Friday Food: Double Pudding and Calzones

Friday 

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: There was leftover pasta bake, chicken, and mashed potatoes that I divvied out. My refrigerator was getting a little crowded.

Saturday

Short version: Beefy Spanish rice, butterscotch pudding

Long version: I had some lamb-y rice leftover and then made some more with the rest of the beef stock that resulted from cooking the tongue. I used that, plus ground beef, the last of the pinto beans in the refrigerator, frozen corn, and pureed tomatoes to make something like Spanish rice. Oh, and I added cheese, too. 

I made the pudding because I wanted to get through the last couple of gallons in the refrigerator before I picked up four more gallons at school on Monday. Pudding uses a lot of milk and makes everyone happy. Most of the family loves butterscotch pudding, although I'm not wildly enthused about it. 

I double this recipe and add a bit of molasses to it, because my family likes molasses. 

Sunday

Short version: Lamb roast with potatoes, carrots, and onions; cucumbers with salt and vinegar, chocolate pudding

Long version: This was the last leg of lamb in the freezer. I marinated it, shoved garlic into slits, and put a spice rub on it, so it had lots of flavor. 

There was room enough in the dish with the lamb to cook potatoes, carrots, and onions, so I did that.

Sunday roast.

More pudding to use more milk, but chocolate this time (doubled, with the optional cocoa and half dark chocolate chips, half semi-sweet chips). I did the extra step of sieving the pudding when I was scraping it out of the pot because no matter how careful I am, I always end up scraping out some of the layer of cornstarch, etc. on the bottom of the pot, and that makes little lumps. Half the pleasure of pudding is the smooth texture, so I sieved it this time. Much better.

Monday

Short version: Calzones, raw radishes, cookies

Long version: A mom from school just had her fourth baby, which means she now has four kids under 8 years old.

Been there. That mom needs food.

Her oldest daughter is in Poppy's class, so I asked Poppy what she thought I should make for their family. She thought pizza. Okay. That's what I made for them.

We had pizza not too long ago, so I thought I would try something a little different and make calzones. Pretty much pizza, just wrapped up instead of flat.

Of course, calzones are individual and have to be rolled out, which makes them a bit more time consuming. I also felt like I couldn't get enough filling in them, because they were so bulky before the cheese melted.

They browned nicely, though. And they were certainly large.

I made extra sauce for whoever wanted it, which was everyone except Poppy.

I had also made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for the other family, and there were enough for our family, too. We got the ones that I over-baked when I got distracted, but they were still happily dunked in milk and consumed.

Tuesday

Short version: Stuffed pizza

Long version: The general consensus on the calzones was that they needed more sauce and cheese. There were four of them left, and only four people eating this night, which worked out nicely. It also worked out to have leftovers, as I was at First Communion class with Poppy until about 5:30 p.m. 

A. re-heated the calzones in the oven before I got home, and then I topped them with more sauce and cheese, just like pizza. So they were pretty much like a stuffed pizza. Much better.

Wednesday

Short version: Eggs and rice, leftovers

Long version: The younger children had a party at school in the afternoon, at which they filled up on many snacks. I knew they would do this, so I hadn't planned on anything too elaborate for dinner. Also, the eldest was traveling home at dinnertime from an FFA event, so he ate on the road.

There was enough leftover lamb roast, potatoes, and carrots for A. and the middle boy. Poppy and I had fried eggs and rice. The youngest boy wasn't hungry at all and didn't eat dinner.

Thursday

Short version: Spanish tortilla, Snow's clam chowder, raw radishes, chocolate wafer cookies

Long version: I had thought I would be at a basketball game, so I made a Spanish tortilla ahead of time for dinner. I completely filled a 12-inch skillet with the tortilla and wasn't careful enough when I poured the scrambled eggs in with the potatoes and and so on.

Fun.

I didn't end up going to the game, but it was nice to have dinner already made. I did add the clam chowder since I was home and it was rainy and cold.

Refrigerator check:

Pretty empty.

