Tag: pork

What’s for supper? Vol. 447: Mark me down as phojascent

Happy Friday! Let’s get the heck to it! Here’s what we ate this week. 

Oh wait! I forgot I haven’t showed you Halloween costumes yet. Okay, we had one Chestburster (from Alien):

one Rarity: 

one Red Hood: 

one Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist:

and of course one Bender, complete with cigar:

The three older kids made their costumes completely on their own (and at the last minute, I should add. The original plan was for them and two friends to be different versions of David Bowie, but that fell apart, sadly; so they had to throw these together). Benny made her entire Edward Elric costume by herself except for the shirt (which is a T-shirt with duct tape on it), including that incredible articulated arm; and Corrie made her entire Bender costume except for the body, which I started and she finished. She was particularly proud of her tidy little robot feet, which stayed on all night.

So I would say the costume torch has officially been passed! It stopped raining in time, they got tons of candy, and everyone was happy. Whew. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and mozzarella sticks

Just a regular shopping and chores day, as far as I can recall. I was in a state about the messy house, so I gave the kids pre-cleaning assignments while I was out, and they really did them. This big kid thing is pretty great. 

For supper, we had leftovers, and mozzarella sticks for the frozen food bonus. Looks like I chose chicken soup with rice, caprese salad, and honey battered chicken. 

It was a non-HDO All Saints Day, and I’m ashamed to say we did absolutely nothing to mark it. Sorry, saints. 

That evening, I had already told the kids we’d be doing a deep cleaning on Sunday, so before bed I made an apple pie and the dough for soul cakes, so we’d be able to still have some good food after a busy day. 

SUNDAY
Beef pho, apple pie

When we got home from Mass, I got some broth going for pho, and cut out and baked the soul cakes. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

These are not super sweet, and are kind of spicy and old-fashioned tasting, and they are much much better when they are fresh out of the oven and still soft. 

I did tell kids about the history of soul cakes (kids would go door-to-door singing a song begging for cakes, and they would pray for someone’s soul in return. This is apparently the origins of trick-or-treating), and then I said they had to pick someone dead and pray for them, and then they could have one skull cake (an un-prayed-for soul) and one winged cake (a soul released from purgatory). They were very relieved with this deal, because they thought I was going to make them sing. 

Then oh boy, did we clean. The kids tackled the living room, dining room, kitchen, stairs, and landing, including floors and woodwork, and I did the “tool area,” which is the geographically lowest point of the house and collects so much miscellaneous junk and just plain dirt, you wouldn’t believe it, and it was also full of pieces of dog food the dog likes to fling around just to keep his spirits up. It had gotten to the point where, just to get from the kitchen to the back door, you had to writhe around like you’re doing the merengue. But not in the fun way. 

So while the kids did their part, I cleaned and organized and swept and scrubbed furiously and sorted ruthlessly, and got rid of something like 200 dresses that I was finally ready to admit nobody fits into anymore. Some of them were dresses all eight of my girls have worn! I was very brave.

(Actually, I remember talking about this before — getting rid of clothes that have heavy nostalgic value — and a younger mom was like, “oh no, are you saying it never gets easier?” and I was like, “Yeah, sorry, it just stays hard.” But it turns out it does get easier! I think it’s probably the Prozac, honestly. Also I do that goofy “thank you for your service” thing if I have to get rid of something with especially fond memories attached, and it really helps!) 

I shan’t show an “after” picture of the area I cleaned, because it will look too much like other people’s “before,” but it’s a massive, massive improvement. You can just walk through it like a normal human being. Hooray!

The kids also did a great job cleaning, and it feels so so much better in here. 

It also smelled great, with the pho broth simmering away. Here’s the recipe I followed. Real pho is made with a bone broth, but I honestly figured I was already pushing my luck with an unfamiliar food, so I figured this would be sort of entry-level pho, and if they liked it, we could go from there. A phojascent soup, if you will. Beef is a big treat these days, so I was pretty excited about that part. 

In the morning, I had put the hunk of beef in the freezer and asked Damien to sharpen a knife for me, and I sliced the meat up as thinly as I possibly could

(it’s much easier to cut thin if it’s slightly frozen) and prepped a bunch of toppings: Scallions, cilantro, thinly-sliced onion, lime, jalapeños, and Thai basil. 

Right before supper, I turned up the heat on the broth and quickly cooked some thin rice noodles. I tried to keep them in nest shapes, but they just unwound and merged, oh well. 

The idea is everyone gets a piping-hot bowl of broth with noodles in it, and then you add the thinly-sliced beef right into your bowl, and it cooks right in front of you. Then you put whatever you want on top. I chose everything, plus some sriracha. 

Here’s my bowl, before the meat has entirely finished cooking. 

Some of the kids were uncomfortable with the rareness of the beef (it did cook more than in the picture above!) so they put their bowls in the microwave, and that did the trick. 

Holy wow, it was delicious. I know this is dreadfully inauthentic and so on, but it was so good. Light and savory at the same time, and delightfully filling. I think almost everyone liked it, which hardly ever happens! We’re definitely making this again.

I glazed and baked the pie in the afternoon, and it was still warm after supper, so that was also popular. 

This is probably the flakiest crust I’ve ever made. I ended up freezing the butter for way longer than I usually do (usually I chill it for half an hour or so, and then grate it into the flour and salt), but this time it was really frozen solid. That must have been what made the difference. 

Here is my pie crust recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

Works every time!

MONDAY
Butter chicken, basmati rice, terrible flatbread

Monday I was a little annoyed at myself because I was planning butter chicken, and I had bought chicken thighs with the bone and skin on, so I had to process all that. Sonny was . . . . the opposite of annoyed. He was enraptured. I didn’t actually even give him any scraps, because there has been entirely too much throwing up in this house lately, but I think he still enjoyed the afternoon. Just being near meat is good. He’s kind of into the whole agony/ecstasy thing. 

I had my own little agony going, because I had bought a sack of chappati flour

but the “gluten free” part didn’t really register with me until I made the dough, according to the instructions on the bag. Like, when I’m cooking new foods, I always keep an open mind. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to look like! Or maybe it’s my fault, because this is my first time!

Well, sometimes it’s just because it’s gluten free, and that’s just a sad state of being. The dough is on the left here: 

As you can see, I decided to go in a different direction, so I made a double batch of this sort of generic no-yeast flatbread from Recipe Tin Eats. That’s the dough on the right. 

It’s just flour, salt, butter and milk, and you fry it in an ungreased pan. I did try that, but I burned the hell out of it, so I tried greasing the pan.

Ladies and gentlemen, they still sucked. Really, just terrible, all twelve of them.I don’t know where I went wrong, but these were truly disgusting. I guess not as bad as they would have been if I had used the gluten-free chappati flour, which tasted of lentils and miscellaneous grit, but still inedible. Oh well! Anybody want an opened sack of gluten free chappati flour that has regular wheat flour sprinkled all over it because that’s how I bake? Let me know. 

The butter chicken was fabulous, luckily. I made a big pot of basmati rice and garnished it with cilantro, and it was just wonderful. 

I use the Recipe Tin Eats recipe, and I’ve never found a reason to try a different recipe. 

My site is being weird, so if the recipe link above isn’t working, here it is:

Butter Chicken

I also roasted the pumpkin seeds the kids had saved from carving jack-o’-lanterns. I did reserve the seeds from the one massive one, and I’m air drying those out to be planted in the spring. The rest, I lightly oiled, spread in a single layer, and toasted in the oven at 300 degrees, stirring them occasionally. I think it took about forty minutes. Then I sprinkled them with kosher salt, and they were yummo. 

And that was Monday!

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips

Tuesday, I was supposed to leave early and take a kid to a medical appointment far away, and I felt so sick and lousy that I just cancelled it. I’m working on introducing myself to the idea that I don’t have to force myself to do every hard thing that presents itself, but can sometimes take an easier route, like rescheduling an appointment. It feels weird, but it was definitely the right call. We had a simple supper of grilled ham and cheese with chips, and in the evening I started a big hunk of pork with its dry rub (a cup of salt and a cup of sugar, rub it all over, and bag it overnight). 

WEDNESDAY
Bo ssam with basmati rice, kiwi and mango

In the morning, I cut up a bunch of kiwis and mangos, which is just a lovely combination

and around 12:30, I put the brined pork in the oven. I do the bare bones version of this recipe,

okay, again the linking is not working. Ugh. Here is the link:
https://mykoreankitchen.com/bo-ssam/

So you rub a cup of salt and a cup of sugar all over the pork shoulder and let it sit overnight, and then you put the pork in a 300 oven for like six hours. Then just before you serve it, you crank the oven up to 500 and slather brown sugar, cider vinegar, and salt on the top, and let it brown up. 

I know I always say it, but this is the lowest-effort, highest-yield recipe I know. It turns out absolutely scrumptious every time, and you barely have to do anything. There is a sauce that goes with it, but I rarely make it, because it’s already so juicy and tender and good. 

