Snapshots: Flowers and Veils

It's Tulip Time!

And still daffodil time, too.

An animal face-off.

I've had this pepper grinder for about seven years now, and just now saw this little joke on the bottom.

And last, Poppy and I veiled all the statues at church in anticipation of Holy Week. Which means Easter is almost here!

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Irish Pasta and Spring Cranberries

Friday 

Short version: Feta omelets, yogurt with apricot jam

Long version: For this meatless Friday, I asked A. to make some of his famous omelets. I suggested he use feta cheese in them, and then I also had some green onion and green onion I brought in from the garden. So what this really was was the first garden harvest consumed in 2025.

Momentous omelets. Very yellow, thanks to all the eggs we're getting from the chickens right now.

Saturday

Short version: Brisket tacos, chili beans, chocolate pudding

Long version: The entire reason I made tacos was that I had some masa that needed to be used promptly. And the reason it needed to be used is because it got damp. And the reason it got damp is because the chest freezer in which I store the masa stopped working.

BOOOOO.

Very thankfully, I discovered this when I went out to retrieve masa and cornmeal from that freezer to make cornbread on Thursday. The contents of the freezer were mostly thawed, but there was still some ice in there and everything was still very cold. This was the non-meat freezer, so the fruit, nuts, butter, etc. that I store in there were just transferred into the meat freezer and everything was salvaged.

There was one almost-empty bag of masa that had gotten towards the bottom of the freezer, and the bottom of the bag got a little damp. So I wanted to use that masa up soon. Thus, I made corn tortillas. 

To put inside the corn tortillas, I used the container of brisket that had also been in that freezer, along with a container of chili beans (pinto beans flavored like chili). 

Just like a restaurant.

I made the chocolate pudding because I ended up with excess milk. Like, three gallons to be used within two days. Pudding uses a lot of milk. Especially a double batch of pudding.

Sunday

Short version: Pork, pasta, corn, baked rice pudding

Long version: I didn't really want to cook another pork butt, since we just had one last week, but it was the easiest meat to find in my now-chaotic single chest freezer. And I could bake it a long time with the rice pudding, which I made because it both uses a lot of milk and is the favorite dessert of the child who returned home from an FFA trip with a wicked cold.

The pasta was one package of some shamrock-shaped pasta my mother had sent home with the family when they were in Arizona. It was meant to be for St. Patrick's Day, but I didn't find it until I was cleaning out the van later in the week.

So we had our lucky pasta on a random Sunday.

Some of it was also colored green with spinach powder.

All I added to it was butter, garlic powder, and Parmesan.

This ended up being a very starchy meal. Oh well.

Monday

Short version: Pulled pork sandwiches, raw radishes, canned peaches and cottage cheese

Long version: Lots of pork left to make sandwiches. So that is what I did after work, by adding all the things I use to make barbecue-ish sauce (ketchup, mustard, molasses, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce).

It always makes my family happy when we have peaches after dinner. Knowing how much work goes into canning peaches, it is a marvel to me that I can buy big cans of them for like three dollars are Walmart. They are definitely not that cheap elsewhere, however.

Tuesday

Short version: Meatloaf, butter-swim biscuits, pureed calabaza, cranberry sauce, still-frozen green beans

Long version: It's still hard to find things in the freezer, with everything all thrown together in the one chest freezer. So when I was digging for meat--which ended up being some store-bought ground beef that got hidden under other things--I also pulled out two bags of cranberries I bought on sale after Thanksgiving, and a bag of pureed calabaza.

I was planning on making mashed potatoes, but the extra bag of potatoes I thought I had in A.'s office I did not, in fact, have.

So I made these biscuits instead, as the oven was on anyway to bake the meatloaf. I personally like my plain old baking powder biscuits better--less heavy, crispier, and without the pronounced flavor that comes from buttermilk/yogurt--but these kind are much easier to serve, as no one has to be cutting them and putting butter on them at the table.

This ended up being a much more elaborate meal than I had planned on.

Many things on a small plate.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: I had to take a kid somewhere at 5:30, so I just pulled out the meatloaf, cranberry sauce, pasta, and biscuits, and left it all out for everyone to serve themselves whatever they wanted. I think they mostly ate the meatloaf and biscuits. Which is why I make one and a half of that biscuit recipe. Always good to have leftovers of popular foods.

Thursday

Short version: Pork and potato skillet, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I had quite a bit of pork left, so I chopped it up and fried it with potatoes, spices, and cheese. 

