Out to the World

Please excuse my late post today. My oven stopped working on Sunday, which is something of a situation in my heavily-used kitchen.

I needed a new range, which of course meant a hundred-mile drive. As do most purchases here.

So after I got the kids off to school this morning, I took myself off to the city to buy a new range. While I was at it, I also (finally) bought a new dishwasher.

In for a penny, in for a pound! Or rather, several hundred pounds.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring the range home with me today because we use propane here, which meant a gas range that had to be converted. And the guy who does the conversions wasn't there today. So I had to schedule a delivery for both appliances.

Amazingly, this store will deliver to my house. For free, even. They had a delivery set up in our area just next week, in fact, so I'll just be without an oven for a couple of weeks.

Of course I had to go to the grocery store while I was in the city. I always expand my horizons at Walmart.

I had no idea one could purchase ready-to-bake cookies shaped like footballs, pumpkins, and ghosts, for example. Not that I could bake them at the moment. (And not that I would buy them ever.)

I also stopped at the produce trailer on the side of the road to buy what is certainly the last fresh corn of the season.

This particular trailer was pulled by a de-commissioned school bus, which is just so . . . New Mexico.

So that's what I did today. I spent most of my day off--and all of my month's paycheck--buying appliances and groceries. 

I like to lead the glamorous life*, indeed.

* It's a song. The video is here, and it's so incredibly 80s. I had never seen it, and so have just now learned that Sheila E. not only sang, but played the drums. At the same time. Impressive.

Snapshots: Food, Flowers, Fun

A big day in the kitchen (cookies, banana muffins and bread, bread pudding).

The start of roasted tomato sauce season.

A road (our road) lined with sunflowers.

And some new additions to the sunflowers 'n' sage: a zinnia and a cosmo.

We have a new teacher in the phrase-cube classroom, and she put in this loft for her students to read in. I so want to nap in it.

I want to nap here, too, when I'm sitting in the darkened preschool classroom with actual napping kids around me.

Okay, so wanting to nap at work is maybe not really "fun" as suggested in the title of this post, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Solo Food and Peaches

Friday 

Short version: Solo cottage cheese and chips, leftover omelet

Long version: A. left this morning with all the children for Tucson, to celebrate his father's 95th birthday. They stayed in a motel in Lordsburg this night, and they ate the barbecue meatballs and boiled potatoes I sent with them.

I stayed home to take care of the animals. And this is what I ate on my own:

Cottage cheese and potato chips are kind of balanced. Book  (The Luck Uglies) recommended by Jody here, and now by me. Thanks, Jody.

I had been in the garden just before I ate dinner, weeding and harvesting, during which I had eaten several small tomatoes, a small cucumber, and a few raw green beans, so I felt like my vegetable needs were met.

Saturday

Short version: Salad, ice cream

Long version: The salad was heavy on the cucumber, since the garden is heavy on the cucumbers right now. It also had tomato, hard boiled egg, feta, and pickled onions in it.

Much healthier than the previous night's meal. Except for the ice cream not pictured.

Sunday

Short version: Chili, ice cream

Long version: Even though I didn't really need to cook, I decided to make a pot of chili just to have on hand in the freezer for nights when I don't have time to cook. So I made that, and had some of that for dinner this night. 

Chili in a pot.

Same ice cream. Cookies and cream, in case you were wondering.

Monday

Short version: Brisket, mashed potatoes, sauteed calabacitas and tomatoes, cucumber with salt and vinegar, rice pudding

Long version: The return of the travelers, as you can tell by the large meal. I hadn't intended to cook brisket, but that's what was in the bag I took out of the freezer that I thought contained pork butt. So I cooked the brisket. And, of course, since the oven was on so long, I also made rice pudding.

I found another calabacita in the garden and sauteed that with tomatoes, onion, and garlic. 

A happy summer skillet.

Tuesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, chorizo patties, leftover mashed potatoes, tomato/cucumber/feta salad

Long version: I had planned on having the leftover brisket, but then I thought I'd better save that for an after-work meal the next day. By the time I came to that decision, it was too late to defrost anything big from the freezer. We did have a small bag of elk chorizo still in there, though, which thawed quickly.