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

A Quick Cookie Tip

I make a lot of cookies. They are my younger children's primary snack at school, which means I make cookies once a week. I have the recipe for chocolate chip cookies memorized because that one uses melted butter and thus requires no creaming with a hand mixer. And THAT means I don't have to have soft butter to start with. Handy. 

I've made those cookies so often that I play pretty fast and loose with the ingredients, usually adding peanut butter in addition to the butter and some oats instead of all flour. I also don't actually measure the salt, baking soda, and chocolate chips, instead just eyeballing those ingredients.

When I make other recipes--peanut butter, gingersnaps, oatmeal--I do more or less follow a recipe, but with one exception: I never, ever mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Instead I mix the wet ingredients first--fats, sugars, eggs, vanilla--and then right on top I put the flour and other dry ingredients. 

I'll sort of shallowly mix the dry ingredients right there before incorporating them into the wet ingredients, but I really do not see the point in two bowls. Cookie dough is always thoroughly mixed anyway. It's fine to just stir it all up vigorously in the same bowl.

Wet on the bottom, dry on top.

This saves time and another dish to wash. So feel free to also be a rebel and disregard the "in a separate bowl" instruction if you, like me, are always trying to find more efficient ways to get through kitchen tasks.

Snapshots: A Real-Life Bond Villain

Following a breakfast conversation on Tuesday during which the children all agreed they would be better off without school, Poppy apparently decided to take action on this.

I have no idea where she got the phrasing for this, but she might be a great lawyer one day.

The principal was shown this and told Poppy she'd start looking for a replacement for her, but no promises.

Good thing our principal has a sense of humor.

I was in town on Thursday and saw an interesting truck in the auto parts store parking lot. The tires gave me pause.

I really don't understand when this might be necessary. All I could think about was car-chase scenes in James Bond.

I bought our Thanksgiving turkey while I was in town. It's a large one and would have taken up most of the big cooler. I needed the space for other things and I decided that given the fact it takes days to fully defrost a turkey that big, it would be just fine in the car for the 90 minutes it takes me to get home.

I did wrap it in a towel for some insulation and it was, indeed, not at all thawed when I got home.

Now that I'm not working, I tend to wear the same clothes for a few days in a row. I did decide on Thursday that I should probably wear something cleaner for my trip to town, though, so I put on clean jeans. Unfortunately, I did this BEFORE building the fire, with the predictable result.

I changed out of these before I left the house.

One boy has been asking to go camping for awhile now, but we couldn't find a free weekend with good weather to make it happen. This past week was very warm, however, and finally nothing else going on, so I made plans with his friend's mom for the two boys to camp a short way from their house on a giant ranch. It's below the hill, so it was a bit warmer than at our house.

Heading down in the morning to pick up the camper.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Here Comes the Tongue

Friday 

Short version: Pizzas, carrot sticks with ranch dip, chocolate pudding

Long version: Everything aligned for pizza this day: I had bread dough in process; I had pureed roasted tomatoes in the refrigerator; I had a whole block of asadero waiting to be grated and put in the freezer. That definitely all adds up to pizza.

I didn't have any pepperoni on hand, so one pizza had cooked bacon and pickled onions on it, and the other was just cheese.

I made the chocolate pudding for the sick child with a sore throat. And everyone else, too, of course.

Saturday

Short version: Aged lamb roast, roasted potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: We're getting to the forgotten and daunting cuts of meat at the bottom of the freezer now as we prepare to put the whole cull cow we're buying from our neighbor in there. I found a lamb roast labeled 2022 and figured that wasn't getting any younger. Ahem.

This was the afternoon Poppy and I took our drive to the mission church. I knew we wouldn't be getting home until just about dinnertime, so I prepped everything before I left.

I had apparently put a marinade in with the roast before I froze it, so all I did was brown it and leave it in the skillet for roasting. The potatoes I pre-roasted, stopping before they were all the way browned. This meant that all A. had to do was turn the oven on to 400 degrees and put the skillet with the roast in first, then the pan with the potatoes about fifteen minutes later. 

