Snapshots: Travel Time

Of course, I have pictures of our trip to Colorado. And now you will see them.

Running over the state line.

It's amazing how right there at the line it looks Very Colorado, and Very Not New Mexico.

As did the spot we stopped for lunch halfway through our drive.

My sister put one of her roses in the room I slept in. A nice touch.

Coffee the next morning on my sister's back patio. The younger boys were going to sleep in that tent, but traffic and things ended up being too noisy for those country mice.

The wading area in the river at a park in the city. We went here twice. Much appreciated, since it was at or close to 100 degrees most days we were there.

There was also extremely strong sun there, which is why I covered up pretty much all the time in my dorky Mom hat and a linen button-up shirt. 

Poppy in a replica Greek (I think) helmet my sister's late husband won at a strong man competition.

We went for a very mild hike, during which there was much delighted scrambling about on rocks by the children.

Floating down the lazy river another day.

And our lunch stop on the drive back home.

There you have it! My (traveling) life, snapshotted.

The Grand Total Was . . .

For that small basket of nine things at the grocery store, I spent $56.37. Yikes.

I wasn't at a fancy grocery store. I did, however, buy a few name-brand things--Skippy peanut butter, Riesens, and Nutrigrain bars--which I rarely do. Also, jerky is expensive even if it is store-brand.

Mostly, I think it's because I was buying packaged snacks. Another thing I rarely do. 

Which is why I bake way more than I would like to.

So I guess I'll just carry on with my low-snack, store-brand shopping style, lest I bankrupt us with Nutrigrain bars and candy.

Friday Food: Monster Pizza and Other Vacation Food

Friday 

Short version: Monster pizza, soda

Long version: I left in the morning with all four children to drive to my sister's house in Colorado. A. stayed home to take care of things here. It took us 9 hours to get there, and we arrived just before my sister got off work. She walked in the door, and then immediately out again so we could go get pizza.

She took us to a local place that makes 28-inch pizzas. I can't visualize measurements like that. In case you can't, either, here's a visual for you.

 It was so big it took up almost the whole table.

We brought home I think six pieces, which were all eaten as a snack the next afternoon.

I got each of the children a soda, which I never do. And I let them refill their cups at the fountain if they wanted to. That's even more unheard-of for me. Yay, vacation. 

Saturday

Short version: Tamales, coleslaw, cupcakes, cake, jello

Long version: There's a place near my sister's work that makes good tamales, so she bought a bunch there for us to have this night. Some were red chile and pork, some were green chile and chicken. 

The coleslaw was just cabbage and carrots with a vinegar dressing. Perfect with the tamales.

My sister had a lot of leftover cupcakes and cake from her birthday the week before. She was tired of eating cake. The children were not. They were happy to help her get rid of the various cakes around. She also had some random blue raspberry jello left from something a friend of hers had made, and a couple of kids had that. With whipped cream on top. Yay, vacation, again.

Sunday

Short version: Carnitas burritos, leftover coleslaw, ice cream

Long version: My sister put a pork shoulder in the Crockpot in the morning to make carnitas, which were delicious. The kids had them in flour tortillas. The ladies had them in salads.

In pretty salad bowls my dad made.

My sister bought a half gallon of cookies and cream ice cream for dessert. I think she was surprised it was all eaten in one night. Honestly, I bet some of my kids could have eaten more. Our family can put away a lot of ice cream.

I went to the grocery store this day to get another gallon of milk plus some things for our drive home. This is everything I bought.

It all fit in the top small part of the little basket thing.

It included a jar of Skippy peanut butter, a small jar of store-brand strawberry jam, one loaf of store-brand bread, one gallon of store-brand whole milk, one bag of store-brand potato chips, one bag of store-brand beef jerky, one box of 12 Nutrigrain bars, two small bags of Riesens, and a one-pound block of store-brand cheddar cheese. Can you guess how much those nine things cost?*

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, Girl Scout cookies

Long version: There were lots of tamales and pork left, so we had more of those. Just as good the second time.

My sister had just a few Girl Scout cookies left from a party that she wanted used up. There were just enough for everyone to have one Thin Mint and one Samoa each. My children were extremely excited about this. It's the first time they've ever had Girl Scout cookies, poor things.

