Never Have I Ever

We used to play a game sometimes when I was younger called "Never Have I Ever." The idea was to come up with things that were common, but that you had never done. I think of this game sometimes when I'm reading about other people's lives online and realize how odd my own life is in comparison.

For instance, never have I ever . . .

Ordered groceries online. I suppose it would be possible for me to do this at the Walmart I go to. I see the shoppers racing around in there with their giant racks, and I think they'll even load them into the car for you. I just have never done it. Given the amount of complaining I see online about grocery substitutions or subpar produce choices, it is not something I will ever choose to do as long as I am able to shop for myself.

Even if I did order groceries online, I would still have to sort everything and load the coolers to transport it 100 miles home.

Used an Uber. The first time I ever heard of Uber was about ten years ago when my brother mentioned it. He was somewhat incredulous that I had no idea what an Uber was. We were sitting on the porch at Blackrock at the time, so I just waved my hand around and said something like, "You think that would exist out here?" I have still never lived anywhere where it might be an option.

Ubers don't drive these roads.

Paid for anything with my cell phone. Almost everyone at the state fair paid for things by waving their phone in front of those little boxes they hand out of the window. I don't have any apps for payment on my phone. 

Read a book on an electronic device. I read things on my laptop, but only short things. I have no interest in reading a full-length book on a screen. As you can tell by the numerous bookcases in my home.

One of many.

Bought a frozen pizza. I guess I have nothing against frozen pizzas in particular, except buying the number I would need for my family would take up a lot of space in the coolers I have to transport everything home in. Also, I never really think about buying frozen food at the grocery store. Except frozen strawberries and peas.

Frozen pizza would mean less space for cream, milk, and ice cream.

How about you? What have you never done that most people take for granted?

Snapshots: To the Fair and Beyond

Poppy finished her pinata for her friend's birthday, and A. actually brought home some candy for it when he returned from his overnight trip. That means I didn't have to use any of the good suggestions all y'all gave me (thank you!).  

This was apparently a very strong pinata and required some intense whacking to break. Maybe two layers would have been better than three.

Our trip the state fair was very exciting. 

Floppy-eared rabbit.

Sea lions.

An impressive candy store.

A roller coaster.

And of course, the reason we were there: livestock judging. I think it's funny they still use Scantron sheets for this.

I did manage some flowers this week. There are a few sunflowers on the dining room table, and for the altar tomorrow . . .

A bit moody, thanks to the rainstorm that darkened my living room when I was taking this photo.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: State Fair Food

Friday 

Short version: Roasted rooster with gravy, scalloped potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette, strawberry shortcake with cream

Long version: I had just been saying to the kids that no one had given us any unwanted roosters lately, and then out of the blue, I get a text from one of the other moms at school that they had a bunch of roosters they weren't going to get around to butchering, and would we like them?

YES.

We picked them up Thursday, and A. and I butchered them this day. We gave two back to the lady who gave them to us (fully prepared for the oven), and I cooked one of them this night. They looked pretty young, so I thought it would be okay to roast one. I did it at fairly low heat at first, which is why I made the scalloped potatoes, too. Also because I had some cream near its use-by date to use up.

Fancy Friday food.

I turned the heat up later to bake cream biscuits, also to use up cream and to use as a base for the strawberries I had gotten on sale at the store the day before. 

I used this recipe for the biscuits, and they did not rise at all. I always reduce the amount of leavener in my baked goods because of our altitude, so maybe that was it. Or maybe I didn't wait long enough for the oven to get from 325 degrees to 425 degrees, and the oven was too cool when they went in. Or was it the sugar I added to them, since they were for dessert purposes?

I don't know, but they definitely did not look like the biscuits in the recipe photos. They tasted good, though, and everyone was very happy with their strawberry shortcake.

Saturday

Short version: Personal pizzas, carrot sticks with ranch dip, mint chocolate chip ice cream

Long version: I was home with just the two younger children for dinner this day. Since I had bread dough on hand to make, um, bread, I thought it would be fun for them to use some of it to make their own pizzas. I am not willing to do personal pizzas for six people--too many individual pans to fit in the oven--but it's manageable for just two. Accordingly, I put some dough in a 12-inch skillet for the youngest boy and some in the 8-inch skillet for Poppy, and let them make their pizzas.

Both chose to put pepperoni on them, and the boy also put on some pickled onions.

I do wish I could make pizzas in cast-iron skillets like that all the time. They come out much crispier. However, with the quantities I have to make right now, I'll have to stick to the two half-sheet pans I currently use. Someday . . .

