Friday Food: A Failure

Friday 

Short version: Throwaway meatloaf, baked potatoes, last-minute egg salad, salami and cream cheese, raw green beans, baked mystery apples with cream

Long version: Starting right off with the failure here. I had had ground beef in the refrigerator since Monday, when I bought it at the store. I had meant to cook it earlier in the week, but heat and tiredness from in-service week derailed me.

Our meat is so fresh out of the freezer that I never have a problem keeping it in the refrigerator for a few days. I wasn't sure about store meat, though. I did smell the meat before forming the meatloaves, and it smelled okay. But as it was cooking, it started to smell . . . not okay. Not bad, exactly, just kind of funky.

It tasted that way to me, too. I'm very sensitive to flavors, though, so I had A. taste it, too. He thought it was okay. So I served it. 

A. ate a few bites and vetoed it. He said it tasted gamey. Again, not really rotten, just not very good. 

So I quickly grabbed other available sources of protein, which were some hardboiled eggs I had on hand that I made into egg salad, and the salami and cream cheese.

The apples were from a grafted branch on the tree next door. A. had grafted several varieties onto the existing tree there, and we didn't know which variety this was. This is the first year there's been apples on that branch. They were quite large, and partially red, so I was hoping they would be good saucing apples. When I started peeling them, however, they were pretty dry and hard to peel, also almost inedibly tart when I tasted them. 

I peeled and sliced them anyway, and cooked them most of the way in the microwave, to see if they would get soft. The small green apples on that tree never do get soft when cooked--although they are delicious raw and perfect for drying--so I thought I'd better try that out first. They did get soft. I finished baking them in the oven with a lot of maple syrup, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, and they broke down even further.

A. thinks these were an old variety of apple that are meant for pies. One of the varieties he grafted came from his uncle's farm near Blackrock, and they were pie apples. That's why they're so large and tart. 

So the meal ended well, even if it started disastrously.

Oh, and I ALSO completely burned the garlic bread I had baked with the regular bread and had intended on having for dinner after the first day of school.

Definitely not my best day in the kitchen.

The one kid that had eaten most of his meatloaf before A.'s pronouncement didn't get sick in any way, so I guess the meat was okay, just overaged. I still gave it to the dogs and chickens, though. That made me feel a little better about wasting fifteen dollars' worth of meat. But just a little.

Saturday

Short version: Lamb, rice, green peas

Long version: Pretty much all the meat I have left needs to be braised, stewed, or otherwise cooked a long time to get tender. Like the bag of lamb shanks and stew meat I pulled from the freezer in the morning. I put it, still mostly frozen, in a pot with water, onion ends, carrot, and celery, and simmered that until I could pull the meat off.

I used that meat and a little of the resulting broth, along with onion, garlic, tomatoes (from the garden, yay!), paprika, oregano, thyme, lemon juice, and cornstarch plus yogurt, to make some saucy meat to go on top of the rice.

It turned out quite well. Shanks really do produce some nice, tender meat if they're cooked right.

Sunday

Short version: Tuna-rice skillet, dressed-up ice cream

Long version: I hadn't taken any meat out to thaw, so I planned on making tuna/salmon patties. But then I didn't have any bread crumbs, and I didn't want to haul out the food processor to make some. I did have leftover rice, though.

So!

Rice+one big can of tuna+onion+mayonnaise+butter+a tiny bit of milk+grated cheddar=something like tuna noddle casserole. But with rice. In a skillet.

We had three kinds of ice cream on hand: vanilla, cookies and cream, and mint chocolate chip. So everyone got to choose their ice cream and then dress it up with either chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookie crumbles from the freezer, or chocolate syrup. Or all three! It's a Sunday! Anything goes!

Monday

Short version: Fried pork, bread and butter, pickles, ice cream

Long version: First day of school! And work for me. I knew I would be exhausted, which is why I had stashed a bag of cooked pork butt in the freezer. I took that out to thaw in the morning and fried it with spices when I got home.

I didn't have the energy to even cut carrot sticks, but I do have a lot of homemade pickles on hand right now, so everyone got one of those. And then A. remarked several times how good they were with the meat, so I guess that was a winner.

