Mr. Green Thumb Strikes Again

 

Master Cubby

(Not at all chubby)

How does your garden grow?

With lettuce heads,

And snowpea beds,

And everything all in a row.

A few weeks ago, when A. and I were planting peas, carrots (successful), sprouting broccoli, and collard greens (not so much), Cubby asked if he could have some seeds for a fall garden.

A. showed him where he could plant, I gave him lettuce, snowpea, and cabbage seeds, and he dug out some trenches and made himself a garden.

I suggested to him today that perhaps he needed to thin his lettuce and gave him a bowl for the thinnings. This is what he brought in:

Boom.

If a green thumb is real, then Cubby has it. On both hands. 

Not that this is totally unexpected. I mean, he did start successfully solo gardening when he was five years old. And he was the reserve champion for vegetables at the county fair last year.

Maybe by the time he's fifteen he'll have a market garden and I can buy all my produce from him. I wouldn't be surprised.

Friday Food: It's Tomato and Green Bean Season!

 

Friday

Short version: Scrambled eggs with bacon and cheese, pinto beans, rice, green beans

Long version: Fridays are apparently for scrambled eggs now. But this time I had a couple of pieces of bacon to chop and cook first, and eggs cooked in bacon grease are definitely the best kind of eggs.

A. took all the kids except Charlie with him when he went to get hay. They all wanted to see the camels that live near the hay place. Charlie wanted to see the camels, too, but he wanted even more to stay at home and not have to go anywhere after finishing his first week of school.

I can sympathize.

So Charlie and I stayed home and made some brownies. He doesn't care much about cooking, and Cubby tends to commandeer all the patience I have to help a kid in the kitchen, so Charlie never cooks anything. I do want him to learn, too, though, so we made some brownies together. He got to have one, of course, but then I froze the rest for our Sunday dessert.

Saturday

Short version: Italian sliders, garlic bread, tomato salad

Long version: Another Saturday, another bread-baking day. And more garlic bread.

No one complained.

Sunday

Short version: Pork stir-fry, rice, brownies

Long version: I put a pork sirloin roast in the oven at 5:30 a.m. and left it there until about 10:30 a.m. Then I pulled it apart and used some of the chunks in the stir-fry, which also had onions, carrots, green beans, and banana peppers from the garden. I've never used slow-cooked pork in stir-fry before. It was good, although the texture was a little surprising. Softer than usual.

Monday

Short version: Loose meat sandwiches or pork and rice, tomato salad

Long version: I had just enough ground beef left from Saturday to cook with some onion and barbecue sauce when I got home from work so all the kids could have a sandwich. A. and I had some of the leftover pork fried, carnitas style. I had mine with leftover calabacita/tomato/onion/garlic, and it was really good.

I just love summer vegetables.

Tuesday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, potatoes and cheese sauce, raw green beans, sauteed calabacitas and tomatoes

Long version: The only reason I made the potatoes was because I really needed to finish up the rest of the box of Sysco potatoes. Some were starting to liquefy, which is really disgusting. I also had some Velveeta cheese that was in the one of the many boxes of foodstuffs given to us by neighbors, plus a gallon of milk that was at its "sell by" date. So I figured cheese sauce was called for.

I made the potatoes in the morning and put the casserole in the refrigerator. Then, at dinnertime, I just microwaved the casserole until it was hot and stuck it under the broiler to get it a bit brown on top. It's really better baked for 45 minutes or so, but that is not happening when it's still over 90 degrees every day.

I used half Velveeta and half cheddar, and as soon as he tasted it, Cubby said, "This isn't cheddar." No, not entirely.

They all ate it without further comment, though, so I guess it was okay. Velveeta is definitely a weird cheese product, though.

A. has our shared cell phone in the school bus now, so I haven't been taking any pictures. So, to avoid a completely photo-less post, here's an old one.

Cubby in the great emptiness on their elk scouting expedition.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken patty sandwiches for the kids, leftover pork for the adults, raw tomatoes and green beans

Long version: The maintenance guy at school came to find me at work this day to ask if I wanted a dairy box and some chicken patties. 

The dairy box is a USDA program box that has a gallon of milk, a quart of half and half, two containers of cottage cheese, and a large container of sour cream. They're part of the commodities program here, which provides food to most of the elderly residents in our county. There were two extra boxes left at the school a few weeks ago, and the same guy happened to see us at the track after church that Sunday and asked us to take them so they wouldn't go to waste. 

