Friday Food: Throwback Turnips

Friday 

Short version: Vaguely chicken soup, cookies

Long version: I used the chicken bones left from the previous Tuesday's meal to make stock, and then pulled off what meat there was. It wasn't much--maybe a cup and a half. So this was only vaguely chicken soup. Mostly, it was vegetables. I had carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, peas, and at the last minute I added a pint jar of sauerruben (fermented shredded turnips). 

The sauerruben was key. It added a lot of flavor, but also quite a lot of body to the soup. So really, this was more of a vegetable stew. I also added some sour cream to make it a little richer. 

It was actually really good. The younger two children were the only ones eating with me--the older two were gone on an FFA trip and A. wasn't feeling well--and they loved the sauerruben, too. 

A happy mistake by Seeds 'n' Such in the end. And I still have plenty more turnip* seeds to plant this year.

The cookies were just chocolate chip/peanut butter ones, with a little bit of oats added to bulk them up a bit.

Saturday

Short version: More soup, cheese, biscuits

Long version: Since most of the family hadn't eaten the soup the night before, there was enough for another meal for the four of us who were at home. As long as I supplemented with something else. Like cheese and biscuits.

Remember: Your biscuits do not have to be round. 

Embrace the rebellion of wonky rectangular biscuits. It saves so much time.

Sunday

Short version: Lamb chops, hammy rice, green salad with vinaigrette, cookie bars

Long version: The FFA travelers returned this afternoon, and I knew they would have had their fill of hamburgers, pizza, and gas station food.

Travel food is never the best.

So I made some plain food for them. The lamb chops were from the ram lamb that we butchered recently; the one that sat for some time in A.'s office until we could get around to cutting it up.

That delay in processing turned out to be the perfect amount of time for aging. Everyone was exclaiming about how tender the lamb chops were.

I cooked the rice in some ham stock.

And I remembered in the afternoon that the younger kids had nothing for their school snacks for the week, so I quickly made some cookies. They were oat/peanut butter/almond/chocolate chip cookies. I baked about two dozen as actual cookies, and then baked the rest as cookie bars for our Sunday dessert.

I have the chocolate chip cookie recipe memorized, and I freely add to it as I go, making sure to get the right texture at the end so they aren't dry, so it doesn't take me long to make cookies anymore. Handy sometimes.

Monday

Short version: Ham and rice skillet, leftover lamb chops

Long version: I had a small amount of ham from the last time I cooked it that I stashed in the little freezer for a future after-work meal. And this was it. Diced ham, leftover rice, already-cooked onions, green peas, grated cheese.

The lamb chops were for A., because there wouldn't have been quite enough of the ham and rice otherwise, but there was enough for him to have it as a side dish to his lamb.

Tuesday

Short version: Lamb chili, rice pudding, birthday jello

Long version: The birthday boy was sick--with both a bad stomach and throat--so I put off his requested birthday meal and instead made chili with some of the lamb we ground. I don't like ground lamb on its own as burgers or something, but it's good in something highly spiced like chili. You can tell it's not ground beef, but the lamb flavor isn't overwhelming.

One child, after taking a bite of his chili, asked, "Is this really strong beef or really good lamb?' Really good lamb. Also really good chili, which also had two cans of beans; a few cubes of frozen green chili; a jar of lamb and game stock I made awhile ago from the leftovers of lamb chops, grouse, and doves; and some of the giant calabaza I baked and pureed this day.

This resulted in about a gallon and half of pureed calabaza.

Edited to add: I forgot to explain the birthday jello! This day's birthday boy was sick, so we delayed his requested meal of pork ribs, mashed potatoes, and strawberry/rhubarb crisp with ice cream until he was feeling better and wanted to eat. It seemed sad to have nothing for him, though. So I made some jello (4.5 cups lemonade+2.5 tablespoons gelatin) and stuck a candle for him to blow out in a serving of that. We had to sing really fast, because you can imagine how precarious a lit candle in a chunk of wobbly jello is, but it worked for the situation.

Wednesday

Short version: Breakfast quesadillas, cucumbers, crispy rice treats

Long version: We were home all day thanks to school being canceled due to an ice cloud that settled on us, plus some very cold temperatures and wind. We didn't even have online schooling, because so many people were without power.

An actual snow day! HOORAY.

So everyone spent much of the day eating various snacks as well as a pretty heavy lunch of chili pie made with leftover chili topped with cornbread. I decided after all that that we really didn't need a big dinner. I was cooking bacon anyway for my contribution to the next day's elementary Valentine's party, so I used a few pieces of that in scrambled eggs with cheese and salsa to make quesadillas.

The crispy rice treats were for school the next day, too, but I made a small pan of them for my own family to eat this night.

