Tag: meatballs

What’s for supper? Vol. 486: Grill, baby, grill!

Happy Friday! Come along with me and I will tell you about an incredible new invention I have made, which will revolutionize baking forever. 

But first, a little background. I think I’ve told this story before, but I’m still perversely proud of how stupid it is. It was several years ago, and I was probably pregnant, and definitely sleep-deprived. I had to leave the house, but suddenly realized I had forgotten to eat. I thought I would grab some toast, because that’s portable. Then I thought, no, I need something with more protein. What has protein? Um. . . nuts! Yes, peanuts. Perfect. But I wish there were some way I could affix them to the toast, so I could carry it with me. Perhaps if there were some way to crush the nuts onto the bread . . . 

So yeah [looks down modestly] I invented peanut butter.

I honestly thought this was going to be the peak achievement of my life, and truly, it would have been enough! But in fact peanut butter was only a foothill in comparison with the immense heights I summited last night. And I thank you for being here with me as I reveal my latest achievement.

Friends, last night I invented . . . THE OVEN. 

I’ll explain in a bit. First, here’s what else we ate this week!

SATURDAY
Leftovers and something

I have very little memory of Saturday, except that Damien spent his afternoon driving me around to various stores so I could do my own grocery shopping for the week. I had attempted driving a few days before, when I was still taking Keppra, and he wasn’t crazy about, for instance, the way I hit Sophia’s car. What a fussy man. Anyway, I was tapering off Keppra at this point, and it made me extremely dizzy, so it’s a good thing I wasn’t driving! I think I went home and napped for the rest of the day.

SUNDAY
Chicken enchiladas, beans and rice

I DID get to Mass on Sunday, then ate banana bread that Corrie baked, drank cappuccino that Damien made, and then did some more advanced-level napping. 

There was lots of leftover chicken from Thursday’s Ina Garten roast chicken, so when I got up, I shredded that and made a bunch of enchiladas. First I slowly fried a bunch of chopped onions, then I added in the shredded chicken with a bunch of cumin, salt, pepper, and chili powder. I heated up some enchilada sauce, dipped tortillas in the sauce, and rolled them up with the chicken and onion mixture and some diced tomatoes and shredded cheese. Then I put them in a baking dish on top of a layer of sauce, topped them with more sauce, more cheese, and more chili powder; then baked them until they were bubbly. 

Is this the authentic way to make enchiladas? Nah. But they were freaking delicious. I made a pot of beans and rice, and had my enchilada with a scoop of sour cream. 

Yum. 

MONDAY
Harvest chicken salad

On Monday, I assessed last week’s timid foray back into the world of lettuce, and I decided it was probably fine or whatever, mainly because I really miss salad. So I roasted a bunch of chicken breasts with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and served it sliced on mixed greens with an assortment of  vaguely Octoborish stuff from Aldi: Dried cranberries, “pumpkin spice almonds,” green apples (cut up ahead of time and tossed with lemon juice to keep them from browning), cucumbers, and parmesan crisps.

I also made a batch of croutons using old hamburger buns, cubed and tossed with lots of butter, salt, pepper and garlic powder, toasted slowly in the oven. 

My original plan was to finally get around to digging up some potatoes from the garden and making baked potatoes, but I ran out of energy; and luckily, it was a hearty enough salad on its own. 

I had mine with Italian dressing. It wasn’t fabulous, but it was nice enough, and filling. I do like a really big salad. 

And Monday was my very last dose of Keppra! The doctor said it would take 24-48 hours to get out of my system, and she was right.

TUESDAY
Ham, cheese, and onion omelettes, hash browns, salad, OJ

Tuesday, I was still feeling pretty dizzy, but the forecast said there would be a frost that night, so I picked the last of the tomatoes, decided I didn’t care about the rest of the basil, because I had already frozen a bunch, and went to check on the pumpkins. There are about a dozen, and they didn’t get very big, but I figured there was plenty of time for them to grow. 

OR WAS THERE.

Look at that! Every single pumpkin looked like this. Some gnawing little bastard beat me to the pumpkin patch. OH WELL. My poor garden just wasn’t having its best year this year. I do not have a great feeling about my potatoes, which are the absolute last things I haven’t harvested yet. But maybe I’ll be surprised. 

Speaking of surprises, Tuesday is also the day the oven exploded. I was standing there happily making some messy omelettes with ham, onions, and cheddar cheese, and warming up a bunch of frozen hash browns in the oven

when suddenly there was a deafening buzzing sound and a roaring, the overhead lights flickered off and on several times, and the oven was filled with flames! Which is not my normal recipe!

So I turned the oven off and — okay, look, I’m not exactly proud of this, but I pulled the hash browns out and served them. They looked fine. The bottom of the oven where the heating element plugs in had a little blackened hole blown in it, but the hash browns looked fine! The kids were really excited about hash browns, and they’ve been through a lot lately, so I went ahead and — okay, I’m not exactly proud of this, either, but I also continued using the stovetop to finish making omelettes, and it was a lovely meal. With orange juice, and salad!

The salad was really good, too. I’m not on trial here. 

So, Damien is really good at watching YouTube videos and figuring out how to fix all kinds of stuff, but this one looked like it included both electrical work and welding, and this oven is so old, I don’t even remember when we got it. I remember when one burner decided it would only do “high” from now on, and I remember when the glass door broke, and I remember replacing the door handle with a growing wad of duct tape and then eventually pvc pipe. So I guess we fed Mr. Frigidaire one last meal of hash browns garnished with a subtle dusting of combustion residue, and now it can go in peace. So long, venerable oven, and thanks for all the cheesecake. 

WEDNESDAY
Hamburgers, chips, steamed broccoli

On Wednesday, as you may recall, we had no oven, so Damien cooked the burgers on his grill. I steamed some broccoli, and we had the burgers with tomatoes from the garden, and the second jar of refrigerator pickles. 

You can see I got some pickled dill and garlic on my burger along with the pickles, and I wasn’t mad about that! 

Oh, Wednesday was also the day I tried driving again! I went to pick up the kids after school and Lucy after work, with Damien in the passenger seat, and this time it went much better. I did almost hit someone, but it was on the way out of the church parking lot where we pick up high schoolers, and it’s just generally accepted that people are going to hit each other. 

THURSDAY
Homemade meatballs and sauce and bread

Thursday I ended up sleeping really late because I had been up most of the night with TONGUE ZAPS. I’m sorry I keep complaining. I really am healing steadily, if not gracefully! Complaining is just an essential part of my healing process.

Anyway, when I finally got up, I wanted to take a shower, but I thought about how I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom since before surgery, and I reeeally wanted to clean it, and it makes more sense to shower after you clean. And then I thought, well, if I haven’t showered yet, I might as well make supper first, and then I can shower away food smells, too. The plan was some kind of Korean meatballs with an apricot glaze, plus rice and maybe some roasted delicata squash.

But! Then I remembered, again, that we didn’t have an oven. So I figured I could still make meatballs, but just pan fry them rather than making them in the oven like I usually do. And as long as I was gonna go to the trouble of pan fying them, I might as well make them nice meatballs, with olive oil, and minced garlic and diced onion.

And they were nice! I made probably eighty meatballs, because I had bought a bunch of ground beef on sale, but forgotten to freeze it, so it was now or never. 

Then I discovered we didn’t have any more jarred sauce. Which was fine, because they were such nice meatballs, they deserved a homemade sauce. More onion, more garlic, some freezer basil, some tomato paste, a bunch of chopped-up tomatoes from the garden, a little sugar, some salt and pepper, and I let that simmer in the olive oil left over from browning the meatballs. Mmmm. 

Then I was like, gee, this is such a nice meal, it deserves some freshly-baked bread! So I made some dough, let it rise, and rolled eight little loaves of french bread, and set them for a second rise. 

And then. AND ONLY THEN. Did I remember again that we

do

not

have

an oven. 

I thought about the microwave. No, obviously not. Thought about the air fryer, which, maybe, but it’s a very small air fryer, and I’d have to cook each loaf individually. Do not want. I thought about the Instant Pot and the slow cooker, but again, the size they are, I’d have to re-form the loaves into a single loaf, and it would almost certainly turn out damp and rubbery. Also, I had already put the meatballs and sauce into the slow cooker and washed all the pots and pans, and the idea of transferring all that food into another receptacle just made me . . . I don’t know, it was like putting a golden seal of stupidity on the whole enterprise. And I didn’t want to do that!

So I put a a double layer of tinfoil on one compartment of Damien’s grill, and he cranked up the compartment next to it. I waited about ten minutes, and then I put those poor loaves in, and put the top down. 

Then I went to bed and felt sorry for myself for a while. Why? I don’t even know. I was just really sad about how terrible the bread was going to turn out, and how dumb I was, and how I couldn’t even blame it on the drugs, because I’m not on drugs anymore, and somebody ate my pumpkins, and my tongue is weird, and my head itches but I can’t scratch it because it’s still numb, and probably my potatoes are going to bad potatoes, and so on.

Eventually I realized about 40 minutes had gone by, and it was going to be time to exhume whatever wretched, inedible parody of bread I would find inside the grill.

So I slogged outside, gingerly opened the top, and . . .  

IT WAS BREAD. 

Actual bread, baked kind of perfectly! 

Absolutely could not believe my eyes. HOW could anyone have predicted that heating up an enclosed metal box, placing unbaked dough inside, and then waiting a while while it continued to stay hot, could have resulted in BAKED BREAD? THIS IS LIFE-CHANGING. 

Told you. I invented the oven.

Well, that’s just what I’m calling it now, until I come up with a snazzier name, like “Hotsybox” or “Transform-a-bread.” Or heck, can you really beat “Funcooker?” 

 

So now we have a mechanism for producing baked bread, and you’re welcome. We have a method for making protein adhere to that bread, and you’re welcome again. But I’m not done! My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives, and I think I will focus next on a new technique for transforming common fruit into some sort of spreadable yet palatable material, and I don’t mean to outpace myself here, but I think  . . . the three elements may just go together. I think — and this is only if it works out, which is a big if! — I will call it “JBP.” Or maybe “BPJ.” I don’t know. Let me know what you think. 

Har, har, okay, I got that joke out of my system. But seriously, this bread was so nice. It had a faint smoky flavor on the outside, and it was soft and lightly chewy inside. 

Piled on the saucy meatballs, which were extremely tasty. 

And everyone liked it! So, I stopped feeling sorry for myself! Potential potatoes be damned. 

Oh, also, I DID clean the bathroom. Did a very thorough job, and then I had a very nice, very hot shower, compliments of Damien, who fixed the water heater. 

