Friday Food: An Elk Encore

Friday

Short version: Elk bites, garlic bread, curried cauliflower, leftover coleslaw

Long version: I took out one the three remaining bags of elk, because I am nothing if not persistent when it comes to using up meat.

This time, I trimmed and cut up the entire bag all at once. This bag must have been the hind quarters, because there was a lot of clean meat without connective tissues. So most of it I cut into thin pieces for the elk bites and stir fry.

The stir fry meat I put back in the refrigerator in a marinade.

The tougher bits I made into chili. It was never above 80 degrees for a delightful change, so I cooked the chili this day even though I knew we wouldn't be eating it this night. Sometimes I'm smart like that.

Saturday

Short version: Elk chili, cheese quesadillas, frozen peas

Long version: I had had a different plan for this night, but then we took our unexpected outing and got home at 5 p.m. At which point I was very glad I had made the chili the day before.

Stop! Photo time! (I hope everyone just heard that in a Hammertime voice.)

I randomly found this Nerf gun hanging by the front door. Don't worry: It wasn't loaded.

Sunday

Short version: Leg of wether, roasted potatoes, garlic/lemon yogurt sauce, roasted garlic heads, leftover coleslaw, leftover curried cauliflower

Long version: When I asked A. what he wanted for Father's Day dinner, he immediately said, "Lamb." And when I went freezer diving, I found that the only lamb we had left from the wether was some ribs and one leg roast. Perfect. The leg roast, that is.

I marinated the roast in olive oil, vinegar, and garlic, then roasted it at high heat until it was done. Roasted potatoes and two heads of freshly-dug garlic at the same time. The yogurt sauce was yogurt, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt and pepper.

When A. ate his lamb, he covered it in yogurt sauce and squeezed the roasted garlic all over it, too, thereby achieving a triple-garlic meat. Perfection. For him, anyway.

Monday

Short version: Leftover elk chili, rice, frozen green beans

Long version: Nothing to see here.

Except for another random photo!

My mom brought one of these bouncy ball things for each kid, with the result that at any given time there are four shrieking blurs ricocheting around the enclosed porch.

Tuesday

Short version: Elk stir-fry, leftover rice

Long version: The time had come to use the marinated elk meat. I actually used all fresh vegetables in the stir-fry this time--carrots, mushrooms, broccoli, onion, green beans--both because I actually had them and because I'm out of frozen stir-fry mix. Gotta re-stock on that.

Wednesday

Short version: Pizza wether, pasta with pesto, cauliflower with pesto, carrot sticks, frozen green beans

Long version: I had half a can of tomatoes in the refrigerator that needed to be used, plus a few slices of the lamb roast, plus the remainder of the pesto from the previous Thursday. So, I made a marinara sauce with the tomatoes and some of the pesto, then heated the lamb up in that and melted some asadero cheese on top.

I saved a little of the pesto and Parmesan from the pasta to put on the leftover cauliflower, and you know, it was really almost as good as the pasta. I mean, nothing is really going to be as good as pasta, but it was satisfying enough as an accompaniment to the meat.

For me, that is. Pretty sure the kids wouldn't agree.

Thursday

Short version: Carnitas-style pork, boiled potato chunks, frozen peas

Long version: "Boiled potato chunks" probably doesn't sound too appealing. What if I told you that they had half a stick of butter mixed into them? Yup. They were good.

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

Let's Play a Game

I saw this question around on Twitter somewhere, and I was intrigued by it: If you were to build a house on two acres for which money was no object, what five features would you insist upon?

I don't have a Twitter account, so I'm going to post my response here in a whole, long blog post that is going to be way more than 280 characters. WHEE!

Number one will probably surprise no one: a garden. But not just any garden. I want a walled kitchen garden. Like this:

Be still my heart. 

(This is West Dean, in England, and the full gallery of photos is here.)

I have always wanted one of those walled gardens with the espaliered fruit trees and tidy rows. And of course, were I ever to possess such a thing, no weed would dare show its face in those perfect rows.

Ahem.

