Friday Food: It's Lovely Rice Pudding for Dinner Again*

Friday 

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: I used leftover taco meat/beans to make quesadillas for the kids. I don't usually do this, because frying anything individually is a huge pain with four children, but Cubby was gone at a track meet, so I only had three children. Slightly less of a pain. But only slightly.

A. and I had leftover steak, and the last of a giant container of green beans and potatoes the school cook had sent home with me. They were surprisingly good.

Saturday

Short version: Pot roast, bread and butter, asparagus, watermelon radish, rice pudding

Long version: The extra commodities stuff is really getting out of control. We got a big box dropped off at our house by the lady who delivers it; a big box from Miss Amelia of the stuff she didn't want; and TWO boxes from Rafael of his extra things. Which is how I ended up with four pounds of cheap white rice and eight more pounds of raisins (in addition to the literal case I already had). So I decided to make rice pudding, since I had the oven on anyway for the pot roast, and it takes four hours to cook a double recipe.

I used the MiL's recipe, which was the one her father used to make on the farm for her and her five siblings. It calls for half a gallon of milk, which unfortunately doesn't come with commodities. Well, except for fat-free dried milk, and there's no way I'm making rice pudding from that.

I didn't have quite enough sugar, so I added some maple syrup, but that made it too sweet. I fixed this by cooking some rhubarb plain in the microwave so anyone who wanted to could stir that in to their rice pudding to cut the sweetness. Only A. tried it, and he really liked it.

The children didn't seem to think it was too sweet. But then, their tastebuds are significantly less sensitive to that particular taste.

I have one child who hates cooked raisins, so I leave one side raisin-less for him.

Sunday

Short version: Chicken and split pea curry, rice, green beans, rhubarb custard pie with whipped cream

Long version: I had two more rooster carcasses in the freezer, so I put those in the pressure cooker to make stock and have some cooked chicken. The problem I always have with pressure-cooking chickens, though, is that it definitely makes the best stock, but the meat gets sort of stringy.

In any case, I used that meat plus a container of curried split peas from the freezer, plus some sour cream, to make curried chicken. I should have used the other container of split peas in the freezer, though, because the chicken wasn't seasoned enough.

Well, I didn't think so, but everyone else still had two servings, so I guess it was okay.

Cubby chose the dessert. He wanted to make a pie with the rhubarb I had harvested the day before, so he made the crust using the MiL's recipe and I made the filling using this recipe (except with a teaspoon of cornstarch instead of flour). 

I was sort of ambivalent about the pie in the end. But then, I'm not a pie person, and the three pie people in our house really liked it. Particularly A., who said it was one of the best pies he's ever had.

Given the number of pies he's eaten over his life, most of them prepared by the MiL and her family, who are very accomplished pie bakers, that's a great compliment.

The two children who do not like pie had a graham cracker with whipped cream on it for dessert.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: The children all chose leftover curried chicken and rice for their dinners, which they ate along with watermelon radish on the side.

A. and I ate leftover pot roast, his with rice, mine in a salad.

Yup, it was a workday. You can always tell.

Completely unrelated sunrise photo of the steers across the road.

Tuesday

Short version: Male stew, garlic bread, rice pudding

Long version: When A. went to the store the day before, he got the four gallons of milk I requested, but the only ones he could find had a use-by date of Thursday. I knew we would not use four gallons of milk in six days (if they're not opened, they're usually fine for a few days after the use-by date), so I decided to make more rice pudding. This was a good day for it, as it was 35 degrees and windy when we got up, so the house could use the heat from the oven.

This time I used my big 15"x10" Pyrex and made a quadruple batch. That used almost a full gallon of milk. The Pyrex was completely full, and therefore sort of tricky to put in the oven and stir without spilling it. I used quite a bit less sugar this time, and it was better. And the boys were VERY EXCITED by the great quantity of rice pudding they found when they got home from school.

Because I needed the oven to be on for four hours to bake the rice pudding, I took out a bag of ram stew meat and cooked that along with the pudding. Lamb, onion, green garlic puree, rooster stock, a can of spaghetti sauce (we get a lot of this from the excess commodities, so I often use it in place of plain tomatoes), carrots, and potatoes.

It was male stew because it was made from ram meat and rooster stock. The children thought this was funny.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers, bacon and eggs

Long version: There was some chicken curry, some rice, and some lasagna left from the cafeteria on Monday. I added bacon and eggs, bread and butter, and leftover rice pudding to fill it out for those who needed more food.

And that's how we eat on work days.

Thursday

Short version: Fried pork, spaghetti with pesto, fried potatoes, cucumber slices

Long version: Two cans of commodities pork fried with spices, spaghetti for the kids, a nuked potato fried with the pork for A., a salad for me, cucumber slices for everyone.

I had to work again, but I actually cooked. Three pans going on the stove and no leftovers in sight. Look at me go, like a real cook instead of a microwaver.

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

* Remember the books of poetry by A.A. Milne I recommended last week? Well, they include a poem entitled "Rice Pudding," and I took every opportunity to recite the last stanza whenever we were eating said pudding. It goes "What is the matter with Mary Jane? She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain, and it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again! What is the matter with Mary Jane?" English nursery rice puddings must not have been as good as mine.