Also on Thursday Moe moved into his new apartment, which is nice for him, and nice for Damien, who gets his office back! Happily, Moe is not too far away, so I hope we still see him a lot. Once he’s settled in, he’s going to pick up Maggie. She has been with us for just over a year, and God bless her, she never compromised on her steadfast hatred of this house, this family, and most of all, this freaking dog. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle? 

Or tuna noodon’t. Damien is not a fan of tuna noodle casserole, but I planned it thinking he was going to be away at dinner, but now I’m not sure. And also, uhhhh we

don’t have an oven. We are ordering one tonight! Damien is actually, at this moment, at an awards ceremony where he just won an award for his journalism AGAIN, and this one comes with cash, of all things! I’m so proud of him. He writes award winning stories while also constantly doing things like fixing the water heater, driving everybody everywhere, and rescuing me from corners I painted myself into for no reason at all. 

In the mean time, we’ll just keep grillin’. For tonight, though, I think perhaps we will just have tuna sandwiches and chips. Or maybe I’ll treat everyone to a good old fashioned BPJ.

 
 

What’s for supper? Vol. 4SIX SEHHHHHHVEN

Happy Friday! A couple of days ago, I thought of a really witty pun title for this week’s post. Then I thought, “I don’t need to write that down. It’s so good, there is no way I will forget it.” Then a great river went rushing through my mind, and left behind 

–okay, now here I broke away for a bit to try and hunt down an authentically ancient description of what it looked like when the Augean Stables got cleaned out, and I got as far as people singing “ting-a-ling” in praise of Herakles afterward

and I decided it wasn’t really that funny. So please just imagine that my mind is sparkling clean, and also quite empty. And I have a middle schooler. So that explains the title. 

Well, here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets(?) 

I remember being super busy on Saturday, but I can’t remember why. 

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, steamed broccoli

Sunday after Mass, I did part 2 of cleaning the kid room that needed a drastic overhaul. This is the project that’s been preventing me from getting anything done outside! This task has been looming in my mind, so it’s a huge relief to get it done. We are hoping to paint over April vacation. 

I have soooo many projects I have to get to outside. Gotta build Corrie’s tree house, prep the gardens for planting and start a new spot for corn, replace the grape arches that fell down over the winter, plant the new grapes I got on clearance at Walmart, maybe build a second brick step/stoop in front, finish the duck pond, finish the garden I started building on the side of the back steps to maybe prevent people from dropping crap there, and, less glamorously, finish up the new roof we put on in the fall, and take a million pounds of trash and scraps to the dump. And fix the mailbox. But knowing that bedroom inside was such a wreck was making it impossible to commit to anything outside. So now I can!

Well, the truth is, I am waiting to hear back about if I will be having surgery soon or in several months, so everything is very much up in the air. But a girl can dream. 

So then we had hamburgers, chips, and steamed broccoli for supper. 

I’ve been on a huge steamed broccoli kick lately. Just something very satisfying about the two different textures in each bite Nobody else is that crazy about it, so I’ve been eating leftover all week for a snack, and that is how I keep current with my fart schedule. 

It snowed. 

MONDAY
Turkey bacon wraps, hot pretzels, fruit salad

Monday I had a meeting and then a boring pharmacy adventure, and then it snowed. I compensated by making a very bright and cheerful dinner, kind of 90’s brunch style or something. Deli turkey and bacon, tomato, lettuce, cheese, and honey mustard wraps, hot pretzels, and fruit salad. 

While the bacon was cooking, I started making the fruit salad, and it was so pretty in layers, I left it that way, rather than mixing it. 

Color! Must have color! 

I absolutely love this kind of meal. It’s like something your grandparents would buy you at a hospital cafeteria. 

Possibly you will even get to pick out an eraser shaped like an ice cream come at the gift shop, if you are good. 

TUESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs, salad, hearth bread

Tuesday I got some lab work done on the way home from the school run, and I was so reluctant to do anything else when I got home, I ended up making a slightly more elaborate meal than I had planned. It was just meatballs,

Jump to Recipe

but I usually bake them in the oven on a rack, because it’s so much easier and less messy. This time I browned them in a pan, and it did take quite some time!

I also made King Arthur Hearth Bread. Last time I made this recipe, it was decent, and had a nice crackly crust and chewy inside, but didn’t hold its shape, and was much flatter than the picture in the recipe. So I tried it again, paying closer attentions to the rising time, and the exact same thing happened. But I did recall that you can improve the appearance of a weird loaf of bread by serving it already cut in pieces, so that is what I did. 

Made a little salad with the leftovers from the wraps

and it was a yummy meal. Ground beef was $2.99 a pound, for some reason (usually that’s Superbowl prices), so I bought as much as I could fit in the freezer 

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, veggies and dip

Wednesday is when I had to admit to myself that I was really sick. I was hoping it was just allergies from the dust I stirred up while cleaning, but really I had succumbed to the respiratory ick that is circulating around the family. I really hardly ever get sick anymore since I started taking big doses of vitamin D for the dark months of the year! But this one got me. I slept most of the day and we had grilled ham and cheese for supper, and I did not take a picture of it. 

THURSDAY
Bibimbap sort of 

Thursday I was still sick, but I was so mad about being sick when the weather was finally warming up, I decided to pretend I wasn’t sick. This usually doesn’t work, but I got away with it this time.

It was sunny and breezy, so I hung out a bunch of laundry to dry, then started picking at the broken glass debacle in the back. To refresh your memory: Through a completely avoidable bit of stupidity on my part, one of these windows

now looks like this

and after spending two good long sessions gloomily cleaning, there are still millions of bits of broken glass on a probably 4×8′ area that is covered with small rocks that you can easily move, and large rocks that are fully embedded in the ground, and every day that passes makes it harder to clean up the glass because things are starting to grow in the cracks. The good news is, all of this is entirely my fault, so I can think about that while I clean! 

I have now tried every  conceivable method for cleaning up this glass, including using different sizes of soup spoons, and nothing was getting me anywhere. The only thing I know would work is if some friendly mice and sparrows got busy and, with a rush and a twitter, made it spic and span for me in no time. But I would have needed to start that several months ago (i.e. leaving treats for them so they would befriend me and come to my aid in my hour of need), and while it is true that, in a certain sense, we do routinely leave snacks for the mice, the overall tenor of our relationship remains hostile. So that was out. 

So I bowed to my fate and inquired about a used shop vac on Facebook Marketplace. Then, because I had sort of done something about the glass, I felt clear to tackle the blackberry bushes that are encroaching on the spot between the patio and the house, which is where I want to plant wildflowers.

Every time I mention getting rid of wild blackberry, somebody goes, “oohhhh, I wish I had that problem!” Fine! I believe you! Please come and get them. Take all you want. We have 423 million of them, and they have sent root systems snaking around all over the property, and the one thing they hate is for anything else to grow. But maybe I’m wrong, and it’s actually quite nice to have them. Like I said, come on over. 

But it really was incredibly satisfying to sit in the dirt and dig and scrabble and uproot, even knowing that it was only slowing them down at best. I listened to the last two parts of The Rest Is History series on the KKK, and started on their series about Samurai before I had to call it quits for the day.

Got a quick shower, got a CT scan (this was to confirm that I don’t have an aneurism and that the schwannoma is not strangling my carotid artery, and I’m happy to say that I don’t and it isn’t), picked up the shop vac, and went home to make supper. I was extremely proud of this supper, because I really had only a concept of a plan, and it turned out very tasty. 

First I got some rice cooking in the Instant Pot. Then I started broiling some pork ribs with salt and pepper. While the first side was cooking, I made a thick sauce from brown sugar, corn start, soy sauce, garlic powder, and some hot chili paste. I flipped the ribs over and brushed the sauce on the other side and let them finish cooking. I found some spinach and crunchy noodles. and quickly sauteed some mushrooms. Then I started some eggs frying and called people to supper, and by the time everyone was assembled, the food was all hot 

Ribs turned out great! The sauce was really good and sticky. Of course I didn’t write down the proportions, except that I used way more sugar and corn starch than I meant to, so that was probably the secret. 

It was warm enough to eat outside — first time this year — so I had a lovely meal while my companions, the ducks, happily rooted around in the compost heap.

The table doesn’t super duper have a top yet, but it has enough decorative wrought iron that you can use it if you don’t move around a lot. Whatever, it’s on my list. Anyway, I used up the last of the fresh eggs that lady gave me in exchange for my excess toum, and it was a tremendously yummy meal. 

FRIDAY
Tuna sandwiches or broiled salmon

Last Friday I ended up making tuna sandwiches for the kids, Instant Pot risotto

Jump to Recipe

for everybody, and sesame-crusted ahi tuna for me and Damien. It was very tasty, although I was sad to see that the cheapo sack of ahi tuna from Aldi now only has three pieces of tuna in it, rather than four. 

As far as I can recall, I marinated the tuna in sesame oil and soy sauce for about ten minutes, then pressed them into a mixture of sesame seeds, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt, and then seared them in oil. Served it with the risotto and really needed a vegetable, but the closest I could find was some furikake.  So we had that, and it was yum dot com. 

I ended up sort of flaking the tuna into the risotto, and it all melded together deliciously. 

So tonight we have some equally cheapo frozen salmon, and I’m not sure what I will do with it. Maybe just broil it, and serve it with, like, potato chips and an old apple. Maybe some friendly sparrows will come and help me. Maybe!

Oh, I forgot! We got an axolotl.

This is Benny’s pet. Lena knows someone who works for a vet, and they found themselves with that common problem, Too Many Axolotls, so obviously Damien went and got one. Benny is currently calling him Mordred, but she originally suggested “Ravioli,” and I like that much better, because it scans exactly like axolotl:  ˘˘/˘.  He’s a nice little guy, very chill. 

I haven’t tried my new shop vac yet, because if it doesn’t work, I just don’t know what I’m gonna do. Pave the whole back yard, maybe. Or reroute a river and just wash the whole thing away. Ting-a-ling! At least that’s what it says here. 

Print

Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 4 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 1 cup)
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

 

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Instant Pot Risotto

Almost as good as stovetop risotto, and ten billion times easier. Makes about eight cups. 

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground sage
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 4 cups rice, raw
  • 6 cups chicken stock
  • 2 cups dry white wine
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • pepper
  • 1.5 cups grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Turn IP on sautee, add oil, and sautee the onion, garlic, salt, and sage until onions are soft.

  2. Add rice and butter and cook for five minutes or more, stirring constantly, until rice is mostly opaque and butter is melted.

  3. Press "cancel," add the broth and wine, and stir.

  4. Close the top, close valve, set to high pressure for 9 minutes.

  5. Release the pressure and carefully stir in the parmesan cheese and pepper. Add salt if necessary. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 463: Wiggly eggs and other perverse urges

Happy Friday! We’ve had kind of a nutty week that I can only describe as RIFE WITH INTERPERSONAL COMPLEXITY. By which I mean I’ve changed my mind, and from now on I’m going to clean school buses for a living, and raise mushrooms instead of children, and possibly stop speaking entirely, like . . . 

