Friday Food: Highly Unusual

A. left last Friday for New York with the three younger children, and just returned yesterday. I was home caring for animals and the eldest child, who wasn't feeling well all that time. So it was a really odd week of food at our house.

Friday 

Short version: Barbecue food

Long version: To continue the odd theme, I actually went to a barbecue. Our whole family was invited when we were at the parish picnic the week before, by one of the moms from last year's First Communion class. When she heard that I would be the only one here, she was insistent that I come by myself.

She's very nice, and I didn't want to be rude, so I went. She lives in the village in the opposite direction from the one where we go to school and church. Even though her village is the same distance from our house as the village we are usually in, I don't really know anyone there except by sight. So I didn't really know anyone at the barbecue. 

I sat with three elderly Spanish ladies, who spent much of the time telling me about their various family connections and asking me about my neighbors, since I have the misfortune to not actually be related to anyone here. Old Spanish ladies are highly opinionated and outspoken, so it was very entertaining.

As for food, I had chicken and some pasta salad. The hostess confessed that she just bought a bunch of rotisserie chickens and quartered them before putting them on the grill for just a few minutes with barbecue sauce. She and her husband both work and they have five children, so spending an hour grilling chicken didn't seem like a good use of their time.

This seemed like a brilliant idea to me, and I told her so. Also, the chicken was delicious.

My contribution was a plate of chocolate-chip cookies, because that's what I happened to have in the cookie jar. They were all eaten, which is good.

Saturday

Short version: Salad and ice cream

Long version: I had some hardboiled eggs on hand, so I used those to make a salad.

Virtuous salad and my current book. I have mentioned more than once that I really do love reading while I eat.

And then I had some not-so-virtuous ice cream. Because I could.

Sunday

Short version: Hardboiled eggs, cucumbers, more ice cream

Long version: I didn't even bother with making an actual salad, instead just mashing up two hardboiled eggs with leftover ranch dressing and eating a cucumber from the garden.

Well, half a cucumber, because these Armenian cucumbers are a bit much for a solo diner.

And more ice cream. Again, because I can. Also because it's been HOOOOT all week.

Monday

Short version: Bunless hamburger, tomato and cucumber salad, and yes, more ice cream

Long version: I had a few hamburger patties still in the freezer from the extras I froze awhile ago, so I cooked one of those this night. The salad had feta in it, which makes it so much better.

Please enjoy my very fancy bunny bowl.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken and cucumbers with ranch, ice cream

Long version: I had just a bit left from the jar of ranch dressing that's been in the refrigerator for awhile, so I used it for the second half of one of the Armenian cucumbers.

I went to Walmart this day to buy All The School Supplies. While I was there, I also bought a rotisserie chicken. Since there was a little ranch dressing still in my bowl after I ate my cucumbers, I just shredded some of the chicken right into the bowl and had ranch chicken.

Bunny bowl again, yes.

And there's my ice cream. Vanilla with chocolate syrup, in case you were wondering.

Wednesday

Short version: Salad, ice cream

Long version: My salad this time was an actual lettuce salad--lettuce from the store because I got almost no lettuce out of my garden this year--two hardboiled eggs, feta, tomatoes, cucumber, beets, and green onion. The last three things were from the garden.

Soon the tomatoes will be from the garden, too, but they're not quite there yet.

Thursday

Short version: Taco rice, cucumbers with vinegar, lemon jello

Long version: The return of the travelers this afternoon meant the return of cooked dinners. I put out the cucumbers with salt and vinegar while I was making the taco rice, which was just ground bull, a bunch of leftover rice that I had cooked in chicken stock for the sick child, salsa, taco spices, and grated cheese.

The lemon jello was the bit left from the large pan I had made for the sick child. I just make six cups of lemonade--lemon juice, sugar, water--and then add four tablespoons of plain gelatin to it. It took me awhile to get a perfect jello consistency, but this ratio does it.

Refrigerator check:

It stays surprisingly full when there's no one here to drink the gallons of milk.

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

A.P.D.: The Bedtime Edition

I am an early to bed, early to rise person. I have always been this way. Even in college, I typically went to bed before 10 p.m. This was a problem because re-runs of "Seinfeld" started at 10 p.m. and my roommate always watched them, which meant I was trying to go to sleep with the bantering of Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer filling the dorm room.

I hate "Seinfeld" to this day. 

Anyway.

Now I'm a really early to rise person. I can't sleep past 6 a.m., no matter what time I go to bed. Waking up that early means I need to go to bed early to get enough sleep. This becomes an issue for me in the summer, because it's hard to go to sleep by 9 p.m. when it's hot and still light outside. I still go to bed early, but I can't always sleep. So pretty much in the summer, I sleep from about 10:30 p.m. to around 5:30 a.m.

I see a lot of sunrises. Not so much with the sunsets.

In the winter, I will actually fall asleep by 8:30 p.m. and I usually get up by 5 a.m.

And yes, my children go to sleep later than I do. I do the bedtime read-aloud and prayer for the younger three kids at 8 p.m., then get myself ready for bed. They can read on the couch until 8:30 p.m., and then they go to bed. But at that point, it's up to A. to actually keep them in bed, because I'm out for the count.

So tell me: What time do you typically go to bed and wake up?

Snapshots: No Connecting Theme

Poppy's friend generously gifted her a dress and a bracelet for Charlotte the doll. 

Little girls are so cute, for real.

I had to bring a child to the clinic for school vaccinations in a town with a feed store, so I stopped to get four three-string bales of alfalfa. 

Do you know how much a three-string bale of alfalfa weighs? Yeah, I didn't either. They weigh around a hundred pounds or more. I managed to get them all loaded into the van--with a lot of lifting with my legs and flipping bales end over end--but I forgot to bring gloves and a long-sleeved shirt with me.

And this was the result. Ow.

Random photo of our ghost village.

And puffy clouds.

We have entered a new era in our household: the era of teenage boys and their project trucks.

We are now the owners of a 1982 Dodge Power Ram, which means our teenage son's first vehicle will be almost as old as his parents. 

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.