Friday Food: Lady Day Waffles

Friday 

Short version: Fried seafood, baked beans, potato salad, carrot slaw, frozen grapes

Long version: My friend was getting their whole cow for the freezer and found some things in her freezer she didn't have room for and didn't want to cook. She gave those things to me, and one of them was a bag of shrimp. We still had a bag of "octo-mari" in the freezer, which I think are big squid tentacles cut to look like calamari. A. loves these sorts of things deep fried, and he is our fry cook, so I suggested that he do that for this Lenten Friday.

I invited our priest and his brother to join us for dinner, which of course all had to be meatless. Thus, no bacon in the baked beans. I used slightly more molasses in them, instead. It has a little bit of a smoky flavor, and the beans turned out well.

I made a classic American potato salad, with the pickles and hard-boiled eggs and all, though I don't use quite as much mayonnaise as most recipes call for, and I do add mustard.

I was going to make coleslaw, but absent any cabbage, I made carrot slaw instead. This is just shredded carrots and finely diced pickled onions with my coleslaw dressing, minus the celery seed.

Our guests aren't eating added sugar during Lent, so I didn't make a dessert. I did have quite a lot of green grapes, however, that were not going to stay good for too much longer. Since it was a hot day, I decided to freeze them individually on a baking tray. I put the whole big bowl of frozen grapes on the table and they were all gone within minutes. A perfect non-dessert dessert.

Saturday

Short version: Leftovers, sandwiches

Long version: Our family went three different ways this day, two to Albuquerque, two to an FFA contest, Poppy and me to the Peewee basketball tournament. We stayed there until late afternoon. Poppy ate two pieces of pizza there and wasn't hungry for dinner. I didn't eat there and was starving when we got home. I had leftover potato salad and carrot slaw.

I had thought everyone else would eat before coming home, but two of the boys were hungry when they got back. One had a grilled cheese sandwich with leftover baked beans and carrot slaw on the side. One had a grilled salami and cheese sandwich.

Sunday

Short version: Lamb chops, deluxe rice, caramelized onions, green salad with vinaigrette, gingerbread with whipped cream

Long version: This was the first meat we tried from the two wethers A. and I butchered on Thursday.

Ready for the freezer.

I marinated the chops in olive oil, vinegar, and garlic powder and then just pan-fried them. The meat on wethers tends to be quite good, and this was no exception. 

Quite small.

I didn't make a sauce for the chops, but I had just enough caramelized onions from the steaks we had awhile ago to put those on the lamb chops.

The rice was deluxe because I fried it in butter with spices (thyme, cumin, paprika) before adding chicken stock to simmer it in. I also put in a little bit of tomato paste. It was very good.

Poppy made the gingerbread. It, like her famous brownies, calls for melting butter rather than whipping it with a mixer. Much easier for her. I read the recipe to her and helped her measure the molasses, but she otherwise did it herself. Hooray.

Monday

Short version: Pizzas, carrot sticks, ranch dip, leftover gingerbread

Long version: One cheese, one pepperoni.

All good.

I was informed this was the best pizza I have ever made. Too bad I just wing it every time, so the odds of exactly replicating this are low.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover pizza, scrambled eggs, peaches with or without cottage cheese, fried egg sandwich

Long version: The older two boys were gone on an FFA trip, and there was enough leftover pizza for those at home if I supplemented with scrambled eggs for A. Which I did.

I didn't really have a good vegetable option, so we had peaches instead. Because I buy the peach slices in heavy syrup, these are more like a dessert, but always appreciated. Some people like them with cottage cheese; some like them plain.

One of the FFA boys was hungry when they got home, so I made him a fried egg sandwich. I have plenty of eggs on hand because my one friend brought me four dozen eggs the day before from her plethora of chickens, and then my other friend sent two dozen eggs home on the bus with A. It is definitely Egg Season.

Wednesday

Short version: Chili, corn tortillas with cheese, Lady Day waffles

Long version: It was almost 90 degrees this day, which made chili seem a little strange. However, I had made it the day before because I knew I was subbing at school at the end of the day and wouldn't be home to cook dinner. Thankfully, our house hasn't heated up to the point that eating chili was punishing.

The waffles were just from the last of the batter I had made in the morning for breakfast. I do not typically make waffles on weekdays, but this was the feast of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and revealed to her that she would be the mother of Jesus. This has been called Lady Day for centuries, and apparently in Swedish, the word for Lady Day and the word for waffles are so close that Sweden now celebrates it as a national waffle day.

I thought this was funny. Also a good excuse to have waffles. There was just enough batter to make one more waffle for everyone after dinner, and then they got to choose what to put on it. Two chose butter and apricot jam, one chose butter and powdered sugar, and one chose peanut butter. 

Thursday

Short version: Chili+rice+cheese, applesauce and cream

Long version: It actually was 90 degrees this day, and I did not want to cook much. I had some chicken stock in the refrigerator, with which I made rice. Then I just dumped in the leftover chili and some shredded cheese to all heat together. 

Sloppy, but tasty.

I gave the child with a delicate stomach just rice cooked in chicken stock, with butter, and then he got some of the applesauce I canned last fall. It didn't seem very nice for him to get applesauce and no one else got any, so I opened another jar and everyone got some. Much happiness.

Refrigerator check:

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

A Dangerous Discovery

When my children got home from their trip to Arizona to visit family, they presented me with a bag of kettle corn my mom had sent home for me.

I love kettle corn. Like, a lot. It checks all the salt/fat/sweet boxes that make something taste good to me.

I did send a jar of it with each of the younger two children to be their school snacks a couple of days, but then I ate the rest of the bag all by myself. Which is what I do when given access to kettle corn.

Popcorn, however, is a pretty healthy snack all in all, and I thought maybe I could make something like kettle corn that would satisfy my desire to eat something sweet without going overboard on the sugar.

I make popcorn on the stove in a big saucepan. Typically, I pop the popcorn in the pan, dump it into a bowl, and then put the butter right in the very hot pan to melt before drizzling that over the popcorn and then salting it. 

To make something like kettle corn, I figured I could just add my very dark maple syrup to the pan before the butter, and the maple syrup would quickly release most of its water content on contact with the hot pan. Then I could add the butter, etc.

That is what I did, and it did indeed work quite well.

But then, of course, I had kettle corn. A lightly buttered and sweetened kettle corn, to be sure, but still the salt/fat/sweet popcorn that is so hard for me to stop eating.

I fear I did not. I managed to put a few cups in a jar for one child's snack. But I, um, ate the rest of the batch. It was like five cups of kettle corn. 

The only survivors.

So I will not be making it again unless all of my children are home to eat it before I do, but now you know: Homemade kettle corn is easy. And addictive.

Snapshots: Spring Heat

Friday was the first day of spring, and the table flowers celebrated accordingly.

Peach blossoms and daffodils. I won't cut anymore peach branches, because I want the blossoms to turn into actual peaches, but I couldn't resist just a few for the first day of spring.

The weather has felt much more summer than spring in the last few days, though. It was about 90 degrees at the track meet I went to on Thursday.

And so of course I had to wear a long-sleeve shirt and dorky hat. Because I do not care about being stylish if it comes with a crispy sunburn.

Yesterday was 92 degrees. A. and one boy went on a school trip to Albuquerque. The older two boys went a different direction for an FFA contest. The two groups all left early in the morning, about two hours apart, so I made them all get all their clothing and so forth ready to go the night before.

Ironed and waiting.

This left Poppy and me home alone. We went to the Peewee basketball tournament so she could see her friends play.

And so they could play on the playground between games. I finished my book under these trees.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.