I reheated the leftover basmati rice, and put out some lettuce leaves and the cut-up fruit, and wow, it was a perfect meal. 

The idea is you tear off some lettuce and use it grab up some rice and some shreds of meat, and you make a little bundle for personal gobbling. Repeat. IT’S SO GOOD. I like having fruit as a side for this meal, because the meat is outrageously salty, and it’s good to have something juicy to sooth the tongue a bit. 

Everyone likes this meal, and I deliberately made a giant pork shoulder so there would be leftovers for Thursday. 

THURSDAY
Pork fried rice and wontons

Thursday we had to get up early to get to a flu and covid shot clinic. Very relieved to get that done! Then we got donuts and I brought the kids to school and prepped supper. I cut up the leftover pork, defrosted some peas and a bag of cooked rice I had stuffed in the freezer last week, and chopped up some onions and garlic. Sadly, I had used up all the fresh ginger for the pho, so when it was time to cook, I had to use powdered ginger. 

Here’s my basic fried rice recipe:

Jump to Recipe

When I got home, I made a pot of chicken broth from bouillon and cooked some frozen wontons in it. 

Not a spectacular meal, but it was tasty and popular and cheap, and took probably 20 minutes to cook. My meal planning skills have been in overdrive lately, and it’s been really gratifying to make stuff ahead of time, and use leftovers, and so on. My big secret is not having little kids hanging off my legs while I cook. I cannot emphasize what a difference this makes. I do now have a dog doing his Y E A R N I N G thing in the kitchen while I cut stuff up, but it’s not nearly as disruptive as toddlers breaking and trying to eat glass while I have raw pork on my hands, for instance. Truly, I don’t know how I survived that long, long period of my life. No regrets, but no desire to do it again, either!

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Just reglear old spaghetti. 

I know I have a bunch of people who are waiting for me to get back to them, so if that’s you, I haven’t forgotten, I promise! Sorry about that! 

And that’s-a my story. Shall pray for you all at adoration in a few hours, if I manage to stay awake. 

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Soul cakes

Servings 18 flat cakes the size of large biscuits

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, chilled
  • 3-3/4 cup sifted flour
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp allspice (can sub cloves)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp cider vinegar (can sub white vinegar)
  • 4-6 Tbsp milk
  • powdered sugar to sprinkle on top

optional:

  • raisins, currants, nuts, candied citrus peels, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350

  2. Put the flour in a large bowl. Grate the chilled butter on a vegetable grater and incorporate it lightly into the flour.

  3. Stir in the sugar and spices until evenly distributed.

  4. In a smaller bowl, beat together the eggs, vinegar and milk. Stir this into the flour mixture until it forms a stiff dough.

  5. Knead for several minutes until smooth and roll out to 1/4 thick.

  6. Grease a baking pan. Cut the dough into rounds (or other shapes if you like) and lay them on the pan, leaving a bit of room in between (they puff up a bit, but not a lot). If you're adding raisins or other toppings, poke them into the top of the cakes, in a cross shape if you like. Prick cakes with fork.

  7. Bake for 20-25 minutes until very lightly browned on top.

  8. Sprinkle with powdered sugar while they are warm

 

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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 stir fried rice

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 446: Whoopy once! Whoopy twice!

Happy Friday! HAPPY HALLOWEEN! The kids made their costumes almost entirely on their own this year. I made one component each for Benny and Corrie’s costumes, and the older kids did it all themselves. Sweet! I haven’t seen them all put together yet, but I will share when I do. (Honestly, I would have been a little sad if they had 100% taken over the costume-making.) 

Also this week, Damien and I (mostly Damien) FINISHED THE ROOF. Well, basically. Maybe not every little detail, but it is doing what a roof is supposed to do, and I’m pretty happy. Especially since we’re suddenly getting all the rain we didn’t get all summer!

I got pretty cook-y and bake-y this week, and a little bit spoooooky. Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Anniversary Indian food!

Saturday we got most of the shingles up, until we ran out of shingles. This was our anniversary; this is our anniversary picture. 

28 years! 

So we ran out of shingles, we gave up, cleaned up, and went out to eat at the local Indian restaurant, Royal Spice, which I heartily recommend if you’re anywhere in the area. They are SO nice and the food is SO good. We got the same fried vegetarian whatnot appetizer platter we always do, with the cute little stand that holds three kinds of chutney; and then Damien got some kind of lamb dish, maybe kadai? and I got a beef chettinad curry. Of course we both had rice and garlic naan. The waiter actually congratulated us on how much we ate (all of it). He said it made him happy. It made us happy, too! And it made my nose run. 

Then, in order to avoid going home, we stopped for ice cream. I was surprised to see how many other people were buying ice cream. It was nippy out! Maybe they were also avoiding their children. 

Oh, the kids had Aldi pizza. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers and chimichangas 

Sunday after Mass, I went shopping and Damien finished the roof! Here it is when we started taking it off a week ago:

and here is where we are almost done putting it back on.

Actually, darn it, the picture I was going to share is where it’s not quite done. I guess I’ll have to come back later. I would run out and take a picture now, but it’s raining right now and I am still in my payamas. 

The kids spent most of the day working on their costumes. The house is such a wreck, SUCH a wreck, you wouldn’t believe. Partly because of costume making, partly because we’ve been working on the roof rather than making sure kids actually clean, rather than just pantomiming it. But I’m holding off on a cleaning rampage until after Halloween, because we’re about to be hip-deep in candy wrappers. You have to let that happen for a few days, and THEN you can clean. 

MONDAY
Chicken tenders, caprese salad with skull cheese, french bread

Monday I suddenly realized that, if I was gonna use the silicone skull molds I bought on a whim, it needed to be this week. So I made a batch of mozzarella using my kit. I’ve taken to heating the cheese in the final stage longer than it says in the instructions, for a total of three minutes or more, and that has made it much stretchier and smoother. I also bought some kitchen gloves, and that helped a LOT. Because when you heat cheese, it’s, uh, hot. 

So I made a batch and planned to make individual skulls, but it doesn’t stay pliable for long, so I opted to just smoosh it over the molds in slabs.

I cooled it in water and then ice water for about fifteen minutes, and then peeled it off. SO SATISFYING. Here’s a little video of that. 

Then I cut the cheese into individual skulls, but I wasn’t happy with the square effect.

So I sort of grudgingly (not that the whole thing was anyone else’s idea besides mine) trimmed off the square edges with a paring knife, and I made a caprese salad.

I usually serve this salad undressed and let people add their own oil and vinegar, but the skulls looked much more defined after I splashed a little balsamic vinegar over them. 

Very pleased with this. 

Then I decided to try a balsamic reduction, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I can’t find the specific recipe, but I think it was just a cup of balsamic vinegar and half a cup of brown sugar or something, simmered until it’s thick and syrupy. I had pretty much the lowest-quality balsamic vinegar one can find (thank you, Aldi), and the recipe warned me that reducing it would make it even worse, but I liked it anyway, so there! I like good food, but I also like bad food, which has made my life much simpler. 

Then I decided we needed some fresh bread, so I made a big batch of french bread

Jump to Recipe

and decided to make twelve little loaves, rather than four big ones. They turned out pretty cute. 

Then when I got home, all I had to do was heat up some frozen chicken tenders, and we had a nice little meal. 

I told the kids on the way home that I had prepared a spooky surprise for supper, and they were incredibly impressed by the spooky caprese. I mean one of them took a PICTURE and sent it to her FRIEND GROUP. Let me tell you, you may think you’re over wanting to impress the cool kids by the time you’re fifty years old, but when you have four teenage girls in the house, it does sneak up on you sometimes. (I think they expected feetloaf, which they swear I have made in the past. I have not. I have made zombieloaf, which they were weirdly unimpressed by, and anyway who can afford ground beef?)

I keep seeing recipes for mozzarella where you just use milk, vinegar, and salt. The kit I got has rennet and citric acid. If you’ve done both, do you have any comment about the difference? The kit is plenty easy to use, and the cheese is great, but I like having options. 

TUESDAY
Ina Garten roast chicken, baked potato, mashed squash

Sometimes I look at my camera roll to remind myself what I did on a particular day, and it looks like I spent Tuesday morning noticing the pretty leaves in the back yard, the burgeoning trash heaps in various rooms of the house, the one fingernail I hit the hardest with a hammer, some fluctus clouds, people being dumb on social media, and misc. Eventually I got my ass in gear and got a couple of chickens roasting, using Ina Garten’s simple recipe again, minus the thyme and gravy.

Actually, wait, I had to take a kid to an appointment on Tuesday! I forgot. I always tell myself I’m so lazy and waste so much time, and then I look at my calendar, and . . . well, sometimes I am lazy and waste time, but sometimes I’m not and I don’t. It all evens out. 