Not everyone likes chorizo, though, so I cooked it separately as patties for those who wanted it and kept the scrambled eggs plain.

Wednesday

Short version: Brisket Spanish rice, cucumbers, peaches and cream

Long version: I made a pot of rice before I left for work in the morning, so when I got home, I added that to chopped brisket, already-cooked onion from the freezer, salsa, frozen corn, spices, and grated Monterey jack cheese to make something like Spanish rice.

Nick the Peach Guy had told me on Sunday that he had been away the previous week, and his peaches had started ripening while he was gone. So they were very ripe by Sunday, and I didn't have any children to help me pick them. I brought two of the boys over there after school to pick peaches while we waited for Poppy to finish cheer practice, so we had lots of fresh peaches on hand for peaches and cream.

Thursday

Short version: Chicken drumsticks, pasta bake, cucumbers with ranch dressing, chocolate pudding with cream

Long version: I made the pudding in the morning with milk and cream that were starting to go off. And then I spent over three hours dealing with the peaches.

Because they had almost all fallen off the tree on their own by the time we got to them, and then they had to sit while I was at work on Wednesday, they were in pretty rough shape.

I ended up with four quarts of peaches in syrup, five pints of peach jam, and one gallon bag of frozen peaches. Also a complete disinterest in cooking. However, the show must go on! Especially since one of the boys had a friend over at dinnertime, and teenage boys eat a lot. In case you didn't know.

I had some roasted tomato sauce in the refrigerator I had made on the weekend when I was baking bread, as well as some pesto, so I used those to make the pasta bake, along with asadero cheese.

And because I had an Italian theme going there, I marinated the drumsticks in olive oil, vinegar, and Italian spices before baking them along with the pasta.

A fairly easy meal after a long day in the kitchen.

Refrigerator check:

Lots of pudding left in that big bowl.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Autumn in New Mexico

Because New Mexico is generally lacking in trees, we don't have the most noticeable sign of autumn here. Also, the days continue to be very sunny and quite warm until the Winter Solstice.

So without the turning leaves and the nippy days, how do we know it's autumn? If we don't have pumpkin spice, what do we have?

We have chile smoke. Because autumn is when the chile roasters appear.

Most people are aware that New Mexico is known for chiles. The chiles with the best PR are Hatch chiles. They are grown in a town called Hatch, in an irrigated agricultural area which is a very fun place to visit. These are the most widely distributed chiles. All grocery stores in New Mexico will have Hatch chiles in their produce departments in the fall. They can be purchased in big boxes. Many stores also have roasters outside, so you can bring your box of chiles out and have them roasted right away.

But there are other places in New Mexico that grow chiles. Lots of them. And they will bring their chiles to cities all over the state to sell.

That's why there was a pick-up truck with a trailer of chiles parked on the side of the road in the city I was in a couple of weeks ago. 

The trailer told me that these chiles came from Lemitar, which is a well-known chile-growing area in Socorro County.

There were both red and green chiles, and they were being sold by the small bag, the small bucket, a five-gallon bucket, and a box. There were medium, hot, and extra-hot. Knowing that even "mild" New Mexico chiles are way too hot for me, I bought a five-gallon bucket of the medium ones. It cost me twenty dollars.

They had roasters there, too, and all chiles were roasted for free.

The chiles go in those drums, which rotate while a propane flame is trained on them to char the chiles.

After a few minutes of charring with the flame, the chiles are dumped into a plastic bag. This is tied off and holds the steam, which is how the skins are loosened.

Driving home with this in my car made the interior of my car smell like smoke and chile for at least a week.

The skins come off pretty easily after the roasting and steaming.

Charred and ready for skinning.

And then they're ready for Chiles Rellenos.

After being slit open and seeded, that is.

The rest of my chiles went into the food processor to be pureed and frozen in ice cube trays, ready for use all year long in chili, stew, taco meat, tamales and whatever else I want to throw them in.

So tell me: How do you know it's autumn where you live?

Snapshots: Peaches!

