Friday Food: Green Food

Friday 

Short version: Fish sandwiches, oven fries, carrot sticks

Long version: A. had asked me to get some fish for sandwiches. I got whole battered fillets. I probably should have gotten some kind of fish patty, but I think the fillets were better. They were kind of like a double-sized fish stick, so each sandwich had two on them.

We had some of the Big Mac sauce left from the cheeseburgers the night before, which worked well as a tartar sauce substitute with the fish.

I had made oven fries the day before, but I made more because Poppy had been sad she couldn't have more.

Saturday

Short version: Creamy sausage and potato soup, pumpkin-pecan muffins

Long version: I had all the juices from the pork roast I had made a few days previously to use, so I decided to make a soup. For the meat in it, I used a package of plain smoked sausage. And then there were also onions, garlic, carrots, celery, green peas, and, of course, a lot of potatoes. I used diced potatoes, but then also thickened it with some of the instant potato flakes I still have. At the end, I added some milk.

Soup in progress.

I made the muffins as a consolation prize for the children who are not thrilled with soup. Also because I had cooked and pureed our last winter squash this day, so I just used some of that before I froze the rest.

Poppy decorated them with the pecans. Someone get that girl a Pinterest page.

Sunday

Short version: Green food! And meatballs.

Long version: It has become our tradition to have pasta with pesto on St. Patrick's Day. This is, of course, not at all an Irish food, but it is green. And delicious.

Since we were having pasta, I took out some of the ground bull meat to make meatballs. These were not green, since they were in a tomato sauce.

The salad was green, though.

Well, except for those red tomatoes again.

I also got all ambitious for dessert and decided to use some green sugar I had and the clover cookie cutter someone gave us when we did 4-H (the symbol of 4-H is a four-leaf clover) to make sugar cookies. I hate rolling out cookies and cutting them, but I did it. 

The clover shape is not so obvious, but they were green. Tasty, too.

Monday

Short version: Small meatloaf, baked spaghetti, baked potatoes, frozen green peas

Long version: While I was clearing up after dinner on Sunday, I put together a casserole of baked spaghetti by simply chopping up the leftover spaghetti, mixing it with the rest of the tomato sauce from the meatballs, and adding the grated asadero cheese I keep in the freezer.

I didn't use all of the meatball mixture to make meatballs. The last of it I saved to make a small meatloaf, which I baked along with the spaghetti casserole when I got home from work.

I threw some potatoes in the oven, too--after pre-cooking them in the microwave for a bit--thinking I could use them for a meal later in the week.

And then half the family ended up eating potatoes, as well, and I was left with one lonely baked potato. So much for that.

Tuesday

Short version: Sheep tenderloin chunks, mashed potatoes, cucumber

Long version: I pulled out a bag of sheep tenderloin to thaw. For this meal, I just trimmed it, chunked it up, marinated it in olive oil, vinegar, garlic powder, and salt, and then fried it. Then I made a sauce for it with garlic, some cooked diced onion from the refrigerator, apple cider vinegar, and cold butter.

The rest of the tenderloin I used to make . . .

Wednesday

Short version: Sheep curry, rice

Long version: I made this in the tandem with dinner on Tuesday, so I could just heat it up when I got home from First Communion class. Besides the sheep meat, in included onion, garlic, carrots, potatoes, green peas, yellow split peas. 

I also made a pot of rice on Tuesday, so when I got home at 5:30 p.m., all I had to do was heat up the curry --still in the skillet--and add some cream to that, and microwave the rice.

Yellow sludge: It's what's for dinner.

I do think next year I might make just a few pints of chutney, because I really like it with curry. Chutney is one of those things that can get out of hand and result in dozens of jars that never get used, but I think if I make maybe a half recipe of my favorite green tomato chutney, that would be about the right amount for a year.

Thursday

Short version: Pigs in a blanket at home, fast food on the road

Long version: I was at a track meet all afternoon. 

Track shadow.

The track team got burgers and fries after the meet, which my trackster elected to eat in the car so we could get home earlier.

The pigs in a blanket at home came from the school cafeteria. Someone else has been hired to help the school cook this year, so I haven't been working in the cafeteria and bringing home leftovers. The helper had taken the week off, however, so I went in to the kitchen during one  of my breaks to help the cook with the lunch dishes. She had a lot of pigs in blankets left, and gave me a whole bag to take home.

She makes the dough that goes around the hot dogs from scratch, and they're actually surprisingly good. Everyone at home was happy with them, anyway.

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

Another for the List

I make a lot of things from scratch that most people buy: yogurt, chocolate syrup (for chocolate milk), bread, salad dressings, and many other things. I do buy some condiments, though, including salsa, mustard, ketchup, and jam.

Except I guess I won't be buying jam anymore. And it's all because of the tea party.

I had promised Poppy that we would have a tea party while the MiL was here. Tea parties must, of course, include scones. And those scones must, of course, be accompanied by jam.

We were out of strawberry jam, and I had put it on the list for A. when he went to the store. He missed it, though, and never got any. So there I was, with a tea party promised for the next day, no jam, and no way to get it that didn't involve driving 60 miles.

I did, however, have the last of a bag of strawberries in the freezer, bottled lemon juice, and sugar. And these are the ingredients for strawberry jam.

I've made a lot of jam over the years, so I didn't use a recipe. I didn't even use pectin, because I didn't have any.

I dumped all the strawberries in a pot, heated them gently (so they wouldn't stick) until they were thawed, mashed them with my potato masher, dumped in slightly more than an equal amount of sugar, added a few squirts of lemon juice, and boiled it all furiously, while stirring, until it was sheeting* on a flat wooden spoon. 

This jam was enormously popular with everyone, of course. A. especially liked it. His theory is that it tastes better because there's no pectin in it, so the flavor of the strawberries is undiluted.

Eating it on a scone is also a good idea.

Out of curiosity, I did a little cost comparison between the ingredients for this jam and a jar of store-brand strawberry jam. What I found is that this jam is about half the cost of the store jam. And it's a lot better than store jam. 

Making jam without pectin does require more sugar to get it to a spreadable consistency, otherwise it can be slightly runny. However, we don't worry too much about runny jam. Particularly since it's often used in yogurt.

So I guess we can add jam to the list of things I make now. It's a lot easier than the bread, at least.

* Sheeting is when the jam doesn't drip in individual drips from the spoon when it's upside down, but rather all gathers and falls off all along the spoon in a line.

Snapshots: Flowers and Tea

So many dainty photos this week.

Buds on the apricot tree, which turned into . . .

Flowers on the apricot tree.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely there will ever be many apricots on the apricot tree. We usually get a bad freeze or wind storm that kills off the blooms or tiny apricots. But you never know! This may be our year!

Meanwhile, in the mechanic's-pit bulb garden . . .

Crocuses!

The children associate the MiL with tea parties. With good reason, as some of you might recall if you've been reading here a long time. (Wookit da widdle baby boys!)

So of course, we had to have a tea party while the MiL was here.

Tea table.

I made scones, whipped cream, and strawberry jam*, and also put out cheese and summer sausage for the less-delicate among us who needed a heartier tea.

The mugs you see there are some of my dad-the-former-fighter-pilot's squadron mugs. Definitely not delicate, but fun for the children to use.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* Yes, I actually made the jam. I'll tell you all about that on Tuesday.