Happy Friday! And dang, it is COLD out there. I know some of you live in an alternate universe where it’s still summer weather, but here it is officially NIPPPY.
And you know what that means: Time to eat! (Same as warm weather, but I’m not on trial here.)
Here’s what we had:
SATURDAY
Leftovers with chicken three ways and burritos
Sophia took Lucy, Irene, Benny, and Corrie to a con and they were gone all day, but Elijah (who moved out a few months ago) needed to go shopping, so we had a good old fashioned Elijah Shopping Turn. That was nice! I really love hanging out with my older kids.
The leftovers included a lot more chicken than I remembered cooking (fried chicken, chicken tenders from wraps, and garlic butter chicken bites), but it was all good.
Because all the kids were out, I got to choose dessert. I grabbed some kind of disgusting spooky chocolate Twinkies for Saturday, and then I used some empanada dough discs I found in the freezer to make apple hand pies for Sunday. I did that Saturday night, because I knew we’d be gone during the day.
SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, Actual Doritos; apple hand pies and ice cream
But first, after Mass, Damien and I went on a two-hour drive to pick up Miss Maggie.
Her owner has a roommate situation that’s not working well with cats, so we’re fostering her for the long-term until that changes. She is absolutely gorgeous, and extremely chatty.
Sonny thinks she is AMAZING, and misunderstood pretty badly when she hissed at him, and then she swiped at his face, and he thought that was ALSO AMAZING, and he continues to be AMAZED by her. Friday is a lot more cautious, and mostly just stares at her in awe, while she gazes at him with queenly contempt.
When Maggie is upstairs, Sonny and Friday dash around the house like giant goobers, and then when she comes down, they suddenly get all awed and respectful. So I guess they’ve sorted it out? I hope they all learn to relax around each other eventually! But they’re not fighting, so that’s good.
For supper we had grilled ham and cheese, plus brand name Doritos which were on sale.
I also got a bag of taco seasoning flavored Doritos, and they tasted exactly like that.
I baked the apple pies, and they truly didn’t turn out that great. The dough was pretty old, and I should have baked them at a higher temp, and the apples were also pretty old and squashy. Oh well! People ate it and no one complained. Just not my best effort. The ice cream helped.
And that was the weekend!
MONDAY
Chicken biryani, mango
Monday I really wanted to make some progress on the duck pond before it freezes, so I spent quite a bit of time hauling rocks from the stream to hold the liner in place. But first I got supper going. Chicken leg quarters were on sale, and there are VERY few things they are good for unless you’re holding a low rent Renaissance Faire or something; but they work great for biryani.
I more or less follow this recipe, which yields a tasty but quite mild version. Except that I was out of ground cardamom, so I opened up a bunch of pods and ground up the kernels in my mortar and pestle. So one minute I tell Damien I’m just doing a quick easy meal, and then he comes in and I’m grinding spices like Strega Nona.
Anyway, I followed the recipe as written, and then I moved it to the slow cooker. This is my big secret for success with biryani: You let it slow cook all day. I’ve never been able to get the rice and liquid proportions right otherwise! I also cut up a bunch of mangos.
When I was really tired of hauling rocks, I went to the front of the house and dug out the dirt under the granite step. It was more or less where I wanted it, but it was wobbly and too far from the next step, so I got that squared away.
So here’s the front entrance situation. I am in talks with the redoubtable Wesley to revisit the idea of building a portico.
I got that trellis for free at my favorite store, The Side of the Road.
Then I scurried around doing little bits of yard work, and I finally cut the head off my one solitary sunflower, which was a volunteer.
and an overachiever! You can bet I’m saving those seeds.
Speaking of volunteers, did I show you this poppy that’s growing by the back steps?
No idea where it came from! I’ve tried to grow poppies in my garden many times, with no success, but I’ve never even tried to grow this color. I guess it just came from heaven. Or rabbit poop or whatever. Either way, I’m gonna save those seeds, too.
So then finally it was supper time, and oh man, it was delicious.
I was so hungry, I just took one quick photo, which, as you can see, was actually a video, oops. So here is a still from the delicious short film titled “Get In Mah Belleh.”
TUESDAY
Garlic pork chops, baked potato, string beans
Tuesday I was planning to make soup and bread, but then I looked at the weather report and saw it was going to rain (finally! We are still in a drought) on Wednesday, so that would be a better day for soup and bread. But I knew I was going to be too busy Wednesday to make bread. So then I changed my mind another 523 times and eventually ended up making two full suppers on Tuesday.
For Tuesday supper, we had pork chops, baked potatoes, and string beans that I just served raw, because I couldn’t get a straight answer on how people would like them cooked.
I just broiled the pork chops, but I marinated them in the morning, more or less following the recipe for this marinade from Recipe Tin Eats, except I was rushing so I used garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, and I didn’t super duper measure anything, so it ended up tasting heavily of Worcestershire sauce, so I dumped in a bunch more brown sugar.
Well, they turned out great. Probably could have been in the oven a few minutes longer to give them a little caramelization, but they were really tasty. I’m so happy I found this marinade, because I have struggled my whole life to cook pork chops in a way that is easy but doesn’t make them dry and tasteless. This is it!