Ice cream because it was the first day of school. I didn't put out all the toppings, though, which is what differentiates Weekday Ice Cream from Sunday Ice Cream. I guess.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftovers, lamb-y rice, raw radishes and green beans, lemon jello

Long version: Tuesday is one of my days off from work, so I wouldn't typically need to have a meal of leftovers on this day, but I was in the city with a child at the doctor. So, A. had the leftover stewed lamb with the rice, which I had cooked in a jar of lamb stock that had been in the refrigerator long enough. Two children had the last of the fried pork, plus the lamb-y rice. Two children had rice and beans, just made with a half can of pinto beans that had been in the refrigerator awhile, with the addition of butter and garlic powder.

The jello was for the sick child, but he didn't want it. Everyone else was happy to finish it.

Wednesday

Short version: Sandwiches and Crunchy Cheese Snacks at school and home; cottage cheese, cherries, and bananas at home

Long version: We had a Vigil Mass for the Assumption of Mary at 5:30 p.m. this day. Our school is in the village where we go to church. School gets out at 4 p.m. I decided it wouldn't be worth it to rush home only to leave again an hour later. So I brought dinner with me to work.

By that I mean I threw sliced bread, rotisserie chicken meat, salami, ham, mayonnaise, and mustard in a bag to make sandwiches after school/work. I also brought the Crunchy Cheese Snacks I had bought at the store the day before. These are a store brand version of crunchy Cheetos. Unlike the store brand of Fritos, these don't taste just like Cheetos, but they were okay.

We got home a bit after 6:30 p.m. A. hadn't had a chance to eat because he had been driving the school bus, and Poppy had been playing with her friend, so she hadn't eaten either. I made them sandwiches and they got some Crunchy Cheese Snacks, too. 

Two boys who had eaten sandwiches already were hungry again. They had the cottage cheese and bananas (not together). We all had cherries, which tasted SO GOOD after a very hot church service. It was over 90 degrees and our church has no air conditioning. Cold, sweet cherries were very welcome after sweating profusely for 45 minutes.

Thursday

Short version: Sausage and potatoes, or pasta with pesto and chicken, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, watermelon

Long version: I had a little of the meat left from the rotisserie chicken I bought at the store on Tuesday, so I chopped that and added it to pasta with pesto. 

A. and I had the sausage, which was the very last package of smoked sausage I bought a long time ago from a store that is not close enough for me to get to often. There were two baked potatoes in the refrigerator from Sunday, so I diced those and added them to the pan with the sausage. I also found some already-cooked diced onion in the refrigerator, so that went in with the sausage and potatoes.

I was very excited to find a real watermelon (with seeds!) from Texas at the grocery store, so of course I bought one. It was a really good one, and we're going to save the seeds.

It was, of course, giant. As all watermelons with seeds are.

Refrigerator check:

Lots of watermelon in there.

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

First Day of School Thoughts

I can't be the only one who still has to think hard for a second while looking at the little arrow that denotes "greater than or less than" in math to remember which way it's supposed to point. The way I still remember it is that the greedy alligator eats the bigger number (the open part of the arrow faces the bigger number). I figure if that's what stuck in my head almost forty years ago, that must be a good mnemonic. So that's still how I explain it to the first graders.

One of my duties in the lunchroom is serving the elementary kids from our well-stocked salad bar. Some of the students were really surprised that I didn't remember exactly what they like on their salads. As if my brain is still in its prime and can keep the individual salad combinations of 28 kids on file over three months of summer. Give me a couple of weeks, though, and I'll have "Andrea=lettuce+cheese+ranch dressing+ham bits" taking up valuable space in my memory again.

I spent almost an hour trying to set up four Zoom meetings for the semester. This should have taken me about ten minutes, but every time I set the time parameters and saved them, the ending time would inexplicably change to the same as the beginning time. Over and over. It was so frustrating. I kept changing things in settings and re-scheduling the meetings until eventually it worked. Why did it finally start working? No idea, but at least I got it done. And that's pretty much my technology experience in a nutshell.

We have a couple of very spirited teachers, bless them, who always come up with a theme for the beginning of school and decorate accordingly. This year's theme is Hollywood, mostly because that was the prom theme last year so we already had a lot of props and decorations for it. 

This is by the front office.

They laid out a long length of red paper on the path leading to the cafeteria where all the kids go in the morning so they could "walk the red carpet," gave them all VIP bracelets and star-shaped sunglasses, and had the staff act as the adoring crowds lining the red carpet and being all excited to see them.

