Snapshots: Some Old, Some New

Since I publish the Snapshots posts early in the morning, I didn't have any photos from Mother's Day last Sunday.

It was very low-key, which is how I prefer my days to be. I didn't do any dishes or feed any children. That counts as a holiday for me.

In the afternoon, we had a little cheese party with the Brie and Parmesan left by my parents.

I put out the Brie first. I wasn't sure anyone but A. would eat it.

But then everyone tried it . . .

And it was gone within five minutes. So then I put out some Parmesan.

That disappeared even faster.

Buncha Cheeseheads in this house, for sure. Must be my dad the Wisconsin native's genetics.

Incidentally, do you like the fancy cheese plate? That's actually one of the saucers from my grandmother's china. My sister has the whole set, but never used the tea cups and saucers, so she asked if I would like them.

We do like our tea parties here, so now I have twelve fancy tea cups and saucers for our next party. And in the meantime, the saucers make lovely little plates for special-occasion cheese.

A. took the children on a horse ride on Mother's Day, and one of the children came running back to the house with a bunch of wildflowers for me that he found in the pastures.

Superior to Teleflora in every way.

And some slightly more recent photos . . .

One of the children got a giant plastic Slinky in his end-of-year classroom auction. This was so coveted by another child that she used some of her Christmas Amazon gift card to buy her own.

Slinkys (Slinkies?), of course, function best on stairs. Our house doesn't have more than two steps in any place. Nothing daunted, my children proceeded to set up their own Slinky steps.

Top bunk to Lincoln Log tin to drum to chair to step stool to floor.

We have spent a lot of time untangling the Slinkys (Slinkies?), but that's par for the course for this particular toy.

Our second-to-last day of school on Wednesday was our annual Field Day, with many track events. This includes a color run:

The elementary kids run and the middle/high school kids throw the color. I ran with a little four-year-old who honest-to-goodness ran an entire 3/4 of a mile around the track. Good thing I run regularly myself now, or I would never have been able to keep up with her.

 This year there was also a kite-flying contest.

We live in the perfect place for flying kites.

The last day of school includes an awards assembly, at which all my children got honor roll awards and other recognition. There is also always a staff vs. students basketball game, in which my oldest two boys played. I didn't get any photos of any of this, however, because the construction at our school means we have to do everything in the old gym, which has these really odd lights that make any photos look entirely green.

In real life it looks okay, but any photos look like they were taken under the sea or during an alien invasion. So weird.

Anyway.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Summer Vacation!

Friday 

Short version: Lamb chops, rice, raw radishes, sauteed asparagus, ice cream

Long version: This was the day I spent the whole afternoon in the garden and man, I was SO TIRED by dinnertime. 

Is this how I know I'm aging? Don't answer that.

Anyway. I had taken out a bag of lamb chops to thaw, and had put some garlic powder, salt, and vinegar on them for a sorta marinade. Then I fried them in butter with a bunch of chopped new garlic and parsley.

And then while I was cooking this meal, it occurred to me that if we had homegrown potatoes instead of rice, the entire thing would have been our own home-raised food.

The French Breakfast radishes did pretty well this year (for here, anyway). I should have planted more.

This thought is why I remembered the sprouting potatoes in A.'s office. And why we went back out after dinner to plant them.

So tired. So, so tired. Good thing the next day was a rainy day, because both A. and I needed a day inside to recover.

Saturday

Short version: A few lamb chops, pizza, cucumbers, ranch dip

Long version: I made one pizza, just because I was baking bread to give to teachers as end-of-year gift. I also cooked the last few lamb chops for anyone who wanted one.

I put the last of the ground bull taco meat on the pizza, which sounds weird, but is actually really good. Taco pizza? Sure.

Sunday

Short version: Mother's Day Frito pie, ice cream

Long version: I make my own special-occasion food, because I like my own cooking best. I had a container of ground beef taco meat in the freezer that I took out, so I could eat without actually cooking.

I had thought we would eat that with tortilla chips, like nachos, but then I saw the Fritos on top of the refrigerator while I was pulling out all the toppings and decided Frito pie would be even better.

It was.

Monday

Short version: Vaguely Spanish rice, raw radishes

Long version: I didn't really have anything planned for dinner, so before I left for work, I pulled out a container of burrito filling I had frozen from extra when I was packing camping food for A. and the kids. It was pork, beans, and cheese. 

