Friday Food: Bacon Grease All Week

There was a lot of bacon cooked at our family get-together in Colorado, and I saved all the grease. Which I put in an empty jar and brought home with me. This probably cemented my reputation as The Weird Relative, but I got more than a cup of bacon grease out of it, which is totally worth it. And which I used every day this week.

That's a quart jar it's in. That's a lot of bacon grease.

Friday 

Short version: Ground bull burritos, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: A pound of so of ground bull meat browned in bacon grease with half a can of black beans and spices and salsa. I was too lazy to even chop an onion or garlic, so I used the powders. It was still fine. And easy.

Saturday

Short version: Lamb, spaghetti with pesto, green salad with ranch dressing, cheesecake

Long version: This was the new 12-year-old's birthday dinner request. It's very lucky for him that pasta with pesto is his favorite and that his birthday happens to be right when there's enough basil in the garden to make pesto. 

He had asked for any kind of lamb, so I took out a boned-out leg roast, browned it (in bacon grease!), sliced it, then cooked it the rest of the way in the pan with sliced shallots from the garden, and cream.

I used the recipe for New York-style cheesecake in my Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook, which was written by Christopher Kimball. That means it was basically a Cook's Illustrated recipe. I made the New York-style kind because then I didn't have to separate the eggs and beat the whites with cream of tartar. 

That recipe was for a 10-inch springform pan, and I have a 9-inch pan, so I baked the extra batter in a disposable aluminum pan and gave it to our priest. I think I overbaked his, because it was smaller and I kind of forgot about it, but I'm pretty sure he'll still eat it. It's hard to completely ruin a cheesecake.

Sunday

Short version: Chicken and pesto, leftover spaghetti with pesto, fried potato, carrot sticks with ranch dip

Long version: One child had requested chicken, and the cheapest option for that was bone-in breasts. I had three of them in the package, so I poached those in the morning while it was still cool. At dinnertime, I just pulled the meat off, chopped it up, fried it in a lot of bacon grease, and added the rest of the pesto.

And then it still seemed dry, because chicken breast is, so I added some olive oil. And more bacon grease.

The potato was for A., because he doesn't eat pasta. I just microwaved it, chopped it, and fried it in . . . yup, bacon grease.

Monday

Short version: Fancy bean and cheese quesadillas, kohlrabi sticks, canned peaches with or without cottage cheese

Long version: When I make quesadillas for lunch, they are typically just cheese, sometimes beans. But for these, I used the rest of the blue corn tortillas my sister had sent home with us, some of the monterey jack cheese (a kind I never buy) also from the Colorado trip, the rest of a partial can of refried beans that had been in the refrigerator for awhile, garlic powder, and sliced jalapenos for those who like spice.

So I guess it was the garlic powder and jalapenos that made these fancy? Sure. And the blue corn tortillas.

Pretty.

After they were fried--in, of course, bacon grease--they were a very dark purple color. One child sat down at his place, looked at his place, and said quite matter-of-factly, "Wow. Those sure got burned." It sounded as if he had every intention of eating it anyway, however, and it was pretty funny.

I had two more kohlrabi in the garden that I harvested this day, so we had one of those for our vegetable.

I went to all the trouble of putting the can of peaches in the refrigerator to chill it before dinner, so I obviously get a gold star for this meal. Also a gold star for actually turning on the stove and frying the quesadillas, because it was so hot I was seriously tempted to just microwave them. These kind of tortillas are kind of dry that way, though, so frying was the way to go.

Hot, though. Eighty-three degrees when I finished making dinner. Definitely out of my temperature comfort zone.

Tuesday

Short version: Pesto chicken and potatoes, more kohlrabi sticks, creamy apricot popsicles

Long version: Hot again. I microwaved the potatoes before frying them (in you know what) so I wouldn't have to have the stove on as long, and then added the leftover pesto chicken, plus some more spices and salt.

The popsicles were just apricot jam, yogurt, and heavy cream. I never measure quantities for popsicles, except for knowing I need about 1.25 cups total to fill my four popsicle molds. I didn't have one, and one child wasn't here, so four was enough and I didn't have to get creative with butter knives.

Wednesday

Short version: Barbecue bull sandwiches, roasted potatoes, coleslaw, rhubarb pudding with cream

Long version: I took out a bag of pressure-cooked bull meat to thaw and then processed it further with my immersion blender before heating it with barbecue sauce. I realize when we sat down to eat that I missed an opportunity to add bacon grease to the meat. The bull meat is so lean, it can always use extra fat, and the bacon grease would have been good for that. It was tasty anyway, though.

I was baking bread anyway, so I made some buns, too. Potatoes roasted while the oven was on for the bread. I did put bacon grease on them.

I made the coleslaw with the very last cabbages from the garden, which were very small.

Paring knife for scale. A. drolly asked me if these were giant Brussels sprouts.

