Very nice meal, and the house was packed to the gills with family. We began with a prayer:
I wasn’t on the ball enough to send people home with leftovers much, but my father did score a loaf of Hobbit bread, which pleased him:
A few cooking tips from this year:
You can make the gravy ahead of time and keep it warm in the crock pot, but don’t count on the crock pot to heat up cold gravy in a few hours! Heat it up first.
My mezzaluna knife justifies its existence through cranberry bread alone. The mixing bowl from my KitchenAid (it’s narrow and has a handle) and this knife keep the nuts and cranberries from bouncing and rolling all over the place.
Also, I can never get zesters to work, so I zested the orange using the fine side of the cheese grater, and then got the zest off by using a pastry brush. Fine, I couldn’t find my pastry brush, so I used a paint brush.
To make light, supple pie dough, freeze the sticks of butter and then grate them into the flour using a cheese grater. It’s so much easier to lightly incorporate it into the flour mixture this way.
I’ve never made chocolate cream pie before, and I’m not a fan of slopping chocolate pudding into a crust, but this recipe was very different: immensely rich, thick, and wonderful. The stirring part takes some patience, but is worth it.
I can’t find the pics I took of our lovely pies, but my daughter made a very pretty effect. For one, she cut out dozens and dozens of simple leaf shapes and laid them out overlapping in concentric circles, so the pie looked like a chrysanthemum. For another, she used a flower cookie cutter and covered the pie with flowers, leaving a few gaps. For the pecan pie, I left a wide lip with the bottom crust, which she snipped into strips with scissors; then she folded the strips over each other in pairs, so they made little x’s all around the pie, like a basket. Here’s a short video with 20 ideas for pie crust:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9F7ZDnN2bU
Before baking the pies, I brushed the crusts with beaten egg yolks, for extra color and shine, and then sprinkled them with coarse sugar.
People with tiny kitchens and no storage space can always have recourse to the dryer.
I guarantee you, this is more sanitary than the kitchen of a typical four-star restaurant, which yes I have worked in.
My husband, who is usually the Thanksgiving turkey man, had to work part of the day. I hate having to baste the damn thing every half hour when I’m busy running around moaning, “I need another oven! I need another oven!” so I assigned the job to my sons, who are at the perfect age to be . . .
. . . natural master basters.
Sorry.
As you can see, I cook the turkey breast down for 3/4 of the time, then flip it over and finish cooking it that way. You still get nice, pretty skin, but it’s jucier overall if you let it cook mostly upside down. It does have an “executed frog” look in the oven, though.
I can offer zero “what to do with all that leftover turkey” recipes, because I only bought a 21-pounder, ::shame shame::, so we only had enough leftovers for sandwiches the next day; and then I did what I always do with the meaty carcass: I lost track of it. I think it’s still lurking in the back of the fridge. That’s the smell of Advent in our house: Fresh pine boughs, candles burning gently, and somewhere, somewhere, hidden sheltered in the night, a rancid turkey carcass.
The rest of the week was our normal crazy schedule plus what I can only describe as an extended crisis in my extended family, so we didn’t try anything fancy in the kitchen. I would appreciate any prayers you could spare for resolution! It’s been a very tough year.
Aldi had these chopped salad kits on sale for 75 cents, so I bought three. It had a bag with various chopped-up greens and cabbage, and separate packets of some kind of zesty citrus dressing, plus crunchy noodles and maybe almonds, I forget.
Very flavorful, and a nice change from the usual broccoli or string beans that I usually make for a side with this dish.
MONDAY Pulled pork sandwiches, cole slaw, frozen french fries
Once again, the crock pots are worth the purchase price and counter space just for pulled pork alone. Chuck it in the pot with a can of beer and some salt and pepper and garlic powder, and just walk away.
I made about 4.5 pounds of pork in two crock pots, and let the kids add BBQ sauce if they wanted.
TUESDAY HAM NITE!!!!!!! Also mashed potatoes (we ate ten pounds of potatoes without batting an eye), spinach AND peas
You know what makes an easy meal even easier? Slice up the cooked ham before you heat it up.
It warms up faster and you can just throw ham at people without them hounding you while you slice it. And then they go ahead and make Food Santa anyway.
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.
It’s made from a slab of ham fat, you know.
WEDNESDAY Giant pancake! Sausages, and mangoes.
To cut up mangoes! Here is how you do it: Make your best guess which way the pit is situated, and cut off the “cheeks,” getting as close to the pit as you can. Then take a glass or a metal cup with a thin edge, and use it to scoop the flesh out of the skin, rather than trying to get the skin off the flesh. Then you can trim the skin away from the rest and use a paring knife to cut the rest of the flesh off the pit. You get much more intact fruit this way.
Giant pancake is not something I’m proud of, but it’s an okay meal in a pinch. Mix up one full box of pancake mix. Dump it into a greased pan and bake at 350 for 25 minutes or so. You can add whatever you want: cut-up apples, raisins, chocolate chips, honey, cinnamon, etc. You could even stir in some jam, or maybe even sausage bits. Cut into wedges and call it a meal.
THURSDAY Chicken burgers, chips, carrots and hummus
Every time I make chicken burgers, I remember when I used to remove the breading from chicken burgers because I didn’t need the extra calories. Well, now I do. Winter is coming. It is nature’s way. I need chips, too.
FRIDAY Ravioli and salad
I intend to boil the ravioli in a big pot of water. Bon appwhatever to you.
Hooray for Friday! It only took eleven years getting here. Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY
Deli sandwiches for 9 kids at home; a variety of foods for parents and Corrie on the road
On Saturday, we were at the excellent Bridgeport Catholic Women’s Conference, being well-fed spiritually and foodily. Note to other conference organizers: they offered a nice, long breakfast, and then snacks and drinks were available until lunch, and then snacks were available until dinner. That is how you have a women’s conference.
We weren’t able to stay to hear the third speaker, and Corrie was so buggy that I only heard part of the second speaker, Damon Owens. I went to chat with him afterwards, and said how disappointed I was not to hear the final third of his speech. He said, “Oh, it was like the first two thirds, except louder.” Heh. (Great speaker, by the way. Don’t miss an opportunity to hear him.)