It was all pretty much done when we got home at 5:15 p.m. All I had to make was the salad, which was also easy because the lettuce was already washed and the dressing was the ranch dip from the night before.

We don't have roasts very often, and this was appreciated.

Sunday

Short version: Tacos de lengua, refried beans, chocolate peanut butter balls, cookies

Long version: Continuing my facing down of freezer things I would rather avoid, this was the day I cooked the tongue.

Tongue tastes fine, and there's a lot of meat there due to the size of a cow's tongue, but they are just . . . daunting.

It looks just like what it is.

Tongue is cooked whole slowly to tenderize before the thick covering is peeled off--that's where the taste buds are, which is very much not appealing*--and I chose to do this in my pressure-cooker/canner.

Partially I did this because that's the only pot I have big enough to fit the tongue, but also A. had replaced one of the valves on the top to see if I could get it to hold pressure after it stopped working, and I wanted to test that. I duly brought the pot up to pressure and was delighted to find that it does indeed work again. 

I pressure-cooked the tongue at about 11 pounds pressure for around an hour and a half, in water with chopped garlic, onion tops, and bay leaves. Then I peeled it, cut out the nasty bits, and chopped the remaining meat up.

I made corn tortillas this night on my cast-iron griddle pan, so when I was done with that, I used the hot griddle pan to fry the meat in beef tallow with spices.

We had lettuce, tomato, pickled onions, queso fresco, sour cream, hot sauce, and salsa to top them with, along with the refried beans. 

The tongue was 4.5 pounds uncooked, but I probably only ended up with around two pounds of meat in the end. I had invited our priest and his brother to come for dinner, and there was just enough meat for everyone.

And yes, I did tell them what I was cooking ahead of time. Tacos de lengua are not uncommon here and these are not picky eaters, so they didn't hesitate. Or if they did, they didn't tell me.

The brother doesn't eat gluten, which is why we had the chocolate peanut butter balls. The cookies were this week's snack cookies--peanut butter, oats, chocolate chips--that I had made this day, so I put those out too and everyone could choose their dessert.

Monday

Short version: Potato soup with optional sausage and collards, leftover corn bread

Long version: I had made a very large pot of pureed bacon and potato soup over the weekend for the sick child, figuring if I made a big one I could use up some of the many potatoes I have on hand and freeze some soup for future illness (minus the dairy I added at the end).

This is the soup we had this night. To bulk it up and add some more flavor, I diced and fried a package of andouille sausage, along with some diced collard greens. Those I added to the bowls of the family members who would appreciate them. 

I had made cornbread for our post-church breakfast the day before, and there were just enough pieces of that left for everyone to have one with their soup.

Basketball started this day. Our basketball player is the one person who really dislikes soup. Since he wasn't here at dinnertime anyway, he got to have leftover lamb and pizza when he got home.

Tuesday

Short version: Pasta bake, leftovers

Long version: I had some roasted and pureed tomatoes in the refrigerator, so I used those, a package of loose Italian sausage, some already-cooked onion and roasted garlic from the freezer, heavy cream, grated asadero cheese from the freezer, the fat and some of the broth from when I boiled the tongue, and pasta to make a pasta bake that A. could put in the oven while I was at First Communion class. That way, dinner was ready when I got home at 5:45 p.m.

I also topped this whole casserole of pasta with slices of a cheese mysteriously labeled "melting cheese." It's some kind of Mexican cheese the child with me at the store asked to get. I was curious what it might be, so I did buy it, and it turns out to be pretty much fresh whole milk mozzarella. Good to know. Like fresh mozzarella, it can't be grated easily, which is why I sliced it instead.

Ready for the oven.

A. doesn't appreciate pasta as much as the children do, so he got the last big bowl of potato soup, to which I added more collard greens and some of the cooked Italian sausage. I also made him quesadillas with the last four homemade corn tortillas and the last of the refried beans. Plus cheese, of course.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken-fried pork chops, milk gravy, mashed potatoes, green peas

Long version: Although it is more work to make pork chops this way--with the egg wash, seasoned flour, and individual browning before baking--they are so appreciated that I do it anyway. I need to remember that it always takes more salt than I think it should, though. And more fat in the pan when I'm browning them. That flour can take a lot of salt and absorb a lot of fat.