I let them have the last of the ice cream that's been hanging out in the freezer. It wasn't enough for everyone, which is why I hadn't offered it to everyone. It was enough for the two of them, though.

Sunday

Short version: Spaghetti with meat sauce, carrot sticks with ranch dip, messy pear upside-down cake

Long version: I found some tubes of loose Italian sausage on sale at the store last time I was there. This is the only kind of sausage everyone in my family likes, so I got some. That's what I used for the spaghetti sauce, which also had some of the roasted, pureed tomatoes I had made earlier in the week. Sauce made with garden tomatoes really is so much better.

I also used the leftover chicken gravy in the spaghetti sauce. A surprisingly good addition.

The cake was a learning experience. I have never in my life made any sort of upside-down fruit cake, or even eaten one, but A. loves them. I had just a few pears that were ripe, so I found a simple-looking recipe online and made it.

As I was making it, I noted that between the caramel on the bottom of the pan and the sugar in the cake part, there was twice as much sugar as flour. Hmmm. I reduced the sugar in the caramel slightly, but it was, as I expected, extremely sweet. 

Also hilariously messy after I dumped it out of the pan.

The barely sweetened whipped cream I served it with helped, and Poppy and A. loved it, at least. Still, I think it would be much better with less sugar, more-tart fruit (and more of it), and maybe some spices. This didn't even have cinnamon or anything in it. Next time.

Monday

Short version: Chicken enchilada casserole, pickled radishes and cucumber, leftover cake, ice cream

Long version: I finally got around to making chicken stock with the rooster carcass this morning. From the bones, I pulled a couple of cups of meat. I added a can of black beans to this and used it to make a casserole with a sauce using the last of the pureed tomatoes in the refrigerator, frozen corn, corn tortillas, and cheese.

I had a half a bag of store radishes in the refrigerator that had been in there too long. I was going to just give everyone radish slices, but then I used the last of some pickled carrot ribbons--that in turn had been pickled in the same liquid used for onion slivers--and decided to use that pickling liquid one last time. I heated it up, then added the sliced radishes, and, at the last minute, a cucumber that had been sitting on the counter for a couple of days. I thought sure it would be bitter, but it miraculously wasn't. Into the pickling liquid it went with the radishes for five minutes or so while the casserole cooled a bit.

The people that liked it had leftover cake. The other two had the very last of the mint chocolate chip ice cream. Luckily, the ones who like mint chocolate chip ice cream did not like the cake, so it was easy to assign desserts.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftovers, frozen peas, cherries

Long version: I was in town this day and by the time I got all the laundry hung up that I had washed at the laundromat* and put the groceries away, I was not too enthused about cooking the ground beef I had thawed. Luckily, I had enough spaghetti and casserole to feed everyone, so that is what we had.

Wednesday

Short version: Salisbury steaks and gravy, mashed potatoes, tomato salad

Long version: And here's that ground beef I thawed and didn't use the day before. In Salisbury steak, which, when made at home and not in a cafeteria or in a microwave dinner, is actually good.

Cafeteria food made better.

Thursday

Short version: Fair food!

Long version: One of the boys was scheduled to participate this day in a livestock judging event at the New Mexico State Fair. His FFA teacher asked if I wanted to take him, or if she should see if one of the staff members from school could bring him. My first reaction was no thank you on driving 200 miles to the state fair. But then I considered: What if I let the younger two kids skip school and come with us? They've never been to a state fair before, and then it would be more like a fun trip rather than a boring slog for a competition.

So that is what we did. It was a loooong day. We got there are 10 a.m. and didn't leave until 6 p.m. No food can be brought into the fair, and of course, like all fairs, the cost of the food there is extortionate. 

We were very lucky that Thursdays happen to be the day of a promotion called "Graze Dayz," wherein most of the major food vendors offer one menu item for five dollars. This enabled me to get the kids their main meals of the day for a relatively reasonable cost. They each had a piece of cheese pizza for lunch, and then they split two bean and cheese burritos for dinner. I just ate whatever was left over. I was so hot and tired, I didn't even really want to eat much.

Portrait of an exhausted mom at the state fair, courtesy of Poppy.

They also finished off the beef jerky, apples, honey roasted peanuts, and Jolly Ranchers I had in the car during the three-hour drive home.

I think the two members of the family at home had cereal and applesauce for dinner, but I'm not sure about that.

Refrigerator check: 

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

* I have been assured that the control panel for my washing machine has been delivered to the repair place. Now it's just waiting on the repair guy to actually be there to put it in. I am hopeful that this is my last visit to the laundromat, although I'm not counting my washing machines until they're repaired. Or something.

