Friday Food: Rhubarb! Asparagus! Hooray!

Friday 

Short version: T-bone steaks, rooster rice, raw cabbage, cottage cheese chocolate cookies

Long version: Definitely not Lent anymore! And that means we can have steak, and rice cooked in rooster stock, for dinner on a Friday. So we did.

I had a very large container of cottage cheese the school cook had sent home with me because it was past the time she could serve it, even though it was still fine to eat. Unfortunately, it was the reduced-fat kind, which is not universally beloved in my household. Fate stepped in, however, in the person of mbmom11, who commented here this very day that she had made cottage cheese cookies that week.

Kismet!

I was due to make some cookies, so I looked up recipes online. I used this one, except I tripled it, used slightly less sugar, added chopped almonds, and didn't dust them with powdered sugar. They were very good. Very soft, cakey cookies. My children approved.

Saturday

Short version: Pizza, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: One cheese pizza, one with bacon and onions. I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen in the morning cooking down a couple dozen onions from excess commodities that were starting to go bad.

I'd never tried it before, but the slicing disc on the food processor is absolutely the way to go when there are many onions to be sliced. So fast, so much less teary. 

It's always fun to see how much onions cook down.

Before . . .

And after.

I actually filled that pan three times and cooked down all three batches, which leaves me with a LOT of onions in the freezer. Yay.

Some of the onions went on one pizza with bacon, and that was very good. Oh, and both pizzas had the last of the ricotta from the week before on them. Also very good.

Sunday

Short version: Brisket, cornbread, sauerkraut, raw broccoli, rice pudding

Long version: This chunk of brisket was actually from the cow we got before this last one, so I figured I should cook it now, before it's hot enough that I don't want to be running the oven all day. I cooked the meat with just a sliced onion, mustard, ketchup, salt and pepper. When it was done cooking, though, the juices needed some more flavor to sauce the meat.

I had fortuitously made some rhubarb-peach jam earlier in the day by simply cooking down some rhubarb and combining it with some of the very overly sweet peach jam that resulted from following the recipe on a pectin box last fall. Holy cow, does that call for a lot of sugar.

The rhubarb tones down the excess sugar nicely, though, and it was just what the meat juices needed for the right flavor.

A very bad photo of the rhubarb.

Monday

Short version: Spanish tortilla, asparagus, leftover corn bread

Long version: I had actually made the Spanish tortilla over the weekend for the one child who likes to eat it as a snack, but there was a lot left, so we had it for a fast after-work dinner.

I made myself a salad and was thinking that I wished I had more vegetables to put in it. Then I looked out the window and remembered . . .

It's asparagus season! Hooray!

Three of my children will eat asparagus, but only raw. So that's what they had.

Tuesday

Short version: Bull enchilada casserole

Long version: Chipping away at the bull, forever and ever. I like using it in this because I can make casseroles in my biggest 15"x9" Pyrex and then have leftovers.

Wednesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, leftover rooster rice, raw broccoli

Long version: I really should make scrambled eggs for dinner more frequently. It uses up a lot of eggs quickly, and I'm still getting 5-7 eggs a day, so we have a good supply at all times.

Also, please be impressed that I turned on the stove and cooked something on a work day. I was saving my leftover casserole for the next day . . .

Thursday

Short version: Leftover enchilada casserole, rhubarb/peach pudding

Long version: I was at the school for a late-afternoon celebratory assembly for our state-winning FFA team. I was there until the end of the school day, which is why I saved the casserole for this night, so we could eat quickly in between the end of school and judo. 

And then there were cupcakes, cookies, cake, AND doughnuts at the assembly, which all of the children were more than happy to sample. That meant that A. was the only one who really ate the pudding, but he enjoyed it.

The pudding is a recipe for rhubarb pudding in an old encyclopedia of cooking the MiL has. I tried to find something similar online and couldn't really find anything, so I actually called her for the recipe. I might have to post it sometime.

The recipe is for just rhubarb, but I used the peach jam and rhubarb. It was very good. 

But not very photogenic.

Good thing we don't eat with our eyes in this house.

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