Because it was gonna rain the next day, I pushed to get some more outside work done. I continued building up the retaining wall/heap behind the flower bed with cinder blocks and dirt, and I filled in the trench I had dug to level the granite step, and transplanted a bunch of flowers.
I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this! I guess partly so, someday, I can reread these posts and fondly remember a time when I could still lug stuff. I do like lugging stuff. I feel like I’m my true self, when I’m lugging stuff.
I hung up the sunflower to dry, because the seeds seem a little juicy still. This has resulted in some interesting vignettes when people sit in that spot.
She looks like she’s getting a revelation, or possibly taking a shower.
On the way home from school, I bought some bread flour and then made this focaccia dough, and put it in the fridge overnight.
WEDNESDAY
Italian wedding soup, focaccia
Wednesday we had three dentist appointments plus something else, I forget what, and it didn’t actually rain all day like it was supposed to! But I was still happy to have a giant pot of soup all ready. I had made a double recipe of this Italian Wedding Soup from Sip and Feast, except I had ground chicken instead of ground turkey for the meatballs, and I skipped the escarole. If you ask me what escarole is, I could probably come up with a plausible answer, but it’s definitely not a piece of knowledge that I keep in the front of my brain.
About four hours before supper, I greased up a pan and schlorped the cold focaccia dough onto it, and sternly warned everyone not to touch it even a little bit, not even for a funny joke.
Shortly before supper, I finished the soup with the acine de pepe and the spinach, and I gently encouraged the focaccia dough to cover the rest of the pan (it was already almost there). I oiled it, dimpled it, and then attempted to make a design on it with tomatoes, onions, and parsley, but it was such a spectacular failure that nobody even realized it was supposed to be a design, so pretend I never said that!
Anyway, it turned out FANTASTIC..
Absolutely scrumptious, with a crackly bottom, airy inside, and a thin, chewy top.
I’m a little ashamed at how much I ate, but it was really the best focaccia I’ve ever had. Most definitely using this recipe again.
The soup was also very nice.
An excellent meal overall.
THURSDAY
Spaghetti with sausage sauce
Thursday I could really feel the cold coming, so I hustled to put together a cold frame for my two pomegranate plants.
Look at them, enjoying their sunny little spa on the back steps!
Here’s the side view.
So luxurious. I had all these fricken windows I got when I was planning to make a greenhouse, so I’m glad to be using a few of them, anyway. Eventually my house is going to be 100% things I found on the side of the road and things I got for free from Facebook Marketplace, and then I can die happy, or anyway, die.
Then I dragged Damien out to the duck pond and demanded he explain to me how to fix it.
I could see that I dug it unevenly, but I was having one of those moments when I know there’s a really simple answer, but it’s, like, sealed in one of those blister packs and you can’t find scissors, and you end up gnawing on it and just making it worse. Mentally, I mean. You guys gnaw mentally, right?
So he suggested I move the rocks on the far edge, lift the liner, and dig more — not wider, just lower; and then put the liner and rocks back. Which was obviously the answer. I just have some kind of obvious spatial awareness deficit disorder or something (O-SADD), and I couldn’t figure it out on my own! (Actually first he assured me he totally understood not being able to work out a simple problem, and he has offered repeatedly to dig it for me and lug rocks for me, but he’s been wrestling with car repairs for two weeks straight, so I’ve been trying to keep my project bullshit to myself.)
So anyway I did dig, for quite a long time, until I had to acknowledge that there was a bunch of water in there, and my efforts to make the pond deeper were resulting in that water flowing into the spot where I was digging, which is what I WANTED, but, well. So I set up the pump, which promptly stopped working. So that was the end of that for the day.
By this time I was all hyped up and desperate to accomplish something, and I found myself I guess building a new step for the front of the house.
If I can pull this off, it will actually be great, because with the porch gone, it became evident that the front of the house actually slopes quite a bit, and when that freezes, we’re all going to slip and die anytime we try to go in or out. (Obviously we can shovel it and salt it, but it’s hard to keep up with. You will have to trust me; we will die.)
So right now I’m batting around various ideas of what to make the new step out of. Possibly pea gravel, but probably bricks or pavers. I did go to Home Depot and price out pavers, but I don’t want to spend that much, and this whole project has cost me zero doll hairs so far, so I’d like to keep it that way. So I’m back to haunting Facebook Marketplace for freebies. I did find a good used pump for $20, and I’m getting that today, yay!
You may have noticed that the long granite step is not level. My plan for that is to pretend it’s not.
Anyway, I made a quick and easy meal of loose Italian sausage added to jarred sauce over spaghetti, with leftover focaccia.
Yum yum.
FRIDAY
Bagel egg cheese sandwiches, OJ
Gotta bring a kid in for a job interview and then get to adoration and get the other kids, and then we have a lovely three-day weekend, which we desperately need! It’s supposed to rain, which we also desperately need, but I’m a little bummed because we were supposed to go apple picking. Maybe we’ll just pick wet apples.
Anyway, pray for me and I’ll pray for you! And let me know if you hear about any free bricks.