Anyway, before the afternoon run I threw the chicken in the oven, and I prepped some potatoes and some butternut squash (I made a little video showing how to prepare it so it’s easy to cut and peel) and then ended up cooking it in the slow cooker anyway, so I didn’t really need to bother peeling it first! I just dumped it in the slow cooker with half a cup of water and set it to high, and let it go for probably three hours. Worked great. 

When I got home, I mashed it up with some cinnamon, a little chili powder, a pinch of salt, and a bunch of honey, and then covered it and put it in the oven to stay warm while the chicken and baked potatoes finished up. 

Chickens turned out lovely. I think you can see how crisp the skin is.

It’s kind of fun cutting the chickens up and out pops the heads of garlic and the lemons. Hello, boys! You did your job so well!

So it was a great little cool-weather meal of tasty chicken, mashed squash, and baked potato. Not the most artistic photos, but I was so hungry. 

 

You can see I squeezed some of the garlic right out of its wrappers and ate them, yum yum

WEDNESDAY
Basic asian pork chops, rice, sesame broccoli

Wednesday we had another appointment and I didn’t get going on supper until it was later than I would have hoped. The original plan was bulgoki, but believe it or not, I can’t find gochujang anywhere in this town. I gotta order some. They did have it at the International Market, but to everyone’s sorrow, it’s closing. I’m so sad about this. They were awfully nice, and they carried foods that no one else did. 

I did stop by to pick up some bargains as they liquidate, and they were out of gochujang but they did have these cans of BBQ sauce.

The guy on the can seemed confident, so I opened it up and off, it looked so gross. It was a solid, gritty chunk swimming in orange grease. I thought maybe if I heat it up and whip it a bit, it would help. 

It did not!

It tasted like . . . something a dog who lives on the docks would eat with reluctance. I don’t know. But it smelled bad and tasted bad and life is short, so I threw it away and made a quick sauce out of soy sauce, brown sugar, and garlic powder, and marinated the pork chops in that. 

When I got home, I poured the leftover marinade on top and roasted them under the broiler

and they were perfectly good and juicy. They tasted like soy sauce, brown sugar, and garlic. No complaints. 

I roasted a tray of broccoli with sesame oil, a little soy sauce, and sesame seeds, and cooked a pot of rice, and there you are. 

Damien has been working away furiously on his car all week. It has many, many things wrong with it, and it’s been a huge project, so I was honestly just so impressed that, when he went out to buy some more tools and parts, he also came home with caramel apple wraps, because even when he’s stressed out and overworked, he’s a nice daddy and always thinking about those kids. 

I was still riding the high of the mozzarella skull success, so I got the idea to use the molds again and make some candy skulls (we always have candy melts in the house). I made the caramel apples real quick and then stuck the skulls and some sprinkles on the apples, and they were pretty cute. 

That night we watched The Invisible Man from 1933, and it was a hoot. If you’re looking for something to watch that’s a tiny bit scary but really mostly silly, and pretty short, this is a good one. I wasn’t expecting it to be funny, but it was!

THURSDAY
Hot dogs, chips, chicken soup with rice, crostini, skull cake

Thursday the menu said we were having hot dogs (I had been expecting to have to go to a third doctor’s appointment an hour away, but it got rescheduled, so I found myself at home with an easy meal and extra time), but when I fished the hot dogs out of the freezer, they just didn’t look great at all.

I mean they’re hot dogs, so it’s not like they spoiled or something, but they just seemed like Discouragement Food, and who needs that. So I looked in the freezer again and found some chicken parts, and made a simple soup. I cooked the chicken in water for an hour or so, then pulled out the chicken and sorted out the meat and bones and — man, you guys know how to make chicken soup, but I’m in too deep now! Let me tell you, the dog was INCREDIBLY interested in this part, and wanted me to know, I mean really really know, that if I NEEDED anything, like for instance if I needed someone to EAT SOME CHICKEN, then HE WAS HERE, and I should not hesitate to call upon him. What a guy.  

So I put the meat back in the pot and dumped in a bunch of chopped carrots, celery, and onion. Didn’t have any herbs in the house. Let it cook for several hours and acknowledged that it tasted hot, wet, and, if you used all your powers of concentration, slightly chickeny. So I added some concentrated chicken broth and bunch of pepper, and about an hour before dinner, I added a bunch of rice, and let that simmer until the rice was a little bit exploded. 

I sliced up the leftover bread from the other night, drizzled it with olive oil, and sprinkled it with garlic powder and salt, put it in the oven, and forgot all about it. So they were PRETTY CRUNCHY, but oh well. I did also serve the hot dogs and chips that were on the original menu. 

Ahem. 

In October, I’ll be host
To witches, goblins, and a ghost
I’ll serve them chicken soup on toast. 
Whoopy once!
Whoopy twice!
Whoopy chicken soup with rice!

You see, I am using my literature degree! I use it all the time. 

I also spent several hours writing an essay, then got to a point where I realized it was crap, I’m a crap writer, my mind is gone, I can’t do this anymore, I need to go get a job cleaning Greyhound busses, etc. etc., and decided to make a cake. 

I was actually originally thinking to use my skull molds yet again, and make jello skulls, but the only gelatin I had in the house is unflavored. I briefly considered making rosewater Jello skulls, but pivoted to cake, and then remembered I had bought a cake pan at a thrift store for $2. It’s for making spherical cakes (it’s two hemispherical pans and two silicone rings to hold them steady while they bake), and I thought I could somehow . . . carve it into a skull? 

Which I couldn’t, really, but I did cut out eyes and a nose, frost it, and then frost the ramekin it was standing on for the teeth part. I realized too late that it had a Dios de las Muertos look, and I could have really gone to town with flowers and stuff, but I ran out of time. 

Then I went back and reread my essay and it was actually fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine, so I took out the line that might get me sued and sent it off. So now you know, my creative process involves cake, and sometimes a frosted ramekin. Go ahead and jot that down. 

The kids were moderately impressed by this third spooky surprise, but after supper it was time to carve pumpkins, so we forgot to eat the cake, and it’s still sitting there on the counter, grinning at nothing and slowly drooping. Who among us. Anyway, now I know those pans work well, so that’s something! 

Oh and the soup was fine. Tasted like chicken. 

FRIDAY
Bagel, egg, and cheese

This is the first Halloween since 2010 that we’re not going to the Halloween Parade at the school. The youngest kids are both in middle school and they have aged out. Ah, me. The older kids are going out with their friends tonight, but Corrie is going trick-or-treating with me and Damien, so, phew. Also the rain just stopped, and it’s supposed to stay more or less clear tonight, PHEW. 

It just now occurred to me that, for the spooky caramel apples, I could have put the candy skulls on the apples FIRST, and then stretched the caramel sheets over them, for a potentially creepy “oh no, it’s coming through the walls” effect. Next year! 

Also, here’s something nice, that I totally forgot existed: Carole King singing Chicken Soup With Rice. 

Before I forget, here is my post about what we have for All Soul’s Day, which is Sunday. Not putting away the skull molds yet, let me tell you. 

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French bread

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

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 443: Take heart, for the Lord hath not focaccia

Happy Friday! And dang, it is COLD out there. I know some of you live in an alternate universe where it’s still summer weather, but here it is officially NIPPPY.

And you know what that means: Time to eat! (Same as warm weather, but I’m not on trial here.) 

Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with chicken three ways and burritos 

Sophia took Lucy, Irene, Benny, and Corrie to a con and they were gone all day, but Elijah (who moved out a few months ago) needed to go shopping, so we had a good old fashioned Elijah Shopping Turn. That was nice! I really love hanging out with my older kids.

The leftovers included a lot more chicken than I remembered cooking (fried chicken, chicken tenders from wraps, and garlic butter chicken bites), but it was all good. 

Because all the kids were out, I got to choose dessert. I grabbed some kind of disgusting spooky chocolate Twinkies for Saturday, and then I used some empanada dough discs I found in the freezer to make apple hand pies for Sunday. I did that Saturday night, because I knew we’d be gone during the day. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, Actual Doritos; apple hand pies and ice cream

But first, after Mass, Damien and I went on a two-hour drive to pick up Miss Maggie.

Her owner has a roommate situation that’s not working well with cats, so we’re fostering her for the long-term until that changes. She is absolutely gorgeous, and extremely chatty. 

Sonny thinks she is AMAZING, and misunderstood pretty badly when she hissed at him, and then she swiped at his face, and he thought that was ALSO AMAZING, and he continues to be AMAZED by her. Friday is a lot more cautious, and mostly just stares at her in awe, while she gazes at him with queenly contempt. 

When Maggie is upstairs, Sonny and Friday dash around the house like giant goobers, and then when she comes down, they suddenly get all awed and respectful. So I guess they’ve sorted it out? I hope they all learn to relax around each other eventually! But they’re not fighting, so that’s good. 

For supper we had grilled ham and cheese, plus brand name Doritos which were on sale. 

I also got a bag of taco seasoning flavored Doritos, and they tasted exactly like that. 

