Friday Food: Hamburger Helper and Heart

Note: I have been informed that comments aren't working today. I couldn't even post a comment myself. Unfortunately, I don't know why this is happening or how to fix it, so I guess we should all just cross our fingers that Blogger fixes it. I'm sorry!

Friday 

Short version: Fish sandwiches, fried potatoes, carrot sticks

Long version: I had some trouble with this meal only because I didn't want to run the oven for the amount of time it would have taken to get the breaded fish fillets and potatoes crispy. I experimented with par-cooking the potatoes in the microwave first, to reduce the amount of time they would need to be in the oven, but it didn't make enough difference to be worth it.

In the end, I took the potatoes out of the oven and fried them on the stove to get them mostly crispy. They weren't as uniformly browned as they would have been in the oven, but good enough.

Not all the way crispy yet, but in progress.

I fried the fish fillets on the stovetop, and while they did get browned on the outside and thawed, they weren't as crispy as they could have been. They were fine for the sandwiches, though.

I made tartar sauce for the sandwiches, too, which makes everyone in my family happy.

Saturday

Short version: Confetti rice, watermelon

Long version: I thawed one package of smoked beef sausage and made rice with the chicken stock I had taken out of the freezer. Those two things, plus diced onion, garlic, bell pepper, frozen corn (I was going to use peas, but I found the corn first), collard greens, one of the many small cans of cream of chicken soup we got from commodities, and cream made up dinner.

One boy came into the kitchen just before dinner and looked into the skillet and asked what I called what was in there. 

Mom's Made-Up Meal? Nah, not catchy enough. Confetti rice sounded better.

This was okay, but needed more flavor.

Sunday

Short version: Hamburger gravy, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, lazy fondue

Long version: Hamburger gravy is pretty much just like the hamburger steaks I make with gravy, except I just cooked the meat loose and then made the gravy in the pan with it. The children told me they like the hamburger steaks better, but that the hamburger gravy is okay too.

Lazy fondue is what I make for Sunday dessert when I really don't want to make a dessert. I had looked at some no-bake things, and man, those are more work than just baking something. Too many layers and beating things and chilling and on and on and on.

Much easier to just microwave some chocolate chips with coconut oil until melted for dipping marshmallows.

Monday

Short version: Sirloin steaks, leftover confetti rice, green salad with tartar sauce dressing, peanut butter cookies

Long version: I re-heated the rice in the skillet after I had fried the steaks, which gave it some more flavor. 

Tartar sauce works well as a salad dressing. At least, homemade tartar sauce does.

I forgot when I was making the peanut butter cookies in the morning that this is one of the few cookie recipes I don't double, and I put in double the number of eggs needed. Then I needed to add more of everything else, so I ended up with a LOT of cookies. No one minded.

Tuesday

Short version: Accidental hamburger helper, green peas, canned peaches

Long version: I started feeling a cold coming on the night before that was fully operational by this afternoon. Luckily, I had quite a bit of hamburger gravy left. I cooked some pasta and then made a sauce with another of those small cans of cream of chicken soup, heavy cream, milk, tomato sauce, and grated cheddar cheese, into which I added the meat to heat up. Then I dumped all of that over the cooked pasta.

And that is how I accidentally made something almost exactly like hamburger helper.

So as not to infringe on copywrite, perhaps I should call it Assisted Ground Beef.

I was a bit abashed that the football player got dropped off from an unusually short practice with his friend who needed to wait for his mom to come get him and he ended up eating with us. Hamburger helper--even a homemade version--is not the most stellar of meals to offer a guest, but luckily, post-football teenage boys are hungry enough that they'll eat anything.

Wednesday

Short version: Heart stir-fry with rice, brownies

Long version: I was staring into the chest freezer on Tuesday night, trying to decide what meat to take out for dinner this night, when Poppy wandered over and suggested I use the package of cow heart. 

Okay. At least someone made the decision for me.

I regretted this the next day, when I still wasn't feeling well from the cold I had, and was staring down a thawed heart. 

