Friday Food: Mostly Courtesy of Rafael

Friday

Short version: Chocolate-chip pancakes

Long version: Yup. That's it. It was just Poppy and me for dinner still, so I made chocolate-chip pancakes.

I could try to justify it by telling you that we ate leftover fried rice with lots of vegetables for breakfast, and vegetable soup for lunch, so we got in our healthy food for the day early. And I could virtuously claim that the pancakes are made of buckwheat flour, which is higher in protein than wheat flour, plus yogurt, eggs, and milk.

And then I would sing, "Mom is great, give us the chocolate pancake."*

But really? They were chocolate-chip pancakes. And they were highly satisfying. So there.

And here we have an unrelated photo of Poppy in action:

Faster than a speeding bullet when fueled by chocolate-chip pancakes.

Saturday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and onions, frozen peas

Long version: I think it's obvious from the completeness of this meal that the family was reunited for dinner this night.

Sunday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Cubby and I went to the 4-H awards, which included a catered dinner of beef, mashed potatoes, salad, and desserts. Everyone else had leftover meatloaf, rice, baked potato, and peas.

Monday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage links, bread and butter, pinto beans, green salad

Long version: My children get incredibly excited about sausage links. Jack actually said, "Sausage! It's just like dessert for us!"

If you say so, Jack.

The green salad was a romaine mix in a bag from the store, and the whole thing tasted like chlorine. Plus, I always feel as if all bagged lettuce is infected with salmonella. All in all, not the most enjoyable salad experience.

I miss my own lettuce.

Tuesday

Short version: Venison and hominy stew, roasted vegetables

Long version: Rafael stopped by on Saturday with a smoked leg of venison and the ribs from the deer. His son-in-law shot it and did the smoking. He gave it to Rafael for his dog, but Rafael wasn't about to waste it on his dog when he knew perfectly well we would eat it.

Yes. We will certainly eat this kind of dog food.

A. cut the meat off the ribs and used it to make one of his chili stews with hominy in it. No pig's feet this time, but only because he didn't know I had put them in the big freezer.

The roasted vegetables included the biggest sweet potato in the world. Seriously. This thing was like four times the size of even a big sweet potato. Rafael got it from the commodities drop-off--which is essentially free food for old people who don't get Social Security--and gave it to us because he knew he would never be able to eat it on his own.

We wouldn't have eaten all it ourselves either, but it gave me an idea . . .

Wednesday

Short version: Leftover meatloaf or A.'s stew, bread and butter, raw tomatoes

Long version: The family ate leftovers while I took a big platter of various roasted vegetables--including the gigantic sweet potato--to the school staff holiday party. So clever. And tasty.

Thursday

Short version: Cabbage and venison soup, fried venison and potatoes, bread and butter

Long version: One of the pieces of meat Rafael gave us was a smoked leg. I cut as much meat off as I could, then boiled the bone to make stock. The meat left after the stock was made had pretty much no flavor, because all the smokiness went into the stock.

I used that stock, plus the smoked meat I had cut off, to make the soup, along with onion, carrot, potato, and cabbage.

The flavorless meat I fried in a lot of sheep tallow with onion, garlic, potatoes, and paprika. Half the family ate this and half ate the soup.

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

* That whole stand-up routine was one of the funniest things ever, and is therefore even more disappointingly ruined by our current knowledge of Bill Cosby's character. Or lack thereof.