Friday Food: Barbacoa for Days

Friday

Short version: BLT sandwiches, cucumber slices with salt and vinegar

Long version: I happened to have all the ingredients for this, as well as a great disinclination to trim and prep more of the enormous bowl of elk in the refrigerator.

Everyone liked them, of course, although Charlie ate his BLT deconstructed, because he is an odd child.

Saturday

Short version: Barbacoa soup, homemade corn tortillas, mashed squash, canned black beans, leftover peas

Long version: Thanks to the infernal time change last week, Poppy has been getting up punishingly early every day. That's why I fell asleep while she was taking a nap this day. While I was sleeping, A. decided to take care of the elk in the refrigerator. He decided to make barbacoa with it, which is a Mexican preparation involving chile and fat and long cooking.

Unfortunately, the elk requires much longer cooking than the beef called for in his recipe, so it wasn't shreddable by dinner time. It was tender enough that he could slice it, though, and serve it as a soup. So that's what he did.

It seems silly to be serving canned beans when I have 35 pounds of dried pinto beans sitting in my pantry. But since I didn't know we were having Mexican food until afternoon, and therefore didn't have time to make the dried beans, I went with the canned beans.

And for an afternoon snack, elevated pistachios:

The better to fend off hungry dogs.

Sunday

Short version: Leftover barbacoa soup with rice added, potato soup, bread and butter, cheese, tomato and cucumber salad

Long version: Sick Cubby requested soup to soothe his sore throat, so I made him some creamy potato/bacon/cheese soup. For A., I added some rice to his barbacoa and cooked it some more. Then everyone ate whatever combination of things they wanted.

The salad was made from store tomato and a store cucumber, and was thus disappointing. As grocery store food always is.

Monday

Short version: Leftover barbacoa and rice with cheese added, sliced cucumber with vinegar and salt

Long version: A. had said he was going to make something with the ground beef I had taken out, but he decided we should finish up the barbacoa first. So I heated it up with some cheese and added sour cream to the kids' bowls so it wouldn't be so spicy.

Tuesday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, garlic bread, coleslaw

Long version: The ground beef was still in the refrigerator, so I made two batches of meatballs. I browned them under the broiler, then cooked one pan with barbecue sauce for dinner this night and put the other in the refrigerator, covered with marinara sauce, for the next day.

I made the coleslaw because I had a quarter of a cabbage that needed to be used, and all of my children love coleslaw. It occurred to me as I was grating cabbage and carrots and making a damn mess--as I always do when grating cabbage and carrots--that I would probably make coleslaw a lot more frequently if I could buy those bags of prepared coleslaw vegetables.

But I can't buy those bags, so it remains an infrequent but always appreciated treat. Probably for the best.

A. finished the last bowl of the everlasting barbacoa.

And speaking of everlasting, these are the last flowers from the mixed bouquet my sister brought with her when she came to visit us . . . four weeks ago.

Okay, so I actually chucked these flowers on Tuesday, but that still means they lasted for over three weeks. I find that a bit alarming.

Wednesday

Short version: Meatballs with marinara, pasta with marinara, leftover coleslaw

Long version: I had made the marinara sauce the day before when I had the food processor out to make the meatballs, so all I had to do was bake the meatballs and boil the pasta.

I put some Romano cheese on a few of the meatballs for A., and Charlie came in the kitchen and said, "I know what THAT smell is, and I'm not eating dinner."

I assured him that there would be no stinky cheese on his meatballs, though he continued to look highly suspicious until he sat down and sniffed his food.

I was very glad I had mostly prepped this the day before, as this was the day I felt the onset of what Charlie has been referring to as "the family plague."

Thursday

Short version: Barbecue beef, baked potatoes, frozen peas

Long version: I felt pretty awful this day, but colds wax and wane, so during one of the waning periods I shoved a frozen chuck roast in the oven and later, a few potatoes.

At dinnertime, all I had to do was pull the meat apart and add barbecue sauce, plus nuke the peas.

I also used a couple of the baked potatoes to make myself some potato and cheese soup. Some of the cheese also went on the baked potatoes, because I was out of sour cream.

Not the best meal, but this is what happens on sick days when takeout isn't an option.

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

Introductions Are in Order

So.

As of yesterday, we have a horse.

Everyone, meet Samson.

Samson, meet everyone.

