Friday Food: Obscene Squash, Abundant Ribs, and Triumphant Watermelon

 

Friday

Short version: Curried chicken and potatoes, frozen green peas

Long version: I had made some curried squash soup earlier in the week with the last of the mashed squash and the chicken stock from poaching chicken. It was tasty soup, but too thin. So I used it as a sauce for chicken pieces and potatoes, instead of eating it as soup.

All I did was brown the chicken, then dump the soup over the pieces in a big skillet, along with some chunks of potato, and cook it covered until everything was done. I stirred in sour cream at the end, too, and the result was very much appreciated by the family.

Even Charlie, who rarely deigns to comment favorably on his food, asked me, "What is this sauce? It's really good."

I win!

Saturday

Short version: Beef pot roast, pasta, green salad with ranch dressing, custard

Long version: The pot roast cooked in the morning with just some salt and tomatoes, then I pulled it apart at dinner time and heated it up with a cube of garlic scape pesto. Yum.

The children were pleased with the pasta, which was my childhood comfort food of pasta with butter, cream cheese, garlic powder, and pepper. I could eat a whole pot of that by myself. It wouldn't be good for me, but I could do it.

I made the custard only because I had some milk that needed to be used up and the oven was on already for a long time for the beef. I intended to save it for our Sunday dessert, but I decided to be indulgent and let everyone have it after dinner Saturday instead.

Custard is really hard to judge for doneness. At least, it's really hard for me. Especially because I always make a double batch, which does not necessarily translate to double the baking time. I slightly overcooked this one, which results in a bit of separation and makes it not as silky in texture as it should be, but it was still good.

Sunday

Short version: Pork spareribs, bashed potatoes, mashed squash, green salad with ranch dressing, ice cream sandwiches

Long version: One of the packages of meat A. came home with a couple of months ago contained two entire racks of ribs. It was a LOT of ribs. And it was already frozen, so I couldn't easily separate them. I just chucked the whole thing in the freezer, figuring I'd deal with it later.

Later was Saturday, when I took them out to thaw. A. put a spice rub on them that night and I swathed the pan in aluminum foil and left it in the refrigerator overnight. Then in the morning--at 6 a.m., to be precise--I put them in a 300 degree oven and left them there until they were all the way done, around noon. 

While the oven was on, I also baked some potatoes. Then, at dinner time, I scooped out the now-cold potato from the skins, heated them up, and mashed in some chicken stock that was in the refrigerator, plus butter, milk, and sour cream. You might notice I cleverly called the resulting roughly-mashed potatoes "bashed potatoes." Get it? Baked+mashed? Yeah. 

Also while the oven was on, I put in a squash. A. did his own preemptive harvesting this day, which included all of the squash.

It was, um, a lot of squash.

Toddler for scale.

Perhaps you need a close-up of that yellow squash next to Poppy that looks like it's half her height? Surely, a squash couldn't be that big?

Oh yes, it could. And don't call me Shirley. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

That, my friends, is how big a calabaza can get if it's assiduously watered. It's a bit obscene. Cooking it should be interesting.

A. had finished the rest of the custard in the morning for breakfast, so I just bought some ice cream sandwiches at the tiny store in the village we always stop in after church. It was hot. I was not into baking.

Monday

Short version: Leftover ribs, rice, carrots

Long version: I harvested the carrots during the preemptive harvesting I was doing ahead of our cold snap. It was a pretty small patch in the pasture, but I'm always surprised at how many carrots come out of even a small patch. At least a big grocery store bag's worth.

A. took the kids to a lake about an hour away to fish in the morning. 

They didn't catch any fish, but a good time was had by all nevertheless, because they did get to swim. Hooray for 95 degrees in September. I guess.

I stayed home and harvested tomatoes, carrots, and green beans in anticipation of the cold weather to come.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover ribs (again), pizza, roasted green beans, roasted tomatoes, leftover mashed squash, triumphant watermelon

Long version: I was baking bread, which means I usually make garlic bread, but I decided to give the kids a break from the never ending ribs and make pizza instead. I had some roasted tomatoes and roasted garlic that I had cooked when the oven was on a few days before to make the pot roast, so I just mashed those together for the pizza sauce. 

It was just a cheese pizza, and only one, but it came out well and was appreciated.

The watermelon was triumphant because it was one that volunteered in the backyard garden near the asparagus bed. It turned out to be a proper big watermelon. 