Tuesday

Short version: Sauteed chicken thighs, rice, cabbage

Long version: I stopped at a grocery store a couple of hours from home on our way back to buy milk. I also wanted to get something quick-cooking for dinner. I ended up getting a package of boneless chicken thighs, which were not as quick-cooking as I had anticipated--and also quite expensive at $20 for the four-pound package I needed--but were definitely delicious. I just sauteed them in butter and olive oil with lots of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika.

I had two garden cabbages in the refrigerator, so I sliced some of that and put it right in the pan with the chicken to take advantage of all the grease and spices in there. Good call.

Wednesday

Short version: Brisket, mashed potatoes, sauteed cabbage and carrots, still-frozen green beans, cherries

Long version: I thawed the entire brisket A. brought home awhile ago. I had frozen it whole, so I cooked the whole thing, cut into three pieces.

This is 14.5 pounds of meat.

I put garlic powder, salt, pepper, paprika, vinegar, canned diced tomatoes and maple syrup on them, plus water, and cooked them for several hours.

A lot of fat rendered off or was pulled off for the dogs, but I probably ended up with at least ten pounds of meat. Some of it we ate this night, in a sauce with the liquid from cooking, plus ketchup, mustard, and some more spices.

For the cabbage and carrots, I used the unwashed pan from cooking the chicken the night before. It had a lot of highly spiced grease still in it, so I used that to saute the last quarter of a cabbage, plus some shredded carrots I had put in the freezer last fall. The green beans were for those children who do not enjoy cabbage cooked.

Dinner on the stove.

The cherries were ones my sister had sent home with us, because they were starting to get wrinkly and she correctly knew they would get eaten faster in our house with six people than in hers with just her.

Thursday

Short version: Ram steaks, curried split peas, leftover rice or mashed potatoes, collard greens, cherries

Long version: I found a bag of just two big ram steaks in the freezer that I pulled out and marinated before frying and making a sauce with red wine and soured cream.

I didn't think that would be enough for everyone, so I also took out a bag of cooked split peas I found in there. Those I cooked with onion, a diced garlic scape, curry powder, chicken broth, and, at the end, some soured cream I ALSO found in the freezer. Many good freezer things.

The collards are about the only thing the grasshoppers aren't eating into oblivion. They are HUGE. I used only three leaves, and it made enough for at least four people. I used some already-cooked onion and canned tomatoes that had been in the refrigerator, too.

We finished the cherries this night. Mission accomplished.

Refrigerator check:

Still haven't fixed the deli drawer. The part is on the way, though.

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

* I'm not including the Time magazine about cats or the bottle of Prosecco I got as gifts for my sister.

I Learned Something

I have discovered that the store version of Fritos are pretty much always good. The chips with more kinds of flavorings--like Doritos or Cheetos--are generally not as good in the generic version. Fritos are very basic, though. They only have three ingredients. How can you screw up corn, corn oil, and salt?

Well, you can do it if you pretty much leave out the salt.

I did not even know this was a thing, although I had noted that the corn chips I bought awhile ago said "salted" on the bag. I thought that was weird, because of COURSE they're salted. When are they not?

I found out last time I bought some. These were labeled "original," and they had so little salt it was almost impossible to taste it.

Can you imagine Fritos without salt? It was very strange. And not really appreciated.

 

Original=pretty much not salted.

Luckily, they're greasy enough that I could just shake salt into the bag and it would stick to the chips, so they were salvageable. But now I know to look for salted corn chips, not original, if I want them to taste like actual Fritos.

And now you do, too, I guess. 

Snapshots: First Canning

I canned sauerkraut and pickled beets this week.

A pleasing color contrast.

This part of my run is lined on both sides with blooming clover, which has the sweetest, slightly spicy scent.

And here's one with Jasper, just to give equal billing to both dogs.

I'm not harvesting the asparagus anymore, but here's an old photo of it I took just because I loved the contrast of the bright-green asparagus on the bright-red Pyrex top I threw it on to cool down before I put it on my salad.

Both the rose and the asiatic lilies are blooming, which makes for a very pink table centerpiece.

A former teacher at our school invited all the children to go up with him in his small plane this past week. The airport he flies out of is 100 miles from our house. He goes flying at first light, so as to avoid the almost-constant wind. This meant that we left our house at 3:50 a.m. to get there in time for his 5:30 a.m. flight.

Despite the unpleasantly early wake-up and long drive, the kids had a very good time.

