other spot repairs on the roof, we discovered as we tore layers away. Some of them looked vaguely familiar; some of them had clearly been done by other boneheads. I think it was on Friday that we realized we have been living in this house for almost 20 years, and it was really time to stop calling the previous owners “they.” As in, “I can’t believe they did it this way” and “I can’t believe they just left it like that.” Because, like I said, for twenty years, it’s been us. There is no they. They are we. 

I masked up and clambered around pulling all the horrible old moldy, mousy insulation out

It was also very much we who did a terrible job putting tarps down, so there were rusty nails and scraps of rotten wood and bits of chewed-up insulation all over the place, in among the tall grass and wet blackberry thorns and whatnot. So I wandered slowly and furiously around with a magnet for a while and got most of the nails and crap cleaned up, and redid the tarps, so there. I’m making it sound like I did most of the work, but actually Damien did most of the work. 

SATURDAY

Saturday, Clara’s boyfriend came over and did a ton of work replacing and shoring up trusses and laying down new decking, and talking us through the rest of the project. Then I went back to Home Depot for some more wood and dropped a 8×10 sheet of plywood on my foot and broke my little toe, which is something I like to do from time to time. My toe is now more or less pierogi-shaped and permanently grey, and the toenail grows in three distinct pieces. All just part of my feminine mystique. Then I went to Home Depot a few more times and also got pierogis, and we had that and leftovers for supper. 

I was a little bummed to be missing the No Kings rally, so I went out with a staple gun and gussied up my skeletons. 

So there. 

I think it was on Saturday that Damien fell off the ladder. He tumbled really well, and didn’t hurt himself, thank God. But it was a good wake-up call for us to both be super super careful! 

SUNDAY
Beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins

Sunday we went to Mass of course, and then stopped at the store for some meat and milk and whatnot to help us limp through the week without actually shopping.

Corrie has been aching to learn how to make her favorite meal of soup and muffins, so I gave her a very little bit of direction, and off she went making beef barley soup

Jump to Recipe

very much enjoying the process

My recipe calls for diced tomatoes, but she doesn’t like that, so she skipped it. 

Then she started on the muffins

Jump to Recipe

and everything turned out great!

Nothing like sitting down to a delicious meal you made yourself. 

Damien spent the day fitting plywood onto the roof for decking. It is, like everything else in our house, oddly shaped, so it took a long time! But he got it done and then absolutely swaddled and taped the heck out of it, because the rain was on the way. And it rained all night and into the next day, and man, that was nerve-wracking, listening to the rain fall. We both kept looking up at the ceiling, hoping and praying everything would stay dry. 

MONDAY
Roast chicken, peas, noodles

It did stay dry! Wonderful. While Damien worked on the eaves or something, I went back to Home Depot for nails or something. I think it was also Monday that we got the drip edge on. The days really blurred together this week. I did see a nice rainbow at Home Depot, so that was something. 

I roasted the chickens following Ina Garten’s super easy recipe. I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I just threw the garlic and lemons in there, and had the seasoned butter on the top, and they turned out absolutely scrumptious. No searing or flipping or basting or anything. They did take a little longer than expected, but it was worth the wait. 

We didn’t have much in the house for sides, so I just cooked some egg noodles and served them with butter, and heated up some frozen peas. Unsophistication at its best. 

I was looking at this plate and trying to think what it reminded me of. Then I realized: Toy food. It looks like toy food. 

Not a thing wrong with that! 

TUESDAY
Chicken quesadillas

I guess it was Tuesday we got the drip edge on. I don’t know. I’m probably forgetting a bunch of things we had to do. Damien had a bunch more carpentry to do, because the eaves and soffits and whatnot are in tough shape in spots. While he wrestled with that, I went upstairs and caulked the frame of the window (we suspect water is getting in under the siding from the window frame) and loosened up the siding around the window, much to the consternation of Maggie the Cat, who mostly lives in that room.

Then I swept all the crap off the roof, which was harder than you’d think! I don’t know if you’ve ever swept a sloped surface above your head, but it makes you feel like your arms are just about useless.