The most exciting news first: I ate a peach from our own tree! This is a tree A. started from a peach pit and planted in the garden a few years ago. This is the first year it's ever had peaches on it, so we didn't know what kind it might be.

There are quite a few peaches on it. Unfortunately, grasshoppers really like peaches.

A pox on the peach-eating grasshoppers.

I was examining that chewed-up peach, and noticed it felt soft. So I pulled it off the tree and took a bite of the half the grasshoppers hadn't gnawed on.

And it was good! Delicious, even! These are what we call white peaches, which are very sweet and seem to be a locally adapted variety.

There are still some peaches on the tree that haven't been touched by the grasshoppers, and they should be ripe in the next week or so. Yay!

Let's see what else . . .

The contrast between the pickling cucumber vines and the Armenian cucumber vines is amusing.

The giant Armenians on the right are taking over the puny pickles on the left.

Armenian cucumbers don't taste exactly like cucumbers, but close enough. And their hardiness cannot be denied.

I got a packet of wildflower seeds during Teacher Appreciation Week at school in the spring, which I sprinkled in a garden bed near the road. There were these very fluffy plants that grew and grew and grew, but never did anything but get bigger. 

I was starting to think they were just some kind of weed when . . .

Pretty pink somethings! Anyone know what these are? They opened from something that looks like a berry on the top of the plant.

And speaking of flowers!

When we had a guest over for dinner last weekend, Poppy cleaned off her little table in the corner of the dining room and decorated it nicely for dinner (even though no one was eating there).

Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

We have no shortage of sunflowers right outside our gate.

Just waiting to be put on a table.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: An Ambitious Beginning

Friday 

Short version: Chiles Rellenos, pinto beans

Long version: Starting right off with a bang here.

Chiles Rellenos--which is just Spanish for stuffed chiles--are a very traditional dish in New Mexico. I had never made them, or even eaten them, but then I bought a five-gallon bucket of roasted green chiles from a truck on the side of the road in the city.

I announced to A. that no way would I make rellenos with them. The recipes I saw for rellenos involved three things I pretty much always avoid in recipes: separating eggs, whipping egg whites, and deep-fat frying.

However.

As I was standing there skinning the chiles before pureeing them for the freezer, I thought how almost no one has access to the chiles necessary to make authentic Chiles Rellenos. And here I was with dozens of them. So I decided I had to try it at least once.

It was indeed a real pain. I mostly followed this recipe, except instead of shredding the cheese, I just cut it into sticks. I figured it would stay put better that way. Also, I had brought Poppy to the playground to play with her friend this very morning, and was talking to the friend's mom, who is very much a native New Mexican, for generations back. I asked her if she had any tips for me, and she said to make sure to season the batter with salt and garlic powder.

Good tip. I did. And the recipe worked just as it was supposed to.

Looks kinda like corn dogs. Does not taste like corn dogs.

I actually had queso fresco--a non-melting fresh cheese--to put on top of them, and that was all we topped them with. They were delicious, albeit very spicy.

Will I ever make them again? Probably. But not anytime soon.

Saturday

Short version: Pork, leftover rice, sauerkraut, popsicles

Long version: I had bought a whole pork loin at the store, which I cut up into both steaks and chunks. For this meal, I fried a bag of the chunks in the fat rendered from a pork butt awhile ago, plus paprika, garlic powder, and salt. I added cold butter at the end to make it kind of saucy.

I was going to make a salad, but apparently I left the bag with the lettuce in it at the store on Tuesday. Boo. So we had sauerkraut instead.

The popsicles were the leftovers from the smoothie I had made for lunch--strawberries, blueberries, apricot jam, and yogurt. I added extra jam and heavy cream before freezing them, and they were quite good.

Sunday

Short version: Meatballs, homemade pasta, fried bread, frozen peas, calabacitas, strawberry/rhubarb cobbler with ice cream or whipped cream

Long version: This meal got way more involved than it needed to, but it's kind of fun to go over the top sometimes, especially in garden season. It all started with the fact that I had enough basil to make pesto, as well as two bags of roasted tomato sauce from last year's garden still in the freezer.

