The View from the Bench

Right outside our porch door, we have a big wooden bench that A. made some years ago. If I can manage to sneak outside without anyone following me, I can enjoy some peace and the view from the bench*.

I particularly like sitting there as the sun is setting, or even after it has set. The light lingers almost an hour after sunset, because it's so flat here.

To the west (ish.)

And the other way.

There are some benefits to living a hundred miles from anywhere, and the bench is one of them.

* Not that I object to their company (usually), but anywhere my children are immediately becomes less peaceful.

Snapshots: Heading to the County Fair

I had a couple of errands in town that couldn't wait, and since I was going to the town with the (tiny) dinosaur museum that my two youngest children had been asking to visit again, I took them with me.

This is a giant ammonite. The green hand on the display indicates that you can touch it. The touchability of many of the displays is one reason my children like this museum.

Since my washing machine is still in being repaired--there were several machines waiting for repairs already, so I knew this was not going to be a fast turnaround--I took the opportunity to stop at the single laundromat in town to wash three baskets of clothing.

It was a surprisingly nice laundromat for what is admittedly often a kind of sketchy town.

The children were enthralled with the novelty of a laundromat, as they had never been in one before. I hadn't used one in years myself. We only used the washers, though, eschewing the dryers in favor of just bringing everything home wet and hanging it on the line at home.

We went to the grocery store, of course, before coming home, where the son with me was excited to see a kind of spicy Doritos he had tried before and liked. I told him he could buy them himself, and he did.

This is definitely not something I would ever bring home on my own.

We've been at the county fair for the past three days*. I always enter several things in the open class contests at the fair. Basically whatever I find in the garden, plus something baked and something canned. I don't grow or can anything specifically for the fair; I just enter whatever I have.

This year, that was cucumbers, tomatoes, collard greens, mint, parsley, carrots, green tomato chutney, currant jelly, and a Bonnie Butter cake.

I also had the idea for a very large wildflower arrangement that came to me while I was circling the village during my trudgery. I went out the morning the fair started and gathered all the likely-looking plants I found.

The raw materials.

The hot weather had finished off most of the more colorful flowers, so I was limited to white and yellow. Also, the liner in my container kept leaking and I had to keep taking everything out and re-lining the outer container with other things, which meant I rearranged it at least three times.

I was still pretty happy with how it turned out, though.

And it won Grand Champion in the Floriculture division.

One son won Grand Champion in the Arts and Crafts division with this chair he made.

He didn't even use a plan for it, instead just making it up out of his head and some two-by-fours.

Another son did a really cool stone shaping and chiseling project. It turned out very well, although they had some trouble figuring out how to categorize it. I think it ended up in the "carved sculpture" category. And of course, there were Poppy's brownies. Both of those things got first place ribbons, so our family was well-represented at the fair this year.

The last fair event is always the community dance on Saturday night. 

All ages, all two-stepping in the livestock pavilion.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* And every time we go to the fairgrounds, I have to put this song on in the car.  

Friday Food: First Snickerdoodles

Friday 

Short version: Leftover meats, porky rice, pinto beans, raw tomatoes or leftover vegetables, almond cookies, fresh bread and butter

Long version: I had leftover grilled steak, barbecue ribs, and tuna patties that I apportioned out based on preference. 

It was fairly cool this day, so I had also decided to cook the half bag of pinto beans that had been in the pantry for awhile. To flavor the beans, I fried pickled onions and garlic in the lard that had rendered out of the ribs I had made the day before, and then simmered the beans with that for a bit. 

The rice was cooked in the liquid from the ribs.

The tomatoes were mostly from Poppy's plants in the garden. She generously shared with her brothers, and then A. and I had leftover sauerkraut, carrots, and peas.

The cookies I had made the day before, substituting finely ground almonds for some of the flour.

And bread and butter because I had baked bread in the afternoon and fresh bread is hard to resist.

Saturday

Short version: Green chile bacon cheeseburgers, roasted potatoes, peaches and cream

Long version: I had made hamburger buns the day before when I was baking bread. I made the bacon very last-minute when the rest of the meal was almost done, but it of course was the best part of the meal for my family.

All the males in the family had their cheeseburgers with pureed green chile on top, along with raw onion. Poppy and I declined.

