Friday Food: On the Road

Just barely making it for Friday food this week, but it has been an . . . unusual week, shall we say?

Friday

Short version: Chicken, pork, potatoes, and s'mores on the beach

Long version: Our friends Jodi and Alyssa and their three children came down to our beach for one last cookout before we left. They brought the appetizers--chips and salsa, cheese, apricots, and blueberries, out of which I pretty much made my meal. We provided the meat and potatoes.

I didn't have time to boil the potatoes ahead of time like I was planning, so instead when I came up to the house to grab the meat, I quickly nuked the small new potatoes in a covered bowl and then put them on skewers for the grill. I also put butter, salt, and pepper in a big Tupperware, into which I put the potatoes when they came off the grill so they would get seasoned.

I also got all the stuff for s'mores, and then the boys had the brilliant idea of putting the remaining blueberries in their s'mores. They all loved this. I think it would be better with raspberries, myself, but it's a great idea. Cuts the sweetness a little. Not that kids care about that.

A bunch of little kids and a raging fire. What could go wrong? (Nothing went wrong.)

Saturday

Short version: Ham steaks, spaghetti with pesto, green salad (with a real tomato! hooray!)

Long version: After another hectic moving blitz this day to get the remainder of our things into the U-Haul trailer, I was really, really tired. I had earlier requested that the MiL make pesto for dinner, because I had promised Charlie pesto one more time before we left and I no longer had access to a lot of fresh basil.

She made the pesto. I made the spaghetti and the salad (with a real tomato from the farmers market! hooray again!) and broiled some ham steaks.

Sucks we left New York at the beginning of tomato season. I sincerely hope I can find some to buy near us in New Mexico, as I will not be growing any this year.

Sunday

Short version: Food I did not cook.

Long version: We left Blackrock at 6:30 a.m. and rolled into A.'s cousin's driveway in rural central Ohio at 5 p.m.

It was a long day.

I had enough food in the coolers in the van to feed everyone, but A.'s cousin's girlfriend (got that?) had already put a lasagna in the oven, to which she added extra venison. She also made garlic bread and, after dinner, s'mores in the oven. She made two s'mores for me, because she is one of the best hostesses ever, particularly if you come with many small children. Though she has no kids herself, she's one of ten children and has something like thirty nieces and nephews. That's the woman you want to stay with if you have a bunch of kids.

Monday

Short version: Tacos, carrot sticks and cucumbers

Long version: Ohio to Illinois this day. Every motel we stayed at--and they were all pretty rough--had a microwave. So we had previously made and frozen taco meat microwaved in our motel room on corn tortillas and cheese. Plus the carrots and cucumbers we had been eating in the car all day.

Tuesday

Short version: More tacos, pulled pork, chips

Long version: Illinois to Missouri. Another motel, another microwaved dinner. The kids wanted tacos again, so they finished that up. A. and I had previously made and frozen pulled pork with barbecue sauce. Plus the same vegetables.

The chips were from a big variety box of snack-sized bags I bought before we left because they were on sale. They were probably the most popular thing I brought with us.

Although the molasses cookies the MiL made for us were also much in demand.

Wednesday

Short version: Pulled pork sandwiches, chips, bell pepper slices

Long version: Missouri to Kansas. The Protection Motel in Protection, Kansas, had not only a microwave for our dinner, but three beds in our room. So no children had to sleep on the floor for the first time on this trip. Both the town and the motel have seen better days, but a triple-bed room makes up for a lot.

Thursday

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, Grandma Brown's baked beans, chips, cucumber slices

Long version: Kansas to our house in New Mexico. We made it here at 4 p.m. and of course, everyone needed to eat. I still had a container of previously made and frozen hamburger patties in one of the coolers, so I heated those up in a cast iron skillet on the stove. The baked beans--which I had also brought with us--had to be heated on the stove as well, because I still didn't have a microwave set up.

I'll bore you with some more details of our trip later, but that, at least, is what we ate for dinner while we were traveling.

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

Good-bye, New York

We're ready . . .

We're excited . . .

We're gone. 

Crazy/Awesome

The other day as I was watching A. build a water catchment system for the well he hand-dug in the back pasture, I had an interesting thought: The things people think you are the craziest for planning to do are ultimately the things people think are the most awesome after they're done.

