We're Ready for Thanksgiving!

 

We've got decorations!

These are not Christmas lights. They are Thanksgiving lights, because they're only white and only in the kitchen, which is the center of all Thanksgiving festivities.

Window decals courtesy of my sister and applied by my very careful children.

Preschool art from one of the children. Maybe Charlie? There's no name on it, and I have now had three children go through preschool, so who knows.

Turkey centerpiece given to me by my mom seventeen years ago (yikes), with the further embellishment of two malformed squash that never matured before the frost. Festive!

We also have lots of meat on hand:

Conveniently located in the apricot tree right outside our front door. 

A. killed the ram yesterday--for reasons mostly to do with wanting to avoid inbreeding with his incoming group of offspring--and it is currently aging for a few days before we butcher it. So that, along with the bull, will ensure we have a very full meat freezer.

How are your Thanksgiving preparations coming along (if you're American, of course)? Any big plans?

Friday Food: Beef, Beef, Bull

 

Friday

Short version: Green chili bull soup

Long version: I decided I really should use the beef stock that was in a cracked jar in the freezer. I don't know why glass jars ALWAYS crack in my freezer, but they do. I don't freeze things in glass jars anymore, mostly, but this was a jar that had been sitting in the refrigerator and I just popped it into the freezer when I was afraid it was about to go bad.

And then, of course, it cracked. Annoying.

Still usable, though. I just let it thaw in a big bowl and lifted out the big pieces of glass.

So I used that for the soup, which also had half a can of tomatoes that had been in the refrigerator for awhile, onion, garlic, quite a bit of roasted green chilis, carrots, and potatoes. Plus the bull beef, of course, which this time was a package of "steaks" that I cut up small.

I simmered the meat for about four hours, but I should have done it for another couple of hours. It was still pretty chewy, though the soup was tasty.

Saturday

Short version: Leftovers and garlic bread

Long version: Cubby and I had some of the leftover soup, and everyone else had some leftover taco meat with rice and cheese.

Random photo that is not at all timely.

Cubby got a new bike a couple of weeks ago--an early Christmas present from my parents--and had a great time putting it together with A. That boy still loves his tools.

Sunday

Short version: Let's burn everything! Roasted chicken with onions and peppers, baked potatoes, calabaza squash, peanut butter cookies.

Long version: Okay, I didn't burn everything, just several things. Charlie helped me make peanut butter cookies for dessert, and I charred those. I spent about ten minutes scraping the black bottoms off, and they were eaten, but definitely tasted pretty, uh, barbecued.

Incidentally, I was not going to make a dessert this Sunday, because we have a huge bag of candy from Halloween still, of course. But then Cubby asked what I was making, and when I informed him of my plan, he said, "But candy doesn't feel like a dessert. It isn't baked."

Okay.

I also charred on one side the squash cubes I was roasting, and allllmost burned the calabaza I was steaming in a pot when the water boiled off and the calabaza started sticking to the bottom of the pot. 

And, as a fun bonus, I burned my mouth when I tasted the peppers I had randomly put in the pan with the chicken. Apparently, immature Alma paprika peppers are spicy.

The chicken and baked potatoes survived unscathed.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Actually, the same leftovers as Saturday, but no garlic bread. The kids all ate rice, taco meat, cheese, and sour cream. A. ate the last of the bull soup, with some of the hot peppers from the roasting chicken added. I had a salad.

Tuesday

Short version: Meatloaf, roasted potatoes, mashed squash, frozen green peas

Long version: Miss Amelia gave us a couple of pounds of real ground beef from her son's ranch last weekend, and Cubby wistfully asked me if I could make meatloaf with it. I don't make meatloaf from the cheap Sysco ground beef, because it's too mushy and wet, so I haven't made meatloaf in awhile. There wasn't quite enough of Miss Amelia's ground beef to make all the meatloaf for this family, but I mixed it with some of the cheap stuff, and it was good.

Wednesday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, rice, leftover squash and peas

Long version: Just some more of the Sysco ground beef I had left in the refrigerator, knowing I would need something I could make quickly after work. Cheeseburgers and rice are it.