Number two: A sort of butler's pantry just inside the house when one comes in from the garden. I don't know if butler's pantry is quite the right word, but what I mean is a small room with lots of counters and shelves, and a big farm sink. This would be so handy to have for things like butchering and cleaning produce and storing large canning pots and so on. And, you know, having a place to store extra food that is not the floor around my woodstove.

Which leads us to number three: A proper laundry room off the pantry, with an easy-to-clean floor and a place to store brooms and things. This would lead to . . .

Number four: A kitchen of my own design, with a really, really nice range. I have probably the world's worst range right now, so this has been on my mind lately. I don't necessarily need a really big kitchen--what with that handy pantry I would also have--but I would like to have a good range. And a bigger refrigerator. And maybe a wood topped island.

The kitchen could be its own entire post. But moving on.

Number five: A small library room. I wouldn't really want a huge library, just a small room with shelves for books and a comfortable chair with a reading lamp. Plus a soundproof door with a lock on it to keep my children out.

Just kidding about the door.

Kind of.

Okay! Now tell me: What five things would you have in the house of your dreams?

We Went Somewhere!

Sound the trumpets.

I decided on Saturday that perhaps the children would like to do something other than watch A. and me water the garden and move sheep fences. Jack had recently expressed an interest in shooting the BB gun, and Cubby always enjoys target practice, so we went to the nearby village that has a shooting range.

A. took the shooters to the range. Poppy is too young to shoot, although I have no doubt she'll be all about it when she's old enough. Charlie has no interest in shooting guns. He prefers bows, but all his arrows are broken right now. So I took Poppy and Charlie to the playground while the others were at the range.

This playground is a nice one because this village actually has sprinklers for it. Meaning there is grass. This is a rarity around here, and the children were suitably impressed at the soft springiness at their feet. And the fact that if they fell, they didn't rip their knees up.

There are also a lot of shade trees. Good thing, because this playground is definitely old school, by which I mean that the equipment is mostly metal. That would be a real danger to bare skin if it was out in our brutal sun all the time.

As it was, the metal slide had only been in the sun for a little while, so it wasn't skin-burning hot yet.

Slides used to be a lot higher. You don't see these on modern playgrounds.

There's a big metal turtle at this playground, too. The kids always want to climb on it. Luckily, it was still in the shade.

I didn't take a close-up, because the paint that's run all over the turtle gives its face a definitely creepy expression.

Cubby and Jack showed up about forty-five minutes later, and everyone enjoyed their unexpected time away from our house.

Mission: Success.

Friday Food: Sausage and Potatoes. And Repeat.

Friday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, fried potatoes, carrots and radishes with ranch dressing, sauteed spinach and tomatoes

Long version: I made a large pot of boiled potato chunks this day, both to use up the last of the now sad-looking big box of Sysco potatoes and to have some potatoes already cooked for the coming hot days.

The spinach also came from Sysco, in a five-pound bag. It was fresh spinach, which means it was a very large bag. But even a very large bag of spinach cooks down to not much spinach. I froze most of it in balls to use later, but this night I cooked some of it with the now-wrinkly grape tomatoes my mom brought.

Saturday

Short version: Barbecue pork, garlic bread, baked beans, frozen peas, cucumber spears

Long version: Leftover pork with the New York State barbecue sauce the MiL sent back with A. She also sent several cans of Grandma Brown's baked beans, another New-York-State-specific product, and the ideal of baked beans according to my children.

Sunday

Short version: Antelope, fried potatoes, frozen peas

Long version: This was a boned-out roast that I browned, then took out, sliced, and put back in the pan with a couple of cubes of garlic scape pesto and a bit of heavy cream.

And more potatoes.

Monday

Short version: Antelope fajitas, frozen green beans

Long version: Another roast, this time browned, sliced, and then added back to the pan with a sliced onion and bell pepper, plus cumin and chile powder.

The children got to have theirs with flour tortillas that my mom brought, which made them happy.

And then, after Cubby ate his burrito, he asked me if he could have another flour tortilla with baked beans in it. We had some beans left, so I said okay, and then he made himself an enormous baked bean burrito. It had like a cup of beans in it.

He ate every bite. Okay then.

