Tag: What’s for Supper?

What’s for supper? Vol. 485: Rusty dipthongs and greasy ennui. And guacamole!

Happy Friday! One must imagine Simcha saying something poignant here, something amusing and a little bit weird, making a captivating opening for this week’s food post. Then she will say something like: Here’s what we ate this week!

Oh, here is a picture of the “four to six quarts” of grape juice I expected to get out of the grapes I processed last week. About half a gallon. Thanks a lot, Obama. 

Anyway, I made grape juice, which makes Corrie happy. 

I will say that the tiramisu cake I made for Clara turned out well! I was following the Betty Crocker recipe but wanted a round cake I could serve without a baking dish, so I made it in a springform pan, used some of the ladyfingers to make a fence around the outside, and added gelatin to the top layer of egg white as I whipped it, so I could pipe it on top and it would keep its shape. I skipped the cocoa (because we were out and I had already sent Sophia to the store twice); and I added sugared raspberries and a dust of edible gold powder. And it was lovely!

I refrigerated it for nearly 24 hours before serving, it, and it held up great.

I’m really glad to know that the gelatin thing works for keeping piped whipped cream in shape. Will be VERY handy if I sell pies for Thanksgiving again this year. 

I wrote up all the adjustments I made into a recipe card, which may or may not be coherent, but it sure is long. 

Jump to Recipe

I don’t think I included the directions for sugared raspberries, but you just whip up some egg whites until they are foamy, brush them on dry raspberries with a pastry brush, roll the raspberries in sugar, and let them dry for several hours. They get a little sweet, crackly crust, and they are sparkly. Very nice dessert accent. My general advice is to make at least twice as many as you need, because about half of them get weepy and don’t look great. 

SATURDAY
Leftover delite and ??

Saturday, Damien did part of the shopping and I splurged on an Instacart order for the rest. I think the chosen frozen food was loaded potato skins. 

 

SUNDAY
Grilled cheese, sorta caprese pasta salad

Sunday, half of us were felled by some respiratory virus going around. Corrie came into my room to languish with me, and she got bored pretty fast, but didn’t like any of the activities I suggested . . . until I offered to teach her how to write phonetically in ancient Greek. Eleven is the PERFECT age for this kind of thing. She loves codes and secret languages, and she’s smart as heck, so off she went. I wonder if I still have my old Luschnig workbook hanging around somewhere! My dipthongs are rusty. 

In the afternoon, I sent her out to pick a bunch of basil, and made a simple pasta salad. I had replenished my rennet supply and briefly considered making some mozzarella skulls, but that seemed like a bridge too far, so it was just pasta, chopped tomatoes, basil, lots of olive oil, some red wine vinegar, kosher salt, pepper, and fresh garlic. 

Always popular. 

The main dish was supposed to be grilled ham and cheese, but the ham had vanished without a trace, and I’m still very much in “okay I have five energy and I used up four of them just getting into the kitchen” territory, so I didn’t look too hard. Made a bunch of grilled cheese and that was that. 

The kids remembered we had refrigerator pickles, so that was a little perk. 

If your pickles don’t look like they were violently captured from a bog, what are you even doing? 

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, chips

Monday, Damien once again drove me to Lebanon for a neurology visit! This is the final in-person post surgery visit I should need, and she doctor said it looks like healing is going great. My incision looks good, the ridges and divots in my head are normal, I could cancel the upcoming MRI and just schedule one for six months from now, and best of all, I could start weaning off Keppra, which is the anti-seizure medicine which has been keeping me stoopid and wobbly. AND, the pathology report says it was definitively a benign tumor. (I figured it must be, since they always give you bad news fast; but it was nice to hear officially!)

Oh, and she said I could start taking ibuprofen again, which was great. I really missed ibuprofen. Mainly because my body shrimply does not care if we are nearly 52 years old and recovering from a craniotomy; we are still going to keep on cycling, cycling, and cycling, until the ennnnnd of the world. But at least now we have ibuprofen again. 

Got back in town around 5, picked up the kids, and had buffalo chicken wraps for supper. We have been abstaining from lettuce and fresh herbs all this time, for fear of cyclosporiasis, but, feeling reckless and celebratory, I put lettuce on my wraps. So it was frozen buffalo chicken tenders, lettuce, tomato, shredded pepper jack cheese, and blue cheese dressing. 

And nobody died of the shits! The kids had chips, but I am once again making an effort to Stop Being So Fat, so I skipped the chips. I spent a whole month hardly eating anything but soup, so I should actually be incredibly thin by now, but I refer you to the fact that I’m almost 52 and my body is really dumb. Anyway, I skipped the chips. 

Also, I cleaned the kitchen! Monday is my day to clean the kitchen, and I hadn’t done so for quite some time. Felt great. 

TUESDAY
Chili verde, rice, guacamole and chips

On Tuesday afternoon, I convinced Damien that, because I was weaning off Keppra, I could drive again, so I drove to pick up the kids while he chaperoned. And it went great, until we got home and it was time to park, and I hit Sophia’s car. Then later he told me the rest of the driving was also not as great as I thought, and he took the keys back again. DAMMIT. Slow breathing, patience, grouse grouse grouse. We can try again when the Keppra is all out of my system, next week. 

Anyway, I made some chili verde. Part of why I don’t like Instacart shopping is because you can’t really pick the meat, and I guess I ordered pork chops, rather than a loin or a shoulder or something. So I ended up cutting the meat off the bone and, predictably, it was a little tougher than you really want the pork to be for a chili, but whatever. It tasted fine. Here’s my recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I also made some guacamole, and I kept seeing this video where this woman says everyone misunderstands guacamole, mashing the avocados and then adding stuff to it. Indeed, that is how I do it. Instead, she says you should crush up all the non-avocado ingredients, and then add chopped avocados into that. Actually, I didn’t watch the video. I don’t know what she said. 

Nevertheless, I went ahead and tried what I imagined the video said. I was too sleepy to use a mortar and pestle, so I just threw the onions, garlic, cilantro, and jalapeño into the food processor with a little olive oil to help things along

and then I chopped 3-4 avocados and mixed it together, along with salt, pepper, and lime juice. 

Tasted good to me! It wasn’t necessarily better or worse than the way I usually do it, but it was good. Maybe someday I’ll even watch the video. 

I had my chili over rice with sour cream, more cilantro, and a lime wedge, and it was a yummy meal. 

I sure missed cilantro! I missed chips, too. (Gloomily counted out exactly seven, which is apparently one serving.) I’m starting to get more feeling back in my mouth, so this was a careful experiment as I refamiliarize myself with the left half of my head. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday I sulked my way through a bunch of paperwork that I was pretty sure I had already submitted, but who knows. Made three pizzas, one pepperoni, one olive, and one cheese. And that really is too much pizza for our family size! I forgot how few we are these days, alas. 

THURSDAY
Ina Garten’s roast chicken; brussels sprouts and butternut squash

We had this same chicken recipe last week, but la creativity, she is at an all-time low. It’s easy and relatively popular and cheap, so that’s what we went with. Garlic and lemons, salt and pepper inside; butter, salt, and pepper outside, and the chicken roasts on top of a layer of carrots and onions. I skipped the thyme. 

I had some butternut squash and brussels sprouts, too, so I roasted them in a separate pan with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a little honey, and then got involved with helping Irene edit a scholarship essay and burned the hell out of the vegetables, oh well. The chicken was good! 

Good essay, too. Somebody give that kid $60,000 stat!

I also got a wild hare and sorta kinda fixed the dining room storage bench, which fell apart a few weeks ago and has been sitting there with its guts hanging out, collecting candy wrappers and used tissues and generalized greasy ennui. I did a truly terrible job, and I will definitely need to redo it later, but I did use a power drill without killing myself, so that counts for something. And you can sit on the bench again, so there.

I’m sorry to be so whiny, I am just SO TIRED OF NOT BEING ABLE TO DO ANYTHING OR GO ANYWHERE OR GET ANYTHING DONE. Bah. Bah, I tell you! Bah, and boo. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Just regular old, begular old spaghetti. This weekend, I am hoping to dig up the potatoes I grew, and maybe get some marigold, cosmos, and sunflower seeds collected. I guess the pumpkins are probably as big as they’re going to get (not very big; something went wrong right after they fruited), so we might as well pick those, too. I just let the unpicked corn languish, so I guess they are fancy bird feeders now. Oh well.

I was extremely holy for a while there, and was offering stuff up left and right, but now I’ve reverted to just whining. As you may have noticed.

Anyway, excelsior, or whatever. Damien actually won another journalism award! He is having quite a year. I regretfully told him I didn’t think I could come see him get it, because being in the car is just too hard. But hooray for awards! He should win an award for putting up with all my complaining, honestly.

And so should all of you. 

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Spicy Chili Verde

You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs pork shoulder
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for cooking
  • 2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)

For the salsa verde:

  • 4 Anaheim peppers
  • 2 habañero peppers
  • 4 jalapeño peppers
  • 4 medium onions, quartered
  • 12 tomatillos
  • 1 head garlic, cloves peeled or unpeeled
  • 1 bunch cilantro

For serving:

  • lime wedges
  • sour cream
  • additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.

  3. When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want. If you roasted the garlic in its peel, just squeeze the insides out and discard the peels.

  4. Put the tomatillos, peppers, garlic and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.

  5. In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.

  6. When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.

  7. Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.

  8. Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

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tiramisu cake

This is a large, festive cake that yields 12-14 generous slices. Traditionally, it would have rum or amaretto mixed into the espresso, and cocoa powder sifted over the top (or shaved chocolate). I skip both of these, and it's still spectacular; but feel free to add them back in.

Tiramisu needs at least four to six hours to chill and for the flavor to develop and for the ladyfingers to soften. If you're going to eat it within this time frame, you can save yourself some trouble and construct and serve it inside a rectangular baking dish, which is easier, if less decorative. If you want a round tiramisu cake that can be served on its own with a decorative, piped top, you will need to let it chill at least overnight to hold together, and you will need to add gelatin to the top layer of whipped cream to stabilize the piping.

Ingredients

  • 12 egg yolks
  • 1-1/2 cups sugar
  • 1-1/3 cups milk
  • 2 lbs mascarpone at room temperature
  • 1-1/2 cups heavy cream
  • 2+2 tsp vanilla extract and/or almond extract
  • 1/2 cup espresso, chilled
  • 14 oz ladyfingers
  • 1-1/2 tsp unflavored gelatin powder (optional, for stabilizing whipped cream)

Instructions

  1. In a mug or small bowl, mix together the espresso, the first 2 tsp of vanilla/almond extract (and rum or amaretto, if you're using it). Set aside.

