Friday
Short version: Chicken Spanish rice, pintos with ham, beef jerky and dried apples
Long version: I had quite a few chicken bones left from previous meals, with which I made stock. To do this, I actually use any uneaten chicken, but also the bones my children have eaten from. They leave behind a lot of meat.
I used some of that stock, plus the meat I picked off the bones, to make something like Spanish rice. That also used the leftover corn I had cut off the cob.
I had made a big pot of pinto beans with a ham bone from the freezer, mostly to freeze for later, but we ate some of those with the chicken and rice.
All of this was before and after the volleyball game, which was the first cheerleading game of the season. I brought two of the boys along with me and Poppy, and they had some beef jerky and dehydrated apples during the game. I've made quite a few quart jars of dehydrated apples this year, using an old but pristine dehydrator given to me by a friend in the village. It works faster than the sun, but it's also easier to over-dry the apples, and they're drying on plastic racks. So I am conflicted. But still using it.
Saturday
Short version: Salad for me, bedtime cinnamon toast for children
Long version: We had been out and about in the afternoon. I was at a birthday party with Poppy, where she ate enough that she wasn't hungry at dinnertime. A. had been in a city with the boys, and they stuffed themselves at a Mexican restaurant and weren't hungry for dinner, either.
I, however, was hungry for dinner, so I made myself a salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, pickled onions, deli salami, and feta cheese.
The children made themselves cinnamon toast before bed. So I guess that was their dinner.
Sunday
Short version: Salisbury steaks and gravy, rice, sauteed calabacitas and tomatoes, leftover corn, crepe cake
Long version: When I was a kid and my parents left us with a babysitter at night, we would usually each get a Hungry Man frozen dinner. I always wanted Salisbury steak, which came with mashed potatoes, corn, and a really gross cherry cobbler thing that I never ate.
I still like Salisbury steak, except now I make it. This time I did the binder with bread crumbs and eggs, so it would stay together. The gravy was just a milk gravy with some diced onion. Very satisfying.
The sauteed calabacitas, tomatoes, onion, and garlic were even more satisfying. Well, to me. The children had the corn.
And now, the cake.
This was something A. had seen online. He is the crepe cook in our house, you may remember, so he wanted to try it. It's just crepes, whipped cream, and sweetened strawberries, all layered like a trifle in a springform pan and refrigerated for awhile.
He even decorated it all fancy with the (frozen) strawberries.
We served it with more sweetened and mashed strawberries.
Pretty presentation.
There were a couple of things that would probably be changed next time--it needed more fruit and more sweetening--but A. was very pleased with it. And the leftovers actually made for a very nice breakfast for the children to cajole them out of bed on Monday morning. I think we might make something like this whenever we have leftover crepes from the Sunday after-church breakfast.
Monday
Short version: Ms. Rebecca's Spanish* feast, watermelon
Long version: A. did some repair work on our elderly neighbor Ms. Amelia's roof last week, along with one of the boys, and Ms. Amelia's daughter wanted to pay him. A. said she could just pay him for the nails he had to buy, but nothing else, so she asked if he would like some enchiladas or something.
Of course he would.
So this day she brought by an incredible quantity of food: A big pan of beef enchilada casserole, another big pan of Spanish rice, a huge container of pinto beans, and 12 homemade flour tortillas.
So much food.
She works in the cafeteria at a school, so I guess she's accustomed to cooking for a lot of people.
Oh, and my new range was unexpectedly delivered this day! So the very first thing I used it for was to heat all this up in the oven.
The oven on this one has a window AND a light, which is an upgrade from the previous one.
Tuesday
Short version: Two soups, bean and cheese quesadillas, peanut butter cookies
Long version: It was relatively cool this day, so I decided to get the big bag of chicken carcasses and bones out of the freezer and make stock with it.
And then, with that stock, I made both a chicken/vegetable/rice soup that used the bits of chicken I managed to salvage, as well as the bread-thickened pureed tomato soup my children love so much.
Some left from each.
That tomato soup has very little protein in it, which is why I also made the children the quesadillas.
These peanut butter cookies.
Wednesday
Short version: Leftovers
Long version: I went straight from work to two different meetings and didn't get home until after 6 p.m. Thankfully, there were lots of leftovers from Ms. Rebecca's feast, so that's what everyone ate while I was gone.
Thursday
Short version: Leftover soups, grilled cheese sandwiches, ice cream
Long version: This was kind of a seasonally schizophrenic meal. The soup and grilled cheese are fall foods, but the ice cream is summery. This was the last day it was going to be over 80 degrees, so I decided to celebrate the last day of the school week by letting the kids finish off the mint chocolate chip ice cream that's been around for awhile.
They were fine with this.
Refrigerator check:
Thank goodness the tiny store in the village had some milk, otherwise we would have been out for at least a few days.
Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?
* I know most people would call this Mexican food, but the old Hispanic families here claim the title of Spanish. Their ancestors are in fact the conquistadors, who came here before the United States was even a country, so they are actually of Spanish heritage.