I feel like this might be the most boring Friday Food post in the (long) history of Friday Food posts. Maybe we should pause for a photo? Yes? Okay.

One of the giant slabs of black walnut A. brought back from New York, with Poppy for scale. She is not tiny. The slab is just that big.

Well, that made everything much more exciting, didn't it? Sure.

Tuesday

Short version: Barbecue chicken sandwiches, fried potatoes, coleslaw, bribery Oreos

Long version: The last package of those giant bone-in chicken breasts, just simmered until they were shreddable, then mixed with more of the New York barbecue sauce.

And more potatoes. Told you it was a large pot of potatoes.

I promised the kids Oreos if they would get the living room picked up really well so I could vacuum the next morning. I'm sure our neighbor--Miss Georgia--who gave us the Oreos would approve of my using them in this way.

Wednesday

Short version: Vegan tamales, antelope, frozen green beans

Long version: I know you all just did a double-take at the word "vegan" up there. Has such a thing ever been seen before here in this chronicle of carnivorous cooking?

No. (But I hope you appreciated the alliteration there.)

The tamales came from the bed-and-breakfast-type place my parents stay at when they visit us. The lady who owns it stocks the kitchen with all kinds of things, and one of those things was a package of frozen vegan tamales from a Santa Fe tamale company. My parents brought them here thinking we might make them one of the nights they were visiting, but it was really hot then and I didn't want to steam anything for 30 minutes.

It was hot last night, too, but I steamed the tamales anyway.

They were tasty, but . . . lacking. Lacking the adhesiveness and flavor that a cup of lard gives them, that is.

We ate them with sour cream, cheese, and, in some cases, antelope meat. So that pretty much negates that whole "vegan" thing.

You expected anything else from us?

Thursday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, pasta with pesto, carrot sticks with ranch dressing

Long version: This was real pesto, made with basil instead of just garlic scapes. This is the first time this year that we've had enough basil from the five plants still alive in the garden to make pesto.

Basil pesto is definitely better than garlic scape pesto.

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

Still Here!

It occurs to me that my last few posts have focused quite a bit on the raging fire near our house, and a lack of updating here may lead some people to fear we were swallowed by that fire.

We were not.

We had one bad night when the wind was blowing directly to us from the fire and we could see it just over the paved road a few miles to the south of us. We figured that if it jumped that road, there was nothing to stop it from running right through the (very dry) pastures to our house. That was the night I packed all the essential documents and put the bag by the door.

A. stayed up to watch, though, and around 10:30 p.m., the wind shifted just a bit, the humidity went up, and the crisis was over for us.

Also, there was a big truck with a water tank on the back that was running up and down that road for hours, soaking the ground on the south side.

Can I tell you how grateful we are for the 75 men and women who showed up to help fight this fire? SO GRATEFUL. Most of them were from volunteer fire departments all over the northern part of the state, and they had to come a looong way to help. The community donated food, water, and places for them to sleep, and the school opened up so they could shower.

It's very comforting to live in a community that can mobilize so quickly when there's an emergency.

That fire is about 90% contained right now, burning in isolated pockets of trees on unoccupied range land. It probably won't be 100% out until it rains, though, and we don't have much of that in our forecast.

Anyway. Let's hope that's the last of the fire talk for a very long time.

Over and out.

Friday Food: We're Still Standing

Didn't I just say last week that it had been quite a week? Yeah. That, again. The fire is still burning to the south of us and I still have a bag packed with clothes and important documents in case we need to leave. But through it all, we eat.

Friday

Short version: Pork carnitas tacos, pinto beans, guacamole, cherry pie and vanilla ice cream.

Long version: My parents came for a short visit and brought enough avocados that we could make guacamole. And there was much happiness in the land.

The cherry pie was one of The Village Piemaker's pies that the lady who owns my parents' hotel-type thing always leaves in the freezer for them. I think the blueberry is actually better, but I don't really like pie, so who cares what I think.

Saturday

Short version: Leftover Italian sliders and pasta, garlic bread, sauteed greens

Long version: The greens were spinach and chard from my dad's garden. They were really, really good.

Sunday

Short version: Buckwheat waffles, strawberry milkshakes

Long version: Where is the redeeming nutritional value to this meal? Nowhere, that's where.

