Tag: pork

What’s for supper? Vol. 478: Accidental pork fried candy

Happy Friday! This was not an illustrious week for us, food-wise, or really in any way, but at least it’s Friday. 

FRIDAY
Ice cream, then tuna noodle

Friday we did go see the Bellows Falls petroglyphs in the late afternoon, as planned. I’m more skeptical than I was that they are really ancient — at very least, I’m quite sure they’ve been touched up by more modern hands — but they’re still mysterious and beautiful, and we had a great time.

Irene, as usual, discovered a more direct route, while Benny, Corrie, Damien, and I wandered around and ended up having to scramble up a ridiculously steep rock face to see the glyphs.

We hung out for a while and enjoyed being there and seeing stuff. Benny did briefly make her Blue Steel face, but I am not authorized to share it, so instead here is us looking normal on the rocks.

Then the first group also found an easier route back up to the road, while Damien, Corrie, and I uhhhhh kind of almost died trying to force our way through a more direct path.

We all earned some ice cream, so we stopped at Dari Joy, then made our way back and had some tuna noodle or frozen pizza. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and taquitos

Saturday turned into the world’s longest shopping trip, and I forget why. I guess Benny needed clothes and Lucy needed to be picked up from work and I needed to go to confession, AND we needed food. Yeah, that’s what did it! 

Leftover delite, plus taquitos. That night, I baked Lucy’s birthday cake so I could decorate it on Sunday. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips; birthday cake

After Mass, I went on a spur-of-the-moment quest for a FREE SPINNING WHEEL.

I am not 100% sure if it’s an actual spinning wheel or a decorative replica. If it is real, it obviously has some pieces missing. But the wheel moves smoothly and it has been put together with care and without the use of metal hardware, so it’s a lovely piece regardless. This will be for Clara, so she can spin straw into gold, and/or donate it to the local theater troupe as a prop. Yay!

Then I made another batch of frozen coffee in the slushy machine. I think we have settled into a routine where Damien makes cappuccinos on Sundays through the winter, and I make coffee slushies on Sundays through the summer. This is called complementarity, and speaking of which, happy NFP awareness week to you. I am celebrating by not reading any of the articles where people daringly reveal the brand new information that NFP is HARD, because of CIRCUMSTANCES, and some people are simply brave and strong enough to choose a DIFFERENT PATH, and where is their TROPHY. 

Anyway, on Sunday afternoon, fueled with plenty of caffeine and sugar, I  finally got around to cutting Benny’s hair, which she’s been begging me to do. She claims this is her second ever haircut! I feel like that can’t possibly be true, but on the other hand, she sure had a lot of hair. 

Turned out super cute, but am I allowed to take a picture, no I am not. 

I also realized my cucumbers were languishing in their current position. Not getting enough water or light, and in constant danger of being smothered by galumphin’ pumpkins. So I dragged out that terrible bench I never got around to fixing, and now it’s a cucumber and dill bench, ta dah!

Lucy went to the beach with her friends for her birthday, and I decorated her cake, and then for supper, we had verily the worst grilled ham and cheese I’ve ever made. I don’t even know what happened. It was like one of those dreams where your hands don’t work and gravity is weird and everything keeps swooping around in front of you. It tasted okay, though. 

And the cake turned out cute! Here is the pic she sent me for inspiration:

and here is the cake I made:

It’s not often that some aesthetic style you’re trying to imitate lines up perfectly with your skill level!  She liked the cake, liked her presents, whew. 

MONDAY
Burgers, corn, french fries, watermelon

Monday is a bit of a blur. Corrie made some banana bread, which she’s been doing a few times a week this summer. It’s honestly the best banana bread I’ve ever had. Nothing fancy, just fluffy and moist and sweet, with a nice buttery crust. 

Here’s the recipe she uses:

Jump to Recipe

On Monday I went to Home Depot to buy sixteen bolts to replace the ones I installed on my clothesline, which are somehow a few inches too short, so the pipes are wobbly. I had put a sample bolt in my pocket so I would be able to compare it to the new ones, so I would definitely get the right size and not have to go to Home Depot again.

Then I changed pants, got to Home Depot, reached in my pocket, and sighed a big sigh. 

A BIG SIGH. 

However, while I was there, I got a sack of soil to firm up my gladioli, which had popped right out of the ground, and I also saw they had some non-poo lettuce for sale, so I snapped that up. They also had tomato plants for $1 each, and even though I swore of growing tomatoes long ago because it always just leads to heartache, I bought six of them, because, yanno, mother should I trust the government? (No.)

Got home and moved some basil around and got the lettuce in. 

I didn’t quite have room for six tomato plants, so I dug up the rest of my garlic a little bit ahead of schedule, and it looked good and ready. 

Certainly an improvement over last year’s garlic harvest, anyway!

I forced myself to do a little thinning on my carrots, but I know I didn’t do enough, oh well. I fed the tomatoes and made some quickie stakes for them. I had heard that you can trim suckers off your tomato plants and just stick them in the soil and they will turn into new tomato plants. So I did that, and they immediately died. 

Then I checked the four shoots on my peach tree that I was trying to propagate by air layering, and they were all also all dead. I was mostly relieved, to be honest, because I got a 99 problems, but a dearth of peaches is not currently among them. 

I guess we had hamburgers for supper. We’re still working our way through the frozen patties I got for July 4th. I hope I remember this when I’m shopping for next year’s party! I truly bought twice as much food as we needed, which is insane. 

We also had corn, fries, and watermelon. Nice summer meal, but I’m REALLY looking forward to being able to eat the corn I grew! 

Look: Tassels! We have tassels!

TUESDAY
Fire chicken, rice, roast string beans

Tuesday is “everybody has an appointment” day around here lately, so probably not the best day to try a new recipe. Definitely not the best day to try a new recipe that you don’t actually have, but which you need to buy a subscription to get, and then you get in a dumb little fight with someone about whether it’s morally worse to use AI to generate a recipe or to ask someone to give you a recipe that you haven’t paid for. The upshot is that I WINGED IT. 

What I wanted to make was the Milk Street recipe for fire chicken where all you have to do is broil the chicken in the oven, then move the pan onto the stove top and keep cooking it until the sauce reduces. The technique is pretty self-explanatory, but I didn’t have the proportions for the ingredients. So I just kinda threw a bunch of spicy things into a pan with some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, then broiled it for a bit, and then cooked it on the stovetop for a bit, hoping it would get thick and sticky, which it did not. 

Yes I crowded the pan. Of course I crowded the pan. I also burned it a little bit, which kind of aeorsolized the gochujang, which is not a thing you want to do unless you enjoy coughing. 

I made a pot of rice and briefly considered making tempura string beans, but most of the kids said they wouldn’t eat that, and my will to live was ebbing away anyway. So I roasted them with some sesame oil, salt, and garlic powder, and threw some sliced almonds in there. 

And it was not very good! The chicken was okay, and the string beans were pretty bleh. 

I did not ruin the rice, hooray! And that was supper. Cough cough cough.

WEDNESDAY
Pork fried rice, potstickers

Wednesday I actually got a fair amount of writing done, and then Damien, Sohpia and I went to see The Odyssey in the afternoon. I reviewed it here. 

Before I left, I prepped a bunch of stuff so I could make fried rice when I got home. I chopped up leftover string beans and some zucchini and red onion and minced up a bunch of garlic and onion, and I found a bag of frozen pork, already cooked and chopped, in the freezer. I even pre-scrambled four eggs. Packed up everything in handy little mise en place dishes, covered them, and stuck it all in the fridge. 

That was a LONG movie, and then we had to stand in the parking lot and complain about it for a while, and then we had to get Corrie, whom we had dropped off at the library; so it was already after 7:00 when we got home. Turns out I forgot to tell the kids at home what the plan was, at all, so they were all in the kitchen hungrily yelling at each other, and Irene (remember what I said about Irene always finding the direct route) was grimly heating up some rice. It turns out they all thought (a) I was expecting them to make supper and (b) fried rice tastes like that because the flavors from the meat sort of seep into it, and you don’t have to add anything for a sauce. 

Here is my actual recipe for fried rice:

Jump to Recipe

and my technique is to lightly cook the garlic and onion, then add the vegetables, then the meat, then brown sugar and let that bubble and brown for a bit, then add the rice, and then finish it with soy sauce, fish sauce, and oyster sauce. My technique is not to dump everything in a pan and then stand there yelling. 

To be fair, it is entirely my fault for not communicating better, or at all, but I was a little distraught to have a pan full of hot, oily rice, raw garlic, ginger, and onion, and cold meat, plus cold vegetables that another sister had forcibly added to the pan despite the resistance of siblings.

So I did what any idiot would do: I told everyone to go away, then dumped a bunch of brown sugar on top of all of it, and heated it up, then shook some oyster sauce over it, and kept stirring. I thought it was working, too, until, as I sttirred, I started to hear a distinct clanking noise. Yes, there is was again: My fried rice was clanking. 

And that is how I made fried rice candy.  The sugar did melt a little bit, but then quickly crystallized into savory little chunks, and these got distributed all through the rice, and picked up some garlic and onion as they went. And I have to admit, the flavor of the meat sort of seeped into it!

I fished out as many clumps as I could find, and yes, I ate them. I was so hungry! Then I quickly boiled some frozen pot stickers, threw it all on the table, and ran away with my plate of food. 

The kids did ask later what those rocks were in the rice, and I told them it was a lucky prize, and they didn’t ask any more questions. And that was supper! 

Honest to goodness, it was not the worst fried rice I’ve ever had. I was hungry, though. 

THURSDAY
Ground beef doner kebabs, pita, yogurt sauce, tomatoes

Thursday was a bunch more writing. Moe was making supper, and we had some fairly elaborate plans, but you know, the cucumbers went bad, the herbs might have parasites, we ran out of time to make pita, and it turns out I didn’t super duper follow a recipe last time I made ground beef doner kebabs, and Moe was willing to do his best, but he’s never even seen doner kebabs, so it would be hard to fake it. So I tossed this recipe at him and told him to just skip the vegetable part, so he did it and also ran to the store for pita, and we had yogurt sauce and sliced tomatoes, and it was delicious. 

I am once again urging you to try the ground beef doner kebab thing, if you haven’t yet. It’s so easy and delicious. 

We watched The Sheep Detectives that evening, and it was entertaining and amusing. I’m not a huge fan of let’s get kids to confront death when they don’t want to stories, but this was sufficiently warm and reassuring that they pulled it off.  They did make a few irreverent jokes about God, but it’s not a huge feature of the story, and it does sort of balance it out with a plot point where the church saves babies in danger, and a priest humbly acknowledges that, because he took advantage of someone vulnerable, he considers himself “a bad shepherd.”  It was a little scary in parts, with the sheep being approached in the dark by frightening animals, and then being chased by dogs, but overall it was wholesome and well-crafted, with themes of self-sacrifice and devotion, and protecting the vulnerable and the outcast. It was a decent mystery, too, and I was surprised when the murderer was revealed. No deep thoughts, I just liked it well enough! The dialogue was better than The Odyssey. Which isn’t saying much. 