However. 

I was in the kitchen anyway, cooking for a teacher at our school who just got home after a two-week hospital stay with her son, so I went ahead and more or less made our dinner while I was making pasta and brownies for them.

First I had to trim the heart. It has a kind of membrane around the outside that needs to be removed.

Trimmed piece on the left, untrimmed piece on the right.

I had thought I might just fry slices of it, but there really wasn't a ton of meat. Also, heart meat is very lean and free of cartilage or anything, which makes it perfect for stir-fry. So that's what I used it for. I cut it all up into small pieces and put those in a marinade of soy sauce, oil, vinegar, ginger, and garlic powder.

I tend to do okay in the mornings when I'm sick and then go straight downhill in the afternoons, so I decided to do as much of the rest of the stir-fry as I could while I was still in the kitchen in the morning. Accordingly, I chopped and fried the onions, carrots, and collard greens that were going in the stir-fry. Then at dinnertime, I added garlic and frozen peas, plus the meat, and made the sauce.

Stir-fry, by the way, is an excellent use for the no-salt, no-sugar peanut butter we're been getting from commodities lately.

I made a double recipe of the brownies for the teacher so we could have some too. I carefully packaged up the nicely cut ones for her, leaving a container of the crumbly ones for us. And then I grabbed the wrong one when I brought her her food, so she ended up with crumbly brownies and we had the pretty ones. Oops.

Oh well, they all taste the same.

Thursday

Short version: Spanish tortilla

Long version: It's funny that I've been going through a period of having so many excess eggs on hand. Usually that happens in the spring, but here I am in September with eight dozen eggs in my refrigerator. I used 18 in the Spanish tortilla, which just had bacon, onion, spices, cheese, and some of the tomato sauce from the open can in the refrigerator. Besides the potatoes that are always in it, of course.

I made this in the morning so it would be ready when everyone got home from school. I went to the volleyball game after school with Poppy, which is why I needed something for everyone else to just grab when they got home.

Refrigerator check:

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

A Steak Memory

Poppy's best friend comes home with her from school every Monday to play until her mom comes to pick her up after football practice. This works out very well for the girls, who are in different grades and would otherwise not see each other much.

This means that her friend eats dinner with us every Monday. Last night, we had steak. Before dinner, I asked her friend if she likes her steak more well-done or more rare. She said more well-done, and she accordingly got one of the thinner pieces that wasn't very red.

As I was choosing her piece of steak, I remembered when I was a guest at dinner at one of my best friend's houses, in high school. Her dad was grilling steak, and he asked me how I liked it. Well-done, I replied. The steak he gave me was SO FAR from well-done. It was, in fact, very bloody. 

Her dad was from Texas, which is probably why he considered a steak that was bleeding all over the plate to be well-done. Or maybe he was trying to teach me a lesson, since people who like their steaks rare tend to feel disdain for those of us who do not.

I of course ate the steak to be polite, but I didn't enjoy it.

Most of my family likes their steak pretty rare, which requires some deliberate attention on my part so I don't overcook it. Poppy agrees with me, though, and doesn't like bloody meat, so I usually cook one piece a little more for us.

We never all agree, as usual.

So tell me! How do you like your steak?

 

Snapshots: Some Misadventures

First, take a look at the fruit on this can of raspberry-lime Polar seltzer A. brought home.

Those raspberries look awfully grape-like to me.

I went into school to sub for just the afternoon. I was taking over for what used to be S.T.E.A.M. (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), and is now M.A.S.H. (music, art, Spanish, and health). 

I was reminded during the quiet prep period between classes how much I hate ticking clocks.

Ticktickticktick...haaaate.

I did like this sign outside the preschool room, though.

A. drove my Honda to town on Friday and had an unfortunate run-in--literally--with a wild turkey.

You should've seen the turkey. (It's dead.)