Thursday

Short version: Rotisserie chickens and gravy, lamb-y rice, cucumbers with ranch dip, surprising cookies

Long version: I was at Walmart this day and was delighted to find the frozen rotisserie chickens in the meat section. These are four dollars for a whole chicken. I got two and just re-heated them in the oven for dinner. After rinsing out their bags with hot water, I had enough liquid to make some gravy, too. This is definitely the cheapest convenient meat I have ever seen. Almost as cheap as the chicken leg quarters, which are definitely not convenient and are kind of gross to cut up.

I made the rice with some lamb stock I had had in the refrigerator and wanted to use up.

The cookies I found on a clearance rack at Walmart. I always look at this, although most of the "deals" aren't really very good. It's mostly strangely-flavored candies, and they are not cheap enough to be tempting. This time, however, I saw bags of dark chocolate wafer cookies from Austria. I love wafer cookies, but they're usually the most artificially-flavored garbage out there. These, however, were not artificially flavored. They were also only one dollar each because they expire this month. I took a chance and bought four bags.

These were SO GOOD. If you see these, buy them.

Especially if you see them for one dollar.

Refrigerator check:

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

* Ha ha. Appealing, peeling a tongue . . . Insert your own joke here.

Tumbling Tumbleweeds

Tumbleweeds are so iconic of the American West: blowing about on the wide-open spaces, a fixture of western movies, almost as recognizable as the cowboy.

They are also awful.

We live in the land of the tumbleweed, which is actually an invasive plant called a Russian thistle. They grow big, plentiful, and prickly, drying in the ground and then getting uprooted by the wind to blow about and disperse their seeds.

Still firmly rooted and biding their time.

They are wretched plants. They are stiff and sharp, embed their prickers into the sheep's wool, and this year, they are EVERYWHERE.

We must have gotten rain at just the right time for them, because I've never seen so many. Even the one year when they formed a solid four-foot-high bank of tumbleweeds against the garden fence, I don't remember seeing so many in the ground. They're currently still rooted, but in the next month, they'll start blowing free, and then we're really in for it. 

All the dark patches in this field are Russian thistle.

There's really nothing to be done about them at this stage except wait for them to build up against fencing and then pitch-fork them into piles to burn. And hope that next year isn't such a banner year for them.

Snapshots: A Far-flung Church

After quite a bit of work by A. and the eldest boy, the brown truck has been towed to the semi-retired mechanic in the village for help with the rodent-chewed wiring.

Good thing we have a one-ton van that can tow anything.

I always put up a string of white lights around the iron divider running between the kitchen and dining room right after daylight savings time ends. I call them my time-change lights. I bought a new string last year, which I carefully wound up and put away. When I plugged them in this year, only half the string was working. 

WHY does this seem to happen with all lights now? I can't get more than one year out of them before they're only partially functioning.

I did try replacing one bulb that looked burned out, but when that didn't work, I gave up and ordered another string.

I did use the half-working string of lights around the kitchen window, so at least I didn't have to throw them away.

Winter lights.

We don't have a lot of deciduous trees around here to give us fall color, but the apricot trees do turn a nice yellow.

The windmill apricot is almost at peak color.

We have several mission churches in our parish that have a Mass once a month. I've been to all of them but one. I've been meaning to go to it for awhile now, but it's about 70 miles away and not on the way to anywhere, so it's a definitely commitment to get there.

Poppy said she'd go with me, though, and we finally had nothing going on the second Saturday of the month when Mass is celebrated there, so off we went.

There's a whole lot of nothing getting there. It was even less populated than around our house.

The town the church is in is at the beginning of these hills.

It's a plain old church.

The inside is quite plain, too, with unfortunate ceiling tiles.

Not much around it.

But they do have an outhouse.