On the way home, we stopped at a restaurant which always intrigued me, because it’s called “The Marina On the Water.” It’s a good name. And thorough! Do they also serve bread rolls, and will the waiter see you to a chair seat in the sitting area?
It turns out that the waitresses were friendly, the water view was spectacular, the food was mediocre, and it cost and arm and a leg and another arm. And Corrie spent most of the time on the foyer and bathroom floor, screaming “NOT NOT NOT, MAMA!” and pouring water into her lap. Here she is in happier times (right after and right before screaming):
I think my face conveys something of how much we enjoyed that meal. Anyway, we both ordered grilled swordfish sandwiches with pesto mayo and sweet peppers. I had coleslaw. The overwhelming sensation conveyed by every aspect of our food was: Do not forget that you are in Vermont.
Let’s just say our taste buds not only refused to tingle, they all yawned elaborately and muttered something about turning in early.
Yep, I decided to redeem the previous day’s meal, and I succeeded. I bought a dozen of those individually-wrapped, frozen salmon steaks from Aldi (they are wild-caught) and pan-fried them according to this method from The Kitchn. They were swell. Ooh, that crisp seared skin.
I mixed tons of bottled pesto into some mayonnaise, and served it on toasted rolls with spinach.
My daughter made the coleslaw, nice and tart. Her recipe:
1 cup Mayo 1 cup White vinegar Half cup Lemon juice Half cup Sugar 1 head cabbage A few carrots 4-5 Radishes
Mix wet ingredients. Add wet to shredded cabbage. Add sugar and stir. Grate carrots and radishes and stir in.
Very satisfying meal.
MONDAY
Hamburgers, chips, salad
I have no memory of Monday. On Mondays, my world is restricted to whatever I can see through a clean spot in the grimy windshield of the van.
TUESDAY
Sausage, pasta, and onions with meat sauce and parmesan
As usual, I made enough to feed a battalion of marines. As usual, they ate enough to make an almost-visible dent. I don’t even know why I made this dish.
WEDNESDAY
Grilled Cuban sandwiches
This has been on my list forever. I’ve never had a Cuban sandwich, so I guess we can call this a New England version. First I roasted a pork using this simple, tasty method from Cook The Story (which I will use again. It turned out moist and flavorful, and would have been great as a stand-alone dish.
I used thick sourdough bread, and assembled the sandwiches in this order:
Buttered sourdough bread
Mustard
Swiss cheese
Sliced ham
Roast pork
Pickled peppers
More Ham
More Swiss Cheese
Mustard
Buttered Sourdough bread
I grilled them on both sides, then pressed them hard with cans and grilled them again.
I like how the recipe suggests using a kitchen press, or a brick. I think they are trying to sound tough. “Yeahhh, just grab one’a dem bricks you got lyin’ around yer kitchen, ya know? Or brass knuckles, yeah, dat would do da trick, too.”
THURSDAY
Chicken nuggets, carrots and cukes, hardboiled eggs
I put this one the table and then went to go close my eyes for a minute for three hours. Then I got up, had a mug of wine, and went back to sleep for another eight hours. Don’t hate me. I’m so far behind on sleep, I’d have to spend 23 hours a day sleeping and live to be 125 years old before I got caught up.
FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips and salsa, mangoes
That’s the plan, anyway.
Tell me about your lackluster restaurant meals, especially ones you redeemed at home!
Aw, I’m in a rush and can’t find my What’s For Supper? picture with Irene threatening a pie. Add it to my list of things that are making my new site look polished and professional!
Here’s what we had to eat this week:
SATURDAY
Nachos
I was out of town, so my husband put these together. The kids marvelled at how much cheese Daddy uses. Now you know why I married him, kids. That and his beautiful eyes. But mainly the cheese.
SUNDAY
Bacon, egg, and brussels sprouts; crescent rolls
Hear me out. You put a bunch of cut-up raw bacon in a pan with a bunch of halved brussels sprouts, along with balsamic, honey, olive oil, and garlic. You cook ’em up reeeeeal nice. And then you pull out the pan and you crack a bunch of eggs into the pan, sprinkle on red pepper flakes and parmesan, and cook it some more! Recipe from Damn Delicious.
I made this with two pounds of bacon, four pounds of brussels sprouts, and a dozen eggs. I could easily have made twice as much. And eaten it all myself. But really, I think eleven out of twelve Fishers ate it, all making yummy sounds the whole time.
It was fantastic, so savory, just spicy enough.
In the back of the fridge lurked a few cans of crescent rolls left over from that time I made an army of mummy hot dogs, so I dragged those out and made some misshapen dough hulks, and then burned them all. It’s a special charism I have.
We also served pomegranates, which are fast becoming our favorite thing to gnaw on while nodding at each other across the room and agreeing, “They’re so cooling to the tongue!”
MONDAY
Ham, string beans, potato tostones
HAM NITE!!!!!!!! My seven-year-old remarked that this meal was like something in a fairy tale. Note to self: find out what she’s been reading lately.
It was fun to crush them between our palms, though. Must find more recipes that involve crushing.
TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, pickles
Gosh, I love pickles. I wish I had remembered to fry them right into the grilled cheese. It would have been a bright spot in a day that was otherwise like so:
WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, beans
Wednesday, I was deep in day 2 of a massive, violent cleaning project, so I just shouted down to the kids to make hot dogs, which they did. Like much of the country, we had been up until 2 or 3 a.m. the night before, watching the country tear itself apart like some kind of repulsive analogy that involves parasitical nesting insects and which I won’t share with you. Oops! Well, I won’t share the whole thing.
Well, so before we went to bed, my husband called the schools and left messages that the kids wouldn’t be in. Because their parents are too old for this shit, that’s why.
THURSDAY
Honey garlic chicken with red potatoes and broccoli
Mighty tasty. Love love love these one-pan meals. This one is also from Damn Delicious, but we used thighs instead of breasts. Benny and I cut up the broccoli and potatoes and made the sauce in the morning, and then we threw it together in two pans half an hour before dinner time. Turns out wonderful with almost no cooking skill required.
