Friday Food: Homecoming Week

Friday 

Short version: Beans and rice, concession food at the game, leftovers at home

Long version: The cheerleader had a basketball game to cheer at, to which I also brought the younger two boys. They all had some pinto beans with butter and vinegar over leftover rice before we left, and then they all bought their own food at the concession stand at the game. Two had pizza and one had Frito pie, I think.

The remaining child at home had the last of the leftover lamb stew. A. had leftover elk burgers. I had a salad before I left.

Saturday

Short version: Spiral ham, baked potatoes, tomato and cucumber salad with feta

Long version: When ham was on sale for a dollar a pound around Christmas, I bought a few. This was one of them. Since the oven was on to bake the ham, I made baked potatoes.

I was very grateful I made the ham this day, as the rest of the week got very busy. The ham helped. So did canned refried beans and tortillas.

I had half a cucumber to use up, and I had found the good feta at the store I went to the other day, so I used some grape tomatoes to make a salad with those two things. Plus pickled onions. It was good, but nowhere near as good as the same salad I made a few months ago with cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden. Alas for garden produce.

Sunday

Short version: Not-stuffed shells, Italian sausage, peppers and onions, green salad with vinaigrette, pots de creme with cream

Long version: Awhile ago, A. brought home "jumbo" pasta shells and ricotta cheese. I was pretty sure this meant he wanted me to make stuffed shells. Unfortunately, I didn't have any asadero cheese--my mozzarella substitute--until this week, so it had to wait. And then when I went to make them, I found the jumbo shells were not actually that big and looked like they would be impossible to stuff. So I used all the same ingredients to make a baked pasta dish that was kind of like baked ziti. On my sister's recommendation, I didn't pre-boil the shells, instead just adding extra water to the pan with the sauce and dry shells, baking it covered until it was mostly done, then adding the cheese. This worked well. Thanks, sis!

I also made one package of Italian sausage, because the pasta wouldn't have been enough. And I had some peppers that were getting wrinkly, so I threw those in the oven with some onion and olive oil to roast, too.

An Italian-American feast.

I hadn't made pots de creme in a long time. It didn't fit our Italian theme, but as we all know, America is a melting pot. And that means that I, as an American, am free to serve a French (ish) dessert with an Italian (ish) meal.

I was informed by everyone that it was the smoothest pots de creme ever. I don't actually know why it was any different, so I guess I can't re-create it, but I guess it was nice that I got it just right this time.

Monday

Short version: Chicken, bean, and cheese quesadillas, raw tomatoes

Long version: I took the younger two children with me to their brother's basketball scrimmage in the evening, which meant I had about an hour to feed everyone between getting home from work and leaving again. I thought it was an opportune time to use one of the cans of chicken I bought awhile ago for rushed evenings. All I did was mix the drained chicken with salsa and put it in tortillas with cheese and refried beans. A serviceable meal, if far from gourmet. And only nominally homemade, but that's the way this week went.

The tomatoes were something labeled "cocktail tomatoes." I don't know what these are or what sort of cocktail they would be used for. They're small tomatoes on the vine, basically. They were a lot cheaper than the cherry tomatoes, although not as good. Good enough, though.

Tuesday

Short version: Rushed and late casserole, carrot sticks with curry dip, brownies

Long version: I had to sub for a teacher this day, and then I stayed after school to wait for Poppy to finish cheerleading practice. We had the older boys' friend staying with us this night so I could bring the three FFA boys to school for a 5:30 a.m. departure for a wool-judging clinic. Having a guest--and a guest who is a perpetually hungry teenage boy, at that--meant that I was not going to be getting by with quesadillas.

So I got home at 5:15 p.m. and started microwaving potatoes to chop and add to chopped ham, plus butter, the last of some chicken fat and juices, and garlic powder. I browned that under the broiler, and then added a bunch of grated cheddar to melt in. That was the casserole. 

