Friday Food: Elk and Pork

Friday 

Short version: Elk and gravy, mashed potatoes, frozen peas

Long version: I found two bags of elk stir-fry meat at the bottom of the freezer, which just means it was carefully trimmed and cut very thinly. Instead of making stir-fry with it, though, I fried it and made a gravy for it with a diced shallot, milk, and cornstarch.

Gravy requires mashed potatoes, so I made some of those.

Unrelated photo of the traffic situation on my way to pick some things up one day.

Saturday

Short version: Lamb chops and rice, burritos, cucumber slices

Long version: I made this meal very quickly in between getting home from the county fair rodeo and going to the county fair dance. I had to wait until all the ironing was done at the table before we could eat, but that gave me time to fry the last few lamb chops from some I had thawed a few days earlier. A. had those with the rice. 

The children had the burritos, which were just leftover bull taco meat with cheese in flour tortillas.

Sunday

Short version: Elk stir-fry, rice, chocolate pudding

Long version: I had maybe a pound of the elk meat that I hadn't cooked on Friday. It wouldn't have been enough on its own, but in a stir-fry, it was enough. I used the one bag of stir-fry vegetables that had been in the freezer a very long time, which were mostly cut green beans. To that I added carrots I had pre-cooked in the microwave, plus the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and onion powders (too lazy to actually cook an onion), ginger powder, and peanut butter.

I made the same recipe for chocolate pudding I always use, but the cornstarch got away from me a little bit, and I also used some cream that was about to go off. Both of those things made the pudding much thicker. Not bad--especially with heavy cream poured over the top--but definitely a different texture.

Monday

Short version: Burritos and leftover pudding at home, chicken drumsticks on the road

Long version: I was with one child in town at dinnertime, so A. fed everyone at home with the leftover taco meat and pudding. Since I started my long drive home right around dinnertime, I picked up a container of rotisserie chicken drumsticks at the grocery store and shared those with the kid in the car with me.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork, smashed potatoes, green beans, cookie bars

Long version: It's really been too hot to cook something like a pork butt that needs the oven on for a long time, but I really don't have a lot of meat on hand at the moment that's fast-cooking. So I made the pork. 

I started it at 6 a.m..

Early-morning pork.

I took it out around 11 a.m., so at least the oven wasn't on during the hottest part of the day.

Late-morning pork.

The potatoes baked while the pork was in. At dinnertime, I just cut them in half, scooped out the flesh with a spoon, and re-heated them before roughly mashing them with lots of butter and salt.

I also made the cookie bars while the oven was on for the pork. They were oatmeal/chocolate chip/almond.

And I FINALLY had enough green beans for a side dish. I only have half a dozen plants, so this is not going to be a banner year for green beans. With these, I sauteed them in bacon grease, and also added a diced shallot. So good.

Wednesday

Short version: Pulled pork sandwiches, Crunchy Corn Chips, carrot sticks with curry dip, strawberries and cream

Long version: I had made sourdough buns a couple of weeks ago when I was baking, and I just stuck them in the freezer for a future meal. This was it. It was brutally hot, and I had been at teacher in-service meetings all day, so this was an easy and relatively fast meal to make.

Crunchy Corn Chips are store brand Fritos.

Strawberries because they had been on sale when I was at the store on Monday.

Thursday

 

Short version: Various leftovers, spaghetti with pesto, grape tomatoes, ice cream

Long version: Another full day of meetings, another quick dinner when I got home. For A., I used the last of the leftover stir-fry and rice to make fried rice, just by adding a couple of scrambled eggs and, um, frying it.

I had made spaghetti before I left in the morning for the child who hasn't been feeling well. I cooked a whole pound of spaghetti, so I used some to make pesto pasta, with a few of the remaining frozen cubes of pesto from last year's garden. The kids had that with leftover pork and the tomatoes.

I had the last of the pulled pork, plus a tomato/cucumber/feta salad made with my own garden produce, yay!

Roma's are not a great fresh-eating tomato--kinda mushy--but I take what I can get.

We had ice cream because I wanted some. Our meetings this day included all the wretched required trainings for child abuse reporting, suicide prevention, active shooter scenarios, and so on. I hate this day of training. It's so depressing. I should not use food to comfort myself, I know, but I do. Thus, ice cream.

Refrigerator check:

Not too bad.

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

The Remote Chauffeur

Like most parents of older children who cannot yet drive, I spend quite a bit of time driving my kids to wherever they need to be. Unlike most of those parents, however, my drives are a lot longer. Also more scenic.

I had a particularly driving-heavy day a bit ago, and I documented it for you in photos.

You ready? Let's go!

First up was getting my eldest to his job. He's been working at a ranch down the hill this summer. It's an outdoor job, and he starts very early to avoid the worst of the heat, so we were leaving the house just before sunrise for the 25-mile drive to the ranch.

The last five miles are on a caliche road.

I stopped on my way back up the hill to take a picture of the rising sun.

It was unusually hazy on this morning.

Just a couple of hours after I got home from that excursion, I went back down that same hill to bring another child to a town for his school vaccinations. That was another 120 miles roundtrip.

On the road again . . .

And just about an hour after returning from that, I got back in my trusty old Honda to take Poppy to her friend's house for a sleepover. Thankfully, her friend only lives about twenty miles away.

She's on a pretty remote ranch, but at least their house only requires about a mile and a half of off-the-pavement driving on their driveway. Some of the houses on this ranch are twenty miles or more off the paved road.

Nice views on the way home.

So all together, I drove around 250 miles to get my kids to work, the doctor, and a sleepover.

Thankfully, I do not have days like this often, but it's just another part of parenting in Remote America.

Snapshots: The County Fair

The first weekend of August is our county fair weekend. Our fair is reeeally tiny. No rides, no food trucks, no concerts. It's really just agricultural products and crafts, livestock showing, a kids' rodeo, and a dance on the last night.

Let's go!

Our family entries for the indoor competition this year included basil from one child; a diorama from another; and cookies, shallots, Armenian cucumbers, and rhubarb from me.

The diorama, cookies, and cucumbers got first-place ribbons.

Our former neighbor in the village teaches dance for little girls, and also sews these really cute outfits for her dancers.

The kids got to watch their friends show their animals.

This is a market steer. I don't know why the steers are always foaming at the mouth in the show ring, but they all do.

Waiting for the parade to start on Main Street.

Pole bending during the kids' rodeo.

Getting ready to ride steers.

Ironing for the dance.

At the dance.

The dance is a community event for all ages, held in the livestock show pavilion, with a live band. The two oldest boys and Poppy wanted to go, so I went with them. It was fun. Lots of people, lots of kids, but way too late for me. I think it goes until midnight, but we left at 10 p.m. because I had to get up early this morning to be Church Lady.

I am very tired right now.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.