And I had my sous chef prepare the salad for us.

Although she informed me that since she was the one wearing the chef's hat, it was actually I who was serving as sous chef. Noted.

Refrigerator check:

Lotta cheese. And tortillas.

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

A Creature of Habit

I am, for sure, a creature of habit. To a rather ridiculous degree, actually. I remember in college talking with a friend about how I always dried myself off after a shower in the same order--face first, then on down, ending with my feet before I stepped out of the shower--and she totally did not get this. Which left me feeling all confused. Like, do people NOT do this? Do people just dry themselves off all willy nilly?

Does not compute.

Another example of this is breakfast. I eat the same thing every morning: two fried eggs with salsa. On days I run, I add a piece of toast with butter. 

One of the running days, obviously.

I suppose this is the food equivalent of a capsule wardrobe. It removes one more decision that I do not want to have to make on already-busy mornings. Plus, I like it. Why wouldn't I want to eat what I like every morning?

Do you do this? Or are you like my college friend, all wild and free and eating something different every morning?

Snapshots: Successful Delegation

Anyone who has been reading here for a (very) long time may remember how frequently the muddy clothing my family created in New York had to be rinsed in a bucket before I could even put it in the washing machine. I did not enjoy the bucket rinse, and I don't miss it. It's much less common here at our home in the arid high-altitude west.

I do still occassionally have to use the bucket, though, including this past week after a session of work under the project truck left me with two sets of manly clothing covered in dirt and grease.

Out came the bucket. But now, I have an apprentice.

And here she is, jamming a stick into the bucket to agitate the clothing.

She loved this activity, and I loved that I didn't have to do it myself. Happiness all around.

The same girl played a very good April Fool's prank on me. I don't actually like pranks at all, but this one was inoffensive and actually pretty funny.

She set up her American Girl doll as me reading in bed. Perfect.

We woke up to a blizzard yesterday morning.

Complete with 30-mile-an-hour winds blowing in all directions.

Thankfully, I had already brought some spring inside for the table.

Poppy decided we needed to have some spa time since we were stuck inside all day. I declined to do a face mask or makeover, but we did have a little foot spa. We soaked our feet in Epsom salt water with marbles in it, she gave me a foot and hand massage with lotion, and then she painted my toenails for me.

I let her choose the color, too.

And last, I have discovered my medium-sized Pyrex lids fit perfectly on these large cereal bowls the MiL gave us a few years ago.

Handy.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Starring Leftovers and Apricot Jam

Friday 

Short version: Spanish tortilla, cucumbers with ranch dip, leftover chocolate pudding

Long version: Meatless Fridays continue, this time with a Spanish tortilla minus the bacon I usually add. And since the one child who dislikes bell peppers wasn't home for dinner, I could add some of the bell peppers that came with the salad my friend gave us. I don't much care for bell peppers in salad, but I like them in Spanish tortilla.

Saturday

Short version: Asian-ish pork butt, porky rice, still-frozen green beans

Long version: I cooked a pork butt this day, but instead of broiling it with barbecue kind of spices or maple syrup and mustard, as I usually do, I instead used brown sugar, soy sauce, and ginger to season it after I had pulled it apart for broiling.

This was very good, and very popular with the family.

I cooked the rice in the juices from cooking the pork butt. 

The green beans were the ones from the garden I froze in the summer. They have a very unpleasant sort of sharp taste, and I think it's because I was lazy and didn't blanch them this year. There's a similar flavor in the carrots I didn't blanch and then froze, so I think I've learned my lesson with blanching. Most people say it's to maintain the texture; I think it makes them taste better. So I will blanch from now on. Amen.

Sunday

Short version: Frito pie, jam tarts

Long version: I made some chili with ground ram, and then I used that to make Frito pie for dinner. Except, of course, with the Walmart store-brand chips, so it was really Crunchy Corn Chip Pie.

The tarts I made with the one pie crust that was in the freezer. I just rolled it out, cut out circles with the top of a wide-mouth jar, put strawberry jam in half and apricot jam in the other half, then crimped them closed and baked.

I inevitably overfill them and have to remove some of the jam.

These were very well-received. Most of the family preferred the apricot ones slightly, but no one refused the strawberry ones, either.

Monday

Short version: Custom beverages, pork and potato skillet, buttered toast

Long version: I came home from work to one child who had an upset stomach, one who had a bad throat, and one who had had a brutal track practice. The bad throat got creamy tea. The bad stomach got switchel. The worn-out trackster got maple milk (just milk with maple syrup).