Nice sunset on the way home.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Many Potatoes

Friday 

Short version: Spanish tortilla

Long version: I ended up with fifty pounds of potatoes from excess commodities to add to the twenty pounds A. had bought literally the day before we got those. So! Let's use some potatoes! 

It was just me and the younger two children this night. Both of them love Spanish tortilla, so that is what I made. I used bacon and tomatoes in it, plus some already-cooked onion and shredded cheddar. An easy meal before the last-minute scramble to get costumes on before trick-or-treating.

Saturday

Short version: Pork, peas, and rice skillet

Long version: Still just the three of us. I had put some cooked pork chops in the freezer a few weeks prior during one those rare periods when I had too many leftovers and we weren't going to be getting through all of them before they went bad. In such situations, I take a look to see what will freeze and defrost the best. This time, that was cooked pork chops. 

I took these out and trimmed and diced all the pork, then used the pork with leftover rice, pickled onions, and frozen peas to make a skillet meal. In this case, I just fried all of that in a bunch of butter, not even bothering to add any spices except salt and pepper. 

The three little bowls.

Sunday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, tomato salad, chocolate ice cream

Long version: Everyone was home. Thus, a full meal. 

I made the meatloaf with both ground beef and breakfast sausage, because that is what I had. 

Did anyone need more dessert after the post-Halloween candy glut? No. But it was Sunday. And I did have a bit of chocolate ice cream left in the freezer. 

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, pickles

Long version: I had another ridiculous Monday afternoon of driving hither and yon, with the added complication that I had to go to an pep rally at school at 2:30 that was partially in honor of one of my sons. This meant I was gone from 2:15-5:45. Before I left, I microwaved a few more potatoes to add to the leftover baked potatoes, then chopped those and fried them. I chopped the leftover meatloaf before I left, and then when I got home, I just re-heated the potatoes with the meatloaf in the skillet. In a lot of butter, which is the best way to re-heat leftovers.

There was also leftover Spanish tortilla, which I also fried in butter to re-heat. 

It was far from gourmet, but everyone was fed.

Tuesday

Short version: Tuna mac, tomato and cucumber salad

Long version: I was at First Communion class this night, so before I left, I made a casserole of essentially macaroni and cheese, with a can of tuna added. I used Parmesan, cheddar, and a Mexican cheese that was pretty much exactly like fresh mozzarella, but way cheaper. A very cosmopolitan mac and cheese.

Every time I use fresh tomatoes now, I hear the drumbeat that heralds the end of fresh tomatoes for the year. 

Too dramatic?

Wednesday

Short version: Lamb ribs, chicken slop, mashed potatoes, green peas

Long version: I'm mining the depths of the freezer now as we get to the less-desirable meats that I've been avoiding. Among those is lamb ribs.

A. gave me a recipe for a Carolina barbecue sauce--heavy on the vinegar--that he thought would work well as a marinade for the lamb ribs. I marinated them for a few hours, then cooked them on low heat a few more hour, still in the marinade. I'm told they turned out well. I don't really eat them.

For the rest of the family that doesn't appreciate lamb ribs, I used the meat from a chicken I found at the bottom of the freezer. This was one of ours, a hen that had been getting bullied so badly by the others that we had to remove her from the flock. She was pretty old, which means long cooking. I basically made stock, then pulled off the meat and used that plus some of the stock, garlic, some dried thyme the MiL sent me, cornstarch, and milk to make chicken in gravy. 

The MiL used to make something like this after Thanksgiving with leftover turkey and gravy served over mashed potatoes. She called it turkey slop. This is the chicken version.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: I had a very short time in between the children getting home from school and the time I needed to leave with Poppy for the volleyball game she was cheering at. There was enough time to feed children before we left. Two of them had the rest of the tuna mac, to which I added the last bit of chicken and gravy. The other two had mashed potatoes and cheese, plus fried eggs. They all had leftover peas.

A. had lamb ribs, mashed potatoes, and peas.

Refrigerator check:

Can you tell I don't bother to clean or organize this before taking the weekly photo? I'm all about being real. And I am lazy.