Then, o then, we finally started on the water and ice shield! This was exciting, because it meant the structural part is basically done, and also because it was going to rain again. It is fancy self-adhesive stuff, and BOY IS IT ADHESIVE. I guess I would kind of like to draw a veil over Tuesday, but the upshot is that we went up and down the ladder 923 times

and we kept at it and kept at it, and by gum we got that roof and part of the wall covered with high quality water and ice shield. 

and then it DID rain again that night, and the roof did stay dry. WHEW.

The kids made chicken quesadillas for supper. I purposely made two big chickens so there would be leftovers for that, and the kids did great. 

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday Damien and I were both just so freaking exhausted, we decided to just stick to our day jobs on Wednesday, and we both got some writing done. Damien has been going back and forth from working on the roof to doing all his regular work all this week – pretty amazing. That evening, we dressed up and drove to Concord for the tenth anniversary party for In Depth, which is one of the papers Damien writes for. The snacks were quite good, but we decided to stop at Burger King on the way home anyway. 

I had bought sandwiches, popcorn, and Swiss Rolls for the kids at home, so they didn’t have to cook. I think they spent the evening working on Halloween costumes. We got home late and collapsed. 

THURSDAY

Thursday we had school conferences, which I went to 

while Damien started in on the tar paper layer.

In the morning, I had fried up a bunch of Italian sausages, cut them up, and put them in the slow cooker to stay warm all day. So when we got home around 5, all I had to do was cook some spaghetti and then discover that yes, I had turned on the slow cooker, and yes, I had plugged it in, but! the power strip I had plugged it into was not plugged in. No.

I didn’t really think we needed to dine on All Day Room Temperature Sausage, so we just had plain spaghetti, and it was a little sad. But at least we had tar paper. 

FRIDAY

Friday Damien finished the tar paper and we started in on the step flashing between the roof and the house wall. For whatever reason, I got the heebie jeebies and couldn’t get myself to get up on the roof, so Damien ended up doing most of it.

Then we ran out of flashing, briefly considered putting the newspaper plates back up, and decided we should just go back to Home Depot. So I’m gonna do that after adoration, and he’s gonna finish putting them on, and we may or may not be able to get the waterproof tar sealant stuff on tonight. I don’t now what’s for supper, and I’m struggling to feel like this is my problem. I will probably pick up some tuna. 

AND THEN, the only thing left is to put the shingles on! And of course reattach the siding. And rebuild the soffits and fascia boards, and a few other miscellaneous things, and of course haul away all the debris. I’m sure in a few weeks, when it’s really truly done, we’ll feel proud and relieved, but man, this project has really taken it out of us. It’s only about 115 square feet of roof, and we’ve been thinking it would be sort of a test project to see if we could fix the whole main roof on the rest of the house in the spring, which, I don’t know. Maybe. It’s pretty high up there. Lotta roof. Much ladders. Keep hitting our thumbs with hammers. You know. 

It’s our 28th anniversary tomorrow, and you’ll never guess, it looks very much like we will be spending most of it on the roof. Better than in the grave!

Well, goodbye! 

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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. 

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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. 434: Shawarmageddon

Happy Friday! Hope this finds you well. It finds me listening to Mozart Piano Sonata No. 5 in G and then suddenly AN AD FOR FREAKIER FRIDAY, which is essentially a war crime. Not to mention the Lay’s potato chip ad, which features someone loudly chomping on a chip right into the microphone. WHO WANTS THAT?

Anyway, so, here’s what we had this week. Some pretty good summer meals, a new recipe, and another successful kid-made meal! To wit: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers, onion rings

Saturday is a blur. I vaguely remember angrily cleaning the refrigerator out. Don’t know if I’ve ever cleaned the fridge out without being angry. 

SUNDAY
Parking lot pizza

Sunday we went to Canobie! I got an unexpected royalty check and it was enough to pay for most of the trip, so I was feeling pretty triumphant about that. I was riding the migraine train all weekend, but I medicated and caffeinated myself to the max, and when we got there, Damien gave me his sunglasses, sent the kids away, and put me on an inflated tube, and we floated around the lazy river together until I felt a little more embodied. 