Odin had an unfortunate run-in of his own, with a dog that lives up by the post office. This very large dog is not usually out, but she was one day last week, and she beat up Odin pretty good. He had a wound on his shoulder that I was watching, hoping it would heal on its own. But of course, dogs are always licking at things, and that was making it worse, not better.

We don't have one of those cone collars that vets use to keep dogs from licking at wounds, so we had to improvise. After putting on the wound dressing liquid and a gauze pad, we wrapped it all up around his belly with vet wrap. And then topped it all off by putting a t-shirt on him.

A picture of a dejected dog.

Odin is not enjoying his experience with dog clothing. I do not think I will be buying him any cute little sweaters for the winter.

And last, this week's flowers.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Many Leftovers

Friday 

Short version: Pintos and rice, cornbread, cucumber salad, apple/pear crisp with vanilla ice cream

Long version: I used the pinto beans I had cooked earlier in the week to make something like red beans--roux, onions, garlic, bell pepper, tomato--and served that over rice.

The cucumber salad was just cucumber with leftover ranch dressing and pickled onions.

I used one quart jar of apples and one of pears for the crisp, leaving me with only one more quart jar of canned apples from last year. I don't think I'm going to have any apples to can this year, unless they come from someone who lives sort of far away. All the fruit here got frosted. Even the apples. Sadness.

Saturday

Short version: Leftovers, summer squash hooray!

Long version: I had enough steak for everyone, as well as enough leftover rice and mashed potatoes to divvy out. Good leftovers make dinner so easy.

The summer squash came from the lady the older boys work for. All I did with it was slice it and cook it in olive oil with garlic, and then a little bit of tomato sauce from the can I had opened for the beans the day before. So good.

Sunday

Short version: Barbecue ribs, American potato salad, coleslaw, pots de creme

Long version: I bought a couple of racks of pork ribs when they were on sale awhile ago, and then A. bought two more when he was at the store about a week ago. So I really needed to cook some ribs.

I first cooked them in a low oven, covered, and rubbed with various spices and brown sugar. I put them in around 6 a.m. and took them out when we got home from church about 9 a.m. At dinnertime, I started a fire in the grill and actually grilled the ribs with barbecue sauce on them.

American potato salad=russet potatoes, mayonnaise, mustard, hard boiled eggs, diced dill pickles.

This coleslaw.

And this pots de creme.

Summer plate.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, cookies

Long version: There were some leftover ribs, quite a lot of leftover potato salad and coleslaw, and also pinto beans and rice. I heated all of this up and let everyone choose their dinners.

Tuesday

Short version: Beef and bean burritos, green salad with ranch dressing, watermelon

Long version: I made slightly less-lazy taco meat with the ground beef and a can of pinto beans by using fresh onion and garlic, plus tomato sauce and spices. As opposed to just dumping salsa in there to serve as the tomato/onion/garlic part.

It looks very labor-intensive, right? Ahem.

Wednesday

Short version: Pizzas, carrot sticks with ranch dip

Long version: The coolest day of the week, which means the day to bake bread. Also the day to steal some of the dough to make pizza. One was pepperoni, one was vegetables. This time the vegetables were pickled onions, bell peppers, and finely diced collard greens.

Thursday

Short version: Different leftovers, butterscotch pudding

Long version: There was enough leftover pizza for all the kids to have some, and then A. and whoever wanted any had corn tortillas with cheese and the taco meat. 

I made the pudding because a child informed me in the morning that the milk was starting to go off. Slightly off is still good enough to make pudding. A nice treat for the end of the second week of school.

Refrigerator check:

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

A Potato Salad Tip

I have always been a big fan of potato salad. The American kind, with mayonnaise and hardboiled eggs in it. I don't use a recipe for it, but I have noticed that recipes for potato salads always recommend an all-purpose potato for potato salads.

In case you're not as interested in potatoes as I am and so don't know what an "all-purpose" potato is . . . there are waxy potatoes, like those red "new" potatoes. And there are floury potatoes, like baking potatoes (also known as russets or Idaho potatoes). All-purpose potatoes are in between the two in texture. The most recognizable kind is Yukon Gold.