Samson was given to us by one of the teachers at the school, who also co-owns a ranch down the hill and runs the quarter-horse breeding program there. Her family has had a horse operation for generations, and to say she knows horses is a great understatement. Samson was the horse her own daughter, now grown, learned to ride on and won many competitions with.

Samson is now 22 years old and has bad teeth, which means he can't just graze on pasture like all horses do here. He needs special senior horse feed, which is expensive and requires someone to actually feed him twice a day. 

On a large ranch, this care quickly becomes burdensome and impractical, as well as expensive. So Samson really couldn't stay where he was, but they didn't want to just put him down, because besides his teeth, he's in very good shape.

So she thought of us. I had asked her about riding lessons for the boys when we first moved here, and she thought maybe we would like Samson.

We would.

Samson is an exceptionally calm and well-trained horse, which is just what our children need. According to the lady we got him from, who taught her own two daughters to ride on him, there is no safer horse for children. Good thing, as I know exactly nothing about horses and wouldn't know what to do with a horse that isn't basically like a huge, well-trained dog.

His implacable nature is also useful given that Jasper--who apparently has a deep distrust of horses--spent all day yesterday by the fence, barking at the horse.

Samson was unimpressed.

Samson is living in half of the back pasture with the chickens. It's a little louder here than what he was used to, but it doesn't seem to bother him.

Welcome to Crazytown, Samson. We're so glad you're here.

Friday Food: Sick Children Abound

Friday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, mashed potatoes, mashed squash, green salad

Long version: My plan was to make roasted potatoes, but Charlie still had a wicked sore throat, so I mashed the potatoes instead so he could eat those for dinner with some cheese.

The squash was one of the volunteers from the backyard. This mysterious variety was one of the more interesting-looking ones--meaning it wasn't just a pumpkin--so I had high hopes it would be tasty.

My definition of "tasty" for squash is one that comes as close to a sweet potato as possible. That is, dense, sweet, and not watery.

This one delivered. Good thing, too, as it was a really big one that left me with a LOT of cooked squash.

This is my biggest container. It holds probably two gallons. The squash didn't fill it, but pretty dang close.

Saturday

Short version: Barbecue elk, rice, green peas

Long version: We went to see a (wo)man about a horse and didn't get home until later than I had anticipated. I had already prepped the elk meat by trimming it and cutting it into thin slices, then put it in a marinade of olive oil, vinegar, salt, and garlic. When we got home, I browned it on my cast iron grill pan--the best way to get a lot of meat browned without it steaming in the released liquid, yuck--and then I mixed in some barbecue sauce.

Sunday

Short version: Elk tacos, squash soup, chile beans, green salad

Long version: I used the remainder of the elk meat I had prepped and marinated the day before for the tacos. I simmered it for awhile in some tomato juice and and cumin and chile powder to make it a bit more tender.

I had intended to make homemade tortillas, but then A. ended up on an hours-long odyssey to get hay and didn't get home until 9 p.m. Making tortillas is not something I want to do with children under my feet, so they got store-bought tortillas.

The soup was nothing more than the cooked squash, onion, chicken stock, and a bit of cream. It used up a gratifying amount of squash, as well as a couple of the numerous containers of chicken stock in the freezer. It was good, but next time I think I'll add some bacon.

"Chile beans" means pinto beans that I added onion, tomato, and spices to while I cooked them. I prefer them this way rather than plain, but lately I've been too lazy to do the add-ins.

Monday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, squash soup, cheese, bread and butter, raw carrots

Long version: Didn't we just have cheeseburgers on Friday? Yes. But this was a Monday and a workday for me, and therefore required something quick to cook.

Tuesday

Short version: Carnitas beef, leftover rice, roasted sweet potatoes/bell pepper/onion, frozen green beans

Long version: The beef was a chuck roast that I put in the oven completely frozen and cooked a long time with just salt, pepper, garlic salt, vinegar, and water, then cut into pieces and fried in tallow with more salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

This method of braising the meat first and then browning it--rather than the other way around--is the method used to make carnitas, and is very useful for people like me who hate the spattering of browning raw meat. And also never take meat out to thaw in time. Ahem.

Speaking of frozen . . .

This is what it looked like out my back door the previous Tuesday. Cozy.

Wednesday

Short version: I dunno. Stuff on plates.

