Friday Food: Repetitive Steaks

Friday 

Short version: Egg salad, cottage cheese, leftover spaghetti, crackers, leftover coleslaw

Long version: I already had all the eggs hardboiled, so I just made the egg salad and set everything out for everyone to choose their own combination.

A very modest buffet.

Saturday

Short version: Lamb steaks, rice, green peas

Long version: Some of the leg of lamb steaks, marinated and fried. Rice, peas, whatever. 

Sunday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, one lamb steak, beans and rice, leftover peas, brownie sundaes

Long version: I had one lamb steak that didn't fit in the pan the night before, so I cooked that for the one child who doesn't like scrambled eggs. Everyone else got the eggs.

The beans were the pintos and ham from the big batch I made a few months ago and froze. This was the last of it. I should do more big batches like that. A very handy thing to have in the freezer.

I had promised the kids I would make brownies for Sunday dessert, and I had made chocolate syrup earlier in the day. So those two things, plus a choice of vanilla or mint chocolate chip ice cream, made for some very exciting brownie sundaes.

Monday

Short version: Elk steaks, bread and butter, coleslaw

Long version: I found one last bag of elk steaks while I was rummaging in the meat freezer, so we had those. I just fried them in tallow and made a gravy for them with milk and the onions I had cooked after dicing what I needed for the coleslaw.

Tuesday

Short version: Cheeseburgers (with buns!), home fries, corn

Long version: I had made the buns on Sunday when I was baking bread, figuring I'd find something to put in them at some point. Which I did: Ground bull.

Again, too hot to turn the oven on for oven fries. So microwaved potatoes chopped and fried in tallow had to do.

The corn was just frozen corn kernels I had bought to have for shepherd's pie. I consider corn to be more of a starch than a vegetable, but the children were very pleased with it.

Wednesday

Short version: Lamb steaks, potatoes or bread and butter, green peas

Long version: Fourth day in a row with some kind of steak, yes. In fact, this meal had both lamb steaks AND an elk steak, since there was about half an elk steak left from Monday and some children prefer the elk to the lamb.

I had some already-cooked potatoes that I fried in the pan with the steaks, but I didn't have enough for everyone. Thus, bread and butter.

Actually, the same children that had the elk had the bread and butter. Concidentally.

Thursday

Short version: Many meats, potato salad, baked beans, coleslaw, American flag cake, ice cream, s'mores

Long version: A. bought a giant package of bone-in pork butt instead of ribs for our Fourth of July barbecue. He was going to buy pork ribs, but they were marked way up for the holiday. So instead, he bought the pork butt, boned it, and cut, well, steaks from it.

Despite the size of the pork butt, it didn't make all that many steaks when it was boned out. So I also took out a bag of lamb steaks, and then I added some hamburger patties I had formed and frozen awhile ago.

The Fourth of July is about the only day A. is willing to grill anything. Meat always tastes better cooked over charcoal.

I made American potato salad--with mayonnaise and hard boiled eggs in it--instead of the vinaigrette-dressed kind I often make. Because it was America Day, and that calls for a mayonnaise-based potato salad. Obviously.

Baked beans made from two jars of frozen pinto beans, coleslaw left over from a few days before.

And our traditional American flag cake. Which, also traditionally, was pretty ugly.

Even uglier than usual, actually.

Ice cream with the cake, and also because we had a guest with us who doesn't eat gluten.

I had promised the children we would have a fire on the Fourth of July, which seems to demand s'mores. It was supposed to be a big bonfire with all the scrap wood we've been collecting as we clean up the property, but it ended up being too windy for a really big fire. So we had a more restrained fire, but it was enough to make s'mores, and that's the important thing.

Refrigerator check:

Many leftovers.

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

Real Tradwives of the Country

Happy Fourth to all my fellow Americans! Have a totally random post, with no photo, in celebration of our great nation.

Although I am definitely an Internet dinosaur--having a personal blog just for fun is pretty much obsolete these days--I do still see a lot of what goes around online these days. And one of the things I see a lot is discussion of "tradwives." 

If you are not familiar with this, it stands for "traditional wives," and so far as I can see, is supposed to be something like June Cleaver crossed with Ma Ingalls. 

A tradwife makes sourdough bread, grows a big garden, keeps an immaculate house, cares for animals, has many children, and does all of this in a white cotton dress and cute boots.

This seems to be tied to the rise in "homesteading" as a lifestyle choice, and has quite justifiably created a backlash of mockery.

As anyone who has ever lived a "homesteading" life can tell you (and most people are living a very light version of that life, myself included), a woman cannot do all of that. She cannot care for everything perfectly, keeping everything and everyone in her orbit perfectly manicured and photo-ready. It's just not possible.

It's a dirty life, and it's often not pretty. It's muddy, or bloody, or smelly, or full of maggots. Because that's what life is like if you live anywhere close to the natural world.

I was thinking about this yesterday when the children and I were cleaning out the truck bed.

I had not planned on cleaning out the truck bed yesterday. I was actually on my way to go gather apricots from my neighbor's tree in the pasture across the road. Picking apricots and making jam from them is a perfectly acceptable tradwife activity. It's even possible, I suppose, to do those things while wearing a sundress.