I baked the apple pies, and they truly didn’t turn out that great. The dough was pretty old, and I should have baked them at a higher temp, and the apples were also pretty old and squashy. Oh well! People ate it and no one complained. Just not my best effort. The ice cream helped. 

And that was the weekend! 

MONDAY
Chicken biryani, mango

Monday I really wanted to make some progress on the duck pond before it freezes, so I spent quite a bit of time hauling rocks from the stream to hold the liner in place. But first I got supper going. Chicken leg quarters were on sale, and there are VERY few things they are good for unless you’re holding a low rent Renaissance Faire or something; but they work great for biryani. 

I more or less follow this recipe, which yields a tasty but quite mild version. Except that I was out of ground cardamom, so I opened up a bunch of pods and ground up the kernels in my mortar and pestle. So one minute I tell Damien I’m just doing a quick easy meal, and then he comes in and I’m grinding spices like Strega Nona. 

Anyway, I followed the recipe as written, and then I moved it to the slow cooker. This is my big secret for success with biryani: You let it slow cook all day. I’ve never been able to get the rice and liquid proportions right otherwise! I also cut up a bunch of mangos. 

When I was really tired of hauling rocks, I went to the front of the house and dug out the dirt under the granite step. It was more or less where I wanted it, but it was wobbly and too far from the next step, so I got that squared away. 

So here’s the front entrance situation. I am in talks with the redoubtable Wesley to revisit the idea of building a portico.

I got that trellis for free at my favorite store, The Side of the Road. 

Then I scurried around doing little bits of yard work, and I finally cut the head off my one solitary sunflower, which was a volunteer. 

and an overachiever! You can bet I’m saving those seeds. 

Speaking of volunteers, did I show you this poppy that’s growing by the back steps?

No idea where it came from! I’ve tried to grow poppies in my garden many times, with no success, but I’ve never even tried to grow this color. I guess it just came from heaven. Or rabbit poop or whatever. Either way, I’m gonna save those seeds, too. 

So then finally it was supper time, and oh man, it was delicious. 

I was so hungry, I just took one quick photo, which, as you can see, was actually a video, oops. So here is a still from the delicious short film titled “Get In Mah Belleh.” 

TUESDAY
Garlic pork chops, baked potato, string beans

Tuesday I was planning to make soup and bread, but then I looked at the weather report and saw it was going to rain (finally! We are still in a drought) on Wednesday, so that would be a better day for soup and bread. But I knew I was going to be too busy Wednesday to make bread. So then I changed my mind another 523 times and eventually ended up making two full suppers on Tuesday. 

For Tuesday supper, we had pork chops, baked potatoes, and string beans that I just served raw, because I couldn’t get a straight answer on how people would like them cooked. 

I just broiled the pork chops, but I marinated them in the morning, more or less following the recipe for this marinade from Recipe Tin Eats, except I was rushing so I used garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, and I didn’t super duper measure anything, so it ended up tasting heavily of Worcestershire sauce, so I dumped in a bunch more brown sugar. 

Well, they turned out great. Probably could have been in the oven a few minutes longer to give them a little caramelization, but they were really tasty. I’m so happy I found this marinade, because I have struggled my whole life to cook pork chops in a way that is easy but doesn’t make them dry and tasteless. This is it! 

Because it was gonna rain the next day, I pushed to get some more outside work done. I continued building up the retaining wall/heap behind the flower bed with cinder blocks and dirt, and I filled in the trench I had dug to level the granite step, and transplanted a bunch of flowers. 

I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this! I guess partly so, someday, I can reread these posts and fondly remember a time when I could still lug stuff. I do like lugging stuff. I feel like I’m my true self, when I’m lugging stuff. 

I hung up the sunflower to dry, because the seeds seem a little juicy still. This has resulted in some interesting vignettes when people sit in that spot. 

She looks like she’s getting a revelation, or possibly taking a shower. 

On the way home from school, I bought some bread flour and then made this focaccia dough, and put it in the fridge overnight. 

WEDNESDAY
Italian wedding soup, focaccia

Wednesday we had three dentist appointments plus something else, I forget what, and it didn’t actually rain all day like it was supposed to! But I was still happy to have a giant pot of soup all ready. I had made a double recipe of this Italian Wedding Soup from Sip and Feast, except I had ground chicken instead of ground turkey for the meatballs, and I skipped the escarole. If you ask me what escarole is, I could probably come up with a plausible answer, but it’s definitely not a piece of knowledge that I keep in the front of my brain. 

About four hours before supper, I greased up a pan and schlorped the cold focaccia dough onto it, and sternly warned everyone not to touch it even a little bit, not even for a funny joke. 

Shortly before supper, I finished the soup with the acine de pepe and the spinach, and I gently encouraged the focaccia dough to cover the rest of the pan (it was already almost there). I oiled it, dimpled it, and then attempted to make a design on it with tomatoes, onions, and parsley, but it was such a spectacular failure that nobody even realized it was supposed to be a design, so pretend I never said that!

Anyway, it turned out FANTASTIC.. 

Absolutely scrumptious, with a crackly bottom, airy inside, and a thin, chewy top. 

I’m a little ashamed at how much I ate, but it was really the best focaccia I’ve ever had. Most definitely using this recipe again. 

The soup was also very nice. 

An excellent meal overall. 

THURSDAY
Spaghetti with sausage sauce

Thursday I could really feel the cold coming, so I hustled to put together a cold frame for my two pomegranate plants. 

Look at them, enjoying their sunny little spa on the back steps! 

Here’s the side view. 

So luxurious. I had all these fricken windows I got when I was planning to make a greenhouse, so I’m glad to be using a few of them, anyway. Eventually my house is going to be 100% things I found on the side of the road and things I got for free from Facebook Marketplace, and then I can die happy, or anyway, die. 

Then I dragged Damien out to the duck pond and demanded he explain to me how to fix it. 

I could see that I dug it unevenly, but I was having one of those moments when I know there’s a really simple answer, but it’s, like, sealed in one of those blister packs and you can’t find scissors, and you end up gnawing on it and just making it worse. Mentally, I mean. You guys gnaw mentally, right?  

So he suggested I move the rocks on the far edge, lift the liner, and dig more — not wider, just lower; and then put the liner and rocks back. Which was obviously the answer. I just have some kind of obvious spatial awareness deficit disorder or something (O-SADD), and I couldn’t figure it out on my own! (Actually first he assured me he totally understood not being able to work out a simple problem, and he has offered repeatedly to dig it for me and lug rocks for me, but he’s been wrestling with car repairs for two weeks straight, so I’ve been trying to keep my project bullshit to myself.) 

So anyway I did dig, for quite a long time, until I had to acknowledge that there was a bunch of water in there, and my efforts to make the pond deeper were resulting in that water flowing into the spot where I was digging, which is what I WANTED, but, well. So I set up the pump, which promptly stopped working. So that was the end of that for the day. 

By this time I was all hyped up and desperate to accomplish something, and I found myself I guess building a new step for the front of the house. 

If I can pull this off, it will actually be great, because with the porch gone, it became evident that the front of the house actually slopes quite a bit, and when that freezes, we’re all going to slip and die anytime we try to go in or out. (Obviously we can shovel it and salt it, but it’s hard to keep up with. You will have to trust me; we will die.) 

So right now I’m batting around various ideas of what to make the new step out of. Possibly pea gravel, but probably bricks or pavers. I did go to Home Depot and price out pavers, but I don’t want to spend that much, and this whole project has cost me zero doll hairs so far, so I’d like to keep it that way. So I’m back to haunting Facebook Marketplace for freebies. I did find a good used pump for $20, and I’m getting that today, yay!

You may have noticed that the long granite step is not level. My plan for that is to pretend it’s not. 

Anyway, I made a quick and easy meal of loose Italian sausage added to jarred sauce over spaghetti, with leftover focaccia. 

Yum yum. 

FRIDAY
Bagel egg cheese sandwiches, OJ

Gotta bring a kid in for a job interview and then get to adoration and get the other kids, and then we have a lovely three-day weekend, which we desperately need! It’s supposed to rain, which we also desperately need, but I’m a little bummed because we were supposed to go apple picking. Maybe we’ll just pick wet apples.

Anyway, pray for me and I’ll pray for you! And let me know if you hear about any free bricks. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 442: Behold, the steamer cometh

Happy Friday! I don’t remember why, but I even though I was quite busy this week, I planned a menu with some heavy and elaborate meals. A foolish but delicious error, and we have arrived at Friday, safe and sound and full of butter. 
Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Kids leftovers; adults pizza

Damien and I have been ships passing in the night lately, so we ditched the kids and spent some time being ships having pizza together. Sausage and mushroom, very good. 