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips, watermelon

Corrie just showed me the eggplants are finally growing!

Little cuties. 

We have yet another appointment to get to today. We have an ailing duck living in the laundry room. We have plans for Opera Nite and a day at the ocean coming up. And I hope we have tortillas, because we’re supposed to have quesadillas for supper. Wish someone were in charge of planning meals and buying the necessary food items, OH WELL. 

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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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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. 477: Parasite by the dashboard light

Happy Friday!

Today I am working outside

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

 

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus loaded potato skins

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

SUNDAY
Spiedies, cole slaw, guacamole

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

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

Here is my spiedie marinade recipe

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

It’s not stupid if it works!

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, pesto pasta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, mashed carrots

Here is my recipe for bo ssam. 

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

Just excellent. 

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

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

THURSDAY
BLT’s, ice cream pie

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I gave blood, woo!

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

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

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

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


And that’s-a my story! 

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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

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

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

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

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

For the ice cream base

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

Instructions

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

Make the ice cream base:

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

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

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

Put it together:

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

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

Print

bare bones bo ssam

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

 

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Oven-fried chicken

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 472: In which I (Persephone) have high hopes

Happy Friday! I hope spring is being good to you. We’re supposed to get down into the 30’s the next couple of nights, but HIGH thirties, so I’m just gonna throw some blankets around in my garden and hope for the best. I had a wonderfully outdoor week and got tons of yard work done, and took a bunch of things too personally, and made some very good food, and some that was just okay, and now I’m gonna tell you all about it. 

SATURDAY
Pancakes, sausage, OJ

Saturday after shopping, I went to pick up one of those gliding benches that someone was giving away. It needs work (new seat slats, sanding, and painting), but nothing hard or expensive. 

Will I ever get around to this? Impossible to say. But I might! I think it will be great down by the stream. 

Damien drove over to go fishing with Moe and got back late, and I took the opportunity to make breakfast for dinner. We used to go through an entire box of pancake mix for our family, but our family is so teeny tiny these days, I figured we’d only need half. Then I realized pancake mix boxes have also gotten teeny tiny, oops. So an entire box was just barely enough! It’s also possible I ate more raw batter than I realized. I am truly a freak for raw batter, and nothing that can be done about this. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

The shopping kid chose pizza pockets for her fun food to supplement the sad leftovers, which was a tactical error because part of the leftovers included last Saturday’s pizza pockets.

But somehow we survived, and right after supper I badgered everyone into driving to Westmoreland, where there was going to be a free summer event of some kind. The details were a little skimpy, so I tried to keep expectations low. 

But even if I had hyped everyone up, I don’t think we would have been prepared for . . . EL PULPO MAGNIFICO.

As you can see, it is a giant flaming octopus! It’s tentacles, eyes, and mouth move, and the man inside the octopus manipulates the flames (which also come out of the top of its head) in time to the music he was playing. It. was. tremendous. I loved it so much. Here are some pics of the evening,

 

and I also shared a few videos on Facebook and Instagram.  One of the videos got — let’s see, 46,000 views on Instagram, and I got a bunch of followers who . .. . might have the wrong idea about what kind of account this usually is (ducklings).  

MONDAY
Hamburgers, potato salad, con on the cob, chips; strawberry rhubarb crisp

Monday was, of course, Memorial Day, so we had the day off school. I have been desperately in need of more exercise. I can feel my joints rusting together day by day. But my stupid arm just won’t get better, so I can’t really do yoga or weights or any of my regular things. So I resorted to taking a WALK, like a CHUMP. 

It actually turned out really nice.

Of course it did. Walking is nice, and I live in a nice place. This hill is up behind my house, so I didn’t have to go anywhere to get there. Got home and discovered that it was exactly one mile, half uphill, so a pretty perfect workout. I decided I would start every day this way, with a pleasant, invigorating walk.

Then I didn’t do that even one more time. But I might! 

New Hampshire is it is full of mossy stone walls meandering through woods. You might wonder why they bothered to build walls between trees, but of course they did not. A hundred years ago, they had felled all the tree, and this was all pasture — mostly for sheep. There were way more sheep than people, and NH exported fleece and wool all over the world. Then someone figured out how to mass produce cotton, and that was pretty much the end of the wool boom. The trees grew back in the pastures, the farms fell down, and all that is left is the stone walls. On my walk, I did spot some stone foundations left from the houses that used to stand off the road. Sometimes you will also spot daffodils in the middle of the woods, and that is a sign that some human once lived there. 

Anyway, the weather was wonderful all week. We have started putting the baby ducks outside during the day. They’re big enough that they don’t need their heat lamp all the time, and they love marching around in the grass, fighting with buttercups, and struggling in and out of the little wading pool. And they still like being whistled too. 

 

Then it was parade time! Our town was founded in 1776, so we’re having a big anniversary along with the country itself. I mean, relatively big. This is the biggest memorial day parade I’ve ever seen here. Also the cutest. 

Only Benny and Corrie and I wanted to go, and we were rewarded with free ice cream afterward. (Again, quite an exceptional thing for this little town!) 

Got home and made some potato salad. The last few times, I made a version that seemed extremely yummy to me, but the kids felt very different indeed! It’s not like I put raisins in it or something, or capers or something, sheesh. Anyway, I made the dressing with mayo and cider vinegar, a little olive oil, salt and pepper, celery, and hard boiled eggs. 

Then I started prepping dessert. My beloved rhubarb plant is having a wonderful year, although I have concluded that I have an evergreen rhubarb, and it’s just not going to turn red. Some of them are like that. Slightly disappointing, although the flavor and texture are great. I more or less followed the Smitten Kitchen recipe. Here it is before I put the topping on:

I baked it right before supper, so it would still be warm when we ate it. 

Elijah came over, Damien cooked hamburgers and corn on the cob on the grill, and we had a lovely, chill dinner. 

After supper, I whipped up some heavy cream, and dessert was lovely. 

If I had one rhubarb-related wish other than for redder rhubarb, it would be that I could get my crumble topping to brown up better. It always turns out pale, for some reason, and I don’t know why. Anyway, it tasted good! 

I think I will cut up a bunch of rhubarb and freeze it, so I can make a compote or something at some point. That seems like the kind of thing I would be happy to suddenly remember I have in a few months. 

That evening, I started a big pork shoulder brining with a cup of salt and a cup of sugar. 

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, lettuce, rice, pineapple

Tuesday was chock-a-block full of appointments and whatnot, which is why I planned bo ssam, which is very hands-off. I was up early and cut up some pineapples. Then I got a little sidetracked, because I keep seeing reels about propagating pineapples at home. You’re supposed to twist the tops off and then peel off the bottom leaves to expose the root nodes. I had no idea these were under there! Here is one unpeeled, and one peeled:

Look at those root nodes!

I had no idea. Anyway, I trimmed the rest of the fruit off and set the tops in water, and now we’re waiting for roots to develop. 

Dreaming about the day when, a mere four or five years from now, I might get another, very small pineapple or two from these tops.

Then I remembered I was actually really busy, oops, so I got started on stuff I actually had to do. Threw the pork in the oven around 12:30, and then had some appointments, and when I got home, I got my pumpkin seeds into the ground in my hugelkultur bed, and then made a spot for cucumbers and dill next to it. I dragged a torn trampoline mat over to keep the weeds down, then filled eight pots with compost and set them up in front of Damien’s trailer office. 

Then I planted a dozen sprouting potatoes in one bed, and then weeded and composted another bed and got most of my corn in! 

SATISFYIN’.  I think Tuesday was the day I cut things so close, I didn’t have time to take a shower before going out, so I just washed my hands feet and put on a long skirt to hide my grubbiness. By the time I got home, I just had to start some rice cooking in the Instant Pot, and then put a little extra sauce on the pork for the last ten minutes or so. I finally made up a recipe card for my cheater’s version of bo ssam, so here’s that: 

Jump to Recipe

The pork came out gorgeous and tender, juicy and wonderful, as always. 

Probably could have left it in the oven a little longer to crisp up the top some more, but I was HONGRY. 

Tasty meal, productive day. This “being outside” thing is great. 

The older I get, the more pronounced becomes the difference between winter me and summer me. I love New Hampshire, I love the ice and snow and those brilliant, glittering winter skies, and I’m deeply wedded to the idea that having real, distinct seasons is existentially important, and spring and summer are all the sweeter because of how fleeting they are. 

At the same time, phew, I am SO much happier when it’s warm out. Here is a real question, specifically for people who have moved from a cold climate to a warm climate. Does the euphoria of being able to be outside all the time wear off? Or do you get used to it, and stop appreciating the sunshine after a while? I never though I’d even consider living anywhere besides New England, but the idea is creeping in, and the Persephone thing is getting kind of old. It does help to take vitamin D and get exercise throughout the winter, but it’s a struggle still. Winters are really getting hard, and we just kind of shut down. I don’t know. 

Well, on Tuesday Damien had to go cover some kind of event, and he was gone all afternoon and evening, boo. After clean-up, I sat the kids down and started reading the new encyclical to them, so there. On Tuesday, we read the introduction, and I liked it, and they did not. 

WEDNESDAY
Not sure what to call it but wow it was good

Wednesday the plan was some kind of bi bim bap situation. But I utterly succumbed to Being Outside, and just did that all day. I must have been doing gardening and yard work, but I was so wrapped up in it that I didn’t even take pictures; so just imagine a lot of green, green, green. I think I mostly did weeding and organizing, because I was getting mad at myself for working so hard on growing beautiful flowers, and then having my own view ruined by tubs of garden tools, old tarps tumbled and flapping around, heaps of scrap wood, chairs on their sides, etc. My phone says I walked over two miles just trotting back and forth in my yard making things look better, so that tells you how much crap was lying around!

I think I also potted a bunch of stuff in the front yard — a big, deep purple lupine, some double impatiens, a clump of dahlia tubers, and two holy basil plants to frame the door. Last year I planted some cinnamon basil in my herb garden and I kept pinching the flowers off and the plants got huge and bushy. Then discovered I don’t like the taste at all, so I demoted them to a decoration and moved them to the front door. Every time we went in or out, we got a little whiff, which was very nice (I like the smell, just not the taste)! So I hope they will do as well this year. The ferns and hostas are thriving, and the daisies and alliums I put in are blooming just as the tulips and daffodils die off, so I’m pleased. 

It’s still a baby garden, but I have high hopes. 

By supper time I was tired and starving and sweaty, and truly did not want to cook. So I just cut up a watermelon I meant to serve on memorial day, and some broccoli I meant to roast on Tuesday, and then I found some leftover rice and leftover pineapple, and I cut up the leftover bo ssam real thin. And it looked very promising. 