Well, I couldn’t think of a good example, so I googled “vow of silence who took” and this is the first result that popped up:

And now I feel better! Also we’ve had ABOVE FREEZING TEMPS all week, and dang, it’s nice. Water flowing, grass showing, fewer ice patches, more mud puddles. Good stuff. 

Okay, here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Pretty luxurious leftovers

Look at this! 

Leftovers get a bad rap, but that’s just because they haven’t had Saturday night at my house. I wish there were, like, some hungry seminarians who lived next door or something. Or maybe we should buy a goat. 

SUNDAY
Meatball subs, curly fries, birthday cake

Sunday we celebrated a birthday, and the kid in question requested meatball subs, curly fries, and a chocolate cake with Kit Kats and Reece’s Peanut Butter cups, and not too much frosting. 

I made the meatballs with ground beef and ground pork, eggs, panko bread crumbs, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, and Worcestershire sauce, and cooked them on a rack in a hot oven, then transferred them to the crock pot with jarred sauce. 

I did a three-layer box cake, but made the frosting from scratch. I creamed together 1.5 sticks of butter and 4.5 cups of powdered sugar, then a little salt and three ounces of melted, unsweetened chocolate. Then I just added milk until it was the consistency I wanted. 

The cake turned out . . . fancy! 

The design on top is the logo he uses to sign his artwork. 

Twenty-two candles, and it was a hit. 

The kids were trying to work out how many birthday cakes I have made over the years, and I really don’t know. Ten kids, and the oldest is 27, so you can work out that formula; except some of them had multiple cakes in a year, and occasionally they would request tiramisu or something instead. Anyway, it’s a number that’s so high, you’d think I’d be better at decorating by now! I always give it my all, anyway. Never an unenthusiastic effort; this is my pledge. 

MONDAY
Chicken ranch wraps, chips, raw vegetables

Just chicken tenders on tortillas with shredded lettuce, shredded pepper jack cheese, and ranch dressing. I actually love this and would make it every week if I could get away with it. I love wraps of all kinds. 

I am working on increasing my vegetable consumption. I’ve been serving big platter of raw veggies early in the week, and then I will have them ready to snack on for the rest of the week, and I have actually been doing it. I don’t even have any illusions of losing weight at this point; it’s just a matter of self respect. Hard to respect self that is coated in orange cheez dust. 

TUESDAY
Chicken biryani, naan

I had four big chicken leg quarters that were on sale, and I really never know what else to make with them besides chicken biryani, which Damien and I happen to love. They get seasoned and then seared. 

Then you take the meat out of the pan and start building up the rest of it: First ginger and onions, then your spices, then the raw rice, plus cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, and blond raisins. 

I have begun to play pretty fast and loose with the seasonings, but I more or less followed this recipe, except that after I put the meat back in and add the broth, I immediately move it all to the slow cooker, and let it cook all day. That is the only way I’ve ever been able to actually get the rice completely cooked. 

Before I left for the afternoon drive, I made a double recipe of naan dough from King Arthur, except I was out of yogurt so I used sour cream.  I make a double recipe, which should make 16 pieces, but I only make eight, so they come out nice and big. 

Doesn’t look big here, but this pan is huge. 

I keep a wet cloth ready and wipe the burnt flour out of the pan in between frying each piece, and they turned out yummy. Nice buttery taste, and chewy but not tough on the inside, with a little crispness on the edge. Brushing them with melted butter at the end really makes them special. 

I served it all with mint chutney, and some cilantro and some almonds that I pretty much burnt, but it was really tasty meal. I burnt the almonds because I made them in the oven and they burn REALLY fast. Next time, I’ll go back to toasting them in the microwave like I usually do. Although the microwave has reverted to one of its old habits of turning on any time the door is closed, so I get nervous using it, wondering if the next trick is going to involve flames or what (there is always a next trick with our appliances. They can’t just die quietly; they have to be on fire). 

WEDNESDAY
Spicy chicken soup with corn chips and guacamole

Wednesday I had about six chicken drumsticks I forgot to cook last week, and the original plan was chicken tortilla soup, but that calls for chicken breast, which I think is an inferior chicken part for soup anyway. So I roasted the drumsticks with oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, and chili powder and pulled the meat off. 

Then I started throwing stuff in the food processor to make the soup base. I put in two onions, 6 cloves of garlic, a jalapeño, a bunch of cilantro, and about a pound of tomatoes. I whirred that to a pulp, then cooked it in the pot in hot oil to thicken for about ten minutes. Then I put the meat back in and added a bunch of chicken broth. 

The recipe I usually use calls for chiles and adobo sauce and tortilla strips, but I realized I’m really the only one who likes tortilla soup anyway. I offered to the kids that I could make crunchy chili lime tortilla strips, or corn muffins, or even quesadillas, but they didn’t want any of that. So I made a nice bowl of guacamole

and served the soup along with some of those oversized “street corn” corn chips from Aldi, with a little sour cream and cilantro on top of the soup, and it was a highly delicious and nourishing meal. 

The soup was thick and very spicy, and I liked the corn chips much better than tortilla strips. I might have also added some corn and/or beans to the soup if it were just for me, but it was really good as it was. Also I couldn’t find the can opener. 

In situations like this, where the kids just do not want any part of dinner, they generally just go fix themselves whatever they want. They’re all old enough to cook, and they have some general idea that protein=good. Often this means they make omelettes, which is great; but sadly, on this day, what they all wanted was things in cans, and the can opener had really gone thoroughly missing. They were all mad at me about this, for some reason, even though I, too, frequently wish to open cans, and had not hidden the can opener for my own perverse reasons. Anyway,  I guess they all found something, and I have gotten so much better about not caring what they eat, and I enjoyed my soup and guacamole! We did have some bleeding when one kid tried to open a can of Spagehtti-o’s using the stabbing method, but it wasn’t a deep cut, and we did have bandaids in the house for once. Maybe next week, I’ll just serve bandaids. Bandaid omelettes. 

Now that I think of it, I think I actually made the soup on Tuesday, while I was making the biryani, because I knew I was going to be busy the rest of the week. I remember people coming in and asking what was cooking, because it smelled like so MANY kinds of things. 

THURSDAY
Chef’s salad, fresh bread

Thursday I had some apprehension about the meal I had planned. I talk big about not caring about what the kids eat, but obviously I actually care deeply. However, I have to balance food the kids enjoy with food I have time to make and food that isn’t outrageously unhealthy and food we can actually afford in This Golden Age of America, and it’s not always obvious what to make. So I was starting to have my doubts about the chef’s salad. 

Again, to me, this is a pleasant and yummy meal that I’d be happy to eat every other day. I did my best to present it in an attractive way. I even cut the hard boiled eggs with a special wiggly cutter!

Isn’t that cute? There’s a big bowl of greens in the back. Two kinds of cheese, two kinds of meat, cute li’l grape tomatoes. I would have gone ape over this when I was a kid. I even put out some of those crunchy onions that come in a can.

But I still thought maybe it needed to be bulked up a little, qua a meal. So I made some bread, following the King Arthur hearth bread recipe, which is apparently an old classic, but which I have never made before. It was going great, but I started it at the wrong time, and ended up leaving it for the second rise for way, way too long while I was driving around. So by the time I baked it, the loaves had overinflated and then slumped pretty badly. I baked them anyway, and you know what? It was nice bread!

Wonderfully crackly outside and soft and chewy inside. I was pleased, and will definitely make this again, just timed better. I liked the whole meal. 

And I got my dang vegetables. I also got a new can opener, and I’m pretty sure some people had Spaghetti-o’s for supper.  

You know what, though, these kids do like bread with all kinds of nuts and seeds and stuff in it, and I bet this hearth bread can be adapted pretty easily that way. I’m enjoying the novelty of just making single recipes of things, these days. I’m starting to realize how much my cooking has been affected by quantity. Like, there are meals that seem incredibly laborious and/or expensive to me, but that’s because I was serving twelve for so many years. It now feels very freeing to just . . . follow the recipe, as written. It feels like cheating!

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular pizza, no tricks!  And Damien and I are planning to be very kind and gentle with ourselves this weekend. It’s been a hell of a year, honestly, and that goes for just about everyone I know. I would bake you all some nice bread if I could.

Anyway, spring is coming, birds are returning, snow is melting, can opener is with us again. I think we’re gonna make it. Poopsmith out! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 457: The Great Cornballio

Happy Friday! I am not, nor have I ever been, a Beavis and Butt-Head fan. Nevertheless, I am a Gen Xer and certain things are in my head for good. Uh-heh-heh-heh-heh. 

Well, here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with buffalo chicken

The kid whose shopping turn is an absolute buffalo chicken fiend. Whatever else we had this week, just assume she was slathering it with buffalo sauce. 

She is also a thrift store fiend, and we ended up going to three of them, along with the regular shopping stops. I got a nice haul of neat stuff which I can’t remember right now. Not this:

or this:

but I do recall I got one of those clear bird feeders with suction cups, and also an intriguing pan. 

Got home and realized it was for cake pops. I don’t really approve of cake pops. I’ve never actually eaten one, but I don’t even really like regular cake, and they seem like the gross version of cake. Although I do remember being asked, several years ago, to make a Dragon Ball cake, and this pan would have been an improvement over ye olde cabbage methode. 

This was just while the balls were drying. There was an actual cake, not just a cabbage!

The balls were made of rice krispie treats and candy melts. Like Disney says (or I guess used to say), it was wrong then and it’s wrong now. Oh well. 

Anyway, my obvious task now is to encourage someone in the house to get into Dragon Ball, so I can use my new pan. Either that, or . . . what else has balls? Not the democratic party, heyyyo. 

I also wonder if I can use this pan as a Jell-o mold. I’m not sure if the two halves fit together tightly enough. I’m also not sure why I would need Jell-o balls, but you never know. 

SUNDAY
Chili verde, corn balls

Sunday as we got out of Mass, the Big Snow began to fall. I had already planned to spend the day cleaning the landing (after cut up and expelled the bunk bed a few weeks ago), and I had lots of argy-bargy energy to work off, so that worked out well. I emptied a closet, sorted everything in it and bagged it all, cleaned the closet, filled it back up with one kid’s art supplies and another kid’s please-come-get-your-stuff stuff; bagged and stuffed another kid’s stuff into the newly accessible attic, threw out seven bags of trash, listed a couple of desks on a buy nothing group, put a shelf back together, told Corrie she can have my father’s old glockenspiel, and organized the hell out of what was left. Much of which was EXTREMELY misc. in nature.

