pork – SIMCHA FISHER

What’s for supper? Vol. 392: I hope you guys like hearing about peaches

Happy Friday! Today’s post will be a good one for people who enjoy color. Especially peach color. And peaches!

Oh yes, peaches. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and finally started picking. And picking, and paying kids to pick, and picking some more. I estimate at least 130 pounds so far, and there are still hundreds of peaches on the tree. Just one little tree! What a champ.

This is also our first week back at school, and so far, I’m not a fan. Much rather sit and home and eat peaches.

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, strawberry shortcake

Shopping day with Corrie, plus a side quest to SPIRIT HALLOWEEN, which now opens in early August and hasn’t gotten any less silly. Damien made yummy sandwiches while I recovered.

Benny prepped the strawberries with sugar and a little vanilla. I just got pre-made cake shells for dessert, and squirty whipped cream from a can. Not shortcake per se, but who doesn’t like this.

We were planning a little outing on Sunday, so Satuday evening I prepped a bunch of peaches and a streusel topping ahead of time, so I could put it together when I got home. Benny and Corrie helped with blanching the peaches

and we had sort of mixed success peeling them.

I got better at this over the course of the week! My process now is to rinse the peaches, score the bottom in an X, dump them in boiling water for a full two minutes,

and then fish them out and dump them in ice water. Lots of recipes said thirty seconds in boiling water, but the skin just doesn’t slide off like it’s supposed to when I do it that way. Maybe it varies by peach or by ripeness, but that’s what I’ve found.

I also made a batch of vanilla ice cream, and didn’t notice that the dasher got hung up, so it ended up not terribly smooth, oh well.

SUNDAY
Deli sandwiches, peach cobbler

Sunday after Mass, it was the very last day everybody was still on summer vacation, so we went to Trap Falls in Ashby, MA. This is a place we discovered several years ago when the kids were little and I dragged everybody on a yurt camping trip. The lake in the campgrounds was closed because of cyanobacteria or something, so we drove around looking for an alternative, and stumbled across this — not quite paradisal, but extremely lovely spot

We’ve been back several times, and it’s almost always a good trip. When the kids were little, it was glorious. Now it’s just merely pleasant. But I’ll take it!

We brought the dog along, and he enjoyed himself, which he always does, everywhere, in every circumstance, including when he went with Damien to go find oil for my car when it abruptly ran out of oil, but especially including when we stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Got home and ate the deli sandwiches I got at Market Basket, and made the peach cobbler, which turned out . . . juicy.

I really should have drained those peaches! In retrospect, the oven slowly dying was also probably partly to blame, but I didn’t realize it yet. But it was still a delicious dessert, especially topped with ice cream.

I made a huge amount of streusel topping and saved half of it, thinking I would make cobbler (or crisp or whatever) at least a few more times. Then I ate a bunch of it, and I’m not even sorry. Butter, flour, cinnamon, and sugar. I’m a monster and I don’t care.

MONDAY
Mussakhan and taboon

Monday the Catholic high school kid and the college kid started school, and I had a little errand in a different town, and Damien started covering a hearing in Concord; so the driving was . . . extensive.

But I was determined to stick to the rather ambitious menu I had planned, so I made mussakhan (Palestinian roast chicken) and taboon. Here’s the mussakahn recipe from Saveur that I use; and here is the taboon recipe:

Jump to Recipe

The oven breathed its last just as the chicken finished cooking, which was a mercy! Ten minutes earlier and we would have been in trouble.

Sadly, the bread has just started baking, and it does bake quickly, but not quickly enough, so I was in a bit of a pickle with that. Just the bottom heating element broke, though, so I broiled the bread, and it was not amazing, but edible.

It really is a great meal in general, though. The chicken is so juicy, and I adore that sour-bright, earthy sumac flavor. I even splurged on pine nuts, which I don’t always do, and they get toasted up in oil and then sprinkled over the hot chicken. Spectacular.

I had timed things down to the minute, but didn’t factor in an “oh crap, the oven broke” eventuality, so I ended up eating my dinner in the car.

Which is just as well, because this allowed me to shamelessly gnaw on the bones like a neanderthal.

That night, a child who shall remain nameless decided to bleach and dye her hair, which is fine, but it’s less fine to get bleach in your eye, especially when your mother is not home. So I GOT home as fast as I could, and we went to the ER, where they hooked said child up with a kind of contact lens device attached to a tube with a bag of fluids, which flushed the eye out. No eye damage, thank God!

It’s a very damp process, though, especially when you haven’t rinsed the blue out of your hair yet.

The doctor reassured us that far, far worse things had happened to that sheet. And then we got home and collapsed like bunches of broccoli.

TUESDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese, sausage sandwiches

Tuesday was the public high school kid’s first day, and I also promised Corrie I would get her a professional haircut to correct the alleged malicious violence I had done to her hair last month when I gave her the exact haircut she asked for.

Very cute!

Dinner was nice and easy. Tasty, despite the horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you.

The yolk of a duck egg is a powerful thing.

I also bleached and dyed the tips of Benny’s hair. I actually bleached it twice, because the first time I was like, “Aw, I’ve done this a million times, I don’t need to read the directions,” but it turns out I do. So I sent Elijah out for more bleach, and we got it done.

You there, boy! What year is it?
Why it’s 1983, sir!

I paid the girls to pick a bunch of peaches for me, and I blanched about mmm fifty pounds of them.

(If you are wondering, a box that you definitely are going to return to the post office has a tare weight of 1.84 lbs.)

I cut them up and put them in gallon bags and stuffed them in the freezer.

I didn’t add anything. You can add lemon juice to preserve the color, but these will be for baking anyway, so it didn’t really matter. I also didn’t mind if they froze in one big clump, for the same reason; so I didn’t bother doing any individual freezing tricks to keep them separated.

WEDNESDAY
Butter chicken and rice

Wednesday was the first day for the elementary and middle school kids, which were the last batch of kids. They had half days, but not, of course, the same half; so I was kind of mad at myself for again planning a slightly complex meal on a day when I was gonna be in the car all day; but, on the other hand, BUTTER CHICKEN. Can’t be mad when you’re eating butter chicken, or really even when you’re making it, because it’s so pretty. I use this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats.

I started marinating the meat around noon, and then it does come together very fast if you have all the ingredients prepped. I had splurged on a big sack of basmati rice a few months ago, so I started a big batch of that in the Instant Pot (2 cups of water for each cup of rice, and then just press the rice button, and fluff it with a fork when it’s done — turns out great), and cooked up the chicken in the lovely marinade

then added the pureed tomatoes and cream

and let that simmer for about half an hour.

Oh, it smells so good.

While that was cooking, I prepped some pork for Thursday’s dinner. I am so smart! Sometimes I am so smart.

It was really too hot for butter chicken, but at the same time, it’s always a good day for butter chicken.

Just threw a little cilantro on top. I went back for more rice and more sauce. So very cozy and delicious.

THURSDAY
Bo ssam with gochujang peach sauce, rice, cucumber salad, crunchy rice rolls

The replacement heating element for the oven is ordered, but won’t be here until next Wednesday, so I made the bo ssam in the Instant Pot, following the bare bones of this recipe. I really need to remember to do it this way (in the IP) every time, rather than in the oven, because it turns out spectacular. I just hucked the pork into the pot and pressed “meat.” It said “burn” after a while, so I vented it, checked that it wasn’t actually burning, and pressed “meat” again.

Then I made a dipping sauce with — I swear I wrote this down, but now I can’t find it. Well, it was about eight pitted peaches with the skins on, two tablespoons of brown sugar, a heaping tablespoon of gochujang, half a red onion, and a tablespoon of soy sauce, if I remember correctly, which I never do.

Put it all in the blender

and it made a really nice dipping sauce, sweet and fruity (obviously) with just a little kick from the gochujang.

It went very, very well with the salty meat. I probably could have skipped the onion, though. I’m not crazy about raw onion unless it’s minced or diced. Something slightly unpleasant about pureed raw onion. But there wasn’t a ton in there, so it didn’t ruin it.

I also made a cucumber salad with — I dunno what. Rice vinegar, water, red pepper flakes, white sugar. That sounds plausible. Maybe lime juice.

Ten minutes before dinner, I made a paste of brown sugar, cider vinegar, and salt and spread that on the meat, which was absolutely falling apart by this time, and put it under the broiler.

I served it with Boston lettuce to wrap the meat in, and the sauce to dip; plus the cucumber salad, and crunchy rice rolls. And a dish of plums, just to shake things up.

The meat came out SO NICE, and everything complemented each other so well.

Completely excellent meal.

That evening, I headed back to the peach mines and blanched another thirty-plus peaches, and made peach butter.

I followed this recipe, kind of, except I used far less brown sugar than she said, and bumped up the spices a bit. I love that it has cardamom.

You cook the peaches in pieces for a while,

then run it through a blender, then cook it some more. She says to cook it down for 10-15 minutes for the second cook, which I knew was going to be nonsense. I set it to a very low simmer and just let it go, uncovered, for something like three hours, stirring it occasionally.

Then I poured it into jars

and put it in the fridge. I think it’s already all spoken for, so I’ll have to make some more! It’s the consistency of thick applesauce, loose but spreadable. It will be so nice on toast. It would be spectacular on french toast, or hot scones, or bread pudding.

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle

Sophia, who is not back to school because she is taking a gap year to work and save up money, volunteered to make tuna noodle. I’m hoping and praying the dang jury reaches a verdict today so we can see Damien again someday! Maybe we’ll ditch the kids and go out for pizza tonight.

I plan to spend the weekend making as many stovetop or Instant Pot peach recipes as I can find — more peach butter, definitely; and peach salsa sounds tasty, and I am determined to make that peach-tomato-basil -burrata-prosciutto salad, and perhaps I will make more ice cream and grill the peaches. And eventually the oven will work again, and then I’ll — let’s face it, I’ll make more streusel because I will have eaten my stash, and then I’ll make another peach cobbler, and see if I can come up with something a little more solid. Or not. And peach muffins, and peach cheesecake!

I also dropped off bags of peaches with a few people, and called Vincent de Paul to see if they want peaches, Because, I don’t know if you guys realize this, but I have a lot of peaches.

This is the tree right meow, still:

Not suffocating under obscenely heavy clusters of fruit like it was before, but still, plenty of peaches!

And I’m sort of nervously keeping an eye on this situation:

But not yet! It’s not time to worry about that yet.

I . . I did plant another grape vine yesterday. Because what if we run out of fruit? WHAT IF WE RUN OUT OF FRUIT????

Oh, here is a photo of last Friday’s poke bowl, which turned out rather pretty.

Rice, ahi tuna, salt and pepper cashews, pea sprouts, sugar snap peas, and pickled mango on top, and watermelon and some kind of weird wafer cookies from Aldi on the plate. (They were supposed to be coconut wafers with caramel and sesame seeds, if I recall, but they were just sort of neutral wafers with caramel. Not bad, but not quite as exotic as the package promised.)

The pickled mango was a mistake! It was violently salty and spicy and not much else, with big chunks of rind. I was thinking it would be a sweetish chutney, but it was not! Live and learn.

And since I mentioned color at the top, check out this beaut.

I have about a dozen pumpkins growing nicely, but this is the biggest, brightest one. It took me 49 years to figure out what I’m really good at, and that thing is: Growing pumpkins. I’ll take it! I saved seeds from last year’s biggest jack-o’-lantern and planted them in composted soil, and that’s my whole secret.

The rest of it is just good soil. Good, good soil. I can’t take credit for it, but I’m glad.

taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.
While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.
Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.
If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.
Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

What’s for supper? Vol. 390: In which it is still summer

Happy Friday! In haste, in haste, for I have spent the week dashing around trying to get all the summer things done while there’s still time, and have therefore put off doing my actual job, and now it is Friday and, while the wolf is not at the door yet, but it’s only a matter of time before he figures out GPS steered him wrong and we’re just a little ways down the street.

However, the hummingbirds are humming, the peaches are swelling, and it’s still summer, dammit. Sonny’s battle wounds from his little fracas last week are healing up just fine and haven’t slowed him down one tiny bit. My pictures are pretty terrible this week, not really sure why; but we had a couple pretty good meals, plus HOMEMADE ICE CREAM SANDWICHES.

And peaches. You simply cannot fathom the number of peaches.

SATURDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, watermelon

Just a regliar shopping day with a quick, easy meal. After supper, I WD40’d my clippers and attacked the chokecherry tree that’s been suffocating my blueberry bushes for many years, and I hope next year we’ll get more blueberries.

We did try making chokecherry syrup one year, and let me tell you, it tasted exactly like something called “chokecherry syrup.” Bleh. So the blueberries get the nod.

I offered to take the kids to the pond after dinner, and ONLY ONE PERSON WANTED TO GO. We used to spend alll summer at the pond, and the most devastating thing I could say was that it was time to leave. Ah well. Anyway, Benny and I went, and it was a little too nippy to swim, but we heard some loons and saw a gorgeous sunset.

A wonderful, blessed spot.

SUNDAY
Chinese food and McDonald’s

Sunday after Mass, we drove to Alewife and then took the T further into the city and got to Chinatown for the Harvest Moon Festival. A successful trip! We saw some lion dancers and other impressive performances on the street, and everyone got a snack from a bakery.

If I lived near a Chinese bakery, I would be 400 lbs and rising. I chose some kind of matcha cake with red bean filling. I would fight through miles of cake to get to red bean filling.

Then, as is traditional, I got bullied by a Chinese lady while buying tea on the street, and the kids all picked out some authentic tourist tchotchkes, and we got some smoothies with boba pearls, and heard lots of exciting drumming and singing. Good stuff.