Charred broccoli is the great, unexpected delight of my forties, just like Helen Gurley Brown promised.
Saturday is the only day I came close to cooking anything interesting. THIS WAS INTERESTING.
The recipe I used called for roasted poblano peppers, which I’ve never used before. The supermarket’s labels weren’t clear, and I wasn’t completely sure the peppers I chose would be hot enough. They sure looked pretty, though, especially after roasting, which I did under the oven broiler:
Then I took off the seeds and stems and as much of the skin as possible, and put them in the blender, still worrying that it was going to be too bland.
As soon as I opened the blender lid, everyone’s eyes started to water and everyone’s nose started to run, and everyone in the kitchen started to choke and gag. It was spicyin the same way that the Grand Canyon is deep: Technically, that’s an accurate adjective, but you don’t really grasp the full import of the word until you’re standing at the edge and you can’t actually breathe for a minute.
I started to feel a little nervous about my soup at this point. But at least I knew I had the right kind of pepper.
So I got the rest of the ingredients in and let it simmer for a while, and once it was heated through, the retching subsided, and the kitchen smelled less like, “I said,LET MY PEOPLE GO!” and more like, “Perhaps we can market this as a homeopathic remedy for sinus patients.”
By the time I mixed in the cheddar and the cream cheese, it smelled like the place that poblano peppers go when they have been very, very good.
Verdict: I ate about three gallons of it. I had to steel myself before every spoonful, but it was magnificently worth it. If I serve it again, I’ll have something cooling to eat in between, like slices of mango. We made do with bananas.
UPDATE: Thanks to some sleuthing from my Facebook friends, I now know that these were most likely scotch bonnets, not poblanos. That explains a thing or two.
The corn bread, I made a double recipe of the one on the side of the corn meal canister, but I decreased the sugar a bit.
Also, if you run a pat of butter all over the top of the corn bread as soon as you pull it out of the oven, it gives it a nice sheen.
I like this cornbread recipe because (a) you make it all in one bowl; and (b) everything is in half, quarter, or whole cups. So if you have one of those kitchens where you know you have six or seven sets of cup measures scattered around somewhere, but all you can find is a quarter cup measure, you can still manage fine. If all you can find is a third of a cup, though, you are oodscray.
SUNDAY
FAMILY BIRTHDAY PARTY!
Left the kids with three pizzas and Damien and Corrie and I went to my brother Jacob’s house for his birthday, where we had chicken and broccoli divan with rice. Must get my sister-in-law’s recipe — it was delicious. A happy day.
I hope when my kids grow up, they will have parties like this together, with tons of food and tons of kids, and a very pleasant doggie.
I brought four apple pies.
I’ve been having the worst time with pie crust lately, so I made a streusel topping, and it turned out fine. I also made twice as much as I need, so I have the extra stored in the fridge for later.
Streusel topping:
3/4 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
Rub the dry ingredients into the butter and cut with a butter knife until it’s all crumbly. Sprinkle over pies and bake as usual.
For Thanksgiving, I’m gonna try again to make a decorative crust, though. Here’s a short video with 20 ideas for decorative crimps on pie crust. A few are brilliant:
Also, I want that green bracelet.
MONDAY
BEEF BARLEY SOUP; BISCUITS (from a can)
I never get tired of this soup. Basic recipe here. This week, I used steak (which was cheaper than soup meat, in the quantities I wanted); canned tomatoes, red onions, mushrooms, barley, beef broth, lots of garlic and red pepper flakes and freshly -ground black pepper. Don’t forget, barley isn’t like pasta, and takes a good forty minutes to cook all the way through.
There should be a name for that sensuous moment when the first ingredients start to sizzle and the sound, smell, and sight envelop you in a cloud of fragrant soup anticipation.
I Googled “sensuous vs. sensual” just to be on the safe side, but let’s be honest, it’s kinda both. I really like soup.
My only comment about the biscuits is that some people live in houses where otherpeople hear the oven timer beeping, and they just turn it off and walk away without telling anyone that the timer went off. This is not in the best interest of the biscuits.
TUESDAY
HOT DOGS; CHIPS; RAW VEGGIES; LEFTOVER APPLE PIE
Tuesday was a blur. Much of this week was a blur. My husband said, “When I think about your afternoon driving routine, I just get mad!” I did chop up a giant platter of raw veggies, which we ate for three days for lunches and snacks as well as dinner. I’ll spare you the story of the French onion dip with the hole in the bottom, and of all the poor French onion dip-related decisions I made while leading up to the discovery that it was moldy anyway.
WEDNESDAY
NACHOS; HOT DOGS; AVOCADOS; GRITS
My 13-year-old son was in heaven. Nachos and hot dogs? Nachos AND hot dogs????
Also, grits are the best. Little butter and salt? Num num num.
THURSDAY
GRILLED CHICKEN AND SALAD; HARD BOILED EGGS
Chicken breasts were $1.77 a pound! Haven’t seen it that low for years. I made a quickie marinade out of veg oil, wine vinegar, garlic powder, salt, fresh pepper, and dried parsley, and was really surprised at how tasty it was. Just douse the chicken in the dressing and put it under the broiler for 20 minutes or so, turning it once. Let it rest a minute, then slice it up and serve it over a green salad.
This is my Meal of Great Virtue, with the lean meat and the fresh greens. The kids compensate by smothering it in creamy dressings.
I don’t know why I made eggs. I think I just noticed we had six boxes of eggs in the fridge, and that seemed silly. Anyway, we got all protetin’d up for the night.
FRIDAY
I GUESS SPAGHETTI
I’m pre-resting on my laurels for all the wonderful things we’re going to have for Thanksgiving. I’ll probably do a food post sometime before Thursday next week, in case people want to share recipes before the actual day. That makes more sense, right?
Question of the week: Do you like Thanksgiving? Why or why not?
We left for Syracuse on Friday around noon. The first thing I did that morning was say, “What kind of paint?”
What kind of paint, that is, did the dog spill, o son who is knocking on my bedroom door first thing in the morning? And was there any possible way I could wait until the sun was up before I got up and started cleaning up the dog paint tracks that covered four rooms as he dashed around in a guilty panic? Was it, perhaps, tempera paint? Or even watercolors?