Random photo break time!

Watching Daddy's house demolition from a safe distance.

Thursday

Short version: Bull meat, pasta with Funny's sauce, frozen green beans

Long version: I don't really know what this cut of meat was. It was labeled "London broil," but it was labeled by us and we don't know anything. It was very thick. I marinated it in vinegar and oil, plus spices, to hopefully tenderize it a bit. Then I just seared it, then sliced it as thin as I could against the grain. It was still basically raw inside. I put the slices back in the hot pan--now off the heat--and mixed in some of Finny's sauce and finely grated Romano cheese. It tasted really good, but it was still pretty chewy.

I think that's going to be the continuing theme with this bull meat.

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

House Progress . . . and Rabbits

 

So! When we last left our intrepid house-rehabber, he had pulled down the ceilings and was slowly and arduously wheelbarrowing the detritus into the dumpster parked outside the house. He also continued removing paneling from the walls to expose the original stone or plaster, revealing all the many colors the house was painted inside at one point.

He definitely filled that dumpster, which was picked up last week, but he did not quite finish the clean-up. Even absent that handy dumpster, however, the work must go on, so he started filling trash cans and old feed tubs for transport to the dump.

There are still a couple of rooms that need to be cleaned up, but it's beginning to look more like a house that can be worked on, rather than a house that should just be razed.

It's a long time before we will be inhabiting this house, but we've moved in some new tenants in the meantime.

Hasenpfeffer!

We have, in the past, discussed getting meat rabbits, but I'm always reluctant to add yet more animals to our menagerie. Unlike A. and the children, who want allll the animals. 

However, when our neighbor asked us if we would like to take his granddaughter's 4-H meat rabbits--she's no longer doing 4-H, and he's a cattle rancher, not a rabbit-fancier--I couldn't really say no. He wouldn't even take any money for the rabbits. Or the home-built hutch he insisted we take, as well. Or the half-full bag of rabbit food he likewise bestowed upon us.

So now we have six meat rabbits. Two bucks, and four does. 

Our neighbor had them all in the hutch, but we felt bad having them in such a small enclosure.

Jasper sat here by the hutch for HOURS the day we brought the rabbits home. He wasn't the least aggressive, interestingly, he just appeared fascinated. Maybe he thought they needed herding.

Rabbits can actually be somewhat difficult to keep in, due to their habits of digging and gnawing. That's why we put them on the concrete porch of the casita next door. No rabbit is gnawing or digging out of a concrete-floored room with concrete walls. 

We were originally going to separate the bucks with two does each by having the white ones in the casita and the brown ones in the hutch, but we decided instead to put a divider down the center of the casita porch so the brown ones have more room, too. A. is going to do that today.

We might have to use the hutch to separate the bucks after the does have babies, because we're not sure how aggressive and problematic the bucks might become with the young. To be honest, we're not sure about anything, because we've never had rabbits before.

We'll learn, though. And isn't that what life is all about? Growing and learning every day?

Right. Or something.

A Round of Applause for Karen.

You see that cool header there with the photo and the nicely placed text in my favorite color?

I did not do that.

I wanted to do that. I tried to upload that photo into my new theme in Blogger, but it wouldn't re-size automatically, and then I was all, "Okay, that's that," and I gave up.

I am really, really not a tech person. More like a Luddite.

But then! Karen., who is a professional design person, and a regular reader here, and also someone I have never met in real life, offered to help me design a header.

Perhaps it was apparent that it desperately needed to be done, and that I was not the person to do it?

Perhaps.

Anyway. 

I provided that photo--which was actually taken by me and shows the pasture across the road from our house--but she did everything else. A few e-mails and questions later, and she sent me that nicely designed header in a file that was all ready to go and upload to Blogger. Just like that! Like it was easy! Because it was. For her.

Hooray for Karen.! 

We can all thank her for providing us with something pretty to look at up there, instead of just the boring old template that I would definitely have left forever and ever.

Thank you, Karen., for saving me from my own technical ineptitude. We all appreciate it.

