Friday Food: ASPARAGUS YAY!

Friday 

Short version: Pintos and ham, rice, carrot sticks

Long version: I had the ham bone still in the refrigerator from making the spiral ham on Sunday, so I decided to use it to cook the last of the big bag of pinto beans I had bought some months ago. I made them pretty much just like black-eyed peas, and they were very good. Kind of soupy, but tasty.

Saturday

Short version: Early Chinese food, salami and yogurt later, peaches and pb&j before bed

Long version: This was the day we went to Santa Fe to pick up our new car. We went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant after we finished with the car, but it took us so long, that it was 2 p.m. before we even got to the restaurant. 

It was actually a pretty good restaurant. Our meals included cashew chicken, chicken with snow peas, sweet and sour chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce, and A. got Peking duck, which made him very happy.

Everyone ate a lot, but it was really too early for their last meal of the day. Two of the children went with me to the grocery store on the way home. They ate some deli salami in the car. The other two children got home earlier with A. They had some yogurt with strawberry jam when they got home.

And then when I got home at 7:30 p.m. and was frantically putting away groceries so we could all go to bed after our long day, they ask me, "So when's dinner, Mom?"

As if I was going to produce a full meal at that point. Their faith in me is touching. But no.

In the end, two kids split the last peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had brought with us for lunch, one had a big glass of milk, and one had some canned peaches.

Sunday

Short version: Pizzas, green salad with ranch dressing, strawberry-rhubarb pie with whipped cream

Long version: I made one half-sheet-pan pizza, and one smaller pizza. The bigger one had bacon on it. The smaller one was just cheese.

Big and little.

I didn't have enough rhubarb in the garden yet to make rhubarb pudding, but I did have enough for a pie when combined with strawberries. I mostly used this recipe, except (always) I only had two cups of rhubarb, so I made up the difference with more strawberries. And I used lemon juice instead of cinnamon, because cinnamon sounded weird to me. And I never use the pie crust instructions in recipes, instead using the MiL's recipe of two cups flour and one cup butter (or half cup butter and 1/3 cup lard). And I didn't do the egg wash.

This pie is so pretty.

Even with my ugly crust.

My crusts are always the proper texture and they taste perfect, but yeah, they're not pretty. I don't care enough to learn how to make them decorative, so that's that.

The pie was delicious, anyway.

Monday

Short version: Leftover pizza, leftover pinto beans, cucumbers, cookies and cream ice cream

Long version: All the kids got two pieces of pizza, which isn't enough for them, so then they all had some beans, too. A. had the rest of the rice with his beans. I had a salad.

The ice cream was Poppy's request. She was with me at the store, and she can read now, so she could see the flavor options. Cookies and cream is one of the few flavors Walmart offers in their store brand the full gallon. We always have to buy the full gallon, because our family will eat more than half a gallon in one sitting. Which we did this night.

Cookies and cream is apparently a favorite of my children. I never knew that, but now I do. So I guess we'll be buying it more often.

In case you were wondering, the Walmart brand ice cream is actually really good. Surprising, given that an entire gallon is about seven dollars, but true.

Tuesday

Short version: Lamb, roasted potatoes, raw radishes, pureed calabaza, roasted ASPARAGUS YAY!

Long version: The lamb was a bag of lamb steaks, which are just, well, steaks cut from the back leg. I marinated them for about an hour before dinner, then fried them to get them brown, and then stuck them in the oven with the roasting potatoes to cook more.

Steaks in a skillet, ready for the oven.

I had a little calabaza left in the bag I had taken out of the freezer for the chili I was also making this day, so A. and I finished it. And then, when I was looking idly out the kitchen window, I noticed that there were quite a lot of asparagus spears out there that needed to be cut.

Yay!

I just put them on the pan with the potatoes to roast, and just like that, asparagus season has begun.

Only one of the children will eat calabaza, and none of them like cooked asparagus, so they had the radishes. Their loss.

Wednesday

Short version: Frito pies

Long version: I had made chili the day before--using ground bull, the paprika sludge from dyeing Easter eggs, some of the green tomato salsa, and the rest of the pinto beans and ham--specifically to make Frito pies when we got home at dinnertime after First Communion class.

When I was at Walmart on Saturday, I noticed they had store-brand corn chips. I had never seen a store-brand version of Fritos, but I thought we could try them. They were almost exactly half the price of Fritos, so I bought two bags.

They were good. I couldn't tell a difference. Great Value wins again.

I guess I should call these Generic Corn Chip Pies, but that's a little clunky.

Thursday

Short version: Enchilada casserole, roasted asparagus, carrot sticks

Long version: Our shearer had called the night before to let us know he could come shear our sheep this day, and that he would be here around 11 a.m.

I knew that meant I would be spending most of my afternoon bagging up fleeces and otherwise helping. And that would mean I would be tired and in no mood to cook dinner at dinnertime.