  2. In a heavy pot, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Whisk in the milk. Heat up at medium, whisking constantly, until mixture begins to boil. Turn heat to low and continue whisking for two minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, pour the egg mixture into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap so wrap comes into direct contact with the mixture. Chill for an hour or more, until it is thoroughly cool.

  4. While this mixture is chilling, also chill a mixing bowl in preparation for whipping.

  5. When the egg mixture is cool, add mascarpone and beat with an electric mixer on medium until it is smooth.

  6. HERE YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS!

    If you are planning to serve the tiramisu in a few hours, I recommend constructing the tiramisu in six layers (ladyfingers, custard, whipped cream, ladyfingers, custard, whipped cream) and constructing and serving it still inside its dish

    If you are planning to serve it the next day, the additional chilling time will let you make it in a springform pan with a "fence" of ladyfingers around the outside to hold it together; but you will need to stabilize the top layer of whipped cream so it holds it shape overnight.

  7. IN-DISH OPTION: If you are making a tiramisu that will stay inside its dish, whip all the heavy cream with the remaining vanilla extract until it is stiff.

  8. IN-DISH OPTION: Using a pastry brush, brush both sides of each ladyfinger with the espresso mixture and arrange them in a layer to cover the bottom of the ungreased dish. Then spread half the egg mixture over that, then half the whipped cream over that. Repeat with a second layer of ladyfingers, egg mixture, and whipped cream. (If you are sifting cocoa over the top, do that now.)

    Refrigerate tiramisu at least four hours before serving, to give the ladyfingers time to soften.

  9. SPRINGFORM PAN OPTION: If you are making a tiramisu that will stand on its own outside a pan, whip 2/3 of the whipped cream and the remaining vanilla until it is still.

  10. SPRINGFORM PAN OPTION: Using a pastry brush, brush both sides of each ladyfinger with the espresso mixture and arrange them in a layer to cover the bottom of the ungreased springform pan. (It's hard to make it come out even because it's round, but that's okay!) Then break about half of the remaining ladyfingers in half and arrange them upright around the inside of the pan, making a kind of picket fence.

  11. SPRINGFORM PAN OPTION: Spread half the egg mixture over the ladyfingers, then spread the stiff whipped cream over that. Then arrange the remaining ladyfingers over the whipped cream, and spread the remaining egg mixture over that.

  12. SPRINGFORM PAN OPTION: To stabilize the remaining whipped cream, sprinkle the gelatin powder over 2 tablespoons of water in a mug, and let it stand for 3 minutes. Then microwave it for five seconds, mix it, and microwave it again for five seconds. Repeat until the gelatin is dissolved and the mixture is smooth.

    Start whipping the remaining cream and vanilla/almond extract in an electric mixer on slow. Increase the speed to medium, and when it begins to get bubbly, slowly pour in the gelatin mixture. Then increase the speed to high until stiff peaks form. Using a star or flower nozzle, pipe the stabilized whipped cream onto the top of the tiramisu. If you are sifting cocoa over the tiramisu, do that now. Refrigerate up to 24 hours before serving.

  13. SPRINGFORM PAN OPTION: Carefully unclamp and remove pan side before serving.

    In this photo, I have added sugared raspberries and a light dusting of edible gold dust along with birthday candles.

What’s for supper? Vol. 484: It finally happened, I used up all my words writing and now I can’t think of a title

Hola, amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. (And now ends the part of this post where I find out how old you guys are.)

Happy Friday! Coming up to five weeks post surgery, I am still doing VERY LITTLE INDEED. Lots of naps, lots of lurking about, lots of soup. Damien has been doing an absolutely phenomenal job of not only taking care of all the kids and all the household stuff and appointments and driving and also doing his actual job, but also constantly reassuring me that I’m not being lazy or crazy or malingering or anything, and the whole craniotomy thing really was a big deal, and it really is my job to rest, rest, rest. So that is what I’m doing. 

However! I am also very gently working toward Doing A Few Things. This week, I started cooking again, and although Damien (along with some of the incredibly generous staff at our kid’s school!) was keeping everyone very well fed, it feels pretty great to be back in the kitchen, wrecking the place up.

SATURDAY
Awards dinner!

Wait, I’m confused. The awards dinner was on Friday. Well anyway, on Friday afternoon, Damien and I drove down to Boston where he received the Freedom of Information award from New England First Amendment Coalition. It was a truly wonderful event. Incredibly, Damien was introduced by Diane Foley, the mother of journalist James Foley who was beheaded by ISIS, and she and her husband were so warm and gracious. Kind, friendly, intelligent, sincere people everywhere, delicious food, wonderful venue. We were at the Commonwealth Hotel, right across from Fenway Park.

And it was a lovely night! Here’s a few pictures. 


Saturday morning, it seemed like a shame not to go do fun Boston things while we were in Boston, but I was truly a blob of glup and had a hard time even sitting up to drink my coffee, yeesh. So we made a quick stop to see Clara and Wesley on the way home and then went home, and I spent the rest of the day just blobbing gluppily at home. I think we had leftovers and pizza pockets for supper. 

SUNDAY
Brats, french fries, peach cobbler

Sunday I did get to Mass, and it was much easier than the previous week. I am less paranoid that someone is going to leap out of the bushes and whack me in the head with a hammer. Damien did the week’s shopping, and I took a nap and then picked some peaches and made a very basic peach crumble for an afternoon snack. 

I can’t find the recipe I used, but I remember messing with it anyway. Probably I used corn starch, sugar, a little salt, cinnamon, and butter, and mixed that up with the sliced peaches (skin on). I topped it with a box of cake mix mixed with cinnamon and scrunched up into clumps with melted butter. Baked at whatever until the top was slightly browned and the filling was bubbling. 

Would have been great with ice cream or whipped cream, but an unexpected warm dessert in the middle of the day was well received (declared by the kids to be yum dot com).

I also had a moment of satisfaction because the household has been getting along ALARMINGLY well without me. But when I went to get some butter for the streusel, I found this:

Turns out I was the one keeping the butter situation around here reasonable. Me!! I’m useful after all!!!

MONDAY
Ina Garten’s roast chicken with carrots and potatoes

Monday I got tired of worrying about the carrots I never dug up, and went outside to see what was going on. I discovered that something (probably some combination of wild animals and feral Corrie) had already dug up most of them. So I got what was left, and fetched a few heads of garlic from my drying corner. 

I washed and trimmed all the carrots except for these two, who already had other plans. 

This is the roast chicken recipe. I had dried thyme instead of fresh, and no fennel, and I threw in a pound or so of little red potatoes. It’s SO EASY and it takes literally 15 minutes to throw together, and it always turns out absolutely juicy and delicious, with a tasty, crackling skin, and you don’t have to baste it or flip it or anything. 

I was a little miffed that I hadn’t thought to get some nice crusty bread to sop up the splendid lemony garlicky juices,

but it was still great. And now I did something about the damn carrots. 

TUESDAY
Chicken cheesesteak sandwiches and chips

Tuesday I took care of another thing that’s been nagging at me: I made two big jars of pickles. Just cucumbers from the store, since my cucumber garden was a bust; but I had stuffed the last of the dill from my garden into a jar of vinegar, and it was just sitting there daring me to forget about it. This is basically the recipe I used, except I fiddled with it a bit, and added peppercorns, bumped up a lot of the spices, couldn’t find coriander seeds, forgot to heat it up, and couldn’t find the kosher salt, so I used table salt. 

I haven’t tasted these pickles yet, but the kids told me (about 48 hours after I made them) that they are slightly mushy, but tasty. Good enough for me. 

For supper, I picked the chicken off the carcasses and shredded it in the stand mixer with a little Tony Cachere’s. I was sort of following this recipe from Sip and Feast, except for the seasoning, and also I used American cheese. He has you cook the peppers, then take them out of the pan and cook then onions, then add the chicken, and then melt cheese onto the chicken and onions. Then you melt more cheese on top of it, scoop it onto rolls, and add the peppers. 

I opted to just do one dose of cheese per serving

and I had mine with BBQ sauce. 

I thought it was totally delicious. I think about half the family liked it, which is a pretty good score. It’s nice to have a new idea for leftover chicken, anyway! 

WEDNESDAY
Whatever

On Tuesday I heard a cheerful chirping noise, and looked out my window to see Corrie clambering around picking grapes and singing. (Singing a violent parody of “Frosty the Snowman,” if you must know.) She has been steadily working her way through the first batch of grape juice we made the other week, and wanted more, so she went ahead and picked about a bushel of grapes. Her enthusiasm lasted right up until the moment I suggested she help me sort them, and then grape juice suddenly appeared overrated. WHICH I GET. 

On Wednesday, Damien, that lucky man, got to drive to Boston again after school, to bring Lucy and Irene to a Brandon Flower concert. Moe and Sophia were at work, so that just left me, Corrie, and Benny at home for dinner. We had french toast and boxaroni, and then Sophia got home and took Benny and Corrie out to the movies.

And so I found myself ALONE. Which VERY rarely happens. So I dragged the bucket of grapes into the living room, put on some disposable gloves, opened a can of diet ginger ale, and slowly, slowly sorted grapes while watching Best In Show and then an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Sometimes it’s a little startling to be by yourself, to be able to do whatever you want, and then your heart’s desire turns out to be a little weird. Anyway, I got the grapes sorted. 

THURSDAY
Meatloaf and rice

Thursday I got started on Clara’s birthday tiramisu! Usually Damien is the tiramisu guy around here, but it turns out I really can do kitchen stuff, as long as I allow myself three times the normal amount of time. I more or less followed the Betty Crocker recipe, except I realized we were out of eggs, went to collect eggs from the duck house, and then realized the water was off in the house, and sent Sophia to the store for eggs from the clean world. I also skipped the rum, ran out of vanilla, supplemented it with almond extract, and made a double recipe, and I decided to fit it into a large springform pan, with a little fence of ladyfingers around the outside, rather than serving it still in its glass dish. 

I have no idea if this will hold up to having the side removed, but I guess we’ll find out! I wanted to make it fancy, because we’re celebrating Clara’s birthday, but of course the whipped cream tends to deflate over time. So I did the inside layer with regular whipped cream (it’s ladyfingers, custard, whipped cream, ladyfingers, custard, whipped cream), but then I took the rest and did the thing where you bloom a little gelatin and then add that to the cream as you whip it, and I piped that over the top. 

