That’s my first message of peace and freedom I come before you, to share today. I forget what the other one is.
It’s raining cats and dogs here, there are suddenly ticks all over the yard and ladybugs all over the living room. The axolotl is getting used to his new home on top of the piano, which was one of those situations where — and here I have deleted a tedious, meandering complaint about various things, ending with the part where I admit that Nobody Is Ever Going To Learn To Play Piano, So We Might As Well Put An Axolotl On It.
On the bright side, we now have a handy reminder that the living room is slanted, which I had forgotten!
Now Mordred has more space to grow at an alarming rate and wave his weird arms around, and I got my olive tree in before the frost, I didn’t have to find a new spot for the fridge, and Elijah got his shelf. [I TOLD YOU it was tedious and meandering.] Now the final enemy to conquer is the furnace, which wants to be turned on and start gobbling up money until April. But we are staying strong
Staying strong, and eating food. Here is what we had this week:
SATURDAY
Leftovers and loaded potato skins
Saturday was my first shopping trip without a chaperone! In fact, I had with me what you may call an anti-chaperone, who, rather than protecting and guiding one and keeping one on the right path, wears one out, has dramatic dilemmas about cookies, and then disappears into Spirit Halloween. But eventually we made our way home again and ate leftovers, and watched Mars Attacks! to kick off Spooky Movie season.
I had no idea how long I would be without an oven after last week’s little explosive mishap, so I planned a lot of stovetop foods and sandwiches, as follows:
SUNDAY
Cuban sandwiches, fake doritos
After Mass, I managed to get all the kids mad at me (some by offering to pay them to do yard work, and some by forcing them to do yard work without pay), but the yard looks less like the spot where impoverished sharecroppers are made their last stand, anyway. And Corrie dug up about fifteen pounds of potatoes. There were more, but they were badly gnawed, oh well.
For supper, I cooked a pork butt in the Instant Pot with a bunch of adobo seasoning and some apple cider vinegar.
Looks dry, don’t it? That’s because it is! My Instant Pot valve isn’t working right, and it’s hard to know how long to cook stuff. Anyway, that pork got cooked.
I used kaiser rolls for the sandwich bread, and put mustard on both halves, then added swiss cheese, pickles, pork, sliced ham, and more swiss cheese to seal the deal.
Normally, I grill these on a pan, then move them to the oven to make sure the cheese is throughly melted and the whole sandwich is hot. This time, I grilled them and then piled them into the slow cooker and warmed them that way
which is a little weird, but it worked. I just didn’t want the sandwiches to fall apart!
MONDAY
Beef stew, fry bread, maple walnut tart
Monday the kids were home for what New Hampshire has finally decided is an actual holiday. If it’s any consolation, in all the years we insisted it was still Columbus Day, nobody got the day off school, but the library was closed, so every single year I would forget that this was the case, and would swing by to pick up a bunch of chilly kids who’d been huddling outside the locked library for forty minutes. This is as close as we’re ever gonna get to reparations.
I made a sort of indigenous inspired meal. The stew was just very basic beef stew, which we haven’t had for a long time since beef is so dang expensive. I cut up a chuck roast and coated the pieces in flour that was heavily seasoned with salt and pepper, browned that, and then added in carrots, onions, diced tomatoes and juice, and beef broth, threw in a few bay leaves and set it to simmer in the slow cooker.
Then Corrie and I made a maple walnut tart, which is something the Abenaki people could conceivably have made, although they generally made sap into sugar, rather than syrup. They would repeatedly freeze the collected sap in troughs, letting the water rise to the top and then discarding it, which would leave the sugar on the bottom. Easier to transport than syrup, doesn’t go bad, and you don’t need to sit there watching it boil for 900 hours! Maybe I will try that in the spring.
We made a really basic shortbread dough by smooshing together two sticks of softened butter, 2 cups of flour, and half a cup of powdered sugar. I pressed this into a shallow pie plate, and we made a simple filling:
1 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 large eggs (I used two duck eggs)
2 Tbsp melted butter
2 Tbsp flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
dash of salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
and Corrie poured that in
You may not believe it, but it was at this point I remembered we
[and here you must imagine a faint whisper emanating from my crushed soul]
didn’t have an oven.
I guess I have entered the stage where, if something seems bad, I simply do not. Nope! No bad. There is a certain peace in my balmy little world of make-believe, and it would have been nice to stay there, but at some point you do have to figure out what to do with this freaking raw pie.
So I asked Damien to fire up the grill for me again, and once it was heated up, I put the pie in a second pan, renounced all worldly attachment to dessert, and slid it in. I have never actually made a shortbread crust before, but I was pretty sure you are supposed to bake it before you fill it, and also, I don’t think you are supposed to grill it.
Then (and this is another crucial part in my two-step plan to inner peace) I forgot about it. Then about 45 minutes later, I remembered it, and hey, it was fine! Looked like pie
Ha! Take that– whoever it is I woke up feeling belligerent toward!