We walked through The Boston Common, and Corrie got sopping wet in the fountain, and then we went in search of the Make Way for Ducklings Statues, but instead found “The Embrace.”

Now, this statue got a lot of derision when it was unveiled, and was fairly universally mocked and derided. You may have heard that this piece is an abject conceptual failure, and that there is no angle at which it looks anything other than obscene and grotesque. But now that we’ve been there, and walked all around it and touched it and experienced it first-hand, listen to me when I tell you: it’s so much worse in person.

It this a wienie statue? Is an homage to the idea of a giant bronze turd? It is an incredible work that truly invites the viewer to decide! Anyway, sorry about that, MLK.

Then we got back on the T, and Corrie dried off a bit in front of one of those enormous subway fans, and then we drove homeward, stopping for burgers and then stopping again for ice cream, because, believe it or not, the soft serve machine in the first McDonald’s was out of order. And then we got home and collapsed like bunches of broccoli, respectively.

MONDAY
Oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, lemony string beans

Monday I had promised I would go to Millie’s house and help her deal with her oriental bittersweet, which was taking over her mock orange tree. If you’re not familiar with oriental bittersweet, it’s a truly dreadful invasive vine that grows at a breakneck pace, climbs and twines around everything it touches and strangles it to death, and tunnels underground in several directions at once, so you can pull it up everywhere it sprouts and it still has secret infiltrations in a dozen other spots.

You have to attack it several times a year with clippers and glyphosate for several years to get on top of it, and then you find out your neighbor thought the flowers were pretty (which they are!) and was letting it grow, so you’re right back where you started. BOOOO.

So I got to Millie’s house with my clippers and herbicide feeling a little grim, and guess what? She doesn’t have bittersweet! She has a mock orange tree that has gone crazy with all the rain, and it was sending up tons of shoots that looked suspicious. So that was a happy ending. I weeded her garden and did some odds and ends, and then decided that as long as I had all my killing crap out, I might as well go home and tackle my own bittersweet. So I did that for about three hours, and I got . . . some of it. HORRIBLE STUFF.

But I was so glad that I had started prepping the chicken early in the day, because I was HONGRY by late afternoon. Here’s the recipe for oven fried chicken, which is several orders of magnitude easier than pan fried chicken, and I think it’s just as crispy and tasty.

Jump to Recipe

I had drumsticks and wings, which were on sale. While that was cooking, I boiled some corn on the cob and then quickly sautéed some string beans in butter and then squeezed a few lemons over them.

Not a great picture, but a terrific summer meal.

OH, was I hungry.

TUESDAY
Carnitas, guacamole and chips, fresh corn salad (?)

Tuesday morning, I started some pork cooking for carnitas.

Jump to Recipe

and then started on the guacamole. Some interfamilial fights broke out at this point, but luckily I couldn’t find my garlic press, so I needed someone to smash some garlic for me. Inviting the most upset person to walk away from sister and come smash some garlic is one of my best parenting tips; no charge.

And if the person in question believes a Rainbow Dash figurine to be the best possible tool for the job, then yes it is.

I forgot to buy tomatoes for the guac, but didn’t really miss them, so I may skip them going forward.

We had tons of corn leftover, so I cut it off the cobs and then just started adding likely-looking stuff to the bowl: kidney beans, black beans, canned tomatoes, diced chili peppers, lime juice, cayenne pepper, salt, cumin, and cilantro, if I remember right.

I knew perfectly well that nobody but me was going to eat it, and I was fine with that. I did have it for lunch a few times during the week. I love this kind of dish.

The carnitas turned out great. I seared the meat before putting it in the pot with the soda and oranges and whatnot, and I don’t know if that’s what made the difference or what, but it was so tasty.

Awkward photo, great little meal.

Corrie’s little pal came over and they ran around wrecking up the place for awhile, which is their charism. What a gift it is to see your kid playing with a good friend who’s just right.

We also tried out the little ice cream sandwich making device I got at Aldi for like $6. Benny made chocolate chip cookies and I had made some plain vanilla ice cream the night before, and spread it in a cake pan, rather than putting it in a tub to freeze.

It’s a very simple device: Just basically a cookie cutter with a handle and a plunger. You press it into the ice cream and then push the plunger and pop out a puck of ice cream.

After they made the ice cream sandwiches, they rolled the outside of the filling in mini chocolate chips.

Success!

I did a ton more yard work on Tuesday. The poor, overburdened peach tree is drooping very badly, and the peaches are very close to being ripe, so I decided to wait a few more days before picking them, and instead propped a bunch of wooden beams and ladders and whatnot under the branches.

I also pruned the rose bush (yes, I know it’s the wrong time of year, but this rose bush is like 60 years old and I think it can deal with it) and weeded out a ton of goldenrod and jewelweed and other intruders, and it looks so much better in front of the house now. To me, anyway. I tend to leave the piles of whatever I’ve clipped or weeded lying around for a day or so, just to impress Damien. He doesn’t necessarily notice when something outdoors looks much better, but the upside to this is that he also doesn’t notice when it looks horrible and overgrown! I used to wish we could switch brains temporarily so we could see how each other sees the world, but at this point, I think I would rather just leave it alone. I tell him when I did a good job on something, and point to the giant heap of refuse I created, and he praises and compliments me, and we’re both happy. There’s another fee tip for you.

WEDNESDAY
Sausage and pepper subs

Wednesday Benny had a couple friends over, so Damien handled dinner at home and I took the girls to the pond with some sandwiches and popcorn, fruit and cookies.

Then we got home and roasted marshmallows over the propane fire.

Summer things! Doing all the summer things!

THURSDAY
Lemon garlic shrimp pasta

Thursday, also went back to Millie’s house after Mass to help her with a dead mouse that turned out to be alive, and let me tell you, Millie and I ran around and screamed like cartoon characters, but eventually I had to acknowledge that I was the one in charge of this situation, and, well, if your stream is downstream from our stream and you see a mouse with its head stuck in a trap float by, just mind your business.

On Thursday another kid moved out. We now have only six kids at home, which means I only made two pounds of pasta for dinner.

I truly don’t know if this is an appropriate amount, because (a) I never, ever, ever learned how to judge how much pasta to make for any amount of people, and (b) I was making pasta with shrimp, and most of my kids hate shrimp.

I was a little nervous myself, since the last time I had shrimp, I was violently sick for a week. I don’t even remember why I decided to make it — shrimp was on sale, I guess — but it’s a good, easy recipe, and it turned out fine. And I found out that I am able to eat shrimp without fear and revulsion, but also the sparkle has gone out of it. I only had one little bowl of it and then I was ready to go somewhere else.

I realize this is normal behavior for other people, but shrimp used to be one of my absolute favorite treat foods, and the thing I ordered most often when we go to a restaurant. But now it’s just . . . fine. Ah well. Himmel und Erde müssen vergeh’n.

Aber das Eiscreme, aber das Eiscreme, aber des Eiscreme bleiben besteh’n! Oh yes, I made ice cream, and the kids made more cookies, so we have that going for us. This is now the third time I’ve churned ice cream inside a cooler with an ice pack, and I can definitively say the extra cold makes a difference! Comes out good and thick.

I spread it in a cake pan again, but it was still a little soft by evening, so we let it continue to freeze.

FRIDAY
Aldi pizza

Today after adoration we are going to see Clara in The Importance of Being Earnest, and . . . that appears to be all I wrote on the menu for today. So I guess I am picking up some Aldi pizza!And now they are making more ice cream sandwiches.

And there is still a little summer left. We’re going to Trap Falls this Sunday, most likely, and my eggplant is finally growing. I think my sugar snap peas are done for the year, so I’m probably gonna pull them out and throw some spinach seeds in that spot and get a second crop, which I’m not usually organized enough to do. I have maybe half a dozen lovely giant pumpkins growing, and also various squash ad gourds, and I found some Joe Pye Weed in the yard for the first time, which I’m unreasonably excited about.

And uh I found this at the thrift store:

We’re about to be hip deep in sweet little peaches in about 72 hours, as you can see here, and the throngs have demanded peach cobbler. That can be arranged.

Maybe also a peach burrata salad with prosciutto and balsamic glaze. Maybe grilled peaches with coconut ice cream and praline topping. Maybe peach marmalade. MAYBE JUST PEACHES.

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

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.
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.
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.
Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.
Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.
Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

Carnitas (very slightly altered from John Herreid's recipe)

Ingredients

large hunk pork (butt or shoulder, but can get away with loin)
2 oranges, quartered
2-3 cinnamon sticks
4-5 bay leaves
salt, pepper, oregano
1 cup oil
1 can Coke

Instructions

Cut the pork into chunks and season them heavily with salt, pepper, and oregano.
Put them in a heavy pot with the cup of oil, the Coke, the quartered orange, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves
Simmer, uncovered, for at least two hours
Remove the orange peels, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves
Turn up the heat and continue cooking the meat until it darkens and becomes very tender and crisp on the outside
Remove the meat and shred it. Serve on tortillas.

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, chips

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

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

Close enough. And no oven!

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

SUNDAY
Southwest chicken salad

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

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

MONDAY
Tortellini salad, crackers, watermelon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We stuck these monstrosities in the refrigerator and walked away.

TUESDAY
BLTs, ice cream pie

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

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

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

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

Me oh my, another birthday.

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

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

uhhh more or less.

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Hamburgers, veg and dip or hummus, chips

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

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, collard greens

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

But man, they are delicious.

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

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

FRIDAY
PBJ

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

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

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

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

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

Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.
Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.
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.
When pork is tender, shred.

What’s for supper? Vol. 381: Excuse me, stewardess. I speak chive.

I don’t know if you guys realize this, but June is, in fact, bustin’ out all over.
The feeling is getting so intense!
And the Fishers are so busy
That I’m always in a tizzy
But I still have time to make a wattle fence!

Because it’s Junnnnnnne!

And I do what I wannnnnnnt! Overall.

I do apologize for how dead the site has been lately. I honestly have been writing, and I hope to have more up next week! I also think I have fixed the issue with the com box. If you left a comment last week and it didn’t show up, it’s because I had a leetle spam problem and still have to manually sort through almost 6,000 comments, which, honestly, I might just . . . not do. But like I said, I think I fixed it!

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, watermelon

Shopping day, uff cawse. I had planned grilled ham and cheese last week, but didn’t make it, so we had plenty of sourdough and sliced cheddar and ham. Easy peasy, and it was a good thing, because one kid had a party to go to (and a present to buy), two kids needed to be at work, and there was an art thing downtown and the non-working kids were helping the other kids set up, and I realized that meant the other kid was gonna be alone all day, so we invited a friend over for her, which turned into her meeting the friend at the beach (not that beach, the other beach) and then coming here, and then everyone needed to be picked up from their parties and jobs and arts and confession and whatnot, and, long story long, we had grilled cheese.

Kids had a fire and made s’mores after dinner. I will eat many, many disgusting things, but I draw the line at s’mores, for some reason.

A few months ago, when I still thought we had a 50/50 chance of seeing the parousia before June, I signed up to make dinner for the youth group. But I lost that bet, so on Saturday night I started hacking up pork shoulder and browning it.

I had bought some ludicrous number of pounds of pork, too much to fit in the slow cooker, so I put it in a giant casserole dish and covered it tightly with tinfoil and cooked it in the oven at 225 for about five hours.

Here’s my pulled pork recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I bumped up all the seasonings a bit, used jarred jalapeño instead of fresh (without the juice), and added a heavy hit of liquid smoke. Oh my dammit, it smelled amazing. I thought I’d have to leave it cooking slowly overnight, but it was shreddy betty and so good.

SUNDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, chips, broccoli slaw, watermelon

Sunday was Corpus Christi, which I love so much. My 90-year-old friend has been coming to Mass with us, which is excellent, but of course she wasn’t quite up for a long walk in the blazing hot sun afterward, so I brought her home while the rest of the family joined in the procession. Found out later that Benny, who is not even 90, fainted! Just too much sun and not enough water, and plus we had stayed up late to watch Godzilla Minus One the night before. So down she went, and bopped her head on the pew when she fell. SHE IS FINE. But it was a worrisome day, because we have some medical nonsense in this family to worry about. But she was just very dehydrated.

It turns out everyone else in the parish is also super busy in early June, so the youth group was a very small group, and even taking that into account, I absolutely CLOBBERED them with food. One smart thing I did, though, was realize that a cooler isn’t just for ice, but will also keep hot food hot. So I didn’t have to muck around with cooking in the church basement and trucking the food over to the other building this time, but just heated everything up at home and then brought it straight to the yoot.

We had kaiser buns and pulled pork and two kind of BBQ sauce on the side, but the meat truly didn’t need it. Bunch of sliced onions and some of that hot cheese sauce I love so well for the sandwiches, tons of potato chips, tons of watermelon cut into chunks, and tons of soda. At the last minute I also made some broccoli slaw just to have something green.

I threw the broccoli into the food processor and then jammed some carrots in, but I wasn’t thinking clearly, and ended up with basically minced broccoli and discs of carrots. Which is fine, but it looked . . . dated. Can’t explain it, but it looked like someone’s elderly aunt had brought it to a birthday party and called it her famous slaw.

Anyway, I made the dressing from this coleslaw recipe, which calls for mayo, dijon mustard, maple syrup, celery seed, salt, and pepper. I skipped the celery seed and didn’t even notice it called for dijon mustard until about the middle of this sentence. Then I threw in some sliced almonds, and probably would have put in dried cranberries if we had had any. Considered sunflower seeds and realized I’m at least allegedly feeding teenagers, not chipmunks.

Look, I took a few gummies last night to help me sleep, and I’m feeling too dumb to write short paragraphs, so you’re just gonna get the whole . . . pork. I don’t know.

