Friday
Short version: Roasted rooster with gravy, scalloped potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette, strawberry shortcake with cream
Long version: I had just been saying to the kids that no one had given us any unwanted roosters lately, and then out of the blue, I get a text from one of the other moms at school that they had a bunch of roosters they weren't going to get around to butchering, and would we like them?
YES.
We picked them up Thursday, and A. and I butchered them this day. We gave two back to the lady who gave them to us (fully prepared for the oven), and I cooked one of them this night. They looked pretty young, so I thought it would be okay to roast one. I did it at fairly low heat at first, which is why I made the scalloped potatoes, too. Also because I had some cream near its use-by date to use up.
I turned the heat up later to bake cream biscuits, also to use up cream and to use as a base for the strawberries I had gotten on sale at the store the day before.
I used this recipe for the biscuits, and they did not rise at all. I always reduce the amount of leavener in my baked goods because of our altitude, so maybe that was it. Or maybe I didn't wait long enough for the oven to get from 325 degrees to 425 degrees, and the oven was too cool when they went in. Or was it the sugar I added to them, since they were for dessert purposes?
I don't know, but they definitely did not look like the biscuits in the recipe photos. They tasted good, though, and everyone was very happy with their strawberry shortcake.
Saturday
Short version: Personal pizzas, carrot sticks with ranch dip, mint chocolate chip ice cream
Long version: I was home with just the two younger children for dinner this day. Since I had bread dough on hand to make, um, bread, I thought it would be fun for them to use some of it to make their own pizzas. I am not willing to do personal pizzas for six people--too many individual pans to fit in the oven--but it's manageable for just two. Accordingly, I put some dough in a 12-inch skillet for the youngest boy and some in the 8-inch skillet for Poppy, and let them make their pizzas.
Sunday
Short version: Spaghetti with meat sauce, carrot sticks with ranch dip, messy pear upside-down cake
Long version: I found some tubes of loose Italian sausage on sale at the store last time I was there. This is the only kind of sausage everyone in my family likes, so I got some. That's what I used for the spaghetti sauce, which also had some of the roasted, pureed tomatoes I had made earlier in the week. Sauce made with garden tomatoes really is so much better.
I also used the leftover chicken gravy in the spaghetti sauce. A surprisingly good addition.
The cake was a learning experience. I have never in my life made any sort of upside-down fruit cake, or even eaten one, but A. loves them. I had just a few pears that were ripe, so I found a simple-looking recipe online and made it.
As I was making it, I noted that between the caramel on the bottom of the pan and the sugar in the cake part, there was twice as much sugar as flour. Hmmm. I reduced the sugar in the caramel slightly, but it was, as I expected, extremely sweet.
* I have been assured that the control panel for my washing machine has been delivered to the repair place. Now it's just waiting on the repair guy to actually be there to put it in. I am hopeful that this is my last visit to the laundromat, although I'm not counting my washing machines until they're repaired. Or something.






