OKAY.

So we got another of those boxes, and then this huge bag of chicken patties, complete with fake grill marks on the outside. I guess those were also part of the commodities delivery. I fried four of those for the kids in a pan with butter and they had them as sandwiches. They were all very happy with them. Perhaps not the most wholesome of foods, but a nice treat for them occasionally, and certainly convenient, as the patties cook from frozen.

Thursday

Short version: Pot roast, rice or leftover cheesy potatoes, sauteed green beans and tomatoes, mashed squash

Long version: I put the beef pot roast in the oven in the morning. I like to cook pot roasts with something tomato-y, so I used a small can of generic low-sodium tomato soup that one of our neighbors gave us in a box of commodities food. It was low in flavor as well as sodium, so when I re-heated the meat for dinner, I added salt, along with a cube of the garlic scape pesto I had in the freezer. It turned out well.

The meat cooked for several hours, and while it was in there, I also cooked one of the big winter squash from a plant in the front that the horse had accidentally separated from the vine. I don't think it was quite done maturing, but it was okay.

I also stuck a head of garlic in the oven to roast, and used some of that with the green beans and tomatoes. Yum.

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

Masks Are the New Mittens

 

One of the most annoying things for me about winter weather is making sure all of my children have two mittens (or gloves) before we leave the house. So many hours of my life have been wasted searching backpacks, pockets, and cars, or throwing every hat and mitten out of the box by the door looking for a matched pair. Or at least a left and right of something, anything to cover hands.

I do this a lot less now that we don't live in the far north, and I am still grateful for it.

But now! Now each child needs a face covering every time we leave the house! And those face coverings are small masks that are liable to get left behind wherever they go. The boys are pretty good about hanging theirs up by the door or keeping them in their backpacks. If the masks make it home.

But Poppy . . . Poppy is the Bermuda Triangle of masks. Hers just disappear. Sometimes in the house, sometimes in the car, sometimes . . . I don't even know. 

Right now I have one for her on the bus, one in my purse, one presumably lost in the car, and one I think got lost in the house. I'm running out of masks for her and might eventually resort to duct taping her masks onto her ears so she can't just take them off and fling them any old where.

Just kidding. 

It is annoying, though.

The End of an Era

 Poppy has always had her own idea of when the appropriate time is to reach milestones. 

She quit nursing on her own cold-turkey when she was 14 months old.

She decided she was ready to use the toilet at around two years old, and three months later, we were done with diapers entirely.

She insisted I remove her booster seat from her chair at the table about a month ago. Her chin is now about level with the table unless she kneels on her chair, but she was done with that booster and there was to be no discussion about it.

And now, the crib has been retired.

Bunk bed ahoy.

That was the bed my brother made for his daughters when they were sharing a room. When they decided they wanted their own rooms, they each got a single bed and he asked us if we had any use for a bunk bed. We didn't at the time, but I knew we would need a bed for Poppy eventually, so A. brought it back with him from his trip to Tucson for Thanksgiving last year.

Then it sat in the barn for several months. But today, we hauled it out, hosed it off, and set it up. 

It was a little sad retiring the crib that has been in constant use since Cubby was born. That's more than a decade of putting babies in that old, hand-me-down crib with the cheesy lambs painted on the side that we got from my friend Alyssa.

But there's nothing but big kids in this house now, so out goes the crib and in goes the big bed.

Sniff.

Friday Food: Back to School

 

Friday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, rice, pinto beans, raw green beans and carrot thinnings

Long version: Oh look! A picture of quite unexciting food!

This is Jack's plate. The red stuff on his eggs is hot sauce, because he's a good New Mexican boy.

Saturday

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, garlic bread, fried mushrooms, roasted sweet potatoes/bell peppers/onion/Delicata squash

Long version: This was the first Delicata squash from the single plant that sprouted from the six seeds I planted. I put one piece on each of the children's plates, because they'd never had it before. None of the boys like squash, and they didn't like this, either. Poppy did, though. 

Sunday

Short version: Pork steaks, boiled potatoes, corn on the cob, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: Both the corn and the cookies were courtesy of Cubby. (That's some pleasingly inadvertent alliteration right there.)

He went with A. to get firewood last week some distance away, and they stopped at a store on the way home. Cubby spied the sweet corn in the produce section and asked A. to get some. So he did, and the children were very happy.

