Friday Food: Squashsquashsquash

 

Friday

Short version: Split pea soup with bread and butter, leftover steak, bacon

Long version: When I cleaned out the over-refrigerator freezer a few weeks ago, I found two ham bones I was saving for something. "Something" with ham bones almost always means beans, and I have like three pounds of yellow split peas, thanks to the commodities deliveries and our generous neighbors.

Split pea soup it is!

I made it with some chicken stock I pulled out of the freezer, and I think it was better than the last time I made it. Not sure why. Maybe yellow split peas are better than green? Maybe I didn't have homemade stock the last time? Whatever. It was good, and all of the family that ate it, liked it.

Charlie and A. don't eat beans much, so they had leftover steak, plus some of the bacon I had cooked to crumble on top of the soup. And just some raw tomatoes and sugar snap peas, to check the vegetable box.

Saturday

Short version: Brisket, mashed potatoes, mashed calabaza, leftover roasted green beans

Long version: Well, I did it. I bravely cooked one of the intimidatingly giant calabazas that A. grew this year. Not without A.'s help, though, because those suckers have some incredibly hard skins. He had to use our meat cleaver to hack it apart.

This was the one that had the really long neck, so I had him separate that from the seed cavity part. I wrapped the solid neck part up and put it in the refrigerator to cook another time, and put the two halves of the seed part in the oven with the brisket.

Calabaza is an interesting squash. The flesh is very yellow, and it has a sweet, almost delicate flavor. I ate a piece raw and it was like a cross between a cucumber and a honeydew melon. For dinner, I just mashed some with butter and salt and Cubby and Jack told me they liked it.

Say what? Any of my children admitting to liking squash? It's a harvest-season miracle!

Okay, so they didn't like it enough to eat more than the tiny serving I put on their plates, and Charlie and Poppy claimed not to like it. Although Charlie said it wasn't as bad as most squash, and he didn't treat us to a performance of Death by Squash, so I'll take it.

And speaking of squash! We had exactly four pumpkins that volunteered in the garden this year. Very handy for making jack-o-lanterns with our four children, which we did this night:

Pure chaos. And seeds evvvverywhere.

The children drew the faces and A. did the actual carving. Hooray for A. (The one brighter pumpkin is one Charlie got at school, not one from our garden. Obviously it has thinner skin.)

Sunday

Short version: Roasted chicken, rice, roasted bell pepper/onion/calabaza, chocolates with peanut butter

Long version: Sunday is supposed to be homemade dessert day, but . . . I didn't make a dessert. Unless you count spreading peanut butter on squares of Ghiradelli dark chocolate left by my mother. I counted it. And everyone ate them with no complaints.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers of various kinds

Long version: I was in no kind of mood to make dinner after getting home from my day of freezing at work. However, the troops must be fed.

A. and Charlie had a concoction of leftover chicken, mashed potatoes, frozen peas, and cheese. Poppy, Cubby, and Jack ate some vegetable soup I had made the day before for lunch. Plus some cheese. I had a salad. And then I crawled into our heated bed and thawed out.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork roast, roasted potatoes, roasted tomatoes, mashed calabaza, ice cream with chocolate shell

Long version: Before my mom comes to visit, she always goes to Costco and buys treats for us. And by "treats," I mean large bags of avocados and seltzer. This time, however, I asked her to get some meat for us. We were getting pretty low, and weren't planning a trip to the Outside World for another couple of weeks.

Before she came, both she and my dad mentioned that they had a lot of meat for us. And when they got here, she apologized for the quantities, saying that she couldn't find any single packages of anything at Costco.

That's a good thing for our household of unrepentant carnivores.

One of the things she brought was a pack of four individually sealed pork sirloin roasts. I made one of them this night. All I did was season it heavily on the outside--some of the leftover steak seasoning from our fancy steaks, plus extra salt and garlic powder, and thyme--and put it in a 400-degree oven until it was done. 

Everyone went into raptures over this pork. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it was a big hit. All four of the children had seconds of the meat, which almost never happens.

We had the ice cream because A. ventured out during a lull in the storm to the tiny store in the village to get milk. We were completely out. While he was there, he saw the store had ice cream, so he got that, too. It was vanilla. I made the chocolate shell for it.

Do you know what chocolate shell is? It's a product you can buy at a store that you heat up and pour over ice cream, where it hardens into a sort of candy coating. 

Well, you can buy it at a store, but you never should. You know why? Because you can make it at home in literally one minute with two ingredients: chocolate chips and coconut oil. This time I used half a cup of chocolate chips and maybe a teaspoon of coconut oil. Melt in the microwave until you can stir it all smooth, and that's it.

Random photo break! Charlie and Jack inadvertently put on exactly the same outfit a couple of weeks ago, and thought it was very funny.

Perhaps I should diversify my clothing purchases for the children?

Wednesday

Short version: Real tacos

Long version: So, when I say we have tacos--which I say a lot--what I really mean is we have taco meat in corn tortillas. And the tortillas are just heated up in a microwave. I don't think this is what most people mean when they say tacos. To most people, tacos mean crunchy taco shells. I never buy those, but my mom did!

Not sure why she brought us a box of taco shells, but she did. And with them, I made real tacos. It was a nice novelty for the children, but man, what a mess. Soft tacos are way easier for kids to eat neatly.

Thursday

Short version: Fried pork and peppers, garlic bread, tomato salad

Long version: When I took out the pork roast for Tuesday, I took out two. I ended up only cooking one, so this was the other one. I cut it into steaks, then halved the steaks, then seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika, and fried them in bacon grease with a few random banana peppers from the garden.

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