The reason all-purpose potatoes are recommended is because they won't fall apart as readily when boiled. 

I don't buy all-purpose potatoes. I don't buy waxy potatoes, either. I only buy russets, because those are what come in the ten-pound bags, and I am all about quantity at this stage of my cooking life.

But! Russets, in my opinion, are actually better than all-purpose potatoes for potato salad because they will more readily absorb the dressing. Potato salad recipes also always tell you to put the dressing on the potatoes when they're warm, because then the potatoes absorb the dressing better and become more flavorful. So why wouldn't you want a potato that absorbs the dressing better?

You do, but you don't want to it to fall apart. Which leads me to my tip: Boil the potatoes whole, with the skins on. Just rinse them quickly, cover them with salted water in a big pot, and bring to a boil, simmering until the biggest potato in the pot is easily pierced with a fork.

(The fork is a better tester than a knife because it's not quite as sharp as a knife. So if a fork slides in easily, you know it's really done. And nothing is worse than an underdone potato.)

After that, drain the potatoes and let them cool down just a few minutes before peeling (a paring knife helps with this) and chopping into your desired size.

Boiling them whole does require a longer cooking time and more heat released into what is probably an already-hot summer kitchen, but it will retain the shape. No crumbling. 

Russet potato salad is the best potato salad.

I also put mustard and vinegar and diced dill pickles in my potato salad, but that's a matter of personal taste preference, so I'll leave that to you.

Just remember: Whole boiled russets and you're good to go.

Snapshots: Multiple Sunflowers

This first photo is one I forgot to post during county fair weekend:

These two are too old to nap anymore. Except during the county fair, which is enough to wipe anyone out.

A. and I both read a lot, although we don't read the same sorts of things. Occasionally my current book and his will get in close enough proximity to each other for me to be amused at how different our tastes are.

Bet you can guess whose is whose. Mine isn't one I would typically choose, but it was given to me by a friend, and it's good enough so far that I'm still reading it. 

In addition to having no cucumbers this year, I also have no summer squash of any kind. The calabacitas that I use in place of zucchini never germinated in the spring, and the very late planting we did manage to get growing is way behind. Luckily, the lady the older boys work for who has been sending cucumbers home with them has added squash to her offerings.

I know the joke is that you can't avoid being gifted squash in the summer by overzealous gardeners, but I was so happy to see this.

A relatively small knife, and a very large squash.

I don't know what kind of squash that is, but it had very small seeds even though it was large, and it was delicious, so it's a good one whatever it is.

This sunflower I found this week looks so much like an actual sun to me.

Something about the pointiness of the petals makes them look like rays.

Poppy found a several more sunflowers on her way home from the post office and thoughtfully brought them home to me, so we have a nice arrangement on the bookcase right now.

Four whole sunflowers! Impressive for this pathetic year of wildflowers.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Barbecue and Grill

Friday

Short version: Spanish tortilla

Long version: I still had excessive quantities of eggs on hand--I think 7 dozen?--and Spanish tortilla takes care of almost two dozen at once. This one had finely chopped collard greens, bell peppers, onions, salsa, and grated cheddar cheese, along with the potatoes, of course.

I made this also because I could make it ahead of time and we were going to town in the afternoon for appointments at both the post office (for passports) and the MVD. As I was cooking the Spanish tortilla in the morning, BOTH appointments were canceled.

Nice to have dinner made already, anyway.

Saturday

Short version: Grilled chicken, Italian sausage, pasta with pesto, grilled leeks, green salad with herb dressing, peaches and cream

Long version: This meal got a lot more elaborate than I had anticipated, mostly because it was the Feast of the Assumption. I like to look up what foods were traditionally made for different feasts. Apparently, for the Assumption, the emphasis is on herbs and other garden produce. Makes sense, since this is the time of year that the garden is most productive. There's even a tradition in some places of people bringing herbs to Mass to be blessed. 