And then I microwaved some potatoes, chopped them up, and fried them with leftover pork butt, spices, and grated cheddar for the few who were actually eating.

Dinner is served.

The bad stomach started to feel better after dinner and requested toast. And so, of course, his siblings also requested toast. So they all got some toast with butter. We'll call that dessert.

Tuesday

Short version: Jambalaya revisited

Long version: When I made jambalaya for Fat Tuesday, I had enough ingredients to make a double batch. So I made it all except adding the rice, and froze half of the sausage and chicken mixture. That's what I took out of the freezer for dinner this day, along with a container of chicken stock and chicken meat, because the jambalaya mixture didn't have enough stock in it to cook the rice.

I just added the stock to the sausage and chicken and cooked the rice in it. Easy dinner. Also very tasty.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftover ram chili, yogurt with apricot jam

Long version: There was quite a lot of chili left, so those who were eating had it just as chili in a bowl.

I had a salad with some of the leftover pork in it. I didn't have much lettuce washed and didn't want to bother washing more, so my salad was one small lettuce leaf, the pork, some feta cheese, and quite a lot of pickled onions and radishes, with the pickling juice as the dressing. Thanks to the radishes, it was a very pink salad.

I was very hungry, so I ate this as I was getting everyone else's dinner ready. Then I sat down at the table with my dessert/second course, which was a rye cracker with cream cheese and apricot jam. 

Everyone else had yogurt with apricot jam for their dessert/second course. I can never make too much apricot jam in the summer.

Thursday

Short version: Leftover jambalaya or chili, cornbread

Long version: A. got the last of the ram chili. The children who were eating--only two, as one was sick and one was gone-- had the jambalaya. I made the cornbread as a consolation prize for serving leftovers for the fourth night in a row.

Also, the one child who was recovering from his stomach upset could eat the cornbread.

I had another salad, with pretty much the same ingredients as the night before. Except this time I added some pickled beets, which made it extra pink.

My new salad color palette, apparently.

Refrigerator check:

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

The Mystery Kitchen

I have a habit of re-using things, especially in my kitchen. I hate to only use a jar or container one time and then throw it away. I keep the plastic jars A.'s instant coffee comes in, the empty containers of cottage cheese and sour cream, any glass jars, ziploc bags if I can easily wash them (so not if they've had anything really greasy or raw meat in them), and of course, canning jars and lids get used over and over again. 

Most of these things end up in my freezer at some point, and I always label things I put in my freezer, on the lid with a permanent marker. Most of my food containers have been labeled more than once. Sometimes so many times I run out of space on the lids or on the bags.

It's kind of funny to track what's been in the containers with that particular lid.

One lid is new and still has the original label. The other one? First it had chicken stock, then ham stock, then pinto beans, and now the jambalaya base I froze last month.

This lid first had pressure-canned pinto beans in 2023, then rooster stock in 2023, then sauerruben in 2024.

What this means is that you can never trust the lid that's on a container to actually tell you what's in that container. That canning jar lid, for instance, is currently on a jar containing pickled radishes and onions. It's not sauerruben.

Likewise, sour cream or cottage cheese containers are just as likely to have leftover baked beans or tomato sauce in them as the dairy products suggested by their labels.

This is why when my sister visits, she always holds up whatever she's taken out of the refrigerator and asks what's really in it. Because it really could be anything, and only I can tell for sure.

So tell me: Do you do this? Or do all your containers tell the truth about their contents?

Snapshots: Roadtrip

I had to go get milk yesterday, which meant a 120-mile drive, roundtrip. 

At least it's 120 miles of no traffic, though.

Poppy asked to come with me and had a great time. She chattered and sang with the music and read her book.

Benji, in case you were curious.

I let her pick out a snack to eat on the way home, so she munched her Pringles and juice (and read the ingredients on them) and finished Benji.

She's a good travel buddy.

At home, the daffodils continue to bloom.

The white ones are starting to open now.

So of course, I have some on my table.

Also, the little peach tree in the garden has flowers on it.

Possible future peach, Lord willin' and the grasshoppers don't eat it.

The row of tulips on the other side of the garden wall are better protected now that I've surrounded them with rocks to keep the dogs off of that spot.