Watermelon, with photo-bombing bread.

We harvested it so it wouldn't freeze, and it was very, very good. Definitely better than the Moon and Stars watermelons, which never tasted any better than your average store seedless watermelon.

As you know, we have much higher standards for watermelons than that.

Needless to say, we saved the seeds and there will be many more of these mystery melons planted last year. Because anything that has the vigor to grow by itself here is definitely a keeper.

Wednesday

Short version: Quick ground beef tacos, pinto beans

Long version: A work day, which is why I did the quick version of ground beef taco meat. That is, browned ground beef, some already-cooked onion slices I chopped up with kitchen shears, salsa, chili powder, cumin, vinegar, done. And definitely no homemade tortillas on work days.

I had made the pinto beans the day before, when it was cold and cooking a pot of beans on the stove all day made for some welcome warmth. It's been awhile since I've wanted more heat in my kitchen, so that was nice.

Thursday

Short version: Fried eggs, curried split peas, rice, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: I used the other jar of too-thin curried squash soup for the split peas. It's nice that three of the four children really like curry, as I also really like curry, but really do not like cooking anything extra if I'm the only one eating it.

The fourth child ate eggs, and everyone was happy.

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

What Stalks in the Night

 

Good news! It didn't freeze Tuesday night! We squeaked by with 33 degrees, which means all the battling I did with covers in the howling wind to protect my tomato plants was unnecessary. That's okay by me, though. It's going to get warm again, and I anticipate some good harvests of green beans and tomatoes. I'm very glad none of the plants died.

Something else did die that night, though: a sheep. And that is definitely a story you don't hear every day. I will tell it, with fair warning that it involves nature in a somewhat grisly form. 

Although we didn't know it, the drama actually began late in the afternoon. The sheep and the horse were together in the field adjoining our next-door "new" house, which is visible from our kitchen windows. We were eating dinner when Cubby jumped up from the table, saying, "What are the sheep doing? They're running. And the horse is going crazy!"

The sheep were bunched up in the way that they do when they feel threatened, and the horse was galloping around, which is not something he does unless greatly agitated. We thought maybe there had been a rattlesnake or something, so Cubby and A. went out and looked around a bit. They didn't see anything, so A. wrote it off as a nervous reaction to the incredibly high winds and changing weather.

When night fell, the horse was back in his pen near the house, and the sheep were in the vineyard pasture that A. had fenced off for them to eat all the weeds in it. The vineyard pasture is right behind the house, and it adjoins the same pasture the sheep had been in earlier. I was just about to go to bed when Cubby came running out of his room, saying there was a commotion in the pasture. 

His window looks out on the vineyard pasture and the horse pen, and he heard the two dogs going nuts and the horse whinnying and galloping around. A. took his spotlight out to investigate. He found the dogs in with the sheep. They had the flock all rounded up in a bunch in a corner of the pasture. 

These dogs come from cattle-working breeds and are instinctual herders, so A. figured they were just having a little fun and scolded them before putting the sheep back into the next-door pasture and closing the gate so the dogs couldn't get at them. He shut the dogs in the porch for good measure, to ensure no more unauthorized activity.

The horse was hysterical, A. assumed in reaction to the sheep's nervousness and running around, so A. went in with Samson and patted and soothed him a little.

The next morning, just as we were about to all get on the bus for school, A. came in to tell us there was a sheep dead only about six feet from the house, practically under Cubby's bedroom window. It's throat had been ripped out and a few bites taken from its udder. 

It was clearly not a natural death. The question was, what killed it?

Here's what A. thinks happened. A mountain lion was passing through when it smelled the sheep and stopped to investigate. It was probably hiding somewhere around all the old sheds and things by the next-door pasture when the sheep and horse got so agitated in the late afternoon. Then it jumped the fence and took down the sheep when night fell. It only got a few bites before the dogs chased it off, though, and shortly after that, A. went outside. He didn't see the dead sheep in the dark.

Mountain lions generally live in the canyons here, where the larger game animals live and where there is plenty of cover for the lions' preferred stalking method of hunting. They do sometimes travel on the plateau where we live, particularly when the weather is changing. They are very large--males are over 100 pounds--almost completely fearless, and undaunted by fences. 