It was wall paint. Expensive wall paint, which I had been storing in a cabinet, behind which our dog apparently heard a mouse. And there had been damn near a full gallon of this paint left, and the whole can was lying on its side in a giant puddle while the kids stood around in open-mouthed horror.
The way you clean a giant puddle of paint up, by the way, is with a dustpan. You use it like a scoop, and then you sop up the rest with your worst bath towel, and then with a second towel that is wet and soapy. Then baby wipes. You crawl around the house with baby wipes, scrabbling at the floor like an insane woman and thinking, over and over and over again, “He didn’t even catch the mouse. He didn’t even catch the son of a mother-grabbing mouse.”
And I wasn’t even packed yet, for the five-hour-ride I was planning to take with an eight-month-old baby who hates being in her car seat.
We got going kind of late that morning.
But eventually we did get there. I didn’t get much in the way of pictures from the conference, which was wonderful; but here is one of Corrie in the hotel room, trying to figure out how much to tip the pizza guy:
My legs only look fat in this picture because I have fat legs.
SATURDAY
Kids had Chinese food cooked by my wonderful mother-in-law, Helen Mary. In Syracuse, Damien and Corrie and I had a fabulous meal on Friday, hosted by the conference organizers, of zucchini cakes in a spicy sauce, pea and crab risotto, and salmon with mango and asparagus. The lunch served at the conference itself was really nice, too. Grilled chicken on greens with apple and almonds, potato salad, and a scrumptious chocolate mousse with raspberries. The presentation was just gorgeous, and everything was very fresh.
I mention this because, if you’ve ever been to a women’s conference, you may or may not have found yourself muttering, “Well, I guess I came here to feed my soul, after all, but still . . . ”
SUNDAY
Got home just before dinner; picked up some Aldi pizzas.
They are good.
MONDAY
Hot dogs; chips; ice cream sandwiches we forgot to tell them they could eat on Sunday
Hero mother.
TUESDAY
I don’t even remember. I did finally get around to roasting all those pumpkin seeds. It’s tragic that we only get these once a year.
In Rome, many of the bars serve little bowls of pumpkin seeds for free. I had it in my head that there was a funny Italian phrase about pumpkin seeds, but instead I found this:
O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra: You eat this soup or you jump out the window.
This, friends, is what you call “foreshadowing.”
Then came the muffins.
WEDNESDAY
Turkey meatball soup; pumpkin muffins
I had signed up to bake 48 pumpkin muffins for a school fundraiser. I chose an easy recipe, made sure I had all the ingredients on hand, put several reminders into my online calendar, and preened myself on having a special baked goods carrying case for just such an occasion. I used to bake all the time, and would bring in fruit kabobs cut into heart shapes for Valentine’s Day parties, and cupcakes topped with rose buds cunningly fashioned out of fruit roll ups. I recently made a Cinderella coach out of bread and stuffed with onion dip for a princess party, and when my kids want a cake with a three-dimensional volcano spurting candy fire in one corner and stegosaurus taking a cooling drink from a pool made of blue Jell-o in the other, I do not bat an eye, but I smile, and I make with the dinosaur cake.
So a bunch of muffins? No sweat, daddy-o. I could make them with my eyes closed.
Well, the muffins.
Proceeded.
To ruin.
My life.
It’s hard to even describe how this happened, but this is pretty much what it looked like:
I feel like I have described this pumpkin bread recipe as “idiot proof” or “impossible to screw up.” It turns out the exception to this rule is when you . . . well, again, I don’t exactly know what happened, other than that I definitely forgot the baking powder, and I definitely burned the hell out of them, and I am definitely an idiot. And also, there was no food in the house, because we had been gone all weekend. The place was trashed, because we had been gone all weekend. It was raining. There were mice. The baby screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemed whenever I put her down. We had doctor appointments, and drama club, and babysitting. I was trying to save money, so my plan was to “whip up a quick soup with the ingredients I have on hand, after I whip up some muffins.”
And I was just having one of those days where I had idiot hands. The only way you know how to do anything, suddenly, is the idiot way, and you lurch around your idiot kitchen with your idiot brain, like a poorly designed robot set to “IDIOT LEVEL: HIGH.”
I thought I would salvage things by asking my three-year-old (who may possibly have gotten unjustly yelled at earlier in the day by . . . somebody) if she wanted to help. She did want to. She wanted to help by anointing all her limbs with flour.
When questioned, she explained, “I am not doing anyfing.”
So, did you catch the part where I made a triple recipe (and a single recipe makes two loaves, so this was, like, a bathtub worth of batter) but forgot the baking soda? And then burned it all anyway? Yarr.
Here are my muffins, school! Now sell them, and make money!
And it took all day. ALL DAY to make these misbegotten, inedible, gelatinous, pumpkin spice doorstops. (The dog thought they were great.)
But wait, I have to make supper, too, and it’s almost time to go pick up the kids! I shall throw together a soup! What kind of soup? Oh, I don’t know.
I don’t know.
It tasted like hot, angry carrot with a chaser of canola oil.
The good news is, I made TONS of it.
I also made a salad, which they ate. I tried to make the soup nicer by adding some fancy striped noodles we got on sale, but it just kind of made the whole thing sadder, like when the put a festive bow tie on a corpse. One kid complimented me on the soup, saying, “I really like the broth, Mama. It’s so oily, and salty. Nice broth.”
Let us draw a veil over Wednesday.
THURSDAY
I consult my meal plan, which I have designed to save myself time and anxiety, and what do I see? This is the day that Idiot Robot has ordained would be Try an Exciting New Recipe Day! So I took a look at the recipe, which is too spicy for most of the family to eat, and which involves not only ingredients I do not have, but kitchen implements I do not own.
Right. What’s in the freezer?
On the twelfth day of November, my freezer gave to me:
6 bean burritos,
5 limp taquitos,
4 chicken burgers,
3 mini pizzas,
2 crushed pierogies,
and a lonely miniature chicken pot pie.
I fit them all on two pans, too. Thanks, Tetris!