When A. first said he would dig a well in the pasture--by hand, with a shovel--so he could set up a gravity-flow pipe to fill the cisterns? YOU CRAZY.

Once he had dug the well and it was filling the cistern? AWESOME.

When A. said he would build a greenhouse for the tomatoes out of trees? YOU CRAZY.

Once he had built the greenhouse and we had ripe tomatoes for months? AWESOME.

And so on.

Of course, the crucial middle step to going from crazy to awesome is successfully completing whatever plan everyone thinks is crazy to start with. Otherwise you just stay crazy, I guess.

I think our move to New Mexico is going to fall into this category.

I'm pretty sure when we announced to family, friends, and the world at large that we were going to pack up our children and our lives and move to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere New Mexico that only A. has been to, and that only a couple of times, the general (though unvoiced) reaction was, "YOU CRAZY."

Possibly. But once we've done it, once we've made the move and settled in, and have our little family in our little village within driving distance of cousins and out of the punishing northeastern winters? Well. Then it will be awesome.

We just have to get from here to there, starting with our road trip commencing tomorrow*.

Awesome, here we come.

* I can hope the road trip will be part of the awesomeness, but I'm afraid it will fall squarely in the crazy category. Wish me luck, and lots of it.

The Saddest Farewell to the Best Dog

My baby dog Mia has died. She was 12 years old, and not in good health: kidney failure, severe arthritis, early stages of senility . . .

It was time. 

But we're all still very sad.

Goodbye, old friend. You will be missed.

Friday Food: Still in the Kitchen at Blackrock

Friday

Short version: Pork ribs, new potatoes, green beans, carrot sticks and cucumbers

Long version: These were real pork ribs, not those slabs of pork shoulder masquerading as ribs. We had been planning on cooking on the beach, but it was too windy. So I seasoned the ribs, cooked them covered in the oven for a couple of hours at 300 degrees, and then A. made a wood fire in the kettle grill to grill them quickly until they were crispy. They were very good.

So were the boiled potatoes and green beans. A basic meal, but satisfying.

Saturday

Short version: Party!

Long version: The MiL had a low-key going-away party for us with various family and friends. She made the largest pork roast in history. I'm pretty sure she had a party just to get that monster out of the freezer.

So there was sliced pork, rolls to make sandwiches, many whole heads of roasted newly dug garlic that were delicious, Grandma Brown's Baked Beans, green beans, cucumbers, chips and salsa, and corn on the cob.

The MiL was going to make a cake, but I suggested she just buy some cookies and save herself some work. So she did: Oreos and ginger snaps. The adults mostly ate the ginger snaps, the kids mostly ate the Oreos, and everyone was happy.

I chose Oreos, because I'm a kid at heart when it comes to cookies.

Sunday

Short version: Carnitas tacos, black beans

Long version: I used the leftover pork and roasted garlic to make carnitas, which were then served in corn tortillas with lettuce, lime, finely diced onion, salsa, and sour cream.

I feel like I was deprived in the first three decades of my life not knowing how much better leftover meat is when fried in fresh fat. So much better.

Monday

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, sauteed onions/zucchini/green beans, corn kernels, boiled new potatoes, Grandma Browns Baked Beans

Long version: Does this meal just scream "SUMMER!" to you? If it doesn't, you must not live in the northeast.

The sauteed vegetables were all things that needed to be used up that I just tossed into one of the hamburger skillets after the burgers were done. I also added some of the leftover roasted garlic from the party. There was a lot of leftover roasted garlic.

I had the kids shuck the corn for me. And then they all ate one ear of corn raw, because who can resist the allure of raw corn on the cob? I cut the corn off the rest of the ears straight into the skillet I was going to cook them in. It's better to use the bundt pan, but I was trying to avoid making another dish to be washed.

So I just cut the kernels right off into the cast iron skillet, then added some butter and salt and cooked it all slowly until the corn was done. I much prefer corn this way. I always feel the butter is wasted on corn on the cob, because most of it drips right off.

The baked beans were also left over from the party. I think I used up all the leftovers except for one more head of roasted garlic. There really was a lot of roasted garlic.