We stayed for seven hours and it was a pretty great day. I have no regrets about having all those babies, but DANG life is easier without babies.

I posted some pics here if you want to take a look. 

We left the park at nine and chose the nearest pizza spot that was still open, which turned out to be the elegantly-situated Salem House of Pizza. 

All your bodily needs, from the lashes of your eyes to the soles of your shoes, catered to in one spot. I was kind of fascinated by “Bread Makery.” If only there were a word for that! We have a local business called “Jenna’s Butcher” and we used to have a “The Barbery.” I feel we should RETVRN to . . . I don’t even know, whatever. Just, everyone, before doing anything, ask me. 

On the other hand, I’m the one who was very excited to have found this very old penny with a rare misprint on it. It says “ONE CENT” backwards!

So I posted about it on Facebook and started thinking about how valuable it might be if it were cleaned up, and maybe it would even pay for a new roof, and I showed it to Damien, and he gently pointed out that it was a regular penny that I was holding upside down. 

Yeah, well. I’m still starting a roof repair fund. So far, I have one cent. 

Anyway, this pizza place closed at 10 and we got there at 9:15, but they were still pretty mad! So most of us skulked outside while the pizzas cooked, but Corrie opted to have a seat inside, and have a chat with her favorite person

and I have to admit, that pizza was frickin delicious. Possibly because it was the freshest possible pizza imaginable, as they essentially pulled it out of the oven and threw it at us. But it was also very late and we had all logged our 10K steps and then some; but it was also just good pizza. We ate it on the car hood and it was fab. 

I fell asleep a few times on the way home. Sadly, I was driving. But I did wake up again right away, and filed the experience away to my “maybe we are getting too old for this kind of thing” folder. 

MONDAY
Salad with chicken, blueberries, almonds

Monday was a bit of a blur, but I did get supper on the table. Roast chicken breast over salad greens, with blueberries, minced red onion, crunchy onions from a can, and sliced almonds (toasted in the microwave). 

This salad is good with feta or blue cheese, but I didn’t buy any. I think I had blue cheese dressing on mine, and it was good. The blueberries are sweet this year. As you can see, we also had watermelon, and it was another massively juicy one. 

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, pickles

Tuesday the new swing I ordered (after the old swings broke mid-swing) arrived, and Corrie put it together herself,

and now she lives on the swing. 

Seriously, I thought she would probably like it, but I did not anticipate she would be on there 23 hours a day. We had a tire swing when we were growing up, and it was The Place, so I get it. I still remember the smell of the rubber tire, the sound of rainwater sloshing around in the bottom, the prickle of the frayed rope, the sway of the ground passing by. Dragging your fingertips over the roots of the tree as you drift through leafy shadows. Ah, summer. 

We had a blessedly easy dinner of grilled ham and cheese, with chips and pickles. 

Last night I dreamt I was in college again, and it was pretty terrible. I was carrying hay-bale-sized rolls of toilet paper upstairs for the whole dorm, and nobody even said thank you, and my friend Dena from elementary school was there, and she didn’t like me anymore.

The dream did not include one of my actual greatest college experiences, which was getting drunk as a skunk at Penuche’s, and then staggering next door to Jesus Grocery and asking for a hot dog, and the polite Pakistani cashier gently explaining they didn’t have hot dogs, but he could make me a chhham and cheese for a dollar twenty-five. Best chhhham and cheese I’ve ever had. But this one was pretty good, too. 

Tuesday evening, Sophia started prepping for her marvelous Kid-Made Meal of the week. First she shopped for and then made tiramisu, following this recipe, and she made the exact same mistake I made last time I made tiramisu, and mixed the egg custard and the cream parts together, rather than having them as separate layers. I was happy to be able to reassure her that it wasn’t a disaster and everyone would love it anyway.

I also showed her how to skin and bone chicken thighs, and she did that and made the marinade and got the chicken marinating for the next day. And cleaned up! 

WEDNESDAY
Shawarma, pita, tiramisu

AND OH WHAT A SHAWARMA IT WAS. Here’s my oven shawarma recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I still hope to use that rotisserie spit I got at my favorite store, but this recipe works great, especially if you give the meat plenty of time to marinate. 