When I got home, I added this to the leftover rice, added more salsa and spices, and the rest of the grated cheese from the Frito pie, and that was the Spanish rice.

Tuesday 

Short version: Shepherd's pie, ice cream

Long version: Of course we had shepherd's pie. If I'm going to be doing early-morning cooking for the priests, I should definitely do it for us, too.

So many shepherd's pies.

I didn't have any big pans left for our shepherd's pie, so I split it into two smaller ones. We had the one in the skillet this night.

I was at the FFA end-of-year ice cream social at dinnertime, so A. gave the non-FFA kids dinner and then let them have some ice cream, too.

Wednesday

Short version: More shepherd's pie, roasted asparagus

Long version: I baked the smaller shepherd's pie this night, along with some asparagus in a separate pan.

I sure did get a lot of mileage out of that early-morning shepherd's pie. Much appreciated during the very busy last week of school.

Thursday

Short version: Breakfast burritos, hummus and chips, ice cream

Long version: Last day of school! There were hummus and pinto beans sort of languishing in the refrigerator, so we ate the hummus with chips and the pinto beans in the breakfast burritos.

In the interests of honesty, I had chips and hummus and a vodka cocktail for dinner.

Vodka+lime+seltzer+strawberry jam. Yay, summer break!

Refrigerator check:

Needs milk.

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

A Peek Into My Crazy

It has been well established here that I spend a great part of my life thinking about, growing, and preparing food. The hundreds of posts on that subject here prove that beyond a doubt.

This is why it is not even 5 a.m., and I'm about to peel a few dozen potatoes.

Lemme 'splain.

About a month ago, our priest mentioned that he was hosting all the other priests from the area* and that typically, some of the ladies from the parish would help with the lunch that they have after their meeting.

He was sitting at our table, eating dinner with us when he said this, and it was about the most blatant hint imaginable. There aren't very many "ladies" in our parish to start with, and very few that he would ask something like this of.

So of course, I asked him if he would like me to make lunch for them, thinking it would be for at least a dozen people.

Nope. He said there would be about six of them. Oh, so basically cooking for my family? Yes, I can handle that without any problem.

Fast-forward to this week, which is the last week of school, with all the insanity that this entails. Of course the priests' gathering has to be this week. Today, actually. So is the FFA end-of-year ice cream social, for which I was volunteered by my FFA child to provide cookie crumbles for the ice cream toppings.

The count of priests I'm feeding was revised to eight. And of course, I still need to feed my own family of six.

That means that for today, I'm on tap for lunch for eight, dinner for six, and cookies.

I have spent all week thinking about how I can most easily cook lunch without being there to serve it (since they eat after their meeting, I'm not walking into that meeting to deal with food, and the time is uncertain anyway). Also considering that I work on Mondays and therefore wouldn't be making much ahead.

Plus, cookies.

The cookies were easy, at least. I made the requested peanut butter cookies on Saturday and froze a container for the FFA.

When I got home from work yesterday, I made crispy rice treats. After I spilled several cups of cereal on the floor while I was opening the giant bag of Malt o' Meal Crispy Rice, that is.

Good day for the chickens.

I have to drop off all the food for the priest party (as my children have been calling it) this morning before their meeting starts at 10:30 a.m. I decided to make shepherd's pie. 

The appropriateness and humor of making shepherd's pie did not occur to me until just recently, but it is pretty amusing. (Priests are our shepherds, get it? Yeah, my sons didn't think it was as funny as I did, either.) 

Anyway.

I'm making three pans of shepherd's pie--two for them, one for us--which will require about five pounds of meat and around ten pounds of potatoes. Also broccoli slaw--because it's the only other vegetable I have--and brownies, along with the crispy rice treats.

Overkill? Probably. But that's how I operate with food.

Anyway, it's a lot. And that's why I'm going to peel potatoes at 5 a.m.

Catch you on the flip side.

Update: 6 a.m.

Potatoes for mashing are boiling on the stove, and another pan for us is waiting elsewhere. Getting up at 4:15 a.m. has its benefits.

* The "area" in this case being the entire northeastern part of the state, which is large and relatively unpopulated.

 

Snapshots: Rain for Mother's Day

Well, actually, rain the day before Mother's Day.

Shrouded windmill yesterday.