Anyway, there was SO much dang pork. Which is not a bad thing! I thought the addition of the liquid smoke was excellent, so I’ll be adding that from now on.

MONDAY
Roast pork ribs, flavored rice, watermelon, broccoli slaw

Monday I wasn’t ready to look at pulled pork again yet, and I had arranged my day so that I was somehow doing errands for strangers much of the day? I live like I have a personal assistant who has a grudge against me. Anyway I got it all done, and got supper started at like five o’clock. Not pulled pork but roast pork ribs, because they were 99 cents a pound and I’m not made of stone.

Pork ribs sprinkled heavily with salt and pepper and thrust under a hot broiler, turned once; leftover watermelon (did I mention that watermelons were on sale so I bought four?), leftover broccoli slaw, and something the kids covet ardently and I should probably make more often: Rice cooked in chicken broth. Truly, your jaw would drop if you saw how excited they were about this faintly yellow rice.

And you know what, it’s good. Tastes like chicken.

I don’t think I mentioned how the broccoli slaw turned out. The dressing tasted WONDERFUL when I made it, really zippy and nice; but it was one of those mysterious recipes that went flat right away, and got flatter every hour thereafter. So it was quite, quite bland by Monday. I was still happy to have something cool and vegetabally, but it was not exciting. I did like having the crunchy almonds in there.

TUESDAY
Pizza with chive blossoms

My chives peaked over the weekend, and I had been meaning and meaning to fry the blossoms, but I just did not have time. So I made some pizzas on Tuesday: One pepperoni, one plain cheese, and one with black olive and leftover peppers and onions sauteed up, and then when it came out of the oven, I threw chive blossoms on top of it.

Kinda wish I had put some of them on first before baking, because I think they would have been nice with a little frizzled, but they were good as they were. Kinda cute, not mindblowing.Tasted like chives. So now I know!

WEDNESDAY
Pork tacos, watermelon

Wednesday I had to face the fact that I had forgotten to put the leftover pulled pork in the freezer, so it was do or die. Pork or die.

It was supposed to be taco day, so I just heated up the pork and served that with taco fixings. Did not adjust the seasoning or anything, and guess what, it was yummy.

Or maybe I was just starving because I was going crazy with yard work, but I thought they were great.

Wednesday I also culled baby peaches. Last year we had a late frost that killed all the buds, and we had zero peaches. This year we have . . . I honestly think over a thousand, on just the one tree. It just went berserk with pent-up peachiness. At first I was delighted, and then I realized that letting that many peaches grow to maturity would yield a bumper crop of small, tasteless peaches, and would probably also split the tree when they got heavy.

I HATE thinning baby plants. It’s not as bad as pinching off blossoms, but it’s pretty rough. Just feels so brutal and wrong. But I want to take care of my tree, so I spent a LONG time plucking off baby peaches, and after about an hour of staring up into the sun between the leaves, calculating six inches between peaches, and repeatedly getting a face full of crispy old peach blossom debris and picking baby peaches out of my cleavage, that particular emotional knife had been blunted quite a bit.

Here’s what they look like. They’re the size of large olives, and they are too young to have pits.

I have filled two gallon ziplock bags and I’m maybe 1/4 of the way through the tree. It turns out you can pickle baby peaches. This lady says they don’t taste like much, so they take on whatever flavor you put in the vinegar solution. I told myself I was going to try this, but honestly I think I’ll offer them on buy nothing and let them be someone else’s broken dreams this year. Or maybe just feed them to the ducks. Ducks have no dreams.

THURSDAY
One-pan garlicky chicken thighs with potatoes and zucchini

Thursday was the first day this week I deliberately cooked something specifically for that day, rather than just dealing with whatever nonsense that hostile PA had set up for me. Samantha, or Simba, or whatever her name is.

What I had was a bunch of chicken thighs that were on sale, and zucchini that reminded me that I once made a zucchini dish that everybody liked, and it was on a week we were replacing the bathroom floor, so I figured it must be easy. So I made it again! Yay!

Got the chicken marinating in the morning. It’s a simple marinade, just olive oil and balsamic vinegar and apple cider vinegar, plus garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper, and fresh basil and garlic. I prepped the garlic by peeling it, putting it in a sandwich bag, and bashing it with the end of a rolling pin, so it was it kind of flattened fragments. I don’t know if there’s a name for this form of garlic, but I find it very useful in marinades, because it imparts garlic flavor to the whole thing, but also has little bits of garlic you can bite into.

So that marinated all day. I forgot to buy summer squash, but I cut up about four pounds of potatoes (skin on) and two large zucchini, also skin on. I cut them into thickish quarter-round wedges, and put them in a bowl covered with cold water to keep them from browning.

Later that day, I was worried they’d be getting soggy, so I drained the water off, recalling that I have heard that potatoes that have been doused with cold water will not get discolored even if you drain the water off. I wish I had done this sooner, so I’d have a better idea of how long you can do this in advance of cooking them, but I can say that they will go at least two hours after draining the water off without turning brown. Nice.

I sprayed a couple of giant sheet pans, put the chicken on, and then arranged the potatoes and zucchini in between the chicken. I didn’t pour all the marinade in, but I did fish out the basil and garlic with a slotted spoon and spread that over the chicken. Then I sprinkled the potatoes and zucchini with more garlic powder, onion powder, and salt, and just cooked it undisturbed for about forty minutes.

It doesn’t look glamorous, but it’s really delicious. Probably wouldn’t have hurt to stir up the potatoes and zucchini 20 minutes in, so they’d be more brown on the top; but they had a great little crust and wonderful flavor on the bottom, so no complaints.

The fresh garlic and basil are really pleasant and summery, and the chicken came out super juicy. I’m not a giant zucchini fan, but I remembered to cut it into big enough wedges so it didn’t get slimy, and it was really tasty with the slightly sweet, sharp marinade. Would have been good with some crusty bread to sop up the extra sauce.

If you’re looking for an easy, one-pan meal that’s nice and summery, this is the one!

If you’re looking for something really fantastic to do with zucchini, I recommend this zuchhini agrodulce recipe from Sip and Feast. It’s quite a hassle, but holy wow, it is fantastic. I hope I have time to make this when vacation starts.

FRIDAY
Lemon garlic shrimp pasta

This bag of shrimp I got on sale a few weeks ago has been in the freezer long enough. I had kind of a long argument with the kids wherein they accused me of CONSTANTLY serving shrimp lo mein, which I KNOW is not true, and even if it were, WHO COMPLAINS ABOUT SHRIMP LO MEIN. They were, of course, just yanking my chain, but I just dangle it out there all the time, begging one or more of our innumerable chain-yankers to come yank it.

ANYWAY, I’m not going to make shrimp lo mein. I’m going to make lemon garlic shrimp pasta from Sip and Feast, who claims that it is easy and impressive. I like all those words (lemon, garlic, shrimp, pasta, easy, and impressive, not to mention sip and feast), so I don’t see how this can be bad. The jerks can eat plain pasta with butter, which I will admit is also delicious.

This week the main things I’ve been working on are — well, Millie’s garden and Millie’s fall alert system, to be honest, and also my garden (got the last bits filled in with collard, hooray!) and adding legs to the final piece of salvaged platform, so we can have a little pool deck. I’ve only been to Home Depot three times so far, and I know that’s not going to be enough to satiate the project gods.

Oh, I also did some more work on my wattle fence, which is my pride and joy. It’s very possible it looks stupid and nobody wants to say anything, but I just love it so much. Any time I have more than half an hour free, I get the giant clippers and call the dog, and we go out to the woods and cut down as many saplings as I can drag. Then I sit and trim off all the green and all the twigs, and then I weave what’s left into my fence. It’s deeply satisfying.

I also have an ongoing project that’s less satisfying, and that is putting a lot of energy into not dealing with or even seeing the five trash bags of foam fragments that are in the dining room, which used to be in Corrie’s oversized bean bag chair, and which . . . hey, is there a violent stomach bug going around where you are? Because there is here. All I’m gonna say about that is: If you have a kid who is going through a picky stage and only eats rice for dinner? SOMETIMES THAT’S NOT A BAD THING.

Anyway, we have ONE WEEK OF SCHOOL LEFT, the peonies all burst open the other day, Merlin says there is an indigo bunting somewhere in my yard, and I’m gonna get those legs on that deck if it kills me. And it will! But I plan to die at home, doing what I love (eating pork).

Oh, today is the feast of the Sacred Heart, and I’m thinkin of making this Coeur à la Crème with Blackberry Sauce. I’m thinkin about a lot of things.

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

Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.
Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.
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.
When pork is tender, shred.

One-pan garlicky chicken with potatoes, summer squash, and zucchini

Ingredients

12 chicken thighs
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 tsp ground pepper
1 Tbsp onion powder
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp salt
fresh basil, chopped
more salt, garlic powder, and onion powder for sprinkling

4 lbs potatoes, scrubbed and sliced thickly
6 assorted zucchini and summer squash, washed and sliced into discs with the skin on

Instructions

Combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, garlic, garlic powder, onion, powder, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. Marinate the chicken thighs in this mixture for at least half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Grease two large baking sheets. Arrange the chicken, potatoes, and vegetables on the sheet with as little overlap as possible.
Sprinkle additional salt, onion powder, and garlic powder on the potatoes and vegetables.
Cook about 40 minutes or until chicken is completely done and potatoes are slightly brown on top.

What’s for supper? Vol. 380: How does Scooby Doo end his prayers?

Happy Friday! And goodbye, May. You were a good May.

Yesterday I cleaned out the laundry room, because I got a free dryer on Facebook Marketplace and we’re gonna have to take the back door off to get it in, but we can’t reach the door because there is so much misc in there. Getting something for free made me feel like the universe was out of balance, so I recklessly posted a bunch of stuff to give away myself, so today I get to drive around dropping off pots of butternut squash starts and bags of kid clothes that I suddenly worry are absolute garbage, but I can’t tell because I have nostalgia.

Meanwhile, the other door to the laundry room decided to take itself off, and now randomly sort of LOOMS at people, when all they tried to do was open it. It’s okay, because the kids avoid using that room anyway (it’s our second bathroom, if you’ll recall), because the dryer makes a horrendous squealing noise, and the overhead light flickers kind of menacingly. It does have a little whiff of Gitmo about it, but how long does it take to pee? Big babies. Anyway, we got a new dryer. Well, an old dryer. It’s fine. All manner of things shall be fine.

So here’s what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Chicken nuggets, raw peppers, chips

Shopping day! The plan was chicken burgers, but they didn’t have any, so I got nuggets. I haven’t had a chicken nugget for years. They were really pretty good.

I had a sweet chili sauce with mine and actually really enjoyed this meal.

SUNDAY
Oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, spinach

Sunday I bullied my family into putting the big bridge pieces into place!

You may recall that one big wooden piece tried very hard to kill me and Lena last time I worked on this project. Well, it took seven people to lift each of the two long pieces, which is why progress has been so slow. We each grabbed a support plank and shuffled forward like pall bearers, and at one point, when I pulled my foot out of the muck, part of my sandal refused to come along. But it was just an Aldi sandal, and already smelled of ducks. A small price to pay.

Here is what the marsh looked like before, with just the cinderblocks in place:

and here is how it looks now:

Progress! Still needs some work, obviously. I need to stain some parts (the undersides are all done, though), and fill in a few gaps, and get some more cinderblocks to level it off more, and I need to figure out what kind of transitional piece to add in the front, so you don’t have to step up onto it. You can’t tell from this picture, but the ground slopes pretty sharply down from the arch to the first bridge piece. I have a little set of stairs I might half-bury in the dirt, to get to the first piece.

But it’s SOLID. The cross pieces distribute the weight, and they’re resting on dry ground and/or on cinderblocks, and when you walk on it, there’s no wobble, and it’s all up out of the wet. I’m very pleased.

I also moved the big arch back a bit, to open up the entrance, and added a second arch (it’s hard to see, but it’s there). I have a couple of baby grape vines I’m gonna plant, and the plan is to eventually make a canopy of vines from one arch to the other. In 5-10 years, it’s gonna be just gorgeous. It’s already gorgeous. My plan is always to enhance what’s good about what’s already there, because it’s a lovely, lovely spot.

So! It’s usable and I can do the rest without dragging anyone else into it. The other big thing I want to do before summer vacation starts is to build a very simple little deck using the rest of the wooden pieces I got along with the bridge pieces.

I know they sell hardware specifically for attaching legs onto platforms, so I figure if I just think hard about weight distribution and kind of overbuild everything, I should be able to make something functional, and less awkward than the lifeguard station we currently have.

Sunday I also cleared out my other raised bed, topped it up with lovely compost, made a little support tipi out of last year’s sunflower stalks, and planted my sugar snap peas.

I think it might be too lightweight, but I can always reinforce it with actual sticks at some point. I’m going to put collard greens in the rest of that space, I think. There are some leftover Brussels sprouts that survived the winter, but they already bolted and I think I’ll just rip them out.

I think it must have been Sunday that I finally got the rest of my vegetable starts in the ground. I’m a little unsure about what’s what, because I didn’t weatherproof the labels (next time I’ll use popsicle sticks and pencil!), but I am pretty sure I have pumpkins, butternut squash, I think two kinds of eggplant, and possibly cucumbers, one of those birdhouse gourds, and also garlic and basil in another spot.

It’s all a little too close together, because I meant to expand the bed more than I ended up doing. Oh well. They can fight it out.

No strawberries yet (soon!), and I can’t pick asparagus until next year, and I accidentally let the rhubarb bolt, so I didn’t get much this year. But overall, I am pleased. Gotta finish that wattle fence!