SUNDAY
Hot dogs, fries

Sunday I got a ton of yard work done. I lugged a dozen cinderblocks out from the back (in fact they were from Damien’s Amazing Interchangeable Cinderblock Meat Altar Situation, which he no longer uses because he now has a real smoker and grill) and made a little retaining heap (can’t really call it a wall) for the flower bed in front of the house, which I’m going to fill in with soil and ferns.

Then Damien and I moved the enormous granite post to make a front step. It’s . . . still a work in progress. 

Then I looked at the house and realized if I was gonna plant more in front of it, I need to fix the siding first. The spot where the porch used to be attached looked like this:

Easy peasy, don’t have to get on a ladder or anything, and I had saved a bunch of siding from the porch, so I had matching siding and everything. EASY PEASY, I tell you. An idiot could do this!

Well, and idiot could do something. This is what I did:

This is the kind of job where I say reassuring things out loud to myself in the hearing of my kids, because the mother’s verbalized self-talk becomes their own internal voice as they mature, or something. Anyway, I said loudly several times that I’m good at other things, and it doesn’t really matter that much, because I’m going to find some really tall ferns. 

Then I planted a few more perennials I had gotten on clearance and lost the tags for, so I have no idea what they are, but I wish them well. Then Corrie and I spent some very pleasant time sorting flower seeds I’ve been collecting all summer, and then we split open the pits from our modest peach harvest.

I was very happy that we managed to get intact kernels from some of the really monstrously big peaches. Our technique was to put the pit on its edge on a rock, insert a flat-head screwdriver in the seam, and tap the screwdriver until it split, and then pry it open the rest of the way with the screwdriver. 

Obviously peaches can grow from a pit that hasn’t been opened, but taking the kernel out and just planting that increases the chances it will sprout. This weekend, I’ll plant them in pots in the ground covered with used duck straw, and in the spring, we should have a few seedlings.

Sophia had the day off (she’s commuting to college and working), so she made some yeasted cider donuts stuffed with apple filling. Superb. 

The plan for supper was Chicago-style hot dogs, with all the chopped vegetables and celery salt and whatnot, but it just didn’t seem worth it, especially since most of the family was out helping Moe move to his new apartment. And especially since granite posts are really heavy, you guys. At one point I heaved so hard that that first my back popped and then my ears popped, and the the word “hernia” popped into my head, so I stopped heaving. So we just had regular hot dogs and fries. 

I did make some ice cream: Two batches of strawberry and one of chocolate, using recipes from the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream cookbook, which I highly recommend if you’re thinking of getting into homemade ice cream, which I highly recommend.

It was just supposed to be regular chocolate, but something went funny with the texture, and everyone assumed it was some kind of fancy chocolate chip

and I didn’t say a peep. 

MONDAY
Bacon chicken ranch wraps, chips

Monday was full of exhausting appointments, so I was happy to have an easy and popular dinner plan. I cooked some frozen chicken tenders and a few pounds of bacon, and served that on tortillas with chunkily shredded cheddar cheese, sliced tomatoes, and dressing. 

I had some kind of spicy honey mustard, but I think others chose ranch. It was pronounced “yum dot com.” 

TUESDAY
Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sorta-glazed carrots

Tuesday, you’ll never guess, we had another appointment. I was able to prep everything in the morning, though, so there wasn’t much left to do by suppertime. I started the chicken soaking in seasoned egg and milk for the oven-fried chicken

Jump to Recipe

and made some regular mashed potatoes, and put them in the slow cooker to stay warm. Then before supper, while the chicken was finishing up cooking, I made three pounds of glazed carrots in the oven using this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats. 

The chicken honestly looks kind of gross here, but in real life it was scrumptious, with real crackly skin and super-moist meat, full of flavor. I love this recipe. 

I made the carrots using bacon grease, and it did impart a very mild savory flavor, nothing to knock your socks off. These carrots are very popular with a couple people and everyone else thinks they’re okay.

WEDNESDAY
Garlic butter chicken bites, risotto, steamed broccoli

Wednesday I tried a new-to-me recipe from Sip and Feast, which combined four of my favorite words: Butter Garlic Chicken [and] Bites. 

It was a little time consuming, but that’s mainly because I made a triple recipe. It’s really pretty simple. You cut the chicken (boneless, either breasts or thighs) into chunks, season them, and dredge them in flour, and sear them in oil, and set that aside. Then you melt a ton of butter and cook a lot of garlic and red pepper flakes, then add a bunch of white wine and let the sauce reduce. Then you put the chicken back into the pan and heat it up. 

I wish I had seared the chicken a little darker, but wow, it was delicious. I mean how could it not be, with those ingredients. 

Earlier in the day, I made a pot of Instant Pot risotto. 

Jump to Recipe

I use more butter and cheese than the recipe calls for, but it’s good as is. Then right before some supper, I steamed some frozen broccoli. And it was a lovely meal. 

I didn’t count the calories because I’m a Lit major and I can’t count that high. 

THURSDAY
Bibimbap of sorts

Thursday I was very proud of myself for how fast I prepped supper. As soon as I got home from school drop-off, I chopped some vegetables, shredded and pickled some carrots, defrosted and sliced some meat, and set up the Instant Pot with rice, and set out sauces and sesame seeds, sprouts, spinach, and crunchy noodles, all in about eighteen minutes flat. 

I spent the rest of the day editing, and there was a huge amount of driving around doing this and that in the afternoon, but when I got home, all I had to do was press the “rice” button and throw the meat in a pan. When it was mostly cooked, I doused it with a lot of soy sauce and finished cooking it. Is this subtle or authentic or layered in flavor? No. But it was a damn fine meal all together, with lots of wonderful flavors and textures. 

Here’s the recipe for the pickled carrots:

Jump to Recipe

I honestly can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a meal this much. It’s probably because I got a lot of other things done that day, and I was especially relieved about having finished one project that’s been hanging over my head for months, and that added to my satisfaction; but also it’s just a damn fine meal. I like to put a layer of raw baby spinach on top of the rice but under the meat and fried egg, so the spinach wilts. Yum yum. 

It looked like there might be a frost that night, so I covered my basil, eggplant, and cucumbers, and picked the rest of the corn. I wasn’t expecting much (I had already done the main harvest, and these were the secondary ears of corn lower down on the stalk, and the corn from the second harvest that I shoved in the ground on a whim and didn’t bother to de-tassel), and it was indeed not much. 

For my own amusement, I lined them up in order of best to worst:

and then the other way around:

and that’s-a my corn! I read about corn development and I temporarily knew what had caused the various problems you see on the bad end of the corn spectrum, but I have since forgotten.  Maybe I should call in a prisoner that I’ve heard has some skill interpreting these things. (This is a Bible joke, but I’m too sleepy to finish writing it, sorry.)

Anyway, I think I’ll give this corn to the ducks, who have no skills of any kind, but they sure do like corn. 

In the evening, I drove out to pick up a chainsaw someone was giving away! I’m super excited. It’s my first chainsaw. I can tell the rest of the family is excited, too, because I heard one teenager say to the other, “Ho ho ho, now she has a chainsaw.” 

FRIDAY
Regular old spaghetti

ANOTHER appointment this morning, and that’s it for the week, whew. Because it’s Friday, but still. Whew. Damien and I were supposed to go remote camping for two days this weekend, but I think it’s our destiny to stay home and hang out, much to the dismay of the children, who were looking forward to . . .I don’t know what . . . when we go camping.  Poor things, it’s hard for them, because we’re so incredibly lax and undemanding when we’re home, it must be difficult coming up with some way to let it all hang out even further when we leave. I think they just watch MORE tv and eat ADDITIONAL candy. 

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Oven-fried chicken

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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. 

 

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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

For the brine (make double if pickling both carrots and cukes)

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved. 

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

What’s for supper? Vol. 440: Thank you for your attention to this batter.

Happy Friday! We had so much yummy food this week, and I can’t wait to tell you about it! So I won’t! I mean I won’t wait! Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets for kids, steak dinner for adults

Saturday Damien and I went tent camping! It wasn’t that far from home, but it was rural enough that there was no cell phone or internet service. So I put my phone in my purse and I didn’t take it out again for twenty hours. (If you felt a disturbance in the universe, that’s probably what it was.) So I have zero pictures, and zero regrets about that. 

It was glorious. It felt like my brain was being bathed in cool, refreshing water. We just slowwwwed down and did very little. Well, I did very little. Damien did all the packing and made all the arrangements and blew up the air mattress and set up the tent, and he also shopped for and cooked a wonderful meal: Good cheese and good bread and fresh berries for starters, and then he cooked two steaks over the fire. We had some good sharp ginger beer along with it. After we ate, we just sat and stared at the fire, and then we walked to the nearby field and looked at the stars for a bit, and then we went to bed. Magnificent.

