Friday, March 26, 2021

Friday Food: Rabbits and Tongues

Friday 

Short version: Scrambled eggs, leftover pasta with pesto, leftover coleslaw

Long version: Not the most exciting Lenten Friday meal, but it got the job done. And the children never complain about pasta with pesto.

Saturday

Short version: Ram meat, garlic bread, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: I took out a front leg from the ram and cooked it covered in the oven for a few hours with tomato juice from a can of whole tomatoes, garlic, and a bay leaf until it was tender. Then I pulled it into chunks and fried it with a few of the canned tomatoes, mashed up, garlic powder, and salt. It came out really well.

Sunday

Short version: Ground beef tacos, Sprite

Long version: The only notable thing about the tacos is that I made the corn tortillas for them this time. Always a hit.

The Sprite was something Charlie brought home from school. It was a liter bottle, and he decreed that it should be saved for Sunday dessert.

So the children had Sprite on ice for their Sunday dessert. Works for me. No baking involved.

I'm telling you. Those low expectations for children are so key.


Hand over the Sprite and no one gets hurt.

Monday

Short version: Rabbit, rice, frozen peas

Long version: A. decided the time had come to, um, "harvest" the two female rabbits that had failed to have any live babies. They were pretty old, so I put them in the oven with onion, garlic, bay leaves and water in my big Pyrex, then covered it with aluminum foil and cooked that for several hours.

I was trying to avoid having to hack them up to fit in a stock pot, although that's what I should have done, because they weren't even close to tender at 4 p.m.

So I laboriously removed most of the meat from the carcasses, then put that meat in a skillet with the remainder of the liquid from the pan and simmered it, covered, some more. When it was tender enough to eat, I added some more onions I had cooked in a pan that had leftover bacon grease in it from breakfast, thyme, Dijon mustard, and some heavy cream.

Rabbit meat definitely needs lots of help to make it tasty. This was. The children were very enthusiastic about it as well. Well, except for the Serial Complainer who tells me he doesn't like sauces. Super.

Tuesday

Short version: Rabbit and beef soup, cheese

Long version: And NOW I could break the rest of the carcasses up and boil them until the meat was tender. Which is what I did, with celery, onion, and carrot to make a stock. With the meat I picked off the carcass, plus some leftover taco meat, onion, garlic, celery, carrot, potatoes, a few tomatoes from an open can in the refrigerator, green chilis, and the stock, I made soup.

I thought it was really good. The Serial Complainer did not agree. Oh well. He ate the cheese and the potatoes from his soup. He won't starve.

Wednesday

Short version: Brisket, roasted potatoes, very sweet baked beans, Holy's cabbage, mashed squash

Long version: One benefit of waking up early is that I always have time to cook even slow-cooking foods. I put the brisket in at 5 a.m. (with the last of the tomatoes from the can in the refrigerator, some of the chopped onions I had stuck in the freezer, vinegar, bay leaves, salt, pepper) and it was done by noon.

Both of the vegetables came from the freezer. I had several quart bags of cabbage I had just chopped and chucked in the freezer in the summer. No blanching or anything. So I put some of that cabbage in a skillet fully frozen and fried it in butter. It worked fine, which is very nice to know.

The baked beans came from Miss Amelia. She called in the morning to ask A. to come by and get some food that she couldn't eat and didn't want to go to waste. Included in what ended up being three bags of food was a container of baked beans. There was also a container of very sweet deli-style potato salad, so I suspect one of her daughters must have gotten the baked beans at the deli, too. Three of the four children very much enjoyed the beans. The child who didn't said they were too sweet.

He wasn't wrong.

We ran out of dog food this day again, too, because A. inexplicably got a very small bag of it when he last bought it. I guess because he got it at the grocery store rather than the feed store? In any case, we ran out. So I took out a cow tongue for the dogs. Which meant I had a tongue thawing on my counter all day.

If you've always wanted to see what a cow's tongue looks like outside of a cow, this is your lucky day. If the very thought is horrifying to you, you should stop reading now.

Everyone ready? Okay.


Guh-ross.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Charlie, Jack, and Poppy had leftover taco meat in corn tortillas with cheese, plus some grape tomatoes.

Cubby and I had leftover rabbit and beef soup. Cubby also had some of the very sweet potato salad. And that's a wrap.