I decided to make the pasta myself per one son's request. I don't have a pasta machine, so I made pretty thick noodles, kind of like pappardelle, I guess? I don't know. I just rolled it until I was tired of rolling and then cut it with my pizza cutter.

Of course I had a helper for the cutting part.

Pasta worms.

I should have rolled it out more, but again, I got tired.

I was planning on pesto for the pasta, and I had made some pesto earlier in the day. But then when I went to get the Parmesan out to grate it for the pasta, I could not find the piece of Parmesan I could have sworn I had. I took everything out of the refrigerator and it just wasn't there. And plain pesto without Parmesan? Nope.

So instead, I used the tomato sauce left around the meatballs, some of the pesto, and cream to make a sauce for the pasta. It was very good, even if it wasn't what I had planned.

The calabacita was the first one to come out of the garden this year. I just sauteed it in olive oil with garlic (also from the garden, yay!). For those who are new here or who have forgotten, calabacitas are a local kind of summer squash that can be used interchangeably with zucchini.

We had a guest with us for dinner, and not everyone is wild about calabacitas, so I made the peas to have a more widely accepted vegetable. And I made the fried bread--thick slices of bread fried in olive oil and butter, with a little bit of garlic powder--because I was afraid there wouldn't be enough pasta.

We have two rhubarb plants that have staged a good comeback here in late summer, so we're able to have a few more rhubarb desserts before the frost. This one was just sweetened frozen strawberries and rhubarb with slightly sweetened drop biscuits on top. I baked the fruit by itself first to get rid of the excess juices, but I baked it too long for the biscuit topping, which absorbs a lot of liquid. So it was a little too dry.

Nothing that can't be fixed by mounds of whipped cream, however.

With the pasta, fried bread, and the biscuit topping on the cobbler, this ended up being a very carb-y meal.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Chiles Rellenos, beans, spaghetti and meatballs, pork, rice, peas, calabacitas, and even cobbler, all apportioned out by me according to hunger level and preference.

Tuesday

Short version: Boneless pork steaks with milk gravy, rice, cucumbers with ranch, ice cream

Long version: Some of the steaks I had cut from that pork loin, fried, and then I made a gravy with shallots, milk, and cornstarch. Gravy helps a lot with boneless pork that tends to get sort of dry.

Gravy definitely doesn't make anything more photogenic, however.

The cucumbers were just chunks of Armenian cucumbers mixed with the rest of some ranch dip I had in the refrigerator.

And ice cream because we have had a sore throat in this house moving from one family member to the other for over a week. Ice cream is good for sore throats. Also for general morale boosting.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken soup, bean and cheese quesadillas, more ice cream

Long version: I had made this soup the day before with my handy frozen chicken stock and meat. It was pretty basic, with just carrots, potatoes, and the leftover peas. I also added a little cream to it. 

To go along with it, I made quesadillas with either flour or corn tortillas, cheese, and beans. I was back at work this day, so it was nice to have an easy option for dinner.

Thursday

Short version: Pork fried rice

Long version: I had a few pork steaks left that I hadn't cooked. I diced those and used them to make fried rice with leftover rice, already-cooked onion from the freezer, frozen peas, eggs, garlic powder, soy sauce, and vinegar.

Refrigerator check:

We're all about the Daisy dairy around here.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Self-Care

We certainly have started this new school year off with a bang. A bang of sneezes, runny noses, and sore throats. We only made it to the second week of school before a cold started circulating through our house, and now it has landed on me.

Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

The worst part of colds for me is that I still have to cook. Well, A. would cook, but the things he tends to cook are not what I want to eat when I'm sick. I want to eat chicken soup. This is a pain to make from scratch, what with the simmering of the chicken to make stock and all.

But what if I had simmered all my various leftover chicken bones awhile ago just so they wouldn't take up space in the freezer anymore and then picked all the meat off and froze big containers of broth and chicken?

Well, then all I have to do when I'm sick is take that out to thaw overnight, and I'm halfway to chicken soup.

Thawing.

I even have some already-cooked diced onion in the freezer, so all I have to do today is add that, carrots, and potatoes to the stock+meat, and I have soup.

Yay, me.