I missed my chance for that, but I did use as many things from the garden as I could in the one meal. Because that's my idea of fun.

Poppy and I counted seven things from the garden in our food: garlic and basil in the pesto, leeks (I tried grilling these for the first time and they were a little tough even with par-cooking, so I think I'll stick to stewing), carrots and collards in the salad, parsley and green onion in the salad dressing.

Even though I didn't get my herbs blessed before cooking with them, we did have our priest over for dinner, so he blessed the food before we ate. That works, too.

I didn't grow the peaches, but the ones I got from the produce bus in town earlier in the week were perfectly ripe for this night's dessert.

Can't be miserly with the sugar for peaches and cream.

Sunday

Short version: Leftover ham, Spanish tortilla, tomato and cucumber salad, ice cream

Long version: Although the Spanish tortilla I had made was good, they're always better with some kind of meat in them. I hadn't put meat in because it was for a Friday meal, but I did still have quite a bit of ham left. So I just fried that separately and everyone had some ham with their leftover Spanish tortilla. An excellent combination.

I used the salad dressing from the night before for the (store-bought) tomatoes and cucumbers. I had made the dressing in the food processor after making the pesto, figuring the remains of the pesto in the bowl would just add to the flavor of the dressing. So I put in mayonnaise, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil to emulsify, and then added in parsley and green onion to chop up a bit in there. It was a very good dressing.

Monday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, mashed potatoes, green salad with herb dressing, cookies

Long version: First day of school, and we were off to the races with a meeting for all athletes and their parents in the evening. We have a football player this year, so he went from school to practice to the meeting. 

My friend who has both a football player and a volleyball player and is a teacher was staying at school to work until the meeting. Her daughter, who is Poppy's best friend, was going to be hanging around with her. I suggested that maybe she could just come to our house after school so the girls could play until the meeting was over, rather than being bored at school. This meant she had dinner with us.

Since she was eating with us and our house is on the way from our school to the school the meeting was at (twenty miles away; we have a co-op athletic arrangement with the only other school in our county so we have enough athletes to field teams), I asked my friend if she'd like to eat with us too before the meeting.

And so we had two guests with us for dinner. 

This is how scheduling goes during the school year. So long, lazy days of summer.

I also made extra effort for the first-day-of-school breakfast. The children had requested muffins and bacon. I don't typically make muffins--too much work for first thing in the morning--but I did. I made coconut muffins using this recipe, to use the rest of the coconut I bought for Poppy's First Communion cake. They were very good, and popular with the children, but nothing could make up for the fact that they had to get on the school bus.

Pity breakfast. Sorry, kids.

Tuesday

Short version: Barbecue chicken and beans, chicken-y rice, carrot sticks, ice cream

Long version: I had three chicken thighs left, plus the bones from dinner on Saturday. I used all of that to make chicken stock, then stripped the meat and combined it with a can of pinto beans, already-cooked onions, and ketchup and barbecue sauce. That was served over rice cooked in the chicken stock and butter.

Low effort, but fine.

Wednesday

Short version: Ham and potato casserole, sauerkraut, ice cream

Long version: I still had a ham bone in the refrigerator, along with a few kind of gnarly slices from the end of the ham. I cooked these with a pot of pinto beans until they were soft. Then I took them out of the beans and used them in the casserole.

The casserole was just chopped cooked potatoes, ham, the rest of the chicken fat that's been in the refrigerator awhile, a bunch of butter (more fat and salt than seems reasonable is the secret to good potatoes), already-cooked onions, and grated cheddar cheese.

It would have been better to put the sauerkraut in the casserole, but some of my kids prefer sauerkraut uncooked, so I cooked some in the microwave and left some raw and served it on the side.

Thursday

Short version: Grilled steaks, leftover pasta and pesto, leftover mashed potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: I had quite a lot of leftover starches, all of which would go well with pretty plain meat. Thus, steak. 

Refrigerator check:

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