Friday Food: Raising Cane's On the Road

Friday 

Short version: Repurposed leftovers, cucumber

Long version: Second day of the county fair and also the second day of a nasty heat wave, which meant little motivation to get in the kitchen for me. Luckily, we had enough of the leftover ground beef/bean/rice skillet from the day before to use as burrito filling. So that is what I did. 

I even turned on a burner to make toasted burritos, which I thought was very brave of me. Ahem.

Saturday

Short version: Half-hearted pasta

Long version: Last day of the fair, and another hot one. This is always a long day, and I always bring a cooler of drinks and snacks for the long day sitting at the fair grounds. In the morning, I had made pasta using a quart of meat sauce I found in the freezer, plus grated asadero from the freezer.

I actually used the pasta pot at first to make pudding and then yogurt, because I had almost a gallon of milk to be used promptly.

First . . .

Second . . .

Third.

And all that before 7:30 a.m.

No one was very hungry when we got home, thanks to all the snacks and the heat, but some of them ate a little pasta before we left for the dance.

Sunday

Short version: Re-sauced pasta, green salad with vinaigrette, chocolate pudding with cream

Long version: The previous day's pasta really needed more sauce. There was a lot of it left, so I made more sauce for it using an entire 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, a couple cloves of garlic, the few collard greens and the parsley I brought home from my fair entries (blended in), and cream. 

Much better.

Monday

Short version: Fried bean tacos at home, Raising Cane's chicken on the road

Long version: I left this day to drive to a not-close city with one son, leaving A. with the other three children. He made his special tacos for them, which involves canned refried beans and cheese in corn tortillas that are then fried in lard.

The son with me was very happy to see a Raising Cane's chicken restaurant near our hotel. I had never been there, or even heard of it, but it was pretty good. 

Tuesday

Short version: French toast at home, sushi and curry on the road

Long version: French toast is another of A.'s specialties, so that is what they had at home. Son and I stopped for the night in a small town to visit a friend and we went to a Thai restaurant somewhat nearby that had some sushi rolls. 

I do not eat sushi, so I got curry. I've never ordered curry in New Mexico, but I should have predicted it would be way too hot for me. Can it be otherwise in this Land of Chile? I ate some of it mixed with a lot of rice, but it definitely burned.

I also got a glass of red wine, but only because they didn't have any white wine.

Wednesday

Short version: Hamburger steaks with milk gravy, rice, tomato salad, ice cream

Long version: We returned from our trip around 1 p.m., after having stopped at the grocery store on the way, of course. There I had purchased one of those 10-pound rolls of ground beef, which is what I used to make the hamburger steaks. These are just highly seasoned ground beef in large, thick patties. I made gravy for them with cornstarch and milk.

I was most excited about the tomato salad. I came home to find quite a lot of ripe tomatoes, and I had just purchased asadero cheese--my mozzarella substitute--at the store. Those, along with basil from the garden, thinly sliced onion, and a vinaigrette, comprised the salad.

So good.

I also got the ice cream at the store. 

Thursday

Short version: Grilled pork chops and chicken, grilled bread, corn on the cob, ice cream

Long version: Yet another thing I bought at the store was starter fluid so I could finally use up the charcoal without building an actual fire. It was very hot this day--95 degrees--and it seemed like a good day to grill. I had only one package of sirloin pork chops, so I also took out a package of chicken breasts. These were way too big, however, and would have taken forever on the grill. Which is why I cut them in half both lengthwise and crosswise. 

I marinated both kinds of meat in a mustard vinaigrette. Marinating helps a lot with relatively bland meat like this. But I still served it with barbecue sauce.

Did I get the corn at the store the day before? Why yes, I did.

I had made chocolate chip cookies in the morning before it got hot, but the older boys had their first day of classes this day and informed me they got cookies at lunch. So I offered them ice cream, instead, which they were happy to accept.

Refrigerator check:

Messy, because I just threw everything in when I got home on Wednesday and haven't organized it yet.

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

The View from the Bench

Right outside our porch door, we have a big wooden bench that A. made some years ago. If I can manage to sneak outside without anyone following me, I can enjoy some peace and the view from the bench*.

I particularly like sitting there as the sun is setting, or even after it has set. The light lingers almost an hour after sunset, because it's so flat here.

To the west (ish.)

And the other way.

There are some benefits to living a hundred miles from anywhere, and the bench is one of them.

* Not that I object to their company (usually), but anywhere my children are immediately becomes less peaceful.

Snapshots: Heading to the County Fair

I had a couple of errands in town that couldn't wait, and since I was going to the town with the (tiny) dinosaur museum that my two youngest children had been asking to visit again, I took them with me.

This is a giant ammonite. The green hand on the display indicates that you can touch it. The touchability of many of the displays is one reason my children like this museum.

Since my washing machine is still in being repaired--there were several machines waiting for repairs already, so I knew this was not going to be a fast turnaround--I took the opportunity to stop at the single laundromat in town to wash three baskets of clothing.

It was a surprisingly nice laundromat for what is admittedly often a kind of sketchy town.

The children were enthralled with the novelty of a laundromat, as they had never been in one before. I hadn't used one in years myself. We only used the washers, though, eschewing the dryers in favor of just bringing everything home wet and hanging it on the line at home.

We went to the grocery store, of course, before coming home, where the son with me was excited to see a kind of spicy Doritos he had tried before and liked. I told him he could buy them himself, and he did.

This is definitely not something I would ever bring home on my own.

We've been at the county fair for the past three days*. I always enter several things in the open class contests at the fair. Basically whatever I find in the garden, plus something baked and something canned. I don't grow or can anything specifically for the fair; I just enter whatever I have.

This year, that was cucumbers, tomatoes, collard greens, mint, parsley, carrots, green tomato chutney, currant jelly, and a Bonnie Butter cake.

I also had the idea for a very large wildflower arrangement that came to me while I was circling the village during my trudgery. I went out the morning the fair started and gathered all the likely-looking plants I found.

The raw materials.

The hot weather had finished off most of the more colorful flowers, so I was limited to white and yellow. Also, the liner in my container kept leaking and I had to keep taking everything out and re-lining the outer container with other things, which meant I rearranged it at least three times.

I was still pretty happy with how it turned out, though.

And it won Grand Champion in the Floriculture division.

One son won Grand Champion in the Arts and Crafts division with this chair he made.

He didn't even use a plan for it, instead just making it up out of his head and some two-by-fours.

Another son did a really cool stone shaping and chiseling project. It turned out very well, although they had some trouble figuring out how to categorize it. I think it ended up in the "carved sculpture" category. And of course, there were Poppy's brownies. Both of those things got first place ribbons, so our family was well-represented at the fair this year.

The last fair event is always the community dance on Saturday night. 

All ages, all two-stepping in the livestock pavilion.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* And every time we go to the fairgrounds, I have to put this song on in the car.