Despite their diminutive size, I still got enough shredded cabbage out of them to make a half recipe of this coleslaw. I also used one of the shallots I had dug up the day before. We only had about half a dozen shallots, but they did pretty well, and I do like shallots. I'll have to plant more this fall.

I hadn't yet made rhubarb pudding this summer. I thought the rhubarb was done for the year, but two plants staged a comeback, so I had enough to make this pudding. Two thumbs up.

Thursday

Short version: Hamburger steaks with gravy, boiled potatoes, corn on the cob, coleslaw, watermelon

Long version: This meal was much larger than I was anticipating, and all because I went to a city in the morning. In that city was a truck selling watermelons, corn, and cherries, all of which I got. I also got a big 10-pound roll of ground beef at the store.

Originally I thought I would make meatballs, but I didn't want to roll all those individual meatballs. So instead I made essentially really thick hamburgers, which I browned and then cooked in onions and some of the chicken stock from cooking the chicken breasts a few days previously. I thickened it with milk and cornstarch. This was something like Salisbury steaks, I guess, but those are more like meatloaf, with breadcrumbs and all. So I guess these were just hamburger steaks.

I suppose I should have fried them in bacon grease, but I also had some rendered beef fat in the refrigerator that had been there awhile, so I used that instead.

The watermelon was a big--like 30 pounds--seeded one, and it was only just okay. Not bad, but not as sweet as I was hoping. Boo.

Refrigerator check:

A watermelon (hiding in the back of the bottom shelf) plus a grocery run means my refrigerator is stuffed.

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

A.P.D.: Indoor Temperature

For most of the ten years we lived at Blackrock, we had no air conditioning in the house at all. Our bedroom was upstairs, with windows facing the setting sun. Upstate New York--especially when living by a lake--is incredibly humid, and surprisingly hot in the summer. This meant some very uncomfortable temperatures in our bedroom at night.

Anytime I saw a nighttime low that was 70 degrees or above, I knew I would be getting no sleep. It would be well into the 80s in our bedroom, and so sticky that my skin would feel simultaneously hot and chilled from the clammy sweat.

It was very unpleasant.

Here, where the air is significantly drier, I start to notice a change in my comfort level at 80 degrees. Our furnace thermostat is in the kitchen, so I know what the temperature is in there. Our bedroom is right off the kitchen, and is usually about the same temperature.

Last night when I went to bed, it was 83 degrees. That's a little too hot. I didn't feel comfortable enough to sleep until about 10 p.m.

When I woke up at 5:30 a.m., it was 73 degrees. That's a little warm, but I could still drink hot coffee without sweating too much.

The sunflowers and sage have been enjoying the heat a lot more than I do.

In the winter, I set our furnace thermostat overnight to 57 degrees. I mostly do this because otherwise it will cycle on and off and wake me up in the early morning, but that is actually a comfortable temperature for me to sleep in.

During the day it's set to 65 degrees, but with our woodstove going, it's usually between 68 and 70 degrees.

So I guess my ideal indoor temperatures are less than 60 at night and about 70 during the day. 

I have a small window of comfort, apparently.

So tell me: What is your ideal indoor temperature?

Snapshots: Colorado, Of Course

Let's view some photos from our trip to Colorado, shall we?

The nicest rest stop I've ever seen, somewhere past Pueblo but before Colorado Springs.

There were lots of paths, which were perfect for having the children run laps after they ate their lunch.

We were well past Denver and into the mountains when I saw a bunch of cars on the side of the road, but not at a trailhead or anything. I've spent enough time driving in wilderness areas to know this usually means some sort of exotic animal is within sight. Sure enough . . .

MOOSE!

I had not seen a moose since I lived in Alaska as a kid, and no one else in the family had ever seen one, so this was very exciting. It could not have cared less about the twenty or so people watching it. Thankfully.

The house my parents rented was huge. They wanted something that would sleep all 14 of us in a bed, and that meant this giant three-story house with six bedrooms.

The living room was something else.

It was perched at the very top of a hill and had some great views.

It also seemed to be a regular traffic stop for both moose, which we saw several times, once right in the garden twenty feet from the porch, and bears. The bears came every night and knocked over the very heavy dumpster, scattering trash all over. That got old. You'd think a rental house in bear country would have a better-secured dumpster.

Anyway.

One day my parents rented a pontoon boat so we could tour the lake.

Despite the name, Grand Lake is actually quite small.

Spectacular views of Rocky Mountain National Park, though.

Although A. went fishing a couple of times, he didn't have any luck. The children enjoyed swimming in the lake, though, even though it was really cold.

I stayed firmly on shore, thank you very much. Way too cold for me.

And of course, the reason we were there . . .

Happy Fiftieth, Mom and Dad!

There you have it! My (traveling) life, snapshotted.