One of the tulip crushers, looking very innocent now that he can't lie down on the flowers anymore.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: A Little Help from My Friends

Friday 

Short version: Meatless fried rice, canned peaches and cottage cheese

Long version: I had leftover rice in the refrigerator, so I gave A. the choice between fried rice with just eggs, or a Mexican-ish skillet of food with the rice and chili beans.

He chose the fried rice.

It was very cheerful-looking before I added the brown soy sauce.

The peaches were a jar of home-canned peaches. Some ate them on their own, some with cottage cheese.

Saturday

Short version: Oven-barbecued chicken pieces, potatoes, leftover baked beans, raw radishes

Long version: One package of separated chicken leg quarters, which meant I had four drumsticks and four thighs. I coated these in a spice mixture similar to the one we use for ribs--paprika, garlic powder, chili powder, salt, brown sugar--which makes them very tasty and also helps the skin brown nicely, what with the sugar in there.

I only made one pan of them because we had the baked beans, too. And since I had room on the pan, I added some potato chunks to roast on there, too.

The radishes were definitely an afterthought. I wish I had remembered the frozen green beans that really need to be used. 

Sunday

Short version: Creamy chicken soup or leftover fried rice, crispy rice treats

Long version: I used the bones from the night before to make stock, and then soup. With the one chicken thigh that had been left, there was just enough meat for the soup. To that I added celery, carrots, potatoes, peas, sauerruben, and sour cream.

Those who avoid soup had the leftover fried rice.

Monday

Short version: Ravioli lasagna, bread, green salad, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: I did not make any part of this meal. It was given to me by a friend at school. Our family has had a rough couple of weeks, and my friends have been showing their support by giving me food. This was a particularly welcome day for it, as I had no clear idea of what I was going to make for dinner after work and probably would have just cobbled together random unexciting leftovers.

The lasagna was made with ravioli in place of the noodles, which was, as you might imagine, very good.

Complete with baking instructions. And two HUGE loaves of bread.

Tuesday

Short version: Beef 'n' bean quesadillas, raw radishes

Long version: I had some chili beans still in the refrigerator that needed to be used, so I used the last of the beef roast from my other friend, plus the beans, to make the quesadilla filling.

Not exciting, but good enough to fill everyone up.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers, cucumbers

Long version: One child had baked beans and bread and butter. Everyone else had the leftover lasagna.

Thursday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, mashed potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing, chocolate pudding with cream

Long version: I made the meatballs with ground elk. And, as is so often the case, I made the chocolate pudding because I had milk that was on the verge of going bad. Somehow, the pudding came out slightly grainy this time for unknown reasons. Alas.

Refrigerator check:

Lots of leftovers, but no milk.

In our ongoing milk drama, I forgot to order milk from school this week, and the tiny store closest to us is closed for the weekend already. This means I must venture farther afield for milk. Luckily, A. discovered that the next-closest town to us--60 miles away--has good milk at the dollar store there. I guess they have a different supplier than the grocery store in that town, whose milk is always just about to go off. So it looks as if a trip to the dollar store is on my agenda this weekend. Maybe I can get a new shower curtain rod while I'm there.

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

Twists and Turns

Last weekend, I went down the hill to pick up one son at his friend's house after he stayed there overnight. This friend is the son of one of my friends. Also the brother of Poppy's best friend. So I've been to their house several times.

They live on a giant ranch that employs many cowboys, all of whom live at and are in charge of what are called "camps." Each man--they are all men--manages his own camp on this huge operation, and they all gather and help each other in turn for big events like branding or shipping. 

Because of the size of this ranch, many of the camps are quite remote. A couple of families there that send their children to our school live almost twenty miles from the nearest paved road. Every time they come to school, they first drive forty minutes on a really rough dirt road, and then at least another half hour on the paved road. Getting to town is more like two hours for them.

This house I went to last weekend is comparatively convenient. It's only about half a mile of dirt road, and they're only about a 20-minute drive to the school. It still feels very remote to go to their house, though, because there isn't anything else around it.

I took this photo on the dirt road to their house.

And this is their house compound as I approached it. That building on the right is a barn.

I am often confronted here with the fact that nothing about my life now is at all how I thought it might be when I was younger. I mean, I grew up mostly in suburbs, graduated from a competitive college-prep high school, had a political internship right out of college that turned into a job in state government that I probably could have done indefinitely if I had wanted to (which I emphatically did not).

The path that led from that to this was surprising and circuitous. And I don't regret any of it. This unlikely place feels the most like home to me of anywhere I have lived, which is a lot of places.