Actually, what I did was whip the cream, realize it would fall apart overnight, mix up some gelatin with a random amount of hot water, and add that to the already whipped cream, which of course resulted in some horrible buttery rubber cream curds. So I threw that out, gave myself a stern talking to, found some more cream, found my reading glasses, and very carefully followed the actual instructions, and then piped it on. 

Yes, that’s the same picture, but I’m not lying this time. 

I also made a batch of sugared raspberries. You find the firmest raspberries and brush them with foamy egg whites using a pastry brush. I think last time I made these (for my raspberry lemon pavlova birthday bombs), I just brushed them with egg white that I had rustled up a bit with a fork, but this time I really whipped them and just brushed the foam on. Then you carefully roll the berries in sugar (supposed to be sanding sugar, but I never have that in the house) and set them to dry overnight.

It’s not difficult, but you can’t really do it quickly. (Believe me, I tried every dumb idea.)  A few of them are a little weepy this morning, but who among us. They turn out with this lovely, fragile, crackly sweet shell. And again. Who among us. 

While I was preparing the raspberries, I asked the kids if there were any wild blackberries left in the yard (there were not), and then I was musing about maybe buying some cultivated thornless blackberry bushes in the spring, so we could enjoy the sweet juiciness of the fruit without having to deal with the thorns. Well, they were unanimously appalled, and felt strongly that getting torn up a little bit was an indispensable part of the experience, and made the berries even sweeter. Which just goes to show: They certainly are my kids. 

So my plan is to dust the top of the tiramisu with cocoa powder to bring out the piping, if any, and then add in the raspberries in between, and maybe some fresh mint leaves. Won’t that be pretty? And if it collapses when I take the side of the pan off, at least it will be yummy, because I did NOT burn it. (This is a big deal, as I’ve been burning EVERYTHING lately.)

Oh anyway, after I got this squared away, I made a couple of big meatloaves. Here is my recipe,

Jump to Recipe

which is honestly nothing special, but we haven’t had meatloaf for a while, and it’s pretty popular. I couldn’t find the worcestershire, so I added some soy sauce. And yes, I slathered on plenty of ketchup as the good Lord intended. 

I forgot to take the soy sauce into account when I was adding the salt, and it was PRETTY SALTY, but no one complained. Made a big pot of plain rice in the Instant Pot and it was a perfectly fine supper for a chilly day. 

Damien, luckiest of men, spent much of his day repairing the water heater (which is why we didn’t have water earlier). The lurkworm showers were kind of annoying in the summer, but now that it’s getting into the 40’s at night, we’re all pretty happy about hot showers again! The man can fix just about anything. 

FRIDAY
Pizza and tiramisu

Clara and Wesley are coming over, and I believe they are bringing pizza.

OH. And I mentioned this on Facebook, but not yet here, so I am EXTREMELY HAPPY TO TELL YOU THAT THEY ARE ENGAGED. I love these two so much, and I’m so glad they found each other. 

What a month it has been! My goodness. My goodness. I am slowly making some headway into writing thank-you notes to all the wonderful people who pitched in. It was so immensely helpful not to be freaking out about money while I was (am) recuperating. 

I did get some grape juice going, finally. Once you sort the grapes, the rest is so easy. You just mash them up a bit, bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for ten minutes, occasionally mashing,

and then strain it all through cheesecloth. Usually I am dumb and attempt to squeeze it through while it’s still straight out of the pot, but this time I am smart, and I put the cheesecloth in a colander and let it drip. 

Looks like maybe six quarts or two gallons of juice (this is the second pot). If it’s too tart, you can add sugar, but we usually don’t do this. Still thinking about making some gummies, which is just grape juice, sugar, and gelatin mixed and poured into molds. I have silicone skull molds, but have yet to mold any skulls this year! Besides my own, I mean, ho ho. 

Anyway, I am feeling pretty good about having made supper this week. My next goal is to Bring Back Vegetables, but one thing at a time. I have been trying and trying to get some writing done, and as much as I wish I could blame my struggles on the brain surgery, I think I’m just rusty. Alas. Maybe some grape juice will help. It couldn’t hurt. 

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Meatloaf (actually two giant meatloaves)

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground beef
  • 2 lbs ground turkey
  • 8 eggs
  • 4 cups breadcrumbs
  • 3/4 cup milk OR red wine
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

plenty of salt, pepper, garlic powder or fresh garlic, onion powder, fresh parsley, etc.

  • ketchup for the top
  • 2 onions diced and fried (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450

  2. Mix all meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and seasonings together with your hands until well blended.

  3. Form meat into two oblong loaves on pan with drainage

  4. Squirt ketchup all over the outside of the loaves and spread to cover with spatula. Don't pretend you're too good for this. It's delicious. 

  5. Bake ninety minutes or so, until meat is cooked all the way through. Slice and serve. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 483: Smooth dinner, smooth brain

Happy Friday! Happy nopioid day to me! Warning: This post has some scar pics in it, plus a lot of complaining, so don’t read if it you hate that! 

There have been some freaking UPS AND DOWNS this week, but I am completely off rotten old oxy, and yesterday they took all 41 staples and one super itchy lumbar stitch out, and just now I did the thing where I greeted the dog by pretending to kick him to death (which he likes! He thinks it’s funny!) and I suddenly realized I would not have been able to do that a couple of days ago. My sense of balance is back! 

I have never been so cared for in all my life. I remember several years ago taking a baby to the ER for croup or strep throat or something, and the nurse noticed my throat was stitched together (just had a thyroidectomy), and she was like, “. . . are you OKAY?” and I was like, “. . . SURE” because I really didn’t have a choice! That was some year. That was the year we lost our apartment and our car died and my husband’s job was laying people off and I was pregnant and the OB/GYN noticed I had what may or may not be thyroid cancer, but the biopsies were inconclusive and I couldn’t really think about any of that because I had to find a new apartment, and let me tell you, some of that process was a little demoralizing We ended up moving in with my poor old parents, and all I remember about the trip there was that we brought the very last food we owned, which was half a box of Kix, and when I drove away from our old place I had an aquarium full of fish strapped into the front seat, and when we got to our new place, there was only a little water and one fish left, and I never did find the missing ones.

ANYWAY, what I’m trying to say is life sure has changed, and I haven’t done a damn thing for the last two weeks except accept help, listen to music, nap, cry a little bit, and eat peaches. Damien has been stupendous, not only keeping up with everything, but making sure the kids are getting little treats and everything is calm and stable, and telling me repeatedly that every crazy thing I say is normal and understandable. My friend Elisa send a fun package of little crafts I’m doing to keep my hands busy, which helps a lot. My friend Sadie came over, I think my sister Rosie is coming this weekend, my kids’ teacher and principle each sent a yummy dinner, and the dad of one of Corrie’s friends stopped by with a gift card to the local pizzeria. Damien has been making excellent dinners — buffalo chicken wings, roast beef sandwiches, homemade spaghetti sauce, all kind of great stuff. Elijah’s going to come over and make homemade pizza this Sunday. 

I myself have been sticking mainly to soup, smoothies, and peaches, because my jaw and mouth muscles took quite a beating. I somehow missed the whole smoothie phenomenon when it first took civilization by storm (some of you probably don’t even remember life before smoothies!), but Damien got me a ton of Greek yogurt and frozen fruit, and so far none of it has been specifically named in a recall, so that’s been working well for me!

Very smooth indeed.

When I was still in the hospital, my poor peach tree split. Damien knows how much I love this tree and how much I’ve been looking forward to the big year B harvest, so before he even told me about it, he got some special tree wax and straps and put it back together. It did lose a lot of branches, but he did such a good job, and I think it’s gonna make it.

Look at this beauty. 

I went out yesterday afternoon and gathered up a nice little harvest.

When Clara and her boyfriend were over last week, they gathered up hundreds of fallen peaches, dumped the spoiled ones in the compost heap, and started blanching the salvageable ones. I was able to throw a bunch of peeled peaches in the blender and now I have a little stock of peach puree socked away for winter! It seemed super, super important at the time, and I’m grateful everyone humored me with this important peach work.

My garden is actually doing so well. I picked a ton of basil, coated it in olive oil, and froze that, too. I think the eggplants are beyond saving, and all my lettuce bolted, but there is tons more basil, tons of green tomatoes still marching along, and so much corn just begging to be picked. The pumpkins are still smallish but numerous, and the carrots and potatoes can be dug up any time, I guess. The grapes are also having a crazy good year, and I think maybe we will do some harvesting this weekend and make a little juice. Or just let the birds have them, I don’t know.

One of the mixed flower patches I planted has actually started growing flowers. Not a ton, but maybe there will be more next year. I think it’s mainly annuals coming up, and maybe the perennials will show up later.

The other mixed flower bed I started only has a few flowers, but it does have tomatoes and squash growing because I added plenty of compost, so that’s something! I also–

okay, I am making it sound like I’m up and about and doing projects and getting work done, and truly, I am not. I am mostly just lurking around in bed, and I do like one thing per day just to keep myself from going nuts. Sometimes that one thing is picking flowers.

Sometimes it’s just heating up soup and eating it in the most repulsive way imaginable because my lips and cheek are still leading a life of mystery and unpredictability. Yesterday was the first day I took only one nap, instead of two or three or four or six.

That being said, I did happen to notice that Marvin, the apple tree, is having an incredible year for some reason. We have never done one single thing to care for this tree, except to name it Marvin, which isn’t much; and it’s always understandably produced a medium harvest of truly terrible apples. But this year, they are tons of them, and they look NICE (relatively). No idea why. So the other day, I got to that typical stage of post craniotomy recovery where you find a free 8 ton hydraulic jack on Facebook marketplace, and you happen to know that your husband could really use one for his ancient SUV, and he’s already out driving around to pick up kids, so you set up a pick-up for the jack because you love him, and also SECRETLY, your plan is to steal his old scissor jack and use it to make a CIDER PRESS. 

Basically you just have to built a rough wooden frame with room inside for a bucket, and a little stack of wood the same diameter as the bucket, and the jack on top of that. You fill up the bucket with apples and start cranking the jack, and it compresses the apples, the juice runs out the holes in the bottom of the bucket, and you need some kind of catch basin obviously. It’s possible this is a dumb idea and I should not do it, but I have a few weeks to think about it, anyway! The kids LOVE cider, and goodness knows I have plenty of wood scraps from the treehouse

(which I don’t think Corrie has gone in even one time since I finished it, OH WELL). I also have a giant metal pot with a spigot built into the bottom, which I got on the side of the road and have been using as a rain barrel. I have no idea what it was originally for, but I think it would work great as part of a cider press. 