Oops, I forgot to talk about food. Good thing my yard is INCREDIBLY INTERESTING, so you don’t mind. Well, we had oven fried chicken. I started soaking the drumsticks in milk, eggs, and salt in the morning, and then I dredged it in seasoned flour and started cooking it about an hour before dinner. Melt butter and oil in a pan, lay the chicken down, turn it after a while and let it continue cooking, and voila.

I love this recipe. The meat is juicy and tender, the skin is crackly and tasty. I think I honestly prefer it to deep fried chicken, and whoever did clean-up that night definitely preferred it. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

We also had corn on the cob and just plain raw spinach.

Fab warm weather meal. I didn’t even add butter to my corn or dressing to my spinach, because everything was so fresh and nice.

MONDAY
Cookout!

Monday was Memorial Day and we met not one but two boyfriends of daughters. What a to-do! We expected quite a few more people to show up for the cookout than could actually make it, and it did rain like crazy, but we had a nice day anyway, if somewhat lower-key than expected.

I made an incredibly bland potato salad

and then I went a little crackerdog with the fruit salad and made a watermelon swan boat

and Damien grilled up a ton of burgers, and we just had chips and soda and ice cream.

Damien reconfigured his Interchangeable Cinderblock Meat Altar Situation, and now it has more air circulation and more even heat.

He is talking about making an Interchangeable Cinderblock Smoker Situation, too. You may think we’re complete rednecks, but we actually buy our cinderblocks NEW, so you tell me.

TUESDAY
Cookout part 2!

Tuesday I cooked the hot dogs we decided not to bother with on Monday, and we basically just had that meal again, with different meat. No complaints.

Also on Tuesday, I drove the kids to school and every single person who stepped into that car made the same “urk” noise, so I decided it was Time To Find Out What That Smell Was. Got some trash bags, got a pack of baby wipes, set up some music, and prepared myself to launch into a long, arduous search into every nook and cranny to root out the mysterious source of the odor.

I open the door, and right there on the floor is this.

Maybe we are rednecks after all.

WEDNESDAY
Pork ramen

Wednesday I went on a bit of a cleaning rampage and cleared out the mountain of scraps and flowerpots and bits of fencing and old rugs and broken tools that I’d been flinging onto the back stairs. I didn’t take a before picture, but this is the after:

Okay, yes, we are definitely rednecks. I see it now. But we’re rednecks who try! Gonna try to get a dryer up those stairs, that’s what we’re gonna try.(Yes I know I need to do something about all that unfinished wood. It’s on my list. It’s on my list!)

Wednesday I put about three hundred sunflower seedlings into the ground, from seeds I gathered from last year’s most successful flowers. I want PHALANXES of sunflowers this year. I have a long row of them in front of the marsh,

a little sprinkle by the pool where some day lilies appeared, a few next to each light post around the patio, and a line of them in front of the trash enclosure. I also moved the last of the cosmos and zinnia seedlings into pots and found spots for them. I think everything I planted over the winter has a home now!

For supper, I had a hunk of boneless pork whatnot, so I sharpened up my knife and cut it really thin, then pan fried it a little bit, then added a bunch of Chinese five spice and a little soy sauce and finished cooking it. Made a giant pot of ramen, soft boiled some eggs, and served it all up with chopped scallions, sugar snap peas, and spinach, and crunchy noodles.

Delightful. I am steadfastly refusing to find out what good ramen tastes like, because the kind that comes in a case and shrink wrapped in orange plastic is cheap and we like it, and I don’t want to ruin that.

THURSDAY
Pork gyros

Thursday, I cannot even begin to explain how the universe tried to thwart me. Really unprecedented levels of attempted thwarting! I knew it was gonna be a busy day, even pre-thwarting, but I had already cooked all the easy meals for the week, so I started in and prepped pork gyros first thing in the morning.

Here’s the marinade recipe, which is pretty basic but tasty, and it does make the meat super tender

Jump to Recipe

and I made a big bowl of yogurt sauce

Jump to Recipe

Oh! And I finally got to use my mother’s day present from Clara, which is a handmade juicer.

Works GREAT. The ceramic pointy thingy takes way more pressure than plastic, and the spout poured very smoothly, which is harder to design than it looks. She’s getting really good.

Then thing started to go a little bit south. But the upshot is that, against all odds, I got Millie’s replacement fall detection sensor set up and tech support APOLOGIZED TO ME AND SAID I WAS RIGHT. So there! And I was only a few minutes late to the school concert, which they were actually calling a “song showcase,” for reasons which are not entirely clear to me, except that I would not have called that a concert, either. I did get there in time to hear one of the kids say into the microphone, “And [kidname], [kidname], and [kidname] will be our socialists” and the music teacher leaped like an antelope over to that microphone and said, “SOLOISTS.”

This happened mere minutes after our golden haired god hero was unjustly and outrageously convicted on 34 bogus felonies in a banana republic-style kangaroo court with an upside down flag!!!! So IT’S ALREADY HAPPENING TO OUR CHILDREN, just like he warned us. But we did not listen.

The good news is, the gyros were great. A complete mess, but still very delicious.

I made the mistake of trying to open the pita and fill it with meat, rather than rolling the meat up in an intact pita; and I completely forgot to gather fresh mint; and the fries were underdone. But it was extremely late and we were so hungry, and it tasted heavenly.

FRIDAY
Ravioli

The ravioli I promised but did not deliver last week! But accidentally bought sauce for twice, so now we have so much effing sauce! Maybe I can put it on a buy nothing group. Maybe I’ll put myself on a buy nothing group.

I do have these chive blossoms

that are clearly at their peak. I’m not a big fan of infused oils – the bacteria threat worries me – but I think I may try frying them.

Oh! But last night I found a WHOLE OTHER JAR OF MARIGOLD SEEDS.

I may actually offer those on buy nothing, because I don’t know if I have it in me to till anymore ground this year, and every spot that’s open is already sprouting to the max.

Like I said, a good May. Really good May.

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

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.
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.
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.
Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.
Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.
Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

Marinade for pork gyros

Marinate thinly-sliced meat for several hours, then grill over the coals or broil in the oven. Serve wrapped up in pita with cucumbers, tomatoes, french fries, hot sauce, and yogurt sauce. This marinade is enough for about five pounds of meat.

Ingredients

4 medium tomatoes diced and smashed a bit
2 onions grated
2 Tbsp oregano (or a large handful of fresh oregano, chopped)
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup lemon juice
2 Tbsp paprika
12 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
kosher salt and pepper

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 376: Lassi, get help!

Hap the Friday! We had another super busy week, because late April and May are “quick get this in before school ends” time, and then rather than using my free time to get caught up on writing, I made the irrational but irresistible choice to get started on my bog bridge and some other stuff. I cannot tell you how good it is to be outside building again, with all the sounds and smells and busy creatures of spring. I may have shouted, “HELLO, BEAUTIFUL. YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL” at a wasp, who was not impressed. But have you seen the world?

My dear peach tree has more blossoms than I’ve ever seen on it, and the tulips all suddenly popped open yesterday.

Just delightful. I have a very beautiful life.

Here’s what we ate!

SATURDAY
Italian deli sandwiches, chips

Saturday was shopping day, of course, and I opted for nice, easy sandwiches. Baguettes and various salamis and whatnot, plus tomatoes and red pesto, olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper.

The ideal Saturday meal, even if I did forget the basil.

SUNDAY
Rigatoni alla disgraziata

Sunday I dug up some of the yard and put together a little raised bed next to the rhubarb. I’m very pleased with myself for spending zero doll hairs on this.

The border is partly wattle fence harvested from the woods, partly slabs of wood stolen from Damien’s woodpile, and partly rocks that I’m about 83% are not pet grave markers. I filled it with compost from my compost heap, which I’ve haven’t touched all winter. I didn’t do any of the things: Didn’t water it, didn’t turn it, didn’t layer it, whatever. I just dumped anything biodegradable there — soil from other yard projects, food waste, and used duck bedding. I was nervous about digging into it, not knowing if it would be horrible wads of banana peels and eggshells mixed in with sprouting weeds, or what.

Behold, my gorgeous compost:

Isn’t that lovely? It is soooo rich and dark.

I’ll probably plant peas and eggplants in this bed. You can see the strawberries and asparagus are still covered with straw. We can’t really grow much outdoors until the end of May here.

Speaking of eggplant, I had a few eggplants I bought and didn’t use last week, so I made rigatoni alla disgraziata,

Jump to Recipe

which is very tasty and filling. Once I added sausage to this dish, but it just felt like overkill, so this time I made it with just the regular ingredients: Toasted breadcrumbs, chunks of eggplant, pasta, a red sauce, and plenty of cheese (good mozzarella and freshly-grated parmesan on top)

I was actually rushing a bit and undercooked the eggplant slightly, so it wasn’t as soft and well-combined as it could have been, but it was still delicious. I also made a quick sauce to go with it: Sautéed some garlic and onions in olive oil, then added a couple of cans of whole tomatoes, torn up, with the juice; a couple of little cans of tomato paste, some red wine and some water, and red pepper flakes. Savory and lovely.

On Sunday I also discovered that Sonny has been roaming the whole neighborhood, and not just our property, as I foolishly believed. This is not great because the neighbors have a rescue dog who doesn’t think Sonny is charming at all, and in fact wants to kill him. So he’s been having supervised outdoor trips all week, which is exhausting for us and baffling for him; so, it looks like we’re going to spend the weekend making some kind of stupid ass fence out of the snow fence I picked off the side of the road a while back. I was planning to make an enlarged duck pen with the snow fence, but while it turns out the ducks also have been visiting the neighbors, they’re smarter than Sonny, and stay away from ferocious dogs.

in short, we are the problem. Can’t even smooth things over with free duck eggs, because everyone around here has ducks. Perhaps a dozen dog eggs– no no, that’ll never work.

MONDAY
Pork chops, asparagus cheese tart

Monday I had some pork chops, which is not my favorite. Hard to know what to do with them so they don’t dry out. I decided to make a quick sauce using this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats (which is a whole meal with potatoes, but I just made the sauce). I was extremely distracted and the sauce came out really thin, and I didn’t feel like basting the chops, so guess what? The pork chops were dry.

I thought I’d make up for it with a sure-fire side dish, an asparagus tart. This is super easy: You just roll out some puff pastry dough, sprinkle it with shredded cheese (I had gruyère), lay the asparagus on top, and bake it until it’s puffy and lightly browned.

I myself thought it was delicious, but the kids were not terribly impressed. I definitely ate cold, chewy asparagus tart for lunch for the rest of the week, though, so not a total loss.

So this meal fell a little flat

But! I ate it outside under the peach tree with the sparrows and cardinals hollering happily from the bushes, so no real complaints.

TUESDAY
Chicken burgers, vegetables and dip

Tuesday we had appointments in the morning and then an awards ceremony in the evening, so this was a problem only chicken burgers could solve. I did cut up a big tray of vegetables and serve it with dip. Did not take a picture of food; did manage to snap Sophia being recognized for her art.

and it’s a good thing she was recognized, because you wouldn’t be able to do that based on my photography! (She is holding a puppet of the head of her art teacher, who wasn’t able to be there in person.)

WEDNESDAY
Frozen whatnot

Wednesday I swear I was writing some stuff, but then somehow I was out in the woods cutting down young aspens to clip and make into more wattle fence.

Sonny had some business of his own to attend to, but there’s nothing really terrible he can do in that direction, so I let him roam, and then we went back to work on the fence.

This sometimes causes misunderstandings, because at other times, I like to play “No, that’s MY stick! You can’t have it! You give me that stick back!” with Sonny, and he thinks it’s hilarious. But when I’m working on the fence, I really mean it, and it’s very confusing for him. Poor guy.

Anyway, does the fence look elegant and wonderful? Not really! But it’s surprisingly sturdy, and I immensely enjoy sitting on a plastic milk crate (which is the absolute best seat for outdoor work, if you get a real milk crate, not one of those flimsy college dorm storage things) and forcing whippy little branches in out of stakes. It’s like a little puzzle, choosing the right one to go next, and also figuring out if it should go in the front or the back of each stake.

I am now quite sure there is something amiss with my brain, because I have a VERY very hard time with simple alternating patterns. Same thing happens with left/right movements in yoga. Sometimes I just can’t see it, and the harder I push, the more confused I get. Brains are weird. Luckily, this is completely made-up project that I’m doing just because I enjoy it, so I can just go, “Hey, brain-o, you tried” and get back to wattling.

Wednesday we were supposed to go the youth group cookout, but the afternoon quickly devolved into WHY NOT SPEND HOURS DRIVING, INSTEAD? and the kids thought Aldi pizza would save the day. But Aldi, being Aldi, was out of pizza. Well, they had some cauliflower crust pizza, and some pizza with teriyaki chicken or something on it, which. Listen.

So I got a bunch of frozen taquitos and found some pigs in a blanket in the freezer

and nobody was mad. I also bought them soda just because they asked for it. But I got store brand, because I’m still the boss.

THURSDAY
Green masala lamb curry, rice, minty yogurt sauce, mango lassi

Thursday, I got dinner started in the morning. I had bought one of those weird lamb breast plates on sale a while back, so I defrosted that and got it marinating in this green curry from Flavours Of My Kitchen. Not gonna lie, it has a lot of ingredients

and I think I used too much mint. The mint is the weird icy green cubes you see in the bowl, top right, with the jalapeños. I was using some mint I had frozen last fall, so it was hard to judge how much I was using, and I think it overpowered the cilantro a bit. (The other bowl is yogurt with turmeric and salt.) Plus I used black coriander instead of green, which I KNOW is not the same; and also jalapeños are not the right pepper. But I was having fun anyway, because Indian cooking is just a lot of fun.