I don't think it's that unusual to end up far from where your younger self might have imagined your life to be. It's just interesting to reflect on.

Which leads me to ask: What about your current life would be the most surprising to a younger you?

Snapshots: It's Spring, And I'm Not Sorry

Not sorry that pretty much everything here has been about spring lately, anyway. This post included . . .

The first rhubarb sighting.

The first sighting of . . . something. Poppy planted this, so I'm not sure what it is, but I'm guessing arugula.

Tulip row that the dogs kept lying on until I moved the rocks to keep them off of the flowers.

Garlic.

The green onions apparently survived the winter.

Lots of apricot blossoms. This tree flowers too early and we never get very many fruits from it, but it sure is pretty.

There are still many daffodils in the mechanic's pit garden, and thus, on my table.

Two of the three peonies we planted last year survived. This is the bigger one.

And a much-less-welcome sign of spring: The return of flies in the house. Boo.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: A Spring-y Dessert

Friday 

Short version: Fried potatoes and eggs

Long version: This was the last night I was eating by myself before my family came home from their trip to Arizona. I had some potatoes that came as a side with my tacos when I took myself to lunch in the city the day before. They were like home fries, so I fried them in a pan with eggs, and that was my Lenten Friday meal.

It was very good, too. I do love potatoes and eggs. Potatoes and anything, really.

I had a salad for lunch, so I considered my vegetable needs met for the day.

Saturday

Short version: Meatballs and rice for some

Long version: I wasn't sure exactly when the travelers would arrive home, nor did I know if anyone would be hungry when they did get home. I decided to have food on hand in any case, so I made some of the ground ram meat into a curry, also using some of the greens from the beets I had bought at the store for the purpose of pickling.

I also cooked another bag of dried chickpeas, using some in this and freezing the rest for future use.

In the end, only a couple of kids wanted to eat, so I just gave them leftover barbecue meatballs and some of the rice I had made for the curry. I figured we would just eat the curry the next day.

Sunday

Short version: Ram curry, rice

Long version: Everything was already made. It just needed to be heated up, and some yogurt added to the curry.

Pre-yogurt curry.

Monday

Short version: Not-Irish sausage and onions, penne with pesto, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: It has become our tradition to have pasta with pesto on St. Patrick's Day. Not at all Irish, but certainly green. And always popular with my children.

This also has the benefit of being an easy meal to make on a work day for me, which this was. I had one more package of Italian sausage in the freezer to go with the pasta, and then made the plates extra green with salad.

I suppose if I were really committed, I would have dyed the onions and sausage green, but I'll only go so far.

Tuesday

Short version: Pot roast, leftover pasta, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: A friend of mine cooked a very large quantity of beef pot roast and brought some for us. We haven't been eating beef lately, since we don't have any right now, and it was nice to have a break from elk and lamb.

The pot roast was just plain, so I pulled it apart and fried it in the last of some tallow rendered from the brisket I made awhile ago, plus some olive oil, and salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftover curry, rice, yogurt with apricot jam

Long version: We had quite a lot of the curry left, so I just made some more rice for that. 

The apricot jam for the yogurt was a kind I had made last summer as an experiment with half honey when I was running low on sugar. I really like the flavor of it, but it is more tart than the standard jam I make with all sugar. So when I put it in yogurt--which is pretty tart, too, being homemade and plain--I actually add some maple syrup to it for a bit more sweetness.

I do this for everyone else, that is. I don't usually eat yogurt. I had some of the jam on a rye cracker with cream cheese, though, and that was very good. I love cream cheese and apricot jam together.

Thursday

Short version: Barbecue beef sandwiches, baked beans, green salad with vinaigrette, baked custard

Long version: More of the beef from my friend--it was a lot of beef--shredded and with homemade barbecue sauce.

I mostly baked the beans because I was baking the custard. And I baked the custard because this was the first day of spring, and we now have enough eggs to make custard again. It seemed appropriate.

I made the actual recipe this time, as opposed to a double recipe, so I baked it in my 2-quart baking dish. This happens to be oval. Then, when I was explaining to the children that I had made the custard to celebrate spring, I said maybe I should have used the colored sugar to decorate it.

So I did. And completely inadvertently, I created an Easter egg custard.

Fun.

I am hesitant to create another food tradition in my already-busy kitchen, but it was pretty fun to have this on the vernal equinox.

Refrigerator check:

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