Anyway, I talk big, but I was smart enough to stop myself from contacting the new restaurant down the road to tell them I’m really good at making cheesecake if they want to make a deal; so probably I will be smart enough not to make a cider press. But who can say. 

The truth is, now that I am off oxy and my mind is pretty functional again, even though the worst is over, and I’m truly so so glad I don’t have cancer or any real permanent disability, I am now capable of mentally addressing it all, and I am having a wee bit of trouble processing what the hell happened to me. The time in the hospital was really rough, and even though Damien came every day, it was scary and lonely 

and the pain there and the first week back home was . . . well. It was something that made me feel slightly but probably permanently different about human experience and our relationship to God.

This next picture is a pretty good illustration of how amazing and optimistic I felt when they finally let me go home, haha:

So I am a little upset, off and on. So, I’ll build a cider press if I want! Do not argue with me about that! Not that you would! You are all very nice. 

But really, the pain is just worlds better now, and that is an unspeakable relief. It’s just a medium to bad headache now, and a lot of numbness, plus some rather entertaining sensations as the nerves in my cheek, tongue, lips, and jaw either wake up or regrow, and my whole left side from my neck up is still kind of a mess. And my ear is blocked up and loudly crackling, and they said whatever was in there was probably too deep for a normal cleaning to take care of, but oh well. I still haven’t gotten the pathology report back, but I’m really expecting it to be clean. And my eye works again! I didn’t even realize how bad it had gotten before surgery, because it went haywire gradually, but getting rid of that tumor really fixed it. 

I am going to ask someone to take me to Supercuts this weekend so they can give me an identical undercut on my other side, because why the hell not.

The hair in the spot they shaved is growing in white, as you can see here from a pic taken shortly before I got the staples out

so I might as well even that out and have some fun with it.

The swelling is taking its sweet time to go down, and I’m still giving Surgeon General of Beverly Hills vibes

but I am VERY VERY HAPPY TO HAVE THOSE STAPLES GONE. They were starting to make me so angry! And yes, I’m incredibly grateful I’m not doing radiation or chemo right now. As yucky as this has been, it could have been SO so much worse. I was sorta kinda getting ready to maybe die on the surgery table, so I’m just . . . I’m working on stuff. 

In a couple of weeks, Damien and I are going to Boston so he can [pause to catch breath from surge of wifely pride] accept his award from The New England First Amendment Coalition. Gosh, I am so happy about this. They only bestow three awards per year, and last year’s winner of the Freedom of Information Award was The Boston Globe. This year, it is my husband. 

They are putting us up in a swanky hotel and it is going to be FUN. 

Okay, thank you for listening to all of that! Or skimming, or just clicking and then sighing and closing the tab! I get it! Let’s all go have some soup.

What’s for supper? Vol. 481: Free to be… you, a bee

Happy Friday! Today’s post will be largely about the treehouse I’m building, but with a surprising amount of food. Well, I was surprised, anyway.

Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftover delite

We stopped at a few yard sales while we were out shopping, and didn’t find much, but then someone was giving away these gorgeous strawberry pots! Terra cotta, or at least some kind of clay, and not plastic. 

I have two well-rooted pineapple tops that I may plant in the main opening, and maybe the rest can be hen and chicks or whatever it’s called. Just yesterday I found out you’re supposed to pull off the dry leaves from your succulents as they grow, and WOW is it satisfying.

Shopping turn kid chose Hot Pockets, and why not? I had one, plus leftover Korean beef bowl and rice, and a little pesto pasta for a vegetable. 

My mental state was such that I got Corrie a kid’s meal from Wendy’s, and when I saw the toy, I teared up because it was just so beautiful. 

Here is the toy: 

Well, I guess that would be more my emotional state than my mental state. Unless you mean “mental” like the British use it. Tra la la!

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches

Sunday after Mass, we were planning to go check out a waterfall that’s nearby that we’ve never seen before, but we were all feeling kind of gross and exhausted an unambitious. So I mixed up a big tank of sugary frozen coffee in the slushy machine and then tackled the treehouse before I lost momentum. 

I wanted to start on the floor, but realized I should really install corner posts first, so they could be attached to the inside of the frame, rather than the outside. I had already done the two on the more accessible side, but, due to last week’s knuckleheadery, I had made it nearly impossible for myself to get up topside to do the other two. Damien is much narrower than me, though, so he got up there and attached the remaining two posts. 

Even though he doesn’t like heights and had a sinus infection. How lovely on . . . the treehouse are . . . the feet of him . . . who bangs good nails . . . bangs good nails! [sorry, I was briefly in a Baptist choir in high school, and that one stuck]. 

Then I started laying the floor! First I put down all the long planks that I could, on either side of the tree, and that was so gratifying, because it got easier and easier to BE up there, the more floor I installed.

Then . . . I was not sure what to do. 

Wood is straight, but tree is curved?? What do???

After much consideration, and after discarding many insane ideas, I fetched a roll of brown paper and sort of wadded it around the tree, and stapled it in place.

Then I carefully cut around the tree, and noted a bunch of measurements.

Then I pulled up the paper, laid out my wood back in the yard, and re-stapled the paper to the wood, and traced the shape of the tree onto it.

If I’m making this sound efficient and sensible, I’m telling it wrong. Just imagine me getting sweater and sweatier, getting innumerable splinters in my hands and legs, and startling the little forest creatures with my profanities as I repeatedly forgot the [whatever} either back in the yard, or up in a tree, or, if I were up in the tree, at the bottom of the tree. 

So clearly all I had to do was cut out the tree shape. I thought long and hard about how I don’t have a jigsaw, and how much of a problem that really was. What I do have is a circular saw and a reciprocating saw, and one of those little Japanese hand saws. So I tried this and that, and it got pretty ugly, but the best technique I hit on was just to make lots and lots of straight cuts into the curve,

and then knock the pieces out, then cut them as smooth as possible with the hand saw.

It was THE WORST. I mean it worked, but it was so terrible. I did as much as I could (which was one board)

before I lost the will to live (which happens around 7 p.m. in these parts), and then I remembered dinner. Happily, earlier in the day, I roasted some chicken breasts, cut up a bunch of basil, and made a balsamic vinegar reduction. 

Oh dang, wait, I think I also made cheese. Elijah was over and was interested in learning how to make mozzarella, so we made it together. By which I mean he was shouting instructions to me over the noise of the slushie machine, and well, something got lost in translation, and I dumped the rennet mixture in at the wrong stage, so it immediately turned into lumpy curds, rather than being one single block that needed to be chopped up. I predicted that we’d get cheese, just very grainy cheese, and I was right. 

It was like if ricotta tried to turn into mozzarella but gave up halfway through. It tasted fine; it was just grainy! Like I said. 

I was also determined not to overboil the balsamic vinegar, because last time I made it, it turned out way too thick. So this time, I overboiled it and it turned out way too thick. I ended up having to gouge it out of the gravy boat and kind of lay it on my sandwich like it was a ganache. 

STILL DELICIOUS. Also I was freaking starving by the time I sat down to eat. 

MONDAY
Chicken enchilada(?) bowls

Monday I spent a big part of the day putting in the treehouse floor. Some of the curves I had to cut were really quite curvy, and the process was completely ridiculous. I kept making inquiries on Marketplace about cheap jigsaws for sale, and finally made plans to pick up one in the evening on Monday. I figured I would do what I could until then, and then use the actual proper tool, when I got it, to clean up my work.

Not that you could possibly improve on craftsmanship like this.

The good news is, I only had to do it eight times. Anyway, I kept at it and kept at it, and I got all the pieces cut and installed. And it actually looked pretty good! I left some room for the tree to grow. 

At some point during the day, I took some chicken leg quarters, pulled off the skins, and seasoned them heavily with . . . I don’t know, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, and chili powder; and then I cooked them slowly in oil in a pan. Then I cut the meat off the bone and put it back in the pan with a bottle of this stuff

because darn it, I miss cilantro. I always think I don’t eat enough leafy greens, but I must, because trying to summer cook without them is really difficult! Bah. 

Anyway, I made a pot of rice and dug up some shredded pepper jack cheese and sour cream, and we had quite yummy chicken rice bowls. 

Looks like we had beans, too. I guess I put some kidney beans and diced tomatoes in a pot with … I don’t know. Mexican things. They were yummy. 

That evening, before picking up Lucy, I went to get that jig saw, and the dude couldn’t find it. I had to laugh, because I always think I’m the only one who does stuff like that! But no jig saw for me, very sad. But honestly the hole I cut was not half bad. 

One really cute thing that happened was I had labelled the boards with letters so I would know what order the went it, and I added an arrow so I would know which way was downstream. So I’m working outside, and this bee comes around and, well

That oughta clear up a few things around here. 

TUESDAY

Tuesday, I really don’t know what we ate. I do remember going to Home Depot, AGAIN, with this magnificently lucid list

which is written on a piece torn off a box of nails. I stared at the bolts for a really long time before deciding not to get any, which is what usually happens when I got to buy bolts. Then I just got a whole bunch more wood. 

And Tuesday I started to work on the railing. This is where my confidence in the whole project really took a nosedive.

 

The railing is more sturdy than it looks, because it is nailed into the inside of the frame, and the floor is built around it. Buttttt it’s still not as sturdy as I would like, especially when I think about, you know, people who are eleven and maybe have some issues with impulse control. And physics. So I just kind of kept adding more and more reinforcements, and going on a kind of roller coaster of confidence and despair as I went. Which I always enjoy. 

Ah! Irene reminded me we had bratwurst on Tuesday. I asked Damien to grill it, and I served it with the pickled peppers and onions I made last week. They got pickled good!

In the evening, I suddenly remembered I had a garden. Yipes! It had been raining off an on, so nothing was too horribly dried out, but it was not happy. So I gave everything a good soaking, and deadheaded a bunch of flowers and did this and that. My carrot patch is absurd. I DID thin it, but not nearly enough, and now we have ten thousand bushy-topped, threadlike carrots all competing for a few square feet of space.

Corrie sees absolutely no problem with this, so I guess there is no problem!