So the area doesn’t look beautiful, but you can now walk through it, and you can open the attic door again, which meant I could finally put away the Christmas stuff, which had been taking up half the dining room table since Epiphany. Of course now we have a haunted glockenspiel downstairs, but you can’t have everything. 

Before I tackled that, I got supper started. The rest of the family was managing the shoveling (once the snow started, it just kept coming, and we eventually got about two feet), so I thought spaghetti and meatballs would be a good, hearty meal; buuuuut I forgot to defrost the meat. No matter! Chili verde is also nice and warming.

Here’s my recipe for that:

Jump to Recipe

I seasoned and browned the chunks of pork, and roasted up the assorted peppers, the onions, and the garlic and tomatillos

made a nice green salsa in the food processor with the vegetables plus some cilantro, and then put the meat and the salsa in a pot to simmer the rest of the day. 

When it got close to supper time, I made a big pot of rice and realized, to my delight, that I could use my new pan to make CORN BALLS. Here’s my corn bread/muffin recipe:

The pan is in two pieces, and it’s supposed to have silicone clips or clamps to hold it together during baking, but those were missing; so I used those metal clips on rings that are designed to hold cafe curtains. Worked fine. I very slightly overfilled the cups, filling each one a little more than halfway (a single recipe made more than enough for 18 balls), but this just resulted in each ball having a cute little baked cap on top, which was easy to pop off and eat. 

I opened the pan and used a spoon to carefully pry the corn balls out, and was able to get most of them out intact. 

If I had baked them a few minutes less, probably they would have been the same color top and bottom. But aren’t they so cute? I loved them. I like the top crust of corn muffins, and these were encased in top crust, with piping hot, tender corn bread inside. 

So we had rice and chili verde, with sour cream and fresh limes, with corn balls. 

I had somehow lost the extra cilantro I set aside to top it, but that’s okay. The chili was delicious, very spicy and savory. Damien and I and the dog were the chief corn ball appreciators. I feel like, when I was a kid, I would have KILLED for corn balls, but kids these days are built different, I guess. 

MONDAY
Onion soup with croutons; ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches

School was cancelled as it continued to snow and snow and snow. The ducks did not care at all. They just wallowed around yammering, same as they do the rest of the year. 

The snow eventually got too deep for them to get to the stream, though, so I had to give them hot water in a pot, which they also yammered about. If you ever want some top-notch yammering, I do recommend ducks. 

In the morning, I started cooking a big pot of onion soup. Here’s my recipe, which is very basic, and you can adjust the proportions as you like. 

Jump to Recipe

By the way, if you’re cutting onions, all you need to do is breathe through your mouth and not your nose, and your eyes won’t water. I don’t know why it took me my whole life to learn this, but it’s true. 

I made a bunch of croutons with stale deli rolls, lots of melted butter, and salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and toasted them slowly in a 300-degree oven. 

Li’l hot crouton action shot for you, uh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.

For the main dish, I had found a new recipe I was kind of excited about: No Washing-Up Ham, Egg, and Cheese Bowls from Recipe Tin Eats. You cut the top off a roll, hollow it out, line it with ham, crack an egg inside, top it with cheese, put the top back on, wrap it in tinfoil, and bake it until the egg is as cooked as you like.

I had bought some nice rolls, but they were stuck together enough that I figured I could get away with baking them in twos, so I made eight big ones, uh-heh-heh-heh. I cut them like subway sandwiches, and cracked two eggs into each sandwich. There was a tiny learning curve when I realized I need to angle the cut in such a way as to keep the egg inside, but it was easy to correct the ones I did wrong (I just cut off a little wedge of bread and stuck that under the ham). Forgot to take a pic where you can see the eggs, but they are under the cheese:

It took CONSIDERABLY longer for the egg to cook than the recipe said; but she does say that the cooking time will depend on how thick you cut your bread. Also I think my oven runs a little cold. So I kept peeking and peeking inside the tinfoil, and finally after probably 40 minutes, the whites of the egg were cooked, and the yolks were set. 

I thought these sandwiches were SO GOOD. The bread was hot and crisp around the edges and top and soft inside but not soggy, the egg was cooked perfectly, and the cheese has oozed and baked onto everything. Heartier than a typical breakfast sandwich, but not greasy like grilled cheese. LOOK at that jammy yolk. 

And, as the name says, there is no clean-up, because each sandwich is wrapped in tinfoil. You can also prep these sandwiches ahead of time, because the ham prevents the egg from touching the bread, so this would be perfect for, say, a sleepover breakfast, or brunch for a crowd. 

To my great sorrow, the rest of the family thought they were okay at best. One reviewer pronounced them “nice and hot.” Oh well! You’ll never know if you don’t try. The onion soup was pleasant, and it was a filling and warming meal, if not a group favorite. 

Damien forbade me from shoveling, presumably because I’m just too pretty. He had the kids shovel in teams, 20 minutes at a time, and he got hot chocolate and cookies for everybody, and everyone was actually really cheerful and upbeat all day. Including the dog. Especially the dog. 

TUESDAY
Roast chicken with optional buffalo sauce; big salad; cheesecake

Tuesday there was a two-hour delay for school. People were still digging out from the snow, and it was just so dang cold. I don’t remember what I did all day. It’s possible I did some writing, which is a thing I’ve been hoping to break into, but it’s very hard. 

I roasted up a bunch of chicken drumsticks with olive oil, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder

One of the kids mentioned it would be nice to have a big, beautiful salad, so I was happy to oblige. We don’t have tossed salad very often — I’m a big believer in setting out individual bowls of this and that, so people can build their own plates —  but this was pretty popular, so maybe I’ll do this more often. 

Revolutionary, I know. “I served a tossed salad to my family, and they ate it!” food blogger marvels. But seriously, it’s so easy to get stuck in routines, and it didn’t even occur to me that people might like a regular old salad. 

So, not a groundbreaking meal, but tasty and nice. We had plenty of leftover croutons from the onion soup, too. 

I had my salad without dressing because, even though I am currently Quite Fat, I think there’s a possibility that someday in the future, I might take a crack at being Somewhat Less Fat Again, and I don’t want to ruin plain salad for myself. I like plain salad perfectly fine, and don’t feel like it needs dressing, and that may come in handy. Look, if you didn’t want crazy talk, you should have skipped this entire post. 

I think I forgot to mention that we also had a heart-shaped cheesecake with chocolate-dipped strawberries at some point. I was trying different decorations and things, to see what might sell for Valentine’s Day, and this one came out looking kind of dumb, so we ate it. 

Out of curiosity, I weighed it first, and

I think I need to start charging more. That’s a lot of cheesecake! Uh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Wednesday, Benny took a tour of the Catholic high school to see if she likes it for next year. Facebook memories showed me that, on this day seventeen years ago, we also took a tour of the Catholic school. Back then, we were still homeschooling, and just starting to consider other possibilities. In the last seventeen years, the Catholic school has changed leadership several times, and our family is . . . honestly, me from seventeen years ago would find us unrecognizable. I don’t even know. Some of the changes are good, some are not. Whatcha gonna do. Anyway, she took a tour and found it “fine” and “nice and hot.” Just kidding, she just said it was fine. Gonna check out a newish charter school next, and we shall see. Maybe it will just keep snowing, and we will all just stay home forever. 

I finally got around to updating my meatball recipe, although it’s still pretty basic and, like so many things, adjustable according to tastes and needs. 

Jump to Recipe

I skipped the parmesan cheese (I saved it for topping) and had a pretty heavy hand with the Worcestershire sauce, and they were tasty. 

And that’s-a my meatball story. 

THURSDAY
Chicken wraps, baked potatoes, brief thought of salad

Thursday I got up and it was 47 degrees in the house, which is not ideal. We knew we were a little low on oil, but all this week we were overtaken by events, and boop, we ran out of oil. I stayed warm by going into a bit of a cleaning frenzy. There are several things (besides the general insanity in the news) that are making things pretty arghy inside my head right now, and honestly, that is the only way cabinets get cleaned out and wiped down, or grout gets scrubbed. 

I also baked six mini cheesecakes with pretty pink and red borders, and thennnnn dropped them. 

Happily, I had already planned a nice, easy dinner, which was just frozen chicken tender wraps with shredded pepper jack cheese, shredded lettuce, and ranch dressing. I baked a bunch of potatoes and served them with some fake bacon bits I had bought on a whim. 

I haven’t had fake bacon bits in decades, and oof, they were not good. One of the kids said they taste like dog treats, and I was gonna say, “How do you know?” but then I realized I was thinking they taste like Play Doh, and, well. Anyway, the kids did like them, so I guess that’s a win. I liked my wrap. 

I did get another cheesecake order, just a plain one with blueberry topping, and I managed to bake that without accidentally throwing it out the window or dropping an anvil on it anything.  

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Just regular old mac and cheese. I will probably squirt some hot sauce in there Uh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh

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Spicy Chili Verde

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

Ingredients

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

For the salsa verde:

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

For serving:

  • lime wedges
  • sour cream
  • additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

  1. Preheat the broiler.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 from 1 vote
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Simple French onion soup

Serve with a piece of toasted baguette at the bottom of each bowl. Finish with cheese on top.

Ingredients

  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 4 cups onion, thinly sliced
  • 1 Tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp white sugar
  • 4-6 cups beef broth (can also use chicken broth or a combination of water and white wine)
  • pepper
  • parmesan or mozzarella cheese

Instructions

  1. In a heavy pot, melt the butter and then add the onions. Cook very slowly over a low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the onions are very soft and somewhat darkened.

  2. Stir in the sugar until dissolved. Stir in the flour and mix to coat.

  3. Add the broth (or water and wine). Add pepper to taste and simmer for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer.

  4. Serve with a hunk of toasted bread in the bottom of each bowl. Sprinkle cheese on top, and if you have oven-safe dishes, brown under the broiler to form a skin on top of the soup.

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Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 4 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 1 cup)
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 451: Lasagna in the highest

Happy Friday! We are just over a week away from the shortest day of the year, and then we start getting more light. Hooray! 

I hope your Advent is going well, for those of you who observe it. I’m having a freakishly efficient month. Finished Christmas shopping a few days ago, doing tons of cleaning and decluttering, and I’m currently not behind on any paid work. We’ve been managing to light the Advent candles and do the Jesse tree ornaments and readings about half the time, which is not a bad record for this vicinity.

We’ve even mostly been adhering to our screen-free Advent evenings. In the past, we’ve done 7-9:00 Monday through Friday, but this year we’re doing 7:00 onward Monday through Thursday, and then shooting for a movie (rather than endlessly rewatching the same TV shows) on Fridays. The kids have been reading, drawing, and playing games, but mostly hanging around yacking. I have been falling asleep on the couch. Oh, such naps I’ve been having. Yesterday evening’s nap was a real drooler!

