Friday Food: The One With the Turkey

Friday

Short version: Chicken-fried bull, boiled potato chunks, frozen peas

Long version: I took out a bag of bull steaks, and decided to try pounding them to tenderize them. As I was getting out the very heavy rolling pin for the pounding, Cubby wandered through the kitchen and asked me if I was making chicken-fried steak.

I wasn't, but then I did.

All I did after pounding the meat was dredge it in flour seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika, and fry it in bacon grease. I made a gravy, too, with some of the leftover flour, but I added too much flour so it was pretty gluey.

Cubby was still happy, though, and the steaks were tender enough to eat after their pounding.

Saturday

Short version: Bull and potato skillet, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: In this episode of tenderizing the bull, I spent a tediously long time--okay, maybe ten minutes--cutting the remaining steaks up into very small pieces. Basically like a dice. 

Then I browned that and simmered it for several hours with some diced tomatoes, onion, garlic, and paprika. I added the leftover boiled potatoes and a bit of cheese on top, and it was actually really good. The bull meat actually got tender this way. Hooray.

Sunday

Short version: Bull tacos, strawberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream

Long version: I didn't need all the bull meat for the potato skillet, so I saved some for this meal. Which consisted solely of the meat and some cheese in store-bought tortillas. And nary a vegetable to be seen.

There was fruit in the dessert, though!

Cubby had been wanting to make a cobbler ever since he had a blueberry cobbler at school a couple of weeks ago. We have big bags of frozen strawberries and peaches thanks to Sysco, so I told him we could make a cobbler with one or both of those. He chose strawberries.

I didn't follow a recipe. We microwaved the strawberries to thaw them and get rid of some of the liquid, and then added sugar, lemon juice, and a tiny bit of vanilla.

Then we made biscuits to put on top, using generally the baking powder biscuit recipe I have memorized from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but using a full stick of butter instead of 1/3 of a cup, and a tablespoon or so of sugar.

Cubby chose the cutter shape for the biscuits, and it ended up looking like Valentine's Day in November.

Cobblers are red, violets are blue . . .

We continued the Valentine's theme with a dance party in the kitchen while I was cleaning up, for which Poppy insisted on changing into a dress.

The height disparity was challenging.

But she still managed to get some good twirls in.

Monday

Short version: Beef and vegetable soup, cheese, leftover dessert

Long version: Poor Charlie came down with a cold this day and had a pretty bad sore throat. He's not a huge fan of soup, but I made it anyway because it's easy on a sore throat. 

This soup was onion, garlic, celery, carrot, tomatoes, potatoes, some spinach that had been in the freezer awhile, green peas, pinto beans, and the last bit of the bull meat I had cooked for the potato skillet. 

I had taken out a small container of chicken stock from the freezer, which I used, but then I also ended up with several cups of beef liquid because I decided to try pressure canning some of the bull meat and needed to boil that until it was hot before putting it in the jars. There was quite a bit of liquid left after filling the jars, so I used some of it for the soup.

When I tasted the soup right before dinner, it tasted pretty bland, so I added in garlic powder, more salt and pepper, and about a quarter cup of red wine. That was a big improvement.

Because I tend to use soups as a way to just use up whatever I have on hand, rather than making a specific recipe, they can be sort of hit or miss. This one was a hit. Charlie even ate his bowl without complaint. And then he got to have a bowl of ice cream, which is of course soothing for a sore throat but is also a good morale booster.

Tuesday

Short version: Cafeteria hamburgers, rice, steamed carrots and broccoli

Long version: Our school decided to do online learning for the two weeks after the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, which left the school cook with a lot of food on hand that she wasn't going to use. So they sent it all home on the buses for the families. Because we didn't have a few of the kids on the bus last week, that meant that we took home more than half of the food that was on our bus.

So we got five HUUUUGE cans of pinto beans, five HUUUUGE cans of fruit salad, I think four five-pound logs of ground beef, three giant pork roasts, and two large bags of pre-cooked hamburgers. That's probably 100 hamburgers. 

Those are the hamburgers I made for this meal. I didn't have any expectation that they would actually be good, but I was hoping they would be okay.

They weren't. They were gross.

