Friday Food: Cubby's Kitchen Kick

Friday

Short version: Leftovers, homemade pasta with pesto, frozen peas

Long version: Did that say homemade pasta? Yes. Do I have a pasta machine? No. But I do have a rolling pin and a knife!

The last time I made homemade pasta was also the only time I have ever made homemade pasta. On that occasion, I made it with my friend Alyssa and we used her pasta machine. It was surprisingly tricky to figure that machine out.

Or maybe not so surprising, given my difficulty with any machine I have ever encountered. I am not mechanically minded.

So I found making the pasta without the machine to be less challenging. Mentally, anyway.

It was Cubby who wanted to make it. He asked me totally out of the blue in the morning if we could make pasta. How could I say no? It's not like we didn't have the ingredients on hand. And since I already had some pesto made and wasn't planning on making anything else for dinner, I said okay.

We used this recipe, mostly because it didn't call for any separate egg yolks. I dislike separating eggs and having parts of eggs in the refrigerator. I did have to add an extra egg, though.

I actually found it easier to just roll the dough out with the rolling pin. I've never been good with machines, and I don't like washing and storing them, so a rolling pin seems more reasonable than a pasta machine to me.

We made the full recipe, which made four piles of pasta that looked like this:

On a chair, because I ran out of counter space during this endeavor.

We cooked two and froze two, but Cubby said we should have cooked all of it. He really liked it. Of course.

Saturday

Short version: Pork neck meat, rice, frozen green beans

Long version: When A. is in charge of grocery shopping, we end up with a lot of . . . interesting meat. This time he bought some pork neck bones, which I had never dealt with before. However, I know the best way to get meat off of bones like that is to simmer them for a long time until the meat is able to be pulled off the bones.

So that's what I did. It was a pain getting all the little bones separated from the meat, but the meat ended up being really good. I fried it in the lard that was rendered out of the meat.

As a bonus, I ended up with a couple of quarts of highly gelatinous pork stock, which I put in the freezer for soups. Sometime when it's soup weather, which is not now.

Sunday

Short version: Oven-fried chicken, garlic bread, frozen peas, roasted sweet potatoes and onions, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: These were the big chicken leg quarters that I separated into thighs and drumsticks. I didn't have yogurt to marinate the chicken, so I just marinated it in salt and vinegar. I coated it in the same mixture of masa and spices and it came out fine.

Cubby took it upon himself to make cookies for our Sunday dessert. He actually asked me at 5 p.m. the day before if he could make them, but I told him he'd have to wait until the next day. He and Poppy made the cookies all by themselves, and they were perfect.

Monday

Short version: Cheater's pizza, leftovers, carrot sticks

Long version: When I made bread on Sunday, I screwed up the division of the dough and two of the loaves of bread were quite small and kind of thin. So I cut them in half horizontally and used them to make cheese pizzas.

The children were pleased.

A. had the rest of the leftover goulash and rice, too.

Tuesday 

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, leftover boiled potatoes and rice, sauteed mushrooms and onions, frozen peas

Long version: When I was organizing the big chest freezer, I counted ten pounds of ground beef left from the cow we got over a year ago. I was very pleased about this, because there is absolutely no comparison between real ground beef and store ground beef.

We hadn't had hamburgers in awhile. All of the children had seconds.

Random old photo from when A. took the children to the mountains:

You can't go anywhere in New Mexico without finding an old church.

Wednesday

Short version: Brisket, Cubby's tomato soup, garlic bread, roasted sweet potatoes/onions/green beans

Long version: Talk about a seasonally inappropriate meal.

One of the other meats A. came home with was an entire brisket, which you may remember is very, very large. I cut it into several pieces before freezing them. This was one of the pieces.

Brisket cooks for so long in the oven, I decided to cook it overnight at 250 degrees. Then I pulled all the fat off, sliced it, returned it to the pot, and put it in the refrigerator to be re-heated with barbecue sauce at dinner time.

Cubby pulled his cookbook out with the intention of making something, and I suggested that perhaps he should try to make something other than various forms of starch. He decided to make "Creamy, Dreamy Tomato Soup," which doesn't actually have any cream in it. All it is is canned tomatoes, garlic, shallot (we used onion), chicken stock, a small amount of brown sugar, and white bread.

It's the bread that makes it creamy when it's all blended together. So, starch and tomatoes, then.

It was very easy to make, though, and good. Even Charlie, who doesn't like soup, liked it. I might even make a larger batch at some point in the fall and freeze it to have some soup on hand for when sickness inevitably strikes. It should freeze well because it doesn't have any dairy in it.