At the same time, I cut up some carrot sticks and put those on the table with some curry dip (sweet curry powder+mayonnaise) for the hungry children. And I made the brownies.

We didn't eat until about 6 p.m., which is pretty late for us, but at least there was enough food. There was even a small serving of the casserole left to be my lunch at work the next day. Yay.

Wednesday

Short version: Lamb steaks, bread and butter, green salad with vinaigrette, bread with jam

Long version: This night we had another child-guest with us, but this was Poppy's friend, so she ate way less than our guest the night before (who happened to be her older brother). The FFA travelers came home hungry, and I luckily had half of a lamb steak left for them.

The bread and jam was the dessert stand-in, since I was working on Tuesday when I had been planning to bake cookies.

Thursday

Short version: Bean and cheese quesadillas, homecoming food

Long version: Crazy day for homecoming. I brought the three non-basketball-playing children home after the pep rally to gather all their required apparel* before going to the basketball player's game at 4 p.m. We were home about half an hour, which was long enough to make the three kids a quesadilla using canned refried beans, cheese, and the "extra grande" flour tortillas A. bought at the store.

They don't even fit in my biggest skillet, but if I fold them over, they mostly do, so I guess that's good enough.

We were at the homecoming festivities all night, so everyone got food at the concession stand, too. Mostly things involving more cheese, like pizza and nachos. Not the healthiest night, but homecoming comes but once a year, I guess.

I had a piece of the quesadilla one child didn't eat, plus some cottage cheese with strawberry jam, before we left at 3:30 p.m. and was so tired when we got home at 10 p.m. from the community dance that I wasn't hungry for anything but my bed. Thank goodness my friend offered to drop the older boys off on her way home from the dance.

Refrigerator check:

Needs some re-stocking.

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

* Poppy needed her cheer uniform plus a dress for her job as the queen's crown-bearer, the eldest son needed nice clothes because he was on the homecoming court, and the basketball player needed nice clothes brought to him for the community dance that evening.

The Bible in Less Than a Year

I decided last year that I would read the Bible. It seemed kind of dumb that as much of a reader as I am, I had never read the whole Bible, arguably the most influential book for all the literature of the following two thousand years. 

I spontaneously started on Ash Wednesday last year, which was in February. I didn't pick that day on purpose; that's just when my Bible was delivered. I ordered a new one because we only had a King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims Bible, neither of which are written in a style I prefer*. I more or less randomly bought something labeled the New Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Anglicized Text Bible. I didn't want a "study" Bible with a million footnotes. I just wanted to read the text.

So I started right at the beginning and just . . . read.

I didn't have a particular number of pages to read a day or anything, though I did have the goal to finish the whole thing in a year. Some days I read a lot. Some days I didn't read it at all. 

I finished last week, so it didn't take me quite a year.

Some random takeaways:

Man, those Old Testament books with all the battles are rough to get through. They're worse than the genealogical lists of names, in my opinion. I did actually read all those names. I found it interesting which names have survived to this day as popular names and which have been abandoned.

My favorite book was the Book of Sirach, which I had never read before. Good advice in that one, and easy to read.

The Book of Sirach in my actual Bible. I did not mark any passages, because I detest reading marked-up books. Too distracting.

It was surprisingly affecting to read all four of the Gospels all together. You know what's coming, but it's still shocking every time.

Also shocking is what Jesus is recorded as having really said. The popular idea of him as some kind of feel-good hippie is so far off from the actual teachings in the Gospels that it's actually funny.

Paul's letters are very, very interesting to read in their entirety. His personality comes through quite clearly.

I liked the version I had, and it was relatively easy to get through. 

So now I'm wondering what I should read next. A. suggested the Catechism of the Catholic Church. That would certainly be a challenge and would probably take another year. Maybe longer.

Have you ever read the Bible? What did you think?

* And of course, the King James Bible isn't Catholic and thus does not include all the books I wanted to read.

Snapshots: The Long-Anticipated Appliance

First, for my mother:

Look, Ma! I have a dryer!

