Friday Food: Extra Desserts

Friday 

Short version: Fish, leftover mashed potatoes, leftover coleslaw at home; KFC on the road

Long version: This was the day I drove almost 500 miles roundtrip for a football game. There were already mashed potatoes and coleslaw in the refrigerator. We have a few packages of wild-caught cod fillets that came from commodities in the freezer. I took one of those out and A. breaded and fried them.

The football player and I had KFC on our way home, because it was one of our few options. It was not inspiring.

Saturday

Short version: Toasted burritos, more leftover coleslaw

Long version: I used two pounds of ground beef and a can of black beans to make taco meat, which was in turn used to make toasted burritos.

It's important to put coleslaw in a separate bowl, or else you end up with coleslaw juice soaking into everything else on the plate.

Sunday

Short version: Rooster rice, frozen peas, mini pies

Long version: I took out two of the roosters we butchered last week to thaw. A. thought they were young enough to roast, but it was too hot to have the oven on at high heat for that. So instead, I pressure-cooked them in the morning until I could pull the meat off. Then I used the resulting stock to make rice so I could make this, using some of the caramelized onions I still have in the freezer. It's very fast to make when the onions are already caramelized.

I had made baking powder biscuits for after church, and while the oven was on, I used the same bowl to make a single recipe of pie crust. I rolled that out and cut out small circles to fill with plum butter my sister had made. Then I folded them over, crimped them shut, put on an egg wash and sugar, and baked them all.

Slighty overbaked, actually, but oh well. 

I make these very rarely, because doing anything individually like that takes a lot longer than a whole pie or whatever, but my family was very pleased with them.

Monday

Short version: Pork, butter-soaked biscuits, green salad with ranch dressing, rice pudding

Long version: Poppy requested that I make these butter-swim biscuits. The only meat I had in the freezer that really went well with biscuits was pork, and that was only in the form of a giant pork shoulder.

It was too hot to be cooking that, but I did anyway. I had planned to cut it into chunks, so it would cook faster, but it was still almost entirely frozen even after sitting out to thaw all night. So instead, I started it in my biggest casserole dish in the oven, in which it barely fit and the liquid kept boiling over. 

I had rice pudding in the oven with it. When the rice pudding was done, though, I took the pork out and cut it into chunks after all, putting the chunks in an enameled cast-iron pot on the stove to simmer. And the bone, with quite a bit of meat on it, in another pot to simmer so I could get the meat off of that. After I pulled all the meat apart, I mixed it with rendered lard, spices, and maple syrup before putting it under the broiler for a few minutes at dinnertime.

That means I used a total of four different pots, casseroles, and pans to cook this one piece of meat. Irritating. I am so ready to have weather in which I can run my oven comfortably.

I baked the biscuits after taking the pork out--and turning up the heat--in the morning, so that at dinnertime I could re-heat them right in the pan in the oven while the broiler was on. This works very well and makes the biscuits not quite as greasy because all the butter is absorbed during their rest.

Biscuit dough swimming in butter before baking.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover pork, faked beans, porky rice, cucumber salad

Long version: I had quite a lot of pork left, which I just fried in more of the rendered lard in a cast iron skillet.

We got two cans of pork and beans in the commodities last time. This has tomato and some sugar in it (and not actually any pork except pork fat) and the beans are small white beans. Perfect for making not-baked beans. I just dumped both cans into a bowl, added ketchup, molasses, mustard, and maple syrup until it tasted right, and microwaved it.

After removing the lard from the top of one jars of liquid I had saved from cooking the pork, and using the lard to fry the leftover pork, I used the liquid to cook rice.

Cucumbers courtesy of the lady the older boys work for. All I did with those was slice them and add in pickled onions, the last of the ranch dressing from the previous night, a little extra Greek yogurt, sugar, and vinegar.

Wednesday

Short version: Chili, cornbread

Long version: It was finally cool enough that chili didn't seem like a completely ridiculous idea. Which was handy, because I had more of the pork braising liquid to use up. Stock of any kind--chicken, beef, pork, even lamb--makes chili so much better.

I also did the extra step of softening a couple of whole dried red chili peppers and then blending them with my immersion blender before adding that. 

It was really good chili.

I need to make more cornbread and corn tortillas to use up some of the ten pounds of masa we got in the school food boxes last month. I should probably come up with some other ways to use it, too. Any other ideas for masa?

Thursday

Short version: Cheeseburgers on homemade buns, leftover baked beans, pickles, strawberry-rhubarb crisp

Long version: Eldest had made a bunch of hamburger patties awhile ago and froze them so he would have something easy to cook when he was hungry at lunch or whatever. He forgot about them, though, and they were getting a little freezer burned, so I decided to make hamburger buns when I was making bread and use the hamburger patties this night.

I made a LOT of pickles the day before.

The cucumbers I pickled came from the agriculture teacher at school, who in turn got them from her husband's grandpa in the southern part of the state. Well-traveled cucumbers.

I had made the crisp Sunday when the oven was on for the after-church biscuits. I didn't need the crisp for Sunday dessert, because I made the mini pies. I had thought I would serve the crisp the next day, when we had a guest with us for dinner, but then I made the rice pudding. So the crisp waited patiently in the refrigerator and was finally served this night. We'll say it was to celebrate the end of the school week.

Refrigerator check: 

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

Recipe Improvements

I made the butter-swim biscuit recipe from The Kitchn website yesterday, at Poppy's request. I was reminded as I was reading it how stupid the first instruction is in the recipe.

You're supposed to melt the large quantity of butter that goes in the baking pan. The recipe suggests microwaving the butter or melting it on the stovetop.

But the oven is supposed to be heating up to 400 degrees, and the melted butter is immediately poured into the baking pan and then swirled around to coat the pan.

So why, in the name of all that is efficient, wouldn't you just put the butter in the pan and put the pan in the heating oven to melt the butter instead of using a whole other dish and another step? 

Silly.

I will give credit to that same recipe, however, for listing the ingredient amounts in the instructions. I dislike having to look back to a separate ingredient list to find out how much of anything I need to add as I'm going through the recipe instructions.

Do you have any recipe pet peeves?

Snapshots: Very Away Football

If you've ever wondered what it might look like if you forget about eggs you're hardboiling for over an hour . . . 

Do not recommend.

Those went to the dogs, who did not complain.

I subbed at school for one of our special ed. teachers on Thursday. I thought these were funny.

I think the administration gave one of these to every staff member during last year's difficult move into the new school building.

This is in the math classroom. Our math teacher is a man, which makes this make more sense.

Yesterday was the first football game of the season. It was an away game. VERY away. Exactly 223 miles, one way. I went mostly so our junior high player could come home after his game, instead of waiting to take the bus after the varsity game and getting home at 2 a.m.

The first 100 miles of my drive looked like this.

The last 60 miles looked like this.

The intervening miles didn't feature much more of interest. New Mexico is a startingly empty state.

I did stop once in a random village to look at their church.

Unfortunately, it was locked, so I couldn't go in.

Cool stonework on the outside, though.

The athletic facility at the school I was going to was surprisingly nice for such a small school.

I particularly liked the roses that were planted all under the stands.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.