So I made the curry paste and got the meat marinating, and then, again without making any conscious decisions, I just found myself outside working on the bog bridge. The area looked like this:

The dark part in back is the stream, which is a heavenly spot, but not very easy to get to.

So first I waded in (it’s VERY wet this year) and picked out the trash and pulled out those rotting pallets we laid down a few years ago when it was less wet. And let me tell you, I’m kind of a connoisseur of schlorping sounds, and the schlorp those pallets made when I dragged them out of their muddy home was top notch. Just exquisite.

Well, when it’s done, I’ll probably write a whole other post about my ridiculous process, but the upshot is I DID make progress and I did NOT step on any nails and although I THREATENED to drill a hole in the dog’s head and let the sap run out, I did not follow through.

And when I ran out of outdoor screws, I resisted the urge to use drywall screws, or little random bent nails, or hot glue. Maybe I have learned something after all.

Anyway, I eventually went back inside and scraped a tremendous amount of smelly mud and swamp slime off my legs and got back to dinner. First I warmed up some spices in oil

in the Instant Pot. Then I moved it to a skillet for more space, fried up a bunch of red onions, and then seared the lamb in the onions.

Then I moved it all back to the Instant Pot and pressure cooked it with a little water for 22 minutes on high. Then I moved it back to the skillet to keep warm while I cooked the rice. (This is why I don’t make cooking videos: Because it’s mostly me going, “oh, crap, I need to make rice. Argh” and the fishing a dirty pan out of the sink.)

While the rice was cooking, I decided the curry tasted a little bit harsh, because of my aforementioned ingredient substitutions; so I thought a cooling sauce would help, and added some mint and lemon juice and a little salt to yogurt. Then I thought, speaking of cooling, dang, I could make mango lassi.

Frozen mango chunks are really cheap at Walmart, and I keep them in the house for snacks. Can’t find the lassi recipe I used, but I just threw some frozen mango chunks in the food processor along with a bunch of plain Greek yogurt, some milk, and a little sugar, and blended it until it was smooth and pretty. I couldn’t find my ground cardamom, so I added cinnamon. I think a little lime juice would have been nice, but I didn’t think of it. (If you’re using mango that isn’t frozen, you’ll need to add ice.)

It was a good meal! I found a little jar of coriander chutney, which I adore, and it was just yummy all around.

You can see the mango lassi was nice and thick, based on how alertly that straw is standing at attention. Definitely making lassi again. The kids were enthusiastic.

I will probably take a break from lamb breast plate, though. It is SO fatty, and it’s impossible to eat without being an absolute caveman about it. What meat there was was super tender, though, and juicy like crazy.

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle?

We are going to an awards ceremony for Moe this time, so I’m not sure who is eating what and where. The kids did say they’d make themselves tuna noodle if I got the ingredients.

And that’s it! I’ll end this on a musical note. Corrie is going to her first dance (she’s in third grade, so I guess this is going to be a pretty wholesome event) and they asked kids to list their most-wished-for songs. Here is her list:

She is available to DJ your wedding. Must be fed mango lassis.

Rigatoni alla disgraziata

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

In a very large skillet or pot, heat up a little olive oil and toast the bread crumbs until lightly browned. Remove from pan and set aside.
Put the 3/4 cup of olive oil in the pan, heat it again, and add the cubed eggplant. Cook for several minutes, stirring often, until eggplant is soft and slightly golden. Salt to taste. Add in sauce and stir to combine and heat sauce through. Keep warm.
In another pot, cook the rigatoni in salted water. Drain. Add the pasta to the eggplant and sauce mixture. Add in the toasted breadcrumbs and the shredded mozzarella. Stir to combine. Serve with grated parmesan on top.

What’s for supper? Vol. 374: In which we all forge ahead

Happy Friday! Pretty straightforward meals this week, because everything else was complicated enough. Spring is undeniably here, finally, even though there are still a few sodden, grimy hills of snow lurking about here and there. Every tree has a little halo of high green or red, right on the verge of exploding into true green. I see my peonies wriggling their peculiar dark red stalks up out of the soil, and the first of the daffodils have bloomed, and most of the crocuses. The tulips are biding their time, and so are the day lilies, irises, and lilies of the valley. The lupines are back, and maybe they’ll even flower this year. Sedum is raring to go, cat mint is forging ahead, and I’m forcing myself to wait before I uncover the strawberries and asparagus, but I have high hopes. Lots of buds on the apple trees and the mock orange and the lilacs, and yes, on the peach tree!

I made a little progress on my wattle fence, this time trying a bunch of aspen saplings. The first row was a variety of things, grapevine and misc., and those turned out to be too thin. I probably should have pulled that part out and started over, but I just compressed the first row and started weaving branches on top of it. The result would definitely get me kicked out of even the least discerning medieval guild, but it is SO MUCH FUN, and it is sturdy, so I think it will keep soil in, which is my goal.

My compost heap looks rich and lovely, and I have squash, pumpkin, eggplant, and pea seedlings ready to move once the danger of frost has passed (in about a month!), and I think I bought some gem glass corn seeds, and probably a bunch of other stuff I bought on whims. I have to go out and cut down a ton more wood for the fence, which is also extremely enjoyable. Tromping around on the old, dry sticks of last year and seeking out what’s new and useful for the spring, wow. Sonny comes along and frolics, which he believes to be helpful, which it kind of is. I bought some more grape vines and some blueberry bushes on clearance at Walmart (what a world), too. Go go go!

I also got some poppy roots, and I feel like this year is the year I will finally be able to grow poppies, unlike the other six times I attempted it. I’ve been using my most excellent hori hori garden knife to plant things

which was a birthday or Christmas present, I forget which. I love this thing so much. It bites right into the ground and you give it a little twist and excavate a precise little hole, exactly where you want it. As you can see, it’s marked with measurements so you can get to the right depth. Wonderful tool.

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

Saturday I just went shopping and we had Aldi pizza for supper. Damien spent his weekend writing and working on various cars. We don’t have babies anymore; instead, we have ducks and cars.

SUNDAY
Chicken enchiladas

I was toying with the idea of putting enchilada filling in empanadas, but the kids told me that when I take a meal that everyone likes and then MESS with it, it’s upsetting. So I just made enchiladas. My enchiladas are what they are. Every time I mention them, someone who grew up near the southern border expresses polite amazement that I am calling these “enchiladas,” so instead I will call then “my kids eat theses.” Which is what I was going for!

Anyway, I basically follow Pioneer Woman’s recipe, except I use flour tortillas and I don’t brown them. So it’s just seasoned chicken (I actually used thighs, not breasts) browned up

and then shredded (don’t forget you can use your mixer to shred meat)

and then a ton of onions,

which I cooked slowly in the chickeny pan (and yes, PW is one of those people who directs you to caramelize onions in 4-5 minutes. I will never do this to you. It took at least half an hour, and I hurried it).

Then I shredded a bunch of cheese, dipped the tortillas in enchilada sauce, and rolled up the chicken, onions, and cheese in the tortillas, and laid it in a saucy pan, and then poured more sauce on top, and then sprinkled more cheese and cumin and chili powder on top.

I think you’re supposed to just roll up enchiladas, but I always forget this and tuck the ends in as I roll, like for a burrito. Whatever. I made a whole bunch of them, some red, some green, and served them with cilantro and sour cream, and they were yummy.

It was a chilly, rainy day, and these Authentic Mexican Kid-eat-ums hit the spot.

MONDAY
Kielbasa, potato, and Brussels sprouts one-pan meal; adults went out

Monday I heard the cry of my people for kielbasa, and made this easy and popular one-pan meal

Jump to Recipe

In the morning, just to signal to myself that I was serious, I put out the bag of red potatoes, the packages of Brussels sprouts, and the kielbasa, and the savage and carnivorous cat immediately pounced on . . .

the Brussels sprouts. Beware, o thou cruciferous ones! There will be no peace for you with this mighty hunter prowling abroad.

I made up the honey mustard garlic sauce, which you can add halfway through cooking, or reserve for dipping at the end. Or you can put half of it on halfway through cooking and use the rest for dipping. Be like the cat and follow your heart.

I made two big pans. This is both pans combined; you will want them to have more space to cook when you’re making it.

You can also make this dish with wedges of cabbage, which I prefer; but the kids like Brussels sprouts better. I didn’t get a vote because Damien and I went out to eat, which we haven’t done in a WHILE. We wanted to try this newish taco place in town, but it closed at 8, which, what do I know. Maybe that’s a reasonable time for a taco place to close. So we went to Mi Jalisco, which has decent Mexican food but sometimes incredibly slow service. I mean like a few times when we went, we honestly thought they forgot about us. Anyway this time it was slowish, but not terrible. Gosh, this is a boring story.

Anyway, Damien got carne asada and I got some kind of shrimp and mushroom dish, which was tasty.

I wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce the name of this dish, which I confessed to the waiter, and he said he didn’t either. Let us all take a moment and salute the intrepid white guy working at a Mexican restaurant, just sweating and doing his best and forging ahead.

TUESDAY
Chicken on salad

Tuesday I felt the need to reintroduce the family to green vegetables, so we had roast chicken on salad, with feta cheese, toasted almonds, and dried cranberries.

A decent meal that was elevated by IT BEING WARM ENOUGH OUTSIDE TO EAT OUTSIDE.

There are lilies popping up in those planters, and I have a bunch of marigold and morning glory and zinnia seedlings waiting to be transplanted. ALMOST. ALMOST time.

On Wednesday night, I prepped some pork for tomorrow’s meal, so it could brine itself overnight. I mixed together a cup of sugar and a cup of salt and rubbed that all over a hunk of fatty pork shoulder, wrapped it up, and put it in the fridge.

WEDNESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, pineapple

Around noon, I unwrapped the pork and put it, uncovered, in a pan in a 300 oven. I was so pleased with myself for planning this out, because I had an interview in the morning, and then the afternoon was …. well, it took many revisions, but the final form was:

Damien takes the kids to school, Elijah takes my car to class and on the way home, picks up Lucy who had early release because of PSATs; Lena takes Damien’s car to work; Damien takes my car and drops off me and Elijah at U-Haul; I drive the rented truck back and Elijah drops my car off for Damien; Lucy and Elijah and I go and get the free wood, and stop and get ice cream because I felt bad about ruining their day, because that wood was frickin heavy; Sophia walks to work; Corrie goes into aftercare and Benny goes to the library, and Lena drives herself home from work and then picks them both up; I stop home and dragoon Irene, who got home on the bus, into helping to unload the wood; then I return the truck and Elijah picks me up at U-Haul with my car, I text Lena to press the “rice” button on the Instant Pot, and we pick up Sophia from work and then we GO HOME.

My car now has FOUR warning lights lit up, and one of them is flashing, but WE WILL GET TO IT. By which I mean Damien. My job is to wring my hands and fret, and then Damien fixes the car while I think about fun projects I can do.

Anyway, by the time we all got home, the rice was just about cooked, and the meat was ready for its final step, which is just a little extra sauce and then high heat for ten minutes.

I lost my phone, so I don’t have a pic, but here’s a previous finished bo ssam:

Here’s the whole recipe, such as it is, in one spot:

Mix together a cup of sugar and a cup of salt, and rub this all over a fatty pork shoulder.
Wrap it up in plastic and put it in the fridge overnight.
Six hours before you want to eat, turn the oven to 300, line a pan with at least two layers of tin foil and put the pork in, fatty side up. (Don’t bother to transfer all the salt and sugar, except what’s clinging to the meat.)
Cook the meat, uncovered for six hours.
Ten minutes before you want to eat, mix together seven tablespoons of brown sugar, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, and a sprinkle of sea salt, and rub this paste all over the top of the meat and crank the oven up to 500.
Serve whole, and people can pull off bits and shreds of meat and wrap it in lettuce, with rice.

If you want a more detailed recipe and you want to make a truly delicious sauce and sides to go with it, check out My Korean Kitchen’s recipe. This dish is VERY salty and sweet, so it’s good to have rice and something cooling to go with it, like mango. I had pineapple, which was decent (although I’m one of those “wow, I love pineapple, but it’s crazy how it’s such a popular fruit even though makes everyone’s mouth itchy and their lips swell up” people. Don’t care, love pineapple, forging ahead).

So, the WOOD I got used to be a small deck and a wheelchair ramp. So I now have three long, thin sections which will go a long way toward the bog bridge I keep talking about, to bridge this area, which is much wetter than it looks

and the rest of the wood is three or four square sections which I think will make a lovely pool deck. Right now, there are two ways to get into the pool: On a rickety ladder that is embarrassingly slightly narrower than my hips, or via a cannibalized wooden swing set I put together a few years ago. The swing set thing has worked well enough — mainly I wanted something I could sit on and act as lifeguard, without having to be in the pool myself — but it does have some structurally necessary pieces of wood that make it extremely awkward to enter and exit. SO, I’m going to add some legs to the square pieces and bolt them onto the lifeguard thing, and IN THEORY, we will have an actual deck. Or not. Probably yes, though!

Anyway, it turns out I am old, and driving a gigantic scary truck for two hours and lugging extremely heavy wood around is my limit for the day, and I was chatting with Benny after dinner and apparently dozed off mid-sentence, and she turned off the light and tiptoed away, and I spent the next hour drooling all over my own face until the evening screaming and quacking brought me back to the land of the living.

You know what, those ducklings are jusssssst about old enough to move outside. I really like them, but dang, they are loud, and smelly.

Look how big they got! Annie is the one with the mostly white chest, and Bebe is the one with more spots.