And I picked a bunch of eggplants! I have a few ichiban plants, which make long, thin eggplants, and a bunch of — okay, I forget what they are. They are streaky purple and white, and they’re producing like crazy, which makes me happy. 

That night, the kids made s’mores while I stayed inside and melded into my bed. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork gyros, stuffed grape leaves, fried eggplant

Wednesday, you’ll never guess, I worked on the treehouse. But first I did a bunch of prep for supper. I really wanted to use the eggplant, and also make some stuffed grape leaves before the grape leaves start to get tough. So obviously it was GYRO TIME. I made a marinade and cut up a pork butt into thin pieces, and set that marinating. Here is that recipe (oh yeah, this is a food post!)

Jump to Recipe

Then I sent Corrie out to pick me a 40 grape leaves and 40 mint leaves. We blanched the grape leaves in salted water, and I decided we’d do cheater grape leaves, with leftover, already-cooked rice. I put some fresh mint a dill and some diced red onion in a pot with a bunch of sumac, salt and pepper, butter, olive oil, and oregano, and warmed that up a bit, and then mixed in the rice. Then Corrie just went ahead and made forty grape leaves!

When she was done, I put them in the slow cooker with water and lemon juice, and let that go. Then I made some yogurt sauce and cut up all the eggplants, salted the slices, and laid them between paper towels to dry out a bit. I also mixed up the dry part of the batter for the eggplant. 

I spent a good part of the day building a reinforcing the railing. Then, when it got close to supper time, I started some spicy french fries cooking, and when they were almost done, I took the meat out of the marinade and spread it on a pan, and roasted it. 

Then I added the oil and water to the batter mix for the eggplants. Here is my recipe for fried eggplant. 

Jump to Recipe

I really love this recipe. It seems mild at first, but the warm spiciness sneaks up on you; and the texture is wonderful. It puffs up and then crisps, and in the time it takes for the outside to get crunchy, the inside (the actual eggplant) practically melts. Aghh, so good. 

Most of the eggplant I was cooking was baby eggplant, so it was just penny-sized, and let me tell you, that was a pain in the neck to dredge in batter and drop into oil. I burned the hell out of my fingers several times. WORTH IT.

You give it a little sprinkle with kosher salt while it’s still piping hot, and it’s amazing. 

So we had an actual two-course meal: Fried eggplant and stuffed grape leaves with garlic yogurt sauce: 

and then gyros, with pork, tomatoes, cucumbers, spicy fries, feta, and more yogurt sauce, hot sauce, and more fresh mint leaves. I did store bought pita because I know my limits! More or less!

I wished, as I always do when I make this meal, that I had set aside some of the marinade before I put the meat in, to use as a dipping sauce for the eggplant. Maybe next time. And I kind of wished I had made the grape leaves with parboiled rice, because they had gotten rather mushy. But these are minor complaints. It was a fantastic meal, and I was very pleased with myself and with Corrie. 

At some point during the day, I made some ice cream, because Corrie was having some friends over the next day. I made one batch of coffee ice cream, which is just the sweet cream base (two eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, one cup of milk, two cups of heavy cream) plus two tablespoons of freeze dried instant coffee churned in, plus a third tablespoon stirred in after churning. I also dumped in half a bag of mini chocolate chips. 

For the second batch, Corrie asked if I could make purple cow ice cream, which is raspberry with chocolate and white chocolate chunks. I could try! I started off making raspberry ice cream, but didn’t have quite enough raspberries, so I went into the yard and found a very small handful of wild blackberries and some blueberries from our poor neglected bush. Still not quite enough, so I dumped in the last of the strawberry rhubarb compote from last week’s cheesecake. So it was raspberry-blueberry-blackberry-strawberry-rhubarb flavored. I churned it and then added the rest of the mini chocolate chips and half a bag of white chocolate chips. (I pre-freeze any add-ins while the ice cream is churning, so they don’t melt when I add them.) 

THURSDAY
Burgers, chips, fruit salad, ice cream cones

Thursday in the morning, I went and got a NEW (to me) SACRAMENT! Anointing of the sick. Surgery is next Thursday, so we’re getting down to it. I like our new pastor a lot, and it turns out he has a DOG. This dog was so incredibly overjoyed to see us, she bounced straight up in the air like a toy on a spring. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, Sonny bounces like that sometimes, but he’s proportioned so oddly, it has a different effect. Anyway, I got anointed, and I got to meet a nice dog, and had a good talk with the pastor, and it was a very good way to start the day. 

I went out to assess the treehouse, and decided the railing was about as strong as it was going to be without some major additions, and Clara’s boyfriend is going to come over on Sunday and tell me if it needs any major additions, or I’m just being crazy. I did want to add something to function as a sort of net, to prevent people from accidentally slithering through the railing to their death below.

But also, I truly, ardenty, profoundly did not want to spend any more money on this friggin thing. 

So we went to the pumpkin patch, which I fenced in early on to keep the ducks out. Actually, it was really the flower patch on the other side that I was hoping to keep the ducks out of. Pumpkins are pretty hardy even when they’re just little sprouts, but I really had high hopes for this spot. Remember this? 

I was imagining a glorious blaze of color as a carpet of brilliant flowers sprung up right outside my bedroom window. Well, in just two short months, with constant attention, that plain bare soil has been transformed into

. . . this.

Not a flower in sight. I think there are two little purple thingies in there somewhere. The rest is all just bullshit that was already growing there, but now it’s growing better because I tore out blackberries and Virginia creepers, and composted it. Hooray! The good news is, there are several tomatoes plants in there that seeded themselves, presumably from the compost, and they’re doing great! Whatcha gonna do. Gardens, man. 

Anyway, what I was saying was that I actually put up the fence to keep the ducks out of the flower patch; but since there are clearly not going to be flowers, I figured I might as well use that fencing (which I got on the side of the road anyway). So I started to disentangle it from the pumpkin vines. I had to cut two pumpkins off, which is a bit of a shame, but oh well. Then I found one last pumpkin, and that procedure was a bit more involved. 

Poor thing! I ended up gradually bending the wire just enough so we could push the pumpkin out, and it did finally pop out, no episiotomy necessary. We’ll see if it rots or heals. Poor pumpkin. Poor everyone. 

I also found Tulip, one of our Pekins who has been disappearing for large swaths of the day and every night. I figured she must have a nest, and I was right. I don’t know how many eggs she has, because she was pretty furious that I found her, and I don’t need any of that action. Ducks, man. 

SO ANYWAY, so then I had some fencing! Not quite enough to go all the way around the three sides, but I was able to patch it with some cattle fencing from a failed grape arbor project. I stapled it in place and then pinned it down with all the 1×4’s and leftover bits of 2×4 I could find.

At this point I had come to feel extremely awful about the whole project. All I could think about was children tumbling down out of the sky onto the rocks below, with any survivors being swept downstream and ultimately nibbled to death by ducks.

And that is how I knew it was time to quit for the day. Also I was out of wood. 

Corrie’s friends came over and played in the pool until the inevitable rain came, and then Damien cooked burgers, and I made a little fruit salad with watermelon, grapes, and nectarines. 

I opened the second jar of refrigerator pickles, and whew, they had just gotten more vicious! I am so pleased with these pickles. I love a good snarly pickle. Woof!

The ice cream was also a big hit. 

I didn’t have any because I put chocolate it all of it, but the kids proclaimed the multi-berry one my best ice cream yet, so that was nice! 

FRIDAY
??Tuna

This morning I went to see the treehouse, and you know what? That sumbitch is really strong and stable. Maybe I will have to put some posts under two corners to make it stronger, but maybe I won’t. Probably I’ll get some kind of specialized metal reinforcement pieces and bang those on, and that will be that. Moe offered to go to Home Depot for me to get the last little bits of wood I need to secure the wire fence, plus two extra 2×4’s just because (because you never have enough 2×4’s) and then I just need to add a kind of sill to attach the ladder to, and then it will be . . . .done? Maybe? For now?

Well, they’re about to cut my head open, so I guess I’m right up at the end of this project, whether it’s done or not! Tomorrow we are going to Rhode Island to visit my niece and maybe swim in the ocean if we can. Right now I gotta get to adoration, and then I’m going to ask this cute guy with pretty eyes and long legs to take me out to dinner. He’s been hanging around a lot lately, and I think he likes me! Wish me luck. 

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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

 

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

What’s for supper? Vol. 479: It is Monday, my dudes

Sorry for not getting this out on Friday! But I assure you, it is Monday. I can tell because I’m on my backup to the backup computer, and it took my all weekend to figure out how to persuade it that I UNDERSTAND simchafisher.com is a suspicious website, but I really do want to go there anyway. Hope this finds you same.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m living in a somewhat preachy folk tale where the slovenly vegetable-hating housewife gets taught a lesson by the fairies, and, through a complete deprivation of fresh vegetables, she comes to understand just how much she really actually enjoyed fresh vegetables. Except the fairy in this case is RFK Jr., and, instead of magic, he uses, well, sorry about that mental image. What I’m trying to say is, I picked some lettuce from my garden and I’m going to eat it for lunch, and I am EXCITED.

It alternated between very hot and pouring rain last week. It turns out that when it’s really hot outside, and I can’t make salads, I just make various kinds of sandwiches. Here is what we had last week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus pizza and loaded potato skins

‘Twas another super long shopping turn with multiple side quests and pick-ups and drop-offs, but I must have had some steam left when we got back, because I did a little harvesting of the last of the rhubarb, plus some lupine seeds from my most magnificent lupine beast, and some zinnias and wildflowers. 

Big year for Queen Anne’s Lace! It is everywhere, and very tall. 

I also dug up the rest of the garlic, because I was tired of thinking about it. 

We lost a duck on Saturday. It was poor little Dolly, the one who struggled to get out of his egg, and who never really caught on how to live right. Poor thing! He did have lots of companionship his whole life and had a fine share of sunshine, grubs, green grass, fresh water, and butterflies. Vaya con Dios, Dolly, you little dope. Sorry we thought you were a girl when we named you. 

A few days later, another duck went missing. Sometimes they go on adventures and spend the night outside, but this one hasn’t come back yet, so it’s not looking hopeful. These are the perils of having free range ducks. I think it’s still the best life for them, because they have the stream and the woods and so much mud and tasty bugs at their disposal, but there are perils! 

That evening, Benny and I went paddling out on the pond. I left my camera in the car, so just imagine the New Hampshirest thing you can imagine as the sun goes down.

