Snapshots: Mom Things

I still have one child who comes home from school with Mother's Day gifts for me.

 

This year, a tile coaster and my favorite, "All About My Mom."

A. brought me some flowers from below the hill.

Now that we've gotten some rain, I have hope we might get some flowers around our house, too.

Poppy and I read a book together that had a guided drawing at the end. She wanted both of us to do it. I am not very good at drawing, and my rendition of the jellyfish was a bit . . . puffy.

Poppy added the pump to it, which amused me greatly.

Poppy is a much better artist than I am. She has learned how to paint with watercolors from A., and made a very nice card for a baby being baptized at church tomorrow.

I found some images for her to copy of the font and shell, and she did the rest.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Happy Mother's Day to all my fellow moms. I hope you have a lovely day.

Friday Food: Three Meals and Their Leftovers

Friday 

Short version: Giant lasagna, sourdough herb bread, salad, brownies

Long version: My family arrived this day for the weekend to help us celebrate Poppy's First Communion. They all drove, and my mom and sister offered to bring dinner. My sister made the world's largest lasagna.

The beast.

It must have weighed at least eight pounds. We only ate about half of it this night, and then the rest of it disappeared steadily over the next few days for lunches.

My sister's boyfriend brought the bread, which he made with the starter I gave him. My mom made the salad. I made the brownies.

Saturday

Short version: Ground beef tacos on corn tortillas, refried beans, leftover brownies, candy variety

Long version: I used around four pounds of ground beef to make taco meat, and then I took out the refried beans with chicharrones that A. had made a couple of weeks ago and that I froze.

This was the only dinner eaten at my house while my family was here. 

We can squeeze ten people around the table if the people on the ends are okay being cozy.

Poppy and I made a LOT of corn tortillas, enough that I had leftovers even.

The candy was brought by my mother for the children. She asked me to find out what their favorites were. They were Almond Joys, dark chocolate, Twix, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. The children generously shared, so we had a bunch of candy on the table for the picking. And leftover brownies.

Sunday

Short version: Ham, scalloped potatoes, cabbage and carrots, corn, green salad with vinaigrette, coconut cake, chocolate pudding

Long version: The ham, potatoes, corn, and coconut cake were all Poppy's requests for her First Communion Day celebratory meal. I added the rest of it.

I have never made--or even eaten, I think--a coconut cake. I used this recipe. I had to buy three different kinds of coconut flavoring for this one (coconut extract, coconut milk, and shredded coconut), separate eggs, make cake flour . . . Suffice to say that I will not be making this often.

Everyone loved it, though, and my sister got a pretty funny picture of me with it.

Cheers to cake!

I made the pudding just because I had five egg yolks left after separating out the whites for the cake.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: One child opted to have the last serving of lasagna, along with some scalloped potatoes. Carb loading. 

Everyone else had ham, potatoes, and corn. 

There were also both pudding and cake left over. O happy day.

Tuesday

Short version: Cinco de Mayo leftovers, plus chips and salsa and not-margaritas

Long version: We always celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Sometimes in a very lame way, but always something. This year, I actually already had leftover taco meat and refried beans, plus some big flour tortillas my sister left with us, so burritos were a no-brainer.

For the adults, I made a frozen cocktail in the blender that was just grapefruit vodka and fresh-squeezed orange juice, plus ice. 

That's my drink on top of The Party Blender.

At A.'s suggestion, we put Los Angeles Azules on to dance around to while we had our drinks and the kids ate chips and salsa.

Wednesday

Short version: Mostly leftovers

Long version: I made some rice and then combined that with more of the taco meat and leftover corn, plus spices, a bit of cheese, and sour cream. A low-effort meal, but whatever. That's the way it is sometimes.

Thursday

Short version: Potato soup, garlic bread, rhubarb pudding with cream

Long version: More leftovers, this time in soup. I took all of the leftover scalloped potatoes and put them in a pot with the last of the leftover ham plus the liquid, some already-cooked onions from the freezer, and then I rinsed out the containers the potatoes and ham had been in so there was some more liquid. After that was all heated, I pureed it with my immersion blender. Easiest soup ever.

I had baked bread earlier in the day, hence the garlic bread. And I had put the rhubarb pudding in when the bread was done, since the oven was already hot. This is the first of the rhubarb I had used this year. Everyone was very appreciative of it.

Refrigerator check:

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

Almost There

Today marks eleven days until the last day of school. And that means . . .

The countdown candy has begun.

We started the countdown candy yesterday, because we always start when there are 12 days left, and we have four-day weeks. This year's candy is peanut M&Ms.

I have also changed the boys' inspirational getting-up music from their usual "Reveille" to "The Final Countdown."

We're gonna make it, one M&M and iconic '80s song at a time.

 

Snapshots: Not Sick!

I have some photos!

Like this one on the way to last week's track meet.

And a very unflattering selfie at the track meet. It was sunny and windy, hence the dorky Mom hat.

We know a very well-read 17-year-old boy who said he hadn't read very much American fiction. Despite being American. Well! I have several American boys who are happy to recommend books to remedy that.

Here's what we gave him to start. (Desmond Bagley was actually British, but he did write excellent adventure stories.)

My family is here for Poppy's First Communion today. They're staying at a place in the village that has lovely New Mexican furnishings. Unfortunately, it also has things like this chair.

I am not a fan of Frida Kahlo, so this is really not to my taste.

Also some impressive orchids. (Apologies for the blurry picture.)

I was sitting outside with Poppy while she was playing, and I was amused when she started playing with good ole Dumpy.