Cubby was also responsible for the cookies. He wandered into the kitchen at 3:30 p.m. and announced that he would take care of our Sunday dessert. He wanted to make cookies, which was not something I would have done in an 84-degree kitchen, but that was his choice. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough butter in the refrigerator and I had to get some out of the freezer. So the only cookie recipe he could make was the one from his cookbook that calls for melting the butter.

Those are the best chocolate chip cookies anyway, so it was fine.

Random photo break! Another from the elk scouting trip last week. 

This one includes Odin the One-Eyed Guard Dog, who drove off something very large from the campsite overnight. A. didn't see whatever it was, but he heard it crashing as it fled from Odin, so he's guessing it was a bear. Elk aren't likely to visit a campsite, and those were the only two large animals in the area. Good dog, Odin.

Monday

Short version: Overnight brisket, rice, frozen green peas

Long version: This was our first day of school for the year. This year, given the new requirements for class size and so on, I'm acting as assistant for the Kindergarten/1st grade teacher and essentially working as a classroom teacher. I knew it would be exhausting the first day, and I would not be brimming with cooking energy by the time we all got home. That's why I cooked the brisket the night before in the oven and then just sliced it in the morning and stuck it back in the refrigerator.

When we got home, I heated the brisket with barbecue sauce, made rice, and nuked some peas.

Then I lay down in bed to rest "for a minute" and actually fell asleep for about half an hour at 6 p.m.

Good call on making that brisket ahead of time.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken, mashed potatoes, tomato salad, roasted calabacita and onions

Long version: This chicken was a clearance package of lemon-pepper seasoned giant chicken legs. There were four of the legs, and there was no way all of them were fitting in the skillet I started browning them in. So then I had to transfer the browned chicken to a 400 degree oven. It was much too hot in the kitchen for that, and it took a lot longer to cook them than I anticipated. 

It was 6 p.m. before we sat down to eat. We usually eat at 5 p.m. But at least there was tomato salad.

It's always exciting to have the first tomato salad of the season. I didn't have any asadero cheese for it, which I prefer, but just the tomatoes and basil with balsamic vinegar and olive oil was delicious.

Wednesday

Short version: Various foods in various combinations

Long version: Another work day for me, and also a rather hot day. My kingdom for a Wendy's.

However. 

Absent any options for food made by someone else, I went with my original plan. That is, I made some taco meat with the leftover shredded chicken by just putting the chicken in a skillet with a couple of tablespoons of salsa, and some chili powder and cumin. Charlie, Jack, and Poppy ate that in corn tortillas with cheese. They also had some green beans.

Cubby had some of the chicken on its own, plus the rest of the leftover mashed potatoes and some green beans.

A. had leftover brisket, leftover rice, and some leftover peas.

I had a salad with some of the leftover brisket in it. And I managed to stay awake until 8:30 p.m., so, you know, progress.

Thursday

Short version: Italian sliders, pasta with pesto, sauteed calabacita and tomatoes with garlic, frozen peas

Long version: The sliders are those small hamburgers seasoned like meatballs. Poppy and I made the pesto in the morning while we were watering the gardens and harvesting things, which included the tomatoes.

A. took a photo of our harvest for you:

That round pink thing in the front is a watermelon that wasn't quite ripe. It was at least as good as your average seedless watermelon, but definitely not all the way ready. There are about five more still on the vines, however, so we have great hopes that this will be the year we grow our own delicious seeded watermelons.

A. wants everyone (where "everyone"= "my mom") to see that I am not lacking fresh vegetables. So there. You see. I have many, many vegetables.

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

A Sign of the Times

We have discovered a new use for the decorative iron thing in our front entry:

 

Mask central.

I bet I could show the kids that photo in twenty years, and they will know what year it was taken. Unless we're all still wearing masks whenever we leave the property in 2021, which I suppose is possible.

And in related news, Cubby has found a new use for the sewing skills taught to him by the MiL years ago:

He was complaining that the masks I bought for the other kids didn't fit him (they don't--he has a big head) and that nothing fits him and everything is uncomfortable and "I'M GOING TO MAKE MY OWN."

And so, with an old t-shirt of Jack's and a needle, he did. It took him about thirty minutes. I helped him very minimally. I don't sew at all, except for the odd button that needs to be sewn on, so my help was limited to assisting him with the measuring of his face and the length of the ear loops.