We were planning to explore the little St. Francis chapel on the other side of the water, but someone was doing a maternity photo shoot, which I was fairly slow to catch on to, oh well. Sorry, lady. 

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, chips

Sunday after Mass I finally got the rest of the garlic hung up to cure

and chopped up and froze the rhubarb. This time I remembered to string it first!

Then I made a little progress on Corrie’s treehouse! This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to real carpentry. A treehouse built around a single tree needs four diagonal braces to support the platform, and the braces need to be cut to fit inside the corner of the frame.

This is my first one. I ended up getting better as I went! But they all seem to be doing the trick. I used my little Japanese pull saw, which I love. 

It looks a little Dr. Seussy, but that’s to be expected. (I did add some nails to the bottom end after I took this picture!) 

For supper, I asked Elijah to roast some chicken breasts with olive oil, salt and pepper, and Irene to cut up some tomatoes, and then I picked a bunch of basil and made a balsamic vinegar reduction — super simple, just two cups of balsamic vinegar and one cup of brown sugar, simmered until it was about half the volume. 

Cut up some mozzarella and some baguettes, and it was yummo.

I hope I remember to do a balsamic reduction and grill some peaches, when the peaches are finally ripe! That will be lovely with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Gosh, I was busy on Sunday. At some point during the day, I baked some brownies and some lemon squares, because after supper, when it got dark, it was OPERA NITE. We watched the 1987 Met production of Turandot, which none of us has ever seen before. It has Luciano Pavarotti and is conducted by James Levine, with incredibly lush, intricate sets by Zeffirelli. I didn’t recognize the other names, but it was Eva Marton as Turandot, and her voice and presence were wonderful; but even with the spectacular costumes, we struggled a bit with accepting her as the most beautiful princess in the world. But Leona Mitchell as Liu was heartbreakingly good. 

Unfortunately, my kids are simply too Gen Z to be able to tolerate the whole “Ping, Pang, Pong” thing going on in Turandot, and they also felt like Turandot was justified in killing everybody and keeping all her subjects in fear of torture constantly? So it was not especially well received. Oh well! They did like the snacks, and we watched it outside on the projector, which is fun. The actual moon, nearly full, was rising just as they were singing, “Perché tarda la luna?” so that was lovely.

We watched Act One, had a break for cheese and crackers

watched Act Two, had a break for brownies and lemon squares

and watched Act Three. It’s only about two hours in total. And that was Opera Nite! Another summer goal checked off the list. 

MONDAY
Beach food and McDonald’s

Monday we went to the ocean! Everyone made a sandwich and I packed up a bunch of chips and cherries, cookies and soda, and we went to dear old Hampton Beach. Perfect weather, sparkly water, decent waves. Everyone went in, and Corrie and I stayed in, and then uhhhh we almost drowned. This has actually been causing me a medium amount of anguish, because I’m having trouble sleeping because my arm hurts, and while I’m awake, my mind keeps replaying the scary part in the water over and over. I’m making progress! My siblings gave me some good tips for how to integrate what happened into my life, so it’s not just this chaotic scary thing that I can’t handle, but something that happened and turned out okay. But still, yeesh. 

What happened is we were out past the breakers, still shallow enough where we could touch bottom, and we were having a lovely time, bobbing up and down with the waves and periodically checking our position to make sure we weren’t getting pulled past this outcropping of jaggedy rocks. I truly felt like a little kid again, and was so happy and carefree, and Corrie was just in absolute bliss. Then suddenly Corrie goes, “Hey, the rocks are right there!” and dang, they were, and dang, we were suddenly a lot closer to them than we had been, and DANG, we COULDN’T GET AWAY FROM THEM. 

Corrie had a boogie board, so I grabbed her hand and told her to hold on to the board, and we kicked together. Every time a wave came, I shouted, “Let’s kick!” and we did, but we didn’t make any progress at all. My feet and hands were hot and I started panting and swallowing water, and I was getting tired so, so fast. Corrie was just excited and having a good time, and I didn’t want to freak her out, so I just kept saying, “We need to kick!” I waved my arm in between waves while holding her hand with the other one, but I kept swallowing water, and every time I turned around, the rocks were closer. 

THEN, this beautiful, serene water nymph in red appeared. She put an orange torpedo buoy in my hands and told me to hang on, and someone else was on the way. Then yes, a second beautiful, serene water nymph appeared and put a buoy in Corrie’s hands. And they just towed us right in. They kept telling me to hold on with both hands, but I could not get myself to let go of Corrie. I have had this dream, you see, probably twenty times over the last few decades, where I am with a child in the ocean, and we’re holding hands, and a wave comes, and … I let go. Then the wave recedes, and it leaves a shining empty beach, and the child is gone.

So, sorry, ladies, I did not let go, and probably that impeded our rescue, but anyway, this time I didn’t let go. 

Feaking ocean. I still love you, but sheesh. I guess that was a rip current. I’ve read this sign many, many, times

but when we were in the middle of it, I wasn’t thinking “oh, this must be a rip current. Good thing I know my options!” I was thinking “AGGGGGGGGG ::splut splut:: Oh AIEEEEEEE ::spit sputter:: AUGGGGGGG.” So, thank God for those lifeguards! They really appeared out of nowhere like divine apparitions, and they were so calm and kind, and as soon as we were on our feet and made sure we were okay, they just went back to work. 

Corrie just thought the whole thing was neat. I let Damien put me in a chair and wrap me in a towel and I cried a bit, then ate a bunch of cherries. I was so shaken up. I’ve been struggling a bit with “but what if I die?” thoughts lately, because of my upcoming surgery, and this did not help! 

Anyway, we went to the arcade and then got some beach snacks (I opted for a snow cone)

In the pic, I am wearing the bracelet Damien won for me at Ski Ball. Then we drove part way home, stopped for McDonald’s, and went the rest of the way home. What a to-do, my goodness. 

TUESDAY
Burgers and fries

Tuesday it rained most of the day, and I was so glad we had gotten to the beach while the weather was good. I spent a good long time sorting Benny and Corrie’s outgrown clothes. Bagged ’em up and immediately found someone on a buy nothing group who wanted them. 

Usually we are kind of the end of the line, clotheswise, and by the time we’re done with something, absolutely nobody wants anything to do with it; but Benny had a LOT of clothes! I didn’t even recognize some of them. Clothes just flow through our house in a never ending river.  

Even though it was raining, Damien grilled the burgers, and I just made a big batch of frozen fries, and I took this ultra glamorous photo

And that is finally the very last of the burgers I got for July 4th! Phew. That was a lot of burgers. 

WEDNESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, corn and zucchini salad

Wednesday it was absolutely pouring rain all day. Tremendous amounts of rain. I had a doctor’s appointment that was like “you are taking your meds wrong and are just asking for uterine cancer, and your blood pressure has crept up again, and we are out of meds for your reflux so I’ll order an endoscopy, but not until after your brain surgery, but in the mean time, here is a PT referral for your frozen shoulder.” I didn’t even get a sticker! Oh well, at least I didn’t drown. 

So I got home and heated up some chicken tenders, and for a side dish I made a little salad. I cut up a few zucchini into spears and seared them in olive oil

then did the same for some leftover corn cut off the cobs. Then I mixed it with Taijin seasoning and red onion. 

Really could have used some fresh cilantro, but it was pretty good. 

I took a truly terrible picture of supper (we had the chicken with buffalo sauce and pepper jack cheese on tortillas)

and that was Wednesday. 

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, baked potatoes, watermelon

It being the end of the month, I suddenly realized I have a job, and spent most of the day writing furiously. In the morning, I hacked up a pork shoulder and started pulled pork cooking in the Instant Pot. Here is my recipe for that:

Jump to Recipe

I didn’t find the apple juice, so I used ginger ale, and it turned out nice. This is your reminder that you can use your standing mixer to shred cooked meat, and it takes about four seconds.

An hour before supper, I threw a bunch of potatoes in the oven. When they were done, I toasted some buns, cut up some red onions, cut up a bunch of watermelon, and we had yummy sandwiches. 

Not sure if you can tell, but it was still raining. I was sitting under a tree and just decided to be wet. It is summer and I am going to eat outdoors, dammit!

FRIDAY
Pizza

I also spent Friday furiously writing, and miraculously got everything turned in that I really needed to! I did forget to take the pizza dough out of the freezer, so after adoration I just bought some thawed pizza dough and, this may surprise you, but then I made some pizza. And very good it is, pizza. 

Okay, phew that’s it!

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Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

  • fatty hunk of pork
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for browning
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2/3 cup apple juice
  • 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

  1. Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.

  3. Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.

  4. When pork is tender, shred.

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

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

FRIDAY
Ice cream, then tuna noodle

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

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers and taquitos

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

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

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips; birthday cake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and here is the cake I made:

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

MONDAY
Burgers, corn, french fries, watermelon

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

Here’s the recipe she uses:

Jump to Recipe

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

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

A BIG SIGH. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look: Tassels! We have tassels!

TUESDAY
Fire chicken, rice, roast string beans

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Pork fried rice, potstickers

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

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

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

Here is my actual recipe for fried rice:

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips, watermelon

Corrie just showed me the eggplants are finally growing!

Little cuties. 

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

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Banana bread or muffins

adapted from Quick Breads, Soups & Stews by Mary Gubser

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Basic stir fried rice

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 477: Parasite by the dashboard light

Happy Friday!

Today I am working outside

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

 

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus loaded potato skins

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

SUNDAY
Spiedies, cole slaw, guacamole

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

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

Here is my spiedie marinade recipe

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

It’s not stupid if it works!

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, pesto pasta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, mashed carrots

Here is my recipe for bo ssam. 

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

Just excellent. 

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

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

THURSDAY
BLT’s, ice cream pie

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I gave blood, woo!

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

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

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

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


And that’s-a my story! 

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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

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

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

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

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

For the ice cream base

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

Instructions

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

Make the ice cream base:

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

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

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

Put it together:

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

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

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bare bones bo ssam

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

 

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Oven-fried chicken

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 476: Talk to the blanket

Happy Friday! I can’t believe a whole week has gone by since the last week’s what’s for supper, tee hee.

This week has been very improvised, so if you were hoping for recipes, you will be disappointed. If you were hoping to find out what a family of seven eats when nobody is hardly home and nobody is really in charge, read on!

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus pizza pockets

Saturday was when the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage arrived in NH, with its first stop at our parish! Here is the bishop bringing the Blessed Sacrament into the church. 