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


13 comments:

  1. Oh, the cow tongue brings back memories from my youth. My mom used to pickle cow tongue for my dad.
    takeout
    hot chicken salad, au gratin potatoes, garlic knots, mixed vegetables
    zucchini pizza, salad, garlic knots
    spinach lasagna, salad, garlic knots
    chicken breast sandwiches, salad
    grilled pork chops, garlic knots, mashed potato casserole, sauteed mushrooms for me, salad for husband
    And for tonight turkey & cheese melts, vegetable soup
    Linda

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  2. The tongue: gross indeed. One of my husband's childhood memories involved a summer camp field trip to Fort Ticonderoga, when every boy's sack lunch included a tongue sandwich. He said they left behind a towering stack of uneaten sandwiches. Gotta wonder what the camp cook was thinking.

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  3. Oh those modern sensibilities. Tongue was once considered a delicacy, and when I was young, the relatively fancy local inn always had tongue, nicely sliced, on the Sunday buffet. In previous centuries, it was skinned and served whole to be carved at the table. But true confession, when I cooked one for my MIL, I kept trimming and trimming until most of it became dog food. The dogs loved it.

    Friday: a soupy fish stew of potatoes, carrots, onion, flounder, cream, and reconstituted dried porcini mushrooms with thyme. I forgot to add the bay leaf that I should have included.
    Saturday: all-vaccinated dinner with friends!
    Sunday: after a late lunch of leftovers, I just ate smoked trout for dinner. Wonderful.
    Monday: pork chop and broccoli
    Tuesday: pork chop, broccoli, baked potato
    Wednesday: stir-fry with tofu, which I had marinated a bit in mushroom soy sauce. Rice.
    Thursday: all-vaccinated drinks and snacks at my sister's, outdoors in weirdly warm March weather.

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  4. MiL: In the case of tongue, I fully embrace having modern sensibilities and am happy to leave that delicacy for the dogs.

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  5. Linda: I have never heard of pickled tongue. I like pickled things, but since my issue with tongue is the soft texture, I don't think pickling would help much.

    Jeanie: Yuck. Maybe it was supposed to be an authentic soldier's experience? Except if tongue was a delicacy, I suppose it wasn't given to soldiers.

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  6. Perhaps the Serial Complainer should be encouraged to leave to cook--and then he might increase his range of taste and praise? Mary in MN

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  7. pass on the tongue!
    Friday-vegetable soup, bread
    Saturday(grandkids)-chicken fried steak, baked potatoes, broccoli
    Sunday (grandkids)-fish sticks, oven fries
    Monday-lentil soup, biscuits
    Tuesday-leftover chicken fried steak, rice
    Wednesday-chicken enchiladas, peas
    Thursday-leftover vegetable soup, bread

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  8. As usual, I can't remember what I ate yesterday, let alone the entire week! BUT kudos to you for not enabling the complainer by making a separate meal.
    Also, tongue. We get tongue with our freezer full of beef. It is not my favorite. In fact, the last time it was time to eat it, I left the cooking of it to my 16-year-old. I just didn't have the mental capacity to deal with it. However, I think I probably ate it. We make it into taco meat. If it's mixed in with ground beef, it's even less noticeable. I still hate looking at it in the freezer, on the counter, after boiling, etc. Just yuck.

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  9. Blame it on our German heritage, but we really like making rabbit into hasenpfeffer. We only ever get rabbit occasionally though (once someone gave us a couple show rabbits we butchered and ate, and my husband has shot a couple wild ones).

    Tongue is actually a super popular cut of meat in my neck of the woods. It gets slow cooked, sliced, and then served on sandwiches or tacos as "lengua." It's just as pricey at the store as other cuts of beef.

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  10. Mary: Maybe, although this is the child who commented, "I don't really like food. I just eat to stay alive," so where do you go with that?

    Jody: I have never in my life made a separate meal for a child, and I don't plan to start now.

    JP2: I made hasenpfeffer years ago, and it was really good. As pretty much all meat cooked with lots of red wine is. I don't have red wine on hand usually, though, and can't get it easily, so I have to be creative with the rabbit.

    G.P.: Far from it. Just ask my kids. :-)

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  11. Eesh, tongue ... the only use I've found so far is helping to disguise medicine for an antique dog to tone back his arthritis.

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  12. Tongue, I ate it once at my Czech Grandmother's. I tried to make it years ago, but ours wasn't skinned. I just couldn't do it. I gave it to the dogs too.

    Our week
    Sunday: Corn Dogs or Chicken on salad

    Monday: Cheese Quesadillas, refritos, OR Tortellini and salad

    Tuesday: Cast Iron Cheeseburgers with chips, beans or on a big salad

    Wednesday: Pancakes and sausage

    Thursday: Steaks with fried onions, veg or salad and homemade bread

    Friday: Fish & shrimp, fries, coleslaw

    Saturday: Long Day of shopping & then cattle chores in the muck & mud. We ate TV Dinners
    The End

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