Kitchen Alchemy

I have been the recipient of so much food recently. So much food. It started when Rafael asked us to come pick the apples off his tree. From those apples, I made several crisps and pies, and also canned five quarts of apple slices in cinnamon syrup.

Next was the lady who runs the coffee shop in the village asking A. and me to pick the apples and pears from her trees.

These were Granny Smith apples.

Those became a crisp and six quarts of canned apple slices. The pears are still ripening, but I'm guessing I'll can at least five quarts of those. And there were great quantities more of both fruits on her trees, should we decide to get more.

Our elderly neighbor that A. helps brought me a box of sand plums the next day.

These are a small, local variety of plum, the only use for which is jelly.

Those became two and a half pints of jelly.

Such a pretty color. Delicious, too.

Next, another mom from school texted me to ask if we would like the extra roosters they weren't going to get around to butchering. A. picked those up that day and we spent the next day butchering them.

And of course, we had one for dinner that night.

When I stopped by that mom's house to give her back two of the six prepared roosters, she asked if we needed any pears or apples. I didn't really, but I took some pears anyway, just because they had just harvested the ones from their tree and she said she didn't have time to deal with them.

She also said she had saucing apples, and I couldn't say yes fast enough to those. Most of the apples here are definitely NOT saucing apples; they don't break down enough in cooking to make sauce. My family can eat astonishing quantities of applesauce, and they're always sad in the fall if I don't find good apples for it.

Small, but tasty.

I came home with enough apples to make 12 quarts of applesauce. 

I only canned seven quarts, though, because that's how much my canner holds. We ate the rest just from the refrigerator.

I also came home with eggs, because she said she was overrun with eggs from all the new pullets they got this year.

Four and half dozen eggs, and she wanted me to take more.

People here give us food a lot partially because they know I have a lot of kids to feed. But also they give it to me because they know I know what to do with it. If they ask us to, we will harvest fruit from trees. If they give me fruit, I will can it. If they give us animals, we will butcher them. No preparation is necessary on the part of the givers.

Also, and crucially, I always give them something back. Rafael got a small apple crisp. The lady at the coffee shop will get a jar of canned pears. Our elderly neighbor got a pint of jelly. And my fellow mom got two chickens ready for the oven, a quart of applesauce, and a loaf of bread.

No one asked me for anything in exchange for all these things, but it seems only logical--and polite--that they should get some small part of this food back, but in a usable form. I don't have to pay for these things, except with my labor.

Make no mistake, it is a LOT of labor, but it's also a lot of food. Seems like a good trade to me.

Snapshots: Sans Flowers

I'm just going to admit right up front that I have no photos of flowers in this post.

I know. It's shocking.

I actually have no flowers in my house right now, and did not get anything together for the altar at church this week. There are several reasons for this.

First, we always have school on the Friday after Labor Day, which means an uncharacteristic two-day weekend for us instead of our usual three-day weekend. And that means less time in general to do smaller things like flowers.

Also, three out of the six members of the family left yesterday for two different short trips. One son left at 4 a.m. for a day trip. A. and another son left in the middle of the day for an overnight trip. Both of these events required my involvement to make sure everyone had the appropriate clothing, food, and accoutrements. 

And last, I have been spending six or seven hours in the kitchen every day processing all the food that has come into my house in the past week (more on that Tuesday). 

It's been busy, I am tired, and I just didn't get any flowers gathered and arranged.

I still have plants in the house, though!

My indestructible pothos have finally gotten long enough that they were interfering with the kids' reading spots on the couch, so I put a hook there in the center and looped them up out of the way.

A. continued his bathroom heroics by tearing out our bathroom, which was in almost as bad a shape as the kids' bathroom.

This was where the leaking tub was. It will be a shower stall eventually. A. is building this whole thing himself from bricks and concrete or something, so I have no idea what it will look like in the end.

I don't really eat sandwiches regularly, but I do love BLTs. Only with homegrown tomatoes, though. That's why I always have one celebratory BLT in the height of tomato season. This year, that was last week.

Much-anticipated BLT on a bunny plate.

A couple of months ago, Poppy was suddenly taken with the idea of making a pinata. I don't know where she saw or heard about this, but she really wanted to do the paper mache thing. I didn't have any great objections to it--it's easy, if messy--but was somewhat stymied by the lack of newspapers to be had.

It never really occurred to me that the slow death spiral of printed newspapers is depriving a generation of children of paper mache, but it certainly does make it harder. 

However! While we were on the way to my sister's house in Colorado, we stopped at one of the big Colorado rest stops, and there found a stand with one of those free small newspapers that lists things to do in an area. I figured it would be okay to take a couple for paper mache purposes, so that is what we did.