Thursday

Short version: Pork country ribs, boiled potatoes, leftover mushrooms and onions, raw green beans

Long version: It's been awhile since we've had those thick country ribs. I cooked them for a few hours, covered, in the oven in the morning, then at dinnertime added spices and broiled them until they were crispy.

Just before dinner, I went outside and picked some green beans for the kids' vegetable. I just love doing that. I didn't even bother to cook them. The kids like them better raw, anyway.

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

Photo Dumps Are Fun, Right?

Sure they are. And who couldn't use a little more fun in their lives?

I mean, how fun is this photo of the top of my old stove?

I do not miss this filthy black junk that got all over my kitchen.

Also fun: Blurrily captured acrobatic displays by two-year-olds.

Just after this was taken, she started to actually stand on his head, and I cruelly had to end the game.

Cookies are definitely fun, especially when they're completely made by someone who is not me. That is, by Cubby and Poppy.

Poppy was in charge of the chocolate chips, and she took her job very seriously.

And then there was the homemade pasta Cubby requested we make.

This child has definitely (and unfortunately) inherited my love of simple carbs.

There! Wasn't that fun? Back to our regular, boring lives now.

Friday Food: Garlic and Birthday Cookies

Friday

Short version: Leftovers, tuna salad sandwiches, frozen green beans

Long version: This was the night I rebelled at doing anything that would further heat the kitchen at 5 p.m. It was already 87 degrees then (in the kitchen--about 99 degrees outside), but since I had already planned for tuna salad and leftovers, it was okay.

The kids had the tuna salad sandwiches and the green beans, still frozen.

A. had some leftover pork and rice, plus some of the immature winter squash I had harvested and sauteed with onions and garlic earlier in the day.

I had some of the squash with refried beans I had made earlier in the day as well, plus some cheese.

And A. prepped some of his harvested garlic for storage this day:

That bag of garlic weighs about as much as that girl in the purple boots. It's a LOT of garlic. And there's still more in the porch.

Saturday

Short version: Chicken, bread and butter, pickled carrots

Long version: Another day of heat and a disinclination to cook. I took out another clearance package of meat A. bought, this one two giant bone-in chicken breasts. Early in the morning, before it was too hot, I poached them. Then I pulled the meat off.

Most of it I made into chicken salad. When I announced this plan to Cubby, he said, "Can't you cook it or something?" No, child, I can't. I'm tired of sweating while I cook. You'll eat it cold and like it.

The carrots were just carrot ribbons--made with the vegetable peeler--and put in the liquid left from when I made pickled garlic scapes. Yum.

Charlie and Cubby chose to have their chicken plain with curry dip to dip it in. The rest of the family had chicken salad. I had my chicken salad on lettuce with toasted pecans and some of the pickled carrots, and it was incredibly tasty.

Sunday

Short version: Ham, potatoes, sauteed immature squash, frozen peas

Long version: A. bought a big 12-pound bone-in ham awhile ago, and I decided to cook it in the morning so as to have a ready supply of protein available for the coming days.

It took about four hours in the oven, and while it was in there, I also put in some potatoes. Just thickly sliced, then put in a covered dish with chicken stock left from making the chicken the day before, plus some thinly sliced garlic, salt and pepper.

Monday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, pasta with pesto, carrot sticks with curry dip, ice cream sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies

Long version: This was Charlie's requested birthday meal. He always wants to have pasta with pesto for his birthday dinner. Thankfully, I actually have some good basil plants this year, so I had no trouble making that.

The only things I didn't have for this meal were the sausage and ice cream. The tiny store in the village actually had a couple of tubes of breakfast sausage, so that was taken care of. Ice cream is hit or miss there, and the only kind of ice cream at that store when A. stopped in after church was ice cream sandwiches.

Given the choice of going with ice cream sandwiches or driving 120 miles round-trip to get real ice cream, he went with the sandwiches. With those, and the chocolate chip cookies Charlie also requested and that I baked in a relatively cool kitchen at 6:30 a.m., I made a "cake."

Actually slightly less ugly than my usual Ugly Cake.

The kids were really excited about getting to have both an ice cream sandwich AND two cookies, each.

There are those low standards coming to my rescue again.

Tuesday

Short version: Camp food and leftovers

Long version: Charlie wanted to go camping for his birthday, so A. took all the children the day after. They went to a place about half an hour away.