Sunday

Short version: Oven-fried chicken, biscuits, carrot sticks with curry dip, brownies with ice cream

Long version: I hadn't made oven-fried chicken in a very long time, but everyone likes it, so I did. It involves marinating the chicken--I used three breasts and a package of thighs--in yogurt and spices, then coating it in masa and spices before baking on a buttered sheet pan.

Because I had the oven on for that, I made biscuits too. They were just plain baking powder biscuits, and they weren't my best effort. The butter was a little warm when I made them. Oh well. They were still all eaten.

Chicken and biscuits.

Poppy made the brownies to practice one more time before she bakes some for the fair. Unfortunately, I was not paying close attention while she was putting them together and I was making dinner, and she read a half cup as one and a half cups. She hasn't gotten to fractions yet in school.

So they ended up more like a cake. Still eaten, though.

The chicken was kind of underseasoned, too, and didn't get as crispy as I would have liked. All in all, a slightly underwhelming meal that made far too many dishes. That's how it goes sometimes.

Monday

Short version: Pasta with chicken, pesto, and bacon; green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: The chicken breasts I had used the night before were huge, and also on the bone. I cut them off the bone and then cut them in half so they would cook in the same amount of time as the thighs. Half of the halves I cut into smaller chunks, though, and saved for this meal.

To the pasta--small elbows--I added bacon, the chicken, extra garlic, about a cup of pesto I managed to make from the small basil plants, heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, and balsamic vinegar.

Basil and tomatoes. The tomatoes went in the salad.

Tuesday

Short version: Ram chops, leftover rice or fried potatoes, radishes, snickerdoodles, bread and cheese

Long version: Oddly, the part of this meal that was most enthusiastically received was the leftover rice. This was the rice that I had cooked in pork juices. I added more butter to it, and on A.'s rice, the juices in the pan from cooking the chops. I guess three kinds of fat is the secret to good rice.

This was a potato plate. No triple-fat rice for him.

I have never in my life even eaten snickerdoodles--it's a cookie, in case you haven't, either--but have always meant to try making them. So I did.

They're an odd cookie. The cookie itself has shortbread ingredients, but with a leavener, so they come out cakey. Each cookie is rolled in cinnamon and sugar, which is the main flavoring.

About half the family loved them. I thought they were bland and boring, so I'm not too enthused about making them regularly, but maybe every once in awhile for those who were such fans.

The bread and cheese was for the boys who were roaming around after dinner complaining of still being hungry. A second course, I guess. 

Wednesday

Short version: Leftover pasta, scrambled eggs, Sunday sandwich, corn on the cob, cherries

Long version; Totally random meal. I had been planning on the pasta, because I went to town this day, which always saps my will to cook dinner. I had thought I would get a rotisserie chicken at the store to supplement the pasta, but the chickens at this store were the smallest I'd ever seen. They looked like quail. Definintely would not have been enough for all of us, and also a total rip-off.

So instead I cooked the last few pieces of bacon, plus a bunch of scrambled eggs. I used the eggs and bacon to make a Sunday sandwich for A., which is these two things with cheese, then toasted. The MiL used to make these for A. and his brother if they went to church.

A. goes to church every Sunday now, so he can have his Sunday sandwich early. 

The kids had the pasta and some eggs.

The corn was from the store. It was the first corn I had seen this season that didn't look very sad and dry. Kind of a starchy meal in the end, but everyone was happy to have corn.

Thursday

Short version: Pork/beans/rice skillet, blue-ribbon brownies

Long version: This was the first day of the county fair. The fair is always incredibly tiring, since it's always brutally hot and we spend hours there. I would typically prepare at least some part of dinner in the morning before we left, but this morning I was busy gathering wildflowers and arranging them to enter into the floriculture contest, and helping Poppy bake the brownies she entered, as well as the cake I entered. 

We got home at 3 p.m. I pulled a small bag of cooked pork shoulder from the freezer and made some rice. Then I fried the diced pork in bacon fat. To that I added frozen corn, a can of black beans, salsa, pureed red chile from the freezer, taco spices, grated cheddar cheese, and sour cream.

I counted the salsa and corn as our vegetables.

The brownies were the ones left from the pan Poppy baked. Before we left the fair, we saw that she got a first place ribbon on her brownies. They were very good brownies.

Refrigerator check:

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

Summer Reading, and a Minor Announcement

The bigger boys start school this week, and everyone will be in school in two more weeks, so now's a good time to tell you all about the many books I bought this summer, right? Right.

