Friday Food: Food Other Than Cookies

It appears the raisins have a slight edge in our oatmeal cookie poll*. It also appears that people have very definite opinions regarding cookies. At least, my kind of people do.

Anyway. I made four dozen oatmeal-raisin cookies on Wednesday, four dozen plain chocolate chip cookies Thursday with Jack's help (because I ran out of oats), and am set to make another six dozen chocolate chip cookies today with Cubby and Charlie.

But of course, man cannot live on cookies alone (although this woman might like to try it with the chocolate chip cookies). So here's the actual food I cooked this week.

Friday

Short version: Tuna and rice skillet, popcorn

Long version: We pulled into our driveway at 3:36 p.m. after our Christmas tree excursion. We had to be at church in the village at 5 p.m., leaving me with exactly one hour and nine minutes to make dinner and bake the bread that was exploding out of the pans on the counter. I didn't have any meat thawed. I also was out of eggs, my go-to quick dinner.

This is one of the few times I might have wished for a convenient drive-thru. However, 75 miles away is not convenient, so there was nothing for it but to cook something fast on the fly.

First I cooked some diced bacon. While that was cooking, I also made some rice in a separate pot. When the bacon was done, I took the bacon pieces out of the skillet and cooked diced onion and celery in the bacon grease. Then I added two big cans of tuna, a bunch of the now-cooked rice, some mayonnaise, and grated cheddar cheese.

Ta da! Just like tuna noodle casserole, except with rice. I should have added some peas to get in some kind of vegetable, but, well, I didn't.

It was actually pretty good and definitely filling. Everyone liked it. Even Charlie.

We ate so early that when we got home from church, I made some popcorn. And then everyone ended up eating slices of fresh bread with blackberry jelly about an hour later, so basically, we ate every carbohydrate in the house.

Saturday

Short version: Cabbage soup, oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green salad

Long version: Cubby randomly asked me a few days earlier if I could make cabbage soup. Um. Okay? I mean, sure. I have cabbage. I have lots of stock. I can figure something out. But, why?

Apparently, Charlie in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ate cabbage soup frequently, and this detail stayed with Cubby after he read the book. I'm pretty sure impoverished Charlie and his family did not have bacon, carrots, and potatoes in their cabbage soup, but that's what I used to make it tasty.

Cubby loved it. He asked me if he could bring the leftovers to school for lunch. Um. Okay?

My Charlie did not love it. He was happy with the chicken and mashed potatoes, though.

Sunday

Short version: Scrambled eggs and sausage, beanie weenies, leftover mashed potatoes with cheese, leftover rice, leftover pureed squash, Rice Krispie Treats

Long version: I was still out of pretty much every kind of protein, although I was lucky that the tiny general store in the village had eggs, pork sausage, and hot dogs when I stopped in after church. I didn't notice until I got home that the sausage was hot breakfast sausage, though. So I could only cook a little of that to mix with the scrambled eggs.

I sliced the hot dogs and added them to some of an enormous can of Grandma Brown's beans the MiL had sent us. Seriously. That can was three and a half pounds of beans. We had a lot left over.

Poppy could have eaten more beans if she had used the right end of the fork, but she did pretty well regardless.

Incidentally, there is no way I would actually call this beanie weenies with my sons present. Because you know what else you can call weenies? Yeah. Hotdogs and baked beans in much less hilarity-inducing. A. informed me they always called them franks and beans when he was a boy. Whatever you call it, it's really surprisingly tasty.

So during Advent I announced that we would only be having dessert on Sundays after lighting our Advent candle. Mostly I did this to curb the crazy sugar intake during this holiday season, but also for Advent observance and all. I did, however, promise that the Sunday dessert would be homemade.

Too bad I forgot about that until right before I was about to dish up dinner.

Rice Krispie Treats to the rescue! They take literally five minutes to make with the help of a microwave, and they are definitely better than the sum of their limited parts.

Monday

Short version: Pork, rice, green peas, steamed cauliflower

Long version: We finally got to the grocery store, and I came home with more of those boneless sirloin steaks that tend towards dry and tough. Appetizing.

Fortunately, I remembered how I had made them palatable before. So I chunked up some of the pork, browned it in chicken fat that had been hanging around in the fridge, seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and the MiL's paprika, added a little chicken stock, and then some heavy cream at the end. Thumbs up.

Tuesday

Short version: Italian chicken, hot breakfast sausage patties, leftover rice and mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes/bell pepper/onions, leftover pureed squash

Long version: "Italian" just means that I wanted to use up the rest of a can of tomatoes from the refrigerator, so I cooked the chicken pieces in a tomato sauce with tomato, chicken stock, onion, garlic, oregano, and basil.

I had about half the package of hot sausage left from Sunday, so I made it into two big patties. This ended up being the contested part of dinner. All of the boys wanted to eat it, despite the fact that they kept fanning their mouths and asking for more milk.

This reminds me of the jalapeno eating contest at the enlisted men's club on the Air Force base when I was in middle school. The winner went temporarily blind. I always thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard, but now with boys myself, I can totally see how it happens.

I FINALLY finished up the bland pumpkin. That was a big pumpkin.

Wednesday

Short version: This and that.

Long version: Bacon and fried eggs, franks and beans, bread and butter, salad and radishes

Thursday

Short version: Pizza, green salad

Long version: Although sourdough pizza is a very long process--two days to get the dough ready--the majority of the work is done ahead of the actual cooking. This worked out very well this day, as I was gone from 2:30 p.m.-4 p.m. I made the sauce in the morning, pulled the bag of already-grated asadero cheese out of the freezer to thaw, pressed the dough into the pans right before I left, and it was ready to assemble and bake when I got home.

I have not yet gotten another rack for my oven, so I couldn't fit both of my half-sheet pans in the oven to make the usual two big pizzas. Instead I used my smaller baking sheet for the cheese pizza and one of my 14-inch cast iron skillets for the pepperoni and onion pizza, because those will fit side-by-side on the one rack in the oven.

The one on the baking sheet got a little too done, because that smaller baking sheet has a dark coating on it. A. really liked his pizza made in the cast iron skillet. It was like a deep dish pizza. Too heavy for me, but then, I wasn't eating it.

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

* My posts usually get a little over a hundred views each. This totally random cookie poll? Currently closing in on 500 views. This is obviously a hot topic.