Thursday

Short version: Randomness

Long version: The elementary kids had their Valentine's party right before school let out, so they ate there. I also ate some of the cream cheese and bacon roll-ups I had sent for that party while I was there. Then we rushed home to get Poppy dressed for her cheer game. The power had been out all afternoon and still wasn't on when we got home, so she just ate a peanut butter sandwich while I did her hair. 

Everyone else ate concession food at the game, as well as some beef jerky I had brought. And we had to stay until the boys' varsity game and didn't get home until after 9 p.m. Boo.

Refrigerator check:

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

* When I searched "turnips" in my posts, look what came up from over a decade ago: Tiny boys and Good Old Dog Mia eating raw turnips. 

Insane Lasagna, Denied

We don't celebrate birthdays in a really big way in our house. The birthday person gets to choose all their food for the day--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert--and then we have a little family party after dinner with presents. 

The food is obviously a big part of that, and I have always made anything my children have requested.

Until this year.

This year's new 15-year-old* requested this lasagna for his birthday. 

Ugh.

I never wanted to make that again. It was just too much. But it's a birthday! And I always said I would make anything for their birthdays!

So I resigned myself to two days in the kitchen, plus some sore arms. As the birthday grew closer, though, and I realized how much I was dreading it, I just . . . said no. I told him I would make him lasagna, but it wasn't going to be that particular one.

Whereupon he changed his mind and said he'd rather have pork ribs and mashed potatoes. Which are about a thousand times easier.

I do feel some guilt about this, but not enough to make the lasagna. And I did make cinnamon rolls for his birthday breakfast, so that kind of makes up for the lasagna, right?

I made them on Sunday and just par-baked them because his birthday is today and I was working yesterday. (The pan in the back right has bar cookies for Sunday dessert.)

I guess even I have my limits in the kitchen. And that lasagna is it.

*I am now in the stage of figuring out how to get teenagers a driver's licenses, which is wild. Also wild: I will not be out of this stage for another decade.

Snapshots: Poppy, Center Stage

I told Poppy her friend could come spend the night on Thursday. She was thrilled, and sat right down to make a schedule for their 24 hours together.

The list included a tea party with their American Girl dolls.

The list also included baking the monster cookie mix this same friend had given Poppy for her birthday. So of course, the cookies were part of the tea party.

For some reason, this spoon sticking up out of his ice cream delighted one child so much that he asked me to take a picture of it.

Kind of a long back story, but the younger two wanted to order a howling wolf beeswax candle for their brother's upcoming birthday. I duly ordered one on Etsy, but what came was . . . not a wolf.

It was actually a fox candle, and the seller was very nice about it when I messaged her to let her know we received the wrong canine candle. The wolf candle won't get here in time for the birthday, but we get to keep the fox, so I guess it's a two for one deal.

This year's guidelines for creating the elementary students' Valentine's Day boxes were to decorate them with a favorite book character. Poppy chose Curious George, and we came up with a pretty good one using an ice cream bucket.

George is sitting on the Man with the Yellow Hat.

And last, lookit!

DAFFODIL!

There are quite a few bulbs sprouting in the mechanic's pit garden. The crocuses and daffodils seem to be coming up at the same time, which is sort of odd, but I am not complaining. Yay, plants!

We had two more lambs born this past week--both male--but I don't have a picture of them yet. Maybe next week.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Salvage Food

Friday 

Short version: Pizzas, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: Since I had finally gotten to the store that sells the big blocks of asadero cheese, and I was baking bread this day so I had dough on hand, it seemed I was obligated to make pizza. So I did.

One pepperoni, one cheese.

Saturday

Short version: Beans, rice, and ham; carrot sticks; gingersnaps

Long version: A. was at the basketball game with, of course, the basketball player. One of the children home with me wasn't feeling well and didn't want to eat. I was planning on having a salad. So, since I was really only feeding two children, I didn't end up using all the meat I had defrosted.

Instead, I used the ham stock I had made earlier in the day, along with the ham I pulled off the bone, plus the pinto beans I had defrosted, to make dinner for those two children. All I did was saute a diced onion--and save half of the cooked onion for later--add in the ham, beans, and stock, then cook rice in that. When it was all done, I added a bunch of butter and some balsamic vinegar.

Oh, I also used a few frozen tomatoes in the beans. I have a gallon-sized bag of tomatoes from the summer garden that I just froze whole one time when I was too sick or something to roast, puree, and freeze them. I really like having them whole like that, though, because it's very easy to just take a few of them out, run them under warm water for a minute or let them soak, and then squish the insides out of the skins. If you have the space they take up, it's way easier than skinning them fresh and freezing the pulp in ice cube trays or whatever.