I was going to correct the slant in this photo, but I kind of like how it looks like the church is leaning toward the monstrance. There was adoration, then lunch, then a procession through downtown, and then Mass, but we had a ton to do, plus some people were bugging out, and I had a migraine; so we bowed out. Caught part of the procession on the way home. 

I do love a procession. During Adoration, they sang O Salutaris Hostia, which I happen to know in English, thanks to Fr. Stan’s trademark supersonic benediction trap. So when we got to “Qui vitam sine termino,
Nobis donet in patria,” I knew it as “O grant us endless length of days in our true native land with Thee,” and that is when I started to cry. Because of The Everything. If we could sing that instead of the National Anthem from now on, that would be good. 

Anyway, I did a bit of grocery shopping to get us through the weekend, and then schlorped myself home. 

SUNDAY
Father’s day!

Damien does not like a big fuss for Father’s Day, and the best I could do was bully him into having bacon cheeseburgers and store-bought strawberry shortcake. Nine of the ten kids were able to come for the afternoon, so that was lovely! 

Clara and Wesley had to scoot off pretty early, but I did get a group photo of almost everybody. I have found that if you suddenly scream “SAY ‘BANANA HAMMOCK,'” then you will get some kind of smile out of your family. 

It’s possible this will only work one time.

Anyway, despite my protests, Damien ended up cooking the burgers on the grill (not that he doesn’t cook well, but we were REALLY trying to get him to not accomplish anything for one day), but he prevailed. Delicious burgers

and very low-effort strawberry shortcake, with angel food cake and squirty can whipped cream. 

A lovely day. Those are nice kids. 

MONDAY
Very homemade pizza

Monday, I faced the fact that, when we got home from camping on Thursday, we agreed that if Damien brought all the gear into the house, I would put it away. And I did! Sort of. Well, most of it. Well, probably half of it. Not including the tent or the air mattress, and some other things, a few. The good news is, the tent was basically clean, so all I had to do was roll it . . . 

oh dear. Okay, so I shook it out and brushed it off, but it was still pretty wet, so I set it up to dry in the sun, and then tackled the air mattress. So I inflated it …

Actually I wasn’t sure which air mattress we had used. If you will recall from my camping post, there was SOME CONFUSION about the air mattresses, and there were actually three of them out and about in the house. Which was truly not making is easy to get around our postage stamp-sized dining room. So I basically smacked myself around until I unwillingly agreed to inflate all three of them, see which one leaks and what size they all are, deflate them, roll them up, LABEL THEM, and put them away. So it turns out we have two one-person air mattresses and one two-person air mattress. Which was, of course, very wet. 

So we did this for a while:

and if you noticed the plastic full of debris hanging down from the ceiling, just walk away. Just walk away, man. 

So eventually the mattress dried, and I labelled and put that one away, too, and all the rest of the camping stuff, finally. I was feeling extremely smug and competent because of all my hard organizational work, until I looked out the window and saw that someone had discovered the tent

You guys know I love my ducks, but they do be crapping. So yeah, they found the entrance, went in, and crapped all over the place. Then it started to rain. So I decided that I would not think about it for a while, and that is what I did! 

My decision-making skills were all used up by this point in the day, and the idea of going out and shopping for groceries seemed unbearably horrible. So I made some pizza dough. I followed this recipe from Darwin Catholic, uhhhh sort of. Well, not really. I didn’t have any flax seed (which is optional anyway), and I ended up using QUITE a bit more flour than it called for. I dunno. This recipe came highly recommended, so I assume I messed up somehow, based on the fact that my pate was very addled that day. (I say “that day” as if I didn’t today shout, “Oh, YOU’RE back again, eh?” to what turned out to be a blanket.)

Anyway, I flobbled the dough into a bowl to rise, and assessed our cheese situation. It was low, boys. But we did have plenty of milk, so I decided to make a batch of mozzarella. It was raining, my day was already ruined, and you can make cheese mostly sitting down, so it was a sensible choice. I do love making cheese. It goes through so many magical transformations. First the milk separates into curds and whey

and then it organizes itself into a lovely, stretchy whole again. 

And the whole thing only takes about 25 minutes. 

Or, from another angle, about nine months. 

AM I CRAZY? Does this not look like a full-term baby, upside down and smiling, possibly curled up with a twin? 

It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Just never speak to me or my cheese baby again. 

Anyway, eventually I got the pizzas together, and I made one with just cheese, and then decided to make the other one a homemade trifecta, with basil from the garden. So red onion, black olives, garlic, and basil.

They both came out very nice, if slightly overbaked.

Sonny gallantly reassured me that if I had any doubts about these pizzas, any at all, Mother, he would be more than glad to take them off my hands. 

TUESDAY
Hot dogs?

Tuesday is a blur. I cannot remember what we ate, but I’m looking at my calendar and it sure looks like I spent the day in the car, so I think hot dogs leftover from camping is likely. I do remember doing a lot of writing in various waiting rooms and parking lots! 

The main thing I remember about Tuesday was going out to check on my peach tree, and discovering it had these crazy clear and yellowing blobs of gel all over it, which I’ve never seen before. 

I was alarmed, because I’ve really been using my whole ass with this peach tree — pruning, culling, fertilizing, and so on — and I was really looking forward to a big harvest this year. I looked it up, and it seemed like it was gummosis, which is not a diagnosis in itself, but a condition that could have many root causes. 

So I made a true rookie mistake: I joined a fruit tree hobbyist group on Facebook, and asked for advice. I was, of course, immediately informed that my tree is dying, I will have no peaches, it’s thoroughly infested with worms, insects, and rot, and I will need to lop branches off and bring them into Emergency Peach Services for diagnosis, but the only thing for sure is that the outlook is GRIM. 

So I went back and looked more closely, and really could not see a single bug or worm, but something that looked like even worse news: A few places on the trunk with a line of holes, which definitely hadn’t been there before. 

I was distraught. I tried to comfort myself with the two baby peach trees I had grown from the pits of this tree. If it really was dying, I could just start over with the next generation. But I really did not want to. I wanted this tree. 

Then I remembered my mother always used to call the university extension service for nature advice, and she always said they were super helpful and nice and knowledgeable. So while we were in yet another parking lot waiting for a kid to get out of work, I called, and GUESS WHAT? Carl, who was indeed helpful, knowledgeable, and nice, said that the holes were almost certainly the work of a sapsucker. Basically a woodpecker who was deliberately poking my tree to make it freak out and ooze sap, because it is, well, a sapsucker, and when a peach tree is stressed out, it oozes in an attempt to heal itself.

And the tree is fine, Carl said. I might loosely wrap some burlap on the injured spots, and keep an eye on it to make sure no bacterial infection seems to have entered, but otherwise it’s not an emergency at all. No one is dying! Not this time. 

I was so encouraged by this escape from the jaws of death that I raced around doing a bunch of other little gardening tasks. I mixed some perlite into the last remains of my compost heap and got my olive tree into a bigger pot and found a place in the sun for it; and I took my pineapple top, which has grown some nice little roots,

out of its windowsill jar and into an outdoor pot; and I potted up some geranium cuttings that may or may not be salvageable.

When Moe was here, he helped me get my grapevine organized onto two arches. Before, it was just a big floppy mess sprawling over the bow of our murderboat, which was originally supposed to be a playhouse but has become a spot for storage and grapevine sprawling. My plan is to eventually add some extra structure around it so I can fill it with soil and turn the whole bow into a giant planter. But honestly, probably not this summer. For now, it’s just a good sunny spot for things in pots. 

WEDNESDAY
Omelettes and watermelon

By Wednesday, it seemed like it would be silly to go grocery shopping at this late stage, and plus my vibes-based budgeting system had left me in a bit of a pickle, temporarily. But half the family was out anyway, so it seemed like a fine time to make omelettes and eat them in front of the TV. 

The rain had stopped for a bit, and it was supposed to be hot that day, so in the morning, I got going on some more garden tasks. First I put up a little fence to keep the terrible ducks from stomping on my wildflower seedling patch. 

Oh, do they love to stomp on things. My pumpkins are big enough that I don’t care if the ducks get into them with their big dumb feet, but I REALLY want these wildflowers to grow. 

Corrie’s pal came over, and they had a good day swimming in the pool and then doing terrible things in the kitchen. They came up with deep fried pancake batter fritters topped with apple and cinnamon. Most people would take the peel off the apple before putting it in the food processor, but not these fearless young turks! I very much enjoyed my first bite, and then, when the kids weren’t looking, Sonny very much enjoyed the rest.

Then I faced up to my egg situation, which was out of control. You can leave unwashed eggs on the counter at room temperature for QUITE a while, and their freshness only starts really diminishing quickly once you wash them; but the downside to this system is that your counter very fills up with shitty eggs. It’s not great! So I soaked them for a while and then scrubbed them clean(er)

and tried not to think about how I had done this exact thing several weeks ago with the last batch of eggs, and those eggs are still in the mini fridge. 

and uhhhh there are also a bunch in boxes in the shelf under that. Dang it. 

Anyway I made sure they were all fresh enough, then texted the lady who runs the Chinese restaurant down the road and said I’d make her a special deal, and then I got to work in the front flower patch. My friend Margaret had sent me a whole bunch of wonderful iris cuttings in different colors, and I wanted to get them in the ground before the rain started up again. I had a lovely time weeding, mulching, composting, and expanding the bed, and I got all the irises in. This is a tough spot to grow stuff in, because it gets a lot of salt and gravel from the highway, but I think the irises are far enough back that they’ll be fine. 

Here are before and after pictures that don’t look all that different, but I can FEEL it. 

Before: 

and after: 

and most importantly, this is how it looks from the back:

oh yes. It’s going to be lovely. The egg lady came by while I was working, and she was excited about my irises, so that was nice. Also, spending ten minutes chatting with a woman who runs a restaurant reminded me to never, ever, ever think my life is busy. 

Anyway, we did have omelettes and watermelon for supper. I had ham, cheddar, and diced onion in mine, and it was yummy, if not beautiful. I meant to throw in some garlic scapes (I pulled a new batch the other day), but I forgot.

The original plan was to make some biscuits or maybe waffles, and I had saved a jar of whey to use for that, but by dinner time, I was feeling much more toasted hamburger bun-ish. 

I also listed my corn starts on a buy nothing group. I had thinned my corn patch out on Sunday, and so many of them came up with the roots, I didn’t want to just toss them. I’m glad I didn’t, because there was a LOT of interest. Two nice ladies claimed them, and that felt good. I always think I’m going to sell stuff from my garden, but when it comes down to it, it never feels right.  

