Friday Food: Beans x 2

Friday

Short version: Magic beans, leftover rice, cucumber and tomato salad

Long version: I reeeeally did not want to make dinner. I was in town in the afternoon and didn't get home until 4:30 p.m. I had nothing prepared for dinner, and was so hot and sleepy in the car on the way home that I really considered just telling everyone to make themselves a cheese sandwich for dinner.

By the time I got all the laundry hung up that I had brought home from the laundromat* and put away all the groceries, I was awake again. So I made dinner.

I had six barbecue meatballs left, and quite a bit of rice. I had thought to stretch the meatballs with beans, and the barbecue sauce the meatballs were cooked in is very similar to the ingredients in baked beans. So that's pretty much what I made. 

I sauteed onion in bacon grease, added the chopped up meatballs, then one can of rinsed kidney beans and one of black beans, and then molasses, ketchup, and vinegar, and simmered it all together while I made the salad. This messy mixture was served either on or over rice, according to preference.

A slightly blurry photo that still conveys the sloppiness of this meal. Tasty, though.

Saturday

Short version: Pork chops, macaroni and cheese, frozen peas, ice cream

Long version: I used one big package of sirloin chops for this meal, first browning each one individually and then broiling them on a big pan all to finish cooking. This is an annoying way to cook them, but I do it this way because I have to cook so many that I would have to use two big skillets.

I very, very rarely make macaroni and cheese. I'm not sure why it came to me to make it this day, but I did. Poppy helped me. We used this recipe, except we used half Parmesan and half cheddar. This was, unsurprisingly, very popular.

Ice cream just because I wanted to get the last of the mint chocolate chip out of the freezer.

Sunday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: We were at our parish potluck in the late afternoon. I brought coleslaw and some Crispy Rice Treats that Poppy helped me make. No one was particularly hungry for dinner, although a couple of boys had leftover mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese at some point before bed.

Monday

Short version: More leftovers, and sausage

Long version: I had far too many containers of random things taking up space in the refrigerator. Therefore, I put together plates for everyone with leftover rice, macaroni and cheese, or mashed potatoes, plus the rest of the magic beans, some sausage I cooked, and either coleslaw or Holy's cabbage.

Tuesday

Short version: Ram curry, rice

Long version: It was cool enough this day to cook dried split peas and then simmer some ram pieces I had saved for stew. These I just simmered until I could pull the meat off. That meat was then combined with some of the split peas, pureed tomatoes from the ones I had roasted the day before, onion, garlic, some carrots I harvested from the garden a few weeks ago that had gotten a bit bendy, curry powder, diced potatoes, and cream at the end.

The rice was cooked in some of the broth that resulted from simmering the meat.

I forgot that the older boys wouldn't be home for dinner, so I really should have made something simpler. However, this gave me the opportunity to freeze some of the curry--before I added the potatoes and cream--to have something prepared for later.

I had some of the ram meat in a collard salad.

Hers 'n' his dinners.

Wednesday

Short version: Pintos and sausage, leftover rice, cornbread, cucumbers

Long version: I am once again reminded that my family is very picky about sausage. There was a lot left after Monday's meal, but I knew most of the family would not want to eat it plain. That's why I thawed a quart of frozen, cooked pinto beans and added the diced sausage to that. I also made a roux and added onion and tomato, so it was very much like red beans, but with sausage instead of ham.

The cornbread was not at all soft this time--I used almost half a cup less milk--which made it much more popular.

Thursday

Short version: Cottage pie

Long version: I typically use frozen corn and frozen peas as the vegetables in my cottage pie, since a couple of my children have a great aversion to cooked carrots in anything. Annoyingly, I found I'm out of frozen peas, but while I was searching for them, I found the last cup or so of green beans from last year's garden. I chopped those up and used them instead.

This year's green beans have produced a total of five beans, so it's not looking like I'll be freezing any this year. Or even really eating any.

Refrigerator check:

Now that school has started, I can get the Sysco milk again. Yay.

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

* Yup, still waiting on a "control panel" for my washing machine. We're at one month and counting of tub laundry and laundromats. The repair place told me the part will be there at the end of next week. I certainly hope so. 

Project Vehicles

A few days ago, a friend texted me to ask if we would like to buy the old Jeep they had in their shed. It is an OLD Jeep--1965, I think?--and the engine had seized several years ago, so it was just sitting there. They really wanted to get it out of their shed, and remembered my eldest son's interest in it when he saw it last year during a trip to their house to pick peaches.

These vehicles are relatively rare, and they were selling it very cheaply. A. couldn't say yes fast enough to that. 

We towed it home yesterday.

So jaunty.

Unusually, this Jeep has actual metal doors, a hard top, and a metal back, so that when all those pieces are on, it will be a fully enclosed vehicle. A lot of these just have canvas or plastic or whatever for the top and sides.

Obviously, this is going to be a lot of work to get in working order. The middle son is very enamored of it, though, so by the time he's old enough to drive in three years, it should be ready to go. Not that you can go very far in it--I doubt it would go any faster than 50 miles per hour--but I guess it would be good for hunting or whatever.

In the meantime, A. and the eldest continue to work on the brown truck.

There it is. It's definitely brown. It's a 1982 4X4 Dodge Ram, for those who care. And yes, I had to ask A. what it is.

This is waiting on I think a carburetor--but don't quote me on that--and then it should be running. This son can actually get his provisional license in just a few months, so it's good this one is almost ready to go down the road.

Getting a driver's license in our house apparently means you must be willing to work on a vehicle several decades older than you. 

I'll stick with my new(ish) Honda, though, thank you.

One of these things is not like the other . . .

Snapshots: Toilet Legends

A couple of random kitchen shots this week . . .

When I make my collard salads, I put just a little bit of maple syrup in the dressing. The collards can use the sweetness. Last time I was preparing the collards, there was just a tiny bit of maple syrup in the syrup pourer*, so I just took off the top and was very pleased to find that the upended pourer fit perfectly in the salad dressing jar to drain out.

Drip drip.

The quantities of food I purchase these days come in very large containers. These would be awkward to cook with regularly, so I spend a lot of time decanting from giant containers into more-manageable ones. As I did with the molasses I got this week.

Between gingersnaps and homemade barbecue sauce, I go through more molasses than your average person.

I took a picture of my cart of groceries this week, just because there weren't very many--I'm anticipating a much bigger stock-up trip to Walmart soon--and I was betting with myself that it would still be more than a hundred dollars.

It was, but mostly because I bought alcohol. Without that, it would have been ninety dollars.

This was right next to the front door of the fancy hotel I stayed in last week.

Correctly identified by the son with me as the Virgin of Guadalupe. That's Juan Diego kneeling.

Having something like that outside a random hotel is so New Mexico.

I purchased a new toilet this week to replace the one in the adults' bathroom. The box was one of the more intriguing things I've seen in awhile.

There's a lot going on here.

The scatalogical motto I can see, but why did a toilet maker name their company after a Roman statesman? Then I looked it up and discovered that Cato is said to have met with an Egyptian king while on the toilet, to convey disrespect. Oooookay.

We don't yet know what a "destroyer flush" is, but I guess we'll see when A. installs the toilet.

And last, flowers!

I used apricot branches in this week's altar arrangement. I felt like the background needed to be darker and more solid to show up better on the altar.

It looks better from farther away, so I think it will work.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

 

* I actually bought one of these maple syrup dispensers like they have at diners. We use maple syrup a lot, and these really are the best and least-messy way to pour it.