We usually have the waffles after church, but we didn't go to church this Sunday because A. and Cubby were in New York*. So I decided to make the waffles for dinner.

And of course, we had to have dessert, because it was Sunday. And I had just a little ice cream and just a few strawberries left from the huge quantity of fresh fruit my mother brought with her. And it was the fourth straight day of over 90 degrees with hideous winds.

I think you can see that strawberry milkshakes were inevitable.

One of the reasons A. went back to New York was to cut up the giant black walnut tree the MiL had taken down this winter. No one but A. would try to cut up a tree that size with nothing but a chainsaw, a sledgehammer, and some wedges. All these years later, and still Mr. Relentless.

Monday

Short version: Pork carnitas burritos, leftover roasted vegetables, leftover rice, sauteed spinach with cream, mason jar ice cream

Long version: My brother and his family stopped here for the night on their way to Minnesota to visit my SiL's family, so I put the pork in the oven in the morning to make sure I had something to feed them for dinner.

Had I been a really dedicated hostess, I would have made them corn tortillas. However, it was 80 degrees in my kitchen at 5 p.m. and I'm pretty sure standing at a blazing hot cast-iron griddle pan for 45 minutes would have melted me right into the floor.

I'll never make it as an abuelita.

The ice cream was the New York Times one that calls for shaking cream, sugar, and vanilla in a mason jar, then freezing. It tasted pretty good, but the texture was sort of odd. Kind of like frozen mousse. Thick, and a bit icy. I did one jar with plain vanilla, and one with cocoa powder added to the vanilla recipe, and they were both good.

Not as good as real ice cream, of course, but for those of us without regular access to real ice cream, it's a good thing to know about. And it's particularly good to do with a bunch of kids around, because they are all about both shaking things and eating ice cream.

Tuesday

Short version: Pasta, green salad

Long version: The pasta had the last of the meatball sauce from Saturday, a cube of the garlic scape pesto from the freezer, the last quarter cup of cooked spinach chopped fine, and some shredded asadero.

I had a salad.

Also worth noting: It never got above 78 degrees this day, which means my kitchen was not a sweat bath when we sat down to eat. How refreshing.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftover pork, leftover rice, carrots with ranch dressing

Long version: The only thing of note this day is that A. and Cubby arrived home late at night after a two-day cannonball run/drive home from New York.

I was very glad to have them home. It has been, as I noted above, a hell of a week, and I was not too pleased to have the family split up during it.

Thursday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, fried potatoes, radishes and cucumbers with ranch dressing

Long version: Nah.

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

* Now you know why I went back into the chicken coop after being menaced by the snake: Because there was no one else here to do it. Had A. been here, you bet your sweet Caroline I would have sent him in there while I stayed cowering in the house. 

As the World Burns

Yesterday I went into the chicken coop to check for eggs and a snake hissed and lunged out of one of the other nesting boxes at me.

WOAH THERE.

Let me tell you how not happy I was about that. SO NOT HAPPY. I hate snakes. Especially being surprised by one in an enclosed space.

I couldn't see it very well, because it retreated back into the box and I didn't have a flashlight. I was pretty sure it was a non-venomous bull snake, though, rather than a rattlesnake. I still retreated, but when I cautiously re-entered a few minutes later with a long stick, it was gone.

There was, however, a dead chick in the coop this morning. Dammit.

Also yesterday, the entire south and east horizons were a wall of smoke.

A wildfire sparked by lightning started just five miles south of us on Saturday, and by yesterday had burned thousands of acres and was threatening the village, along with several ranches in its path. The 30-mile-an-hour winds made it pretty much impossible to control, and I was getting a lot of phone calls from neighbors offering places to stay if we needed to leave, a place for our horse, or just information.

I had a bag packed with clothes and in the van if we needed to leave quickly, but thankfully the wind was in our favor and it never came closer to us.

It is still burning, though, and friends of ours are still re-locating their livestock in case they have to evacuate, so it's not over yet.

I could use a break now, okay, universe? Just . . . just lay off for awhile with the anxiety-inducing situations, please.