THURSDAY
Rubber chicken

Thursday we had an awards ceremony to go to, so Damien and I did the world’s fastest writing, I dropped a kid off at work and stopped at the thrift store and found a dress and bought it with my egg money, and then we got gussied up, and then psyched each other up to be sociable with people we aren’t related to, which is a STRAIN. I went so far as to dig out some supportive undergarments, which is something I haven’t done in many years, and haven’t missed at all.

The food was truly terrible and Damien only won two awards, but we actually had some fun conversation and got home before it was too horribly late. The kids at home had chicken tenders with buffalo sauce, chips, and also raw vegetables which I am pretending they actually ate. 

FRIDAY
I actually don’t know.

What should we eat? Very old duck eggs. Mulch. Supportive Undergarments Flambé.

I haven’t even gotten dressed yet, but yet I still found time to forget I was supposed to take a kid in for a physical, and now it’s too late, so that was pretty efficient. She also has an art class later in the day, and I will probably ask Damien to cover nap time, I mean adoration. Let me know if you can think of what to eat!

What’s for supper? Vol. 474: And I alone scaped to tell thee

Happy Friday! This week has been an insane mix of medical emergencies, yard work, milestones, and of course potato chips. So many potato chips. If this sounds like your jam, read on. 

SATURDAY
Panic food/hospital food

Saturday I got back from shopping and Damien was just getting back from the dump, and we found the one kid who was home crying in horrible pain. I immediately thought appendicitis. So we went to the hospital and they said oh yeah, it’s appendicitis, but we don’t do pediatric surgery here. So Damien went with the kid in the ambulance to the big hospital an hour north, and I ran home to get some extra clothes and a sandwich, and then followed in the car. 

I will spare you the tale of how many turns I missed and which new issues with the car cropped up along the way, but the rest of the evening and night and following morning were not great. So we languished in the second ER for many hours, waiting to hear when we could get the surgery. We were doing better than a lot of other people there, let me tell you. 

A kind nurse interceded for us and around midnight we finally got moved to the PICU, which was much nicer. Surgery in the morning. I went to brush my teeth and in came the attending doctor and said they had presented it to her like it was definitely appendicitis, but when she looked at the actual reports, that was far from clear. So we got an MRI at around 3 a.m. and that too was NOT GREAT. Poor kid. Back to the room, kid is all worked up and can’t sleep, everything is beeping, eventually we doze off.

SUNDAY
Wendy’s 

Around 7 a.m. the surgeon bursts in and shouts “YEAH NO THIS ISN’T APPENDICITIS NO SURGERY SORRY FOR THE BACK AND FORTH THANKS” and leaves. I was having a nice dream about a bear and had no idea what the hell was going on. Eventually the previous doctor comes back and fills us in some more. They don’t know what it is. We will be staying at least another night while they keep running tests.

Kid is really unravelling at this point, more from hospital aggravation than from pain. Every single person that comes in tells me something slightly different about what is going on and what is likely to happen next. Time passes, people keep pushing on the part that hurts, everything is still beeping, and about eleven consultations later, they say it’s almost definitely not appendicitis, but we don’t know what it is (possibly a burst cyst, possibly inflammation of lymph nodes from a virus), but white blood cell count is now normal and we can go home if we want to. Which we do! So that is what we did. Eventually. We got Wendy’s for dinner on the way home. Kid shares amazing stories of ambulance and MRI and shows off her IV bruise. Damien and I collapse like bunches of broccoli. 

MONDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, fries

Monday, kid sleeps in, naturally, and wakes up feeling so much better, thanks be to God. I did very little that day. Ain’t no tired like “home from the PICU” tired, especially when you keep thinking about how you went right up to the brink of a kid getting surgery they didn’t need. And I don’t think anyone did anything wrong! It was just an ambiguous situation.

During my afternoon errands, I did buy some ice cream sundae things to say thank you to the kids at home for being so awesome and taking care of everything while we were away.

Supper was muffaletta sandwiches. I threw a bunch of stuff in the food processor – black and kalamata olives, a few jalapeno slices, parsley, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and red pepper flakes – and made a little tapenade, I guess.

and we had soft rolls with ham and various salamis and whatnot, and cheese. And fries. 

I don’t know why my dinner looks like someone plated it with an air cannon, but it was yummy. 

TUESDAY
Dino nuggets/Italian food

Tuesday was Lucy’s last day of school, and Benny’s 8th grade graduation! I suddenly realized we were supposed to bring a dish to share, so I was very glad we had meat and cheese and tapenade in the house. I put together a little platter with all those things, plus some string beans, grape leaves, and pita, and garnished it with chive blossoms, and it was not bad.

Graduation was nice. It’s a small school and they keep it short. Benny was radiant.

And that is the ninth eighth-grade graduation we’ve been to! 

Afterward, she chose a local Italian restaurant for her graduation celebration meal. We had “gondola bread” which is just toasted bread with garlic and melted cheese on it, very yummy. I had a big antipasto salad, and some kind of cake soaked in orange syrup. All delicious. 

WEDNESDAY
Tacos

Wednesday was the last day of school for Benny and Corrie. One more kid to go. I looked at the weather report and saw that we were supposed to get rain starting on Thursday and then every day basically until the end of the world. So I figured it was my last shot to do something about the spot where all that horrible wood used to be. I figured I’d rake it a bit and then scatter some seeds, boom, done. 

Five hours later, I had cleared the scraps, tilled the soil and dug up a bunch of root balls, dragged over some felled trees for borders, mulched the edges, laid a tarp to prep a spot for a path to pave later, dug up five loads of compost from the heap and spread it on the new spot, and THEN I scattered the big pouch of wildflower seeds I had bought. I guess I had some leftover hospital angst that needed working out, and this was the perfect job for that.

This is what it looked like before the junk guy came:

and here it is after I got through with it:

Feeling fairly smug about that!

Then I dashed around doing this and that garden task. I had built up some furious sweaty energy by this point, so I mowed down a bunch of blackberry bushes on the other side of the house, and tore up some soil and broadcast the other big pouch of seeds I had bought. But I had my doubts about the soil, which has been degraded by blackberries.

So at some point during the day — and hospital confusion segued straight into end-of-school-year confusion, and I shrimply do not know what time it is, what day it is, or where I am supposed to be, but I just keep moving — I bought some humus and manure, and spread that on top of the seeds I had just planted, and rustled it around a little bit. I have no idea what I’m doing, but it sure is green around here, so probably something will grow. It started to rain just as I was finishing up, which was immensely gratifying. 

Oh, and then I made some tacos real quick. 

You can see that the tabletop is . . . somewhat improved. This is a wrought iron table that is supposed to have a glass top, and we DID have a glass top, but it broke. Then I miraculously found a free replacement, and that broke, too. At some point I made a tabletop out of wood, and painted it; then a few years later, I had the brilliant idea to use natural objects as stencils and paint it again. This looked, of course, terrible; and then the wood started to warp and splinter, and it’s been a really really bad tabletop ever since.  At some point during the week, I stormed angrily (?) into Home Depot and bought a sheet of some kind of plastic stuff that I guess you are supposed to use on walls to protect them? I don’t know. It turned out not to be stiff or thick enough to work as a tabletop on its own, so I just laid it over the existing wooden one, and it’s . . . . . . . . . . . . somewhat improved. And that’s-a my story. If you happen to have a 48″-round piece of tempered glass that you’re not using, please just roll it in my direction. I have need of it. But actually the plastic is fine. It’s fine!

THURSDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Thursday it got murderously hot. I was expecting cool rain, but guess we are alternating rain and high heat, which is not ideal, but what can one do. I had bought some PVC pipes and zip ties last week, and on Thursday I finally drilled holes in the ends and lashed them to some T posts, because I want a second and third arch for my new grapevines to grow up, so eventually we will have a little shady canopy of leaves over the entrance to the stream. 

It was not to be. It was a good idea in theory, but the way I set it up, the tension was too much, and the pipes snapped. 

Alas. The truth is, my grapevines are not going to need support for quite some time, so it’s okay that this is not done yet.

The pond (you can just see the edge of it to the left of the chair in this picture) is full of frogs and tadpoles, so that’s fun! And allll the flower seeds and bulbs and tubers I planted last week are coming up, and so are my potatoes, corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, dill, garlic, eggplant, and basil. And a few stray potatoes I planted last year and apparently did not harvest, oops. 

I heard a gardener say that it may seem obvious, but remember only to plant food you want to eat. He’s right, it’s something I need to be reminded of! I do like all those things, though. I’ve also been munching on asparagus right out of the garden, it’s so tender and sweet. We didn’t get much this year because a vole chewed up a lot of the roots, so I’m just picking a spear here and there and eating it. The strawberries also got dinged pretty bad, but we are getting a few. They are everbearing and sometimes take a while to get going. Who among us. 

Anyway, we had a bag of premade hamburger patties in the freezer, so Damien grilled those up and they were yummo. As were the chips. 

FRIDAY
Tuna and chips

Yet another super drivey morning. Honest to goodness, I cannot remember the last time I spent this much time in the car. It’s just been nonstop half days and parties and special events and rehearsals and “oops they let us out early” and job orientation and writer’s group and field day and I don’t even know what. We opted out of a lot of stuff in May, so I guess we’re paying for it now! The stuff will always get you in the end. 

Speaking of getting you, I pulled out my garlic scapes yesterday. This is my second time growing garlic, but my first time doing it right, so I’m pretty hyped. I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with the scapes yet, but aren’t they neat?

I left one growing on the plant, to see what it looks like when it flowers. I guess I need to wait a few more weeks until the remaining leaves turn brown and floppy, and then I can dig up the garlic. EXCITED. 

Lucy’s Graduation is tonight. It will be outside and we have been told to expect light rain and high heat, so maybe I’ll just save some time and pass out now. Except then I would miss dinner at Chili’s, which is the spot she has her heart set on for a graduation celebration. I have resolved to stay conscious so I can order something that comes with a side of beans. Their beans are surprisingly good, and I don’t care who knows it. 

 

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

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

SATURDAY
Pancakes, sausage, OJ

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

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

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

SUNDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

It actually turned out really nice.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, lettuce, rice, pineapple

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

Look at those root nodes!

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, salad

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

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

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

THEN
I
FOUND
SOME
BITTERSWEET. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

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

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

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

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bare bones bo ssam

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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