I packed them leftover ham and potatoes; some antelope bites I had fried the night before after I took the sausage out of the pan; garlic bread I had made when baking bread on Sunday; canned sardines (a surprising favorite among the children); carrot sticks; chocolate chip cookies; and marshmallows.

I had some leftovers and a Sidecar while I watched a movie. Then I went to bed at 9 p.m. and slept until the indulgent hour of 6:15 a.m. It was glorious.

Wednesday

Short version: Antelope goulash with carrots, rice, sauerkraut, green beans

Long version: I made the sauerkraut a couple of weeks ago, just a small amount to see if it would work here.

I also made pesto and hot chili sauce that day. It was very Christmas-y looking.

It worked.

It's been a couple of years since I'd made sauerkraut, so none of the children remembered if they liked it or not. Three out of four did. Hooray! More sauerkraut, coming right up.

Thursday

Short version: Pork steaks, rice, sauerkraut, carrot sticks with curry dip

Long version: I canned the sauerkraut this morning and had one small half-pint jar left that I stuck in the fridge, thinking we'd probably eat it pretty quickly anyway.

And then it was all gone that night. The kids sure do like that sauerkraut. For now, anyway.

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

More than a Salad

This is what I had for lunch today:

Yum.

It's just a salad. Just a bowl of lettuce, tomato, sauteed squash, pecans and feta cheese*.

Except it's not just that.

It's the lettuce that A. planted for me last month so that I would have more when our winter-planted lettuce bolted.

It's the tomatoes I started from seed in March, even though last year's tomatoes were kind of pathetic and I had no great hopes for this year's harvest.

It's the squash that volunteered in the middle of the tomato plants and I left in even though I was sure the fruits would be those unappealing orange pumpkins that I don't actually want to eat as winter squash. Except this year I discovered I could eat them as immature squash in place of zucchini.

It's consideration, and hope, and experimentation, and work. All of that in a bowl.

And it was delicious.

* I very, very rarely have feta, even though I love it, but my brother-in-law brought it with him when his family came to visit. I didn't ask him to; he just did. So we'll add luck and family to that bowl, too. Nothing special about the pecans, though. I just buy them in bulk online.

Eight

Happy birthday to

the incomparable Charlie.

Friday Food: Store Meat and Summer Sickness

Most of the game meat I have left in the freezer is long-cooking stew-type stuff, and I really do not want to be doing that when it's 100 degrees every day. So I've been using more of the store meat A. has found on his forays to the Outside World. It's like we're Modern Americans or something.

Friday

Short version: Antelope backstrap, garlic bread, roasted sweet potatoes/onions/bell pepper, frozen green beans

Long version: Okay, not all the way modern.

For the antelope, I just seared it, took it out and sliced it, then put the pieces back in the pan with some basil pesto.

Does that sound familiar? Yup. I am definitely a one-trick meat-cooking pony.

That doesn't sound quite right.

Anyway.

I had to bake bread anyway, which is the only reason I made garlic bread. But you know the exciting thing about baking bread this time? I could also roast the vegetables at the same time, because I now have two whole oven shelves.

Oh, the luxury.

Saturday

Short version: Pork carnitas tacos with homemade corn tortillas, pinto beans

Long version: A.'s brother and his family arrived this day for a short visit. Making tortillas requires high heat on a large cast-iron surface for a long period of time, and thus, does not happen when it's too hot outside (and inside my kitchen). But the high this day was only about 87 degrees, so I could make tortillas without feeling like I was going to combust.

You may have noticed there is nothing patriotic about this Fourth of July meal. Too bad you couldn't see the inadvertent fireworks when I was frying the pork on the griddle pan and some of the grease got in the burner flame. There was a fire at least ten inches high. It was pretty impressive.

I immediately turned the burner off, of course, and before I could get the baking soda out of the cupboard, it was out. And nothing was damaged.

I'm sure our guests found that little pyrotechnic display at the stove very festive.

Random photo break!

Nothing like some bubble-wrap popping in footie jammies first thing in the morning.

Sunday

Short version: Pulled pork sandwiches, kielbasa, coleslaw, Grandma Brown's baked beans, leftover boiled potatoes, banana fake ice cream

Long version: I didn't fry all the pork on Saturday after it was cooked, so I shredded the rest of it and mixed it with barbecue sauce for sandwiches. And yes, I have zero problem serving leftovers to guests.

A.'s brother brought the kielbasa, and I made that, too, to make sure there was enough meat. There was.