Annie started to quack a few days ago, but Bebe is still meep-meep-meeping. The cat is okay with them (I encouraged them from day one to spend time together, because it seemed like less work than constantly being on alert to keep them from killing each other; and yes, they were all equally at risk), but I think he will be relieved when they move out.

THURSDAY
Hamburgers and chips

Nothing to report. Actually I have to report that the Dollar Store version of Pringles are really, really terrible.

And they’re not even a dollar! Everything is $1.25 now, except there is also an aisle where things are $3 or even $5. What a world (derogatory).

The burgers were fine, though. We ate really early because we had one final family faith formation parent meeting for the year. I was kind of scratching my head over why we didn’t manage to make it to more meetings, and then I realized we spent the year getting Corrie prepped for first confession and first communion and confirmation, which is not all supposed to be in one year! So we ended up missing a lot of the classes which were directed at families who were not prepping kids for sacraments.

This is our first year doing whole family faith formation, and I must grudgingly admit that it’s kind of brilliant. Gonna write that up in a bit.

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

Or maybe we will all just go outside and graze on free wood. I sure have a lot of free wood. This is the view from my bedroom window:

No ragrets! But I might treat myself to a cordless impact driver, which Ryan says I will want, and Ryan is usually right.

I am HOPING to have one or both of these projects (bog bridge and pool deck) done by July 4th, but if I had to pick one, I would pick the bog bridge; but I think MAYBE I can do both. I did manage to get my brick patio done by July 4th last year, if you’ll recall. (Yes, I was laying bricks in the dark while weeping on the evening of July 3rd, but I did get it done!) I got this wood from a fellow who said he had been planning to make a koi pond in his back yard, but never got around to it, so I’m gonna forge ahead on his behalf.

Okay, I think that’s it. I shall pray for all you cheesebags at adoration (right after I swing by the school and drop off the overnight bag I forgot to pack for the kid who’s going on a sleepover, oops).

UPDATE: Corrie remembered on her own to pack bags! Three of them! Meep meep meep! All the ducklings growing up. Everybody forging ahead.

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400.

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

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

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

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

Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish.

What’s for supper? Vol. 373: Little lamb, who ate thee?

Happy Friday! This week at our house was A DOOZY. Possibly multiple doozies. Luckily, most of it was scheduled dooze, except for both cars having issues (my sliding door stopped closing, and one of Damien’s tires blew out spectacularly, and also his alternator lost its will to alternate) and also Damien has been working on Dora’s car, so, you remember how Damien once added “and cheese” to every item on my shopping list? It was like that, except every day had “and everybody needs a ride” added to it.

BUT IT IS SPRING. And that counts for so much! We had a big snowstorm last week, but it slowly warmed up over the weekend, and it’s been raining for a few days, so the snow is now mostly gone.

I tried THREE new recipes this week and a new decorating technique, and Corrie had TWO sacraments, and NO ducks died, although some of them tried to kill each other. I think there is a dead mouse somewhere in the WALLS. And we are having SPAGHETTI for supper. We are all pretty TIRED. But it is spring, for real!

SATURDAY
Pizza?

Saturday I did a monstrous shopping because I skipped shopping last week. I feel like there was something else big going on, but I don’t remember what. We had just regular pizza.

SUNDAY
Banh mi, german chocolate cake

Sunday we celebrated Lena’s birthday! They had pork belly on sale at Aldi, so I poked around for recipes and decided to try the Crispy Pork Belly Banh Mi from Recipe Tin Eats, because Nagi has never failed to delight, and also because, despite our best efforts, we still had chopped liver in the house.

Before I forget, here is my chopped liver recipe. Chicken livers are cheap and this is an easy recipe. Why not make up a bunch, separate it into servings, and keep some in the freezer in case of banh mi? I think you should.

So, pork belly is the cut of meat that’s made into bacon. If fat upsets you, you will not like this recipe! But if you are someone who has fond and lavish imaginings of what could possibly be meant by “crispy pork belly,” then I urge you to give this a shot. It was magnificent. And easy! But it did take some planning.

You have to let the meat dry out in the fridge overnight, or at least several hours. Then you rub the flesh side with oil, kosher salt, white pepper, and Chinese five spice, and make a sort of foil packet to enclose the sides and bottom, so none of the juice will escape while it’s cooking. Then you cook it in a low oven for two hours.

You’re supposed to check it halfway through and tighten up the foil, because it shrinks as it cooks, but I forgot. The pork will have changed shape at this stage, so you level it off by putting balls of tinfoil under the lower side.

Then you turn the oven way up to 465 and let it brown up for about half an hour, rotating it halfway through and using foil to protect any spots that are browning too fast. You salt it at some point, but I forget when.

Sooo, here is how it came out:

ooooh.

Probably could have let it get a little browner, but I really have no regrets.

This particular dish is meant to be cut into chunks, rather than shredded, so I cut it up

and served it on toasted baguettes with mayo, cilantro, pickled carrots, cucumbers, jalapeños, chopped liver (paté) and the wonderful, velvety sauce suggested in the recipe (hoisin sauce, coconut milk, and a little soy sauce), and also some crunchy fried onions from a can.

Amazing. Pretty different from the banh mi I usually make, which has fish sauce and is a different texture.

Jump to Recipe

This was sweeter and less bitey but also richer and more complex. An excellent, excellent sandwich, and the sauce was so good. I did make the pickled carrots using her recipe, and I think I prefer mine, which are less sweet,

Jump to Recipe

but it was a negligible difference.

The pork belly chunks were sublime. The fat layer on top was salty and crackly, and the flesh inside was so juicy and succulent, and it had layers of fat inside that were meltingly tender. No chewiness in any part, and each individual piece of meat was, I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but almost like a layered sandwich in itself. So it was like a sandwich full of little baby sandwiches. Not, uhhhhh, an everyday food, for a variety of reasons. But I enjoyed it so much.

And I made a cake! I decided to use the Tastes Better From Scratch recipe for German Chocolate Cake. I actually made the two frostings on Saturday, to save time, but then left them sitting on the stove all night by mistake. One has egg in it, and I wasn’t crazy about the texture anyway, so I decided to remake it. Because I was being smart.

I then proceeded to be very dumb and decided that, when I got to the part of the cake recipe where you add a cup of boiling water to the batter, I would use a metal measuring cup without a handle.

Do you know, boiling water is hot? I didn’t realize this. So I basically tipped a little water in and then shrieked and flung the measuring cup into the moving mixer, with predictable results

So I wiped down every single surface of every single thing that was in the kitchen and then I remade the coconut pecan frosting. I made a double recipe of the cake, and it came out, like so many of us these days, a little too fragile. Also the chocolate frosting was so thick, you couldn’t really spread it, but you could squish it, so that is what I did. So the resulting cake looks a little like someone held it at shoulder level and then dropped it

but everyone assured me it was delicious! You have to agree, this is definitely a lot of cake. I have finally started on Emgality, so who knows, maybe some day I will have chocolate again, and find out for myself.

MONDAY
Eclipse!

Monday, if you recall, was the eclipse! We were in the 95% range, and we’ve seen a partial eclipse before; so I decided to excuse the kids from school and hop in the car to see totality. Our goal was St. Johnbury, VT, which is normally about two hours away. It took about 3.5 hours, so I deployed the car DVD player, which is reserved for the longest trips, and we watched Ice Age, which holds up, at least if you’re only listening to it.

We were thrilled to see clear skies, and it was one of the warmest days of the year so far, so we felt very lucky. Staked out a spot, ate our sandwiches, checked out the craft tables and information booths, and then the moon started to steal across the sun, and then . . .

I don’t know if you guys realize this, but the sun is what is making us alive, and when it gets covered up, things change DRAMATICALLY and IMMEDIATELY. We went from sweating in the sun to shivering, and the light was . . . not twilight, like when the sun is going down. It also wasn’t “there’s a storm brewin'” light. It was light I have never seen before in my life, and there above me were immense heavenly bodies silently moving themselves in a completely new way. Everybody stood up. People shouted and cried out. I wept. It was quiet and cold. I don’t know what to say.

I did take a few pictures

but of course they aren’t anything like what it was like. Neither, I may say, are the dramatic, high resolution pictures that people have been sharing. If you haven’t seen a total eclipse, it is simply not like anything else.

We did bring a colander and use it as a pinhole projector to make the little crescent shapes before totality.

Strange, strange stuff. The whole thing was just so strange. And it was just the sun, and the moon! The sun and the moon, that we already know about and have lived with all these years. If this is how strange the physical world can get, it makes you wonder what other surprises may be in store. Phew. Phew. Quite a day.

Lots of people turned right around and zipped off to their cars the very second totality was over, but we hung out and kind of caught our breaths, and then headed over to the Fairbanks Museum, which is a strange little natural history museum full of taxidermy and cultural oddities from all over the world. I enjoyed every bit of it, including the document hand written by Robert Louis Stevenson deeding his birthday over to a little local girl who had the misfortune of having been born on Christmas. Sweet man.

Oh, I forgot to mention that just before totality, we saw strange ruby-red gems of light on the bottom edge of the sun. These turned out to be something called Bailey’s Beads, and it is the sunlight leaking out between the crags of the moon just before the moon moves totally over the sun.

So after the museum, we plunged back into traffic and spent another 3.5 hours getting home. We watched Help on the way back, and Corrie lost a tooth, and we sampled Wendy’s Orange Dreamsicle Frosties (exactly what you’d expect), and then we came home and collapsed.

TUESDAY
Chicken burgers, chips

Tuesday I was like, wow, I’m not even that tired. I got the kids to school, took one kid to a rather fraught doctor appointment, cleaned out the car for the first time in months because Corrie lost her tooth and then lost it again, and was pretty distraught about it; and then I decided that it was time to do something about the duck house, which was in a truly shocking state. And then I thought I would sit down for a minute, and of course I fell asleep. SO asleep. So ASLEEP. It was such a deep nap, I feel like I’m still waking up several days later. Man.

So yes, chicken burgers and chips for supper. It was finally warm enough to eat outside, so that is what I did!

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, fries

Wednesday was the rehearsal for Corrie’s First Communion and confirmation right around supper time, so I got Elijah to manage supper and we got it done! Wednesday was supposed to be nachos for supper, but I had so many other things to do, we didn’t even have time for that, so hot dogs.

After dinner, I made a cake for the next day – just a box mix, which are really quite good these days. I made some kind of white cake that uses just egg whites.

THURSDAY
Qeema and rice with minty sour cream and coriander chutney; white cake

Thursday I just . . . didn’t want to make nachos. I don’t know why. So I went back to Recipe Tin Eats begging for a ground beef recipe, and dear Nagi said I could make qeema.

I’m telling you, that lady does not miss. I minced up a bunch of garlic and ginger, cooked that a bit, added finely diced onion, cooked it some more, and then added the ground beef along with kosher salt, cayenne pepper, garam masala, cumin, coriander, and turmeric, and browned up the meat. Then you just add some water and simmer it until most of the water evaporates.

And that’s it! I set up some rice in the Instant Pot for Damien to start while I got the kids, and I wanted to make some yogurt sauce, but since I had been planning nachos, I had bought sour cream, and we didnt’t have yogurt. So I defrosted a couple of the mint cubes I had put away last fall

and stirred that in with the sour cream (I froze them with a little olive oil. I also found a bottle of coriander chutney in the cabinet and chopped up some cilantro, and IT WAS ALL DELICIOUS.

Definitely making this meal again. I told the kids it was like Korean Beef Bowl

Jump to Recipe

except Indian, which is sort of true, but also kind of a silly thing to say. It was not spicy, but was absolutely bristling with garlic and ginger, which I love. Just a wonderful, warm, homey taste, and the sauce from the meat soaked right into the rice and made the whole thing savory and good, and so nice with the cool chutney and minty sour cream. Great meal, and really quick (or a great make-ahead meal).

I also realized that I’m very tired of not really knowing how much meat I actually have (the ground beef was in a ziplock bag from last week, after I divided a giant package and used the first part on areyes. So I got a cheap kitchen scale, and I’m looking forward to seeing if this improves my baking, too, if I can measure dry ingredients by weight rather than volume. Probably not! I think I’m just a mediocre baker, and I’m mostly okay with that. But who knows, maybe this will change everything. Anyway, I’ll know how much meat I have.

We ate really early and then headed off for Corrie’s confirmation and First Holy Communion!

Bunch of pictures here.

It was lovely. Just lovely. Clara was her sponsor, and she chose the name Casilda, who is a saint she learned about from Meg Hunter-Kilmer’s excellent book Saints Around the World. It didn’t ring a bell at the time, but Saint Casilda of Toledo is the subject of this famous painting by Francisco de Zurbaran

which was the reference for a painting by Roméo Mivekannin which we saw in person a few months ago at the Currier Museum in Manchester.

We do get around.

For the cake, I often make a stained glass cake for sacrament parties. You cover the cake in royal icing to make a stable surface, let it dry, pipe lines in black, and the carefully fill them in with various jellies whipped up with a little water. This isn’t the greatest example, but it gives the general idea:

I wanted to try something different, so I frosted the cake and then melted some white candy melts and just kind of dabbed them onto parchment paper

When they were dry, I peeled them off and arranged them into a flower.

I thought it was pretty, if a little rough; but it didn’t really say “Catholic” to me. First I attempted to make crosses out of candy melt. They looked pretty terrible when I cut them out with a knife; and when I tried to use a cookie cutter, they kept breaking when I tried to release them. So I found some gum paste and

behold, it’s THE LITTLE LAMBY OF GOD.

This is the cutest religious cake I have ever made. Corrie loved it, and I’m happy to have a new way to decorate cakes. I see many possibilities.