Most of the kids loved it. A few did not. I get off the bus with the kids, so my role in this was actually to reassure our one new first-grader that this was not as scary as it looked. She sort of believed me. At least she actually went into the school, which didn't look like a given when she first saw the scene outside the cafeteria.

The first day is so tiring. Everyone in my house went to bed early last night. Let's hope they'll be well-rested and ready to go for the second day.

Snapshots: Now THAT's Rain

I could not believe my eyes when I looked at our rain gauge after a night of rain.

Almost full!

We had got a half inch the night before, as well, which means that the total for these two days is actually almost a quarter of all the rain we get on average in a year.

So that was pretty exciting.

Let's see what else . . .

I made some pickles with my award-winning Armenian cucumbers after I picked them up from the county fair display.

Using an old pickle jar, of course.

At work, I found piles of books someone had dumped in the back storage room we use for classroom texts, and since books are my domain at school, I was sorting through them this past week when I had time during teacher in-service. Many of them were old textbooks, and one of them is pretty much our family manifesto:

Yup.

I didn't actually read the book, but I think it's about rhetoric and argumentative writing and so on. In any case, this is now what I say whenever anything devolves into a verbal squabble at dinner. Which is a lot. My kids say, "Stop saying that, Mom!" To which I reply, "Then stop arguing."

Never.

Speaking of school, it starts tomorrow and at least one child has been getting ready:

I found her school supply list on the school Facebook page and she started going through the box of supplies I bought to find hers, put her name on everything with a Sharpie, and put it all in her backpack.

Her brothers showed no inclination whatsoever to prepare themselves for the dreaded event, so she asked if she could sort out their supplies for them.

This girl, man. Built different, for sure.

And what do her brothers wish to do instead of going to school?

Add to their collection of spent ammunition, for one thing.

It was pretty funny that when that boy said, "Hey, Mom! Come see my shell collection!" I thought, "He has sea shells? How'd he get those?"

Silly me. You'd think after all these years in the country, I would know he was talking about gun shells. I'll just never be a real country mouse, I guess.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Elk and Pork

Friday 

Short version: Elk and gravy, mashed potatoes, frozen peas

Long version: I found two bags of elk stir-fry meat at the bottom of the freezer, which just means it was carefully trimmed and cut very thinly. Instead of making stir-fry with it, though, I fried it and made a gravy for it with a diced shallot, milk, and cornstarch.

Gravy requires mashed potatoes, so I made some of those.

Unrelated photo of the traffic situation on my way to pick some things up one day.

Saturday

Short version: Lamb chops and rice, burritos, cucumber slices

Long version: I made this meal very quickly in between getting home from the county fair rodeo and going to the county fair dance. I had to wait until all the ironing was done at the table before we could eat, but that gave me time to fry the last few lamb chops from some I had thawed a few days earlier. A. had those with the rice. 

The children had the burritos, which were just leftover bull taco meat with cheese in flour tortillas.

Sunday

Short version: Elk stir-fry, rice, chocolate pudding

Long version: I had maybe a pound of the elk meat that I hadn't cooked on Friday. It wouldn't have been enough on its own, but in a stir-fry, it was enough. I used the one bag of stir-fry vegetables that had been in the freezer a very long time, which were mostly cut green beans. To that I added carrots I had pre-cooked in the microwave, plus the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and onion powders (too lazy to actually cook an onion), ginger powder, and peanut butter.

I made the same recipe for chocolate pudding I always use, but the cornstarch got away from me a little bit, and I also used some cream that was about to go off. Both of those things made the pudding much thicker. Not bad--especially with heavy cream poured over the top--but definitely a different texture.

Monday

Short version: Burritos and leftover pudding at home, chicken drumsticks on the road

Long version: I was with one child in town at dinnertime, so A. fed everyone at home with the leftover taco meat and pudding. Since I started my long drive home right around dinnertime, I picked up a container of rotisserie chicken drumsticks at the grocery store and shared those with the kid in the car with me.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork, smashed potatoes, green beans, cookie bars

Long version: It's really been too hot to cook something like a pork butt that needs the oven on for a long time, but I really don't have a lot of meat on hand at the moment that's fast-cooking. So I made the pork. 

I started it at 6 a.m..

