Friday Food: Lent Begins

Friday 

Short version: Tuna melt sandwiches, roasted potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: One of the track boys came home after the first week of track practice informing me his coach instructed them to rest and eat a lot over the weekend. Accordingly, I asked the trackster what he would like to eat.

This is what he wanted.

Seems like a good carb-heavy choice for all those calories burned.

I just had the salad with some of the tuna salad in it, because I have not been running track. My slow jogs around our semi-ghost town don't count.

Saturday

Short version: Ram 'n' bean burritos, or pasta

Long version: This was the day A. and I were grinding ram meat, as well as some more elk meat. I had also made some chili beans mostly to have on hand for Lent, since they're meatless. And I had made some red chile puree from dried chiles A. had brought home.

I pull the stems off the dried chiles, shake out the seeds, soak them in hot water for awhile, then puree them.

Given all of this, it seemed logical to combine these things into a burrito filling, So that is what I did. Then I took the younger two to the district finals basketball game for Poppy to cheer one last time. While we were gone, the oldest child made pasta for him and his younger brother, using some of the same meat and beans.

Sunday

Short version: Ram curry, rice, King Cake or chocolate-peanut butter cookies

Long version: I used some more of the ground ram to make curry. Although aging the meat helps a lot with the taste, it does still taste a bit muttony, as this was an almost two year old ram. So it's best with things like chile or curry.

I used some already-cooked split peas in the curry, too, to thicken it. The resulting dish was very unaesthetic, but everyone liked it.

My mother sent us the King Cake. 

From Haydel's bakery, of course.

We ate it this night instead of saving it for Fat Tuesday because there are always leftovers. And what can you do with leftover King Cake on Ash Wednesday? Stare at it forlornly, that's what. But this way, the kids got to have the leftovers for their breakfast on Monday morning, which is small consolation for having to go to school, but does at least start the week on a delicious--and sugary--note.

Monday

Short version: Leftover curry and rice, Snow's clam chowder, garlic bread, cucumber, cookies

Long version: There was enough curry left for A. and one of the children. One child wasn't eating. The remaining two children had the clam chowder.

I had an egg sandwich using a slice of garlic bread. Very good it was, too.

Tuesday

Short version: Jambalaya, butter-swim biscuits, green salad with vinaigrette, pecan pie with vanilla ice cream

Long version: Fat Tuesday! And that apparently now means jambalaya. I made that for the first time last year and it was so popular I thought I should make it again. It's a pretty easy meal, actually, and can be made ahead. I found andouille sausage at Walmart, of all places, so I had everything to make it.

Interestingly, in an advertisement that came with our King Cake, Haydel's had what they called "a traditional maple syrup pecan pie." I did not know maple syrup was traditional in pecan pie--seems odd, as maple trees for sure do not grow where pecans do--but it really is excellent. I use this recipe, but substitute dark maple syrup 1:1 for the golden syrup called for.

Haydel's sells theirs for like seventy dollars. I could literally make a dozen pies for that much money. And then I could sell the extra and finance my future pies for the coming year. 

Assuming, of course, that I don't bake them TWICE AS LONG as they're supposed to be baked. Which is, in fact, what I did this time when I got distracted by making the jambalaya and forgot the pie was in the oven.

Amazingly, it wasn't charred. The crust exposed on the top was very over-browned, so I cut that off. I started to scrape off the top, very browned, layer of the filling, but when I tasted some of it, it actually tasted good. Extra-caramelized and sort of candied. So we ate it anyway. 

It was definitely ugly, though.

The Ugly Cake is a staple in my house. Now we can add Ugly Pies to my list of specialties.

Wednesday

Short version: Spanish tortilla, leftover biscuits

Long version: I made the Spanish tortilla--no bacon--and we'd have a nearly instant meatless meal when we got home from our Ash Wednesday Mass around 6 p.m. All I had to do was heat it up for a few minutes in the microwave and we could sit down to eat. 

The leftover biscuits were a nice bonus.

Thursday

Short version: Hunter's pie, carrots and curry dip

Long version: Shepherd's pie, but with ground elk. And I added some pureed calabaza to the meat mixture, which has the effect of thickening it as well as adding more vegetal matter.

Potatoes are a vegetable, anyway, according to my family. Plus, it also had peas, corn, and calabaza in it.

And then there were the carrots. Poppy cut those up and made the curry dip before dinner while the hunter's pie was baking, so they were our appetizer.

Refrigerator check:

I have started ordering milk through the school Sysco delivery every week, so now we will always have milk on Thursdays. As long as we're in school, anyway.

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

Happy Fat Tuesday!

I have mentioned before--maaaaany times--that my mother is from New Orleans. Because of that, certain traditions from that city have always been a part of my life. Mostly food, since that is a big part of the culture of New Orleans.

Pork, greens, black-eyed peas for our health, wealth, and happiness on New Year's Day. Red beans and rice. Grillades and grits. King cake for Mardi Gras. 

This year's king cake, sent by my mother from Haydel's bakery and eaten by us for Sunday dessert. Warmed up with butter, of course.

And now, jambalaya, biscuits, and pecan pie for Fat Tuesday.

This was not something my mother made when I was growing up that I remember. Not on Fat Tuesday, at least. The jambalaya was something I made for the very first time last year, just because A. was remembering Popeye's jambalaya so fondly, and I was sure I would be able to make something at least as good.

This year, I'm adding the biscuits (these butter-swim biscuits) because they were very much like the greasy Popeye's biscuits that A. also loved. And the pecan pie because I now have a really good recipe for it that everyone in the family likes (except I use dark maple syrup instead of golden syrup.)

So I guess I've come up with my own tradition for Fat Tuesday. It's funny to think that these are the things my children will carry forward into their own lives--or not, we'll see--and consider just family tradition because it's what they remember from their childhoods. 

I have become the tradition maker instead of the recipient. An inevitable generational shift, I suppose.

So tell me: What family traditions have you inherited or started yourself?

P.S. I used this as our wake-up song this morning. After it was over, one boy announced, "I like that song. It has lots of food in it." Indeed.

Snapshots: Spring!

It was warm last week! It wasn't painful to be on recess duty at work!

Ahhhh.

Poppy got some new little claw clips for her hair as a gift, and then I had to figure out how to use them.

Not the most secure, but good enough for church.

My eldest child had been telling me, completely out of the blue, that Post Malone (he is a . . . singer? rapper? some kind of entertainer, anyway) had his own Oreos now. Okay.

And then what did I see when I was at Walmart on Tuesday?

This is not an appealing advertisement to me, but I guess I'm not the demographic, anyway.

A. decided he needs to get a new ram this year, so we had to get rid of the old one. We did this by putting it in the freezer, of course.

We now bring this big wood bench A. made right into the kitchen to do the more-brutal part of the butchering on. I do not want a reciprocating saw on my dining room table.

All that butchering made it hard for me to get out into the garden. I really wanted to plant some seeds, though, in anticipation of rain this week. I was just planning on planting spring things--lettuce, radishes, arugula--right in the beds we dug a month or so ago to separate out the crowded rhubarb plants.

So when Poppy came in the afternoon to announce she was bored, I handed her the seeds, showed her how to make some rows with a stick, and set her loose to plant the spring garden.

I stayed in the kitchen with the raw meat; she planted the seeds outside. She got the better end of this deal.

And speaking of spring and gardens . . .

Crocuses!

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.