Friday Food: Catch-As-Catch-Can Cooking

Friday 

Short version: Tuna melts, cucumber with salt and vinegar

Long version: The children actually had the tuna melts. A. and I had a skillet tuna melt, which was just the tuna salad that was in the sandwiches, but with chopped green beans and cheese added. Surprisingly good.

Saturday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, pigs' foot chile, rice, raw cabbage

Long version: I didn't have quite enough sausage for everyone, so A. and Cubby had the pigs' foot chile I pulled out of the freezer. I had a salad with some leftover taco meat.

Sunday

Short version: Ram lap and mince, baked potatoes, pureed calabaza, cucumbers and carrots with ranch dip, pots de creme

Long version: I've had the piece of ram lap hanging around since we butchered the first ram, um, almost two years ago. I'm never too quick to cook the lap (it's from the breast) as it's a very fatty cut with not much meat on it. That's why I also cooked the pound of so of meat from the last ram we butchered that the children had helpfully cut into very small pieces for me.

I marinated both kinds of meat in olive oil, vinegar, garlic powder, and salt, then baked the lap covered at low heat for a few hours. I used some of the fat rendered from that to fry the bits of meat, to which I only added a bit more salt.

Both came out well, although only A. and Cubby appreciate the lap.

Monday

Short version: Chicken fried rice

Long version: I purposely made extra rice a few days earlier for this meal, which also featured the chicken I pulled off the carcass I made stock with over the weekend, as well as a piece of cooked chicken breast meat I found randomly in the little freezer. And the last of the onion the MiL cooked while she was here.

Sauteed chopped green beans, chopped broccoli, and green peas, the onions, then the rice, then the diced chicken, then the eggs scrambled in there, and then soy sauce, ginger, vinegar, and garlic powder.

A very large and full skillet of fried rice, which makes for tricky stirring.

I have no idea how to make fried rice, by the way. But since my children have never eaten it before, they have no basis for comparison and they think this is great. They ate every bit.

Tuesday

Short version: Food on the fly

Long version: I got a call in the morning asking if I could sub for a teacher, so I wasn't home to cook. I thought I had made a workable plan while I was riding the bus home, but I forgot we were out of milk and my plan would not work without milk.

So! Plan-Whatever-I-Find it is!

What I found was about a cup of leftover taco meat, another cup or so of leftover rice, and some pinto beans. With those, plus salsa and grated cheese, I made a skillet meal for the children. Three of them also had a tortilla with cheese. Raw cabbage for a vegetable.

There was one serving of the lamb mince left, which I heated up for A. with some feta cheese. I also microwaved a potato for him, and one for Cubby, who is running track right now and is extra hungry when he gets home from school.

For myself, I made two fried eggs and some pinto beans, which I ate with a corn tortilla and cheese. A. and I also had some pureed calabaza from the freezer.

And then the children topped it all off with a slice of bread and cream cheese each. 

This was my off week for a Misfits Market delivery. Good thing, because I came home this day to find we had gotten another delivery of excess commodities food from the lady who runs the program. And what did we get this time?

The handy sticker on the side of the box will tell you!

We also got a bigger box with non-perishable things in it, including the coveted canned peaches. Since we were also the recipients of eight pounds of cottage cheese from the school cafeteria (it wasn't even opened, but was expired, so it couldn't be used at school), A. has been very happily eating cottage cheese and canned peaches after dinner.

It took a couple of days for the children to notice this post-dinner treat, but when they did, they of course asked for some, too. I thought there was only one can of peaches, which A. had eaten by the time the kids noticed, but we had a happy surprise on Thursday. Stay tuned!

Wednesday

Short version: Fried pork and potatoes, sauerkraut, calabaza, cucumber

Long version: Another work day, but I had a better plan this time. Two cans of commodities pork fried in chicken fat with two diced microwaved potatoes, with onion powder and paprika. 

A. and I had ours with the half jar of sauerkraut still in the refrigerator. We also had the calabaza. The cucumber was for the children.

Thursday

Short version: Barbecue pot roast, rice, pinto beans, roasted carrots, raw fennel, canned peaches

Long version: I made a chuck roast in the morning, sliced it, and heated it with barbecue sauce at dinnertime. 

Exciting? No. But certainly more effort than I made for most of the dinners this week.

I had just canned another batch of pinto beans the previous weekend, and one of the pint jars didn't seal satisfactorily. I wasn't sure there would be enough meat to go around in this meal, so I also heated up some of the beans with butter and vinegar, because Cubby particularly loves beans and rice. 

Turns out Jack was a big fan too, which is convenient since I still have about fifteen pounds of dried pinto beans in the pantry, and then got another two bags of them in the commodities box. We will be eating more beans in the future.

I found another can of peaches when I was actually putting away everything in the commodities box--I didn't get it all put away until I was off work this day--and I saved it for the children. They were very happy with this. Small joys.

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