Friday Food: Ram, Deer, and Tripe

Friday 

Short version: Shrimp, tuna salad, spaghetti with pesto, raw cucumber, pureed calabaza

Long version: Last meatless Friday for Lent, better use the two pounds of shrimp I have in the freezer! They were already peeled and de-veined (ALLELUIA), so I just sauteed them in butter, then added a cube of frozen pesto at the end. Happy Cubby. And A.

I still have at least three meals' worth of pesto cubes in the freezer from last summer. That should last us until I harvest this year's basil. Very pleasing.

Saturday

Short version: Dad's chile, bunless hamburgers, leftovers, watermelon radish

Long version: A few months ago, Rafael brought us a bunch of deer pieces that he had salvaged from someone he knew who shot a deer. Rafael has this tendency to bring us these pieces of random meat, just so they don't get thrown to dogs.

Our dogs ended up getting some of it, though, when I put it on top of the freezer until I could make room for it, and they got to it before I did. Whoops. 

They only got one of the bags, though. So I stuck the other bag in the freezer until I felt sufficiently motivated to deal with it.

That took awhile. I finally pulled that meat out of the freezer, though, and dealt with it.

The way I did that was dump it out of the garbage bag it was classily wrapped in directly into my pressure canner. Then I covered the meat--it was the ribs--with water. And then I picked out the hairs and grass that floated to the surface of the water.

You can see why it took me awhile to find the motivation to cook this.

After removing the visible detritus from the deer meat, I added a package of tripe to the pot. A. requested I use that instead of the other package of pigs' feet that was in the freezer. Good call, since the "use by" date on that tripe was, um, three years ago.

So the venison and tripe were pressure-cooked for an hour, at which point I pulled all the bones out of the pot, added a chopped onion, a ton of chopped green garlic, a can of tomato sauce, and about 1/3 cup of minced roasted green chiles. And some cumin and salt. And a bag of posole (hominy) that's probably been in the freezer as long as the tripe.

I cooked all that for about four hours, until the hominy was soft and it was WOAH TOO SPICY. For me, anyway. It was fine for A.

I had a bit of uncooked hamburger from when I made the meatloaf a few days prior and the center of the meat still hadn't thawed in time for mixing the meatloaf. I made four small hamburgers from that, and half the kids had those. The other half had leftover meatloaf. All had leftover spaghetti with pesto and the biggest watermelon radish ever. 

I had ordered a one-pound bag of watermelon radishes from Misfits Market, and what came was one radish that was one pound all by itself. It was so big, I thought it was a turnip at first. The kids loved it and ate the whole thing. I wish I could tell them I'll grow them, but radishes don't do well here. It gets too hot, too fast for them.

Sunday

Short version: Easter lamb, sourdough pita bread, tomatoes and cucumbers, carrot cake (with pecan flour)

Long version: This was one of the boneless leg roasts from the ram we butchered a few months ago. We actually cut the boneless legs in half, because none of us particularly care for leftover lamb so smaller is better. I covered it in green garlic paste I had made the day before with a whole row of the dry-land green garlic in the pasture (meaning A. never waters those plants--they survived on the very little rain or snow we've gotten).

Green garlic paste is just pureed green garlic and olive oil, and it is the most vibrant green ever.

Spring in a food processor.

I made the sourdough pita using this recipe again, and have finally learned that the skillet they're cooked in needs to be wiped out with a damp cloth between each batch to get the loose flour out of the pan. In this way, I cooked pita on the stove without setting off the smoke alarm once. Yay me!

Yogurt sauce with lemon juice, more green garlic, salt, and pepper, plus cucumbers and tomatoes from Misfits Market and . . .

Happy Easter!

I decided last-minute to make carrot cake for dessert, mostly because everyone had more than enough chocolate in their Easter baskets. I used this recipe, but only made half for a one-layer cake. Good call, because most of the children weren't huge fans. They all liked the cake part--most remarked it tasted like zucchini bread--but not the frosting. Which is really weird, because I think cream cheese frosting is the best part of carrot cake. Although the cake part was good, too.

Anyway, I did have some very appropriate chocolate and hazelnut candies I had purchased for the Easter baskets but ended up using for cake decoration.

Probably could have arranged them more artistically, but whatever.

The recipe had the option of raisins (in a cake? no way) and chopped walnuts. I was going to forgo the nuts, but then Cubby decided to crack a bunch of the pecans we still have hanging around, and then use my very underused molcajete to grind them into a flour. So I used that in the cake.

It took him almost an hour to end up with half a cup of ground pecans. All hail pre-shelled nuts and the food processor.

Monday

Short version: Rooster and split pea curry, rice, carrot sticks, raw fennel

Long version: I still had three roosters in the freezer, so I took one out and simmered it to make stock and get the meat off. I used the curry powder left from dying eggs (I always drain the water off the spices and save the sludgy spices for cooking) to make curried split peas. It's just yellow split peas, sauteed onion, chicken stock, salt, curry powder, and sour cream at the end.

After pulling the chicken into pieces, I mixed it with some of the curried split peas. This was surprisingly popular with the children, all of whom ate two servings.

Tuesday

Short version: Polish sausage, leftovers

Long version: I had to work, so I decided it was a good night for quick-cooking sausage. I bought this sausage last month at a Walmart about a hundred miles away. It didn't have any weird ingredients and was from a family-owned business in San Antonio, Texas, so I had high hopes.

It was, indeed, very good sausage. I loved it. Everyone else did not. I guess they really just like Italian sausage. They mostly had leftover lamb, rice, and curried split peas. And there was actually enough sausage left for me to bring it for lunch at work the next day. Silver lining.

Wednesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, leftovers, fruit shake, and a restaurant

Long version: I went to the Junior/Senior banquet for school, so I fed the kids after I got home from work and before I went to the banquet. Three had the scrambled eggs in corn tortillas with cheese and salsa, plus curried split peas. One had lamb, curried split peas, and a piece of bread and butter. All of them had the fruit shake.

I don't like the word "smoothie." It just sounds unappealing to me. I call them fruit shakes, because then it sounds more like milkshake. Right? Right. Anyway, it was 83 degrees and I had a ton of yogurt on hand, so a fruit shake seemed like a good idea. This one had two pears that were sweet but never got soft when they ripened, frozen peaches and blueberries, honey, yogurt, and milk. I think this is the first time I have ever served a fruit shake with dinner. The children were pleased.

A. had more of his never-ending venison and tripe chile. 

I had brisket, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a brownie with ice cream at the restaurant that hosted the banquet. Yum.

Thursday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, potato soup, sauteed zucchini, raw cabbage

Long version: It was in the eighties again, and therefore not exactly soup weather, but I had half a gallon of  stock left from cooking the rooster on Monday. So. Potatoes, carrots, bacon, onion, milk, sour cream, immersion blender . . . soup.

I put the sliced zucchini right into the pan with the cheeseburgers, along with some chopped green garlic, and it was very good. The children did not agree. They had the raw cabbage.

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