Friday Food: Graveyard Pasta and Bull Beef

(I know! I changed it AGAIN! That light blue and glaring white background were bugging me. I make no promises I won't change it again, but I think this is better. Feel free to weigh in if you care.) 

Friday

Short version: Chicken with Finny's sauce, leftover rice, frozen green beans

Long version: This was the night we got home late from the bull butchering. It was 6:53 p.m. when we walked in the door, and of course everyone was starving.

Except for me. Handling hundreds of pounds of fresh raw meat has a dampening effect on my appetite. 

No one else seemed to be affected that way, however, so I immediately went into the kitchen to make the fastest dinner I could. Luckily, the meat I had taken out of the freezer earlier to thaw was boneless, skinless chicken thighs my mom had brought us. Those cook relatively quickly, especially because I cut them up into smaller pieces after they had browned in bacon grease. I seasoned them with some random spices after they were in the pan.

Then I dropped the full container of tomato sauce from the top shelf of the refrigerator, creating a tidal wave of sauce that mostly landed on my shoe and the floor. Super.

Luckily, the container landed right side up with some sauce still in it, so I used some of that for the chicken. 

Leftover rice, green beans from the freezer, and we were eating by 7:15 p.m. Shockingly late for us, but the best I could do.

Saturday

Short version: Chicken with peppers and onions, graveyard pasta

Long version: I am not one to do holiday-themed meals, because, as you know, I am not a Fun Mom. My sister, however, IS a Fun Mom, and Halloween is her favorite holiday. When she was here a couple of weeks ago, she brought some black pasta (made of soy, although I don't know why soy is black) so we could make a Halloween dinner.

I'm sure she would have done something more creative with it, most likely involving dry ice and meatballs made into eyeballs or something, but since she left it to me, this is what the kids got:

Oooo, spooky!

I called it graveyard pasta with blood (the last of the unspilled Finny's sauce) and alien eyes (peas, obviously). 

Sure. Best I could do, Sis.

Anyway, they seemed to appreciate the effort, and they ate it. Along with the last package of chicken thighs that I cooked with an onion and some banana and bell peppers from the garden.

Sunday

Short version: Pork bites, boiled potatoes, steamed carrots and broccoli

Long version: My mom had brought these pork chops that were seriously at least an inch and a half thick. My sister suggested that they're mostly used for butterflying and stuffing, which is a nice idea, but I just cut them into chunks and fried them in bacon grease with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika.

Not as fancy as stuffed pork chops, but faster and still tasty. Which is pretty much my cooking philosophy in a nutshell.

Break for a photo of a much fancier chef than I am:

Much cuter, too.

Monday

Short version: Pork stir-fry, rice

Long version: More of those extra-thick pork chops cut up again, this time for stir-fry. I had actually cleverly cut all the pork up at the same time, and then put some in a container with marinade for the stir-fry the next day. Because stir-fry does not happen on a workday without previously prepped meats and frozen vegetables. Which is what I used for the vegetables, along with some of the leftover steamed carrots and broccoli.

Tuesday

Short version: Bull steaks, mashed potatoes, steamed carrots and broccoli

Long version: And here it is! The first of many, many meals featuring bull beef. For the first time cooking it, I did it as plainly as I could so I could gauge the tenderness and flavor. So I just pulled out a bag labeled "steaks,"* sprinkled them with some steak seasoning, and seared them on a very hot griddle pan in bacon grease.

I was pretty sure tenderness--or lack thereof-- was going to be the main issue, so I cooked them about medium rare, then sliced it thinly. Then I put the pieces back in the pan and added some butter to make a sauce, because it's very lean meat.

The taste was very, very good. Any of the pieces that got even the least bit well done or weren't sliced thin enough were indeed too tough, but I can work around that. It's basically like cooking London broil, which was a cut of meat that always seemed to be on crazy sales when A. and I were first married, and which I cooked a lot. So I feel like I'm on familiar ground here.

Wednesday

Short version: Baked ziti, leftovers

Long version: The day before, I had made two pans of roasted tomatoes and garlic and turned that into Finny's sauce. I had some cooked calabaza hanging out in the refrigerator, so I sneakily threw that into the food processor along with the rest of the sauce ingredients.