Most of them were for Poppy, who has definitely become a reader.

Many books.

All the Ralph S. Mouse books

All the Ramona Quimby books

All The Borrowers books

All the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books (except the farm one) in a treasury format

Bed Knob and Broomstick (not as good as the movie, I'm told)

An Episode of Sparrows (I read this--it was fairly good, but not what I was expecting)

Poppy's absolute favorite was the complete Pippi Longstocking collection--three books--although that didn't make it into the photo.

Also not pictured, but for Poppy, I got The Little House Cookbook. 

A couple of books by William Durbin, including Dead Man's Rapids, that were mostly for the youngest boy.

The next Horatio Hornblower book for the middle boy, although he informed me it was in no way as good as the first one so I shouldn't get the rest.

We Live in the Arctic, mostly for the older two boys.

And then later in the summer, one son was remarking that he was thinking of writing an encyclopedia of monsters, which led to us investigating if there is one. We found several, but most of them are either actual encyclopedias for adults that are trying to establish the existence of Big Foot or whatever, or ones geared toward small children.

I did end up getting a DK book about mythical creatures.

The plant book was an impulse purchase.

Because it's a DK book, it's good. Poppy enjoyed this one.

I also got another DK book--bad day for impulse buys--called History Year by Year: The History of the World from the Stone Age to the Digital Age. This was very popular with all three younger children. DK wins again.

And for me . . .

A collection of short stories by Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen, including "Babette's Feast." Similar to Bed Knob and Broomstick, the movie was better, but the stories were okay.

I did not enjoy Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis. Extreme navel gazing, mostly.

I did enjoy Gilead, though I'm trying to decide if I liked it enough to read the sequels.

Not pictured, I got a collection of Erma Bombeck books, too.

For the eldest, I got the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. This is dystopian fiction, which I have no interest in, so I didn't read it, but he requested it and said it was good.

Also requested and enjoyed by the eldest, though I can't vouch for it myself, was Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.

And now for the minor announcement: I did not renew my contract at the school for this year, which means that while the children are going back to school, and A. will be going back to driving the school bus, I will not be going back. Well, except as a substitute. I did tell them I could continue doing that.

This means I will shortly have more time for reading! Do you have any recommendations for me? Or for the children?

Snapshots: Home Improvement

Poppy likes to go through my shoes and was delighted to find that I still have the white sandals I wore when I got married 22 years ago. She informed me I should wear them on our anniversary. That was on a Saturday, however, and I do not generally go around in high heels at home. I told her I would wear them to church the next day, though. 

This is the main aisle at our church. It is bare wood. All of my heels are SO LOUD when I have to walk up and down this aisle, which is several times when I'm mayordoma. 

A. finished installing the tub and shower in the children's bathroom. The tub juuuust barely fit.

Like, to the centimeter.

A. has spent his entire life hating cheap bathroom fixtures, so instead of buying the shower plumbing, faucets, etc., at a local store, he ordered this crazy copper set-up from Morocco. Directly from a Moroccan company, I mean.

That giant circular thing in the 8-inch shower head.

It came in an actual wooden box they built for it, with Fragile stamped on it. It was the modern equivalent of A Christmas Story. 

A. actually used a hammer to open this.

The end result is I'm sure not what anyone is going to expect in our old trailer in the middle of nowhere.

Welcome to the Moroccan baths.

A. made sure to mount the shower head so there is plenty of clearance for the over-six-foot-tall people in our house, which at the moment stands at two of them but will probably include all the males in our household in a few years.

The family is delighted with their extra-deep tub and extra-high shower. I am delighted that it no longer smells like a swamp when anyone bathes. Satisfaction all around.

It has also proved useful as our laundry facility for a couple of weeks while my washing machine is gone for repairs.

Poppy was delighted to stomp clothes for me. I was delighted to let her.

For my part, after we made the younger boys' bunk bed into two twin beds, I got them each a clothes rack to take the place of the closet they do not have in their bedroom. The box for each of these racks, which I lifted out of the outer box with one hand, was pretty funny.

"Super Heavy" and TEAM LIFT. Okay, then.

Despite the impressive feat of lifting this all by myself, I was more impressed that I actually assembled them myself.

Flat-pack furniture and I don't really get along.

Check out this impressive bug I found on my collard greens.

Yikes.

The son who is on the FFA entomology team identified this for me as an assassin bug. I can only hope it's assassinating the grasshoppers.