It rained off and on all day yesterday and the previous night. I woke up to puddles on the ground this morning. It's been so long since we've had that much rain that I can't even remember the last time there were puddles. Certainly several months. 

Rain is such an important thing here that everyone has a rain gauge so they can talk about exactly how much they got. We got exactly 9/10 of an inch, which is so, so needed.

Thanks to the miracles of modern weather forecasting, we knew this rain was coming. That's why we spent several hours planting in the garden on Friday. 

Invisible peppers.

Basil in jugs.

The beginnings of what will be a jungle of plants in September.

I forgot about these potatoes from last year that were in A.'s office. They REALLY wanted to grow.

Altogether, I put in 40 tomato plants, 14 basil plants, 10 pepper plants, a couple dozen potatoes, a thyme plant I picked up at the grocery store, a new bed of beets because the first planting never came up, ditto some carrots, more green onion seeds, cucumbers, and delicata squash.

I also, and unusually, had a bunch of flower seedlings to plant, thanks to the new cook at school. She had said she would like to have some of my numerous cabbage seedlings, so I brought her a few. I told her I didn't really need any plants in exchange, but she brought me some anyway: snapdragons and yarrow. And then I got zinnia seedlings from one of the children for Mother's Day. And a packet of wildflower seeds as part of Teacher's Appreciation week.

I planted all of this in a separate bed in the front of the vegetable garden by the fence. It has to be in the garden, or it will never get watered.

I had the children edge it in stone for me, just to make it look a little nicer.

It was a very tiring day in the garden, but worth it, as the rain watered everything in very nicely and the 80-degree temperatures by the end of the week will get everything growing well.

Incidentally, by the time we get to those 80-degree days, we will be on summer break because this is THE LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL, HOORAY. 

The children think they're the only ones who are sick of school. Little do they know how I and all the other staff at the school feel . . .

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

P.S. Happy Mother's Day to my fellow mothers. I hope your day is just as you wish it to be.

Friday Food: Fiesta Time!

Friday 

Short version: More lamb steaks, last of the lamb curry and rice, bread and butter, asparagus, raw radishes

Long version: I still had a couple of lamb steaks that I hadn't cooked the day before, which was convenient, as I had to work this day. A couple of people finished off the very last of the lamb curry and rice from several days earlier. Everyone else had the bread and butter.

Random photo from our trip to the junkyard to get rid of the old Honda:

All roads from our house lead to very Western scenery.

Saturday

Short version: Brisket, mashed potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette, rice pudding

Long version: Last time A. went to the store, he bought an entire brisket.

Have you ever seen a whole brisket? They are comically large. Which meant I had PLENTY of meat on hand to cook for eight people, as my parents arrived for a very short visit this day.

I just cooked the brisket slowly in the morning with pureed tomatoes, vinegar, maple syrup, mustard, and green garlic.

It works better, I find, to cook the brisket ahead, cut it up, and let it sit in the cooking liquid before reheating. It's not dry that way.

Rice pudding because the oven was on for so long for the brisket.

Sunday

Short version: Margaritas, guacamole and chips, ground beef tacos/burritos, pinto beans, blueberry pie, ice cream

Long version: Cinco de Mayo AND First Communion day! So much to celebrate.

I made a pan of ground beef taco meat and then let everyone choose between tortilla chips, corn tortillas, and flour tortillas, plus all the toppings, to make their own Mexican meal.

Blueberry pie because the lady who owns the place my parents stay always leaves one for them. And ice cream by request of the First Communicant. We had chocolate, vanilla, and cookies and cream to choose from.

Monday

Short version: Leftover brisket, rice, frozen peas, fruit

Long version: It's an after-work meal! We had lots of fruit on hand--also from the place my parents stay, which is kind of like a bed and breakfast--so the kids could choose between bananas, grapes, oranges, or apples. A dizzying plethora, indeed.

Tuesday

Short version: Creamy garlic chicken and gravy, leftover rice, asparagus, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: A. and I drove to a city to bring the old Honda to a scrapyard, and we went to Walmart before we came home. I saw there were a few packages of chicken breasts on deep discount, so I bought them for something different.

I cut one package up into chunks, fried them in butter with a lot of chopped new garlic. The new garlic is the greens and young plants from a volunteer patch in the pasture.

Small, but pungent.