I served everything cold. I put my plate together and then threw some bottled yum yum sauce on top, and then sprinkled some furikake over that, and went outside to devour it like a goblin. 

My heavens, it tasted like the best food possible. Just wonderful.  I may serve this exact combination of foods on purpose next time. 

After supper, I noticed that my biggest lupine is blooming! This is from the plant I dug out of Millie’s garden last year. 

As it turns out, this is the one year-anniversary of the day she died. Say a prayer for dear Millie! She would be very proud of me for my garden this year. There are actually lupine seedlings all over the place this year, front and back of the house. I don’t know if they’re from the plants I put in, or if it’s just a lupinous kind of year, but I’m not mad! 

Damien had another long dumb event to cover, and he was gone most of the day again, alas. Wednesday evening, we sat down and started to read chapter one of the encyclical, and then I basically quit mid-word. I thought it would be a good project because I know they care about AI, and the pope is no nice and whatnot, but phew, it just wasn’t landing.

Then I mildly horrified the kids by getting a little emotional while I explained my struggles in getting them educated as adults in the faith, and we ended up agreeing that I will open a new Word document and they will be added as editors, so they can anonymously contribute questions or complaints about religion, and we can start from there. WHAT CAN ONE DO. I was gonna say I am doing my best, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, I’m trying somewhat, sometimes. What can one do. Tricky times. 

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, salad

Thursday I had nothhhhhhhing on my calendar. I actually did some writing for once, and then back outside I went. I cut down a bunch of saplings from the woods and got some twine and a staple gun, and made a trellis for the cucumbers to climb up. 

I also planted some dill seed in each pot. They are supposed to be good companion plants for cucumbers, and by the time the cucumbers grow, the garlic should be ready to harvest. Corrie and I plan to make pickles! 

Then I did this and that, and dumped out some old pots of soil and repotted a few things and weeded and whatnot, and, feeling competent and optimistic, I decided to finally start prepping the hill behind the patio for a big wildflower garden. I knew some wild blackberries had popped up again, and I was feeling a little grim about that, but I knew I could deal with it.

THEN
I
FOUND
SOME
BITTERSWEET. 

In my backyard, which is supposed to be my little haven. My deal (with who, I don’t know) was that bittersweet can be a menace in the front yard, and I will fight it and stay vigilant, but I will accept that it will always be with us. But this was in the back.

 
I didn’t cry, but I felt like my insides had turned to clay. Oh bad. Bad bad bad. I sat for a while, and then complained to Damien for a while, and then I found my Round Up and gloves and clippers and did what I could. I need something with a higher concentration of glyphosate, but it’s a start, anyway. BOO INVASIVES. Very boo. 

Obviously I couldn’t do any more gardening in that spot, because the herbicide was still fresh. So I showered good and made supper, which was grilled ham and cheese and salad.

I was a little nervous about serving sandwiches without chips or fries, which is pretty de rigueur around here, but nobody said anything.

I ate outside, and had the wonderful consolation of realizing that my peach tree, which yielded something like eleven peaches last year, is absolutely LOADED with tiny little fruitsies this year. 

I was hoping that would happen! Big year, little year, that’s how it goes. But I didn’t want to count on it. But yeah, we’re off to a fine start!

At some point during the day, I went to Home Depot and got some long, flexible PVC pipes, which I intend to use for grape arbors in some way. The details in my mind are still foggy, but PVC is cheap. Maybe I will paint it green or something, maybe not. I have some tall T posts and some zip ties, and all the clearance grapes from Walmart that I shoved in the ground are putting out leaves already, so I don’t see how this can fail. The vision is a tunnel of leaves at the entrance to the boardwalk over the marsh. I’m trying not to slip into “maybe they will accidentally lobotomize me at the end of the summer, but at least I will leave a grape arbor as my legacy” thinking, but it’s possible some of that has been happening, who can say. Anyway, PVC is cheap.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

I really really need to finish up some essays I started, but I want to be outside! Wah! Boo! I actually already got a considerable amount of writing done this week. But I also have a bunch of mystery bags of gladiolus bulbs I bought for a song at the town garden club sale, and it occurs to me that a long line of glads in front of the house would be gorgeous. Possibly not enough to make up for the fact that the kids saw a bunch of paper bags on the table and thought someone had brought pastries, but still, very pretty. 

This Sunday, we’re expecting a visit from an enterprising young man who went door to door letting people know he hauls junk. What it was that brought him to our door, in particular, it’s impossible to say; but I’m hoping that (a) he’ll give us a quote that’s about the same amount as the money I’m expecting to get from the guy who’s going to haul the Yukon away as soon as we get the replacement title, and (b) I have the emotional fortitude to tell him to haul away ALL the junk, and that I won’t be a crazy little freak and try to hold onto a bunch of it because it might come in handy.

Damien has to cover RFK Jr. coming to NH and talking about Lyme disease. I am crossing my fingers that a giant tick comes and eats him live on camera, but I would settle for . .. . well, I’ll settle for whatever I can get, I guess. Ain’t that the way. 

Print

bare bones bo ssam

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 469: Loveseat! That’s where we eat!

Happy Friday! Every year, May takes me by surprise with how incredibly, bounteously, tenderly gorgeous it is, and also! with how many freaking events we have to go to!

Happily, both cars are currently running, so we are able to do that! And it is just swooningly beautiful out there. My peach tree burst into bloom this week, there are daffodils and tulips swaying in the breeze, the birds are hysterical with love, and the skies are the bluiest bluesty blue I’ve ever seen. I thought I saw a little patch of ice in the stream, but it turned out to be just bubbles.

Shortly after I wrote last week’s post, the ducklings started hatching in earnest! Only one had totally emerged by the time Damien and I went to bed,

so we moved the incubator into our room overnight, for fear of the cats. I did fret about them all night, but this is what we saw in the morning:

Totally exhausted, poor things, but very healthy. These are all pekins.

One more, half pekin and half Swedish black, eventually muscled its way out of the shell the next day. Two did not make it, but the remaining four are doing absolutely great. Everyone got to see at least one baby emerging from the egg, which is dramatic and excruciating, thrilling and ridiculous, just like many other births. I posted a few videos on Facebook. This is seven minutes of hatching compressed into one minute of video;  this is the poor Swedish black trying to hatch while being repeatedly trampled by its three half siblings; and this is their first living room rodeo. 

They grow insanely fast, and they are now living happily under a heat lamp in a tub on top of the dryer, gobbling up their food, thrashing around in their water dish, and wearing themselves out and falling asleep in a fluffy pile. 

Sonny is pretty resigned to having these peeping little maniacs dashing around his living room in the evening

but he does clearly feel like it’s one of our dumber life choices. He’s not necessarily wrong! But they are so lovely. 

SATURDAY
Shawarma, pita, cream puffs, strawberry ice cream 

On Saturday, Lena came over for a belated birthday celebration! It was great to see her. I made chicken shawarma 

Jump to Recipe

and yogurt sauce, and also gave people one final shot at the toum. The shawarma turned out great, although I overcooked the meat a tiny bit because the pita too so look to cook. I use this recipe for pita, and I made a double recipe but just make really big breads. It turns out yummy, but I always underestimate how long it will take to cook eight breads for six minutes each, even though my father did sit me down with flash cards in third grade and I did finally learn my multiplication facts. Next time, I will get two pans going. 

Anyway, it was worth the wait, and it was all very tasty. 

For dessert, I had made strawberry ice cream

Jump to Recipe

and some extremely messy cream puffs. 

The cream puffs were actually from a Bridgerton-branded kit that was on clearance at Walmart, and they definitely made me realize that, from now on, I will be making cream puffs from scratch. They’re actually really easy. A choux pastry is very simple to make, and once you know how, you can make all kinds of fancy stuff. I really wish I had made an actual cream filling, instead of the mix stuff from the package, which had a bland, oily taste. At least we had something to stick candles in, though! Nobody complained, and we had a nice evening. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers, pizza

I moved leftover day to Sunday, and supplemented it with Aldi pizza.

Those empanadas make great leftovers! It’s crazy to me that the rest of the family isn’t in love with everything pie-like. To me, that is just the standard, baseline desire of humanity: To want to be eating some form of pie. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, potato puffs, steamed broccoli

On Monday, I made the first inquiry into my compost heap. I don’t do any of the perpetual turning or sprinkling or layering you’re supposed to do for compost; I just dump organic stuff in one spot and let nature take its course, and then in the spring, I see what I’ve got. It works well enough for my purposes! I dug up four wheelbarrows full of dark, rich soil and dumped it on top of the new garden bed I made in front of Damien’s office. 

The idea is to give it couple of weeks to get rained on, and think about what it’s done; and then by the end of May, which is when it’s safe to plant in this zone, it should be ready for seeds. I saved tons of seeds from that one gargantuan pumpkin last year, and that’s what this bed will be for.

Then I made one final offensive push against the blackberries, and dumped them in the pool so they could think about what they’d done. The liner is torn, so right now it’s just a big drying area, and you have to dry out wild blackberry canes before you dispose of them, or else they’ll just start over again. 

Supper was grilled ham and cheese, tater tots (or possibly potato puffs. These are separate things, but I don’t know which is which), and steamed broccoli.

Corrie thought this was a hilarious combination of foods, for some reason. I forget she is still young enough that everything we do (for instance, eating chips and raw vegetables with grilled ham and cheese) gets registered as The Way It’s Done, and any other way looks absurd. 

TUESDAY
Tacos al pastor

It was Cinqo de Mayo, which, as I understand it, is Mexican Arbor Day or something? So obviously we had tacos al pastor, to honor our Lebanese ancestry, which is the best we can do since we don’t drink anymore. I cut the pork up thinly and sorta kinda followed this recipe for the marinade. Then I cut up a couple of pineapples, chopped up some cilantro, and sliced up a few red onions and set those to pickling. I believe I used cider vinegar, pineapple juice, salt, sugar, and hot pepper flakes. 

Then I turned my attention to . . . other things. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever favored you with the Sad Tale of the Wrong Loveseat. We had this loveseat that fit our tiny living room perfectly, and even though the room is small and kind of shabby, I was really happy with how cozy and harmonious it was. But then a child accidentally saturated it, down to its bones, with a smelly lotion which gives me migraines. So we threw it out, and I’d been hunting for a replacement on Marketplace.

We did find one, and the kids loved it, because it was so spacious and comfy and plushy.

IT WAS TOO SPACIOUS. It was about eight inches longer than the people said it would be. But I pride myself on being able to tetris furniture into compliance, so we can make room for whatever we need to make room for (hence the ten children). WELL, I could not, could not figure out how to make this dang loveseat fit. And also, it was grey, and the rest of the room is warm colors.

Also, it’s not really a loveseat, but actually just the orphaned short end of a sectional. 