While I was at it, I figured I might as well go all out and just make something ahead for the Wednesday Workday dinner. So I boiled some pasta, mixed in the sauce and a LOT of shredded asadero and Parmesan cheese, topped it all with yet more cheese, and stuck it in the refrigerator.

Then, when I got home at 4:30 p.m., all I had to do was put it in a 350-degree oven for about an hour. 

A. had leftover steak and mashed potatoes. I should have had some of the leftover steak, too, but instead I had some of the pasta with leftover broccoli and carrots, and I wasn't sorry about it, either. Yum.

Thursday

Short version: Ground beef tacos, pinto beans

Long version: Just plain ol' ground beef tacos. And not crunchy tacos, either. We can't be fancy all the time.

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

* Our sorting system when butchering is very minimal. Depending on the size, there are bags of roasts, steaks, stew meat, stir-fry (cut thinner than stew meat), and chili meat (the roughest stuff chopped up). That's it. We are not professionals, obviously.

I Know!

Yes, everything looks different here.

Yes, I also hate it when things change on me without warning.

I'm sorry.

But Blogger is the one that changed everything, and they keep pressuring me to change my format, and things are getting kind of wonky in the formatting department here (perhaps you've noticed), so I just did it.

What do you think? Better? Worse? Vote now!

Oops. I didn't mean to use the "v" word. Still ignoring the elephant and donkey . . .

I Can't HEEEAARRRR Youuuuu

 

Today, I am completely ignoring the elephant--and the donkey--in our national room and purposely not looking at any media content relating to elections.

Instead, I will create my own media content (this post--that's my own media content) focusing on completely different topics.

Like bull meat!

I actually hadn't yet cooked any of the meat from the bull we butchered on Friday, but I took some of the steaks out of the freezer last night to thaw and fried a small test piece this morning.

So how did it taste? Like beef. Hooray! 

I know it seems obvious that a bull would taste like beef, but I've been eating home-butchered animals long enough to know that there is huge variation in the taste of meat even from the same kind of animal, depending on its age, sex, sexual maturity, manner of death, how long the carcass ages, and on and on and on. 

I was afraid that this animal, which was a mature male that has been breeding for the past three years and was butchered quickly and very roughly, would be strong-tasting.

It wasn't. So that's a relief. Although it will be sort of tough, I think. No problem, though. I've spent my entire adult life learning how to cook tough cuts of meat (because those are the cheapest ones, of course), so I feel capable of handling this meat.

I feel now would be a good time for a completely unrelated photo:

I can't remember the last photo of me that I posted here, but my sister took this when she was here for Poppy's birthday, so here I am. With my mom, not looking at the camera. I think we were looking at one of the children, who was obviously being amusing.

Also related to the bull and butchering, I finally cleaned out the gross, bloody coolers today. The ones that we transported the meat home in.

Yes, I should have done it immediately, but man, I was exhausted this past weekend after all the activity related to butchering and all the other things I usually do (mostly laundry and a lot of food prep), and then I worked yesterday, so I didn't get to the real scrubbing until today.

I did at least rinse them out, so there wasn't actually flesh stuck to them or anything, but I still had a lot of scrubbing--with water, with vinegar, and with boiling water--to do until they weren't totally nasty. 

This is the hidden labor of butchering. The cutting itself is arduous, of course, but so is all the prepping and cleaning that goes into having clean, accessible meat in a freezer.

Anyway! It's all done now and the coolers are getting further sanitized out in our strong New Mexican sun.

Let's pause here for another random photo:

Hey look! There I am again! This time showing Poppy her birthday cake.

In addition to scrubbing the coolers, I have also done three loads of laundry (and hung them on the line, of course), made spiced almonds, roasted two pans of tomatoes to keep ahead of the many green tomatoes that are slowly turning red, rinsed out the outdoor trashcans, watered the animals, and cared for Poppy.

I am not lacking in distractions, anyway. Which is lucky on a day like today.

So, tell me: What are you up to today?