I’ve been on a poem-printing kick lately. I follow several poets and poetry lovers on social media, and the printer has been amazingly obliging lately (= it prints things???), so any time something strikes my fancy, I print it out and stick it to the wall. Here’s The Lamb by William Blake, if you’d like to do the same. When we were at the Fairbanks and I pointed out the Robert Louis Stevenson document to the kids, I reminded them that he was the one who wrote At the Sea-Side (“When I was down beside the sea/A wooden spade they gave to me…”) which is the poem that’s been hanging in the bathroom for several years, and my favorite poem of all time; and one of my kids said, “Oh, I have it memorized. I stare at it every time I take a dump!” So I guess you could say [looks smugly at fingernails] I really know my stuff, parent-wise.

And now, my friends, all ten of my children have been baptized and confirmed and they’ve all been to confession and received Communion. And they’ve memorized at least one poem. I’m not saying my work is done, but it sure feels like a milestone.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti?

I believe we’re having spaghetti. I gotta clean up the kitchen from yesterday (it was Benny’s turn, but we got home so late), and the ducklings are meep-meep-meeping and the dog is whining and I’m still in my pajamas and there are things overdue and there simply isn’t time for it all, but I am so glad for my life. What a life!

And look at my flowers, which did NOT DIE.

The greens are daffodils and possibly red tulips, I don’t remember. Some of my winter sowing jugs are finally poking out of the dirt. And the buds on my peach tree look fine! We had a freeze and I was rushing around in the dark, draping sheets over things and weeping, as one does, but it looks like everything survived.

Happy Friday! I’ll pray for yez all at adoration this afternoon.

Korean Beef Bowl

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.
Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.
Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds.

5 from 1 vote

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

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

Veggies and dressing

carrots
cucumbers
vinegar
sugar
cilantro
mayonnaise
Sriracha sauce

Instructions

Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can.
Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight.
Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler.
Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread.

5 from 1 vote

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved.
Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!
Add them to the brine so they are submerged.
Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

What’s for supper? Vol. 371: St. Joseph’s Pizza!

Happy Friday! I’m going through my food photos and noticing that we are not doing great with the part of Lent where you don’t eat a lot. But really, there are two whole other important pillars of Lent. To wit: Praying, and giving alms. And those are going very, you know what, mind your own business.

Here’s what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Chicken burgers, chips

Saturday I went shopping, of course, so we just had chicken burgers and chips for supper. I did make a second batch of maple syrup, even smaller than the last one, though.

Annnd I may have overcooked it a skosh.

I was planning an Irish breakfast for Sunday, which was St. Patrick’s day. But I couldn’t find sourdough bread at either supermarket, so I decided to try making my own. In my usual thorough researchly fashion, I Googled “sourdough bread without a starter” and clicked on the first recipe that popped up. Started the dough and set it to rise in a warm spot (in the box of socks in the laundry room, which is over a heating vent) overnight.

I also, feeling very pleased with myself for all the things I was getting done, put both ice cream bowls in the freezer for the next day.

I also rented a pickup truck for the next day, so I could pick up an amazing offer from Facebook marketplace: Two docks, one 8×8 feet, one 16×4 feet, and the long skinny one had a handrail!!! Free!!!! And only about half an hour away.

The reason I wanted these was because I’m planning to build a bog bridge over the swampy area of the yard so we can get to the stream more easily. I had thrilling plans of using the long dock as a sturdy entrance point to the bridge, and the square one as a sort of floating deck halfway there, and I was thinking of adding birdhouses and solar-powered lights and geraniums in terra cotta pots, and a couple of tasteful deck chairs, and it would be such a lovely little project that would really transform that part of the property, and I was feeling incredibly lucky to have been the first one to jump on the offer, and they were really well-made, solid docks with no rotten wood, and it was all coming together!

You can probably tell, based on how excited I am about this, that it all went to hell. It really, really did. Read on!

SUNDAY
Irish breakfast, maple walnut ice cream

Sunday we went to Mass, I started some maple walnut ice cream going, using the syrup I had made yesterday, which I warmed up in a pot of water until it was soft enough to stir. (Here’s a similar ice cream recipe, and just ignore the part about coconut cream, and instead add 1/4 cup maple syrup, and then stir in some chopped walnuts after you churn it)

Jump to Recipe

I also made a batch of chocolate chip ice cream (same base, but add chocolate chips). Jammed those in the freezer and headed out to get my wonderful docks.

Okay. So. I really can’t stand to revisit every last horrible detail, but it included a woman screaming “STOP!” and a man shouting, “What are you DOING??” and then when we got past that part and found the right field instead of the Very Wrong Field, there was a long spell where Damien and I were standing in the rain in that field, coming up with every last possible scenario we could that might possibly end up with us loading up these docks and bringing them home.

When we got to the part where I suggested going back home, getting our mini chainsaw and as many teenagers as we could find, and then using all our might to load the hacked-up pieces of dock into the truck and making maybe five or six trips to get it home, and then returning the pickup truck to U-Haul on time, we just kind of looked at each other and said, ” . . . Yeah, no.”

It was sad. It was tragic. But the fact is, we really needed a winch and a flatbed for this job. I did call a flatbed company and had a short argument with the dispatcher, but when they finally called back, I missed the call, and that was the final chapter in a long and stupid story called “It Was Just Not Meant To Be.”

So I went home and cried a little bit, to be honest with you, because I really wanted those docks, and also I felt like I was the dumbest person in the world because nothing every works out, boo hoo hoo, and the maple syrup was all my fault, and I had forgotten to buy potatoes for the Irish breakfast, and then I fetched the dough for the alleged soda bread that had been rising for 20 hours, and it was . . . in keeping with the rest of my efforts that day.

HOWEVER, I baked what I had, and they turned out somewhat reminiscent of bread.

Damien made the bacon, and we actually had a really tasty meal. I roasted some mushrooms with — I don’t remember, probably garlic, salt, pepper, butter, oil, and then some lemon juice at the end, and I roasted some tomato halves with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

I cut the bread into thick little wedges

and I heated up some baked beans, and then I fried a bunch of duck eggs in bacon grease, and yes, all together it was delicious.

Even without potatoes.

But! The ice cream didn’t freeze! I don’t know why! Maybe my freezer is overstuffed and the bowls are not getting sufficiently chilled. What can one say. Begorrah. We definitely ate it anyway, but it was more like a thin milkshake than ice cream.

MONDAY
Mussel lo mein

Monday I was pretty ready to have everything go better, and it did. Aldi was selling pouches of cooked mussel meat for $3 a pound a while back, so I pulled those out of the freezer and let them defrost while I did yoga. My sprained (or whatever) ankle was finally feeling well enough to do a full class again, so that was nice; and the cat stole one of the bags of mussels but did not manage to open it, so that was also nice!

At dinner time, I boiled three pounds of linguine, and started the lo mein with minced garlic and ginger, then added diced red onion and sugar snap peas, and then the mussels,

and then I put in 2/3 of the pasta and the sauce, and it was a lovely lo mein.

I served the rest of the pasta plain, for people who prefer that.

The lo mein was so good. I adore this recipe. It’s so fast and easy, and just delicious, and you can put whatever you want in it.

TUESDAY
Pizza, cannoli

Tuesday I had to face the fact that, even though I love St. Joseph very much, I had just plain forgotten that it was his feast day. Most years, we do a big Italian feast, but we were pretty zonked this week, so I just made pizza.

I did make a pretty deluxe pizza for the wild card one (I generally make one pepperoni, one plane, and one wild card pizza): Fresh garlic, roast tomatoes (left over from the Irish meal), spinach, anchovies, artichoke hearts, and black olives.

Ahem:

I can see a new horizonUnderneath the blazin’ sky.I’ll be where the sauce is flyin’(Not Srebenica!)

Gonna be your mom in motionAll I need’s this bag of cheese.Take me where my future’s lyin’St. Joseph’s pizza!

Look, the original song doesn’t make any sense, either.

We also happened to have cannoli shells in the house, which Damien grabbed months ago because they aren’t always in stores, so you get them while you can. I made a basic filling (ricotta cheese, vanilla, cinnamon, and powdered sugar) and piped it into the shells, then decorated them with rainbow sprinkles.

Not actually very swanky (I didn’t have time to let the filling drain, so it was kinda wet), but heyyy. St. Joseph. Not Srebenica.

WEDNESDAY
Butter chicken, rice, dal

Wednesday was duckling day! We ordered them a while back, thinking they would arrive after Easter when things had “”””””calmed down a little,”””””” but in fact they came on Wednesday. Here they are, noisily waiting in the post office to be picked up

The last batch of ducks we got were named after some of Damien’s great uncles, E.J., Coin, Fay, and Ray; so these ones are named after my paternal grandmother, Annie, and her sisters Mickey and Bebe.

They’re a little confused

but quite winsome

Here’s a couple of videos from the first and second day, meeting the rest of the animals.

They are Black Swedish ducks, and their personalities are somewhat different from the last little flock we got, which are pekin ducks. They are less sleepy and more jumpy, and they already look more duck-shaped than the pekins did at this age. (The pekins were just fuzzy blobs for about a week, but these guys have discernible necks already.)

Last time, we got a straight run, meaning nobody had figured out yet what sex they are. We ended up with two boys and two girls, which is not ideal (there are some power struggles). So this time we paid extra to get them sexed, and these are all girls. They’re supposed to be friendly and cold-hearty and good foragers, and the shells of their eggs will be a darker, bluish shade. This is what they will look like as adults.

One of my upcoming projects is to make a better fence, because our current flock finds it very easy to escape, and they’ve been roaming all over the property and also off the property, and we’re not really sure if everyone else finds them as charming as we do. They do get plenty of exercise this way, and nobody has eaten them yet.

Anyway! Still had to make supper, and the menu said butter chicken and dal. I’ve never had or even seen, much less made dal before. I followed the recipe in Julie Sahni’s cookbook, except I think I had the wrong kind of lentils. It said yellow or pink, and I had ones that were kind of orangey and are called “football lentils.”

Anyway it was a super easy recipe. You just simmer the lentils in water with turmeric until they’re tender,

whisk them until they’re blended (that was fun), and then at the end, add some oil that you’ve browned a bunch of sliced garlic in.

I think it came out much thicker than it’s supposed to be — more of a paste than anything you could conceivably sip — but it was DELICIOUS.

The butter chicken is also so easy. You just have to start early (or the night before) so it can marinate, but then I followed this recipe from RecipeTinEats, except I accidentally bought vanilla yogurt instead of plain, so I used sour cream instead. Worked great. You just cook up the chicken, then put in your tomato, cream, salt, and sugar, and let it simmer a bit longer.

I ended up with a lot more sauce than we needed for the chicken (possibly it was thinner because it was sour cream instead of yogurt? I don’t know), but better too much than too little.

I sure wish I had some naan or some other kind of bread, but I was — well, to be honest, I was tired because I was so excited about the ducks. So I just made a big pot of rice to go with it. Set out some more cilantro and there it was.

Such a nice, lovely meal. I ate so much. Just about everybody likes butter chicken. The dal was not a huge hit, but I myself loved it, so I’m probably going to try again on a day when I can also make naan, and maybe I can talk them into it that way.

THURSDAY
Banh mi, Doritos

Thusday we had banh mi, which we haven’t had for quite some time, because the smell is a bit of a trial for some people who live in this house.

I made a very slight tweak in the marinade

Jump to Recipe

(running the cilantro through the food processor, rather than just chopping it up coarsely) and I liked it, so I’ll do it that way from now on.

I quick-pickled some carrots

Jump to Recipe

and did the ol’ glass-skull-full-of-pickled-carrots maneuver

I just cut up the cucumbers and left them unpickled, because there are so many sharp, attention-getting flavors in this sandwich already.

The meat turned out extremely tender.

I had my sandwich with pickled carrots and fresh cilantro and some sriracha mayo, but I forgot to add cucumbers and jalapeños. I did toast the rolls, though, which I don’t always bother to do.

Magnificent. This is truly one of the great lights in the universe of sandwiches. My only regret was the pickled carrots were too sweet, but (so) the kids liked them a lot. We also had Doritos, which were a surprisingly good accompaniment to this sandwich. Or maybe I just like Doritos.

Late Thursday night, we lost one of the ducklings. I mean it died, we didn’t lose track of it. They were only a few days old and I don’t really know what happened. It just happens sometimes. The other two seem pretty hale and hearty, and now . . . I have to figure out which name I should assign to the one who didn’t make it, which is an unforeseen pitfall of naming brand-new ducklings after real people!

Ah well.

FRIDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese sandwiches

Friday was Benny’s school conference (Corrie’s was Thursday afternoon), and we made a stop afterwards at a favorite thrift store, where Benny found an absolutely lovely, brand new dress that fits her like a dream, and I found eighteen matching tiny wine glasses for $4. Perfect for Passover, which we will be celebrating on Holy Saturday as usual. Which is . . . .coming right up, isn’t it. There isn’t much in the way of Passover food to be found in the supermarkets, because actual Passover isn’t for more than another month, but I’ll figure it out.

Deep down, I’m glad I’m not frantically trying to figure out what to do about the two docks that are in my driveway right now. It just took a couple of days to realize I felt that way.

It is snowing.

Ben and Jerry's coconut ice cream

Ingredients

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups whipping cream or heavy cream
1 cup milk
15 oz coconut cream

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.
Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.
Pour in the milk and cream and coconut cream (discarding the waxy disk thing) and continue whisking to blend.
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.)

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

1 cup soy sauce
5 tsp sesame oil
5 tsp sugar

for the rest

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

Instructions

Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.
Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.
Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.
Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.
Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

5 from 1 vote

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

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

Veggies and dressing

carrots
cucumbers
vinegar
sugar
cilantro
mayonnaise
Sriracha sauce

Instructions

Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can.
Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight.
Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler.
Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread.