Then I made a gravy with cornstarch and some whipping cream I got from my parents that had apparently been severely shaken at some point and was on its way to butter.

I also remembered the exuberant parsley in the garden and grabbed a large handful of that to chop and add to the chicken.

A very popular meal. Very pretty, too.

Green and spring-y.

My kids love chicken, probably because we don't have it much.

Wednesday

Short version: Chips and guacamole, ground beef burritos

Long version: I had three avocados left from the two bags I had bought for Cinco de Mayo that were definitely ready to be used. So as soon as I got home from work, I mashed those into guacamole, and we all had some of that with chips before dinner.

Very satisfying. 

The burritos were just flour (or corn, for some) tortillas with the leftover bull taco meat and all the toppings. 

Thursday

Short version: Fiesta eggs, garlic bread, leftover peas

Long version: This was the big field trip day for the school. The elementary school went to a zoo, which was 280 miles roundtrip. The middle/high school went to a pool, which was 200 miles roundtrip. 

Field trips here are a significant endeavor.

The big kid got home in the late afternooon. The elementary kids didn't get home until about 5:30 p.m. That's when A. got home, too, since he was driving the bus to the zoo.

I wasn't sure who would have eaten when, or even when they would all be home, so I hadn't made anything ahead of time. When they all got home hungry, I made scrambled eggs with the last of the pinto beans in the refrigerator, salsa, and grated cheese.

Refrigerator check: 

We've been to the store twice in six days, so it's full. I suppose this is what normal people's refrigerators look like all the time?

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

A.P.D: The Theater

I was talking with a local friend of mine the other day about movies, and she mentioned that her youngest daughter--seven years old--had asked her if movie theaters are actually real. She had never been to one, you see, or even seen one. This made me realize that my youngest two had never been in a movie theater, either.

Partially this is a matter of distance, of course. The nearest (tiny) theater is 90 miles away. The nearest multi-plex is around 150 miles. One way.

I'd spend longer watching this than the movie.

Apart from the distance for us, though, I feel like there just aren't as many theaters as there used to be. I guess because everyone just streams movies at home now.

Going to the movies was a significant part of my teenage years. Tucson had a few options for second-run theaters where they played movies after they were out of the big theaters, so we could go see a movie for two dollars. My friend and I would sometimes see two back-to-back, and we went almost every weekend.

The last movie I saw in the theater was Maverick, with A. in Tucson. It was fun, and I still love going to the movies. Even if I feel like there are very few movies worth paying to see anymore.

So tell me: When was the last time you went to a movie theater? What did you see?

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Big day today. Not only is it Cinco de Mayo, it's First Communion day for our latest second-grader. This means we've got the suit laid out on a chair, and the ingredients for margaritas awaiting us for tonight.

In the meantime, here are some photos I took this week.

I picked up the living room thoroughly yesterday morning, planning on vacuuming when everyone was awake. Then the children that were awake decided to play "Tunnels" and . . .

That's a raincheck on the vacuuming, then.

Our wretched state education department* required us to add more instructional hours this year. Mostly that meant an extra fifteen minutes per day, but we did have to add a couple of Fridays to our usual four-day weeks. One of those Fridays was this week.

In an effort to make Friday school slightly less unpleasant, we spent about an hour in the village park across the street planting shrubs and flowers in the newly-renovated veteran's memorial area.

Trying to organize 30 children to plant about 15 shrubs with only two shovels was complete chaos, but it was fun, and we got it done.

Some of the newly-planted shrubs. I stayed behind to water them in, because I was not about to hand a hose over to that group of children.

I stayed so that the children and their teachers could go eat ice cream sandwiches in the cafeteria. This was very popular, though I'm not sure it entirely made up for being at school on a Friday.

One thing you can always count on here is a good wind to blow the flags out picturesquely.

Stars and Stripes, and the Zia symbol of perfect friendship among united cultures. Or at least, that's what the New Mexico state flag pledge says. This is the only place I've lived where we say a state pledge along with the national Pledge of Allegiance every day at school.

The sun spotlighted the alliums and apricot leaves in the middle of the table very nicely as it was setting last night.

Lit.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

*They are trying to force all schools to go to a five-day week. This overreach is so unpopular that more than half the school districts in the state--even the ones that don't have four-day weeks--have sued them. So we'll see what happens there.