SATURDAY
Leftovers and popcorn chicken

We ended up making tons of extra trips along with shopping because we had to pick up this and that, and also we got our asses to confession, which is #1 on my must-do Advent list. The confession line was possibly the least efficient thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I discovered that I’ve completed the transformation into the cheerful, bossy middle-aged lady who tells everyone where to sit. There is NO REASON for the confession line to be so confusing. All there needs to be is a sign on the wall telling people where to line up! Or one of those paper number machines like they have at delis! Or a fluorescent pink conical hat that says “LAST PERSON IN LINE” and it gets passed from person to person as they trickle in! But we can’t have this. We have to have a confused blob, and everyone has to be anxious and upset about it. So I became That Lady. Anyway, we went to confession, and then resumed shopping. 

The shopping turn kid chose popcorn chicken, which I agreed to because I forgot the oven was still broken. I also picked a variety where the chicken was uncooked. So I ended up doing it in five ten-minute batches in the little air fryer, and it was delicious, but does not figure into the “very efficient December” thing I referenced above. 

I also made a batch of dough to make cookies on Sunday.

Jump to Recipe

That was efficient!  Also, we stopped at a thrift store and I happened to find a cake pan that was exactly the shape I was looking for! Efficient and lucky! 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, fake doritos, pickles

After Mass, Corrie and I went to Lena’s apartment, and Corrie and Lena worked on a birthday present for Benny, and I borrowed Lena’s oven to make cookies and cake. I brought everything I could think of that I might need, including cake mix, eggs, and oil,  parchment paper, toothpicks for detail, all kinds of decorating supplies, and a big pan. But I forgot the cookie dough. So I had to start over, and ended up having a very pleasant afternoon listening to my oldest and youngest daughters working happily together while I baked. 

It was Benny’s birthday we were preparing for, and she asked for a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and she asked to be surprised with the theme. I settled on Merlin, the BBC show they watched recently. This show is pretty, pretty terrible unless you watch it through the eyes of a young teenage girl!

My original plan was to make cookies of Merlin, Arthur, Guinevere, Excalibur, Gaius, Uther, and the Dragon, and possibly John Hurt, but that was too ambitious, and I kept wrecking the Gaius cookie in various ways. So I settled for Merlin, Arthur, Guinevere, and the dragon. When I got home, I made two more attempts to make a Gaius cookie. First I tried the air fryer, and probably you can make this work, but I could not. Then I tried just broiling it in the oven, and you’ll never guess what happened. 

So, Damien suggested I make it Gaius who has been burnt up by the dragon (not a thing that actually happens in the show, but it’s funny). The main thing about Gaius is this goofy face he makes with one eyebrow raised, so here’s his cookie:

Anyway, I spent such a long time decorating those cookies, and every last one of them turned out weeeird! (Another thing I forgot was black icing, so that was a challenge.) And I still hadn’t figured out what the cake itself would be.

But wait, I had bought that thrift store cake pan, which was a castle shape. So I opened the box feeling lucky and efficient . . .  and it turned out to be a large number of plastic towers and turrets and plastic doors and windows. No pan at all. I guess you are supposed to smear frosting on the plastic, bleh. 

(This is an eBay listing. I think I spent $4 on it.)

I have this dumb thing where I really want everything on a cake to be edible, even if no one in their right mind would actually eat it. But time was passing by, so I let yet another pointless personal standard slip through my hands, and I made a cake that was part plastic. I scored the frosting to make it vaguely brick-like and then sprayed it with edible silver spray, and sprinkled some rock candy around, for purposes of . . .I don’t know, magic?

 Kind of makes you wonder why everyone thought Camelot was so great, but those were different times, I guess.  

While Corrie and I were at Lena’s house, Damien was at home doing all the prep for his amazing incredible lasagna. Then we got home and I quickly made some grilled sandwiches.

And then I do believe I feel asleep on the couch. 

MONDAY
Birthday lasagna, birthday cake

On Monday, first we went to Mass for the feast day, and then the part for the oven came, and Damien installed it right away so he could bake the lasagna. And then, literally right immediately then, the dryer broke. Poor Damien has gotten really good at fixing all kinds of appliances, so off he went with the autopsy, while I finished this ridiculous cake, and then I decorated the front door. 

I cut a bunch of greenery from the yard and attached it and some fake berries to a broken Swiffer with zip ties, and then zip tied that to the trellis. 

Not the most lush or symmetrical garland imaginable, but it was COLD out there, with wet snow falling faster and faster, and I did not want to go out again!

Then I strung lights back and forth and back and forth inside the trellis, and hung a wreath on the door. By the time the kids got home, it was dark enough for the lights to show up, and they were properly impressed. 

And nobody noticed that I got the plug ends backwards like I do 100% of the time, and I had to run an extension cord over the step.

The lasagna was superb, as it always is. He actually made two. Here is the larger one, right before we devoured it:

I am deeply suspicious of lasagna that stays together in a neat stack when you cut it. 

Oh man, it was so good. Oh I ate so much. 

Then we had presents and cake. Sweet Benny was absolutely delighted by this bizarre cake, which I ended up holding together with skewers. 

Benny is also a big fan of The Office, so I made an “IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY” banner, and then someone smudged the letters. The original plan was to have the dragon breathing fire onto Gaius, but I ran out of time and, frankly, enthusiasm. So here was the finished (?) Merlin cake: 

But like I said, she loved it. Her favorite was the Guenevere cookie, which I have to admit was pretty, even if it doesn’t look much like the actress.

She also loved all her presents. The one from Corrie was a Barbie doll that she transformed into a FMA Edward Elric doll.

Corrie did the hair and some of the clothes, and Lucy made the coat, and Lena did the face. 

Lucy knitted a Merlin doll for Benny, which she was, if possible, even more delighted with

and it was a pretty good doll! My kids are so talented.

She got a number of other thoughtful presents and she had a wonderful day, and everyone was happy for her. She’ll be having a party with her friends at some later date! 

TUESDAY
Chicken and chickpeas, onion salad, yogurt sauce, fresh pita

Tuesday I pushed really hard to clean, declutter, and rearrange the living room, to get ready for the Christmas tree. Most years we end up dragging a wet tree into a chaotic house and then scrambling to make room for it, but NOT THIS YEAR. 

Tree-ready. 

I made a stab at getting the rest of the Christmas decorations out of the attic, but it turns out I consolidated them all into a giant tub last year, for the sake of efficiency, and then shoved them through the second-floor attic access door — and then, while rearranging Corrie’s room, moved a heavy old bunk bed in front of the door, and then a certain adult child stacked that up with tubs and tubs of things that don’t fit at THEIR apartment. This Christmas tub is too big to fit down the other access door, which is one of those drop-down ceiling ladders. So I don’t know, maybe Christmas is cancelled. At least I vacuumed. 

Oh anyway, we had chicken and chickpeas for supper. We haven’t had this dish for a while, and it’s yummo. Here’s the recipe

Jump to Recipe

I got a big tub of Greek yogurt and used half to marinate the chicken, and made the other half into dipping sauce with fresh garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and a little salt. Then I made a nice bowl of red onion salad with lemon juice, salt and pepper, and cilantro. Maybe a little olive oil, I forget. 

and then I made a batch of dough for pita. I have tried so many recipes, but have returned to this one from The Kitchn, which makes soft, tender breads you can make all at once in the oven. You can also make the dough, let it rise, punch it down, and then pause it in the fridge until you’re ready to finish it, which works out perfectly with my afternoon schedule. 

So when the chicken and chickpeas were almost done cooking, I got the dough out of the fridge, rolled it out, turned up the oven a bit, and baked eight pieces. They turned out lovely. 

When you bake them in the oven, you get a softer, puffier pita, and you don’t get those characteristic flattened bubbles like if you’re frying them on the stovetop, but I honestly prefer it this way, especially for the purposes of this meal. 

I skipped the onion that’s supposed to go along with the chicken and chickpeas, and didn’t really miss it. 

I was so so hungry and it was a very tasty meal. 

If you are a chicken skin appreciator, you will want to try this marinade. Look at how crackly and savory the skin turns out. 

The meat underneath stays nice and moist. I don’t think I’ve ever had this meal turn out bad. 

WEDNESDAY
Second lasagna, garlic bread

Wednesday we were supposed to get the tree, but it was SO bitterly cold and windy, nobody wanted to go outside more than necessary. So I heated up the second lasagna Damien made, and made a bunch of garlic bread, and everybody was happy. 

THURSDAY
Meatball subs, vegetable platter

On Thursday Damien fixed the dryer! He’d been working on it every day, but he does also have a full-time job. Such a hard worker.

In the morning, I made a big vegetable platter and some meatballs, then moved the meatballs to the slow cooker and spent most of the rest of the day in the car, because people needed to be here and there and here and there. It happened that Clara also needed a ride, and she repaid the favor with a big sack of  fresh baguettes from the bakery where she works! So I had been planning meatball subs on boring old Aldi rolls, but we got an upgrade. 

The meatballs were nothing to write home about, but the fresh bread more than made up for it. 

On Thursday Benny and I did venture out over the ice in the dark and got a tree from the Lions or Rotary or whatever, and it is now lying in state in the living room. We still haven’t figured out how to get the rest of Christmas out of the attic, so it’s not in a tree stand yet. We’ve got time! Surely! Due to my prior efficiency!

FRIDAY
Tuna boats, fries

I discovered halfway through the week that I had never figured out what to make for supper on Friday, so we are having tuna boats and fries. I actually love tuna sandwiches, so no complaints from me. No complaints from me about anything right now, actually. What do you know about that? 

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No-fail no-chill sugar cookies

Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.

Servings 24 large cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.

  3. Add egg and extracts.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.

  7. Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.

  8. Let them cool completely before decorating!

 

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Cumin chicken thighs with chickpeas in yogurt sauce

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

Ingredients

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

For garnishes:

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

Garnishes:

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

     -Chop up some cilantro for sprinkling if people like.

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

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

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. 428: There must be … fifty ways to stretch a meatball

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet (?) 

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

Possibly my favorite:

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

SUNDAY
Chicago-style hot dogs, fries

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

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

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

Unsophisticated and delicious. Americans really get some things right. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, raw vegetables

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

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

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

Then we had grilled ham and cheese and veggies. 

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

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

TUESDAY
Char siu, rice, pineapple

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Meatball subs, cheezy weezies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here was my vibrantly-colored reward.

