Friday Food: Snow Days and Sugar Overload

Friday

Short version: Scrounged food, carrot sticks

Long version: We had to take the puppies in to the larger town for a late-afternoon vet appointment for their shots. I wasn't sure if I would be able to find something at the grocery store to have a roadside picnic or if we would just go home.

We just went home.

We got home at 5:30 p.m. and everyone ate some version of the leftover elk chili, tortillas, and cheese. I had a salad with the very last avocado my sister brought with her and some hard salami I had gotten at the store.

You know you live a lot of miles from a store when salami is an occasional treat.

Saturday

Short version: Halloween buffet in the village

Long version: This was the night of the Halloween celebration in the village. The one restaurant has a baked potato bar buffet that's free for kids, which is pretty much the only way our family of six is going to be eating at a restaurant.

I skipped the potato and just had the pulled pork, chili beans, and Fritos with various toppings. The kids mostly skipped real food entirely and homed in on the completely laden dessert table.

Sunday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, curried cauliflower, cucumber slices, raw tomatoes

Long version: "Good news!" I announced cheerily to A.-the-cauliflower-hater. "We're having curried cauliflower with dinner!" To which he replied, "Oh good. Cruciferous vegetables with curry powder are really what I've been missing now that we're so far from fresh produce."

So much sarcasm in that kitchen.

Cubby and I enjoyed our curried cauliflower, though. So did Poppy. Another for the curried cruciferous vegetable team.

Monday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, bacon, mashed potatoes with cheese or bread and butter, carrot sticks

Long version: Nothing to see here. Just another workday dinner in which everyone was fed in a very unfancy manner.

Tuesday

Short version: Elk stir-fry with peanut butter sauce, rice

Long version: This elk is very good for stir-fry, being very lean.

I thriftily used the peanut butter left from Poppy and Jack's snack of pretzel sticks dipped in peanut butter for the sauce.

In the morning I made a few dozen chocolate chip cookies for Cubby and Charlie's school Halloween party on Thursday. While I was making my cookies, Jack and Poppy were making some chocolate chip cookies that looked exactly like dominoes. Because they were dominoes.

Domino cookies are the specialty of Poppy's Very Pink Play Kitchen.

Wednesday

Short version: Pizza elk, pasta with marinara sauce, green salad

Long version: We started the day by losing power at 6 a.m. Charlie got up a short time later and immediately asked, "But how will I read my book? Oh, never mind. There's a candle."

Abe Lincoln's got nothing on him*.

The roads were icy, it was snowing, and we were surrounded by ice fog, so school was canceled. Since it was a Wednesday, this meant that I didn't have to go to work. Hooray.

My very old propane stove actually has pilot lights, so I can cook even without electricity, but I wasn't looking forward to boiling water for dishes. So I was glad that the power was back on by noon.

A. packaged the elk meat by simply stuffing gallon-sized zip bags as full as they could get. This means that when I take a bag of elk out of the freezer, I'm dealing with a LOT of meat. So while I was trimming and cutting the elk for the stir-fry, I did some extra meat and put it in a marinade of olive oil, vinegar, garlic, salt, and dried basil and oregano for the next day.

A.'s favorite meat preparation is fried, then mixed with marinara sauce and covered with mozzarella cheese. So that's what I did with the marinated meat. Thus, pizza elk.

I used the rest of the marinara sauce in the pasta, along with some Romano cheese I used in place of our usual Parmesan. A. had purchased the Romano at the cheese factory some time ago, and I figured it was close enough to Parmesan.

Charlie did not agree. He started eating his pasta, made a face, and said, "This pasta tastes okay, but it smells."

So I guess I shouldn't try using Limburger next time, then.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers, sliced cucumbers

Long version: We all went to Cubby and Charlie's school Halloween party in the afternoon, to kick off the sugar bingeing early. In between the party and trick-or-treating, I managed to get some real food into everyone.

A. ate leftover elk and rice; Jack and Cubby ate leftover elk and pasta; I ate leftover meatloaf and sweet potatoes. Charlie was sick and had a bad sore throat, so I made him some scrambled eggs. He ate those and some rice. Poppy ate scrambled eggs, too, plus some pasta.

After their brothers left to go trick-or-treating with A.--who was not looking forward to a two-hour trailer ride in the forty-degree weather--I let Charlie and Poppy have a candy picnic by the stove with the candy we had already accumulated.

Way more comfortable than that freezing trailer.

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

* For my sister: Please note the flowers you brought us are still going strong two weeks later. Probably because our house is usually so cold it's basically a refrigerator, but still. We're getting your money's worth out of those flowers.