So I started looking for another loveseat again, and I finally I found one! and this one is the right size, and it was free! It’s not, like, an amazing piece of furniture? 

But it fits, and it’s brown, and I was able to put the room back the way I like it. I’m very happy. And very grateful that Damien goes along with my dumb furniture struggles. 

So, but now we have the old loveseat on its end in the dining room. We couldn’t put it out on the side of the road because it kept raining. But in the meantime, the cats discovered that it’s the greatest spot in the world to fulfill their true destiny: Being High Up. 

SO, I didn’t want to take that away from them. But I also didn’t feel like we needed a sideways couch in the middle of the living room. So I started looking at cat trees so I could throw out the loveseat, and I looked at a few, and I was like, HECK, I COULD MAKE THAT. So I did!

I found a dry tree in our little woods, and cut it up, and screwed the ends to a piece of wood I’ve been saving for just such a purpose. Then I used leftover pool deck spindles to make supports for the tree parts. Then I added some wooden rounds left over from some craft projects, and made little platforms; and then I used a broken drawer piece for the top platform. And it was not bad!

Level and sturdy. Then I cut a bunch of fabric off old loveseat #1 and stapled it on to the little platforms. Then we kind of forcefully placed a cat on it, and Behold: A cat tree. 

Of course we still haven’t dragged loveseat #2 out of the house yet. So now the dining room looks like this:

and I think it goes really well with the ducklings in the laundry room. 

But anyway, by late afternoon, I had this wonderful marinated meat to cook. I decided to broil it in the oven while cooking the pineapple on the stovetop. I just heated up some olive oil and then sauteed the pineapple until the edges browned up a bit. 

Cooked pineapple is SO sweet and wonderful, and amazing with cilantro and spicy meat. So we had tortillas with sour cream, cilantro, pineapple, pickled onion, meat, and hot pineapple, with lime wedges.

Oh my gosh, you guys. This was the most delicious thing ever. I was definitely hungry from my cat tree project, but also it was just amazing food. Definitely returning to this recipe, and definitely adding pickled onions to more things!

WEDNESDAY
Hamburgers, chips, veggies and dip

Wednesday began rather whimsically with our very first fairy egg.

It’s not a true egg; sometimes a duck’s plumbing gets irritated and then it’s like, oh, I guess we’re making an egg! and builds a shell around the irritant. Because a duck’s insides are not any smarter than its outsides.

I haven’t cracked this fairy egg yet, but it is probably all egg white inside; but there may be a tiny yolk. I am going to try to blow the insides out so I can save it to decorate. 

I don’t even remember what we did all day, but we had hamburgers with the last of the mysteriously cheap ground beef I stocked up on a few weeks ago. Gobbled up my burger, did not take a picture.

Oh wait, I did take a picture of my veggie platter.

Food styling is my passion. 

Oh, I had leftover pickled onions on my burger, and it was YUMMO. 

Wednesday night, I made pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting for staff appreciation day. We’ve been sending our kids to this school for . . . I don’t even know how many years. Ten kids’ worth, anyway, and I DO appreciate the staff, so very much, but I’ve never had my act together enough to make muffins. Until this year!

Here’s the muffin recipe

Jump to Recipe

and I used this simple recipe for the frosting: Just 8 oz. of cream cheese, 1/3 cup of sugar, and 1/2 tsp vanilla. I made a triple batch of frosting, which was more than enough, so I, uh, ate the rest. (In my defense, it was over the course of three days.)

They turned out great, and for once in my life I thought to buy disposable trays to carry them in. 

I was also immensely pleased and gratified to have a separate little fridge to keep them in overnight. This is one of my great satisfactions in middle age: I have my very own mini fridge which is exclusively for baked goods I don’t want anyone to touch. 

THURSDAY
Pork rice bowls

Thursday I had some cheesecake orders for Mother’s Day, and LET ME TELL YOU. I did nothing but make mistakes all day. Not even just with the cheesecakes, but with every little thing, just one dumb thing after another. I ended up having to make the cheesecakes twice, because I lowered the temperature in the oven too dramatically, for no reason, and they all cracked. 

Just for fun, I did make one extra one, which turned out pretty cute: 

This is about 6.5 inches in diameter and actually has a secret chocolate center. Which reminds me, I need to put up an ad and see if someone wants to buy it!

Anyway, the plan was pork quesadillas, but I forgot to buy cheese, so I just made kind of spicy pulled pork. I cut the pork into chunks and browned them in oil with salt and pepper. Then I put it in the Instant Pot with the last of the pineapple juice, some jarred jalapeños and their juice, some garlic powder, a bunch of cumin, and bunch of that Valentina’s salsa picante. I let that cook all day, and then before supper I made a truly terrible pot of rice. How do you mess up rice? I don’t know, but it was that kind of day. 

But actually it was a decent meal, considering it was forged in sheer panic. I had mine with sour cream, cilantro, and lime.

Not bad at all. I may start keeping pineapple juice in the house! Very handy. 

Damien has had to be out of town covering various hearings and whatnot this week, and then Benny had a fundraising event in the evening, and when I got home, I still had to remake those cheesecakes, so I switched kitchen clean-ups with Irene, made the cheesecakes, cleaned the kitchen, Damien picked up Benny, and then I fell asleep on the couch, phew. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

I just remembered that, when I went shopping for cream cheese, they had everbearing strawberry plants for $3 each, so I bought six. Yay! I forgot about that. My strawberry bed got all eaten up by varmints over the winter, so it will be nice to stock it up again. Maybe I will go back for another six plants. I’m solidifying my vegetable garden plans for the year, and have pretty much settled on corn, pumpkins, potatoes, basil, and eggplant. Might do butternut squash on an arbor this year, if I can get around to rigging it up. 

I slept in this morning while Damien got the kids to school and brought one to an appointment, and then some of them had a half day, and then he’s going to cover adoration while I get one kid to her new art class, and then pick up the rest. And then we shall have spaghetti! And maybe drag the loveseat out of the dining room. Because it is chilly as heck today, but it is NOT raining. And guess what, the surgeon just called and I have a surgery date. August 20, which is absolutely perfect. We’ll have a nice summer, I’ll get my head fixed, and we’ll all be in good shape by Christmas. 

For dessert, it just so happens we have a bunch of cracked cheesecakes in the house. Mom in a heart, indeed. 

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

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

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

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

 

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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

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

For the ice cream base

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

Instructions

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

Make the ice cream base:

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

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

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

Put it together:

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 468: In which we feel the (freezer) burn

Happy Friday! The world hasn’t ended yet, so let’s talk about food. 

This week we found ourselves in a bit of an Oops No Money situation, so I cleaned out the freezer and built my menu around what I found, which is good practice anyway, from time to time. It was a little weird, and the predominant flavor of the week was “freezer,” but it was not terrible overall, and I’m happy to have more space in my freezer!

Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Leftovers, Hot Pockets

On Friday, I had gone to try to pick up a free clothesline set-up someone was giving away. I’ve been wanting a new clothesline situation for a while! I love hanging up clothes to dry in the warm weather, but I’m a little fed up with my current set-up, which is rope stretched from the swing set to the apple tree, with involvement by the grill. So that Fresh Linen scent always had a faint undertones of Old Hamburger. 

Here is the one I was picking up. 

Nice, right? I’m going to set it up in the spot way off to the side of the yard, where we used to have a garden. That was back when we had a bunch of little kids, and my main priority was keeping the main yard clear so they could run. That spot has since returned to weeds and brambles, but a good mowing should clear it fine. 

I brought some lubricant spray and a set of socket wrenches, but was not able to get it taken apart, except for sawing the wood base off. So I sprayed the joints again and promised to be back the next day. 

On Saturday, I went shopping and then went back for the clothesline, with an obliging Damien, who brought more tools. He couldn’t get it apart, either, but realized it would actually fit on top of the car, if’n we don’t drive too fast. So that is what we did. Yay! 

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, peas

Sunday a bunch of us were coughing too much to go to Mass, so I slept in, and then tragically dragged myself over to the Area of Broken Dreams, I Mean Glass. Spent a couple hours vacuuming. Got glass in my hands and feet.  Eventually decided the ground was glass-free enough for the likes of us, and turned my attention to the remaining blackberry canes between the patio and the house. I did something I rarely do: I used Round Up. It was a sunny, breezy day, and I kept it far away from anything we or the animals might eat, and it was very satisfying! Sometimes you just have to get the jug of poison out. 

I also managed to lose my phone pretty early on in the day. I am a shameful phone addict, and it was very disconcerting! Everybody was looking everywhere, and we just could not find the thing, which was crazy because I hadn’t gone anywhere, except trotting back and forth and back and forth in the yard. I knew the ringer was on because I had been listening to music. The screen is pretty badly cracked, so by the time I went to bed, I assumed that even if I eventually found it, it would be a goner. 

But I had a really nice afternoon because Elijah came over, and he sat and chatted with me while I murdered blackberries. It’s awfully nice when your big kids come back and chat. 

MONDAY
Fish or shrimp tacos, chips and salsa

Monday morning I made one last futile search for my phone, and, just so I could say I looked everywhere, I ripped open up a bag of wet dirt and broken glass. It was, of course, not in there.

Then I dragged that out and ripped open a second bag of wet dirt and broken glass underneath the first one, and . . . there was my phone. AND IT STILL TURNED ON. It’s not even in a case! I am very impressed. 

It was April vacation this week for most of the kids, so after I got some work done in the morning, Benny and Corrie and I went to the park. This is a lovely park with a playground, and also big rocks to scramble around on, a fishy pond to look at, and, to my sorrow, a big hill with an intriguing area at the top.

So we went up the hill and got a neat view of the town, and discovered there is some kind of secret grassy amphitheater situation up there. I had no idea!  We goofed around a bit and took turns trying to roll a tire all the way down and up again without it tipping over. I’m describing this because these world-weary children, alas, will not let me share pictures of them anymore. But we had fun, and it was sunny and lovely, very late April. 

Came home and made some guacamole, heated up some venerable frozen fish, and then I sauteed some rather elderly frozen shrimp. I guess I minced up some garlic and sauteed that, then added the shrimp and I’m guessing lemon juice, salt, hot pepper flakes, and it looks like some cilantro. 

I don’t remember, but it was tasty. 

I had mine with shredded cabbage, more cilantro, guacamole, and lime juice. I really love shrimp tacos. Yum yum. 

Then Damien got the glass out of my foot, phew. The number of things he has gotten out of my foot, my word. 

TUESDAY
Pork empanadas, cassava fries, rice

Tuesday we had an appointment in the morning, and we were running late because I had to take a phone call just as we were leaving. Then my car wouldn’t start! This stuck in my craw a bit because we had just gotten it back from the garage, where we had dropped $840. It’s just sad, that’s all. Oh well. Oh well! oh well.