In actual fact, I have had this dryer for some time now. I purchased it a month ago. It was delivered a bit over a week after I bought it. A. was very prompt in setting it up that very day, hooking up the vent and all. Which is when he discovered that the three-prong plug on the dryer was not the same as the three-prong outlet on our wall.

Sigh.

We had some kind of older style of 220-volt three-prong outlet. So he sent me the link to order the proper cord, we waited some more for that to be delivered, and he put it on yesterday.

And then I washed a load of laundry at 4:15 p.m. which was dry before I went to bed. The miracles of the modern age, indeed.

It's too bad I didn't have a (functional) dryer during our last spell of cold weather, during which I was literally hanging up laundry when it was 14 degrees outside. We did, however, have the good old woodstove. And I did figure out how to cook on it.

Some of you might remember the great pleasure I got out of cooking on our woodstove at Blackrock. The woodstove there was literally just a giant cast-iron box, which was perfect for cooking on. The whole thing was like a stove burner. Every part of it was blazing hot at all times. Good for pumping out heat and cooking on. Not so good for keeping small children from branding themselves accidentally. 

The woodstove in this house has a kind of metal grate enclosing the entirety of the firebox. Much better for non-branded children, but not so good for cooking on. The surface of this grate is not hot enough to simmer  a pot of water. Or food.

However! I no longer have tiny children! They can all understand the concept of keeping their bodies away from hot surfaces! And that meant I could lift the top of the safety grate thing to access the firebox itself.

Which is what I did to cook this pot of pinto beans.

Which then went into this chili.

I also kept a covered saucepan of water on there to stay hot, which was handy because our constantly-used electric kettle died right in the middle of this cold snap. We do have a microwave to heat water for tea or A.'s instant coffee, but the children were home for a couple of days doing their schooling online, and when our microwave is running for more than a minute, it messes with the Wi-Fi in most of the house and makes their Zoom meetings drop. 

Not on Zoom, but still using the Wi-Fi to do an online learning program for school.

So when A. went into the kitchen to get more coffee or tea, which is a frequent occurrence on very cold days, he could just use the already-hot water on the stove and microwave it for about thirty seconds to get it to a true boil.

 I also kept an uncovered pan of water on the stove to evaporate and put some much-needed moisture into the very dry air. And, as you can see, to thaw some frozen lamb stock for the coming chili.

I did order another kettle, which arrived a couple of days ago. The one we had was no longer available, so I got one that looked pretty much the same. Unfortunately, it doesn't heat quite as quickly, and also the button is on the handle at the top, rather than a small lever at the bottom. This makes it harder to find in the dark kitchen, which is where I hit the switch before I start getting dressed.

Still boils the water, though. And makes that trippy blue light.

Also related to the stretch of very wintery weather was the lamb carcass. A. slaughtered the last ram lamb some time ago and hung it in the tree out front to age. We were planning on butchering it on the really bad weather day when we would be inside anyway. But when he took it down from the tree in the morning, it was frozen solid. So we had to leave it inside to thaw. Our non-carpeted and relatively warm spots for this were pretty limited, so we put on the floor of the dining room.

I spy with my little eye . . .

Amusingly, every one of the children woke up, came into the dining room, and said not one word about the lamb carcass on the floor. Too accustomed to such things to comment on it, I suppose.

We never got to it that day, though, so we moved it into A.'s office until we could get to it. That room isn't really heated much above freezing, and the lamb had been frozen for the better part of its aging, so we figured it could use some more time to age properly. It did this on top of my washing machine, which is also in A.'s office.

And then I needed to actually use the washing machine, so we moved the carcass again. This time on top of the dog crates that were also in A.'s office. It seemed pretty mean that the dogs were sleeping in these crates literally right under all that delicious meat, but it would also have been mean to leave them outside when it was zero degrees. So they did indeed sleep under the lamb for several nights until we finally got around to cutting it up.

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