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

The Big Bathroom Reveal

If you've been with us here for the past several months, you'll know that A. and I have been battling to renovate both of the bathrooms in our trailer for awhile now. The trailer is from 1972, and we're pretty sure the bathrooms are original to it. There were leaks. The floors were spongy. The tubs were cracked. The sinks were rusting.

It was ugly. It took forever. But we finally finished.

I don't have a lot of before photos, as it turns out. There's this one that shows the lovely avocado-green plastic tub surround. 

Cute baby, hideous tub.

And this one showcasing the faux-marble vanity top that had yellowed over time.

Lovely.

Those were both in the children's bathroom, which is also the guest bathroom. A. demolished the entire thing while we were in Colorado this summer, right down to ripping up the floors. The only thing he left was the vanity, as it was built into walls on three sides.

He replaced the bathtub with a deep soaking tub, even pouring concrete for its base. And then he put in an external shower system of copper he ordered directly from Morocco. He put in a new toilet. He put down a new floor of plywood and then covered it with Moroccan-patterned vinyl tiles. 

And then I painted. I painted the walls and the cabinets blue, and eventually, I got around to painting the sink and counter with a two-part epoxy paint that was tricky and drippy and time-consuming and absolutely REEKED.

Even with a mask, even with every door and window in the house open, it was overwhelming.

I even used some bronze-colored spray paint on the light fixtures, outlet plates, and cabinet pulls.

Upside-down egg cartons work very well for holding the pulls stable.

And finally, FINALLY, it is done.

Hard to get a picture of the whole bathroom, but this is most of it.

I have even fewer photos for the adults' bathroom. It had the same green tub, same faux-marble counter, same disintegrating floor, with the addition of some water damage on the ceiling from a long-ago leak.

The only photo I have is of the sink before I painted it.

And now it is done.

A. removed the tub, but decided instead of putting another tub in there, he would build a shower stall. He did this out of brick and concrete.

In progress.

And almost done. He still wants to find something to put over the painted walls.

A. did an incredible amount of work on all of this, most of it things he had never done before. The end result is very satisfying, though.

It was worth it, but we're very glad it's done.

Snapshots: First Freeze, Halloween, Etc.

We had our first freeze on Tuesday night, so I spent Monday gathering all the tomatoes and the last of the basil. That was pretty much all that was left in the garden.

The turning-color tomatoes, and basil.

The all-green and all-red tomatoes.

I gathered the last cosmos on Monday, too.

And a couple of very small sunflowers.

I was asked to sub for a sick teacher on Wednesday, and was very amused by this student's note left on the classroom refrigerator by the previous day's sub for the teacher:

This is not a note any of my sons would ever or will ever write.

Poppy wore these bows on Thursday that my sister gave her years ago:

Very holiday-specific bows.

I spent some time on Friday cleaning out the van for its annual duty as the Trick-or-Treat Party Van.

With the back two rows of seats out, there's plenty of room for hyped-up children.

Our first stop was in our own almost-ghost-village at Ms. Amelia's house. She always wants to see our children's costumes, and she always gets candy for them. They are the only trick-or-treaters she sees.

Pippi Longstocking and a Green Bay Packer on their way to the first candy of the night.

We ended up with thirteen kids in the back of the van and four adults in the actual seats for the trick-or-treating in the bigger village. Some of the parents followed in their own vehicles, but all the kids want to be in the van. I mean, who wouldn't want to be riding around with all their friends in a giant van, eating candy? 

I only drove them when the houses were too far apart to walk. There was plenty of walking, too, though.

Running around in the dark with friends is even better than cramming into the back of the van.

The only restaurant in the village is owned by the grandparents of three of the children that came with us. The restaurant wasn't open, but they asked us to come back to the restaurant when we were finished trick-or-treating, because they had a bunch of candy there, too. So we went back there, where they handed out water and soda and all the children investigated their bags, playing with the balloons one lady had given them.

It was a nice end to the night. We all appreciated warming up after our cold trek. It was only in the forties outside.

Pretty good haul this year.

By which I mean: Mostly chocolate.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.