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--the 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.

Let There Be Light

One of the consistent home improvement things we've done since moving into this house eight years ago is adding light. We've put lights up everywhere. In the kitchen, in the dining room, in the bedrooms, in the living room . . . We just keep adding light to every room.

For the first several years, those lights were all of the plug-in variety, because A. really didn't want to have to do any wiring. However, after the incident when half his office lost power and he was forced to work on the wiring there, he has added electrician to his resume. This has opened up great new opportunities for lighting in our house. And I have taken advantage of it.

Every room in our house except the bathrooms had an ceiling fan/light fixture in it when we moved in. These have become something of a hazard in recent years as our sons have grown. And grown. And grown. 

Two out of the three boys are now six feet tall or taller. The third will probably be the tallest of all of them. A. is over six feet tall. This meant that all of them heartily dislike any fixture that hangs low enough for them to whack their heads on. Which the middle boy kept doing on the overhead fixtures in his bedroom and the living room.

 This is not a problem that is going to get any better as the boys keep growing, so I started looking for different light fixtures.

Neither of those rooms needed overhead fans, so I just looked for lights. I wanted flat lights, for maximum head clearance. And they had to cover the bulbs, because I hate exposed light bulbs. In fact, the living room light fixture was almost never on because it had exposed bulbs and I refused to be in the room when they were glaring in my eyes.

After much searching online, I found a fairly cheap and plain fixture for the younger boys' bedroom, which A. duly put in. The middle boy was delighted to not have to worry about bumping his head anymore. As did A., who passes through that room to get to his office.

Next up was the living room light. I bought a larger and nicer fixture for that room, since it's a public room and also bigger space. It has a glass shade over the bulbs, and was much more difficult to install. The size and weight of it, plus some less-than-clear instructions, caused some cussing on A.'s part, but he triumphed in the end.

I made sure to take a before photo of the ugly fan light fixture in the living room.

It was always so dusty too. Yuck.

And now for the after:

Ta da!

And a bonus shot from directly underneath.

Everyone is very pleased with this new light. There's a good six inches of clearance for even the tallest in the family, and the light is muted enough that I will allow it to be on when I'm in the room.

What lights will I replace next? I am limited only by Amazon's selection. And A.'s patience.

Snapshots: A Sleepy Butterfly

Our Sundays start pretty early, because Mass at our church is at 8 a.m. We don't have time for anything elaborate for breakfast before we leave, so this is the one day of the week that the kids have cereal. I do make a second breakfast when we get home around 9 a.m., though. Last Sunday, I made biscuits. I set out all the available biscuit toppings on the table when they were ready.

Butter, honey, plum butter (thanks, sis!), strawberry preserves, and apricot jam. There were enough biscuits for everyone to try every one of these things. On separate biscuits, I mean.

I recently used the last of the rendered tallow I had in the refrigerator. I need to render some more of the many pounds of suet in the freezer. It's difficult to find the motivation to do this sometimes, as it's a tedious and greasy job, but this jar of tallow I saw at the grocery store is a pretty good motivator.

Twenty dollars for a pint certainly made me think WOW!!, but not because I was amazed at the low price.

This is the time of year the Monarch butterflies are migrating to their warmer overwintering regions. I'm not sure if we're on the route for the butterflies that are going to Mexico, or the ones going to California, but in any case, there are a LOT of Monarchs floating around right now. I spied this one in the planter outside the bank last week.

A pretty rest stop during a long trip.

Jasper hasn't taken any long trips lately, but he still feels the need to rest.

Sleepy dog.

We are definitely coming to the end of fresh flower season. We could get a freeze at any time now, which means every week might be the last week for flowers. But for this week, I still have some.

On the table (look at those wee sunflowers).

And on the bookcase.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.