Small plane in dawn's early light.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Dad's Seafood Feast

Friday 

Short version: Barbecue pork sandwiches, coleslaw, popsicles

Long version: I had a lot of pork left from the big pork shoulder I had cooked the day before, so I made some barbecue sauce to simmer shredded pork in for sandwiches. 

There were two cabbages in the refrigerator, and I used part of one to make coleslaw again.

The popsicles were mostly a way to use some little bits of things: the last of jars of apricot jam, peach jam, and yogurt. I added some milk and heavy cream, too, which makes them much more, well, creamy. Instead of icy. Very good.

Saturday

Short version: Pork fried rice, chocolate chip cookie bars

Long version: I made rice in the morning, using up the juices left from cooking the pork shoulder. Then I made fried rice with more of the pork, collard greens, asparagus, garlic scapes (all three vegetables from the garden, of course), and eggs.

Garlic scapes are so ridiculous looking. I find them very amusing. Sort of tricky to chop, however.

Sunday

Short version: Father's Day seafood fry, German potato salad, green salad with ranch dressing, Bonnie Butter cake with Chantilly cream and rhubarb compote

Long version: A. had to be in one of the cities on the Mexican border a week or so prior, and while there, he stopped at the Mexican market to pick up meat and seafood. It's much cheaper there, and pretty good quality. He bought pollock, shrimp, and "octomari," which I guess is squid tentacles that's been processed to be more like octopus? Or something.

Anyway. He wanted to fry all these things for his Father's Day feast, and he asked me to take care of all the side dishes and make them all cold ones so everything would be ready to go when the frying was done. Accordingly, I made a German potato salad and a green salad with ranch dressing.

I also made tartar sauce--extra dill pickles instead of the capers, and green onion instead of the shallot--and cocktail sauce for dipping. Cocktail sauce typically has horseradish in it, which I don't have, but the Internet assured me I could use chile powder, which I did. I didn't have the right hot sauce, either, so I didn't use that. A. said this didn't taste really like cocktail sauce, but he liked it anyway.  He called it New Mexico cocktail sauce.

He did the frying, using the thermometer I had got from my parents for my birthday and not yet used. It was perfect for this.

A very professional set-up.

That's lard in the pot. He did a real deep-fry, first coating everything in eggs and then a breading of flour, cornmeal, and Old Bay seasoning. It took a long time to fry the great quantity of seafood he had.

An impressive quantity, in fact.

There were many rapturous expressions of satisfaction among the family about this feast. A. did a very good job with the seasoning and frying. I don't even like seafood, and I thought the shrimp was good.

A. had said he would like a yellow cake with rhubarb for dessert. Knowing his pleasure in anything in great quantity, I made a layer cake instead of a single cake layer, using an online recipe for Bonnie Butter cake. The MiL used to make Bonnie Butter cakes when she was a kid. It's a simple and very tasty recipe for a yellow cake. I layered it with rhubarb compote--I guess that's what it's called when you just cook rhubarb down with sugar?--and Chantilly cream, and then frosted it with the Chantilly cream, too. Chantilly cream is just whipped cream with vanilla and sugar. I added a bit of sour cream, too, both for the flavor and because it helps it to hold its texture better. 

This cake ended up being a bit over the top.

I even made a heart on top using my cookie cutter and some of the compote. And mint leaves, just for fun.

It was really delicious. And certainly abundant. We didn't even eat half of it this night.

Monday

Short version: A feast of leftovers

Long version: There was a lot of fried seafood left, which I just re-heated in a skillet on the stove. Also potato salad, although some of the kids had leftover lamb-y rice with butter instead. They had some still-frozen green beans, too, and the adults had pureed calabaza.

Most excitingly, there was leftover cake.

Quite a lot of it, in fact. It held up very well in the refrigerator, surprisingly.

Tuesday

Short version: Burgers on the road, tuna salad and cookie fool at home

Long version: A. and one child were in town at dinnertime, and they went to a fast food restaurant to get hamburgers before starting their drive home. For the other three children, I made tuna salad. Two of them elected to have it in a corn tortilla with melted cheese, like a taco tuna melt. One had a sandwich.

I made a sort of odd dessert to use up the last of the chocolate chip cookie bars that were getting pretty crumbly, and the rest of the extra whipped cream from the cake. I crumbled the cookies and folded the crumbs into the cream, sort of like how fruit is folded into whipped cream for a fool. Then I drizzled some chocolate syrup on top.