I was already fretting a bit because the upshot of the phone call was that a big story I’ve been working on fell through. Blah. But I had to go, so I took Damien’s car, and when I got home, I moped a bit, and went down to the stream to see what I could find. The water is low, and there’s all kind of interesting stuff lodged in the banks. 

I have a growing collection of porcelain and interesting glass, and absolutely no plans for it. I just like collecting it. Check this thing out: 

I don’t know what it is, but it’s clutching a marble!

Then I prepped supper. First I started thawing the frozen cassava, then I cooked up some ground pork for empanadas. 

I myself would have gone for a version with olives and capers, but I was hoping to not be the only one in the family who ate supper, so I stuck with a more tame version. I kinda based the seasoning off this recipe, but I didn’t have everything, so I just wung it. I rolled out each dough disc a bit, added a couple of spoonfuls of seasoned meat and a little shredded mozzarella (because that is what we had! Don’t @ me!)

wet the edge of the dough and crimped it shut. I made 18. Then I cut up the thawed cassava into fries and rolled them up in a towel to get them really dry. 

I was feeling a little argy bargy about various things, so it seemed like a good time to throw together a new garden bed. This is a spot that gets a good amount of sun, but I’ve never tried to grow anything here before, and I really didn’t feel like digging. So I decided it would be a hugelkulturish garden. I lugged over a bunch of fallen trees and scrap wood for a border, then laid down some cardboard on the weediest spots and piled on some old logs and branches

then a bunch of dry stalks from last year’s sunflowers, and then I cleaned out the duck house. We have been doing the deep litter method over the winter, which basically means you just keep adding fresh layers without cleaning out the old ones, and then clear it all out a few times a year. So let me tell you, the smell was SPECTACULAR. 

So I heaped all that shit up on top of the other material, and I think if I dump a little soil on top, I should be able to grow something here. 

My original plan was to plant corn there, but I think that will need a more stable base to support tall corn stalks, so I will probably do pumpkins instead, or something else that doesn’t mind lying down. 

I couldn’t quite bring myself to take a shower before deep frying, so I just changed my clothes and washed my arms real good, and starting deep frying the empanadas. They did turn out crisp, flaky, and yummy, 

and the cheese inside was melted. They did end up tasting unexpectedly Italian. Disconcertingly similar to Hot Pockets, really. But I thought they were pretty good. I served them, and then used the same hot oil to fry all the cassava.

I have never eaten cassava, don’t know how to prepare it, and don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like. I still don’t! These cassava fries were . . . fine. They tasted somewhere between potatoes and, I don’t know, zucchini. Very fibrous and starchy, without much flavor. I salted them when they came out of the pan, but the salt just kind of bounced off. I ate it because I had gone to the effort to make it, but I think my relationship with cassava ends here.

Anyway, it was definitely hot food, and I sure was hungry. 

Then I took a shower! Phew. 

WEDNESDAY
Penne with meat sauce, garlic knots

Wednesday the tow truck came to drag away my poor old car. I had another meeting, so I took Damien’s car and got back feeling fairly argy-bargulous again, so I assembled some tools, and Corrie and I managed to get most of the old bolts off the clothesline base, and then knock the remaining rotten wood off with a sledgehammer I think I will need to cut the remaining three bolts off, and I do need to buy new bolts, so that was as far as we could get for the day.

Then I turned my attention to Corrie’s tree house, which so far consists of some pieces of wood stuck to a tree.

I made an attempt to drill some holes so I could secure the planks with lag bolts, but the drill bit was very warped, and I didn’t get anywhere. 

Instead, I got a shovel and started digging up some stuff to fill in my garden in front. It’s less shady than it used to be, because the porch is gone, but it’s still in shadow a lot of the day. I got some false hellebore, two kinds of ferns, and a patch of pretty pink and white wood anemone and crammed them into the ground. The lupines I planted last year made it through the winter, and I think this will be a really pretty spot in a year or so!

For supper, I just cooked up some more pork (I forget why I had so much ground pork in the freezer, but I sure did) and threw it in some jarred sauce, and cooked up a bunch of penne.

I also found a stray ball of pizza dough, so thawed that and made it into garlic knots. I baked them and then tossed them with melted butter, garlic powder, salt, and parmesan cheese. 

They were a little rubbery, but who the heck knows how old that dough was, so it was whatever. They got et. 

That night, the kids asked if they could have a fire, and I told them I had used up all the firewood to make my garden, and also felt incapable of getting up. So they went into the woods and gathered more wood, and built themselves a fire, roasted marshmallows, were nice to each other, and even presumably put the fire out afterwards! 

THURSDAY
Pork ribs, roast butternut squash

Thursday, you’ll never guess, I had a meeting, for which Sophia kindly let me borrow her car. And I just did not get a lot else done. I was really, really tired. Damien was out of town all day, and Sophia took Lucy to a job interview and Benny and Corrie to the movies. I thought I was alone in the house, but just spent my wild and precious hours of solitude eating pop tarts like a goblin and making trouble on Facebook, and sort of slogging around getting very small things done, like filling my weekly pill box and moving clutter around. I feel bad it was such a boring, at-home vacation, but at least the weather has been nice. Whatcha gonna do. I did fix Corrie’s swing. Oh, and she gave herself an amazing haircut, and then her sisters helped her dye it blue. 

For supper, I defrosted and roasted some butternut squash from ages past, and then I roasted some pork ribs with salt and pepper. Damien got home and we ate dinner together, at the table. Then I realized that, oops, Irene has been home all this time. She was just upstairs. All afternoon I was remarking to myself, boy, those cats are so noisy up there, and you would think it was actually a person up there, boy! Sorry, Irene. 

Thursday evening, Damien noticed all six duck eggs were starting to crack! Very exciting. It’s hard work and takes a long time, and there was not much progress by bedtime, so we moved the incubator into our bedroom, because it would be a shame if the only ones there to welcome them when they hatched were a couple of naughty cats. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese and broccoli

No duckling action yet! Today is day 28, but as anyone who has waited for a baby knows, these things run on their own schedule. The cracks are a little crackier this morning, and Damien and Benny have both heard some muffled peeping. Just gotta be patient. 

Damien just fixed the kitchen sink pipe, and next on his list is the water heater and a third thing, I forget what. I still don’t have a surgery date. The axolotl is healthy and happy. I think we will have lots of peaches and lilacs this year. And that’s-a my story! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 4SIX SEHHHHHHVEN

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

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

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

Well, here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets(?) 

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

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, steamed broccoli

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

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

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

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

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

It snowed. 

MONDAY
Turkey bacon wraps, hot pretzels, fruit salad

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

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

Color! Must have color! 

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

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

TUESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs, salad, hearth bread

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

Made a little salad with the leftovers from the wraps

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

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, veggies and dip

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

THURSDAY
Bibimbap sort of 

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

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

now looks like this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Tuna sandwiches or broiled salmon

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

Oh, I forgot! We got an axolotl.

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

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

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Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

 

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Instant Pot Risotto

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 466: Oh toum, where is thy victory?

Happy Friday! I don’t think there was a single day this week when I knew what day it was. Which is why I put every single thing down in my calendar, so I don’t get confused. Unfortunately, I have an incredible knack for entering things on the right day of the week, but the wrong month. So I’m constantly getting notifications like, hey, remember that scholarship deadline? Yeah, that’s gone. Yo, happy one month anniversary of the time you said you’d bring in muffins and didn’t! Also, alert: that lab order has officially expired, and unfortunately you are now dead.

The good news is, these notifications don’t bother me at all, because I somehow accidentally turned off my ringer and the battery died, and my phone is carefully tucked in between some dish towels where I set it down for a second and then just walked away

Did I mention I don’t have any cognitive impairment? This is just what I’m like. This is what peak Simcha performance looks like!

But seriously, I so, so appreciate all the many kind messages, prayers, and donations folks have been sending. We are all doing pretty much fine and chugging along. My special intractable schwannoma headaches are ramping up again, but what can one do. Oh actually, probably surgery. I’m waiting to hear back about that! 

And here is what we had for supper this week!

SATURDAY
Leftovers and stuffed potato skins

Just a regular day of chores and shopping. I also did a big Egg Reconciliation. Duck eggs can sit on the counter unrefrigerated for quite some times, as long as you leave them unwashed; but I was running out of counter space! So I scrubbed them all

and then carefully dropped them into a pitcher of water. The ones that sank and lay flat were the freshest, so I boxed those up and sold them to the Chinese restaurant down the road.

None of them floated (which they do when they’re really stale), but about half of them tipped up a bit on one end, which means they’re not super fresh, but still edible. So I separated those and froze them

, without any specific goal except to stop thinking about eggs for a while. Perhaps I will make a pavlova for Mother’s Day. I really like pavlovas!

The shopping turn kid chose stuffed potato skins for the leftover supplement, and there was tons of other food leftover.

I also heated up the last of the chicken soup with matzoh balls, and it was yummy one last time. 

SUNDAY
Pizza

Actually I must have done the egg thing on Sunday. Anyway I remember hoping to get some other kind of big project done on Sunday, and then not doing it. I did make a yummy pizza. 

I spread half the cheese on the pizza, then adorned it with prosciutto. Then I put the rest of the cheese on and baked the pizza, then topped it with arugula dressed with lemon juice and pepper. Yummo. 

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken drumsticks, garlic knots, raw veggies and dip

Monday I just roasted a bunch of drumsticks with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then tossed them in bottled buffalo sauce and put them back in the oven to reheat saucily while I made some garlic knots with the leftover pizza dough. (I bought three balls of pizza dough out of habit, but there were only FOUR people home for supper, so I made a mere two XL pizzas.) And a nice robust vegetable platter. 

I was gonna roll the baked garlic knots in melted butter, but everyone was super hungry, so I just served them right out of the oven. 

Solid little meal, easy peasy. 

TUESDAY
Pulled pork on waffle fries, raw veggies

Tuesday was a very drivey day, so I started the pulled pork nice and early. Here’s the recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

I found a replacement Instant Pot for cheap on Marketplace, so we are pressure cookin’ again, hooray!

Sonny and I got some stream time. Poor Sonny, he drives me absolutely bonkers when he’s inside. He’s just so gross and smelly and dumb and in the way. But we get along so well outside. He chills out and becomes a noble and sedate enjoyer of nature, and also yearns to protect me from biting ducks, which is endearing. I guess he has just learned to accept that I kind of hate him when he’s inside, but when we’re outside, we’re best friends, and that’s just how it is. 

Anyway, it sure is purty down there. We’ve had a lot of sudden bursts of rain lately, so a pretty good haul of pottery and bottles had washed up on the banks. I like to collect these and put them in a pile by a tree, and admire lichen. I guess probably I’m the one who chills out when I get outside. 

In the afternoon, I gave a kid a driving lesson, and we set a new record for how close you can zoom past a tree without actually hitting it. Also thrilling in its own way, a new light came on on the dashboard. Alas. 