The only sour note was the way acorns kept falling from the trees. I know that sounds like a very basic bitch thing to complain about (very “scenery is not breathtaking”), but these were the biggest acorns I have ever seen, and they were firing down from the trees like artillery. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I was genuinely afraid of getting hit. The weirdest thing was, I couldn’t figure out which tree they were coming from! We were surrounded by maples and evergreens, but there was still this invisible oak tree trying to kill us all night. It was truly alarming, and it actually woke me up about fifteen times. But even so, the first thing I thought in the morning was, “We have to do this again soon.” I really love sleeping outside, even if I barely sleep. 

Last time we went camping, we brought the coffee machine, but the battery pack turned out not to be strong enough to power it. This time, we brought a little propane camp stove and a French press, and Damien made coffee and toasted some bagels and fried some bacon over the fire, and brought me a lovely breakfast in tent. 

These are campsites that you park at, and there are other sites fairly close by. The guy across the road from us, for instance, was chopping and sawing wood when we arrived, and he continued to chop and saw wood for hours. And hours. He just kept chopping and sawing and stacking wood, chopping and sawing and stacking wood. Sometimes he would take a break for a while, and then we’d hear the saw start up again. So of course every time, we muttered, “He’s at it again!” and “Lass ihn, lass ihn!” but it was just weird. We figured maybe he promised his wife they could absolutely talk about The Thing, definitely, babe, as soon as he got some wood chopped. Just gotta chop some wood first. What, does she want them to freeze? Then she wakes up the next morning and the entire forest has been felled, and he’s still chopping. 

Anyway, we were thinking next time we might go to a more remote spot. They have campsites with platforms and I think maybe even pit toilets, but you have to hike to them — so no backing up to your site and unloading a million supplies onto a picnic table, but you have to carry it on your back. I think we can do it! Probably won’t be bringing fresh blackberries and a french press, but maybe we will. 

SUNDAY

So we went to Mass at a local church, and the kids at home were all sick, so they stayed home. We were both pretty tired when we got back, but Damien did a million jobs anyway — he did some work on some rotten soffits, and I think he worked on someone’s car,  winterized the pool, set some traps, and yes, he chopped some wood. For the wood stove in his office! Just a normal amount of wood. 

I got busy with the pressing task of rearranging my skeletons. I had an ambitious idea of setting them up on one of those see-saw swings, suspended from a tree, but blah blah blah it was harder than I thought; so I ended up just perching three of them together up in a tree, and they do look like they’re having fun. This year’s new skeleton, Mortadella, I arranged on top of one of our defunct cars, with a young skeleton on his shoulders. I’m not completely happy with them right now, so I’ll probably rearrange them. Anyway, Instacart never has trouble finding our house anymore. 

I truly forget what we had for supper. Oh wait, it was chicken quesadillas. I bought a rotisserie chicken for this because I figured we’d want something quick and easy, and I was right! 

MONDAY
Ziti with sausage and Alfredo sauce

Monday I made my very first Alfredo sauce. I can’t understand how it is that I’ve never made it before, but wow, it is delicious and easy. I followed this recipe from Sip and Feast, and all you do is put butter, cheese, and cream in a bowl (the cream makes it not 100% authentic, but oof it was good), dump your cooked pasta on top of it and mix it up with a little reserved hot pasta water. 

I cooked up a bunch of sausages and added those in with the pasta, and it was fantastic. Totally worth grating some cheese fresh while the pasta is cooking. (Those wedges of parmesan from Aldi have changed my life in a minor but undeniable way.)

Note, I was eating outside with a book. I have been trying to prolong the no-phone brain-rinse effect as much as possible. 

The kids were not impressed with the Alfredo sauce, and I anticipated this, so I made a pound of plain pasta and set aside some plain sausages and grated cheese. And all was well. 

Also on Monday, I finally managed to finish cleaning the pot I burned last Saturday making applesauce! I soaked it for the longest time and attacked it with every tool I could get my hands on, but it still looked like this:

so I dumped in a bunch of baking soda and water and dish soap and let that simmer for several hours. I actually forgot about it and it cooked itself dry, so I ended up having to scrub the baked-on soapy baking powder as well as the burned-on applesauce, but I did it. 

Phew. I really liked that pot. I got it on the side of the road, along with two other very big pots. The only thing I don’t like about them is that they’re so big, it’s hard to find a spot for them. WHICH IS NO LONGER A PROBLEM, AS YOU WILL SEE. 

TUESDAY
Pulled pork, tater tots, roast butternut squash rings

Tuesday I got a pork butt cooking in the morning for pulled pork.

Jump to Recipe

Cut it up, heavy salt and pepper, sear it in a pan, and then dump it in the Instant Pot with cider vinegar, apple cider, cumin, ground cloves, jalapeños, red pepper flakes, and a quartered onion. I think I cooked it for 18 minutes on high and then let it just keep warm the rest of the day.

When it was close to suppertime, I pulled the meat out of the liquid and shredded it in the standing mixer

 

and then added back a little bit of that savory broth it was cooking in. 

My knock-off Instant Pot (I think it’s called Potastic or something) is doing great, by the way. And now the silicone ring smells permanently like cumin and onion, so it’s officially mine. 

I made a few bags of tater tots and a pan of butternut squash rings. It being squash season, I will remind you that it’s way way easier to peel and cut butternut squash if you cut off the ends and/or jab it all over with a fork, and throw it in the microwave for three minutes. Comes out way more compliant!

So I cut the peeled squash into circles and rings (I sliced it into rings first, and then  removed the seeds and pulp by pressing them hard with a mason jar ring), laid them on a pan on parchment paper, and drizzled it with honey, olive oil, cumin, cinnamon, and salt. I just roasted it under the broiler, and it came out lovely. 

I also indulged in some incredibly vulgar jarred cheese product to top it all off. So I had a heap of tater tots, shredded pork on top of that, and topped with BBQ sauce and hot cheese sauce, with squash on the side. 

It was so good. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to eat it out of a little cardboard boat with a plastic fork. I did eat it outside, anyway. Getting as much outdoor time as possible as the temperatures drop. 

The squash was great, too! I do love squash, ever since I ate it for the first time in the hospital a few hours after giving birth to Corrie, who also loves squash. 

WEDNESDAY
Nachos

You know it’s gonna be a top notch meal when I defrost The Chub.

You know which one: The one with the opaque wrapper with a photograph of meat on the outside, and a picture of a cow.

I made two trays of what I am recklessly calling “nachos” — one with just tortilla chips, unseasoned ground beef, and shredded cheese on top, and one with chips, seasoned meat (salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, chili powder), jalapeños, shredded cheese, and the rest of that horrible yellow cheese sauce.

They were magnificent nachos, just like 7/11 used to make. 

I think it was also Wednesday that I suddenly got really mad and cleaned out the refrigerator. It was truly foul, and it’s so unnecessary for it to get that way! I have this wonderful system where all the jars and bottles go in the two tubs in the bottom (I long ago replaced the cracked and shattered original vegetable drawers with plastic bins from Walmart), and all the vegetables and herbs go in the door. IT’S SO EASY. Everything is visible and accessible, and I have one tub for dairy products that come in cartons, two tubs for cheese, and one for deli meat; and I let them put leftovers in ZIPLOCK BAGS. Could not be easier. But they insist on putting tops on halfway and laying things diagonally on top of a bag of spaghetti, so everything drips and drools and oozes downward, and the bottom of the fridge slowly fills up with a sticky, unspeakable sludge. Oh, I was so mad. I’ve been mad about this for almost thirty years, and I’m not done yet! Anyway, I cleaned the fridge. 

To clarify: I do clean it more frequently than every thirty years. You know what, let’s move along. 

I also picked the last of the peaches. They were so ripe that I didn’t have to blanch them to pull the skins off. I cut the flesh into chunks, threw it in the blender, and then simmered the pulp. Oh, what a color!

Then I realized I’m really big on burning things these days, so I transferred it to the slow cooker and set it to keep warm, and let it cook the rest of the day.  This will be for today’s dinner.

And that’s the end of peach season! It’s definitely a B year for my peach tree. Next year I expect to have a whole lot more fruit. 

Oh, I also cut up the second pork butt I bought (I forget the exact number, but it was a heck of a sale) and started it marinating for Thursday. 

THURSDAY
Banh mi

Thursday morning, I was like, “Okay, stupid, it’s time to put away that wood that’s been sitting on the dining room table all week. You had your chance to finish building those shelves, and you’re clearly not gonna do it, so just put the freaking wood away.” But then I was like, “But, let’s just see.”

And it turns out I finished building the shelves! Hooray! 

This looks very grimy and broken-in because I used wood we already had lying around. That’s right, I DIDN’T GO TO HOME DEPOT. I made some clownishly scalloped edges and absurdly crooked screws, but! this is a space that was once just a musty, greasy void, where springform pans and sifters went to die, and now it’s a three-layer built-in shelf that goes all the way back

so it’s not gonna fill up with irretrievable measuring spoons and onion skins and candy thermometers. And I finished it in time to pick up the kids who had a half day. So I feel pretty great about it all. 

