Friday Food: So Long, Summer Break

Friday 

Short version: Meatball subs, potato chips, carrot sticks with curry dip

Long version: I took the younger kids to the county fair in the afternoon. We didn't get home until around 5 p.m. Luckily, I had already baked my bread, and had used some of dough to make buns. They were slightly bigger than hot dog buns, which was good, since I ended up using them to make meatball subs with the meatballs left over from the day before.

Before heating up.

The cheese on top was completely frozen, but I was not about to turn on the oven to melt it. Way too hot. So I just microwaved the whole thing. No one complained.

I seem to have taken a photo of A.'s plate.

And here it is.

Saturday

Short version: Eggs, bacon, spaghetti

Long version: This was the last day of the fair, and we didn't get home until just after 6 p.m. I had kind of been thinking of cooking the Hofmann's hot dogs A. had brought home from New York, but I felt like everyone had eaten enough sodium-laden snacks at the fair already.

So instead, I cooked half a dozen slices of bacon. More sodium, yes, but at least not the main course. I chopped some of those up and added them to leftover plain spaghetti along with frozen peas, butter, garlic powder, pepper, and Parmesan. The children had that with fried eggs.

I had bacon and eggs with leftover sauteed zuchinni.

A. was out working on sheep fence while we were eating. When he came back, he had corn tortillas with cheese, pinto beans, and bacon in them.

Sunday

Short version: Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, s'mores

Long version: I hadn't made oven-fried chicken in a long time, but it was actually cool enough this day to run the oven without wanted to close myself in our chest freezer. Of course, by the time I finished baking chicken and making and reducing chicken stock with the extra chicken, I had managed to raise the temperature of the kitchen to 81 degrees and I was sweating anyway.

The chicken was good, though!

I baked the potatoes with the chicken and then mashed them.

The corn was just frozen kernels. Not as exciting as corn on the cob, but certainly not refused.

We had two chocolate bars, half a bag of marshmallows, and most of a box of graham crackers left from the s'mores supplies the MiL sent home with A. So that's what the kids had for Sunday dessert.

Monday

Short version: Chicken and rice casserole

Long version: I made this casserole the day before while I was making Sunday dinner. I cooked the extra chicken pieces in water with onion, celery, and carrot, and pulled all the meat off the bones. I added this to cooked rice, along with cooked onion and garlic, frozen peas, cream, chicken stock, and grated cheddar cheese. 

The whole reason I made this ahead of time is because I was at school all day for in-service meetings and knew I would not be in any kind of mood to cook when I got home. Turning the oven on and heating up a casserole was about my limit.

I added a cup or so of extra stock before I baked it so it wouldn't dry out in the oven, since the rice had absorbed all the liquid overnight, but I added a bit too much stock and it could have used more cheese.

It was still eaten without complaint, however, which I admit is a low bar but is also my reality.

Tuesday

Short version: Lamb chops, roasted potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette, chocolate chip cookie bars

Long version: I perhaps was a little optimistic about running the oven at high heat for almost an hour. A rainstorm came through (yay!) and cooled everything down juuuust as I was about to start cooking. And then by the time I finished cooking, it was over 80 degrees in the kitchen and muggy from the rain.

Oh well. Tasty food, in any case.

I screwed up the cookie bars when I realized I didn't have any brown sugar, so I added some molasses* but failed to add extra white sugar in the quantity required for the brown sugar part of the recipe. I did add the white sugar specified, but the majority of the sugar in the recipe is brown, and that meant that more than half the sugar was missing.

Interestingly, the cookies were sweet enough, it was the texture that suffered. They didn't hold together well and are kind of crumbly and dry. It was a triple batch, too. That's a lot of crumbly cookie bars.

Again, still eaten without complaint. And it does make me wonder if I could reduce the total sugar by maybe a quarter without impacting the texture. Then again, it's a cookie. I'm not sure the extra sugar really matters.

Wednesday

Short version: Sloppy joe sandwiches, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I made these sandwiches with ground sheep, so should I call them sloppy shepherd sandwiches? No? I thought not.

Thursday

Short version: Pork chunks, black-eyed peas, rice, cucumbers

Long version: What are pork chunks, you ask? Well! I took a photo for illustrative purposes.

And here we have some chunks. Of pork.

I cut the chunks off another pork sirloin roast and just fried them in butter with salt, garlic powder, and paprika.

The black-eyed peas were from the freezer. I took them out a couple of days previously and kept forgetting to serve them, so I really just made the pork--and rice--to go along with the black-eyed peas.

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

* I learned several years ago that molasses+white sugar=brown sugar. It's an easy way to make up for running out of brown sugar, although I have to be sparing with the molasses, as the flavor comes through pretty strongly.