Oh, and there was more corn. There was a LOT of corn. Even more corn than garlic.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork chops, leftover potatoes, corn on the cob, green salad

Long version: I rushed in the door at 5:10 p.m. (boring errands), dumped some spices on the pork chops, and threw them under the broiler. When they were halfway done, I put the leftover potatoes in the half-empty pan with the pork to heat up and get a little crispy.

I had washed the lettuce and made a vinaigrette earlier in the day, so all I had to do for the salad was tear the lettuce up and add a sliced cucumber.

Corn in the microwave (finally, the last of the corn), and there we have dinner.

Incidentally, I feel very lucky that I don't have to come home from work after 5 p.m. every day and get dinner on the table. Everyone was very, very grumpy when we sat down to eat at the shockingly late hour of 5:45 p.m.

To all of you working people who make dinner for your family when you get home after a long day: I salute you. And do not envy you.

Wednesday

Short version: Soft tacos, cucumbers, ice cream with chocolate shell

Long version: Part of my road trip food prep was making some hamburgers and a lot of taco meat. A LOT. I think I had around eight pounds of ground beef thawed. I used a couple of pounds to make eight hamburgers, which I froze. The remainder was used to make a giant pot of taco meat. This pot, actually, which was so full I could barely stir it.

We ate some of the meat in corn tortillas, and then I froze the rest for the trip.

The cucumbers were the ultimate grudging vegetable. An unpeeled cucumber cut into spears and thrown on the plates. There. There's your vegetable.

It was really hot in the kitchen after all the frying and simmering. I was over it.

Ice cream on the porch after dinner during a cooling downpour helped, though.

Followed by some playing in the rain.

Meanwhile, back on the porch, this one wallowed on the filthy porch floor and tried to eat bits of grass and rocks. To each her own.

Today's PSA: The chocolate sauce from the frozen banana recipe is even better spooned right over ice cream. It's like that Hershey's shell product you can buy, but no weird ingredients. Half a cup of chocolate chips and one tablespoon of coconut oil is just enough for all of us to have some.

 Thursday

Short version: Beachy Italian sausage, bread and butter, carrots sticks and cucumbers, random leftover vegetables, cashew appetizer

Long version: A. spent the day chainsawing and clearing brush. When he was ready to quit at 3:30 p.m., he wanted to go down to the lake to wash off in the water. So we all went down and then, as it was already almost time to start dinner and I had taken easy-to-grill sausage out of the freezer, I just added the other things to make a beach cookout dinner.

Let the record show that I have been FUN this summer, dammit. (Also sweaty and grouchy and stressed out sometimes, but I tried to be fun, anyway.)

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

Summing It Up

I made a card for A. this morning that reads thusly:

15 years . . .

2 weddings . . .

4 kids . . .

4 homes . . .

Dozens of sheep . . .

Numberless adventures . . .

No regrets.

Happy Anniversary.

Whistling in the Dark

Or perhaps more appropriately "listing in the chaos."

I am not a list maker. Maybe I fear the failure of not checking everything off of a list. Maybe I feel making a list is more work on top of the work listed. Maybe I just never got into the habit. Whatever the reason, I do not make lists.

Except for now.

I am currently facing down the second portion of our move. We will be loading a U-Haul trailer with our remaining worldly goods on Saturday and starting our drive to New Mexico early Sunday morning. There are many, many things that need to be done between now and then.

And so, of course, I'm focusing on food. You expect anything else from me?

With six people--four of them small children--on a multi-day car trip, there are not going to be many restaurant stops. It would be too expensive, too stressful with all the children, and would delay us too much. Thus, I'm planning on pretty much feeding us all breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks out of coolers and microwaves at motels.

So I've made lists.

A list of meals and snacks for each of the five days we think it will take us to get there.

A list of the foods needed for those meals and snacks.

A list of the foods I still need to buy.

A list of the foods I can prepare and freeze ahead of time.

A list of foods to be prepared and put in the coolers.

A list of the non-food items needed for feeding everyone.

That's a lot of lists.

But if all goes as planned, we'll make it from New York to New Mexico without having to get in and out of a restaurant, unless we really want to.

And if all doesn't go as planned? Well, it can't be my fault, can it? I mean, I made lists.