And yes, I made more pumpkin bread and muffins. With baking soda. I only yelled at everybody a little bit, and it only took about four times as long as it should have. And they turned out fine. See?
Look at that designated baked goods carrying case! Look at it, damn your eyes! *sob*
If you saw me doing anything weird on Facebook on Friday evening, it was because I was drinking a lot. Okay?
O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra. Run around the house in that, you useless, hairy, muffin stealing son of a bitch.
***
Hey, I’m doing a real link-up again! Click the button to leave a link to your “what’s for supper?” post, and please don’t forget to mention my blog when you’re writing.
Halloween was Saturday, you’ll recall! No sense in making dinner when there’s trick-or-treating to get done. They had some cheese sticks or something before they left, then got home and ate their way through a mountain of candy. After a few hours of this, I offered them ham and cheese. A few of them declined; a few didn’t even bother to respond; and a few behaved as if it was the food of the gods, because it was so refreshingly not-candy.
For your delectation, here is my three-year-old, who was extremely pleased with her costume(?) of Toadette(?) from Mario Kart:
The verdict? “It’s not like anyone was retching or anything,” one food critic was heard to muse.
Believe it or not, it only looked about this good in the original NYT recipe page, too, and I still went ahead and made it anyway.
Ah, well. At least I got to feel like a good sport, trying new things for these ungrateful savages. But seriously, it just wasn’t all that good.
For dessert we had those Play Doh cookies that come in a tube and you slice them up and there’s a picture in them.
MONDAY
QUICHE; ONION SOUP
My daughter goes, “I like how this onion soup is just a bunch of onions.” I know. It’s like, “Hey, have some onions!” Oh boy.
I use beef broth instead of water, but more or less follow the Fannie Farmer recipe. They are not kidding when they say leave plenty of time to let the onions cook. Count on at least 45 minutes, if not longer — but the rest comes together in a few minutes. This soup is great served over croutons, with cheese on top – and it’s pretty great just as is, too.
My quiche is really just serviceable (and I use milk instead of cream, which basically makes it scrambled egg pie), but it’s bright and cheery-looking, which is more and more important to me as it gets darker and colder. That moment when you open the oven and pull out four brilliant, glistening, golden, sunny, fragrant pies . . . it makes up for a lot.
Here comes the quiche, doot-n-doo-doot . . . here comes the quiche, and I say . . . it’s all ham. (Actually, two ham and cheddar, two sausage and mozzarella. I forgot I had feta in the house, or I would have done at least one feta and spinach.)
TUESDAY
PASTA WITH MEAT SAUCE; SALAD
Nothing to report. Ground beef in jarred meat sauce. Again, it wasn’t candy, and it wasn’t those awful cookies that I couldn’t seem to stop eating.
At one point during the day, I hauled out the massive bag of pumpkin guts and sorted seeds for about an hour. I got about a fifth of the way through. I do love roasted pumpkin seeds. Looks like the kids have a project for the weekend.
WEDNESDAY
CHICKEN WRAPS
I’m probably the only person in the world who has attempted to make a copycat recipe of Burger King’s awful little chicken wraps. It’s just a hunk of white meat, a slab of iceberg lettuce, some shredded cheese, and some kind of orange salad dressing, wrapped indifferently in a cold flour tortilla and hurled out the window without even offering a receipt. You may or may not get a straw.
I took this photo thinking, “Maybe they don’t know what chicken looks like!”
I remembered about the feta this time, so we also had feta, plus some hummus. But no ketchup.
I like how squash tastes, but I really, really like how it looks like those enormous gaudy wall hangings they put in hospitals. Check it out:
Do I have a follow-up joke here? No, I do not. Squash is pretty, the end.
FRIDAY
TUNA SANDWICHES; CHIPS
And we are off to Syracuse! I believe Mr. Husband and I (and Corrie) will be attending some sort of banquet when we get there. The kids will no doubt dine upon strawberries, sugar, and cream. And roasted pumpkin seeds, maybe!
Question of the week: Still got candy? I ate the last piece of Starburst this morning.
Roast chicken, asparagus, braided stuffed bread, and roast apples; hot cider; birthday cake and ice cream.
One of my four teenagers had a birthday. Fine, her birthday was last month. But when we finally got around to having a party, it was pretty good. It was a dinner party very loosely based on The Hobbit.
You thought the Peter Jackson version was bad? This is the version where the cake is basically just crumbs held together with damp coconut, and everything else is made out of store bought icing squeezed out of sandwich bags, and the director has severe PMS and is just trying not to get tears in the food.
Mommy blogging alert and disclaimer. I like making crafts, decorating cakes, and crap like that. It is fun for me. If you hate crafts and stuff, and reading about crafts and stuff makes you feel bad, just tell yourself, “Yeah, but her house smells like pee andlooks like the hynena cave in Lion King!” And it will be true. Or, if you’re much better at crafts and cake decorating and stuff than I am, just go suck an egg. See? Everyone’s happy.
We had a giant garbage bag spider with a captured Felicity dwarf in its web lurking in one corner
and I attempted to make Bilbo’s door out of streamers, but it didn’t look that great, mainly because the my Cheapskate Brain overpowered my Regular Brain and persuaded me that we could afford to buy green streamers, but not colored paper for the bricks.
Benny was very impressed, though, when I used matches to distress the “no admittance” sign.
I used a match because it’s from The Hobbit times, back when everything was burnt on the edges.
That was all decorating we had time for. We had a campfire, the kids played at the stream, and we made dragon eggs. Yes, the dragon in LOTR is a boy dragon, but you know what? This is a party activity which teenagers are not too cool to do (if you can put up with a lot of shrieking over how gross the egg-blowing is). Here’s theinstructions, and here are a few the kids made:
If you make a little circle of hot glue on one end, they will stand up on their own.
We have An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery (actually, we couldn’t find our copy; but not one but two friends were kind enough to get their hands on the ebook version and send me the recipe!), which is full of tasty things we need to make someday. Because we were rushed, we just chose the braided braid stuffed with onions, mushrooms and cheese. I’m not great with yeast breads, and in desperation picked up five pouches of pizza crust mix from Walmart, and it turned outspectacular. My daughter made four large loaves. There were shouts of, “MAKE THIS EVERY DAY FROM NOW ON.”