But supper was delicious. I cooked a bunch of waffle fries and sliced up some red onions, shredded the meat, set out some BBQ sauce, and we had tasty pork bowls.

I’m not too proud to tell you that I think this would have been even tastier with some horribly orange, dangerously salty fake cheese melted, or possibly extruded, over the top. But it was very good without, as well. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken shawarma, pita, toum 

Wednesday I spent almost all day cooking, for some reason. I was planning two meals with chicken thighs, but had thriftily bought ones with bone and skin, so I spent a good long time processing about eight pounds of thighs, much to Sonny’s intense interest. (Unfortunately this was Inside Dog, so I hated him, and did not give him any chicken. Also, even though I hate him, I had actually given him some pork yesterday, which he promptly threw up, and I HATE that.) I set aside eight of the most intact ones for the next day, and set the rest to marinating. 

Yes, oh yes, it was SHAWARMA DAY. Here is my oven shawarma recipe

Jump to Recipe

Then I made a double batch of pita dough. Last week’s pita was a little disappointing, so I reverted to this recipe, which is a little more labor intensive (more ingredients, and the frying process is longer and slightly more complicated), but it’s really worth it, and easy enough once you get into the rhythm. Anyway I made the dough and let it rise for an hour and a half, and then I put it into the fridge because it was too early to do the second rise. 

AND THEN, I made some TOUM. I have never heard of this Lebanese garlic sauce before, but I saw a video and it looked magnificent. I settled on the Serious Eats recipe, which calls for a cup of garlic cloves. This turned out to be about two-and-a-half heads of garlic, which I peeled with the aid of one of those little silicone tubes lined with nubbins. 

The recipe says you should split each clove open and cut the germ out, but life was passing me by, so I skipped that. You pulse it up in the food processor with some salt, and then add some lemon juice and make a paste. Then, with the food processor running, you start slowwwwwly adding three(!) cups of oil,

alternating half cups of oil with the rest of the lemon juice and then with ice water.

I’m so bad at adding things slowly, and even though I read the little explanation about emulsification and whatnot, I really just wanted to dump the whole amount in. I just had to keep thinking about that part in The Witch of Blackbird Pond where Kit gets mad and dumps all the cornmeal into the pudding at once, and the family has to eat lumpy corn pudding and that was all that was for dinner, and she feels so bad; and that gave me the fortitude to keep it at a slow drizzle. In this way, I avoided the harsh approbation of my dour and exacting uncle, at least for one more day. But oh, ’tis a weary task. What would grandfather think, to see me this way? 

Well, I whipped it and whipped it, but it was still kinda soupy, and even though I’ve never had or seen toum, I was pretty sure that wasn’t right. Happily, the recipe says if this happens, you can just pull most of the toum out of the food processor, whip up the rest with an egg white until it’s fluffy, and then add the rest back in. Worked great!

I can’t really think of anything with a similar texture. It’s light and fluffy, but . . . I guess unguent is the word? But not really. It’s definitely not greasy, and not exactly creamy. One thing we can all agree about: It is GARLICKY. One little dab of it lights your whole head up like an emergency flare. Wow! I was delighted. 

Then I made some normal yogurt sauce (Greek yogurt, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt), because People Don’t Like Change, and they had been looking forward to this meal and I didn’t want anyone to be sad. Then I put a bunch of stuff in bowls.

and heaved my sorry self outside to deal with the giant smashed window. NOT a window of the house, I hasten to add. Just one of those gigantic windows I lugged home last year — or was it the year before? — to make into a sunporch, and then didn’t do that. I had dragged one into the back yard and leaned it up against the old bunkbed,

thinking I would surely figure out some way to make this into a little greenhouse. Then came a mighty wind, and we got this:

The good news is, it is safety glass, so there were not super sharp shards of glass everywhere. The bad news is, broken safety glass collapses into millions of teeny little bits when you so much as breathe on it, even if you don’t have ultrasonically powerful garlic breath. Also, I had set this up on an area of the yard where I had made an attempt to do some landscaping, by which I mean I dumped thousands and thousands of little rocks there, back when we were digging up the ground for the pool and had to move thousands and thousands of rocks.

I did kind of enjoy this “mighty whale breaching out through the arctic ice” effect

but most of the rocks are much smaller, very effectively trapping the glass bits in between them, so the glass sinks into the dirt buuuuut you can’t reach it. 

So . . . I’ll just say I tried lots of different ways to clean it up easily, and there is no such thing. And I’m not gonna rent a shop vac, because the only thing that would make this project worse would be spending money on it. So I settled for putting on my goatskin gloves and just gloomily grabbing up handfuls of glass and throwing them in a tub, over and over and over and over again. I did this for quite some time, and there is still a lot of glass out there. And of course in my foot.  

I’m gonna have to get out there with a shovel and excavate the whole thing, which I’m not super excited about. Also, it has since rained very hard a couple of times, so the tub and bag full of glass bits are also now full of water. 

HOWEVER, after the school run I got home, cut up the pita dough and started it on its second rise, cut up a bunch on onions and sprinkled them over the meat and got that cooking, and ALL WAS WELL. BY WHICH I MEAN DELICIOUS. 

The method for this pita recipe is to fry on one side for 30 seconds, then on the other side for 30 seconds, then brush both sides with olive oil and continue cooking for five minutes, flipping it every minute or so. I made eight pieces (I doubled the recipe and just made really big pita), and it did take quite a while, but man, they were yummy. 

They puffed up so nicely in the pan, and came out really fluffy and chewy, with little crisp bits and a rich flavor. Excellent. 

It was all excellent. 

 
Sadly, nobody else would even try the toum! (Nobody except Damien said the food was good, either, but I’ll kill them about that later.) So I ended up with quite a bit of it leftover. It took so much time and effort to make, I decided to go ahead and offer it on my town Facebook page, and it got snapped up right away! So that was nice. The woman who picked it up even gave me a dozen eggs from her chickens, and several heads of garlic from her garden. I’m growing garlic this year, but it’s nowhere near ready to harvest.

Anyway, the meal was just great and I was very proud of myself. A very satisfying way to turn the day around. 

THURSDAY 
Spicy chicken pepper sandwiches, cheese curls

Thursday I suddenly got a bee in my bonnet about one of the bedrooms upstairs. I knew supper would be easy, so after I did my calisthenics (I’ve been doing calisthenics lately, I don’t know why) I lumbered upstairs with a bunch of garbage bags and tore into the mess. Six bags of laundry and three bags of trash later, it looked a little better up there! I was powered by the sound of Tom Holland’s spectacularly horrible southern accent. I will never, ever, ever once again be embarrassed when an American tries to do a British accent. Seriously, it will make you feel like you are going insane. 

Damien volunteered to pick up the kids, and he also got a bunch of cleaning supplies and my prescriptions, and I was able to stay home and push through to start scrubbing the walls and ceiling (don’t ask), and I got so much done. 

Eventually I called it a day, took a shower, and then threw together some chicken sandwiches with the thigh meat I had prepped the day before. It’s basically this recipe from Sip and Feast, except I use Tony Chachere’s, and I had cubanelle peppers instead of shishito, and kaiser buns instead of brioche rolls. Neither one is necessarily an improvement; it was just what I happened to have. This is a wonderful sandwich, though, and I think you should make it soon. 

 
With some pointed prompting, the child thanked me for cleaning her room, and then I slithered off to bed. Well actually first I handwashed some dishes, because the stinking dish washer broke. But then Damien fixed it! I guess it was some food and grease had gotten into the control panel or something, which is strange, because the children certainly always rinse the dishes before loading them, as they have been instructed to do. A mystery. 

While I was cooking the chicken, the dog came over and horked up a Brillo pad. Then he lay down and looked regretful for a while, then he went back to hoping intensely for some chicken. Which I did not give him, because, dude.

FRIDAY
Tuna sandwiches, possibly risotto

Today Damien is working on my car, and he also got a new coil or something for the water heater (we’ve been taking lurkworm showers for a while now, which is kind of discouraging), and also a pipe for the basement, because when the kitchen sink pipe broke, it leaked dirty kitchen water into the dirt basement floor and you know what, that is probably why we have so many flies. HOWEVER. We’re gaining on them, I feel. The flies, the appliances, the children, the mess, the everything. Superabimus, or something like that. Anyway, when I was cleaning I found six pairs of scissors. 

Not to get too edifying on your asses, but I did realize that, as long as I’m going to be digging up a big swath of dirt to clean up all that glass near the patio, I might as well plant something there. It gets TONS of sun, and I might just get one of those giant pouches of mixed seeds and dump it in. Gotta have some fun somehow! 

Don’t forget, make the sandwich!

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Clovey pulled pork – 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 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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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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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 465: Life with Abby Normal

Hello! Hello! Hello hello hello. I am so very sorry it’s been so long. I will tell you what we’ve been up to, and why I’ve been off the radar. 

The truth is, most of what has been preoccupying me are stories that are not mine to tell. So I will just ask you, in your kindness, to please pray for the beloved X family, and the beloved Y person, the Z beloved person, and the beloved kid. Multiple rolling emergencies and really painful situations.

Then right before Holy Week, we were finally able to procure a family member’s diagnosis we’ve been fighting for for two years; and then right after that,

I found out I have a freaking brain tumor.

It’s BENIGN, and growing very slowly. I may have had it for ten or even twenty years, but it has only been symptomatic since about October. I got an MRI on March 24th and saw the neurosurgeon on April 7th. It is almost certainly a trigeminal schwannoma, which is rare but almost always benign. But look at this thing!

What the heck!?!

I can try medication to control the symptoms, radiation to keep it from getting bigger, and/or surgery to remove as much as possible, depending on how tangled up in nerves it is. The catch is that radiation sometimes causes scar tissue, so if I do need subsequent surgery, it will complicate matters. 

It’s very unlikely to cause an aneurism, though, so I’ve got that going for me. To my disappointment, it is not what’s causing my migraines, which are global; whereas all my schwannoma symptoms are all markedly on the left, (so I cannot ask them to implant the spare Instant Pot valve I have, which would allow them let the steam out when I need to. And they call themselves specialists, pah.) The way it’s placed, it affects my facial nerves (so, tingling, numbness, headaches, and potentially double vision) but not really scary stuff like speech, memory, or cognition.

Although, as it turns out, knowing you have a brain tumor, but not being able to meet with the neurosurgeon to discuss the implications for a full two weeks does affect your speech, memory, and cognition, especially when you are preparing for Easter, Passover, and a birthday all in the same week.

And that’s the main reason I’ve been struggling to get writing done: Knowing something is wrong, not knowing how serious this is, and not being able to tell anyone, including the kids, because I don’t really know anything! So it’s a huge relief to actually have some information. 

