Friday Food: Delayed

Friday 

Short version: Fish sticks with tartar sauce, broccoli/rice casserole, frozen corn

Long version: I planned this meal around the broccoli that needed to be used. One child had agreed with me that broccoli with rice and cheese was awfully good, so I made a casserole with those things. I didn't use a recipe.

Since the casserole needed to be in the oven, I also put some of the fish sticks from commodities in there. Which is why I needed to make tartar sauce.

And since the oven was on anyway, I put some corn in there, too.

Homestyle cafeteria food. Very yellow and brown, but surprisingly good.

Saturday

Short version: Italian sausage, pasta with pesto, creamy leeks, pickled radishes

Long version: Good thing I got all those oven-baked things done the previous day, because this happened this day:

No bueno.

I turned the oven on to preheat for peanut butter cookies in the morning, and it didn't heat. Sigh. My appliance repair guy--A.--diagnosed a failing igniter. Again. This range is only two years old, but that is apparently the lifespan of an igniter in a "heavily used" oven. I think mine falls into that category.

Anyway. A. ordered the part and I was without an oven for the rest of the week.

Thankfully, my plan for dinner did not include the oven.

I needed to harvest basil, so I did that and made pesto. Which is why I made pasta. And that's why I made Italian sausage links. Leeks go well with those, and we still have lots of those in the garden. I cook sliced leeks slowly in butter and chicken stock until they're very soft, and then add a little cream.

Very pink pickled radishes added to plates after this photo was taken.

Sunday

Short version: Beef and bean tacos in homemade corn tortillas, Mexican slaw, pots de creme

Long version: I had lots of beans I had made earlier in the week--a mix of pinto and black--that I hadn't used. So for dinner this night, I used one pound of ground beef and the beans to make a filling for the corn tortillas I made.

I need to start making more tortillas because I have like fifteen pounds of cornmeal masa on hand thanks to commodities. Tortillas use a lot of masa. And now it will be cool enough that I can make tortillas without wanting to crawl into the freezer.

The Mexican slaw was just thinly sliced cabbage, spices, and vinegar. This is better than lettuce on tacos, in my opinion. More flavor and texture.

I needed a non-baked dessert for our Sunday dessert. And I was low on milk. Pots de creme it is!

Monday

Short version: Chicken and rice, green salad with ranch/tartar dressing

Long version: I used one of the butchered roosters to make more or less this, which also uses some of the caramelized onions from the freezer. Having the onions already made makes this a very easy meal to make. I'm getting low on the onions, though, alas.

This is a good dish to make with the roosters because A) I never remember to take them out of the freezer the night before, and I can just put the entire frozen rooster in the pot to simmer until I can get the meat off, and B) There isn't a ton of meat on the roosters, but it's enough when cooked with the rice.

Also, cooking the roosters makes stock to use to cook the rice. Very handy.

For the salad dressing, I just combined the last of some ranch dressing with the last of the tartar sauce. They're close enough in flavor that this works well.

Tuesday

Short version: Hamburger steaks with gravy, mashed potatoes, pickles

Long version: A straightforward cafeteria-style meal. 

Except maybe the pickles. A cafeteria would have served canned green beans, I bet.

Wednesday

Short version: Stove-top pasta, carrot sticks

Long version: I subbed at school this day. I knew I would be, so I prepped the pasta sauce the night before. I used the skillet I had used to make the hamburger steaks to make it, with the half pound of ground beef left from making taco meat, one link of leftover Italian sausage diced up, the leftover creamy leeks, and a jar of the pasta sauce that came with commodies. Plus extra spices and things.

I had some leftover pasta, but not enough, so I cooked some more when I got home and then dumped the sauce in the pot with the cooked pasta and the leftover pasta to heat up everything before adding some of the shredded asadero cheese from the freezer. Plus a little heavy cream and some garlic powder for extra flavor.

This would have been better baked, but as that wasn't an option, stove-top worked.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers at home, Sonic on the road

Long version: I drove 175 miles in the afternoon for a 6 p.m. junior high football game. After the game, I got the football player Sonic at his request before driving 175 miles home. Thankfully, this is the last away game of the season.

The four at home had leftover pasta or chicken and rice. Looks like they also had canned peaches.

I had gone to Walmart before the football game*, as the town the game was in was only about twenty miles from a Walmart. We got home at 11 p.m. and the only thing I unloaded right away were the bags with the dairy stuff in them. It was in the forties overnight, so I figured everything else would be okay.

Refrigerator check:

Featuring my Walmart dairy.

The house was 55 degrees when I got up at 6:30 this morning--but latest I will ever sleep in--so I started a fire while my coffee was steeping. And that is why it is now 7 a.m. and I am just now posting this.

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

* I always bring coolers and a gallon ice cream tub with frozen water** when I go to the grocery store. Given that it was in the fifties and the sun had set by the time I was at the game, everything was just fine in the coolers for the four hours it was in there.

**Way better than loose ice because it doesn't melt all over everything.