Friday Food: Emergency Sonic

Friday 

Short version: Leftover pasta, cheese omelet

Long version: I changed my mind several times about what to make for our meatless Friday meal. I had enough of the Ash Wednesday pasta for that to be a side dish, and in the end I supplemented that with a big cheese omelet to split up.

Saturday

Short version: Baked beans with ground beef, rice

Long version: I had intended to make a pork shoulder and rice pudding in the morning before going to the last basketball game in the afternoon., but when I got up in the morning, the two-pack of pork shoulders that had been thawing in the sink (one side wrapped in plastic bags so it wouldn't thaw and I could put one back in the freezer) was still frozen enough that I couldn't easily separate them. 

Plan B! Which needs to be quick-thawing. And, in this case, something I could make ahead.

First I cooked the last of a bag of pinto beans. Then I made those into baked beans. To make it more hearty, I browned ground beef, too, and put that in with the simmering baked beans. I made rice before I left for the game as well, so everything just needed to be re-heated when we got home.

Three of the four children were at the game, though, and all of them ate something from the concession stand there, so they didn't eat much dinner.

Sunday

Short version: Leftover baked beans and rice, grape tomatoes, leftover crispy rice treats

Long version: Four of us went to a church event in the early afternoon at which we were fed and everyone contributed a dessert. I brought crispy rice treats.

The very late and heavy lunch meant no one was particularly hungry at dinner; they just ate some of the leftovers. Including leftover crispy rice treats, even though they for sure did not need any more sugar.

Monday

Short version: Pasta and meatballs, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I subbed at school this day, so once again, I couldn't cook the pork shoulder that had been in the refrigerator for two days. 

Instead, while I was at work, I defrosted some meatballs I had made awhile ago and froze. When I got home I broiled those and then added sauce before I baked them to finish. For the sauce, I used one of my own jars of roasted and pureed tomatoes, with already-cooked onions, garlic powder, oregano, and basil.

I didn't have enough tomato sauce for the pasta, so for that, I added butter, Romano, and garlic powder, and then poured into it the accumulated liquid and fat from cooking the meatballs. 

Ready to drain.

Tuesday

Short version: Finally the pork shoulder, cornbread, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: Home to cook the pork, jiggety jig. I made this all ahead and just had A. re-heat it while I was at First Communion class.

We've been eating a lot of salad because I bought my annual giant plastic container of greens just to have the containers for starting seeds. There really are a lot of greens in those things.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, ice cream in a bag

Long version: Most of the kids had leftover pasta and meatballs. A. and the one child who doesn't really love pasta had pork and rice.

And there it is.

At dinner we were told all about this year's "Ag. in the Classroom" activity for FFA week. The older kids made ice cream with the younger ones by putting the ice cream ingredients in a bag and then putting that bag in a bigger one containing ice and rock salt. Both bags were then shaken enthusiastically until it became ice cream.

This was, as you might imagine, a very popular activity. The middle schooler didn't get any ice cream, though, because it took so long for him to help one of the preschoolers make his ice cream that all the ingredients were gone by the time they finished. If only, middle schooler said wistfully, we had rock salt at home, I could make some right now.

Well, do I have good news for you, son!

My sister had brought us a box of ice cream salt like three years ago that dated from when her daughter did some project with it in high school. Which would be, uh, five years ago now, maybe. But it's not like salt goes bad, and there it was, in my cabinet.

Ice cream was duly made.

Vanilla.

I tasted a spoonful. It was very good. Very soft, too, and prone to melting, but it didn't sit around long enough to melt much.

Thursday

Short version: Pork burritos, emergency Sonic

Long version: I had a few pieces of pork I had cut off the giant pork shoulder to make it fit in the casserole dish I cook it in. I managed to fit those in for the last couple of hours of cooking, when the large piece had shrunk enough, but they didn't get tender. So in the morning this day I put those pieces in a pot with water, a couple of dried red chiles, and half an onion to simmer until I could pull them apart. Then I reduced the remaining liquid and pureed it with my immersion blender to make a sauce for the pork.