Lastly, this week's flowers, courtesy of sunflower season and A. going down the hill to do some rock work*.

Table flowers.

And the church (and bookcase) flowers.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* The younger boys went with him and were holding all the flowers in the truck on the way home. They informed me that ants were on the flowers and they kept getting bitten on the drive home. This is how I know they love me.

Friday Food: Ribs x 2

Friday 

Short version: Asian-ish pork ribs, porky rice, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: A. bought some already-cut pork ribs that were on sale after the Fourth of July. These were convenient to cook and eat, but kind of weird-looking.

Very long and sort of awkward.

Instead of using barbecue spices on them, I cooked them first in soy sauce and vinegar to cook until tender  in the morning. At dinnertime, I made a coating for them of more soy sauce and vinegar, plus garlic powder, ginger, and brown sugar, and broiled them.

The rice was cooked in the de-fatted juices I poured from the pan after initially cooking the ribs.

The salad was not my lettuce, because the cursed grasshoppers have eaten all my lettuce, but it did have tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden.

So far holding out against the hoppers.

Saturday

Short version: Giant pot of pasta with meat sauce, more salad with vinaigrette, ice cream

Long version: We had some people stop by right around dinnertime, on their way home from a road trip. I had never met them before, and one of them was a ten-year-old boy, so I figured pasta was a safe bet. Also, I could kind of make it ahead, which was helpful because I wasn't sure of their schedule.

I made the meat sauce the morning before. Not knowing how much they would eat, and anticipating feeding nine people, I made two pounds of pasta, which was a LOT of pasta. We maybe ate a third of it this night.

Luckily, leftover pasta will not go to waste. The kids ate from that pot for the next few days.

Sunday

Short version: Grilled chuck steaks, boiled potatoes, frozen corn, milkshakes or not

Long version: This was what I had been planning on making for our anniversary dinner, except our anniversary was the day before and this is not really a meal that holds very well to accommodate uncertain schedules. So we had our anniversary dinner this day instead.

The steaks were chuck steaks, which are not super tender. I marinated them in a mustard vinaigrette before they were grilled, and A. kept them more on the rare side.

Grilled meat always tastes best.

I made two whole packages of steak--about five pounds--which made for a lot of leftovers. I did that on purpose, figuring if we were lighting the grill, we might as well cook all the steaks. Leftover steak is always appreciated.

The sides were nothing special. Neither was dessert. I offered to make milkshakes for anyone who wanted them, since Sundays are supposed to be for homemade desserts and I hadn't made one. Only one child and A. chose a milkshake instead of plain ice cream. I used vanilla ice cream, but made chocolate milkshakes with cocoa powder.

I pretty much never bother with buying chocolate milkshakes anywhere, because nowhere makes a chocolate milkshake that actually tastes like chocolate. I use a LOT of cocoa powder, so mine are very chocolatey. As it should be.

Monday

Short version: Post-pool leftovers

Long version: Our friends invited us to the pool this day. There is only one pool within a hundred miles. It's on the big ranch down the hill and can only be used by employees of that ranch, which our friends are. We were there for five hours and got home right about dinnertime.

Everyone was exhausted--and sunburned, definitely should've reapplied sunscreen, oops--so I just set out the leftover pasta, steak, and potatoes, and let everyone choose their dinners.

No vegetable. Oh well.

Tuesday

Short version: Brisket, potatoes, still-frozen peas, cherries

Long version: I got home from a trip to town right at dinnertime. I had taken out the last chunk of already-cooked brisket to thaw, and fried that in tallow with taco spices. I intended to serve it in tortillas, but the children had apparently already had tortillas with both breakfast and lunch. So instead A. had it in tortillas with cheese, and the children just had the meat with leftover potatoes.

Wednesday

Short version: Tuna/salmon patties, oven fries, frozen peas, peaches and cream

Long version: This was a request of Poppy's. I thought it would be cool enough to run the oven for the fries and all this day, but then it still ended up being almost 80 degrees in the kitchen by the time I was done.

Good dinner, though. Everyone was happy with it. I used two big cans of tuna and the very last can of salmon from excess commodities.

A. bought the peaches in town from a truck on the side of the road. The best place to buy fruit.

Thursday

Short version: Barbecue ribs, cornbread, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: Didn't we just have ribs? Yup. But this time I finished cooking them in barbecue sauce, so obviously, totally different.

