Friday Food: The Inaugural

I know, you all just couldn't wait to see what we ate this past week, right? Well, please allow me to satisfy your raging curiosity. (With some random photos that are not of food, just for fun.)

Saturday

Short version: Pizza.

Long version: When the MiL was here last Friday, she offered to buy pizza for dinner. I was all for it. Charlie, however, when informed that Grandma was going to buy pizza for dinner, from a restaurant, told us that he only likes the pizza I make. So much for the fun treat from Grandma. I made tuna melts Friday instead. But I still really wanted pizza. And I just happened to have already started sourdough for bread on Friday. So before I added the rye and whole wheat flours for the bread, I pulled some dough out for pizza. I figured the tomato sauce would have to serve for a vegetable, because getting dinner on the table without A. to help me with Poppy was a significant challenge, and I was very over it by Saturday.

And here's the fussy baby herself. Hairstyle courtesy of Cubby.

Sunday

Short version: Pot roast, mashed potatoes, green salad.

Long version: A. and Cubby were due home around 7:30 p.m., and I didn't know if they would be eating. So I needed something they could eat if they wanted to whenever they got home, but that was easy to make ahead of time. (Still with the fussy baby.) So I cooked a beef pot roast in some tomato-y liquid. I cut some of it up into chunks after it was soft and fried those in tallow. This is like carnitas, and is the best way to cook tough cuts of meat, in my opinion. They get tender, but then crispy. Yum. Charlie and Jack ate theirs with leftover mashed potatoes and salad with homemade ranch dressing. I ate my meat in the salad with some leftover cooked carrots and broccoli. And A. and Cubby didn't end up eating it at all. Which means . . .

Monday

Short version: Leftover pot roast.

Long version: The boys ate theirs the same way as the night before, with more leftover mashed potatoes, and some frozen peas. I added some of the meat to a soup I made with some of the leftover cooking liquid. I like to use a lot of liquid to cook big pieces of meat, and then use the liquid for soup. My favorite soup is tomato-based with lots of vegetables and white beans, but I only had black beans. So I made a chili-inspired soup with the meat, black beans, butternut squash, cumin, and chili powder. Then I added some sour cream, because it was kind of boring. It was still kind of boring, but okay. I ate it with cheddar cheese.

Cubby working up an appetite trail running in the Chiricahua Mountains.

Tuesday

Short version: Sweet Italian sausage links, roasted butternut squash/red bell pepper/onions, pasta with pesto, more peas.

Long version: I put the sausage right on the pan with the vegetables and roast it all together. A. likes his parmigiana-style with mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce, which I happened to have this time. I make gluten-free corn pasta for the kids because it's better for Charlie's digestion. And I used the very last two cubes of pesto from last summer's garden. Sad.

Wednesday

Short version: Hamburgers, tater tots, Holy's Burned Cabbage with cheese added, fried mushrooms and onions, baked apples

Long version: We don't eat buns, so it's just the hamburger patties. I have to make so many that I can't fit them all in one pan at a time, so I brown all the patties in a pan on the stove, then put them on a half-sheet pan to finish cooking in the oven. After the hamburgers were out of the pan on the stove, I cooked the mushrooms and onions in the remaining tallow in the pan. The tater tots were the last of the bag from the week before I bought for a treat for Charlie and Jack. I don't know what kind of oven the tater tot people have, but I always cook mine about twice as long as the directions state, because who wants damp tater tots? Gross. Cubby and Charlie don't like the cooked cabbage, so they ate wedges of raw cabbage. I made the apples because the oven was on anyway and I love baked apples with yogurt.

Thursday

Short version: Ribeye steaks, rice, braised leeks with heavy cream, green salad

Long version: A. went to the grocery store for me on Wednesday and got everything on my list along with a GIANT SLAB OF BEEF. It was a whole boneless ribeye. It was fourteen pounds. That's only two pounds lighter than the baby. It was HUGE. So I cut it up into many steaks (plus some random bits that will be for soup) and A. bravely cooked some of them outside on the grill, 35 degrees be damned. The rice is basmati. The salad was the most anemic thing you've ever seen, as I was down to iceberg lettuce and carrots. I added the sliced steak to my salad along with some of the leftover roasted vegetables from Tuesday. The leeks came from the MiL's garden. I sliced them and braised them in butter and then doused them in cream. So good.

Friday

Short version: No meat.

Long version: Fridays in Lent mean tuna or eggs. I only have two cans of tuna left, so eggs it is! Maybe I'll ask A. to make a cheesy omelet. If I'm motivated, I'll pre-cook some potatoes to make fried potatoes. If I'm not motivated, the kids will have bread and butter. And, let's see . . . steamed broccoli and carrots, probably.

Woah. That was long. Maybe I should leave it at the short version.

What'd you eat this week, my lovelies?