We've had this little dump truck for fourteen years, unbelievably.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Back to Business

Friday 

Short version: Scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, green salad with ranch dressing, applesauce with cream

Long version: I still have many, many boxes of excess-commodities macaroni and cheese on hand. It occurred to me that perhaps it could be improved by adding egg to it. I had about seven dozen eggs on hand. I looked it up, and it is apparently not unknown to add egg yolks to make it creamier. Okay!

I made three boxes of it and added three egg yolks. It did make it creamier, but is also made it too thick and dry after it sat for a few minutes. I of course neglected to save any of the pasta water when I drained it--always--so I just added a bit of boiling water to it to loosen it up a little.

The egg whites went into the scrambled eggs, which worked out nicely. Even if one boy asked me what the meat part of the meal was. Eggs, I said. "That is NOT meat," he replied.

Nope. You'll survive, though.

And look at me, making a salad! It had some arugula from the garden in it, too, which is always lovely. Arugula bolts very quickly in our hot sun, making it an ephemeral treat, but appreciated while it lasts.

The applesauce was my bribe to get the kids to do their bathroom chores two days early, in advance of overnight guests arriving on Saturday. It worked. 

Saturday

Short version: Beef and bean chili, cornbread

Long version: We had two overnight guests with us, one of whom was diabetic. I needed to make something ahead of time that could just be ready to go whenever we were ready to eat, as there was a lot going on in the afternoon.

Chili worked for all of this. 

Sunday

Short version: Lamb curry, rice, green salad with vinaigrette, butterscotch pudding

Long version: This was the first day in over a week that I actually felt like cooking, as opposed to forcing myself to make food for consumption.

I took out a bag of the lamb we ground when we butchered the wethers and used that to make curry with the curry sludge left from dyeing Easter eggs. It also had potatoes, carrots, and peas in it. I finished it with sour cream, and then some milk and cornstarch because I thought it needed some thickening.

And I made a salad! So many vegetables!

Relative to our previous week's meals, anyway.

Monday

Short version: Leftover curry at home, gas station chicken, and egg salad, on the road

Long version: I went to a track meet in the afternoon. As is my habit, I brought a salad with me to eat on my lap in the car in between events. I didn't make a typical lettuce salad this time, though, instead using two hardboiled eggs and cooked asparagus, plus vinaigrette, to make a kind of egg salad.

This was really good.

The trackster got fried chicken and potato wedges at the gas station we stopped at on the way home. A. gave everyone at home leftover curry.

Tuesday

Short version: Spanish tortilla, still-frozen green beans, sugar cookies

Long version: I made the Spanish tortilla ahead of time so we could eat right after I got home from the last First Communion class with Poppy.

Because it was the last one, I made sugar cookies for the class that looked kind of like the hosts used for communion.

In that they were round and had crosses on them.

I had extra cookies that I frosted with a mixture of heavy cream and powdered sugar and then sprinkled with colored sugar. That's what I gave my family.

Why purple? Why not?

Wednesday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, peas, asparagus

Long version: Every part of this meal could be put in the oven before I had to leave for a meeting at 5 p.m. so it was all ready when A. got home from his bus run. It worked out.

Thursday

Short version: Pizzas with ranch dip, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I didn't have much pepperoni left, so one pizza was only lightly pepperoni. The other was just cheese.

Refrigerator check:

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

Notes from a Track Meet

I was sitting on the bleachers at yesterday's varsity track meet, waiting for it to start, when I hear one of the boys from the team sitting next to me say, "Dominic, what's your problem? You got something to say to me?"

Apparently Dominic did. He squared up and then there were these two full-grown man-children punching each other five feet from me.

Their coach apparently wasn't there, nor any other responsible adult. I briefly considered breaking it up myself before deciding that would be a bad idea, both because of their size relative to mine, and because I didn't know them. More importantly, they didn't know me. 

I will get in between my sons when they fight, but they won't hit me. Who knows if those boys would have.

After just a minute their friends pulled them apart. It was lucky for them that neither one of them fell down the bleachers or got hurt in any other way. They were immediately ejected from the premises. I assume their parents were called to come pick them up. What a fun phone call to get as a parent, especially because they were from a school an hour away.

Such a peaceful setting for fisticuffs.

I always hear some interesting names at track meets. At this one, there was a boy named Dino, a name I don't think I've ever heard in real life. There was also a girl whose name, as far as I could tell, was Aoili. I'm sure it's spelled differently, but it was pronounced exactly like the garlic sauce. And I know it was pronounced that way because it was her teammates yelling it as she ran.

Once on the results from a previous track meet, there was a boy whose first name was listed as "Rage." Perhaps it's pronounced differently or it was a typo, but it was startling.

I guess that's all I got today. Happy Tuesday.

Snapshots: Still Sort of Lame

I am slowly getting better from whatever this sinus thing is that's been hanging on. Day by day it's improving, although I'm still not 100% yet. That's the excuse I'm giving for not having particularly impressive photos this week.

I did go in to school and sub half a day for the high school science teacher. Her classroom houses the fish tank, and I don't know how she can sit in there all day with this thing humming and splashing.

It sounded like an overflowing toilet. 

Over the winter, A. bought some watercolor paints and paper at the dollar store and taught himself how to paint.

He mostly does greeting cards with flowers on them. Very handy to have for birthdays and so forth.

My own flowers continue to dwindle down. At home, I just have these purple ones.

Nicely spotlighted by the setting sun.

And at church, all that's left of the altar flowers are a couple of lilies.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.