The top shelf is very narrow because it’s just for pizza pans and cutting boards, which tend to get lost; and the bottom shelf is very tall because it’s just for my beloved giganto stock pots. Hope springs eternal! I also attached the bottom shelf with just a few screws, so we can take it out if there’s a leak or something, and we need to get in there. Eventually I will line the shelves with linoleum or something, and I’m gonna sand and stain the wood. In theory. Why rush? Maybe I’ll just think about it for thirty years. 

So the day before, as I said, I had made the marinade and sliced up the pork for banh mi.

You can see that I double bagged it, because it has a lot of garlic, onion, and fish sauce in it. I was actually a little short on fish sauce, so I supplemented with soy sauce, but didn’t notice any difference.  Still plenty stinky. 

Here’s the recipe for that: 

Jump to Recipe

In the afternoon, I made a big batch of quick-pickled carrots

Jump to Recipe

chopped up a bunch of cucumbers and cilantro, and sliced a bunch of baguettes. I took the meat out of the marinade and spread it on a pan on parchment paper, and shoved it right up under a hot broiler. It doesn’t take long to cook, because it’s cut thin and I had marinated it over night. 

Oof, it was so tender and so savory. I put out jalapeños and mayonnaise with the carrots, cukes, and cilantro, and toasted the buns in the last few minutes as the meat finished cooking, and hoooo boy. What a sandwich. 

I probably won’t be making this again for quite a while, because some family members really truly do not like the smell, and we all gotta live here. But I enjoyed that sandwich. 

FRIDAY
Peach waffles, eggs, OJ

Today, we’ll be having homemade waffles, which — dang, I thought I had made a recipe card, but I guess not. Well, it’s basically this

and for anyone who wants it, I will make peach-filled waffles. I mean anyone who lives here, sorry.

You grease the waffle iron, put a thin layer of batter on, then add the filling

then top it with a little more waffle batter and close the iron. This is a picture from  last year, made with what was basically peach pie filling;

This time, I just have the cooked-down peaches, and I didn’t add anything, because they’re so sweet. Sweet and fleet! That’s peaches. 

I bought a huge amount of eggs, and I can’t remember why, so I guess I’ll make a big batch of scrambled eggs for supper, and orange juice. 

Speaking of eggs, one of our newbie duckies has started laying! Did I already tell you that? I’m not sure if it’s Shaq or Tulip, but we got three eggs in one day, and there are only two adult females (Annie and Ray), so there you go. See if you can guess which egg was laid by the beginner. 

Ducks so crazy. 

Well, I also have some very cool news to tell you about, but it’s not 100% official yet, so I’ll hold off! But you know what, God is being really sweet to me this week. There have been at least three separate things that I’ve been like, “Ughhhhh, I have to do this hard thing. Okay. Okay. I can do it. I’m gonna do it, in a minute. But it’s harrrrd!” and then suddenly I get a little help, something that makes me want to do the thing. Amazing! 

And now, Damien’s covering adoration for me so I can get caught up on writing. So that is what I’m gonna do! Smell ya later. 

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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.

 

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Pork banh mi

Ingredients

  • 5-6 lbs Pork loin
  • 1/2 cup fish sauce
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 minced onion
  • 1/2 head garlic, minced or crushed
  • 2 tsp pepper

Veggies and dressing

  • carrots
  • cucumbers
  • vinegar
  • sugar
  • cilantro
  • mayonnaise
  • Sriracha sauce

Instructions

  1. Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can. 

  2. Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight. 

  3. Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler. 

  4. Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread. 

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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

For the brine (make double if pickling both carrots and cukes)

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved. 

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

 

 

 

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers

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

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

Here’s the recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and oh man, that was a great combination. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Garlicky pork chops, homemade applesauce, baked potato

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

Actually I have a picture!

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really wonderful meal. 

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Rigatoni alla disgraziata with homemade cheese and homemade bread

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

The plan was rigatoni alla disgraziata,

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Pizza

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

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Banana bread or muffins

adapted from Quick Breads, Soups & Stews by Mary Gubser

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Cumin chicken thighs with chickpeas in yogurt sauce

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

Ingredients

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

For garnishes:

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

Garnishes:

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

     -Chop up some cilantro for sprinkling if people like.

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

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

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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Rigatoni alla disgraziata

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

 

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French bread

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

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 432: S’more licht

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

Just a regular Saturday, chores and leftovers. I will say, first I had to spend fifty years being an undisciplined slob, but I am finally, finally learning the charms of doing little mundane things the same way at the same time every day — just stuff like feeding the animals, watering my garden, lifting weights, saying my prayers — rather than letting everything slide and then scrambling to catch up in a panic. Not that everything is neat and tidy and under control around here. But I guess I’m feeling like I’ve hit my stride a bit, and it’s really nice! 

SUNDAY
Tuna noodle for kids, pub food for grownups

For my birthday back in December, Damien gave me tickets to see the incomparable Samantha Crain, and Sunday was the day! So around noon, we took off, and set up a tent in a campground in the DAR State Forest in Goshen. 

Actually we set up the tent, started driving to the concert, suddenly realized we had set up in the wrong site,

and sheepishly dragged the tent over to the right spot.

And THEN we went to the concert. It was at The Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, and we had a great dinner. I had some kind of tasty pulled chicken sandwich and fries, and then the show was SO GOOD. The photo I took made it look gross, though, so instead, here is a picture of the wall.

Samantha Crain is the greatest. She is just a tremendous song writer, a tremendous musician, a tremendous singer. She rocked pretty hard for the first part of the show,

and then the drummer and bassist left the stage and she switched gears into a more indie mode.

Both halves of the show were great, just banger after banger. And she sang “Elk City” for the encore, which is the first song I ever heard by her, and it just about wrecks me every time. 

I really enjoyed the way The Iron Horse is set up. It’s spacious enough so you don’t feel stifled, but small enough that there aren’t, I don’t think, any bad seats. Acoustics are great, but you also feel like it’s okay to move around and eat your food without being disruptive. 

So then we got back to the campsite and decided to walk down to the lake and look at the stars, maybe catch some Perseids. We did see a lot of stars, and then we heard a weird kind of blowing/screaming noise coming from the trees. We weren’t even sure what animal it was, but it was very clearly saying “GO AWAY OR ME KILL YOU” so we scuttled back to the tent! (Pretty sure it was a buck.)

Then we went to bed, and this is the part where we are fifty years old, and I hadn’t been tent camping in about thirty years, and Damien had never been tent camping before, and we were both like, Boy, we are really lying on the actual GROUND, here. The hard, hard, really, really hard, hard actual ground. We had brought three yoga mats and an extra sleeping bag to lie on, but we had underestimated . . . how necessary beds are, I guess. So not a lot of sleep was gotten. But it was still extremely pleasant to start the day in a cool, breezy tent with leaf shadows drifting back and forth overhead, and birdsong all around.

We had brought a coffee machine and battery pack, but couldn’t get it to work, so I sat in the car like a bleary, smelly princess while Damien packed everything up, and we drove off in search of coffee. Stopped at Shelburne Falls and got coffee and muffins, and Damien and I both felt like if we stayed there a minute longer, some crusty old-timer in bib overalls and crinkly smiling eyes was gonna give us a life lesson whether we wanted it or not, and there was a good chance we would get welcomed right off the premises with garden shears or possibly a falling church tower. Good coffee, though.

Despite the terrible sleep, we both enjoyed it enough that we want to go tent camping again soon! As soon as we get a really good air mattress. 

MONDAY
Cobb salad

Good thing I took pictures of Monday’s meal, because the whole day is a blank to me. We apparently had Cobb salad: Roast chicken in chunks, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, red onion, hard boiled eggs, and avocado in chunks. I substituted shredded cheddar cheese for blue cheese. 

Very popular meal. 

I think I had mine with ranch dressing, but possibly blue cheese dressing. Keep reading for more thrilling details like me not quite remembering what kind of salad dressing I chose!

TUESDAY
Smoked pork shoulder, tater tots, grilled corn

Tuesday Damien had to get up early to do his weekly radio spot, so he started a pork shoulder smoking in the morning. I think he ended up smoking it for six or eight hours, and my dears, it was TREMENDOUS. 

 
Sadly, there is not a recipe for this; he just followed his heart with some kind of sugar spice rub and a spray bottle of cider vinegar. He used charcoal and apple wood chunks and babied this thing all day, and it was SO juicy and tender and packed with spicy, smoky flavor inside, with spicy, sweet, sticky charred crust. Amazing. 

I had mine on a sandwich with red onions and just a tiny bit of BBQ sauce, which I was hesitant to use because I didn’t want to miss the flavor of the meat. 

He grilled a bunch of corn in the husks, and cooked a bunch of tater tots, and this was a VERY popular meal. 

That evening, we made the world’s smallest s’mores: Mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and Teddy Grahams, carefully toasted over a birthday candle. 

Irene came out, saw what we were doing, and goes, “Okay, be honest. How poor ARE we??” Irene has been making me laugh since before she was born. 