Those papers have been kicking around the house for two months now, but yesterday Poppy again brought up the pinata thing. As it was a gray day outside and I was just working in the kitchen, I figured it was as good a day as any to do the paper mache.

Accordingly, I blew up a balloon, set her up to contain the mess as much as possible, and let her have at it.

It was fun at first, but she was tired of it by the third layer for sure.

I'm not sure she was too diligent about smoothing the excess paste off the strips of paper. It was so wet that when we hung it up to dry, it was dripping a little. I hope it dries within a few days, though, because Poppy's best friend has a birthday this week, and the plan is to ask their teacher if they can hang the pinata up in the cafeteria and whack it on her birthday. 

Which means, I guess, that I need to get some candy for the inside. Kind of funny to say it, but I'm not entirely sure if I can. I don't want to drive two hundred miles to the nearest store to fill a pinata. I hope the guy who owns the little store in the village is open this week and has something I could use. 

Or is there something I could make or bake to put in there that wouldn't break into a million pieces? Thoughts?

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: So Many Plan Bs

Friday 

Short version: Leftover cottage pie

Long version: Another trip to town--and a bad night's sleep--wiped me out. When I got home I just asked A. to heat up the rest of the cottage pie for dinner. He did, everyone ate, the end.

Saturday

Short version: Spanish tortilla, apple slices

Long version: Poppy requested the Spanish tortilla kind of out of the blue. I had a lot of eggs on hand and was going to be at the volleyball game with a couple of kids in the afternoon, so it seemed like an opportune time to make this in the morning to have on hand.

I used quite a lot of tomatoes in it, since I have quite a lot of tomatoes at the moment.

I had meant to serve cucumbers, but the ones I pulled from my garden were inedibly bitter. This year I tried again planting pickling cucumbers along with the Armenian cucumbers that are actually a variety of muskmelon. I think the grasshoppers ate all the Armenian cucumbers vines, though, because all I have are pickling cucumbers. And they are always bitter. I probably don't water enough or consistently enough, but it's still annoying.

Anyway. I had stashed some of Rafael's apples in the refrigerator, so we had those instead.

Sunday

Short version: Pork or lamb ribs, cheesy mashed potatoes, corn, chocolate-covered peanut butter balls

Long version: I had one rack of pork spareribs, which is not enough for everyone. That's why I also took out a bag of lamb ribs. Only two members of the family actually like the lamb ribs. This way there was enough for everyone without everyone having to eat lamb ribs.

I had polled the children earlier to see if they would rather have potatoes in some form, or macaroni and cheese. Of course they didn't agree, but eventually compromised on cheesy mashed potatoes. The only time I add cheese to mashed potatoes is when I re-heat leftover mashed potatoes, but I indulged them anyway. All I did was stir in some grated cheddar after mashing the potatoes with the milk, butter, and sour cream.

This recipe for peanut butter balls. I hadn't made them in awhile and forgot that I definitely do not need a full cup of chocolate chips to coat the peanut butter balls. Maybe 2/3 of a cup. I always add a bit of coconut oil to the chocolate chips to thin it a bit, and I used dark chocolate chips this time. That's a good idea, because the peanut butter mixture is very sweet.

Monday

Short version: Tuna Mac, green salad with vinaigrette, marshmallows with leftover chocolate shell

Long version: My plan for this night had been pizza, but then it was much cooler in the house than it has been and my bread dough took way too long to rise. It wasn't ready in time to make pizza crust, so I had to figure out something else for dinner.

I made this recipe (times six), and then added frozen peas and a big can of tuna. This made a LOT of tuna mac.

It almost completely filled my biggest casserole dish.

I re-heated the chocolate from the night before and let the kids dip marshmallows in it, just to get it out of the refrigerator before I forgot about it. A Labor Day treat, I suppose.

Tuesday

Short version: Cottage pie, pickles or tomatoes with mayonnaise, crepe cake

Long version: Again not what I had planned to make. I had taken chicken breasts out to thaw, but then I saw that the children were having barbecue chicken for lunch at school. I had quite a lot of the cheesy mashed potatoes left, and I had also made such a large quantity of the meat mixture for the cottage pie last week that I had frozen some of it.

I actually heated the meat and potatoes separately before combining them in the casserole dish, and then I stuck it under the broiler with bits of butter on top to get crispy. It came out well.

The kids got dill pickles. A. got sliced tomatoes with mayonnaise on them. This sounds kind of weird, but the mayonnaise gets a little diluted with the tomato juices and makes a kind of dressing for them. So good.