We didn't actually look up any instructions, instead just winging it, but it turns out there are quite a few tutorials for t-shirt masks online. Of course.

I did tell him he needed to make sure to cut the shirt with the double layers, figuring that would make it more effective, and after the fact I found that I was more right than I knew.

Nice to find scientific confirmation.

Anyway. School starts for us today, so we need all the masks we have. And if we need more, I know who to ask.

Friday Food: Camp Food and Pancakes

 

Friday

Short version: Chocolate chip pancakes at home, camp food on the mountain

Long version: A. took Cubby and Charlie scouting for the elk hunt Cubby drew for December. The mountain he drew is over three hours away, so they were camping and I threw together a bunch of random food for them.

They had a couple of leftover pork chops, cheese, salami, bread, peanut butter, canned sardines, crackers, apples, cherries, carrot sticks and raw green beans, and cookies. I have no idea what of that they ate for dinner and what they ate the next day for breakfast and lunch, but almost all of it did get eaten at some point.

At the top of the 9,400-foot mountain they climbed.

And at their camp near the car. A. has given up using tents, preferring the simplicity of al fresco camping.

I made chocolate chip pancakes for the children remaining at home, so they could feel they were having fun too, even if they were just sitting at home with boring old Mom. They spent the afternoon grazing in the garden on tomatoes, green beans, and thinned carrots, so I figured their vegetal needs were met.

Saturday

Short version: Steaks with garlic/basil butter, garlic bread, roasted sweet potatoes/bell pepper/onion, roasted green beans

Long version: For the return of the campers, I cooked all the remaining steaks my parents sent us for our anniversary. It was a lot of steak, but there wasn't all that much left over.

I didn't have any steak sauce left, so instead I made some garlic butter by mixing one clove raw garlic and the remains of some roasted garlic into soft butter, and then a few minced basil leaves as well.

You know how food people like to go on about how it's the little extras that make food extraordinary? I hate to admit it, but they're right. That butter made the steaks way better than you would think. Which is annoying, because it's those little things that are often just that much too much for me when I'm trying to get dinner on the table night after night for six people.

It's delicious when I do make the effort, though.

Sunday

Short version: Sausage/rice skillet, sauteed calabacita/green beans/tomato/onion

Long version: Cheap breakfast sausage+onion+rice+frozen peas+cheese. And the vegetables were calabacita, chopped green beans, a couple of tomatoes, onion and garlic.

I just love it when I can harvest multiple vegetables from the garden for dinner.

Monday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, curried split peas, leftover rice, green beans, cookies

Long version: School is starting for us next week, so I was busy all this Monday doing various required teacher trainings. While I was busy, Cubby decided it was an excellent opportunity to bake cookies. He found a recipe in my old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook for oatmeal/peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies.

"I didn't realize the recipe is supposed to make 60 cookies," he said ingenuously when he was telling me about his baking adventure.

So we had some cookies.

Break for a random photo of the backyard garden:

Hello, tomatoes.

Tuesday

Short version: Loose meat sandwiches, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: "Loose meat sandwiches" is definitely one of the most unappetizing-sounding foods ever. But wait! It gets even grosser! Loose meat sandwiches made with chub meat!

Ew.

I did use the cheap ground beef from the chub for this, though. All I did was brown the meat, cook some onions in there, then simmer that with barbecue sauce. My mother used to do this, and we called them sloppy joes, but I'm not sure barbecue sauce is usually used in sloppy joes.

Doesn't matter. It was easy, and fast, and all of the children liked it. Win.

Wednesday

Short version: Carnitas-style pork, rice, carrot sticks with curry dip

Long version: Pork butt (another unfortunate food naming situation) cooked in the morning, then fried for dinner. Never bad.

Every child cleaned his or her plate with this one, mostly because of the curry dip. Jack and Poppy dipped their carrots in the curry dip, dipped their meat in the curry dip, and then, for good measure, mixed the rest of their curry dip in with their rice.

Whatever works, right?

Thursday

Short version: Tuna salad for kids, leftovers for A., randomness for me

Long version: The kids ate their tuna salad with crackers and some frozen green beans. The green beans were still frozen, and I just threw them right on top of their bowls of tuna with a few crackers. Gourmet, without a doubt.

A. ate some leftover pork with barbecue sauce, and some leftover rice.

I made myself a couple of pieces of bacon with sauteed calabacita, onion, garlic, tomato, and melted cheese. And thus were we all fed.

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