I also roasted a couple of big chickens, steamed some asparagus, and made two big pans of roasted apples, and it was a very fine meal, if only vaguely Hobbity.
We had hot cider, non-mulled, because I’m the only one who likes it mulled. I like some wine in it, too, but it wasn’t that kind of party.
Or was it?
Roasted apples, by the way! Yes. So easy and delicious. A quick, easy side dish that would go with lots of cold weather foods.
SUNDAY
Yummy things without kids!
Sunday was our 18th anniversary. The kids had hot dogs or something, and we packed a bottle of wine and an assortment of tasty things and ate the by a little fire down by the stream, which is just out of sight of the house, and we had a lovely time.
So then I realized it was time to start the week, and I hadn’t gone shopping yet, and had also somehow unexpectedly run out of money. Like, all of it. So the rest of the week went like this:
You’ll note there was no actual falling down, but there was a lot of falling. I never actually made a meal plan or went grocery shopping in any organized way; I just flailed around in the store on the way home from school several times, and then flailed around in the kitchen until there was something hot on the table.
MONDAY
WILD TURKEY SURPRISE
There was so much grousing about lack of good lunch food, I thought I should make an effort for dinner, so I made sauce out of all the stuff we had in the house, which turned out to be peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, wine, and ground turkey. I like making homemade sauce, because how fancy is it to add sugar to something that is not supposed to be sweet, because you’re so smart, you know you have to cut the acidity of the tomatoes? I feel like such an insider.
An’ a little bit l’ wiiine . . . and that’s my secret.
Of course the end result is less Godfather and more Tasmanian Devil
But the end result was actually pretty good, mainly because we were starving by the time I got dinner on the table.
I was determined to make something interesting this week. This was not bad.
It is something new to do with pork, anyway, and pork keeps on being cheap. I let it boil too fast for too long, so the meat was a little tough; but the gravy was fantastic. I could have eaten just the noodles with gravy and been happy. It’s definitely easy, and you can do it in a crock pot if you like.
Also, it turns out I didn’t know what “braised” means.
FRIDAY
???
I have no idea. Probably more noodles. I have to finish up Halloween costumes. I’m really counting on the kids being full of candy from their parties today, and thinking less about supper and more about (sigh) gutting and carving ten pumpkins.
This looks like a happy childhood, right?
My therapist says that people underestimate the profound effect of not getting enough sleep. Well, I don’t. Or, I do. I mean, I’m really tired. I feel bad even saying it, because my husband keeps getting up with the kids so I can sleep, but nevertheless.
Question of the week: ‘Attsa matta, you no like-a, HEY, ‘attsamatta for you?
My mother used to eat leftovers for lunch, and sometimes for breakfast. Her method was to take whatever she could find, put it in a pot, douse it with the salsa that she bought by the half-gallon, and stir until it was all hot and horrible. You may think that she did this just so she wouldn’t have to share it with her eight locust children, but she actually liked it that way! Although there is that disconcerting thing that happens to you when you’ve been a mother for a while, when you honestly can’t remember if you like something, or if you’ve just put up with it until it feels familiar, and that’s close enough.
Question of the week: Do you have a crazy food combination that only you think is delicious?
SATURDAY
OMELETTES; HASH BROWNS
Omelettes (mushroom, leftover ham from last week, and cheese) and frozen hash browns, served with a shining lake of ketchup.
There are really only a few times when I feel like we have a really big family. When I stand over the counter cracking 36 eggs into a bowl is one of those times.
I always catch myself thinking, “Why don’t they sell giant bulk egg?” I know they sell bags of frozen egg product, but can’t someone just make chickens bigger, so I can just be like, “I’ll take one egg, please, 48-oz. size, and a hammer. And this lamp, and that’s all I need.”
SUNDAY
HAMBURGERS; CHIPS; ICE CREAM SUNDAES
Hamburgers! Chips! Ice cream sundaes! I’m the best mother ever. Also I let them eat donuts
This meal had such promise. The soup (recipe from Damn Delicious) was very fast to throw together, but it would have tasted much better if we had eaten it right away. But I made it in the morning and let it simmer all day, out of soup habit, and by the time we ate it, tortellini entropy had set in, and the spinach was not a pleasant color. I’ll make this recipe again, but I won’t overcook it.
And next time I won’t BURN IT *sob*. So depressing. I kept telling myself I couldn’t really taste the burn, but people who can’t taste burn don’t have to say things like that to themselves.
Does this look burnt? WELL, IT IS.
The quick garlic cheese bread was quick, and it was bread. I know it was also garlic and cheese because I put those ingredients in with my own two paws, but you sure couldn’t taste either garlic or cheese. It’s good to know there is a quick bread that doesn’t taste like dessert, but I’ll keep looking for a different recipe. And someday, oh someday, I will master the art of Mixing Batter All the Way Down, so I don’t get Surprise Flour.
So these are my new silicone pans! They were $2.99 at Aldi. All my loaf pans are rusty and gross, so I thought this would be a good time to find out if silicone is really so great. So far so good! The loaves popped right out, no trouble. My hope is that some kind of horrible petrochemical leeches into our food and we all turn into monstrous hybrids, half human, half Aldi loaf pan.
TUESDAY
AMAZING SQUASH PORK FOOD
Either I invented something amazing, or I was very, very hungry on Tuesday.
Acorn squash mashed with butter and brown sugar,
topped with raw red onions,
topped with pulled pork,
topped with barbeque sauce,
shoved into my face with unseemly groaning noises.
Yeah, I was probably just hungry.
WEDNESDAY
NACHOS; RICE
According to local son Moe Fisher, “They were so good! I ate until I almost puked!” No picture was available at publication.
THURSDAY
PIZZA
We tried Aldi pizza dough for the first time. It stretched pretty well, and it tasted okay. Kind of tough, but I never know if that’s a bad thing, or just a style of pizza dough. Anyway, it was cheap! I know you can make your own pizza dough, but I don’t feel like it. We make four extra large pizzas.