The crepe cake was just because I had four crepes left from the ones A. made after church on Sunday. I layered them with a mixture of strawberry jam and currant jelly, plus whipped cream.

Not the prettiest, but much appreciated after a return to the dreaded school after a four-day weekend.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken in tomato-cream sauce, rice, frozen peas, experimental apple crisp with cream

Long version: Third night in a row I didn't make what I had planned, again because of the school lunch. I had been thinking I would make chicken parmesan and spaghetti. Then I saw the school lunch for the day was spaghetti with meat sauce.

Yet another plan B.

I did have a lot of roasted and pureed tomatoes on hand I wanted to use. So I first browned and cooked the chicken breasts in olive oil and butter--the butter helps them brown much better--then when they were cooked, I took them out and added some pickled onion slivers and a couple of cloves of garlic. After those had cooked for a bit, I added some of the pureed tomatoes and a little cream. I sliced the chicken before putting it back in the sauce, just so more of the surface area would be saucy.

The sauce was good, but the chicken was still a bit bland. As is often the case with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Which is why I don't typically buy them.

A. and I had been to the coffee shop in one of the nearby villages in the morning after Mass, and the lady who runs it asked us if we would pick some of the abundant pears and apples from her trees in the village.

Would we? OF COURSE we would.

The apples were Granny Smiths. I cooked some of them in a skillet--the same one I had reduced tomatoes in earlier--with water, maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, and a bit of apple cider vinegar. I was going to give these to the children for breakfast in the morning, but then I decided to make a crisp with them for dessert instead.

The apples were already cooked, so I thought I would try cooking the topping--flour, oats, sugar, spices--on the apples in the microwave before putting it under the broiler to get more crispy.

I microwaved the crisp for about seven minutes before broiling it, and everyone told me it was the best crisp ever. Okay. I think it was because the ratio of apples to topping skewed heavily to the topping this time, but it's good to know that method works. A much better way to make a crisp when I don't want to run the oven for an hour.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers, corn on the cob

Long version: The children had the leftover tuna mac. I used the rest of the chicken for A. and me, but I chopped it up more and made more sauce for it with more tomato puree, some sauerruben, paprika, and sour cream to make a kind of chicken paprikash. A. had his with leftover rice.

I got the corn at the grocery store while I was in town. I haven't been going to the town with the produce truck, unfortunately, so I have to rely on the produce at the grocery store. Luckily, this store has pretty good produce.

Refrigerator check:

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

Twice-pickled

This has not been a good year for cucumbers. For the past several years, I have grown Armenian cucumbers. These are not cucumbers at all botanically, but rather a variety of muskmelon. I don't like them quite as much as real cucumbers--they have a faint taste of muskmelon that is detectable when eating the Armenian cucumbers raw--but they have the great advantage of never getting bitter. Even when they grow to huge sizes, they're never bitter. This was a frequent problem I had with true cucumbers. Also, the Armenian cucumbers make excellent refrigerator pickles, which is my main use for cucumbers.

This year, I planted the Armenian cucumbers, and then I decided to try again with pickling cucumbers. I noticed early in the summer that the grasshoppers had eaten only the cucumber vines that were already climbing. They had left the vines still low on the ground. I think it was the Armenian cucumber vines they ate, because I have zero Armenian cucumbers.

I am getting some cucumbers, but they are almost all bitter. Predictably. So I haven't made any pickles from them.

However! One of the former teachers at school showed up to the county fair with lots of cucumbers and mentioned she's been getting great quantities. So I texted her to ask if she would be willing to sell me some cucumbers so I could make pickles. She responded that she wouldn't sell them, but she'd be happy to take some pickles.

Thus, the year's first refrigerator dills have been stowed away.

We already ate one of the pint jars of dill pickles. Rather than throw away the pickling liquid, however, I re-heated it in the microwave and used it to pickle some carrot ribbons.

I do this a lot with the liquid from the pickled onion slivers I almost always have in the refrigerator now. When I finish the onions the first time, I either re-heat the liquid and pickle more onions, or I pickle (store) radish slices.

Pickle trio.

This way I always have some kind of pickle on hand. I only use the pickling liquid once more before dumping it, but at least I get more than one use out of it. I was dismayed to see a gallon of white vinegar priced at over four dollars last week at the store, so I feel like the less of it I have to use, the better. 

Didn't vinegar used to be cheap? I feel like even the gallon of vinegar was like two or three dollars not too long ago. But maybe I'm misremembering.

Anyway. We have pickles, and that makes everyone happy.