Friday Food: Solo Food and Peaches

Friday 

Short version: Solo cottage cheese and chips, leftover omelet

Long version: A. left this morning with all the children for Tucson, to celebrate his father's 95th birthday. They stayed in a motel in Lordsburg this night, and they ate the barbecue meatballs and boiled potatoes I sent with them.

I stayed home to take care of the animals. And this is what I ate on my own:

Cottage cheese and potato chips are kind of balanced. Book  (The Luck Uglies) recommended by Jody here, and now by me. Thanks, Jody.

I had been in the garden just before I ate dinner, weeding and harvesting, during which I had eaten several small tomatoes, a small cucumber, and a few raw green beans, so I felt like my vegetable needs were met.

Saturday

Short version: Salad, ice cream

Long version: The salad was heavy on the cucumber, since the garden is heavy on the cucumbers right now. It also had tomato, hard boiled egg, feta, and pickled onions in it.

Much healthier than the previous night's meal. Except for the ice cream not pictured.

Sunday

Short version: Chili, ice cream

Long version: Even though I didn't really need to cook, I decided to make a pot of chili just to have on hand in the freezer for nights when I don't have time to cook. So I made that, and had some of that for dinner this night. 

Chili in a pot.

Same ice cream. Cookies and cream, in case you were wondering.

Monday

Short version: Brisket, mashed potatoes, sauteed calabacitas and tomatoes, cucumber with salt and vinegar, rice pudding

Long version: The return of the travelers, as you can tell by the large meal. I hadn't intended to cook brisket, but that's what was in the bag I took out of the freezer that I thought contained pork butt. So I cooked the brisket. And, of course, since the oven was on so long, I also made rice pudding.

I found another calabacita in the garden and sauteed that with tomatoes, onion, and garlic. 

A happy summer skillet.

Tuesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, chorizo patties, leftover mashed potatoes, tomato/cucumber/feta salad

Long version: I had planned on having the leftover brisket, but then I thought I'd better save that for an after-work meal the next day. By the time I came to that decision, it was too late to defrost anything big from the freezer. We did have a small bag of elk chorizo still in there, though, which thawed quickly.

Not everyone likes chorizo, though, so I cooked it separately as patties for those who wanted it and kept the scrambled eggs plain.

Wednesday

Short version: Brisket Spanish rice, cucumbers, peaches and cream

Long version: I made a pot of rice before I left for work in the morning, so when I got home, I added that to chopped brisket, already-cooked onion from the freezer, salsa, frozen corn, spices, and grated Monterey jack cheese to make something like Spanish rice.

Nick the Peach Guy had told me on Sunday that he had been away the previous week, and his peaches had started ripening while he was gone. So they were very ripe by Sunday, and I didn't have any children to help me pick them. I brought two of the boys over there after school to pick peaches while we waited for Poppy to finish cheer practice, so we had lots of fresh peaches on hand for peaches and cream.

Thursday

Short version: Chicken drumsticks, pasta bake, cucumbers with ranch dressing, chocolate pudding with cream

Long version: I made the pudding in the morning with milk and cream that were starting to go off. And then I spent over three hours dealing with the peaches.

Because they had almost all fallen off the tree on their own by the time we got to them, and then they had to sit while I was at work on Wednesday, they were in pretty rough shape.

I ended up with four quarts of peaches in syrup, five pints of peach jam, and one gallon bag of frozen peaches. Also a complete disinterest in cooking. However, the show must go on! Especially since one of the boys had a friend over at dinnertime, and teenage boys eat a lot. In case you didn't know.

I had some roasted tomato sauce in the refrigerator I had made on the weekend when I was baking bread, as well as some pesto, so I used those to make the pasta bake, along with asadero cheese.

And because I had an Italian theme going there, I marinated the drumsticks in olive oil, vinegar, and Italian spices before baking them along with the pasta.

A fairly easy meal after a long day in the kitchen.

Refrigerator check:

Lots of pudding left in that big bowl.

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

Autumn in New Mexico

Because New Mexico is generally lacking in trees, we don't have the most noticeable sign of autumn here. Also, the days continue to be very sunny and quite warm until the Winter Solstice.

So without the turning leaves and the nippy days, how do we know it's autumn? If we don't have pumpkin spice, what do we have?

We have chile smoke. Because autumn is when the chile roasters appear.

Most people are aware that New Mexico is known for chiles. The chiles with the best PR are Hatch chiles. They are grown in a town called Hatch, in an irrigated agricultural area which is a very fun place to visit. These are the most widely distributed chiles. All grocery stores in New Mexico will have Hatch chiles in their produce departments in the fall. They can be purchased in big boxes. Many stores also have roasters outside, so you can bring your box of chiles out and have them roasted right away.

But there are other places in New Mexico that grow chiles. Lots of them. And they will bring their chiles to cities all over the state to sell.

That's why there was a pick-up truck with a trailer of chiles parked on the side of the road in the city I was in a couple of weeks ago. 

The trailer told me that these chiles came from Lemitar, which is a well-known chile-growing area in Socorro County.

There were both red and green chiles, and they were being sold by the small bag, the small bucket, a five-gallon bucket, and a box. There were medium, hot, and extra-hot. Knowing that even "mild" New Mexico chiles are way too hot for me, I bought a five-gallon bucket of the medium ones. It cost me twenty dollars.

They had roasters there, too, and all chiles were roasted for free.

The chiles go in those drums, which rotate while a propane flame is trained on them to char the chiles.

After a few minutes of charring with the flame, the chiles are dumped into a plastic bag. This is tied off and holds the steam, which is how the skins are loosened.

Driving home with this in my car made the interior of my car smell like smoke and chile for at least a week.

The skins come off pretty easily after the roasting and steaming.

Charred and ready for skinning.

And then they're ready for Chiles Rellenos.

After being slit open and seeded, that is.

The rest of my chiles went into the food processor to be pureed and frozen in ice cube trays, ready for use all year long in chili, stew, taco meat, tamales and whatever else I want to throw them in.

So tell me: How do you know it's autumn where you live?

Snapshots: Peaches!

The most exciting news first: I ate a peach from our own tree! This is a tree A. started from a peach pit and planted in the garden a few years ago. This is the first year it's ever had peaches on it, so we didn't know what kind it might be.

There are quite a few peaches on it. Unfortunately, grasshoppers really like peaches.

A pox on the peach-eating grasshoppers.

I was examining that chewed-up peach, and noticed it felt soft. So I pulled it off the tree and took a bite of the half the grasshoppers hadn't gnawed on.

And it was good! Delicious, even! These are what we call white peaches, which are very sweet and seem to be a locally adapted variety.

There are still some peaches on the tree that haven't been touched by the grasshoppers, and they should be ripe in the next week or so. Yay!

Let's see what else . . .

The contrast between the pickling cucumber vines and the Armenian cucumber vines is amusing.

The giant Armenians on the right are taking over the puny pickles on the left.

Armenian cucumbers don't taste exactly like cucumbers, but close enough. And their hardiness cannot be denied.

I got a packet of wildflower seeds during Teacher Appreciation Week at school in the spring, which I sprinkled in a garden bed near the road. There were these very fluffy plants that grew and grew and grew, but never did anything but get bigger. 

I was starting to think they were just some kind of weed when . . .

Pretty pink somethings! Anyone know what these are? They opened from something that looks like a berry on the top of the plant.

And speaking of flowers!

When we had a guest over for dinner last weekend, Poppy cleaned off her little table in the corner of the dining room and decorated it nicely for dinner (even though no one was eating there).

Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

We have no shortage of sunflowers right outside our gate.

Just waiting to be put on a table.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.