I used some of my frozen Sysco bananas to make the ice cream and was congratulating myself on having the foresight to get such a large quantity and freezing it in chunks for future fake-ice-cream-making. Too bad the school Sysco program isn't offering bananas anymore.

Monday

Short version: Roasted chicken with pesto, roasted potatoes, leftover coleslaw, leftover baked beans, frozen peas

Long version: It was a bit too hot to be roasting chicken at high heat for two hours, but still only around 90 degrees, so I made it anyway. We had one of those big chickens, which I salted in the morning and put back in the refrigerator. Then I just rubbed some basil pesto I had on hand all over it and put it in a 475 degree oven for a couple of hours. It came out well.

Random photo break #2!

When your mean mom refuses to put the sprinkler on the hose because she insists on watering the boring plants instead of catering to her hot children, you can always make do with a leak in the perpetually punctured hose.

Tuesday

Short version: Beef steaks, rice, steamed carrots and broccoli

Long version: My brother-in-law also brought some steaks with him. They were labeled "chuck tender steaks," but I know the chuck isn't really that tender--I usually pot roast it--so I cooked them more rare than I normally would so they wouldn't get tough. So, about medium. I really don't like rare meat.

This was the first time we've had beef steaks in about a year. Exciting.

Wednesday

Short version: Pre-seasoned chicken drumsticks, leftover rice, potato soup, frozen peas

Long version: A. found these seasoned drumsticks on a clearance shelf in the grocery store meat section. I was afraid, this being New Mexico--Land of Enchantment and Chili Everydamnwhere--that the red seasoning on it would be some kind of burning chili powder.

It wasn't. I think it was paprika.

Anyway. They were okay. I asked A. to cook them because I was in bed with Poppy crawling all over me while I continually blew my nose and bore with great fortitude the cold that Cubby, Jack, Poppy, and I all came down with simultaneously.

I made the soup earlier in the day because Cubby had a terrible sore throat from the cold. It was really much too hot for soup (85 degrees in the kitchen at 5 p.m.), but potato soup is Cubby's preferred illness comfort food--and, not coincidentally, mine too--so I made it anyway. Just onion, garlic, potatoes, carrots, Better Than Bouillon chicken broth, and milk blended to make it smooth.

Simple, but appreciated. I put some bits of chicken in it for Cubby, too, and he was very happy. He had two bowls. And I got to eat the leftovers cold for lunch the next day, which was also quite nice.

Thursday

Short version: Pork steaks with pesto, bread and butter, frozen green beans

Long version: And everyone was fed. The end.

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

The Newest Member of the Kitchen Team

I've been holding out on you. I mean, we've had a new range for three whole days now and you didn't know about it.

I know. Shameful.

Anyway, I guess it's not really that exciting, because the new range is pretty much exactly the same as the old range. Which was really old. It was a brand called a "Holiday," that is no longer made. It was in the house when we got here, so I don't know exactly how old it is, but I'm guessing about thirty years old.

To replace the Holiday, I purposely bought what is euphemistically referred to as an "entry-level" range, for which you can read "cheapest." I did not want anything with excess electronics and digital displays. Or buttons. Not only does that stuff always break sooner rather than later, but I wanted to be sure that I could use it when the power goes out.

The Holiday didn't have any electronic parts at all. But since it's no longer possible to buy propane stoves with pilot lights--at least not at a standard appliance store--I settled for getting one that only has electric igniters. If the power does go out, I can still light the stove burners with a match.

A. installed this thing in about fifteen minutes, which was something of a miracle. I was sure there would be some mysterious parts that would need to be ordered and would delay the installation. But no.

There was one part that had to be taken from the old stove and put on the new one, but other than that, it looked pretty easy. Possibly because I didn't do any of the work.

Range Senior and Range Junior during installation.

Although they look similar, the new range has several important differences. For one, the burners actually light on their own without the aid of a match. For another, the oven door closes tightly. Also, the burners aren't clogged with decades of grease, resulting in dirty, greasy, sooty stuff getting all over the bottoms of my pots and thus all over the kitchen.

And finally, and perhaps most excitingly, the oven has two whole shelves. I've been working with a single oven shelf for two years now, so this is a very welcome change. 

There are a couple of things that I'm still getting used to with the new range--namely, two of the four burners don't seem to have a low setting, so I have to be careful which ones I use when I want to cook something gently--but overall, it's a great improvement.

There. Now you're all caught up with the excitement at our house.

Carry on.