To put it into perspective, the neurosurgeon made an appointment for six months to check in with me, in case I haven’t made a decision by then. So yes, I have to deal with it, but it’s not a, yanno, BRRRRAINNNN TUMORRRRR!!!! It’s just a . . . brain tumor. Which is still not IDEAL, but you know, I got the initial MRI in the evening twelve days before Easter, feeling like it was silly to make such a big deal out of some little stuff, and probably I was just imagining it anyway, and probably if I learned how to hold my neck right, my symptoms would go away.

Then the next morning I opened up the portal expecting them to say everything is fine and I must have just tweaked a nerve by chewing gum too forcefully or something.

Instead it said “tumor” and “neurosurgeon,” and I closed my eyes and some tears leaked out, and then I was like, “Okay, Jesus. I did not ASK for a tumor. So clearly this must be YOUR tumor. So I am officially handing it over to you.” And it has been a pretty light burden since then. (With some more crying, but I always cry at Easter anyway.) 

So now I just have to figure out what to do. Right now, for various reasons, I’m leaning toward surgery, preferably at the end of the summer. I would be in the hospital for 2-3 days, and recovery would be 4-5 weeks. Prolly gonna keep most of my hair and get an interesting scar behind my ear, and my skin will not enjoy the radiation I guess. The surgeon did say I might struggle with chewing and talking for a bit, and I did say BUT THOSE ARE MY TWO FAVORITE THINGS TO DO. 

Any. Freaking. Way. Life goes on, and Damien has been an absolute rock. He has been really sick with a horrible sinus infection for most of Lent, but in callous disregard for his illness, the cars have both been breaking repeatedly, sometimes simultaneously, and also Sophia’s car, too; and also the water heater, the bathroom sink, a drain pipe in the basement, and half a dozen other things I’m forgetting about, have been breaking. Yesterday we drove home from the dentist, got out, and the door fell off. 

Which I have never seen before! But he has just been going ahead and watching tutorials and ordering parts and fixing everything, one by one by one by one, and even saying things like, “It’s okay if  you want to get rid of this loveseat you just asked me to pick up from Facebook Marketplace, and find another one, and I will pick that one up, too.”

We didn’t get a nuclear war, so that was good. The first round of eggs we put in the incubator didn’t hatch, so we just started a second batch. None of the peach pits I planted have sprouted, but my rhubarb is suddenly thriving, the crocuses are coming in thick and gorgeous this year, and even though the snow plows threw tons of gravel up over my garden, the daffodils are just ignoring it and poking through anyway. Jesus is risen, the sun comes up every stinking day, and life is good. Gonna build Corrie’s tree house this spring if it kills me. 

NOW, who wants to see the strawberry Tom Servo cake with cream cheese frosting I made for Irene’s birthday?

Poor guy is leaning pretty badly, but I was proud of him anyway. I was also pretty pleased with the earrings I made her, and it turns out carving wood and twisting up little bits of metal are a really good way to occupy your mind, so you don’t go crackerdog.

I guess I will just do a quick round-up of foods, starting with Passover. All my Passover recipes are here. 

We had cinnamon garlic roast chicken: 

chopped liver, gefilte fish, and spinach pie bites:

roast lamb:

Chicken again, and charoset:

Of course we had chicken soup with matzoh balls, but I forgot to take pictures. This year, I decided to try using seltzer in the matzoh balls, which is supposed to make them light and fluffy. It worked a little too well, and about half of them fell apart! I’ll probably go back to the can recipe next year, and just take my chances. 

Yes, I was worried there wasn’t enough dessert: 

I did the same thing I did last year with the sponge cake, and squeezed fresh lemon and orange juice, then forgot to add them. So I made a syrup with half the juice, poked a bunch of holes and let it soak in; and then I made a glaze with the rest and poured it over the top. Pretty nice. 

Several of the big kids were able to come over, the other kids brought a guest, and we had a lovely seder, even though we never did find the beautiful illustrated haggadahs. Here is Corrie reading the four questions: 

Then we went to the Easter Vigil, which was three hours long and very beautiful and threeeeee hours long. Got home, set out the kids’ baskets, and went to sleep. I spent most of Easter Sunday in bed and I didn’t even feel bad about it. 

We kind of muddled through the rest of the week with leftovers, Aldi pizza, and bagel sandwiches. Then Wednesday I chopped up and heated up the leftover lamb and leftover chicken from Passover,

and I made some pita and we had extremely delicious gyros. Some of the pita turned out a little . . .unpuffy . . but it was still an excellent meal, which we ate with the pita still hot from the pan. I had mine with lamb, red onion, yogurt sauce, feta, tomatoes, and hot sauce. 

Scrumptious.

Then yesterday morning, I quick pickled some carrots and got some pork marinating with onion, garlic, sugar, pepper, and fish sauce, and roasted that up right before supper 

and we had banh mi on toasted baguettes, and some of us added chopped liver. Banh mi is already the queen of all sandwiches, and the chopped liver puts it right over the top. 

Insanely delicious. 

Not sure what we are having today, but it is MEATSTER, so I may spring for some hamburgers or something. 

And that’s-a my story!

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 459: Superb chow

Happy Friday! We are having a bit of a “choose your own adventure” day today, except that it’s my car’s . . . throttle sheath pin housing, or something . . . that chooses our adventure. The rather implausible plot involves an ice skating field trip, the court house, adoration, and of course cheesecake deliveries, and it can either be slightly complicated but doable, or . . . not. Come on, throttle sheath pin housing! Or whatever! Don’t actually be the fuel pump that’s broken!

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers + ravioli 

Just a regular day of chores, plus Corrie had a birthday party to attend. Did you know that many small movie theaters will let you rent out their entire place for a couple of hours and show a DVD of your choice, and it’s not as expensive as you might think? Is this only a small-town New England phenomenon? Anyway, it’s a neat option, especially when it’s super cold out, which it was much of the week. 

It was Benny’s shopping turn, and she chose ravioli for her frozen food/dinner supplement/treat, which I think is pretty cute. She’s not wrong; ravioli is delicious! I was actually still migrainey (I’m having a bad head month because we have new, terrible insurance and they’re still mulling over the likelihood that perhaps I want to inject myself once a month just for sport, and how can they possibly know if I really need this medication or not?), so I just shopped to get us through the weekend and then came home. Photophobia when everything is covered with snow is no joke, phew. 

SUNDAY
Hot wings, vegetable platter, hot pretzels, chips, potato salad; brownie sundaes

Sunday was, of course, the day of the Superb Owl. On the way home from Mass, I delivered a cheesecake with wild blueberry topping, which was very well received. I forgot how much tastier wild blueberries are! I used this recipe which calls for lemon zest, lemon juice, ginger, and thyme. I skipped the thyme and it was still yummo, a nice tart complement to the sweet, creamy cheesecake. 

I made a batch of potato salad following the recipe from Sip and Feast, which has you brining the potatoes for several hours before mixing in the mayo. I have made this before, and apparently forgot that I was the only one who likes this style of potato salad, oh well. 

The big kids went out to play D&D with Elijah, Benny made some brownies for dessert, and Corrie and I made some big hot pretzels. We used the King Arthur recipe, which has turned out great before, but the pretzels are a bit small. So I doubled the recipe but made a single recipe’s worth of pretzels. 

I did let the dough rise a little too long and it got a little crusty, so the dough was a little lumpier than it should be, but we forged ahead.

The dough needs to be rolled out surprisingly long! We got it to about three feet.

You bathe them in baking soda water for a few minutes before baking, and then you brush them with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven. Heavenly. 

We ended up having these as afternoon snacks, rather than part of dinner, because I really wanted to eat them hot. Then we surrendered the kitchen and Damien made a huge bunch of hot wings using the Deadspin recipe except I just got a bottle of blue cheese dressing, rather than making it. 

Then we deliberately poisoned our minds and perverted our hearts with the halftime show, and had a lovely meal with the chicken, raw vegetables, chips, and potato salad. The chicken wings were scrumptious, as always. Damien also made a batch of plain fried wings without hot sauce, for those who are babies. 

For dessert, we had brownie sundaes. And that was that!

MONDAY
Strawberry chicken salad

Monday I did the rest of the grocery shopping. I figured we would have plenty of leftover chicken, and I was right, so I made a light dinner, and if people wanted more food, it could be wing time again. and roasted up some chicken breasts, and served that on salad with strawberries, almonds, and feta cheese. 

The strawberries are HUGE this year. 

TUESDAY
Pork spiedies, chips, hot spinach dip

When I made the list, I discovered that I was a little sad thinking about all the yummy Super Bowl food I hadn’t made this year. Then I realized I’m the chief of police, I can do whatever I want. So I cut up a bunch of bell peppers, red onions, and mushrooms, and started some pork marinating for spiedies

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and put together a little casserole dish of spinach dip. I didn’t really follow a recipe. I just cooked spinach in the microwave and squeezed out the water, then combined it with a bunch of cream cheese, sour cream, parmesan cheese, and I think provolone, and I guess garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and when it got close to supper, I baked it. 

I like spinach in many forms, but I gotta admit, smothering it in several forms of cheese is ELITE. 

The spiedies turned out great. I tried to convince myself to toast the rolls, but I was too hungry. Just slapped on a bit of mayo, and they were fab.

None of the kids would even try the spinach dip! Crazies. They liked the spiedies, though. 

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Wednesday, I started getting serious about all the baking orders for Valentine’s Day. I ended up selling six mini cheesecakes

and these are topped with a heart-shaped strawberry before they go out, very cute. I just cut the strawberries in half and use a little cookie cutter to make the shape.

I also made another full-sized cheesecake with blueberry topping, and then I cut up some leftover cakes into wedges, dipped them in melted chocolate with a little shortening stirred in (this makes the chocolate smoother, and it sets more firmly), and topped them with strawberry hearts. 

Aren’t they cute?

I had some leftover chocolate, so I made a bunch of heart and skull molds, and I used them for one rather gothic medium-sized cheesecake, which just sold, hooray!

For supper, I made some very pedestrian meatballs. Here’s my recipe:

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Then I tossed them in the crock pot with some jarred sauce, and supper was easy. 

Good old spaghetti and meatballs. Wednesday is a complicated day because we get home at 4 but then Benny has writer’s group right around supper time, and it’s only an hour, so it doesn’t make sense to come home in between. I passed the time by trying to remember the shortcut in between two roads, and I got lost for long enough that I just had time to check out Market Basket, which I HATE, and discovered to my sorrow that their cream cheese is, indeed, the cheapest in town. I also grabbed some ground pork because someone inquired about a Québécois tourtière, which I have never made before, but which I had a very slow and detailed dream about making. Now I can make my dreams come true, I guess. 

Wednesday I was supposed to have an interview for a writing gig, but it got cancelled. It’s their loss! Let’s see how easy it is to find someone else who can tell a rambling, pointless story about tourtière!