5 from 1 vote

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved.
Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!
Add them to the brine so they are submerged.
Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

What’s for supper? Vol. 361: Who then, my mother?

Happy Friday? I meant to put an exclamation mark, but I’ll let it stand. Up until yesterday, I kept seeing memes about how awful and long and exhausting January is, and I kept thinking everyone is being silly, and this is just a normal month; and then today I realized I’ve been feeling that way for four months, and all four of those months have been January. Bah. Boo. But at least it must be almost over, anyway.

[checks date]

WELL GREAT.

Anyway, some of that January futilitism crept into my cooking this week, and despite making as much as my second-best efforts, everything turned out . . . basically tolerable. Oh well. I also wrote 40% of several essays and they all suck.

However, I did do a really neat interview with an artist yesterday, someone you may not know about, but should. So there’s something to look forward to! There’s always something to look forward to, even if it’s just bidding farewell and good riddance to the week.

Here’s what we had, and it was all FINE:

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, chicken barley soup

We had lots of leftover soup from last week, so I reheated that and then burned every single grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Some of it was because I forgot to spread mayo on the outside of both sides of the sandwich, and some of them, I just burned for fun.

I did get a few people who hadn’t done so before to try squeezing lemon juice over their bowl of soup, and they agreed it was very tasty that way. Here’s the soup recipe. Definitely worth making. Still plenty of winter left.

s t i l l p l e n t y o f w i n t e r

SUNDAY
Gochujang bulgoki, coconut stringbeans, pineapple; kalakand

On Sunday, it just happened to work out that all my kids could come for dinner! So I was planning a big Indian meal, with vindaloo, coconut string beans, tomato yogurt salad, naan, rice, and dessert. But I did the thing I will apparently never ever ever stop doing, and I just skimmed the recipe, and discovered too late that you’re supposed to marinate the meat for at least eight hours. Soooo did some quick menu switches, and ended up with a half-Korean, half-Indian menu. I had little warning bells going off in my head that this was not a good idea, and I was right! Bah.

The food was . . . fine. I made gochujang bulgoki with thinly sliced pork, matchstick carrots, and plenty of onion

Jump to Recipe

because that does need to marinate, but it can be just a few hours. I had much less gochujang (the actual fermented hot pepper paste) than I thought, though,

and it just didn’t hit the mark. Also I severely crowded the pan, so the meat was more braised than pan fried. It was tender, but just bland and slightly watery.

I decided to forge ahead with the string bean recipe I was originally planning to make, because they are Aldi string beans and you use ’em or lose ’em. But she called for cooking the string beans for twenty minutes, which is insane. It’s one thing if you want string beans cooked to a mush, which might work out for certain recipes, but she specified not to overcook, so they don’t lose their crunch. Insane!

I have since discovered that string beans in India are a different variety, and they are tougher, and do need a lot more cooking. So I did just cook them for a few minutes, and then added them to the mustard seeds heated till “spluttering” in hot oil (I love how many Indian recipes use the word “spluttering,” and I wonder if there is some cognate in some Indian language.

Anyway, the result was . . . fine.

Maybe I would have enjoyed them more if they had accompanied a dish with seasoning that made more sense along with the mustard seed, coconut, and jalapeno, but watery gochujang was not it. Boo.

I made a big pot of rice and cut up a bunch of lettuce and also put out the last of the seaweed sheets from New Year’s Eve, and I did have fun making the little grabby bundles of seaweed, bulgoki, and rice

I do like some bundled food.

Oh, it looks like we also had pineapple, which, again, was fine, but just . . . not quite the thing.

There was enough food, anyway, so that was a relief, and everybody had a good time and I heard uproarious laughter coming from the dining room, so that was lovely. I was a little bummed about the meal, though, and then suddenly realized wait! I had made dessert!

The dessert was something called kalakand, which is a sort of sweet milk cake which you make with paneer, but not THAT kind of paneer; you are supposed to make your own paneer, which is soft set. OR, you can use ricotta cheese. It so happened I had a bunch of ricotta left over from birthday calzones, which is why I decided to make this recipe.

It does say you will need to stir it longer if you use ricotta, and Swasthi was not kidding about that. It says “ten minutes,” and it took me at least forty minutes of stirring.

Corrie had a friend over, and it was just as well I had to park myself in the kitchen and stir, because I could keep an eye on them, rather than ducking and covering, which is what my animal instinct tells me to do when these two get together. So I stirred that mofo forever and eventually decided that it was as thick as it was ever gonna get, and put it into a lined pan and pressed slivered almonds into the top.

I let it chill in the fridge for several hours, and then brought it out after dinner with lots of caveats about how uncertain I was about the whole thing.

People liked it, I think? I don’t think it came out right. It certainly wasn’t cake-like in any way. It helped that nobody had any idea what it was supposed to taste like. I suggested “Cheesecake Play-Doh,” and that got the most votes.

In conclusion, I kept forgetting what it was called, and when I was searching for the recipe today (because I keep dozens of tabs open, but not the ones that I know I will need on Friday), I turned up this:

I don’t know what this song is about, and if it’s offensive, you have only your polyglotismo to blame.

MONDAY
Regular tacos with pico de gallo

Monday was a day off, and I thought we all needed something a little more normal, so I just made regular tacos. Actually I sneaked a pound of ground sausage into the three pounds of ground beef, because it somehow worked out to be cheaper that way, and nobody noticed.

I had the tomatoes I was planning to make into yogurt salad, so I made a bowl of pico de gallo with them. I was super tired and didn’t feel like chopping, so I just threw tomatoes, onions, and cilantro into the food processor, and then added some olive oil, salt, and some lemon juice, because I ran out of limes.

It was fine. Everything is fine.

TUESDAY
One-pan kielbasa, red potato, Brussels sprouts; challah

The kids have been agitating for kielbasa, so I made this one-pan meal

Jump to Recipe

(well, two pans of it), except I used Brussels sprouts instead of cabbage, and rather than serving the sauce along with the meal, I cooked the food for 20 minutes, then added in the sauce, switched the pans and finished cooking it for another 12 minutes or so.

It was super cold out, and I kept thinking about fresh, hot bread, and I had some work to avoid, so I made challah.

Jump to Recipe

I made a double recipe, which is what I usually do, but usually I make one batch in the standing mixer and one batch by hand. It’s not dumb if it works! But for some reason I decided to make a double batch all in one bowl, with the very predictable result that it spurted jets and fountains of flour all over the kitchen.

Then I put the bowl to rise on top of the coffee maker, which is the warmest spot in the house right now, and then I completely forgot about it. So it rose plenty.

Oops. I wisely decided I was in no mental state to make another attempt at a four-strand braid, which I try from time to time, and it always makes me cry. I just divided the dough monster in half and then cut each one into four balls, then rolled out three and made a big braid, and cut the remaining ball of each batch into thirds and made it into a smaller braid to lay on top. I let them rise again, brushed them with egg wash, and then baked them.

They turned out pretty!

I made them with duck eggs, including a duck egg for the egg wash on top. You will never find an eggier egg than duck eggs.

I couldn’t find the poppy seeds, so as you can see, I used sesame seeds on one. Which made me think of this quick little bit from You Don’t Have To Be Jewish:

If I didn’t clip it right, the whole album is here, and the bit in question starts at about 20:17.

Anyway, it was an okay-to-pretty good supper. The bread was a tiny bit underdone, so it was a little damp in the middle, but just a tiny bit; and even though I switched the meat and potato pans, one got a lot crisper than the other. But it was fine.

Fine, I tell you!

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday I didn’t even feel like messing around one tiny bit, so I just made three pizzas, one cheese, one black olive, and one pepperoni. I took a picture so I would remember what we had

A perfectly fine pizza, with pre-shredded cheese that doesn’t taste like anything, and I couldn’t find the garlic powder or the block of parmesan. It was so cold in the kitchen that the dough didn’t 100% defrost, so the crust was a little bit CLAGGY. But I managed to stick to my meal plan for once, so it tasted pretty great anyway.

THURSDAY
Glazed ham, baked potato, mysteriously spicy mashed squash

On Thursday morning, I remembered that we still had leftover coconut string beans in the refrigerator, so I put them out for the ducks, who were incredibly rude about it.

Possibly angry at me for making their children into challah, but I don’t think so. We have to run and get the eggs in the morning before these dopes step on them and crush them.

On Thursday morning, driving the kids to school, I turned on the classical music station and tried to guess the nationality and era of the piece that came on. I guessed German, 1820. And guess what! It turned out to be Karl Maria von Weber, written in 1815! I felt SO SMART. Then the dog turned on the hazard lights and I couldn’t figure out how to turn them off, so I had to pull into a parking lot and watch a short YouTube video.

If you are wondering, the hazard light button is the giant, centrally located button with the big “HAZARD” symbol prominently displayed in red, which is why I couldn’t find it. Probably my Instant Pot gasket is in the glove box, where I put it while not reading all the way through the vindaloo recipe and buying the wrong kind of beans.

Anyway, Thursday was the day we were supposed to have the bulgoki, but I had already used the meat, and I had Corrie with me at the store when I was shopping for a replacement; and if you take Corrie to the store with you, you’re going to come out with ham.

So I got a big spiral-cut ham with a glaze packet on sale, and she pushed really hard for peas and mashed potatoes, but nobody felt like peeling potatoes, and I felt like I had to assert some kind of authority, so we had baked potatoes and mashed squash.

I usually cook the squash in the Instant Pot to save room in the oven,

Jump to Recipe

but when I was dealing the challah flour explosion, I also decided to thoroughly clean the IP top and had hidden the gasket from myself, so I shoved things around and just cooked the ham, baked potatoes, and squash all at 400, which is not the right temperature for any of them. My motto is, if we can’t all be happy, then we’ll satisfy justice by all being miserable.

I sprinkled some baking soda and sea salt on top of the squash before roasting it, and it came out perfectly nice

and then I grabbed some butter and some spices that were handy: Cinnamon, cayenne pepper, salt, and scooped out the flesh and started adding lots and lots of cinn– ope, actually that was cayenne pepper. Wuite a lot of it. Corrie advised me to cover my mistake by also adding lots and lots of cinnamon, so that is what I did. I skipped the sugar because you really don’t need it with a decent squash. Some nutmeg would have been nice, but it didn’t seem like the time to rummage through little tippy bottles, so I just mashed that mofo and set it out. It was actually pretty good! Spicy! For some reason.

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Just mac and cheese. I’m sure it will be fine.

When I insisted on making squash instead of peas, I told Corrie that I only recently started liking squash. In fact, the very first time I had mashed squash was in the hospital, right after giving birth to her, and it was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. And from then on, I’ve had a thing for butternut squash. So it was really her fault. The rest of the kids then turned on Corrie in anger like Joseph’s brothers, because she was the cause of their cruel, heartless mother sometimes making mashed squash for dinner and not making anyone eat it or anything. I am truly a monster! Next time I’ll feed them all to the ducks. Then we’ll see who gets mashed.

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

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.

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400.

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

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

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

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

Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish.

Challah (braided bread)

Ingredients

1.5 cups warm water
1/2 cup oil (preferably olive oil)
2 eggs
6-8 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp yeast
2 egg yolks for egg wash
poppy seeds or "everything bagel" topping (optional)
corn meal (or flour) for pan, to keep loaf from sticking

Instructions

In a small bowl, dissolve a bit of the sugar into the water, and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir gently, and let sit for five minutes or more, until it foams.
In the bowl of standing mixer, put the flour (starting with six cups), salt, remaining sugar, oil, and eggs, mix slightly, then add the yeast liquid. Mix with dough hook until the dough doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, adding flour as needed. It's good if it has a slightly scaly appearance on the outside.
(If you're kneading by hand, knead until it feels soft and giving. It will take quite a lot of kneading!)
Put the dough in a greased bowl and lightly cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm place for at least an hour, until it's double in size.
Grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle it with flour or corn meal. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll three into "snakes" and make a large braid, pinching the ends to keep them together. Divide the fourth piece into three and make a smaller braid, and lay this over the larger braid. Lay the braided loaf on the pan.
Cover again and let rise again for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350.
Before baking, make an egg wash out of egg yolks and a little water. Brush the egg wash all over the loaf, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or "everything" topping.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the loaf is a deep golden color.

Instant Pot Mashed Acorn Squash

Ingredients

1 acorn quashes
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Instructions

Cut the acorn squashes in half. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt on the cut surfaces.
Put 1/2 a cup of water in the Instant Pot, fit the rack in it, and stack the squash on top. Close the lid, close the valve, and cook on high pressure for 24 minutes. Do quick release.
When squash is cool enough to handle, scoop it out into a bowl, mash it, and add the rest of the ingredients.

taboon bread

Ingredients

Instructions

Share this:

Oven-fried chicken

Ingredients

Instructions

Carnitas (very slightly altered from John Herreid's recipe)

Ingredients

Instructions

Share this:

Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

Instructions

Share this:

Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

Instructions

One-pan garlicky chicken with potatoes, summer squash, and zucchini

Ingredients

Instructions

Share this:

Oven-fried chicken

Ingredients

Instructions

Marinade for pork gyros

Ingredients

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

Instructions

Share this:

Rigatoni alla disgraziata

Ingredients

Instructions

Share this:

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Share this:

Korean Beef Bowl

Ingredients

Instructions

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

Veggies and dressing

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Share this:

Ben and Jerry's coconut ice cream

Ingredients

Instructions

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

for the rest

Instructions

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

Veggies and dressing

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Share this:

Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)

Ingredients

sauce:

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

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Challah (braided bread)

Ingredients