Friday Food: Delayed Pizza

Friday 

Short version: Chicken, biscuits, tomato/cucumber salad, apple/pear crisp

Long version: I had enough chicken left from the bag of leg quarters I had thawed earlier in the week to separate them into thighs and drumsticks and roast them. Which is what I did.

Standard baking powder biscuits that went in with the chicken.

Standard biscuits, non-standard shapes. As ever.

The salad had cherry tomatoes and cucumbers from the store, which are never as good as garden tomatoes and cucumbers, of course, but good enough with homemade ranch dressing and pickled onions.

Saturday

Short version: Wedding food

Long version: This was the night we were at the giant ranch wedding. The food came from a local (-ish, maybe 130 miles) Mexican restaurant. It was beef or chicken fajitas with flour tortillas, rice, beans, chips and salsa, and, of course, dessert. Way better than most wedding food. The cake was even pretty good. I didn't try the vanilla/raspberry cake, not being a fan of fruit in cakes, but I did like the German chocolate cake.

Because I didn't have to cook dinner, I spent some time canning apricots and rhubarb. All of our apricots got killed by frost, but my friend down the hill in a much warmer town has a couple of trees at her place. She told me last week they were starting to drop their fruit, so I made a trip to town on Wednesday mostly just to pick apricots. It's a long way for fruit, but these are the only apricots we're getting this year, and a year without apricot jam is a sad year indeed.

I ended up with about eight pints of apricot jam. And then, since I had everything out and the kitchen was all sticky already anyway, I made some rhubarb jam, too.

I know this is not eight pints of apricot jam. There was an un-canned quart jar in the refrigerator already.

Sunday

Short version: Chicken tetrazzini, apple/pear crisp with vanilla ice cream

Long version: It was quite chilly this day, so that simmering the chicken bones from Friday's meal to make stock provided some welcome heat to the house. With the meat I pulled off those bones, plus the stock, and then spaghetti, onions, garlic, cream, milk, peas, and cheese, I made a casserole of something like chicken tetrazzini. No mushrooms, though.

It was quite tasty, and very filling.

I used one quart jar of canned apple slices and one quart jar of canned pear slices for the crisp. Canning fruit is always worth it, even though it's a huge pain at the time.

Monday

Short version: Sloppy joe sandwiches, leftover pasta, carrot sticks, ice cream

Long version: We were supposed to have a guest join us for pizza, but then he re-scheduled for Thursday. Since the main reason he was coming was to try sourdough pizza, I decided to bake the already-prepared crusts with sauce and then freeze them in the pan so we could still have it Thursday. This meant I needed something pretty last-minute for dinner.

Luckily, I had cooked some ground beef earlier in the day just to have on hand, so I made some of that into sloppy joe meat to have on the bread I had baked in the afternoon. One child had the last of the pasta.

Tuesday

Short version: Steaks, mashed potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: While I was organizing the big meat freezer a bit, I found some packages of steaks. I thawed one package of rib steaks and one of sirloin steak. We haven't had steak in awhile, and A. was inspired to grill them. This happens very infrequently, but grilling really is the best way to cook meat.

Dad plate.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers, green peas

Long version: We had enough leftover steak for everyone to have some, and then I had leftovers from a random lunch I had made a couple of days previously with ground beef and rice.

Thursday

Short version: Pizzas, green salad with vinaigrette, crispy rice treats

Long version: We were supposed to have pizza on Monday, when a guest was coming who can only eat sourdough and had never had sourdough pizza. But then he had to cancel, but asked if he could come Thursday, instead.

Since the whole point of him coming was to try the pizza, I decided to save the pizza for Thursday. The way I did that was to bake the crusts until baked through, then top them with the pizza sauce, let them cool in the pans, and then wrap up the entire thing in plastic wrap and aluminum foil to freeze. So all I had to do this day was thaw them, top them, and bake until the cheese was slightly browned.

I was baking bread again this day anyway, so I also made one extra pizza in my smaller pan, because we ended up with another guest coming, too. So one big pizza was just cheese; one big pizza was Italian sausage, bacon, and pickled onions; and the smaller pizza was bell pepper, onion, tomatoes, and collard greens.

So pretty.

Ready to bake. The only one that had any leftovers was the plain cheese.

Refrigerator check:

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