THURSDAY
Roast beef sandwiches, french fries

Thursday I finally pulled out the giant eye of round roast I got a while back, when it was on such a lovely sale I could not resist. I returned again to Sip and Feast for this deli-style roast beef recipe, which always turns out excellent. It’s super easy. You just season the meat very heavily,

roast it at 500 for half an hour, turn the oven down to 300, and continue cooking it until it’s as well done as you like. Then you wrap it up 

and let it chill for a long time, sharpen yo knife, and slice it thinly. 

I wish I had taken it out of the oven a little sooner, because I like it really rare; but it was still truly delicious, super juicy with tons of flavor from the crust. 

I cooked up a bunch of fries and set out horseradish and mayonnaise and sliced tomatoes, and then I made one final batch of sauce for cheesecakes, this time strawberry

and I figured I would eat when I got back. Another busy evening! Damien covered a meeting about the middle school’s upcoming trip to DC, and Benny and I went to an informational night about a newish charter high school in town.  Silly little kid thinks she is old enough to go to high school next year, so we’re humoring her by checking out all our options. Oh me oh my. 

To my sorrow, I had eaten so much roast beef while I was slicing it up that I wasn’t hungry when we got back, so I didn’t eat an actual sandwich. HAPPILY, I made a tremendous amount of roast beef, so we should have plenty leftover for Saturday when it’s leftover day. 

FRIDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese sandwiches

I can hear Damien wrestling with the car. He also just texted me with a list of places I need to be for the rest of the day, because I was sitting there with a marker and a paper plate trying to work it out myself, and it was obvious someone with a functioning brain needed to step in. The guy who just came to pick up a cheesecake with strawberry sauce informed me that my mailbox is missing a number. What I didn’t tell him is that I know that, and I already went out to buy a replacement number, but I got the wrong one. What I did tell him is, “Oh, it’s hard when there’s snow everywhere. Everything is white, not like when there’s grass.” I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but anyway we delivered the cheesecake.

I am going to try my hand at making one of those Swiss rolls with a pattern baked into the cake, for Valentine’s Day tomorrow. This plan includes at least three different things I’m really bad at, so I have high hopes! What is wrong with me! Nobody knows! 

P.S. It is the fuel pump.

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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

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

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

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

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Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 456: Please hold

Happy Friday! Let’s talk about food, all the food, and nothing but the food. Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers and french bread pizzas

Just a regular day of shopping and errands. I forgot to buy frozen food to accompany the Saturday leftovers, so instead we ate the frozen food I had bought for the kids’ lunches. And that’s how you get to be a professional cooking blogger! 

SUNDAY
Burgers and chips

Elijah usually comes over on Sundays, and even though in reality he’s an adult and taller than me, in my head he’s still the little guy who once woke up from a nap trembling, and didn’t stop trembling until we gave him a hamburger. So I try to make sure he gets lots of hamburgers. 

Ground beef was on what passes for sale these days – $3.49 a pound – so I stocked up a bit. Maybe we’ll have burgers next week, too!

I like my burgers absolutely slobberingly smothered with ketchup and mustard, and piled up with pickles. 

MONDAY
Waffles and home fries

Monday was, of course, MLK Jr. day. It’s only in the last few years that NH made this a holiday. We used to mark MLK day by stopping for fries or something on the way home, because I would feel bad about forgetting that the schools were open but the library was closed, so the kids would spend 40 minutes after school shivering on the library steps before I got them, ever MLK day. Thanks a lot, Martin. But this time we didn’t have school! So nobody got fries. Damien went to Moe’s house to work on his car, and the rest of us had waffles and home fries. 

The waffle recipe:

For the home fries, I peeled potatoes, cut them into wedges, drizzled them with oil and seasoned them with salt, pepper, chili powder, and garlic powder, and roasted them in a hot oven until they were browned. I didn’t turn them, because I like having a roasty, crackly part on the bottom and a golden toasty part on the top. 

Also I forgot. But they did turn out nice. 

Waffles were okay, not the greatest, not sure why. 

It’s possible that waffles are only really good if you have a third thing with them, like meat or even just fruit, or eggs. Anyway, it was a filling meal.

On Sunday, I tried making some chocolate strawberry hearts I saw online (and I truly looked for the reel to link back, but I can’t find it. It’s by Foodbites). You cut the strawberries into heart shapes with a cookie cutter, then make a base with melted chocolate, stick the strawberry on it, and embellish it with more chocolate. Like this:

Pretty and simple!

Well . . . 

AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE.

The good news is, we live in a very pretty place. I truly would rather live where there’s ice and there’s snow and the whalefishes blow, but it’s not dull! We get these dazzling, exhilerating skies.

I mean also, I hardly ever shovel anymore, so that definitely helps my attitude toward winter. 

TUESDAY
Chicken quesadillas, fake Doritos

Tuesday I spent most of the day driving here and there and there and here, including out to Nelson with my apple pie money to buy a used mini refrigerator from FB Marketplace. Actually, it’s a beverage refrigerator, which makes it the perfect size for, say, four cheesecakes.

[Here, there should be a photo, but my heart quailed at the prospect of letting even such a friendly crowd see how gross my floors are right now. It’s just been super icy, so we have to put down a lot of dirt and salt outside, and guess where that ends up? Boo! Oh well. Imagine a nice little fridge with perfect shelves inside.]

All my adult life, I have wanted a little spot just to store my baked goods where no one will disturb them, and now I have it! I also had a wonderful chat with the seller, a kindred spirit who loves being in the kitchen and hates being at Market Basket. She had a lot of kitchen supplies for sale because the person who is not allowed in this post withdrew funding, and her culinary school got shut down. We chatted for a while in her spectacularly organized basement, she gave me a couple of springform pans for free, and I left feeling motivated to organize my life. (This did not happen, but I enjoyed the feeling while it lasted.)

For supper we had chicken quesadillas using the chicken left over from last week’s subpar enchiladas. I goosed them with some, I don’t know, chili powder, salt, and cumin, or something like that, and they were fine. I threw some jalapeños in mine, too. 

Everything is fine. 

WEDNESDAY
BLTs, party mix

Wednesday we had BLTs purely because my menu thus far was so thrifty, and I felt like a-splurgin’. I made a second attempt (the first one was about three years ago, and ended in tragedy) to toast the bread all at once in the oven, using that technique where you put the two oven racks close together and use the top one to hold the pieces of bread upright.

This time it worked! The secret, as any halfwitted housecat could have explained, is not to move the racks after the bread is in place. My mistake in the past was pulling the racks out so I could reach them easily, and then carefully putting the bread in there, and then trying to slide it all into the oven, and of course all the bread slithered down into the pan, defeating the entire purpose. Instead, you have to leave the racks where they are and carefully stick your hand into the oven to put the bread in. Then it works. 

This is yet another one of those things that I finally got the hang of only once it became less urgent. When we had twelve people in the house and I was trying to toast 24 pieces of bread at once, this would have been a handy hack indeed! Too soon old, too late schmart. Anyway, we delivered the bomb. I mean we had yummy sandwiches.

I spent a little bit of time trying to figure out why I like party mix so much.  I got the store brand, so none of the individual elements were that good. The pretzels and corn and tortilla chips were stale, and the cheetos, while pleasingly caveman club-shaped, were undeniably greasy. I guess it’s because of the variety that it seems like a treat. Also, it’s called “party mix.” I guess if they called it “Stale But Miscellaneous,” I would be less avid a fan. 

This is why I haven’t been writing a lot lately. My brain just stands there, ruminating slowly over little bits of straw, like an elderly cow who has forgotten how to leave the barn. I’m . . . it’s January. We’re fine. 

THURSDAY
Gochujang bulgoki, rice,  seaweed, sesame chicken

It’s been a while since I”ve made this excellent meal! Pretty often, I will just marinate pork ribs in the marinade, and then grill or broil them. But this time, I decided to go Full Bulgoki. Here’s the marinade:

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You can make this with beef, but I prefer it with pork. 

So in the morning, I sliced up a couple of onions and shredded a bunch of carrots in the food processor, and sliced a bunch of boneless pork ribs as thinly as I could, and set that to marinate together. Then I set up the Instant Pot with rice and water, cut up the broccoli, and even located the sesame oil and sesame seeds, which sometimes wander off to parts unknown right when I need them. 

I don’t even know what I did the rest of the day, but I was — oh wait, I do! Starting back in mid-December, I have trying to finish this complicated application for a thing, but they sent it back and said their new policy is that they need copies of everyone’s social security cards. Lucy’s has, of course, gone missing. So we went to get a replacement, and it turns out you need a government-issued ID for that. Which we don’t have, because I haven’t gotten around to finishing teaching her to drive yet. So we decided to go for a non-driver ID, and to get THAT, you need. . . .your social security card. Tra la la! Your call is very important to us! Have you signed in at the kiosk? The kiosk is only for individuals with an appointment! Appointments cannot be made online, but must be made by phone. Please have your social security card ready before calling. 

Well eventually we rustled up some backups, and I vouched for her, and she got the thing, and I got the thing, and I sent off the application, and all manner of things shall be whatever. 

This is a long way of saying that, when I got back home, I was extremely glad that all I had to do was press the rice button, pan fry the meat mixture, and throw the broccoli in a hot oven with sesame oil, soy sauce, and sesame seeds, and in about 25 minutes, we had a meal that was completely yummo. 

The bulgoki is often eaten wrapped in lettuce, which is also delicious, but I like using seaweed. You tear off a bit and use it as a scoop to grab up a little rice and meat

It’s just so good. I think bundles is the superior form of food. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle

The kids asked for this, and I wrote it down on the menu, but I will probably kidnap Damien into a pizza place. I was going to be kind and make the tuna noodle for the kids, but they are all in the kitchen right now, being SO loud, and also they were hogging both bathrooms this morning, so I feel like I need to do something. Vive le resistance. They can make their own casserole. 

Like much of the country, we are expecting anywhere from one to two feet of snow, and — again, speaking as the lady of the house who has been promoted to “you stay inside; we’ll handle the shoveling” — I’m all for it. We were in a drought for most of last summer, and my pumpkins really felt it, so I hope all this snow will replenish the water table. I hope a lot of things. Please hold. Your hope is very important to us. 

5 from 1 vote
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Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)


Ingredients

  • 1.5 pound boneless pork, sliced thin
  • 4 carrots in matchsticks or shreds
  • 1 onion sliced thin

sauce:

  • 5 generous Tbsp gochujang (fermented pepper paste)
  • 2 Tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 5 cloves minced garlic

Serve with white rice and nori (seaweed sheets) or lettuce leaves to wrap

Instructions

  1. Combine pork, onions, and carrots.

    Mix together all sauce ingredients and stir into pork and vegetables. 

    Cover and let marinate for several hours or overnight.

    Heat a pan with a little oil and sauté the pork mixture until pork is cooked through.

    Serve with rice and lettuce or nori. Eat by taking pieces of lettuce or nori, putting a scoop of meat and rice in, and making little bundles to eat.