That's why I made the casserole in the morning, so I could just shove it in the oven at 4:30 p.m. I used some pressure-cooked bull I had in the freezer (further broken down with my immersion blender), onions, salsa, and some of the leftover chili, plus corn tortillas, cheese, and extra sauce I made with tomato sauce and spices.

More asparagus, because it was there, and I could just put it in the skillet from cooking my breakfast eggs and slide it into the oven with the baking casserole. So easy. And tasty.

The children had the carrot sticks. 

Refrigerator check:

Lots of casserole left for dinner tomorrow. Also some bread pudding left from breakfast (on the bottom shelf), which will make for some happy children tomorrow morning.

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

Flower Season Has Begun

Actually, flower season started a lot earlier this year, thanks to the bulbs we planted in the old mechanic's pit. The first to bloom were of course the crocuses, although those aren't cutting flowers. I like to have some kind of flower in the middle of my dining room table as much as possible. 

The first flowers I could cut and put in a vase on the table were the daffodils. Next were the tulips. And now . . .

Decorative alliums and an apricot branch for greenery.

The lilacs are also blooming right now. We planted lilac bushes a couple of years ago, and while they are still alive, they are several years from having any blossoms on them. Luckily, there are many giant old lilac bushes at abandoned houses. I helped myself to a few from an abandoned house in the village.

They don't last long in a vase, but the perfume coming from them is incredible for the couple of days they do last.

One of the children also found some flowering bushes at an abandoned home site in our ghost village and brought me a branch. I don't know what it is, but I like the flowers.

This is taller than I like my table arrangements to be, so it's on the bookcase in the living room.

Soon there will be silver nightshade and purple alfalfa flowers, then sunflowers and sage, and we'll just keep going as long as there are any kind of usable flowers outside. 

My table should always have something colorful on it for the next several months. And that makes me very happy.

Snapshots: A Vehicle-related Adventure

For a variety of reasons, I decided the time had come to buy another family vehicle. The main reason is that, despite owning four vehicles, none of them had less than 160,000 miles on it. Given the amount of driving I do on very sparsely traveled roads, I felt I would be more comfortable with a lower-mileage car.

Our remote location makes it challenging to buy a car, of course, and in the end, I used a service called CarMax. The whole process was mostly online. It searches all over the country within the parameters you give it, and then will ship the vehicle to your nearest location.

My search was for an older but low mileage Honda Pilot. When one showed up in California, I had it shipped to our nearest CarMax location for a test drive. Our nearest location is in Santa Fe.

Now, "nearest" is relative for us. That's still a more than two-hour drive one-way. And of course, since we would most probably be coming home with two vehicles, both adults and all the children had to go.

This was an all-day event. We left at 8:30 a.m. and didn't get home until 7:30 p.m.

Two hours of that were spent at the car place, mostly doing the paperwork involved in purchasing a car. That was boring, and long, and the children were very ready to be gone by the time it was done.

We went next to a Chinese restaurant that turned out to be not at all close to the car place. We drove and drove through what seemed like every stoplight in Santa Fe to get to this place. It was a pretty good restaurant, but the real benefit to it was that it turned out to be only about half a mile from the plaza in Santa Fe.

Despite living here for six years, I--and the two youngest children--had never been to Santa Fe. I freely admit this is kind of ridiculous. I mean, this is one of the most historic and most visited cities in the entire country. People come from all over the world to see it. So when we found ourselves so close to the historic plaza, we of course had to go.

We walked from the restaurant to downtown, first stopping at the Loretto Chapel. 

Built in the Gothic style, so it looks kind of like a mini European cathedral.

You can read all about it at their website, as well as see photos of its famous Miraculous Staircase.

I took my own photo of it, which was kind of hard as it was very crowded in there.

My children were very disappointed that no one is allowed to actually climb this.

And here is a bad photo of the altar.

Next we went to the cathedral, which is just a block or so away.

It was much bigger than I was anticipating.

If you've ever read Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather (and you should), this is the cathedral being built by Bishop Lamy in the book. 

Unlike the Loretto Chapel, the cathedral is still a consecrated church, and they were getting ready to celebrate Mass, so I didn't take any photos in there. It is very brightly painted. You can see photos of the interior if you do an image search.

Staying for Mass would have made for a very late return home, so we didn't. We did stop on our way back to the car at a very old, and giant, courtyard-style home that now houses shops*. You can go into the courtyard, which has very nice plantings in it.

Hard to get a photo of, though.

I still had to stop at the grocery store on the way home, so we had to leave after that. We'll have to go back, though, because we didn't have time to see much, and there is a LOT to see in Santa Fe.

Oh, you need to see the car!

It's a 2013, but it only has 35,000 miles on it and pretty much zero wear anywhere.

In contrast to the very old Pilot, which was a 2005 and has . . . a lot of wear. And will shortly be going to the scrap metal yard.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

*Most of the historic downtown seems to consist of shops, as a matter of fact. It's a bit overwhelming.