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY

Spaghetti carbonara

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

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

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Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 4 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 1 cup)
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

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Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 416: San Salami

Happy Friday! I went HOMEMAKER BERSERK this week. I know it’s Lent, but I can’t help it. It’s spring, there are a ton of feast days and birthdays, and I’m just being muscled around helplessly by the general optimism in the air like a mouse by a cat. Look, if you didn’t like that sentence, you can have your money back.

Last Friday I collected the last of the sap from the maple trees, tromped around in our tiny woods and collected a ton of dead branches, and started boiling sap. 

And I do mean started. I was using Damien’s little wood stove that he used to have in his “office” (a converted ice fishing shack), and I guess it would work to heat up a small, enclosed space, but it did not do a great job boiling sap.

I sat out there for over three hours feeding dry wood into the stove, and I never got the sap to boil. (I know it has a large surface area, which makes it slower to boil, but that’s the point: You’re trying to evaporate as much as possible, so that’s why it’s in a pan instead of a pot! I did cover it until it started to steam.)

It was pretty nice out there, anyway, but I was a little disappointed. I packed the remaining sap into some snow and put the batch I had heated into the fridge. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers?

Saturday Damien and the girls were still in NYC, so I was pretty busy doing chores. I actually went a little crazy (by which I mean I attempted to reach levels of cleanliness that other people consider a baseline) and took apart the recycling bins and scrubbed them out, scrubbed the wall and floor in the kitchen where they sit, and also took two large baskets of rusty ice skates to the dump. I had put them on the side of the road in the fall when we tore down the porch, but astonishingly, nobody wanted two large baskets of rusty ice skates, and while I was working on admitting this to myself, it snowed and kept on snowing, soooo they’ve been frozen in place until this past week. Phew, that felt good. 

On Saturday the door to the duck house fell off. We knew it was going to happen eventually, so that was a bit of a relief, too. But I forgot to buy bigger hinges, so we had to just sort of barricade the door back on in the evening

creating the impression that we are terrified of ducks. Which is not completely off base. 

SUNDAY
Chicken Caesar salad

Sunday after Mass, I took Benny and Corrie to the second largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the state, which was, well, it’s a small state. It was a cute parade, and it even stopped raining for most of it. 

Then I made my second attempt to boil sap, this time on the propane fire pit on the patio. This was equally unsuccessful, and then I ran out of propane anyway, and it started raining again, so I put the sap back in the fridge again, and worried about the outdoor sap buckets because it was getting pretty warm and some of the sap was getting pretty old. 

However, we got an egg! Our first duck egg of the year. They started laying MUCH sooner last year, but who knows why a duck does what she does. Definitely not the ducks.

First egg was a doozy:

It was a double-yolker, and I used it to make caesar salad dressing.

Jump to Recipe

I roasted some chicken breast and grated some parmesan cheese, and made a bunch of croutons with stale bread cubes toasted with melted butter, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. 

A fine meal. That dressing will wake you up!

MONDAY
St. Patrick’s Day and Syrup Day!

Monday was actual St. Patrick’s Day. We decided to do corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes this year, rather than the full breakfast for dinner we do sometimes. This meal is more Irish American than Irish Irish, but so is St. Patrick’s Day, so there you go. (Apparently in Ireland, it was common to have cabbage with bacon, and the corned beef was for export, I think? But when they came to America, the Jews had lots of tasty corned beef brisket for cheap, so they went with it. Likely the Irish immigrants were eating imported Irish beef. 

I, for my part, decided to do this:

This is me wanting desperately to boil my sap, but also not wanting my newly-scrubbed kitchen to get all sappy. People will fight me and say that it’s not sap that condenses on the walls and runs down in light brown rivulets; what’s in the air is water vapor, and what I’m seeing is rivulets of my own kitchen filth. And they’re probably right! but either way, I didn’t want to see it; so I put up plastic and set a fan in front of the window and got to berlin’.

Actually first I strained the sap through some cheesecloth, to get the bugs and scraps of bark and whatnot out. Here you can see how clear the fresh sap is. It looks just like water.

And here is the bucket I was worried about:

If you are serious about syrup, you will not boil old, cloudy sap. It’s not dangerous (although the cloudiness is caused by bacteria); it’s just not gonna taste right. Some people will mix a little old sap in with new sap, and that masks the flavor. I decided to hang onto it and boil it separately, to see what happened. 

So here is the good, clear sap, after about eight hours of boiling. You just boil and boil and boil it, and keep adding more sap in as it evaporates and makes space:

Here is the finished syrup:

Lovely and absolutely delicious. It thickened up as it cooled. The dark spots are just coagulated syrup, which serious people strain out, but I do not. 

Then I boiled the bad sap up (I only had about five gallons, so it only took about three hours), and it did thicken up and get sweet, but has a faint, I don’t know, library paste taste to it? I am going to use it to make sticky maple walnut buns, I think. 

I didn’t get a good pic of the final syrup, because it was dark out by that time. But I decanted it into six jars, four for the older kids, one for us, and one for Millie, about four ounces each; and then about six ounces of second-rate syrup in a big jar. It needs to be refrigerated, because I didn’t do the whole sterile canning process. 

SATISFYING. So satisfying, altogether. I frickin did it. From tree to jug to bucket to pan to jar. I will probably make waffles this weekend for the nice syrup. Or, it’s, sigh, supposed to snow today and tomorrow, so maybe we will do sugar on snow. 

ANYWAY, I eventually got around to making dinner, and didn’t want to give up the stove space, so I made it in the oven. I just hunked the meat, five pounds of red potatoes, three pounds of carrots, and one cabbage in wedges, into a giant pan with some water, covered it loosely with foil, and cooked it at like 400 for about an hour and a half, which is not long enough, but corned beef is corned beef. 

There is plenty of leftover meat, so I will probably make Reubens this weekend.

TUESDAY
Chicken spinach quesadillas, chips and salsa

On Tuesday, I decided to prep Wednesday’s dessert. Wednesday was St. Joseph’s Day, and St. Joseph is our family’s patron, and I love him, and wish to cook and bake for him (us).

I decided to try a new-to-me recipe for Zeppole di San Giuseppe from Sip and Feast, a site which has given me so many great recipes. I remember the first time I made a choux pastry (this is before I ever saw The Great British Baking Show), and I was sure I had messed it up, because it’s so rubbery. 

But that’s how it’s supposed to look! I’m very glad to know you can make this ahead of time. I put it in a ziplock bag and tossed it in the fridge. 

Then I made the vanilla custard, and I used duck eggs, which are so rich and bright. 

Covered and refirgerated that, too. Duck eggs are big, and the yolks are proportionally bigger compared to the whites, so you can easily use two ducks for three large chicken eggs. 

Zeppole, if you are wondering too, is probably ultimately from the Latin “zippulae,” a little treat. There is a legend that, in Egypt, Joseph supported the family by selling nice little pancakes. There’s also a theory that “zeppole” comes from “zeppa,” meaning “stump,” or wedge of wood, and Joseph, carpenter, I dunno. Or possibly from “serpula,” like a coiled snake, and you make these pastries in a coiled pattern. I actually kind of love how etymology is often just a bunch of educated guesses, because people are weird and go wandering around the world making pancakes as they go, and talking about it to people who may or may not speak the same language. 

We were having chicken quesadillas for supper, and I made the chicken thighs in the Instant Pot. Just threw them in with some water and pressed the “poultry” button. When the meat was cooked, I drained and shredded it and added cumin, paprika, chili powder, and salt. 

I had my quesadilla with chicken, cheddar, and spinach. 

You can see how I was rushing – the cheese is barely melted! But I was starving, so they tasted great. Do you know, I had my first quesadilla when I was over twenty years old. I remember saying, “What’s THAT?” in a loud, obnoxious voice. It was guacamole, and I thought it looked horrible.  I hate to think what would have happened if I had been hanging around Abu Simbel and this bearded guy with a cute baby tried to sell me some pancakes. I would have been so rude. 

WEDNESDAY
St. Joseph’s Day!

The feast day began with three dentist appointments. We have been going to this dentist for something like eighteen years and I love her to pieces. I think it’s so smart to put a fun-house mirror in the waiting room. The kids find it very entertaining, but nobody has to touch it with their grubby hands. 

When we got back, Benny and Corrie helped me pipe the zeppole. 

The recipe says: “Pipe 3-inch circles in two layers, starting from the inside on the first layer. Leave a hole in the top of the second layer for the pastry cream. Make sure to leave at least 3 inches of room between each because they will expand during baking.” We made ours a little too small, but that just meant slightly daintier zeppole, and more of them!

While the zeppole were baking, the kids went to play outside WITHOUT JACKETS, because it is SPRING, and I got out the cheese-making kit Lena gave me for Christmas. 

I was a little nervous about the milk. It doesn’t have to be fancy organic milk or anything, but it’s not supposed to be ultrapasteurized, which is when they bring the milk to a higher temp than just for pasteurizing. I had one gallon of Aldi whole milk and one of Hannaford, and they just said “pasteurized.” They both turned out to be fine. 

And cheese-making turns out to be easy! There are a lot of steps, but nothing difficult. You just need to pay attention with the timer and the thermometer. Basically you heat up some milk, add some rennet (a tablet dissolved in water) and some citric acid at some point, I forget when; heat it up some more, and then let it sit. While it’s sitting, it magically separates into curds and whey!

Then you cut up the curds  

and slowly stir it while heating it again. 

drain the whey off

and heat and drain the curds it a few more times. I did it in the microwave, but you can also use a water bath. 

And then YOU HAVE CHEESE. You’re supposed to add salt and then stretch it like taffy and then shape it and put it in cold water, but I got confused and put it in cold water before I shaped it, so the first batch was shaped, uh, like this:

But very clearly cheese! Magic!!!!

Meantime, the first batch of zeppole came out of the oven and I was DELIGHTED with the results. So light and puffy! 

and they left these cute little rosettes on the parchment paper. 
 

I made a second batch (bigger ones this time) and put them in the oven, and then started a second batch of cheese. This one turned out prettier!

I think I needed to be a little faster stretching it, to get those little bumps out, but I was still delighted with the results. 

Benny and Corrie made some antipasto platters, and I showed them how to make salami roses. You just fold the slices of salami over a narrow-mouthed drinking glass, overlapping the slices, and then gently upend the glass and slide the salami rose off. 

If we have another baby, I shall name her Salami Rose. 

Didn’t they do a lovely job with the platters? Benny did the green ones and Corrie did the red. 

Damien, meanwhile, made probably the best sauce I have ever had. And I lived in Rome for three months. I truly cannot tell you how savory and delicious it was, and I’m very sad I didn’t get good pictures. He also made some tremendous meatballs, using this recipe, and sausage, and we had that with spaghetti. 

