Friday Food: Stuffed Grape Leaves

Friday 

Short version: Omelets, strawberries

Long version: I was not feeling well at dinnertime, so I turned the kitchen over to A. Fortuitously, my friend had dropped off several dozen eggs the day before, so there were plenty for A. to make omelets, which he likes to do.

I think these had onion, ham, and cheese in them. 

I had been to the store this day. Strawberries were on sale, so the children had those instead of a vegetable. This was no hardship for them.

Saturday

Short version: Hamburgers, oven fries, roasted asparagus, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, gingersnaps

Long version: I asked all the children if they had any requests from the grocery store, and one child asked me to get ground beef. The big rolls of ground beef--called, disgustingly, chubs--were on sale, so I got one of those. And then I used some of it this night to make hamburgers.

I have not cooked with store ground beef in . . . well, I'm not sure. A couple of years, maybe. It was alarming how much the meat shrunk in the pan. Also surprising how soft it was. We're accustomed to more chew to our beef now, I guess.

I can't wait until we have a whole cow in our freezers again.

I made the gingersnaps per a child's request (no pepper in mine, though). Now that the cookies aren't being used as a school snack, I don't worry so much about getting protein into them. So I can make purely dessert cookies. Gingersnaps qualify.

Sunday

Short version: Dolmades, lamb steaks, random potatoes, tzatziki, pots de creme

Long version: A. was pruning his grape vines and came in with a bunch of leaves. "We can make stuffed grape leaves!" he said enthusiastically.

There was, of course, not so much a "we" making them, as a "me," but that's what happens when you present something like fresh grape leaves to me.

I used this recipe as a guideline, except (always) I didn't have the mint for the filling, and I didn't have enough grape leaves to line the bottom of the pot before steaming. Nor did I have tomato slices to layer in the bottom of the pot. So instead, I used the trimmings from taking the stems off the leaves, as well as the green part from some new garlic A. had dug up that day. In place of the tomato slices, I used slices of potato.

Good enough.

Filling and rolling the (blanched) grape leaves was challenging, because the variety of grape that A. had trimmed had leaves that did not look like the grape leaves in the recipe I used. Mine had more lobes on them, and thus, were not as wide.

I believe these are from the Cartegena variety, which is relatively rare and thus not used to make mass quantities of jarred grape leaves for commercial sale.

I sort of pieced together what I had, overlapping as necessary, and ended up with fourteen small dolmades*.

Not the prettiest rolling job, but the best I could do with what I had.

I used some lamb stock from the freezer to boil/steam these. I was supposed to cook them until the liquid had been absorbed all the way, but that never happened. Probably because the pot wasn't full. That worked out, though, because I had a lot of the filling left, so I just cooked that in the remainder of the liquid.

So how were the dolmades?

Certainly not the prettiest food.

They were okay. I thought they were sort of bland and mushy, but A., who has actually eaten them before, loved them. He informed me that they must be drizzled with olive oil before being eaten, so I guess that helps? I don't know. They didn't seem worth it to me, but they made him happy.

Everyone was happy with the pots de creme, which I hadn't made in awhile.

Oh, and those potato slices I lined the pot with came in handy to fill out dinner a little. The kids ate them with their lamb, slightly smashed with butter.

Monday

Short version: Unstuffed dolmades filling, raw cabbage, cookies

Long version: This was the filling I had cooked in the remaining lamb stock. I was informed by one child that it needed more meat in it, but everyone ate it without complaint.

The cabbage was the first one from the garden, yay! The kids like it raw, so I just whacked some chunks off it and put it on their plates.

I made the cookies mostly for A., who took one kid on a fishing and camping trip with a friend. I made chocolate chip/peanut butter cookies for them, so they'd have some sort of snack on hand. Good for breakfast or whatever. The kids at home were pleased to have some, too.

Tuesday

Short version: Spanish dolma rice, leftovers, grape tomatoes

Long version: Only three kids were eating, because one was sick with a bad sore throat. I had enough of the dolmades filling left, but thought maybe three nights in a row might be a little much. So I switched it up a bit by cooking a bit more ground beef for it, adding salsa and taco spices to change the flavor, and finishing it up with grated cheddar cheese. Ta da! Spanish dolma rice.

A. had the last lamb steak and the leftover potatoes from their camping hobo pack of potatoes and hamburger patties.

The child with the sore throat had some egg salad and potatoes with cheese.

I had a salad, on which I used the last of the tzatziki sauce as a dressing. That works well.

Wednesday

Short version: Lamb roast, whipped potatoes, cucumbers, roasted asparagus and garlic, baked custard

Long version: This was a boned-out leg roast that I, well, roasted. Roasting actually works better with the bone in, but it cooks a lot faster without the bone and is much easier to carve. Trade-offs.

I prefer to mash potatoes with my handheld masher, but the child with the sore throat prefers them whipped with the mixer. So I did that for him. I had baked them in the oven while I was roasting the lamb, which enabled me to make a lot more potatoes without the space constraint of a pot to boil them in.

These were some seriously large potatoes, and they made a lot of whipped potatoes.

Meat thermometer for scale, I guess.

I also made the baked custard for the sick child, although of course everyone else had to have some, too.

Thursday

Short version: Fish patties, leftover whipped potatoes, raw produce

Long version: One can of tuna, one can of salmon, everyone is happy. I decided on this last-minute after we got home in the afternoon from a trek to the dentist. I had thought I would get something at the grocery store for a quick dinner, but we got home earlier than I thought.

Refrigerator check:

Definitely a post-grocery-store refrigerator.

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

* I didn't know if it was dolmas or dolmades, so I looked it up. It appears that dolmades is the plural version of dolmas in Greek, so there you go.