I had a few left over, and they were so unappealing to me that I didn't even save them. That's how you know how much I did not like them, because I NEVER throw away leftovers. I didn't actually throw them away, but I did put them in a bowl on the counter to give to the dogs. 

But then Cubby was wandering through the kitchen an hour or so after dinner and remarked, "I see you have a lot of left over hamburgers. Can I have one?"

Uh. Sure?

And then Poppy and Charlie followed Cubby's lead, which meant there were three kids sitting on the floor in the kitchen, eating the leftover cafeteria hamburgers that I was planning on giving to the dogs.

Good thing they'll eat them, I guess, because we have approximately ninety hamburgers left.

Wednesday

Short version: Failed canned bull tacos

Long version: I decided on Monday to try pressure canning some of the bull meat. I figured it would get some of it out of our now alarmingly stuffed freezers, and also tenderize it during the pressure canning. I have had a pressure canner for many years, but thus far had only used it to can things like chicken broth and low-acid salsa. 

The long canning time was a one of the reasons I never tried canning meat. An hour and a half at pressure for quart jars is a long time, but not as long as the six or more hours I have to simmer the meat to make it tender on the stovetop. So I filled my biggest pot with chunks of bull meat and got the meat all hot in preparation for putting it in the hot jars, and thence into the canner.

My biggest pot looked big, until I put the pressure canner next to it on the stove.

Size is definitely relative.

I ended up with six quarts of meat, which I duly kept in the canner for an hour and a half. When I took them out, a LOT of the liquid in the jars had boiled out. And in the end, only three of the six jars sealed. Annoying.

But! I tasted the meat in the jars that didn't seal, and it definitely got very tender. So I think maybe I'll just use my pressure canner pot as a pressure cooker--not all pressure canners can be used as cookers, but mine can--and then freeze it after it's cooked.

Anyway. The meat for the tacos was the meat from those jars that failed to seal. All I did was fry the meat with green chili, garlic, cumin, and red chili powder. It got all shreddy and delicious. And it was very easy, since the meat was already cooked and all. Hooray for the pressure canner!

Thursday

Short version: Turkey, etc.

Long version: And here we go. 

Turkey--onion, garlic, carrot, celery, and some green tomatoes (because why not?) in the cavity, roasted according to this method, except it was pretty brown even when I uncovered it, so I didn't roast it at the high heat for very long. It came out well.

Stuffing/dressing--sourdough bread cubes, finely diced onion and celery, lots of butter, turkey stock, and sage. Some baked in the turkey, some baked in a separate dish, because I prefer the crispier kind.

Mashed potatoes--I put some cream cheese in there with the milk and butter, just for the hell of it. They were good, but no better than when I use my usual sour cream. 

Green beans--my own green beans that I froze this summer, with bacon and finely diced onion. My favorite part of the meal.

Green salad--with ranch dressing, for those children (all of them, the weirdos) that didn't want the green beans.

Gravy--pan juices+turkey stock made from the turkey neck in the morning+cornstarch. Pretty standard.

And here it all is:

With some photo-bombing by Poppy's feet.

The kids also got to have lemonade with their dinners (just sugar, water, and bottled lemon juice), which they thought was great.

They thought the whole thing was exciting. Especially the part where they got to serve themselves and eat as much as they wanted of whatever they wanted. The allure of the buffet is strong for children.

And let us not forget the pie! As if we could. So how was the infamous pie?

It was good. Really.

I had instructed A. that he was to emote over the pie, no matter what he actually thought of it, but he genuinely loved it and complimented Cubby on the seasoning of it. The ginger was much less pronounced after the chilling, and served with sweetened whipped cream, which of course it was, it actually was good.

Cubby got his piece first, tasted it, and said, "Well, not to be too self-congratulatory, but THIS IS AWESOME."

The proud pie maker and his pie. (And his brothers in the background, comparing the rotundity of their very full stomachs. Nice.)

Even Charlie, who doesn't even like pie, said it was okay and ate all of his.

I should have baked it about 15 minutes longer because it was still pretty soft in the middle, but such are the hazards of high-altitude baking. Given my low expectations for its edibility, I'm going to call it a success.

In fact, I'm going to call the entire meal a success, which is nice, given that it was the very first full, traditional Thanksgiving dinner I have ever made by myself.

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