I, however, was still wearing my running shorts and t-shirt from my early-morning run, because I had been so busy in the garden and kitchen that I hadn't showered and changed yet.

I was going to take the truck so I could bring the ladder and rake to reach the high ones. But when we got to the truck, we saw that the truck bed was covered in a layer of hay and sand that I had meant to rake out to mulch my tomatoes.

Okay, I thought. I'll just do that real quick.

Ha ha.

Forty-five minutes later, I had filled the wheelbarrow with noxious hay; removed the incredibly heavy rubber truck bed mat that had been harboring a truly disgusting layer of soaked and fermenting hay underneath; raked, swept, and hosed out the muck from the truck; and flipped that giant, heavy mat twice to scrape and wash it off.

I did all of this wearing my running clothes, plus A.'s muck boots. I got liberally splattered with foul muck, and was drenched in sweat by the time I finished*.

This is when I went into A.'s office with the rake in my hand and told him, "I'm ready for my tradwife photo shoot."

Because that's what it really looks like to be a traditional wife: Sweaty, dirty, and tired.

A. asked me if I actually wanted him to take my picture. I did not, because I wasn't feeling very photogenic, so there's no record of this particular moment in our "homestead" life. 

It's just one of many through the years, however, and I'm sure it won't be the last. 

* It was a very dirty and tiring task, but also quite satisfying, which sums up our life in a nutshell.

Dishes and Dishwashers

About a month ago, my dishwasher stopped heating the water. Without hot water, dishes don't get clean. I looked up the error message on the dishwasher's readout and figured out what needed to happen to fix it.

I also figured out that it was not a fix we were going to do ourselves.

I found a place in the city 100 miles away that will look at it, but I have to bring it to them. And that, I have not yet done.

So I don't have a functioning dishwasher.

This is not as bad as it might be, since it's summer. I don't work in the summer, and we're not running all over creation for school/sports/religious education/whatever. This means I have the time to do dishes twice a day.

It's been eight years since I've been without a dishwasher, but before that, I did dishes by hand at Blackrock for a decade. My handwashing skills were a little rusty, however, so I had to remember my method.

What, you don't have a dishwashing method? I definitely do. And here it is!

First, I fill the sink with soapy hot water and put all the silverware in the sink to soak while I wipe the table. 

Next, I wash all the silverware, three pieces at a time. The MiL thought it was very funny that I always do three pieces at a time, but that seems like the right number to me. Enough that I feel like I'm moving quickly, but not so many that I can't properly clean and rinse them all.

Next, I put in the cups and mugs to wash. 

Bowls next.

Next is plates.

Next are the miscellaneous cooking things, including pots and pans. 

Last, I wash cast-iron skillets.

And when I'm all done, I microwave the dish cloth for a minute to sterilize it, since I can't just throw it in the dishwasher.

A dishwasher that no longer washes is a very handy dish drainer, at least.

I will get the dishwasher in to be repaired before I start work in August. If it can't be repaired, I'll buy a new one. But until then, I hand wash, starting with silverware.

Do you have a dishwasher, or do you do dishes by hand? What's your method?

Snapshots: The Locust Swarm

I now have had a small taste of the Biblical plague of locusts visited upon the Egyptians. Or the marching army of locusts described in On the Banks of Plum Creek. 

I was not a fan.

Although the numbers of locusts we saw last week weren't as formidable as those two events, there were enough that it was disturbing. The swarm arrived in our village on Monday. I drove out of our gate and while I was waiting for Poppy to close the gate behind me, I sat looking at our neighbor's pasture. It looked as if there were cottonwood seeds or something floating through the air there.

And then I realized that all those things in the air over the pasture were flying locusts. They covered the roads and swarmed in the air. 

It was hard to get a photo of them, but all those dark spots in the road are locusts.

Driving through them sounded like hail as they slammed into the windshield over and over. 

My car's grille has looked like this for a week.

The boys went running through a pasture and reported that it was hard to see, because the locusts kept flying into their faces. They pretended the insects hitting them were gunfire, though, so I guess it was fun in the end.

I'm glad someone found a silver lining to this particular nasty cloud, because no one else has appreciated them. They haven't eaten my garden (yet . . .), but they have completely destroyed all the pastures. They prefer grass, and all the new grass that was finally starting to grow after the rain is totally gone. It's ugly. Neighbors are having to feed their cattle purchased feed, and probably will have to sell some of their herds off.

The swarm only reaches a few miles, but it was centered here for at least four days before it moved on. I've been asking the older people what breaks the locusts' cycle, and they all agree that a hail storm will kill them off.

I am hesitant to wish for hail, but I guess it would have a positive effect in this case.

Anyway. Here's something nicer.

Poppy disappeared into her room for several minutes and reappeared asking me to come look at her "barrette masterpiece." It was pretty impressive.

We have actually been getting rain, and I haven't had to water my garden in several days.

Almost half an inch in about an hour one afternoon resulted in . . .

Very heavy fog the next morning.

And a foggy sunflower, just for fun.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.