Sophia also made pita, using this recipe. Guys, it was so much better than any pita I’ve ever made. I’m so impressed. Also, her yogurt sauce was better.

Jump to Recipe

Also, the shawarma was better! I don’t know what she did (and when I asked, she said she just followed my recipes!), but it was a completely fantastic meal. 

Served with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, black and kalamata olives. We lost the parsley, but didn’t miss it. 

Amazing. I know shawarma is supposed to be in little bits, but the chicken was so tender, we didn’t bother. 

The tiramisu was also splendid. I didn’t get a picture, because I was too busy arguing with myself that I would rather have tiramisu than get a gold star in food today (yes, I have a sticker chart, and yes, I give myself a gold star if I stick to my calorie goal. And yes, the tiramisu was a good trade). 

THURSDAY
Vietnamese-style meatballs, rice, peas, cherries

New recipe! I ended up using just ground beef, rather than beef and pork; I had lemon zest rather than lime, and I didn’t make the sauce. Still super delicious, very flavorful, with all the good stuff: Fresh garlic and ginger, cilantro, fresh mint, fish sauce, and of course the citrus zest, plus red pepper flakes and scallions. And eggs and panko crumbs, as long as I’m listing all the ingredients. I made a double recipe and ended up with about 75 meatballs, which means I made them smaller than they were supposed to be, but I thought it was a good size. The fish sauce makes them quite salty, so smaller is good. They are baked in the oven, so that’s easy. 

I made rice on the stovetop like an absolute peasant, because I completely forgot about fixing my Instant Pot, which just flashes and beeps and does nothing else. We had just plain peas, which some of my kids are weirdly enthusiastic about, and cherries. 

So kind of an odd but satisfying meal. I’ll probably make the meatballs again, and will probably make the spicy sauce, which calls for peanuts, yum. 

I also started phase 1 of  Project Enormous S’mores, which was homemade graham crackers. I made a triple batch of dough from this recipe, and put it in the fridge to chill

and I was going to make a giant slab of marshmallow, but the recipe was pretty adamant that you don’t want to make homemade marshmallows when it’s humid out, which it sure was. I think I’ll try again on Saturday. Benny is the chief S’mores lover, and she will be out of town on Saturday, so it would be fun to have all the stuff ready for Sunday.

For the giant chocolate bar element, I just keep buying bags of chocolate chips (not all at the same time, because that would be expensive. Instead, I am buying them a few at a time, which is thrifty. In some way), and I’m probably gonna melt them in a double boiler with some Crisco, and then spread that in a pan lined with parchment paper, and put it in the fridge to set. That should work, right? 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Or, as one of my kids used to call it, “pigsnetti.”

What did your kids call spaghetti? Tell me cute things! Right now, I don’t have anyone in my house who mispronounces things in a cute way. I do have a bunch of teenagers who started out saying things like “kway-sa-DILL-a” and “GWACK-a-mole” to be funny, but now it’s just habit and they just say it that way automatically, and some day they’re going to be very embarrassed in front of someone they care about. But that’s not my problem! 

The summer really is wrapping up, and I didn’t do a lot of the things I wanted to, yet. I have to get back to Corrie’s treehouse (which is still just two planks bolted to a tree!), and I haven’t made any progress on the front walkway at all. I honestly wouldn’t feel bad if I just set that project aside for the spring, but I do want to make that treehouse. We are planning one more ocean trip, but man, it went by fast!  So fast. We have a kid starting college in a few weeks, and, sighhhh, also a kid moving out into their first apartment. Yeah, I gotta get that treehouse done. 

Anyway, tell me the cute way your kid says spaghetti. 

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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.

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers with French bread pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh what a life. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes MADE BY CORRIE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Koren beef bowl, cucumber salad

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy birthday, my deary dear. 

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

THURSDAY
Caprese chicken burgers, chips

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Macarona bil laban 

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

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

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

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

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

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Oven-fried chicken

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Korean Beef Bowl

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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spicy cucumber salad

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

Ingredients

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

Optional:

red pepper, diced

  • 1/2 red onion diced

Instructions

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