Long version: This was a rough day at work, and capping it off with vomit as soon as I arrived home  took care of any ambition I might have had to make anything interesting for dinner.

Luckily, we had just enough leftover meat--carnitas beef and hamburgers--to go around. I supplemented that with tortillas and cheese and cucumber slices with vinegar and salt and called it done.

I would normally have served bread and butter with this sort of meal, but we were out of bread. That was the kind of day I was having.

Thursday

Short version: Elk, garlic bread, frozen peas, elderly watermelon

Long version: Same old thing with the elk: trimmed, sliced thin, marinated in olive oil, salt, and lots of vinegar and garlic, then seared.

The elderly watermelon was disappointing. It's not as if I forgot about the watermelon Rafael gave us a couple of weeks ago. It's just that watermelon is somehow not quite as appealing when it's below freezing outside, and also with all the Halloween treats and candy around, fruit for dessert has not been so common.

In any case, I let it go too long. It still tasted good, but it had gotten kind of mushy. Bummer. I was just going to give it to the chickens, but instead I decided to make juice out of it.

From that large watermelon, I got about a gallon and a half of juice, and a really sticky mess in the kitchen to clean up. But at least I didn't waste it.

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

Talk About Timing

This afternoon while I was working at the school, Jack's preschool teacher came to find me to tell me that he was running a slight fever and not feeling well. There was only about an hour left of the school day, so he spent the remainder of the day under a blanket reading books in the corner of his classroom.

He was looking pretty miserable by the time we all boarded the school bus to go home, and by the time we actually got home fifteen minutes later, he was sobbing.

He tearfully asked me to carry him off the bus and into the house. Unfortunately, that was not possible, given my load of my own backpack, his backpack, and Poppy. Cubby offered to carry him off and just as they got to the bottom of the bus steps, Jack threw up all over.

A little bit of it got on the bottom step of the bus, but most of it landed on the ground*. He threw up again while he was walking the rest of the way to the house.

As sorry as I felt for him, I mostly felt relief that he did it somewhere where I didn't have to clean it up. It would have been a real mess on the bus.

Good job on waiting until you were in the great outdoors, Jack. Your teacher and I both thank you.

* A tiny bit also got on Cubby's hand, which is really gross and a poor repayment for being such a nice older brother.

Friday Food: Snow Days and Sugar Overload

Friday

Short version: Scrounged food, carrot sticks

Long version: We had to take the puppies in to the larger town for a late-afternoon vet appointment for their shots. I wasn't sure if I would be able to find something at the grocery store to have a roadside picnic or if we would just go home.

We just went home.

We got home at 5:30 p.m. and everyone ate some version of the leftover elk chili, tortillas, and cheese. I had a salad with the very last avocado my sister brought with her and some hard salami I had gotten at the store.

You know you live a lot of miles from a store when salami is an occasional treat.

Saturday

Short version: Halloween buffet in the village

Long version: This was the night of the Halloween celebration in the village. The one restaurant has a baked potato bar buffet that's free for kids, which is pretty much the only way our family of six is going to be eating at a restaurant.

I skipped the potato and just had the pulled pork, chili beans, and Fritos with various toppings. The kids mostly skipped real food entirely and homed in on the completely laden dessert table.

Sunday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, curried cauliflower, cucumber slices, raw tomatoes

Long version: "Good news!" I announced cheerily to A.-the-cauliflower-hater. "We're having curried cauliflower with dinner!" To which he replied, "Oh good. Cruciferous vegetables with curry powder are really what I've been missing now that we're so far from fresh produce."

So much sarcasm in that kitchen.

Cubby and I enjoyed our curried cauliflower, though. So did Poppy. Another for the curried cruciferous vegetable team.

Monday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, bacon, mashed potatoes with cheese or bread and butter, carrot sticks

Long version: Nothing to see here. Just another workday dinner in which everyone was fed in a very unfancy manner.

Tuesday

Short version: Elk stir-fry with peanut butter sauce, rice

Long version: This elk is very good for stir-fry, being very lean.

I thriftily used the peanut butter left from Poppy and Jack's snack of pretzel sticks dipped in peanut butter for the sauce.

In the morning I made a few dozen chocolate chip cookies for Cubby and Charlie's school Halloween party on Thursday. While I was making my cookies, Jack and Poppy were making some chocolate chip cookies that looked exactly like dominoes. Because they were dominoes.