Refrigerator check:

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

How Good We Have It

Every so often, I will re-read a book called Women's Diaries of the Westword Journey, by Lillian Schlissel. As you might gather from the title, it is a collection of diary entries written by women who migrated west with the wagon trains and so on in the 1800s.

There are many reasons I like to re-read this book, but one of the main reasons is that it reminds me how comparitively easy my life is now. 

Those women were cooking over open fires, when it wasn't raining, blowing wind, or otherwise unsuitable for fires. 

They were hauling water from streams, when they could get water. 

They were walking miles a day, or riding on uncomfortably jouncy and hard wagon seats. 

They were sewing all the clothing for themselves and their large families. 

They were scrubbing that clothing in streams, if they were lucky. 

And they were doing all of this while almost constantly pregnant or nursing a very small baby.

I was contemplating this the other day as I was making Mexican Wedding Cookies. I don't make these cookies often, because they take much more time and effort than most cookies. I have to chop walnuts, grind walnuts (I use my immersion blender), cream butter with my hand mixer, roll the balls individually to bake, and then roll them again individually in powdered sugar. 

However, a woman in 1890 making these cookies would have started by cracking and shelling all the walnuts. She would have had to grind the nuts in a molcajete. She would have had to cream the butter by hand with a spoon. She would have had to pulverize the sugar for rolling in a mortar and pestle. She would have had to build a fire in her cookstove and keep it at just the right temperature for baking.

This is a truly unimaginable amount of work to the modern cook. It occurred to me that this is most probably why they were considered wedding cookies, too, because no one would go to so much effort for anything but a very special occasion.

Truly a labor of love.

It's good to keep things in perspective sometimes. Mexican Wedding Cookies do that for me.

What are you most thankful for in our modern age?

Snapshots: Twenty-two Years

A. and I celebrated 22 years of marriage yesterday.

I always put our wedding album out on the table for the kids to look at. And they always remark how young we look in the photos.

I made a very pink vodka slushie for us to toast with. It's pink because of currant juice made with the wild currants the kids picked for me.

Poppy has been reading the Ramona Quimby books and, like every child who reads those books, she had to try making tin-can stilts like Ramona's.

She made them herself and got quite accomplished walking on them after some practice.

Washing beloved stuffed animals always results in a rather concerning clothesline.

Sheep and Jeremy the Rat, hung out to dry.

I finally replaced my speedy purple shoes that were falling apart.

Not purple. Not all that speedy, either, I guess.

My biggest accomplishment this week was completely emptying the younger boys' room and rearranging it when we cut their bunk bed into twin beds.

There was so. much. stuff. in this room.

Edited to add: I forgot the flowers this week! Shocking. You can see what is on the table right now in that photo above with the anniversary drinks. And then last week, I added a couple more sunflowers to the altar flowers before bringing them to church.

This week's altar flowers were very similar, except I bunched the sunflowers together a little more.

It's definitely sunflower season.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Fishies

Friday 

Short version: A collard salad with leftover pulled pork--and cake--at home, sausages and potatoes at camp

Long version: A. was still gone with the three younger children this night. They were camping, and they cooked the sausages I had sent with them--jalapeno/cheddar and plain smoked beef--on a grate over their fire. They also had potatoes leftover from the meal I had packed for them the night before. The potatoes were in foil so they could be reheated on the fire, too.

The son home with me wasn't feeling well and didn't eat. I manhandled some collards and made a salad with those, the last of the leftover pulled pork, pickled onions, and feta cheese.

I made cake because I had a very small sour cream cake from some leftover batter I had made last time I made that cake. It had been in the freezer since then. It wasn't enough for the whole family, so I figured I would make it for the cake-loving eldest. I used some of the rhubarb I had cut the day before, along with strawberry jam, to layer in the middle of the two pieces I had cut, and then whipped cream over all that.

This is actually the whole cake, although it looks like a half.

He ate it the next day for breakfast. Surprisingly, this sort of cake holds up well in the refrigerator.

Saturday

Short version: Some cottage pie, more collard salad, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: I made a big cottage pie in my 15"x 10" Pyrex dish in the morning when it was cool, not knowing if the rest of the family would be home that night or would camp another night. 

A tip for making a really big pan of this: The mashed potatoes don't spread super well without pulling up the meat underneath, so it's best to make evenly spaced dollops of potato to spread shorter distances, instead of glopping it all in the middle and trying to get it to the edges. 