Oh, that reminds me, I saw an unspeakable thing at Hannaford (which is where I usually buy pizza dough) in the pizza ingredients section:
Bacon Dust Vegetarian Pizza Dough.
Yes. That is what it said. With those words together in one line on the label, like they actually meant something edible.
I tried to find a picture of it, but the closest I could come was this:
Does it make me a jerk that I didn’t blank out the guy’s name? It’s only because I think he’s a hero, that’s all.
FRIDAY
SHAKSHUKA; CHALLAH; SWEET PEPPERS and HUMMUS
NYT:
Shakshuka may be at the apex of eggs-for-dinner recipes, though in Israel it is breakfast food, a bright, spicy start to the day with a pile of pita or challah served on the side. (It also makes excellent brunch or lunch food.) It’s a one-skillet recipe of eggs baked in a tomato-red pepper sauce spiced with cumin, paprika and cayenne. First you make that sauce, which comes together fairly quickly on top of the stove, then you gently crack each of the eggs into the pan, nestling them into the sauce. The pan is moved into the oven to finish. Shakshuka originated in North Africa, and like many great dishes there are as many versions as there are cooks who have embraced it. This one strays from more traditional renditions by adding crumbled feta cheese, which softens into creamy nuggets in the oven’s heat.
I’ve never made shakshuka before, but I’ve been assured it’s delicious, especially if you are drunk. Does it count if I wish I were? Here is the recipe we’re going to use.
Since some of the kids have the day off school, we’re going to seize the opportunity of actually being home, and make some challas to go with it. Here is a recipe for making the dough in your bread machine. (I don’t think that your bread machine will braid it for you, though, so you should do that part yourself.)
In the bucket of the bread machine, in this order, put:
1 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
6 cups flour (I used bread flour – not sure how important that is)
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
Make a dent in the top and put in
1 1/2 tsp. bread machine yeast
Set it to knead the dough. Watch the dough ball — it should be smooth and elastic and not stick to the sides. Add water or flour if necessary.
When the dough is done, divide it into four pieces. Roll three pieces into snakes and braid them together, pinching it together at the ends. Take the fourth piece, divide it into three, and braid it, too — then lay the smaller braid on top of the larger one.
Grease a baking pan and sprinkle it with corn meal. Lay the loaf in the pan, cover with plastic wrap or a damp cloth, and let it rise in a warm place until it’s almost double in size.
Beat 2-3 egg yolks up with a little water and brush the egg wash over the loaf. Sprinkle it with poppy seeds.
Bake uncovered in 350 oven for 20 minutes until the loaf is a deep golden brown.
You can slice it or tear it into hunks.
***
Okay, I probably wouldn’t have chosen a new recipe and homemade bread for Friday if I had remembered that we’re having a Hobbit birthday party on Saturday, but there it is. We are using a few ideas from An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery.
You know I’ll let you know how it comes out, whether you care or not.
***
Last week, I skipped the InLinkz button, because it was giving me grief, and I didn’t think there was much demand for it anyway; but I’d be happy to put it back if people want. What do you guys think? I’ll keep up the Friday food posts either way.
Question of the week:
What childhood meal are you always trying to recreate?
For me, it’s beef stroganoff. I’ve used lots of different recipes, many fancier than the one my mother used, but I haven’t been able to get it to taste quite as good. Maybe the missing ingredient is walking home from school, trudging up the hill in the snow (we really did live on top of a big hill!), slogging up the porch steps, opening the front door, and stepping into a warm cloud of stroganoff aroma. Mmmmmmmmm.
SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, potato chips
Like I said, grilled ham and cheese, potato chips. We did some prep work for the Sunday meal: I made the risotto for the suppli, and Damien prepped the pork roast so it could sit overnight.
SUNDAY
Columbus Day Feast!
Porchetta Pork I had my doubts about this recipe, because I don’t like that licorice smell of fennel; but by the time it came out of the oven, it had melded together with a symphony of other smells and flavors, and it was
it was
was
wa
oh, sorry, I fell into a short coma thinking about how this pork tasted.
Suppli. I made 28. They looked great, because I didn’t crowd them in the pan for once;
but I was so determined to prevent them from falling apart in the pan that I chilled the risotto too long, and the cheese in the middle didn’t melt completely, even after I put them in the oven after frying. Kind of sad. Still delicious.
Caprese Salad (fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil leaves drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper)
(this photo is blurry because my eyes glazed over with desire)
and Bruschetta with two kinds of pesto (from jars) and marinated artichokes.
Not the most coherent combination of foods, and it was funny to have an Italian meal without any pasta, but it was all good stuff.
Dessert:
Lemon and strawberry ices.
We were supposed to have cannoli, but no one in town had cannoli shells. I did findthis list of 22 things to do with cannoli filling, but didn’t have time. I would gladly devour any of these.
MONDAY
French Toast Casserole, Cantaloupe, Leftovers
Last time I shared a French toast casserole recipe, I shared the wrong one. I like this one better. I also recommend not using rye bread or tortillas. Bleh.
Cantaloupe: I have recently discovered that it’s faster to take the fruit off the peel than vice versa. So you cut the cantaloupe into quarters, scoop out the seeds, and then slice a grid into the fruit, making sure you go all the way down to the rind. Then you just slide the knife in the end and make the final cut to separate all the chunks from the rind.
Making sure, of course, to be careful where you point your knife.
THURSDAY
Chicken Tortilla Soup and Cornbread Muffins
Tortilla soup:
I wouldn’t say I followedthis recipe from Pioneer Woman, so much as I skulked around in its general vicinity. I skipped a few ingredients, made a few substitutions, eyeballed measurements, and more or less just chucked everything in together at once. It was DELICIOUS. We put sour cream on top. Just fantastic.
I like how she says
Cut the tortillas into uniform 2- to 3-inch strips. Stir most of them into the soup just before serving. This is what makes tortilla soup tortilla soup!
This is why she’s the expert and you’re just an idiot.