I did all of this by about two o'clock, and it was a good thing I did. At 3:15 p.m. I got a call from the school that one of my children was having an allergic reaction to an aerosol deodorant someone had sprayed in an enclosed room. By the time I got there, he was in anaphylatic shock. He looked like he was having a seizure and he definitely couldn't breathe. If the paramedic hadn't arrived a few minutes after I did and administered epinephrine immediately, he would have died right there.

Not our best day. 

He's fine now, except for a very sore arm where he got the shot of epinephrine. The ambulance brought him to the nearest hospital, and I of course followed them. We were only there about an hour and a half so they could monitor his vitals for awhile, and when we left at 7 p.m., the patient wanted Sonic. He got a triple Sonic smasher and I got a kid's meal with chicken strips and tator tots.

We went through the drive-through for this, and the car in front of us was taking awhile to pay. When we got to the window to pay, the employee told us the gentleman in the car in front of us had paid for our food. My son told me this is a thing all over social media, so I guess we were the beneficiaries of a new fad. But given the afternoon we had had, it seemed like a divine grace. 

So thank you to the anonymous guy in the car with the Kansas plates at the Sonic in a little nowhere, New Mexico town. You will join Leroy as an example of the angels among us.

A. used the pork on the stove to make burritos for the family at home. 

Refrigerator check:

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

Homemade Brown Sugar

Did you know you can make your own brown sugar? Brown sugar is literally just white sugar and molasses. I knew I could make it. I even knew how to make it. And yet, I have not been making it.

Logically, I knew I should. I use a lot of it, given how much I bake. It's much cheaper to make than to buy, especially since I prefer dark brown sugar, which is always more expensive than light brown sugar. And I already have a gallon of molasses.

I kept telling myself I should start making it next time I ran out. But then my laziness would overcome me and I would buy more brown sugar when I was at the store.

However.

Here we go.

I finally did it. I used two tablespoons of molasses per cup of white sugar, which makes very dark brown sugar.

I mixed it in my food processor. It wasn't hard, of course, although I did overfill the food processor and have to split the sugar in half to get it all combined evenly.

The most annoying part of making it is getting sugar all over the counters and floor, which seems inevitable with this quantity of sugar. But now I have a lot of brown sugar on hand, and I can always make more when I need it.

Snapshots: Spring Flowers and Shearing

 The week started with a grim, wintery feel outside:

Moody, bare Chinese elm trees against a cloudy sky.

But now look!

Crocuses, yay!

There are quite a few bulbs coming up in the three beds we have them in. They all need to be watered, because we still haven't had any rain or snow, but they're coming. Hooray!

We have some spring inside the house, too. A. cut some apricot branches to force inside. 

The first one to open.

And now there are more. (It's very hard to get a picture of them, though.)

Speaking of flowers . . .

This past week was homecoming spirit week at school. It was a cruise ship theme this year, and we did pretty well finding appropriate clothing for every day. I was, however, kind of stymied by the day when they were supposed to wear "tropical tourist" clothing. We are not a tropical clothing sort of family. Poppy had a dress she could wear that had flowers on it. One boy wore his older brother's palm-tree-printed swim trunks (over his jeans). But the other two boys had nothing appropriate at all.

I mentioned this to A., and he said, "Too bad we don't have any white T-shirts. I could paint tropical flowers on them."

Oh, really? HOLD THAT THOUGHT.

I found two old, stained white T-shirts for him. He got out his watercolor paints* and . . .

Perfect. So handy having an artist in the family.

Our shearer came out on Thursday morning for a slightly earlier than usual shearing. It was windy and cold, but the actual shearing takes place in the shed, so it was bearable.

First one down.

Nice fleece.

They always look like goats to me after shearing.

I was dicing mini bell peppers for our Fat Tuesday jambalaya and scraping them off to the side of the cutting board as I finished each one. Look what I accidentally created.

A slightly wonky heart. Fun.

And last, this is a mayordoma month for me. I stopped in at church on Thursday morning to make sure I had turned off the heat after our Ash Wednesday Mass (I had), and was delighted by the light coming in through the windows.

Especially the pattern on the aisle.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* Watercolor painting is his new hobby. He's really quite good. He mostly paints small greeting cards with flowers and birds.