But the tiny s’mores party was lots of fun! Clara came by and it was lovely. 

and the s’mores were indeed tiny. 

I don’t even like s’mores, but gosh, and I love my backyard, and I love my family. 

Later in the week when I was at the store, I got normal sized marshmallows, regular graham crackers, and regular chocolate bars, so we can proceed on to normal sized s’mores.

Naturally, the kids are now expecting the next week to feature the world’s biggest s’mores, and there is a very big part of me that wants to pull it off somehow. We did get one of those surprise EBT cards in the mail (even if you don’t qualify for food stamps, they send you a card for summer food expenses if you qualify for free or reduced lunch at school, even if the school your kids go to doesn’t offer lunch anyway, which ours doesn’t!) But the state of the country is such that I kind of want to blow the whole thing on enormous s’mores. Waste, fraud, and abuse s’mores. Abus’mores, if you will. I know there are recipes out there for homemade marshmallow, and a giant graham cracker can’t be too hard to make. Not sure what to do about the giant chocolate. Probably I could just melt a bunch of chocolate into a baking sheet, actually. HMMMM. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork quesadillas, pico de gallo 

The pork shoulder I bought was so big, I knew we would get at least two meals out of it, so meal #2 was pork quesadillas. It turned out only Damien and I and two of the kids actually wanted this. Which is nuts, because it was SCRUMPTIOUS. The melted cheese with the smoky meat was just meltingly delicious. 

As you can see, I made pico de gallo. Diced tomatoes and onions, lots of cilantro, lots of fresh lime juice, some minced jalapeños, and some kosher salt. So good. 

I cut up a whole onion, but only used about 3/4 of it, so I put the rest in a sandwich bag and thought someone could use it later. Then I put the rest of the ingredients in, and then I was like, “Oh look, there was a bag of onion already cut up! I should have just used that instead of cutting up a whole onion.” 

I tell you, life is full of surprises when you spend every day playing hide and seek with your own brain. 

THURSDAY
Stuffed shells and french bread

Thursday I had a million things to do, but it was also the day we had planned for Benny to do her Kids Make Supper turn. Last week, Corrie made oven fried chicken and mashed potatoes; this week, Benny picked stuffed shells and french bread. She did so great! We started off the bread dough in the early afternoon. Here is my recipe

Jump to Recipe

and let me tell you, when you are watching a novice use one of your recipes, it really brings home how terribly written your recipes are. I guess they are really more suited for people who are used to kind of winging it in the kitchen. Sorry about that! 

Anyway, like I said, she did great anyway. 

Got four nice long loaves rising, and only one of them was shaped really weird, which is about my record, as well. 

Then we started on the stuffed shells, and dang, the way I wrote the recipe was messed up! I fixed it (I hope), so here is that:

Jump to Recipe

She did use fresh basil instead of dried, which is vastly preferable.

I showed her how to stuff the shells, and then I ran out to pick up Corrie from her friend’s house. I didn’t want to be late, so I didn’t stop for gas, even though the “empty” light was on. Smart! So I get there, and it’s further out in the country than I remembered, so I’m like, hmm, I should get some gas. So I ask the map app where there is a gas station, and it’s even further out in the country. At this point, I’m coasting, and I finally get there, and . . . .there is no gas station. It’s just someone’s house. So I retrace my steps, coasting like CRAZY, but at this point Corrie is in the car, so of course we’re talking about what it might mean to switch bodies with a dog, so I was a little distracted and suddenly realized I was in Gilsum. Which is a very pretty town, but really falls down in the area of having gas stations. 

But it was gorgeous weather, I don’t have a baby, my phone was charged up, and I was just . . . so unbothered. We did actually make it to a gas station in Keene eventually. I guess this isn’t really a story, huh? It’s kind of an anti-story. Ten years ago, something like this would have ended up with lots of crying, several people wetting their pants, and some kind of encounter with law enforcement, if not a murderous deer. But as it was, we just got home late. 

And Benny was just finishing up stuffing the shells! So I cranked up the oven and we baked them for half an hour instead of 45 minutes, and it was absurdly late by the time we ate, but it was very delicious. And she was rightly proud of herself. 

Bread was great. We have a pressurized water sprayer Corrie uses to keep up the humidity levels in her turtle tank, and it’s very useful for putting some moisture into the oven when you’re baking french bread. Check out this lovely little fragile crust on the bread. 

She did so great! The cheese filling was rich and creamy. The other kids are starting to get enthusiastic about their meals, coming up. I’m very happy with this plan. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular old pizza. 

Last Friday, though, I made macarona bil laban and I loved it. I think one of the kids liked it, and a few thought it was okayish, and everyone else had plain noodles. So I probably won’t make it for the family again, but I thought it was so tasty, and it came together in like twelve minutes. 

Most of the recipes I found called for meat, so I just read a bunch and winged it. I cooked a few pounds of farfalle, and browned up a bunch of minced garlic in a lot of butter. I added the garlic butter to the yogurt sauce and stirred in some lime juice, aleppo pepper, and green za’atar, which is kind of a weird combination, but it worked! So I drained the noodles and mixed them up with the yogurt sauce, and then topped the whole thing with the toasted pine nuts (dry toasted in the microwave) and more chopped mint. 

Absolute comfort food. So yummy.

My mother would have adored this dish. I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t really get into experimenting with cooking until after my parents died, because they really would have liked some of these dishes! We did have my father over for dinner shortly before he died, and we had some kind of shrimp scampi, which I remember him loving. You can have a really complicated relationship with someone and still get a lot of pleasure out of cooking them a meal.

Heck, you can get a lot of pleasure out of cooking a meal that a dead person with whom you’ve had a complicated relationship would have enjoyed, for some reason. What do you know about that? Oh death. O life! Mehr licht. S’more licht, if you will. 

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French bread

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

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Stuffed shells

Just a basic recipe. You can add meat to the sauce or spinach to the cheese, or anything that strikes your fancy. Serves about 10.

Ingredients

  • 2 12-oz boxes jumbo shells
  • 2 32-oz tubs ricotta cheese
  • 8 oz grated parmesan cheese
  • 4 cups shredded mozzarella, divided
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 Tbsp dried basil
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 4-5 cups pasta sauce

Instructions

  1. Cook the shells in salted water, drain, and rinse in cool water. Mix them up with a little olive oil so they don't stick together. Or if you will be using them soon, let them stay in the pot of cool water.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix into the ricotta cheese all the seasoning, the beaten eggs, the parmesan, and 3 of the cups of mozzarella, setting aside the rest of the mozzarella.

  3. Spread a little sauce in the bottom of an oven-proof pan or dish. Spoon a few tablespoons of the cheese filling into each shell and lay the stuffed shells close together.

  4. Top with the rest of the pasta sauce, and sprinkled the remaining mozzarella on top of that. Cover loosely with foil and cook for 45 minutes or longer, until it's bubbly. 

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers with French bread pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh what a life. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes MADE BY CORRIE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Koren beef bowl, cucumber salad

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy birthday, my deary dear. 

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

THURSDAY
Caprese chicken burgers, chips

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Macarona bil laban 

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

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

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

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

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

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Oven-fried chicken

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Korean Beef Bowl

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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spicy cucumber salad

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

Ingredients

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

Optional:

red pepper, diced

  • 1/2 red onion diced

Instructions

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

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

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

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

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers, pork fried rice, mozzarella sticks

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

SUNDAY
Pork buns, rice, watermelon, spicy cucumber salad

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

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

So I chopped up the last bunch of leftover char siu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ladies and gentlemen, they were excellent. EXCELLENT. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s that recipe: 

Jump to Recipe

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

MONDAY
Honey mustard kielbasa, potato, and brussels sprouts 

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

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

Here’s that recipe: 

Jump to Recipe

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

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

Delicious. 

Eventually I will get around to updating the recipe card.

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

TUESDAY
WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER

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

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

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

No matter, I could switch to pork.

But guess what! The pork had also gone bad. 

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Grilled pork ribs and chips

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

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

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

I think we had chips for a side. Perfect. 

THURSDAY
Roast chicken and pasta salad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corn, pumpkins, and rhubarb:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Pizza

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

 

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Basic stir fried rice

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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spicy cucumber salad

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

Ingredients

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

Optional:

red pepper, diced

  • 1/2 red onion diced

Instructions

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

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400. 

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

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

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

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

    Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish. 

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet (?) 

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

Possibly my favorite:

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

SUNDAY
Chicago-style hot dogs, fries

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

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

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

Unsophisticated and delicious. Americans really get some things right. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, raw vegetables

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

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

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

Then we had grilled ham and cheese and veggies. 

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

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

TUESDAY
Char siu, rice, pineapple

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Meatball subs, cheezy weezies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here was my vibrantly-colored reward.

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY

Spaghetti carbonara

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

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

Print

Meatballs for a crowd

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

Print

Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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