They will also kill small women and children, so it's definitely not something you want to have around your house. And I was not too easy in my mind when I considered Cubby tromping around the pasture in the afternoon while a mountain lion watched him from its hiding place.

A. made sure his spotlight and gun were ready last night, but everything remained quiet, so it's most likely that the animal has moved on. The ewe that was killed was a very old one we were going to cull anyway. She was already bloated and inedible by the time A. found her, but there wasn't much meat on her anyway, so it wasn't a great loss.

The real heroes here are Jasper and Odin, who chased off a predator that outweighs them by fifty pounds or more. Those dogs are apparently entirely unafraid of any animal, and those are definitely the kind of dogs we need to have.

As A. said, we had gotten accustomed to living here, considering it just like anywhere. And then we get a reminder like this that we do indeed live in a remote and wild place, where mountain lions might appear at any time.

A Clothesline for the Times

 

It's Sunday! And that means my clothesline looks like this:

And on the seventh day, she washed face masks.

Also today, the backyard garden looks like this:

So green! So verdant! So doomed.

It's going to be 95 degrees today. It's going to be 95 degrees tomorrow. But Tuesday? Tuesday, our high--our high!-- is forecast to be 54 degrees.

A 40-degree drop in one day is extreme even for this place of extreme weather. But even more extreme than that? We're forecast to have a freeze Tuesday night. 

No, 29 degrees on September 8 is not normal, nor is it appreciated. I spent all summer watering those tomatoes in the above photo to keep them alive so I could get a good harvest, anticipating that the majority of the tomatoes would be harvested in September. There are a LOT of green tomatoes on the plants. But they will not survive 29 degrees.

I'll cover the ones that have the most tomatoes on them as best I can, but I don't have enough material to cover all of them. Anyway, our forecast also calls for 30-mile-an-hour winds, which is going to make it hard to keep them covered.

Oh well. Mama N. giveth, and she taketh away. Such is the nature of gardening.

Still kind of sucks, though.

Friday Food: Still Tomatoes, Hooray!

Friday 

Short version: Tuna/rice/cheese skillet, eggs for me

Long version: I had extra cheese sauce still from when I made the cheesy potatoes a few days previously, and a bunch of already-cooked rice, so I made a skillet meal with those, plus a can of tuna, onion, mayonnaise, and green peas. Sort of like tuna-noodle casserole, but in a skillet and with rice.

It was very pale and creamy. Not much to look at, but it tasted pretty good. Everyone liked it.

And to continue my inadvertent "Fridays are for eggs" theme, I had a couple of fried eggs with leftover calabacita vegetables.

Saturday

Short version: Green chili hamburger soup, garlic bread

Long version: Still working my way through the roasted green chilis we froze last fall so I can start using the multiple bags given to me by Miss Amelia. It was only about 80 degrees this day, so I could get away with soup. And I used one of the multiple containers of frozen sheep stock that's been in the freezer since we butchered the wether in the spring, so that was nice.

I don't know what it is about those roasted chilis, but they make anything with meat waaaay better than you would think. Are they like mushrooms? Is there an element of umami there? Has anyone studied this? I would legitimately like to know.

Sunday

Short version: Pasta with chicken for the kids, vegetables with chicken for the adults, chocolate pudding

Long version: It was another day over 90 degrees, so I cooked the chicken--fully frozen legs, just simmered in salted water until I could pull the meat off--intending to make chicken salad. But when I pulled the chicken out of the pot to begin shredding it, the meat was still warm. And I had a bowl of tomatoes on the counter. And a head of already-roasted garlic in the refrigerator. And basil in the garden. And already-shredded asadero in the freezer.

So I made a pasta sauce instead and put the chicken in that.

The box of pasta I cooked for the kids were these tiny elbow shapes, and let me tell you, with those small shapes, there is a LOT of pasta packed into a pretty small box. I had way more pasta in the pot than I was expecting, and not enough chicken and sauce. So to the pasta I also added a couple of cubes of garlic scape pesto, some butter, and a little half and half.

A. and I had our chicken with sauteed calabacita/onion/tomato/garlic. Is it getting old? Never.

The pudding was actually two packets of instant chocolate pudding that was in a box of food given to us by the guy who runs the tiny store in the village. One of the elderly residents of the village gave it to him because that person couldn't use it all. He's a single guy, so he passed it along to us. This happens literally almost every week now. If it takes a village to raise (and feed) a child, we are in the right place.