Dang, it was so good. A sauce to savor. Meatballs to remember. A dinner to dwell on. 

Lena and Moe came over for supper, which was super fun! Those big kids are turning out so great.

After we ate, I filled the zeppole with the cream filling, dusted them with powdered sugar, and topped them with fancy cocktail cherries, which were dark red and had a somewhat sour taste, very nice. 

I was pretty proud of these. 

For comparison, here is my first attempt at zeppole, a few years ago:

 Getting a star tip for piping sure makes a difference. And the Sip and Feast recipe is vastly superior to whatever I did the first time. I think those ones were also filled with instant vanilla pudding. But you know what, I remember being way to busy and tired to make zeppole, and I did it anyway. Yay past me! Yay present me! (Future me is on her own, though.)

I had some leftover pastry dough, so I piped this rather silly St. Joseph logo

and dusted that with powdered sugar, and we ate that, too! Buona festa! It was all great, all of it. Oh, I also made five loaves of garlic bread, because we are not savages. 

THURSDAY
Hot dogs and chips

Because Mama needs a break.

I actually love hot dogs. Mustard and sauerkraut, mmm. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

I’m a little torn with the pizza, because we have lots of yummy things in the fridge left over from St. J day — marinated peppers, artichoke hearts, fancy olives, nice parmesan, not to mention that wonderful mozzarella. Obviously I won’t be putting meat on, but I’m conflicted about the rest of it, because despite appearances, it is a Friday in Lent. 

Oh, but that reminds me, I didn’t tell you how the mozzarella tastes! It tastes great! Fresh and flavorful and creamy and light. You can make it firmer or softer, and you can skip the salt, and you can add all kinds of things to it (basil, prosciutto, etc.) when you’re shaping it, and make a log, or little pearls, or even cheese sticks. I’m so delighted with this kit. It comes with five or six rennet tabs, and you only use a quarter of one per gallon of milk. A gallon of milk makes, well, I forgot to weigh it, but it looked like over a pound of cheese to me. Anyway I see soooo much cheese in my future. The whole thing took like half an hour to make, and it was easy and entertaining. You can also make ricotta with this kit, which I haven’t tried yet. 

And that’s-a my story. Oh, except also I just ordered sighhhhh an incubator, because a certain child once missed seeing an egg hatch at school because of Covid a few years ago, and this has been an enduring and understandable sorrow, so Promises Were Made. I think if we do manage to hatch out some ducklings, we’ll have to name at last one of them Salami Rose. The rest can all be Joe.

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caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 12 anchovy fillets, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two large lemons' worth)
  • 1 Tbsp mustard
  • 4 raw egg yolks, beaten
  • 3/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Instructions

  1. Just mix it all together, you coward.

What’s for supper? Vol. 412: Food of America

Happy Friday! Happy Valentine’s Day! Damien and I are GOING OUT DANCING! Or, well, we are taking our kids to the school dance, presumably to watch the girls text each other and giggle, and the boys shove each other, and the little kids chase each other under the tables. I was discouraged (by my kids) from bringing in food, so none of this, this year:

I went to a Valentine’s Day dance in middle school, which was such a long time ago, it was still called “Junior High.” It was my first dance ever, and I had read a lot of Archie Comics, so I borrowed my sister’s bright pink dress with the flared skirt, paired with a wide, glossy, black plastic belt with a gold heart-shaped clasp, and a pair of pink heart earrings. I nervously crept through the door of the gym, and a teacher chaperone immediately cried, “Oh, don’t you look nice!” Which is how I knew I had worn the Wrong Thing. 

Thanks, brain, for remembering that in excruciating detail. So important.

Anyway, boy am I glad to be an adult. And you know what is important? Food! Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet with dino nuggets

The forecast warned us of a big storm Saturday night, so we went to the vigil Mass. But first it was the shopping turn of a child who made me very proud by picking out the things SHE WANTED, and steadfastly rebuffing the howls of complaints from her older sisters. For her frozen food supplement to leftover day, she picked dino nuggets because that’s what sheeee wanted. 

They also gave her a hard time about the weekend cereal and the desserts she chose, but she didn’t crumple. For real, being a teenage girl and actually expressing what you want, and sticking to it when your peers don’t like it, is almost heroic.

Also heroic was the leftover coconut chicken curry. I ignored all the other leftovers and just stuck with the curry, and oh my dammit, it was amazing.

Next time, I may make curry ahead of time just to have it several days old on purpose, because it was really great the first time, but as leftovers, it was MAGNIFICENT. 

SUNDAY
Buffalo wings and blue cheese dip, Doritos, hot pretzels, raw veggies

The big snow came as forecast, and in the midst of all that brilliant white, my pesky lingering headache turned into a full-blown migraine, so I noped out of shoveling and went back to bed. Bless Damien for making me feel like this was a reasonable thing to do. 

But I was feeling better by the afternoon, and it was, of course, the Super Bowl. We didn’t care about either team, but we do like hot salty football food, so I made some hot pretzels using the King Arthur recipe.

I’ve made it before, and it’s pretty easy, and they come out delicious, although they never really look like the picture, probably because I’m too impatient to roll the dough out into long enough snakes before shaping them. (And no, I never did get dressed, as you can see.) 

Anyway, you make the dough and let it rise (I used the slow cooker on “keep warm”), then cut the dough into lumps

And by the way, this is around the time of year last year I got my new-to-me cabinet and marble countertop from Marketplace, and it’s been SUCH a boon. I set it slightly lower then the other countertops, so it’s very convenient for things like kneading dough or decorating cakes. I have short legs, whatcha gonna do. 

Here’s what my workspace looked like before the new countertop:

and here how it looks right now:

If you look closely, you will see that I have discovered PVC pipe as the universal solution. 

So I have been continuing my decluttering tour, which launched, hmm, right around the time of the inauguration, for some reason. It’s turned less maniacal now and a little more grim this week, but I’m determined to deal with all the worst spots in the house by the end of February. So far I have cleared out the landing and turned it into a playroom, cleared out the laundry room, fixed and cleared out the white cabinet/craft area, re-hung the curtains in front of the gaps in the kitchen cabinets, and done lots and lots of scouring and scrubbing in both bathrooms and the oven, and also stuff like replacing a bunch of old smoke alarms and whatnot. And, I bought my very first Swiffer. 

Yesterday, I decluttered the hutch.

Before:

and after:

I have come to loathe this piece of furniture, and will replace when I can. But organizing it it led to shifting around some other stuff in other parts of the kitchen, and I had the revelation that the kid’s water bottles can go LOW DOWN ON THE BOTTOM SHELVES, and my seltzer and Damien’s soda can go AT WAIST HEIGHT because WE ARE OLD and OUR BACKS HURT. A lot of stuff in this house is still set up to keep meddling toddlers out of stuff, and we may have some problems right now, but not that! 

Okay, so anyway, the pretzels turned out nice! You brush them with melted butter when they come out of the oven, and they’re super soft and chewy and rich. 

Damien made a big pile of his excellent hot chicken wings with blue cheese dipping sauce. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

He actually made some hot, some with BBQ sauce, and some plain; and I had the kids chop up a bunch of veggies, and I bought NAME BRAND Doritos. 

An extremely delicious meal. 

We scored some points with the teenagers by enjoying the halftime show, too, and I liked that guy’s pants. 

MONDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Every year when I do the shopping around Super Bowl Sunday, there is, of course, lots of football-priced ground beef available(it was $2.99 a pound here), and I cleared out the freezer a bit so I could stock up on that. And something about buying all that beef shifts my food thoughts into irresistibly American channels, so we had some of the saltiest, meatiest, least ethnically diverse meals imaginable this week. The kids have been pretty happy. 

Monday, spaghetti and meatballs. Here is my meatball recipe

Jump to Recipe

demonstrating my less-mess technique of baking or broiling the meatballs in the oven on a rack, so they keep their shape, and the grease just tidily drains off. 

And very good it was, spaghetti with meatballs. 

TUESDAY
Pulled pork, tater tots, corn

Tuesday we had a thing in the morning, so I started pulled pork early. Here is my tasty pulled pork recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Came out of the pot niiiiiice and tender. 

so I shredded it up

and put it back in the pot with the juice, to stay warm, while I cooked the tater tots, and also one bag of hilariously overpriced heart-shaped potato . . . things. I guess I was planning to serve this on Valentine’s Day, but this was Wednesday, I dunno. They were actually pretty good. Basically mashed potato in a crisp skin, same as those smiley fries. 

The kids had pulled pork sandwiches in deli rolls, but I had my preferred mode: Hot Pork Heap. Tater tots, then pulled pork, then corn, then red onion, the BBQ sauce. You can spot the potato hearts over to the left. 

This is also really good with some of that disgusting melted yellow cheese stuff that comes in a jar, but some of us are watching our figgahs. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday I actually did some writing for once in my life, and completely lost track of time and had to ask Elijah to make the pizzas. Got home around 5:30 and finished them up, using, as you can see, the leftover meatballs, with pepperoni in between. 

Yum. 

THURSDAY
Burgers and chips

Just regular hamburgers, which I make in the oven on a rack like the meatballs, but right up under a hot broiler. 

On Wednesday, one of the schools called a snow day for one school on Thursday, and the two other schools said it would be a two-hour delay. Damien proposed a Fisher Flop-Out. I’m not saying I married him because of his ability to make up names that don’t quite mean anything but make me laugh, but I will say that this is the man who once called his kids “a bunch of freshwater jerks,” and THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE. So Thursday came and, while we slept, the other schools decided it made more sense to have a full snow day, so there you go. Fisher Flop-Out!

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

I guess the kids at home can fend for themselves, actually, because as I mentioned, we will be out dancing our fool heads out, or anyway watching teenage girls texting each other while standing next to each other. It’s a pretty sweet life, even without the yellow melty cheese. 

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Hot chicken wings with blue cheese dip (after Deadspin)

Basic, tasty hot wings with blue cheese sauce

Ingredients

  • chicken wingettes
  • oil for frying

For the hot sauce:

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/8 cup tabasco sauce
  • 1/8 cup sriracha sauce
  • salt
  • vinegar (optional)

Blue cheese sauce:

  • sour cream
  • blue cheese
  • optional: lemon juice, mayonnaise
  • celery sticks for serving

Instructions

  1. Fry the wingettes in several inches of oil until they are lightly browned. Do a few at a time so they don't stick together. Set them on paper towels to cool.

  2. Melt the butter and mix together wit the rest of the hot sauce ingredients. Toss the wings in the hot sauce.

  3. Mix together the sour cream and crumbled blue cheese. Use a food processor or whisk vigorously to break up the blue cheese. You can add lemon juice or a little mayonnaise to thin it.