I had also promised the kids fry bread, which I’ve also never made before, or tasted, or seen before. But I like bread and I like frying, so it seemed worth a shot. I settle on this recipe by The Stay At Home Chef because I like how she explained why you were doing it this way (mainly, why you make the dough two hours ahead of time and then let it rest before frying. With great effort, going against all my instincts, I made a SINGLE recipe, and fried three pieces at a time
and guess what! They turned out great, too.
Outside lightly crisp, inside fluffy. Very nice!
I probably could have cooked them a little darker, but the kids liked them a lot, and would definitely like to have fry bread more often. It’s less greasy than the carnival-style fried dough we’ve made in the past, and would be great with sweet or savory toppings. Or, like we had it, as a side for some lovely stew.
The pie was medium-well received. I served it with vanilla ice cream, and the shortbread crust was maybe a little gummy on the bottom, but most of it was surprisingly light and crumbly.
It tasted like exactly what it was, and I liked it — better than the pecan pie I usually make for Thanksgiving, as it was less blindingly sweet — but only Corrie was really enthusiastic. She said she hoped I make this exact menu every year. That can be arranged!
TUESDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, big salad
Tuesday, the kids suddenly (by which I mean I put tons of appointments on the calendar and then purged all knowledge of this from my head) had a ton of appointments in various places; but my car is not really roadworthy at the moment, so Damien just did everything. Wishing to feel useful, I found my missing wiggly cutter and made a bunch more refrigerator pickles.
This is my third batch of pickles on this same brine, not to mention the same tinfoil, and I think that’s probably about as far as I can take it.
For supper, we had spicy chicken sandwiches. I heavily seasoned boneless, skinless chicken thighs with Tony Cachere’s and browned them in a little oil verrrrry slowly. When they were done, I topped them each with a slice of American cheese and moved them to a covered dish so the cheese would melt, and then I blistered up a bunch of shishito peppers in the hot pan.
Served on rolls with BBQ sauce and red onion, yum yum.
I made a big salad for a side, and that was that.
WEDNESDAY
Peanut chicken wraps, sesame broccoli
Wednesday, against all odds, our new oven came! It was honestly the last thing I expected, because they said they were coming on Wednesday, and you know what that means. But they did come! Behold, my shiny new darling.
It has a convection oven setting AND an air fry setting, which, I don’t really know what the difference is, but I guess we’ll find out. It also has, get this, a removable pan in the bottom, so if you spill something, you can pull it out and CLEAN IT. Amazing. Best of all, the stovetop is a tiny bit bigger than our previous stove, which makes me happiest of all. Thanksgiving is going to be amazing.
It also has wifi, which I sure hope we don’t have to hook up. I made a pie outside! Do not need any texts from my meatloaf! Or whatever it is a smart oven does. Seriously, what does it even do?
Anyway, Wednesday was very drivey, so I was glad it was an easy supper. I made peanut sauce following this recipe, and mixed it with a bag of pre-shredded cabbage and carrots. Horrible lighting, sorry.
Cooked up a few bags of chicken tenders and a tray of sesame broccoli, and we had peanut chicken wraps with the broccoli on the side.
I absolutely love these wraps. I think a few other people like them, and the rest of them just had chicken and broccoli, which is fine. The new oven worked GREAT. Heated up super fast. Hooray! I did attempt to use the air fry function for the broccoli, but I got confused, so I’m not really sure if I airfro or not.
Oh, and for once in my life, I remembered to freeze the ginger before grating it, and wow, does that make a difference. Room temperature ginger gets all fibrous and unmangeable if you try to shred it, but frozen ginger is a game-changer.
The only issue was that I froze the ginger with the peel still on, and you can’t peel frozen ginger with a spoon. So I just trimmed off the really gnarly bits and grated the rest with the skin still on, and I hope that’s not poisonous or something, because nobody noticed. What do you know about that! I’m kind of annoyed that I’ve ever spent time peeling ginger. I’ve even taught people how to peel ginger. Never again.
THURSDAY
Hot dogs, fries
On Thursday, the plan was to serve hot dogs and the three bags of french fries that have been lurking in the freezer for a couple of weeks now. This plan did not take into account the fact that I told people they could eat the fries, which they did. So we had chips. I also cleaned out the chip bin (we have a vast plastic bin where we keep anything that is bagged and crunchy), and boy was it gross, but it felt great to take another slowly, steadily catching up with little cleaning tasks that fell by the wayside these past few months.
Slowly, steadily, and, in the case of the refrigerator, involuntarily, when someone put the leftover stew away in an especially Seussean manner, and it leaped out, bounced off the floor, and splattered in a spectacular fashion, straight up my nostrils and in my hair and ears, and everywhere from the ceiling to the floor and every surface in between. So I cleaned the fwiggin fwidge. Well, part of it! The stew part. Also my nose and hair.
FRIDAY
Spaghetti
Today we shall have regular old spaghetti with sauce from a jar.
The plan for this weekend was going to be Pumpkin Festival Saturday and then apple picking and grave visiting Sunday, but we realized some of the kids are going to a concert (Olivia Rodrigo) Sunday, so, somewhat to the relief of us old folks, we’ll have to reschedule some of our autumnal frolicking for a later date. And that’s my story! Headed to adoration in a bit, and I will drag you intentions with me.