Domino cookies are the specialty of Poppy's Very Pink Play Kitchen.

Wednesday

Short version: Pizza elk, pasta with marinara sauce, green salad

Long version: We started the day by losing power at 6 a.m. Charlie got up a short time later and immediately asked, "But how will I read my book? Oh, never mind. There's a candle."

Abe Lincoln's got nothing on him*.

The roads were icy, it was snowing, and we were surrounded by ice fog, so school was canceled. Since it was a Wednesday, this meant that I didn't have to go to work. Hooray.

My very old propane stove actually has pilot lights, so I can cook even without electricity, but I wasn't looking forward to boiling water for dishes. So I was glad that the power was back on by noon.

A. packaged the elk meat by simply stuffing gallon-sized zip bags as full as they could get. This means that when I take a bag of elk out of the freezer, I'm dealing with a LOT of meat. So while I was trimming and cutting the elk for the stir-fry, I did some extra meat and put it in a marinade of olive oil, vinegar, garlic, salt, and dried basil and oregano for the next day.

A.'s favorite meat preparation is fried, then mixed with marinara sauce and covered with mozzarella cheese. So that's what I did with the marinated meat. Thus, pizza elk.

I used the rest of the marinara sauce in the pasta, along with some Romano cheese I used in place of our usual Parmesan. A. had purchased the Romano at the cheese factory some time ago, and I figured it was close enough to Parmesan.

Charlie did not agree. He started eating his pasta, made a face, and said, "This pasta tastes okay, but it smells."

So I guess I shouldn't try using Limburger next time, then.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers, sliced cucumbers

Long version: We all went to Cubby and Charlie's school Halloween party in the afternoon, to kick off the sugar bingeing early. In between the party and trick-or-treating, I managed to get some real food into everyone.

A. ate leftover elk and rice; Jack and Cubby ate leftover elk and pasta; I ate leftover meatloaf and sweet potatoes. Charlie was sick and had a bad sore throat, so I made him some scrambled eggs. He ate those and some rice. Poppy ate scrambled eggs, too, plus some pasta.

After their brothers left to go trick-or-treating with A.--who was not looking forward to a two-hour trailer ride in the forty-degree weather--I let Charlie and Poppy have a candy picnic by the stove with the candy we had already accumulated.

Way more comfortable than that freezing trailer.

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

* For my sister: Please note the flowers you brought us are still going strong two weeks later. Probably because our house is usually so cold it's basically a refrigerator, but still. We're getting your money's worth out of those flowers.

Scarily Accurate

You know how when you start to type in the Google search bar, it will auto-fill after the first word or so? I don't know what kind of algorithms they use for this to try to guess what you're looking for. Maybe it's just magic?

Anyway, somewhere online I saw something along the lines of, "Type in 'my children are' and let auto-fill tell you the truth you don't want to admit."

Or something like that. I can't remember the exact words, or where I saw it, but I did it.

Here, in order, is what auto-fill thought I was looking for:

1) My children are . . . my world.

2) My children are . . . my life.

3) My children are . . . out of control.

Spot on, Google. Spot. On.

We've Only Just Begun

Last night was the village Halloween celebration. Of course, we went, with the under-10 set in costume.

From left to right we have a very sulky Crusader king, a fighter pilot who needs a couple of years to fill out that flight suit, the world's most adorable chef, and a very fierce ninja in Converse. Plus a couple of puppies who are hopeful that the chef has some treats in that apron.

Part of the celebration is one of those trunk-or-treat deals where the kids go to (parked) cars and get candy. They also got candy at the haunted house. Between the four of them, they came home with this:

Baby Candy Bowl.

After the first day of treats, I always dump all the candy in that one huge colander. So that's the beginning of The Candy Bowl. 

Later this week, there will be a Halloween party in Jack's classroom, as well as one for Cubby and Charlie. And then on Thursday is the actual trick-or-treating. Soon The Candy Bowl will be overflowing into a Candy Bag. 

Given the rate at which I allow my children to eat candy, this means that it will sit around until about Christmas, at which point all the good candy (i.e., chocolate) will be gone, leaving only the unwanted DumDum lollipops and weird stuff like Atomic Fireballs, which I will throw out eventually. It's a tradition.

But for now, we have KitKats and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in The Candy Bowl, with the promise of much more to come. 

Let the sugar-fueled revelry begin.