  4. Serve with blue cheese dip and celery sticks.

 

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Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 4 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 1 cup)
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

 

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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. 378: In which nobody goes to the emergency room

In haste! In haste! For today is a half day, and I have to go get my punkass kids. It is the final day of teacher appreciation week, and I love that they’re topping it off by making all the kids go away. Truly the gift from the heart. 

Speaking of gifts from the heart, this week having been mother’s day week, I decided to make all foods that I like this week. It was a very tasty week! But also very stupid, as you will see. 

SATURDAY
Hot dogs, chips

Well, I do like hot dogs, but this was more about convenience on a shopping day. But I do like hot dogs. And convenience!

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries, lemon meringue pie with strawberry compote

Damien shopped for and put together these excellent sandwiches (toasted baguettes with red pesto, olive oil, and vinegar, with provolone, prosciutto, capicola, sandwich pepperoni, tomatoes, and fresh basil), and made fries

and Clara made some wonderful pies, using my pie crust recipe

Jump to Recipe

and the filling and meringue from Sally’s Baking Addiction,

plus, as you can see, a layer of homemade strawberry compote between the lemon and meringue

Absolutely splendid. Perfect. I wish I had gotten pictures from the morning, when she made it, because by dessert time it had gone the way meringues tend to go, but it was still airy and wonderful. 

All the kids came over, and showered me with thoughtful and delightful presents. I spent most of the day following my heart, which meant working on my bog bridge. I worked on it off and on throughout the week, when I had 45 minutes to spare and it wasn’t raining, and it’s almost ready to put in place! I AM VERY EXCITED. In fact, at one point I got a little over-excited. As you will see. 

MONDAY
Fajita beef bowl, pineapple

London broil was on sale, so I got a bunch and sliced it up thin and marinated it most of the day in this yummy marinade

Jump to Recipe

I did all the prep work in the morning: Sauteed some sweet peppers, roasted some corn, chopped cilantro, cut up some limes, and found the shredded cheese, sour cream, and corn chips, and I prepped the rice in the Instant Pot. Sometimes we also have black beans with this dish, but we just had them last week and I just wasn’t bean ready yet. We also usually have chopped scallions, but I forgot. 

Before dinner, I cranked up the broiler and (to be honest, slightly over)cooked the meat

and I piled up my bowl with rice and meat and toppings and ate outside with the birdies. 

Oh, I also cut up the pineapple I meant to serve last week. Lovely meal, very popular. 

TUESDAY
Two pizzas, not three

On Tuesday, I was super busy all day with I don’t even remember what, so I as soon as I got home in the afternoon, I made three pizzas very fast. One olive, one half plain and half Hawaiian using the leftover pineapple from Monday, and one pepperoni using leftover pepperoni from the Italian sandwiches. We had a lot of pepperoni left, so I was pretty lavish with the toppings on this.

Feeling very brisk and accomplished, I preheated the oven, set the pizzas on the counter, and asked Elijah to put them in at 5:10. Then I went outside to work on my bridge. 

I was slapping wood stain on as fast as I could, and even though I was increasingly covered with wood stain and blackfly bites, feeling pretty great about life in general, when Elijah comes out and says, “You don’t have to come inside or anything, but how many pizzas are there?”

I say there are three. I’m the tiniest bit annoyed, because it’s not like it’s a big kitchen or something. Three extra large pizzas, pretty much front and center, can’t really miss them. Definitely three pizzas. 

He says, “Okay, I can only find two. And there is an empty pan.” 

So of course I go inside, and he is correct. Two pizzas which are now in the oven, and one pizza pan, still on the counter, with smears of grease and flour on it.

WHAT COULD HAVE POSSIBLY HAPPENED TO IT? 

What indeed.

Now, you know I’m sharing this story because the dog did not die. I will also confess that we did not take him to the vet. If we took that dog to the vet every time he ate something stupid, we’d be investigated by GoFundMe for an implausible number of emergencies. 

And to be honest, we weren’t 100% convinced it was the dog who made the pizza disappear. First we searched all over the house in case it somehow . . . left. Which sounds dumb, but it was very strange! The pan was there, the pizza was gone. We thought of the cat, who does steal whatever food he can carry and has no conscience at all. And we thought of, uh, other possibilities

And the dog seemed fine! He wasn’t bloated or uncomfortable or acting like his butt was any more haunted than usual.

But we couldn’t think of any other place the pizza might have gone, besides down his gullet. He does have very poor impulse control, even for a dog. 

The danger is that the dough would expand in his tummy and do terrible twisty things to his innards, or that it would produce alcohol and poison him from the inside out. Soooo Damien stayed up until 2 a.m. observing him. That makes nine full hours after the dog apparently ate the raw pizza. He did burp. And that was all. 

Friends, this is the almighty power of a boxer’s digestive system. You can judge us if you want for not taking him to the ER, but Sonny himself would give you some side eye for that. 

Well, maybe not a side eye, because his eye placement doesn’t really allow for that, but he would do his best. Sonny always does his best. As do we all. 

WEDNESDAY
Sweet spicy Korean meatballs, sweet pepper lo mein

New recipe! I came across this recipe for gochujang meatballs with apricot glaze and couldn’t look away. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I used fresh ginger instead of powdered. Super easy, and it was fab. Tasted like party food. You just mix up the meatball ingredients and bake them, and then roll them around in the heated glaze which is just three ingredients, and serve.

I had already served rice that week and I was planning to do it agin, so rather than making rice as a side, I made a vegetable lo mein, as you can see. I usually make lo mein with linguine or fettuccine, but this time I had some very thin Chinese noodles I had grabbed at the International Market. They boiled up in no time, like two minutes, which was fun. I did my easy lo mein sauce

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I sauteed up some minced ginger and garlic, then added the leftover sweet peppers, then a little mirin, then the noodles and sauce and heated it all up. Delicious. The whole meal came together, start to finish, in like 45 minutes (moving fast). 

Definitely making these meatballs again. They tasted like party food. They would also be good, maybe even better, with ground turkey.

THURSDAY
Chicken biryani, giant taboon

I’ve had biryani on my mind for a few weeks, so today was the day. This recipe calls for chicken thighs, and that really is the superior kind of chicken for it, but what was on sale was chicken ribs, so that’s what I used. 

I also used actual basmati rice, which I sometimes am too cheap for. I had forgotten this, but it cooks up much faster than short grain white rice; so if you struggle with getting the rice cooked all the way through with biryani, it definitely helps to have the right rice! Anyway I anticipated undercooked rice, so I made the biryani in the morning and put it in the slow cooker for the rest of the day, which generally takes care of any chompy rice by dinner time. 

Turned out great. This being Mother’s Choice week, I did not omit the golden raisins, which the kids don’t like. But they’re easy to pick out, so that’s what they did.

And maybe I went around after dinner and ate up all the little plump, savory, leftover golden raisins on their plates, who can say. Maybe I’m the one who ate the pizza!

(I did not.) So, the chicken breast was a little bit dry, as I expected. Still a wonderful dish. I keep thinking I might try a different biryani recipe, but everyone likes this one, so why. 

At the last minute, I decided to make a Giant Taboon. My naan is kind of hit or miss, mostly miss, and it was too late to start it anyway, but taboon is fast and easy and delightful. Five minutes to put the ingredients together, an hour to rise, ten minutes to rest the dough, and 10-15 minutes to bake. I called everyone down for supper, and then I pulled this lovely pneumatic lady out of the oven:

I made it with a big rolled lip out of force of habit, because I usually make tabboon to go along with mussakhan (Palestian chicken with sumac and red onions) and you serve the chicken right on top of the bread

and I like to make a little lip to keep the juices in. Aghh, I gotta make mussakhan again. It’s so good. 

Oh, I’m almost at the end of the week and I didn’t tell you about my leetle misadventure with wood. The short version is that I had already cut away the rotten wood, replaced it with sound wood, and attached cross pieces on, and stained the underside; and also retrieved the pieces I already laid into the swamp before I realized I really needed to stain them. So then I wanted to flip the two long pieces over so I could stain the other side; but I couldn’t do it the horizontal way, which is easier, because I didn’t want to snap the cross pieces off

So I did what any mother would do: I dragged the kids into it. Four of us hoisted up one short end and carefully walked our hands down until it was basically standing on its end. Then I was like, “Okay, now just me and Lena, and everyone else get out of the way, and Lena, you stand to the side, because it might leap out!” 

You know this is a dumb story. Dumber than the dog eating the whole raw pizza, because his excuse is that he is a dog, whereas I am a college graduate and this was a very dumb idea. 

So we gave it a big shove, and of course it did leap out, but not like I expected, and it thwacked both me and Lena so hard that we both fell down and its fwiggen lucky we didn’t both have multiple broken bones. Do you want to see my leg?? 

Well, I just spent kind of a long time trying to figure out how to insert some code for one of those “click to see image” things, but I’m too full of raw dough, I mean I can’t figure it out, but for some misbegotten reason I really want to show you my leg, which isn’t even that bad. Lena’s is much worse. I’ll put the image at the end of the recipes, and if you are really motivated, you can scroll all the way down and see my leg. I find bruises fascinating, and this one kind of looks like a leaping rabbit. Madeline would be proud.

Oh, so then the long piece was somehow suspended in the air like this

I slapped a bunch of stain on it and dragged a tarp over it just as it began to rain, because I may be an idiot, but I’m not really sure how this sentence is supposed to end.

Damien promised that, when I was ready to flip the second long piece over, I should call him and he he would come over and say, “No, not like that! You’ll get hurt!” (He also said he would help flip it over.) This is what you call traditional marriage roles, and I didn’t even have to become a football player to figure it out. 

P.S. The dog did go to the vet today for his shots, and they confirmed that he is fine, and just likes pizza. Who among us. 

FRIDAY
I don’t know. 
I was planning tuna boats, but Moe and Eliora are coming over, so maybe I will take it up a notch. Or maybe not! Maybe I will throw some wood at them and pretend I thought they ate the pizza. This is MY WEEK, and I can do what I want! Which always turns out well. 

 

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

  • 1 cup lime juice
  • 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1 head garlic, crushed
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 2 tsp hot pepper flakes
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp pepper
  • 1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.

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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

  • 2-1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
  • 1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.

  4. Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.

  5. If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.

  6. If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!

  7. If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.

  8. You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.

 

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basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 5 tsp sesame oil
  • 5 tsp sugar

for the rest

  • 32 oz uncooked noodles
  • sesame oil for cooking
  • add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
  • 2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

  1. Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.

  2. Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.

  3. Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.

  4. Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.

  5. Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

WATCH OUT, HERE COMES A PICTURE OF MY LEG 

Probably not as bad as you were expecting, with all that build-up. But doesn’t it look like a rabbit?