But check out this picture I took! It is easily the fanciest soup picture I have ever taken:
What’s your “Yay, It’s Finally Fall Weather!” dish? Something that you only cook or bake or eat at this time of year. It’s okay if it’s some kind of pumpkin spice bullshit. This is a safe space. Here’s what our week in food looked like:
SATURDAY Cheeseburgers; homemade fries; salad; cookies
Today it’s raining, and we’ve had a few frosts already, and have turned on the heat for the year. Love that cozy smell of toasted dust. But last Saturday, it was still warm, and Mr. Husband cooked the burgers outside:About a month ago, Aldi had this American cheese on sale for ten cents a package, so I bought an armful. Check it out: it has pictures on it. Not only that, but it looks like this one one side:and this on the other side:THESE ARE THE SAME TWO PIECES OF CHEESE, FOLKS. God bless America. I made fries using this cold oil method I just heard about. It’s supposed to be easier, less smoky, and just less hassle all around.The first batch definitely was less hassle; but then I had to make about five more batches, and the oil was already hot, so no more newfangled cold oil method for me. But they were good! And I never would have taken the plunge if I hadn’t thought the recipe would make things easier, so I’m glad.Some of the kids sprinkled vinegar on their hot fries. Here I am, dealing with one of the slightly overdone ones:If you squint, it looks almost liturgical.
SUNDAY Beef stew; popovers; apple pie
Beef stew and apple pie are my “Yay, it’s Fall!” dishes. For stew, I use a pretty basic recipe: Cut beef into small chunks, and shake them up in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.In a heavy pot, fry up some crushed garlic in a little oil, then throw the floured meat in, plus the extra flour. Fry it up until it’s slightly browned.Add some combination of water, beef broth, and red wine*.Add in cubed potatoes, chopped onions and carrots, diced tomatoes with juice (canned is fine), and string beans (frozen is fine).Add a few bay leaves, and add more liquid if necessary; or, if it’s not thick enough, make a little roux (flour and butter paste) and stir that in. Cover and simmer for several hours. If you have mushrooms, add them in an hour or so before serving. Oh, here’s a tip for feeding hot foods to babies: mix in a few frozen vegetables. This cools the food without diluting it:Tried this popover recipe for the first time. You make the batter in a blender. I ended up using the standing mixer with the whisk attachment, because a triple recipe of batter didn’t fit in the blender. Popovers are supposed to be light and airy, and they are supposed to puff up to great heights and then collapse when you pull them out of the oven. Mine were kind of dense and hearty, and just kind of sat there looking eggy. Everyone loved them anyway, and they sure were easy to throw together, so I will probably make them again, even if I don’t get the hang of it.I have now used that mini muffin pan exactly three times in six years: once to make mini quiches for a baby shower, once to make bacon roses for father’s day, and once for these popovers. I can’t use the spots in the middle, because I drilled holes in them to let out the grease for the bacon roses. I should have a TV cooking show called “The Stupid Kitchen.” So, pie! I had to make at least one pie before we ran out of apple orchard apples. I think Cortland apples are technically best for pie, since they are flavorful and keep their shape, but I love the taste of Mackintosh the best, so that’s what I use, even though they get mushy. I have plateaued in my pie crust-making skills, so I just bought some frozen ones and threw in a bunch of apple slices with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, a little flour, and some butter. Irene helped with the apple prep, but quickly discerned that there were too many damn applesand went to watch Spiderman. *Pinecroft. It’s crazy cheap – maybe $3 a bottle – and it tastes completely okay for all your okay-wine-drinking needs.
MONDAY One-pan roasted chicken thighs with fall vegetables
A new recipe for me from Damn Delicious. I had to buy Brussels sprouts, which are unreasonably expensive, because a woodchuck ate pretty much everything in my garden this year. I planted peas, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, radicchio, spinach, basil, pumpkins, cucumbers, and Brussels sprouts, and every time I went out to weed or water, something else would be gone. Just chewed into oblivion, everything except one pumpkin. It was infuriating.Next year, I’m buying a gun, and I’ll share my recipe for pan roasted friggin woodchuck with the vegetables of vengeance. Anyway, this recipe was a big hit. My family loves anything with a balsamic vinegar taste. I associate balsamic vinegar with light, summery, Italian dishes, but it went really well with this cozy, autumnal meal. It was a really good dish for putting together in the morning and then chucking in the oven in the evening. And it looked GORGEOUS. And it’s a smorgasbord of vitamins, too. I felt like sending a picture to my pediatrician with the heading, “SEE?”Oh, so butternut squash is much easier to peel if you cut the shaft off the round part, and peel them separately. I tried peeling the whole thing, and Benny thought it looked like a phone. I wanted to take a picture of her talking on the squash phone, but she wouldn’t let me, and insisted that she take a picture of me talking on the squash phone. So I let her, while thinking, “This is the kind of precious, overstaged nonsense that makes people hate mommy bloggers.”I’m posting it here because the dog intervened. Also, plus, real reason: look how skinny I look! This is a trick of perspective. I’m super fat right now. Hey, here’s some chicken:
TUESDAY Taco Tuesday!
Just regular old tacos with ground beef and spice from a packet, nothing to write home about. I stopped taking pictures at this point in the week, because it was mainly me driving around for hours and hours, and then me lying down and playing Tokyo to Corrie’s Godzilla:
And yes, that is a treadmill with clothes draped on it.
WEDNESDAY Penne with sausage, peppers, and cheese
Cooked up some sweet sausages, fried up some peppers and onions, added a few cans of diced tomatoes, and mixed it up with pasta, jarred sauce, shredded mozzarella, and grated parmesan, and heated the whole thing in a casserole dish. We ate this meal approximately 946 times after I had the baby, so I’ve shied away from it for a while, but I think it’s time to put it back in the rotation. Another good make-ahead dish.
THURSDAY Hot dogs and beans for the kids; bruschetta and calamari for the adults.
We went out on the spur of the moment. Three cheers for having four teenagers in the house!
FRIDAY Ricotta spinach pasta
This is what we’re having today. It’s a Budget Bytes recipe. Her recipes are really reliable — they turn out just as described, and are usually fairly easy to put together. The ricotta gets creamy and yummy, and it is cheap, and you can totally use frozen spinach. Phew. Made it through the week. What’s you eat this week? And don’t forget the question of the week, la di da: What’s your favorite fall dish?