It was not photogenic, but it was eaten.

Wednesday

Short version: Bulked up fried rice, more tuna, sauerkraut

Long version: I got the kids up at 3:30 a.m. to drive to a small airport, where we met one of their former teachers who has a plane. He took them all up for a short flight.

The plane is so small, it's just moved around by hand.

This was very fun for them, but made for a very tired rest of the day. Which is why dinner was not too exciting.

I had some leftover pork fried rice, but not quite enough. I had more plain lamb-y rice I needed to use, though, plus some cooked collard greens. So I added those two things to the fried rice, then scrambled more eggs to add, then put in more soy sauce, ginger, garlic powder, and vinegar. Plus some butter. I didn't fry this, instead just heating in the microwave. It would have been better fried, but I just didn't feel like washing a big skillet.

The three younger children had the rest of the tuna, in flour tortillas with cheese. I microwaved this, too, to melt the cheese. And they had raw sauerkraut, at their request.

A very odd mixture of various cultural foods. America on a plate, I suppose.

Thursday

Short version: Spaghetti with meat sauce, sauteed garlic scapes, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: I took out some ground primal blend--elk and cow heart--and made the meat sauce with that. I feel like I make taco meat with ground meat more often than not, and maybe everyone would appreciate something different.

They did. I cooked probably a pound and a half of meat, plus a pound of spaghetti, and most of it was eaten.

Garlic scapes are the stalk of what would be the garlic flower if I left them on the plants. I don't. I cut them off, cut off the flower part at the top, then saute them until they're soft. They taste like slightly garlicky green beans. Yum.

LOTS of spaghetti, and some garlic scapes.

I had just a bit of ranch dressing in the refrigerator, and just a bit of washed lettuce that needed to be used. So I used them both. In salad, with cucumber, too.

Refrigerator check:

My deli drawer has broken AGAIN on the runner, for I think the fourth time in seven years. So annoying. It does get an awful lot of hard use, though.

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

Trudgery, in Photos

I've been running my entire life, off and on. It's something I could always do no matter where we lived. It doesn't require special equipment or driving anywhere. I just put on my shoes and went out the door.

I'm not a fast runner, and I'm certainly not an effortless runner. I run just because it keeps me in good working order, basically.

It's something I do because I really have to, and it often feels like just another obligation. So it's a sort of drudgery. And as I'm often more or less doing the running equivalent of trudging, I have dubbed my exercise to be trudgery.

Get it? Yeah.

But I consider myself very fortunate to be able to trudge where I do. I don't have to worry about cars or stop lights or bad air or, well, anything. It's just me and the grasshoppers.

Just after I go out our gate . . .

Around the first corner . . .

The home stretch . . .

And back to our gate.

Snapshots: First, Flowers

We went down the hill last Sunday to take care of our friends' animals, which gave me the opportunity to pick some wildflowers that don't grow up here at our house.

Those white ones smelled exactly like oregano.

I thought it needed some more color, so I added clover, silver nightshade, and whatever those yellow flowers are.

And I put this on the bookshelf in the living room.

Many of the wildflowers around the house are towards the end of their life cycle, so I had a pretty random assortment later in the week that I collected on my run.

Lots of clover.

And I maybe got a little over exuberant with the height of the clover on the bookshelf. Oh well. It's dramatic, I guess.

In other plant news, I harvested the first beets this week.

There are beets under those greens somewhere.

One of the beets has gone to seed, which is perplexing, as I thought they only seed in their second year and I planted all these seeds this year. We'll just see what happens with it.

The grasshoppers continue to be horrifying. Not only are the sheer number of them overwhelming, but there are really a shocking variety.

This bright green one was unusual enough that I took a picture of it.

Poppy woke up early one morning. The oven was on already to cook pork shoulder before it got hot, so we made some muffins to go in the oven, too.

When children help in the kitchen, things often end up on the floor.

Jasper is delighted with the warm weather. It means all the people are outside with him all day.

And that means belly rubs are a strong possibility.

Early-morning baking is the only kind I want to do in the summer.

Granola and chocolate chip cookie bars at 6:30 a.m.

The strong sun and heat also means that it's sun-tea time.

The big jar has decaffeinated black tea. In the smaller jars are mint leaves, and a combination of peach leaves and mint leaves.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

P.S. Happy Father's Day to all the dads. I hope you have an excellent day.