They ended up coming home, although only two kids were hungry. They had some of the cottage pie. I typically would serve it the next day, but I was presented with many fish instead, which needed to be used pronto. So the rest of the cottage pie stayed in the refrigerator as just extra food all week. The boys loved this. They could just scoop out some to re-heat for lunch or whatever anytime. They'd probably be very happy if I made a casserole in that pan every week. But I probably won't.

I used the rest of the large quantity of ground beef I had taken out to make just some browned ground beef with barbecue sauce, sort of like sloppy joe meat. I put some of that in with my collards, in addition to pickled radishes I had made that day in the jar the pickled onions had been in. I re-used the pickling liquid.

Saturday

Short version: Broiled trout, garlic toast, frozen corn, Mexican wedding cookies

Long version: A. and the children had amazingly good luck fishing their last morning in Colorado. They brought home eight trout.

That's a lot of fish.

Trout don't need to be scaled, which makes them much easier to clean than most fish. A. showed the three fisher-children how to clean them, using one as an example, and then they did the rest.

When your kids can clean fish for you, you really feel like you've arrived as a parent. At least, I think A. did. I don't clean fish at all.

Anyway. I broiled them with a butter/garlic/parsley/lemon juice mixture inside, and then served them with some mayonnaise mixed with lemon juice.

Since the broiler was on anyway, I broiled some garlic bread in there first, which kept warm in the oven as the fish were being broiled.

Dinner.

I had made the Mexican wedding cookies the day before while the oven was on to bake the cottage pie. My family LOOOOOVES these cookies. As cookies go, they're pretty wholesome. There's almost as much nuts as flour, and WAY less sugar than typical cookies. They're sort of involved to make, but much appreciated.

Monday

Short version: Trout patties, rice, Holy's cabbage or raw sauerkraut, leftover cookies

Long version: I had three whole trout left, plus some on children's plates. I used these to make patties the same way I make tuna patties--bread crumbs, egg, mayonnaise, mustard, lots of parsley instead of dill--but these take way longer because of the bones.

Trout are very bony. I of course pulled the flesh off the bones the night before when I was cleaning up after dinner, but then I spent at least half an hour more this night picking through the meat to get out dozens more tiny bones. It was truly a labor of love. I don't even eat fish. The bones were small enough that I wasn't worried about anyone actually choking. They're just unpleasant in the mouth.

They still found a few, because it's impossible to find them all, but I did pretty well.

I pulled the last bag of Holy's cabbage from last summer out of the freezer--I didn't have enough cabbage to make it this year, alas--and then gave the children who aren't into cooked cabbage some of the raw sauerkraut from the jar I keep in the refrigerator.

There were enough Mexican wedding cookies for everyone to have two for dessert. And there was much rejoicing.

Tuesday

Short version: Baked pasta, frozen green peas

Long version: I had taken a container of meat sauce out of the freezer several days prior and then never used it. It needed to be used. It wouldn't have been enough for everyone just over spaghetti, but in a casserole with pasta, pureed calabaza, and grated asadero cheese, it was more than enough.

I actually baked this in the morning when it was cool. At dinnertime, it looked too dry, though, as it had absorbed all the liquid while it sat. So I poured over more sauce made of a small can of tomato sauce, cream, red wine, and more spices, and then kind of chopped that in there and baked it.

It probably needed even more sauce, but it was very popular.

I added some grated Parmesan on top, too. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Wednesday

Short version: A smorgasbord of leftovers, and ice cream

Long version: I had a lot of different leftovers on hand. So I just set them all out and let everyone make their own plates to heat in the microwave.

A non-leftover rotisserie chicken purchased at Walmart this day, cottage pie, rice, one trout patty, sloppy Joe meat, pasta, sauerkraut, and Holy's cabbage.

The children helped me unload the car when I got home from Walmart, so of course they knew I bought ice cream. They saw no need to wait to eat the ice cream. I couldn't think of any reason not to eat it. Thus, ice cream.

Thursday

Short version: Pizzas, carrot sticks with ranch dip, watermelon

Long version: I made one half-sheet-pan pizza with sliced garlic and pepperoni, and a quarter-sheet-pan pizza that was just cheese.

Watermelons are always a crapshoot. This was a really good one. Yay.

Refrigerator check:

Watermelon always crowds the refrigerator.

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