Friday Food: Soup and Sandwiches to Start

Friday

Short version: Chicken sandwiches, baked beans, carrot sticks, baked rice pudding

Long version: I simmered one of the roosters still in the freezer until I could pull the meat off. For that meat, I made a vinegar-y barbecue sauce and served that in sandwiches. 

This plate was A.'s brother's plate when he was a toddler. Poppy still uses it.

I had cooked a pot of pinto beans in the morning and used some of them to make baked beans. They were in the oven with the rice pudding. 

I was mostly making this for the son who had the flu. He was down and out with a fever all day, and in the end ate nothing but a little of the rice pudding for dinner. The sick boy prefers his rice pudding without raisins. I had actually made a triple recipe with no raisins in my 10"x15" pan, and then made another double recipe in a 9"x13" pan to which I did add raisins. 

That is a LOT of rice pudding. We had leftovers, for I think the first time ever. So I guess I just need to make a quintuple recipe every time, right? Yeah, right. My family wishes.

Saturday

Short version: Beef and bean chili, cornbread, leftover rice pudding

Long version: This was a very cold day, and chili seemed like a good meal for a very cold day. I make mine with ground beef and pinto beans, plus a lot of pureed calabaza to thicken it. I used some of a container of lamb stock from the freezer in the chili, too. 

Sunday

Short version: Ham and potato soup, leftover cornbread, leftover baked beans, raw bell peppers. chocolate fondue

Long version: This is not typical of my Sunday dinners, which tend to be more elaborate than this. I just couldn't come up with anything I was really enthused about cooking. I did have a lot of rooster stock on hand, though, and some ham I had frozen last time I cooked one. So, I made the soup and then just supplemented with the various leftovers.

A leftover kind of Sunday.

I wasn't motivated about making a dessert either. My fall back in such a situation is chocolate chips microwaved with a bit of coconut oil to make a dip for marshmallows. I had some peanut butter cookies in the cookie jar, too, which are also good dipped in the chocolate, so everyone got to choose.

Monday

Short version: Pizza grilled cheese, more baked beans, carrot sticks, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: My plan had been to make actual pizza, but the dough was rising too slowly in our too-cold kitchen. So instead, I used the grated asadero cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni I had out to make grilled cheese sandwiches. These are actually delicious, so it wasn't too disappointing.

The chocolate chip cookies--which also had peanut butter and oats in them--were this week's snack cookie for the younger children at school, but no one minded eating them at home, either.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork chops and gravy, mashed potatoes, collard greens, still-frozen peas, crepe cake

Long version: The thin "assorted pork chops" are definitely much better when dredged in an egg wash and seasoned flour and then fried. And served with gravy. But then, what isn't?

Gravy is delicious, but it is not photogenic.

In advance of the very cold weather last weekend, I harvested the rest of the collard greens. It took me a over an hour to get them all harvested, washed, chopped, and in the freezer.

Ready to freeze.

Now I have lots of prepared greens ready to go, though. I still had some of the liquid from A.'s Asian-ish pigs' feet in the refrigerator, which is very good for cooking collard greens. Greens are always good with any kind of pork product, and this particular liquid is slightly sweet, which helps to balance the slight bitterness of the collards.

We had quite a few crepes left when A. made them after church last Sunday. I used three of them to make a crepe cake by layering them with sweetened whipped cream and homemade strawberry jam. A nice treat for a random Tuesday.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken thighs, roasted potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette, green grapes

Long version: I went to Walmart this day, where I bought a package of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. Those I salted heavily a couple of hours before dinner. This helps with the texture and flavor of store chicken, which is definitely lacking. Then I coated them in a spice mixture of more salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, chile powder, and brown sugar before roasting them. Potatoes in the oven with the chicken.

We often only get sad, soft grapes at our end-of-the-supply-chain stores, so I always try one in the produce section before I buy them. These were good, crispy grapes. I bought them, and the children were happy.

Thursday

Short version: Beef and bean burritos, raw bell pepper or cooked collards

Long version: I had just about a cup of cooked ground beef that needed to be used up. I combined it with a can of black beans and used that, with cheese and salsa, to make toasted burritos in flour tortillas. This was enough only because one child came home from school with a headache and an upset stomach. Boo.

Refrigerator check:

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

A Thing I Learned

I discovered something interesting during this latest period of cold weather: I have touchscreen gloves.

I have to admit that I didn't even know these were a thing. I knew my usual gloves don't work on my cell phone to take photos of whatever, but I had no idea why. And I also have no idea where I got these gloves that do work with a touchscreen.

Gloves of mysterious origin. With hay on them, because I was feeding animals.

Poppy saw these gloves and asked me why some of the fingertips were white. I had no idea. But then, when I went out to walk the dogs* and wanted to to take a picture of the rime, I found that the white fingertips of these work on my cell phone screen.

Photo taken with gloves on.

As was this one.

This got me wondering why these gloves work with a touchscreen. What is it about a bare fingertip that registers with a touchscreen, but a typical gloved fingertip does not? And these gloves did?

A. theorized that it was the light color on the gloves' fingertips that the phone was picking up on. Eldest, however, looked it up, and it turns out that touchscreens pick up on our skin's natural electrical conductivity. So there's actually a charge going from fingertip to phone screen, which is blocked by normal gloves.

Touchscreen gloves, however, have conductive material in the fingertip to continue that charge from fingertip to phone. You can even make your own touchscreen gloves by sewing conductive thread into the fingertips of whatever glove you want.

I just thought that was cool. Always nice to solve a mystery, however small.

* When we have very cold periods like this, we move the dogs' crates from the sheltered but unheated shop into A.'s minimally heated office. They're not in there all the time, but enough that they have to be walked out of the property for potty breaks occasionally. This means that the only time we have to walk dogs is in the very worst weather. It's very dramatic.

Welcome to the Winter Wonder Land

Title courtesy of the sign Poppy made for our door:

She wanted to prepare everyone for what was outside the door, which was . . .

A winter wonder land, indeed.

We didn't really get much snow, maybe an inch. It's just that before it snowed, we were in a frozen cloud that deposited a layer of rime on everything. What little snow we got stuck right to that and made for a very frosty coating.

We didn't see the sun for two days, during which time I kept the living room candle burning continuously.

A single central wick is definitely the way to go with the larger hexagonal candles. This one burned down much more evenly than the last one.

The flu ran through the basketball team and landed on our basketball player this weekend. He had a fever for about 24 hours that laid him out. He alternated between my bed with the heated mattress pad on, and a nest I made for him on the couch with two sheepskins, the microwaveable heated bag thing, and a blanket.

The MiL always maintained that sheepskins are effective in healing illness.

He's feeling somewhat better now, and so far there are no signs of anyone else succumbing. Fingers crossed.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.