Early-morning pork.

I took it out around 11 a.m., so at least the oven wasn't on during the hottest part of the day.

Late-morning pork.

The potatoes baked while the pork was in. At dinnertime, I just cut them in half, scooped out the flesh with a spoon, and re-heated them before roughly mashing them with lots of butter and salt.

I also made the cookie bars while the oven was on for the pork. They were oatmeal/chocolate chip/almond.

And I FINALLY had enough green beans for a side dish. I only have half a dozen plants, so this is not going to be a banner year for green beans. With these, I sauteed them in bacon grease, and also added a diced shallot. So good.

Wednesday

Short version: Pulled pork sandwiches, Crunchy Corn Chips, carrot sticks with curry dip, strawberries and cream

Long version: I had made sourdough buns a couple of weeks ago when I was baking, and I just stuck them in the freezer for a future meal. This was it. It was brutally hot, and I had been at teacher in-service meetings all day, so this was an easy and relatively fast meal to make.

Crunchy Corn Chips are store brand Fritos.

Strawberries because they had been on sale when I was at the store on Monday.

Thursday

 

Short version: Various leftovers, spaghetti with pesto, grape tomatoes, ice cream

Long version: Another full day of meetings, another quick dinner when I got home. For A., I used the last of the leftover stir-fry and rice to make fried rice, just by adding a couple of scrambled eggs and, um, frying it.

I had made spaghetti before I left in the morning for the child who hasn't been feeling well. I cooked a whole pound of spaghetti, so I used some to make pesto pasta, with a few of the remaining frozen cubes of pesto from last year's garden. The kids had that with leftover pork and the tomatoes.

I had the last of the pulled pork, plus a tomato/cucumber/feta salad made with my own garden produce, yay!

Roma's are not a great fresh-eating tomato--kinda mushy--but I take what I can get.

We had ice cream because I wanted some. Our meetings this day included all the wretched required trainings for child abuse reporting, suicide prevention, active shooter scenarios, and so on. I hate this day of training. It's so depressing. I should not use food to comfort myself, I know, but I do. Thus, ice cream.

Refrigerator check:

Not too bad.

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

The Remote Chauffeur

Like most parents of older children who cannot yet drive, I spend quite a bit of time driving my kids to wherever they need to be. Unlike most of those parents, however, my drives are a lot longer. Also more scenic.

I had a particularly driving-heavy day a bit ago, and I documented it for you in photos.

You ready? Let's go!

First up was getting my eldest to his job. He's been working at a ranch down the hill this summer. It's an outdoor job, and he starts very early to avoid the worst of the heat, so we were leaving the house just before sunrise for the 25-mile drive to the ranch.

The last five miles are on a caliche road.

I stopped on my way back up the hill to take a picture of the rising sun.

It was unusually hazy on this morning.

Just a couple of hours after I got home from that excursion, I went back down that same hill to bring another child to a town for his school vaccinations. That was another 120 miles roundtrip.

On the road again . . .

And just about an hour after returning from that, I got back in my trusty old Honda to take Poppy to her friend's house for a sleepover. Thankfully, her friend only lives about twenty miles away.

She's on a pretty remote ranch, but at least their house only requires about a mile and a half of off-the-pavement driving on their driveway. Some of the houses on this ranch are twenty miles or more off the paved road.

Nice views on the way home.

So all together, I drove around 250 miles to get my kids to work, the doctor, and a sleepover.

Thankfully, I do not have days like this often, but it's just another part of parenting in Remote America.

Snapshots: The County Fair

The first weekend of August is our county fair weekend. Our fair is reeeally tiny. No rides, no food trucks, no concerts. It's really just agricultural products and crafts, livestock showing, a kids' rodeo, and a dance on the last night.

Let's go!

Our family entries for the indoor competition this year included basil from one child; a diorama from another; and cookies, shallots, Armenian cucumbers, and rhubarb from me.

The diorama, cookies, and cucumbers got first-place ribbons.

Our former neighbor in the village teaches dance for little girls, and also sews these really cute outfits for her dancers.

The kids got to watch their friends show their animals.

This is a market steer. I don't know why the steers are always foaming at the mouth in the show ring, but they all do.

Waiting for the parade to start on Main Street.

Pole bending during the kids' rodeo.

Getting ready to ride steers.

Ironing for the dance.

