Friday Food: With Cucumber Photos

Friday 

Short version: Boneless pork chops with cream gravy, rice, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: These were the chops I cut from the whole loin. All I did was fry them and make a gravy in the pan with cream, water, and cornstarch.

I had made chicken stock earlier in the day with the chicken bones from the day before, and I used that stock to cook the rice.

The Armenian cucumber plants are protesting the cooler nights with brown leaves, although we haven't had a frost to actually kill them yet.

Saturday

Short version: Cheeseburgers on homemade buns, oven fries, pickles

Long version: I was baking bread, so I made some buns. And that's why I made cheeseburgers. This time, I broiled a pan of them rather than frying them on the stove. This allowed me to make ten patties and not get grease all over the stove top. But it also required me to monitor them in the broiler on the floor, which I dislike doing.

There's really no good way to make hamburgers. At least, for the quantity I need to make.

Pickles are a pretty sketchy vegetable, but I have a lot of them, so there you go.

I made a couple more quart jars of pickles with the very last of the dill plants for the year.

Sunday

Short version: Michaelmas chicken, baked potatoes, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, stabby cake with whipped cream

Long version: This was the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, although we really just celebrate it as Michaelmas. Goose is traditional for a Michaelmas feast, but hard to come by. The chicken I roasted was over seven pounds, so I figure it wasn't too far off in size to a medieval goose.

I started making a cake several years ago for my children to stab. It's a devil's food cake, because St. Michael is traditionally depicted stabbing the devil with a sword when he cast him out of heaven. Usually I just make Grandma Bishop's chocolate cake and call it close enough, but this year I used a recipe for an actual devil's food cake. It had more liquid and more cocoa powder. I followed Grandma Bishop's method, though, and poured the hot coffee over the butter to melt it and so on. 

I didn't have any yogurt, so I used sour cream and milk. And I accidentally used a teaspoon of cornstarch instead of baking soda. I realized my mistake in time, however, so the finished cake just had a bit of cornstarch in it. No big deal.

I never make frosting for this cake, mostly because I don't want to haul out the mixer. Sometimes I just dust it with powdered sugar, which I prefer. But my family likes whipped cream more, so this time I made some with my immersion blender.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, cucumbers

Long version: Diced leftover chicken, leftover rice, leftover gravy, all together in a skillet. And cucumbers.

Must be a work day.

I did not serve this cucumber that was hiding near the fence. It went to the chickens.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken soup, biscuits, oatmeal-raisin cookies

Long version: I spent several hours in the kitchen this day, turning the chicken carcass into a chicken and vegetable soup--I also used the rest of the gravy in it, so it was slightly creamy--making the cookies, assembling a casserole for the next day, and on and on.

I actually ended up having to go somewhere just before dinner and didn't get home until 5 p.m. I was tempted to just slice some bread instead of making biscuits like I had planned, but biscuits don't really take that long and they do make everyone very happy. Especially important when the main course is soup.

Wednesday

Short version: Enchilada casserole, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: This was the casserole I had put together the day before. I used bull meat in it. I am SO CLOSE to the end of the bull meat. A mere, um, four years after we butchered it. Ahem.

Thursday

Short version: Baked pasta, leftovers, cucumbers with ranch dip, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: I had just a little bit of uncooked ground beef left from the hamburgers--maybe half a pound--so I browned that and added it to the roasted tomato sauce I had made on Saturday while I was baking bread. Then that went into a casserole with pasta, Parmesan, and a bunch of asadero cheese.

It's a good thing I made a whole 9"x13" pan because we ended up with two extra kids here for dinner.

The children had the pasta, along with the cucumbers and ranch dip. And the chocolate chip cookies, which also had some peanut butter in there to replace some of the butter. More protein that way, you see.

A. had the last of the enchilada casserole, plus a bowl of the chicken soup. And then some pasta.

I just had soup.

Refrigerator check:

I have nothing particular to say about this, I guess.

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

Letting Go

When my children were all very young, it was always a big event the first time they could go camping with their dad and not with me. I always expected there to be an early return due to a crying child that first time. Sometimes it happened. Sometimes it didn't.

Now they all camp at least once a year. I don't go, because I don't like camping, but they all do. And they don't need me with them all the time anymore. Dad is just fine.

This year, the two older boys--now 14 (and a half!) and 12--upped the ante. They asked if they could go on a camping trip with just the two of them. No Dad.

We said yes.

The plan was to take them somewhere pretty close just for a night. One of them had a deer hunt in the area closest to our house this past weekend, and I suggested to A. that perhaps this would be the right time for them to do their solo campout. It's only about half an hour away. It was going to be dry and warm. There is cell service there. It seemed like a good opportunity.

So A. loaded their packs, gave them many instructions, and dropped them off.

Small boys, big country.

And then, of course, both A. and I spent some time imagining all the unlikely things that could go wrong in the 15 hours they were there.

Could a mountain lion or bear have attacked them? Could there have been an unexpected storm with lightning strikes? Could someone have fallen in the fire? Could one of them have been bitten by a rattlesnake?

Yes. Any of those things COULD have happened. But none of them did. What it came down to is that those boys are comfortable camping, hiking, and hunting, and we trust them in that environment.

There were several elk that ran by in the stream bed just about twenty feet from their campsite in the middle of the night. This of course woke them up, because elk are huge and it sounded like stampeding horses, but that was pretty much it for excitement.

No deer, either, so the hunt wasn't successful. But the campout was. And I'm sure there will be many more in their future.

Snapshots: Ready for Winter and Holding Onto Summer

A. brought home a cord of cedar that needed to be stacked. It's still a marvel to me that we have children who can do that now.

The three younger ones did all of this in about an hour.

And the oldest took care of the pile by the door and some kindling. He will also be on call to split more kindling as needed.

I had thought about paying them to do this this year, but then they came in and asked if they could have a cookie. So they each got three cookies, one for each face cord of wood in a cord. There are those low standards coming in handy again.

Every year our school gets a visit from the New Mexico mobile museum. It's an RV with displays about different themes every year. This year it was agriculture, so all about crops and so on. There was this little New Mexico kitchen that all the kids loved.

It was pretty neat.

Poppy went for a walk the other day and came home with these things to be displayed.

I have taught her to see the beauty in weeds, which may be my most important legacy.

Meanwhile, on the dining room table . . .

A burst of summer at the start of fall.

Most of the sunflowers are gone now. There's only one good patch still in our ghost village, so those might be the last sunflowers and sage on the table until next year.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.