Anyway. I forgot all about the pudding, but Cubby didn't. As soon as we got home from church, he announced that he would make Sunday dessert. After perusing cookbooks, and hearing Jack's announcement that he was tired of cookies (say what?), Cubby decided to make the pudding. Being instant, it literally took two minutes to mix and put in the refrigerator. 

I admit I was a bit skeptical of it, but it was really pretty good. The texture was thinner than homemade, but the taste was more chocolate-y than I was expecting. And it sure was convenient. Especially because I didn't have to stand at the stove stirring pudding for 45 minutes.

Monday

Short version: Chicken patty sandwiches and raw tomatoes for the kids, leftover green chili soup for the adults, watermelon

Long version: Yup, there's those convenient and slightly unwholesome chicken patties again. What can I say? It was a work day. I was tired.

The watermelon was one of our Moon and Stars ones. It was good. Not great, but pretty good.

Small, but mighty.

Tuesday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, roasted potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: These were more of the par-cooked and frozen roasted potatoes that I just finished roasting from frozen for about twenty minutes in the oven.

The salad was very satisfying. The lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots in it all came from the garden, as did the dried dill weed in the ranch dressing. Cubby's lettuce was appreciated by all.

Wednesday

Short version: Italian sliders with fried tomatoes, leftover pasta with chicken for the kids, mashed squash

Long version: I saved just enough of the ground beef from Tuesday to make a few sliders. A. and I ate most of those, while the kids went for the pasta. Of course.

Thursday

Short version: Pork chops, garlic bread, roasted tomatoes and garlic, raw carrots and green beans

Long version: Miss Amelia gave us a pork loin roast, which I cut into chops. My last batch of yogurt turned out very thin--don't know why; the next batch was normal--and I had about a cup of that left. So I used it to make a marinade with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika. Then I just fried the pork at dinnertime. It came out pretty well.

Oh, and here's a photo of A.'s garlic before he harvested it.

With some feral children just for fun. Someone give that girl a haircut. Oh wait. Someone did.

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

The Fourth First

The First Haircut is a classic example of what happens the more children a person has. Let me offer my own children for illustration.

Cubby the Firstborn's first haircut was at an actual salon. He wore a little cape with colorful frogs on it; I took a picture; and I paid ten dollars for the experience.

Charlie the Second Born's first haircut was in the bathtub when I noticed his hair when wet was entirely too long. No cape, no photos of the event, although I did get a couple of photos of his hair after it was done.

I have no recollection whatsoever of Jack the Third Born's first haircut. Definitely no photos, no post, not even any memory of it.

Then there's Poppy the Fourth Born's first haircut. I have a picture of it, but only because it happened in our kitchen and because A. was her stylist.

His services are very reasonably priced.

The only reason she got a haircut is because she demanded it after watching A. cut my hair.

I asked him to do this because my hair had gotten really kind of ridiculously long. I usually get it cut about every six months. Last year, that was when we were in New York in the summer, and thus only ten miles from a salon, and when I took my solo trip to a small city overnight in January, and thus had time to myself in close proximity to a salon.

I am not now, however, in close proximity to a salon, nor do I wish to drive 90 miles to get to one. So I asked A. if he could cut my hair.

Now. My hair is long, which is forgiving of, um, slightly irregular haircuts and mistakes, but it is also very curly. The curls are the tricky part. I always ask for layers. So this wasn't a snip straight across the bottom I was asking for.

However, A. is a handy guy who enjoys new challenges, so he did some YouTube research and announced himself ready. 

He collected his supplies--a comb, my sewing scissors, and two hair ties--asked me to wet and comb out my hair, and then had me sit in a kitchen chair with my head hanging down, as you see Poppy doing in the above photo.

He had decided it would be best to use the methods for self-cutting curly hair, but to do it for me. This involves combing all the hair over the hanging head and putting it in a ponytail before trimming, then sectioning some off in another ponytail and trimming again for the layering. 

There was a third ponytail for a third layer, but it would have made my hair in front too short to pull back, which is a key concern for me. So he just did the two.

It came out well. Poppy's came out even better. A. was very pleased with his handiwork, as he should be, and I am very pleased that I no longer have to try to find a way to drive a hundred miles and pay 30 dollars for a haircut.

So now I cut the boys' hair, A. cuts the girls', and we all live happily ever after. 

The End.

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?