Friday Food: My Commercial Kitchen

Friday 

Short version: Chili, tortillas with cheese

Long version: I cooked a pot of pinto beans in the morning and then used those, plus ground beef, to make chili. I also added the bag of pureed squash I had thawed a few days before and never used, plus the drippings from cooking hamburgers the day before, and the turkey stock that had been hanging out in the refrigerator.

The tomato product used in the chili was some of a food-service-sized can of concentrated crushed tomatoes that my sister brought when she visited. She and her friend were on their way home from volunteering at a camp, and they brought me all the giant cans of things from the kitchen that would otherwise have been thrown away.

People think of me when they see food in this quantity. I have a reputation.

I used a few cups of that in the chili, put a couple of quart bags of it in the freezer, and saved the rest in the refrigerator for the next day.

I had just enough homemade corn tortillas left from the night before for everyone to have one with melted cheese to dip in their chili.

Saturday

Short version: Spaghetti with sausage meat sauce, peppers and onions, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I used the rest of the tomato sauce to make a meat sauce with a couple of pounds of loose Italian sausage, plus roasted garlic from the freezer and dried herbs. The best thing about sausage is that it pretty much is the seasoning, so you don't have to add a lot more to the sauce.

My mom had left a bag of mini bell peppers, which I used with some of the 36 pounds of onions I've been working through.

No, I did not add a digit there. I have 36 pounds of onions because the commodities delivery last month apparently included more onions than anyone in our community can use. Except me! There was a big cardboard bin with many bags of onions on Main Street when we were there for church. They had been there for four days already, it was starting to freeze at night, and I decided anyone who was going to take any probably already had. So I took a dozen bags (leaving like ten still in the bin). 

I've been working on cooking them down and putting them in the freezer since then. I've gotten through maybe half the bags so far. That's where the onions came from that I cooked with the peppers.

Sunday

Short version: Asian-ish pork roast, porky rice, roasted green beans, chocolate pudding

Long version: Last time A. went to the store, he came home with a truly absurd quantity of pork. This store sells what they call "Wow! packs" of meat for a lower price, which in this case was two pork butts packaged together at $1.49/pound.  So you're talking about 25 pounds of meat per package.

A. bought four of those. In case you don't want to do the math, that's a hundred pounds of pork butt.

So, I cooked one.

My typical method for pork butts or picnic roasts is to put them in my very large and deep casserole with nothing with salt and water, cook covered in the oven until I can pull the meat apart, and then season it when I fry it or broil it or otherwise get it crispy. This then results in unseasoned rendered lard, plus the juices.

This time, I re-heated the shredded meat with soy sauce, maple syrup, and vinegar on the pan with the green beans I was roasting. 

Green beans courtesy of my mother the produce bearer.

I used the mostly-de-fatted juices to cook the rice that went with it.

Monday

Short version: Leftover pork, leftover rice with curried split peas, cucumbers

Long version: We had Mass in the village at 5 p.m. for the Immaculate Conception, and I'm mayordoma this month. Our church and school are in the same village, so I just let my kids play on the playground for about half an hour after school before we went to church. 

We got home just after six p.m. I had already made the curried split peas, except for adding the cream. The pork just needed to be fried to re-heat it. I had to get dinner on the table quickly because A., who had been driving the bus, and the basketball player were leaving at 6:45 to go to the other village for Mass, as they had missed the one at our church earlier.

Somewhat hectic, but everyone was fed.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover chili, tortillas with cheese

Long version: I went straight to First Communion class with Poppy after subbing at the school, so leftovers were definitely the order of the day. Good thing we had chili on hand. An excellent leftover.

Wednesday

Short version: Sausage, mashed potatoes, leftover pork and split peas, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I had some leftover pork and curried split peas, but not enough for everyone. That's why I cooked one package of cheddar-jalapeno sausages. And I made mashed potatoes. 

Everyone had the potatoes and split peas. A. and eldest son had the sausage. The others had the pork.

Thursday

Short version: Roasted chickens, potatoes and onions, roasted or raw broccoli

Long version: I thawed two of the roosters we butchered awhile ago and then just cooked them with salt, pepper, thyme, and olive oil.

I don't know if they were actually roasted because I cooked them at 325 degrees. Does it have to be high heat to be considered roasting? Maybe they were just baked. Anyway, I did that because these were pretty small and the home-raised ones don't have a lot of fat on them, so I didn't want to dry them out. They came out well.

I really dislike carving chickens, though, and especially home-raised chickens. They're much harder to cut apart because their joints are stronger.

Taking a break partway through carving the second chicken.

I had my big stainless steel skillet still on the stove from cooking down some of the many onions earlier in the day, so I just put some sliced potatoes in there with another sliced onion, plus olive oil, and stuck that in the oven with the chicken.

Ditto the broccoli. It went in the cast iron skillet I had cooked eggs in, with olive oil. I did turn the heat up after the chicken was out, though, to get that a bit more browned.

Refrigerator check:

I bought a LOT of cream in advance of Christmas. Walmart always runs out if I wait too long.

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

On Singing

My brother's birthday was the past weekend. We have a tradition in our family of calling on the birthday and the whole family singing to the birthday person over the phone. I spent all day Friday reminding myself to call and sing when everyone was home after dinner . . . only to forget after dinner.

Boooo.

But! When I texted my brother to apologize, he said no worries, he had been at work anyway (he's an airline pilot) and wouldn't be celebrating his birthday until Sunday. Which meant we had another opportunity to sing.

To make certain that I wouldn't forget this time, I made a note to myself and stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet.

I suppose a normal person would have used a note in their phone or something.

I sent this to my brother, and he responded that he thought I should keep it up there all the time, like a motivational "Live, Laugh, Love" reminder.

One thing I do not need to be reminded to do, however, is sing.

I love to sing. I do it all the time, often spontaneously. I have a pretty good voice, an incredible storehouse of songs in my head, and a remarkable ability to reproduce a melody. I sing a lot of songs from when I was a kid: songs from the radio, songs I learned in school, songs my family sang. 

I was very happy when our current priest instituted singing at our Masses again. I remember many of the hymns from my childhood and I sing those, too.

My mother is a singer and always sang in church choirs, as did my sister. I did, too, when I was younger, although I never learned to read music or sing parts well like they can. 

I feel like this is not as common as it used to be, however. Both A. and I were required to participate in elementary school choirs around 5th grade. I have never heard of this now, even in places much larger than here. A couple of my children are able to carry a tune, but not because of any formal training.

Do people not sing as much anymore? What do you think? Do you sing? Do your kids?

Snapshots: Back Home

There have been a lot of photos of New Orleans lately. But we're back home now, and back to our regular High Plains photos.

Like so.

Our priest and his brother came over Sunday for our belated Thanksgiving feast. We were sitting in the living room after dinner while the kids played Taboo, and Father picked up the little drawing LED board that was next to the couch. He drew on it for at least fifteen minutes. I couldn't imagine what he could be drawing that would take so long, but I was appropriately impressed when he showed us the finished product.

This is what he was looking at.

And this is what he drew.

I was baking bread on Tuesday anyway, so I made a loaf of bread for the FFA fundraiser auction at school the next day. Since it was for an auction, I made the fancy loaf that people seem to expect sourdough to be.

These round loaves look cool, but are very impractical for sandwiches.

We had our first snow of the season on Wednesday. I had thought it was just going to be a dusting, but it turned out to be a couple of inches.

Good thing I bought new boots last spring.

I didn't miss breaking ice in the water troughs.

Snowy sheep mobbing their hay.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.