At the dance.

The dance is a community event for all ages, held in the livestock show pavilion, with a live band. The two oldest boys and Poppy wanted to go, so I went with them. It was fun. Lots of people, lots of kids, but way too late for me. I think it goes until midnight, but we left at 10 p.m. because I had to get up early this morning to be Church Lady.

I am very tired right now.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Highly Unusual

A. left last Friday for New York with the three younger children, and just returned yesterday. I was home caring for animals and the eldest child, who wasn't feeling well all that time. So it was a really odd week of food at our house.

Friday 

Short version: Barbecue food

Long version: To continue the odd theme, I actually went to a barbecue. Our whole family was invited when we were at the parish picnic the week before, by one of the moms from last year's First Communion class. When she heard that I would be the only one here, she was insistent that I come by myself.

She's very nice, and I didn't want to be rude, so I went. She lives in the village in the opposite direction from the one where we go to school and church. Even though her village is the same distance from our house as the village we are usually in, I don't really know anyone there except by sight. So I didn't really know anyone at the barbecue. 

I sat with three elderly Spanish ladies, who spent much of the time telling me about their various family connections and asking me about my neighbors, since I have the misfortune to not actually be related to anyone here. Old Spanish ladies are highly opinionated and outspoken, so it was very entertaining.

As for food, I had chicken and some pasta salad. The hostess confessed that she just bought a bunch of rotisserie chickens and quartered them before putting them on the grill for just a few minutes with barbecue sauce. She and her husband both work and they have five children, so spending an hour grilling chicken didn't seem like a good use of their time.

This seemed like a brilliant idea to me, and I told her so. Also, the chicken was delicious.

My contribution was a plate of chocolate-chip cookies, because that's what I happened to have in the cookie jar. They were all eaten, which is good.

Saturday

Short version: Salad and ice cream

Long version: I had some hardboiled eggs on hand, so I used those to make a salad.

Virtuous salad and my current book. I have mentioned more than once that I really do love reading while I eat.

And then I had some not-so-virtuous ice cream. Because I could.

Sunday

Short version: Hardboiled eggs, cucumbers, more ice cream

Long version: I didn't even bother with making an actual salad, instead just mashing up two hardboiled eggs with leftover ranch dressing and eating a cucumber from the garden.

Well, half a cucumber, because these Armenian cucumbers are a bit much for a solo diner.

And more ice cream. Again, because I can. Also because it's been HOOOOT all week.

Monday

Short version: Bunless hamburger, tomato and cucumber salad, and yes, more ice cream

Long version: I had a few hamburger patties still in the freezer from the extras I froze awhile ago, so I cooked one of those this night. The salad had feta in it, which makes it so much better.

Please enjoy my very fancy bunny bowl.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken and cucumbers with ranch, ice cream

Long version: I had just a bit left from the jar of ranch dressing that's been in the refrigerator for awhile, so I used it for the second half of one of the Armenian cucumbers.

I went to Walmart this day to buy All The School Supplies. While I was there, I also bought a rotisserie chicken. Since there was a little ranch dressing still in my bowl after I ate my cucumbers, I just shredded some of the chicken right into the bowl and had ranch chicken.

Bunny bowl again, yes.

And there's my ice cream. Vanilla with chocolate syrup, in case you were wondering.

Wednesday

Short version: Salad, ice cream

Long version: My salad this time was an actual lettuce salad--lettuce from the store because I got almost no lettuce out of my garden this year--two hardboiled eggs, feta, tomatoes, cucumber, beets, and green onion. The last three things were from the garden.

Soon the tomatoes will be from the garden, too, but they're not quite there yet.

Thursday

Short version: Taco rice, cucumbers with vinegar, lemon jello

Long version: The return of the travelers this afternoon meant the return of cooked dinners. I put out the cucumbers with salt and vinegar while I was making the taco rice, which was just ground bull, a bunch of leftover rice that I had cooked in chicken stock for the sick child, salsa, taco spices, and grated cheese.

The lemon jello was the bit left from the large pan I had made for the sick child. I just make six cups of lemonade--lemon juice, sugar, water--and then add four tablespoons of plain gelatin to it. It took me awhile to get a perfect jello consistency, but this ratio does it.

Refrigerator check:

It stays surprisingly full when there's no one here to drink the gallons of milk.

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