The two who got home from the basketball game at 7 p.m. were kind of hungry, so they ate some of the beans and rice. And the one who hadn't been feeling well started to feel better, and he ate some. So it ended up being dinner for everyone in the end.

Sunday

Short version: Pork in gravy, cheddar smoked sausage, hammy rice, green peas, chocolate pudding

Long version: This was the meat I had defrosted the day before. We had both pork and sausage because I wasn't sure the one quart bag of pork loin chunks would be enough for everyone. Also, I had bought this sausage at Walmart awhile ago and figured we should try it out to see if it was worth buying again.

Most people seemed to think it was. Except the one who doesn't much care for sausage. He had the pork. 

I cooked the rice in more of the ham stock. 

This chocolate pudding, except doubled because I had some milk on the verge that needed to be used. And also, my family will eat astonishing quantities of pudding.

Eating in progress.

Monday

Short version: Salvage skillet

Long version: When I was pulling the ham bone out for the stock and so forth a few days earlier, I had taken out a foil-wrapped package from the refrigerator freezer that I thought was a ham bone. It was not. It was a whole cooked meatloaf that I had no memory of freezing. Which meant it had been in there awhile.

It was very dry and slightly not-fresh tasting, but I was not about to throw all that meat away. So I salvaged it by chopping it up fine--no chore, as it was so dry it pretty much just fell apart--fried it in some freshly rendered beef tallow with taco spices, salsa, and some already cooked onion, and then added leftover rice, grated cheddar cheese, and sour cream. I also threw in the last cup or so of beans and rice and some frozen corn.

The corn was the vegetable component. Ahem.

It was not pretty, but it was pretty tasty.

Which more or less sums up my cooking.

Tuesday

Short version: Roasted chicken pieces, baked pasta, frozen peas, peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies

Long version: I had to go to a basketball game at 4:30 p.m., so I made all of this and just left it for everyone else at home. It was one package of chicken leg quarters, separated into thighs and drumsticks, salted, seasoned with olive oil, Italian herb seasoning and garlic powder, and roasted at about 450 degrees until done.

The pasta was a box of penne, mixed with the last half a frozen bag of roasted tomato sauce, some of the ricotta that really needs to be used up now, and shredded asadero cheese. That went in the oven with the chicken for the last half an hour or so.

The peas went in the oven, too, actually. That made it very easy for me to just tell Poppy to have Dad take everything out of the oven at 5 p.m. so they could eat. 

I had made the cookies in the morning. They were pretty much just chocolate chip cookies with a bunch of peanut butter added in place of some of the butter. I love these kinds of cookies, although it is hard to get the chocolate chips to stay in while they're being rolled. The dough is much greasier because of the peanut butter, so it doesn't stick together as well as plain chocolate chip cookie dough. It's fine once they're baked, though.

Wednesday

Short version: All the leftovers, plus eggs

Long version: One half piece of sausage, pork in gravy, the meatloaf/rice skillet, baked pasta, peas, all apportioned out as I saw fit.

And I made a couple of eggs for A. to bulk his up a bit.

Still not photogenic. Still eaten.

 Thursday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, garlic bread, baked carrots, brownies

Long version: I got all of this prepped before I went to pick up Poppy and her friend--who stayed the night with us--from cheerleading practice. Then, when I got home at 5:15 p.m., I did a car-key hand-off to A., so he could go pick up the basketball player from his practice. I could have dropped the girls off and then gone to get the basketball player, but I had to get all of this food into the oven.

I also made the brownies when I got home, which take literally ten minutes to mix up. Not that we had to have a dessert, but the oven was on anyway, and we did have a guest with us.

It all finished baking around the time A. got home around 6 p.m., so that worked out well.

Refrigerator check:

Good thing A. is going to get hay and groceries today.

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

A Milk Update

Because I can't leave you with yesterday's cliffhanger . . .

Success!

I gambled on trying the tiny store in the village yesterday afternoon rather than driving a long way for a full grocery run, and was rewarded with the last gallon of milk they had. So now we'll be okay until A. goes to the bigger town for his hay run on Friday, which he can combine with a trip to Walmart for all the groceries.

Thus ends this week's milk saga. 

The Milk Situation

I spend more time that your average person plotting about milk. This is a result of both our remote location so far from stores, and the fact that we just go through so much milk. 

We will use five gallons a week of milk, if we have it. Keeping that much milk on hand at all times is very difficult when the nearest store is 60 miles away. And that store doesn't have reliably good milk, either.

Here's the breakdown for our milk supply*.

There is a very tiny kind of convenience store that's about 10 miles away that sometimes has milk. It's good quality, but sometimes it's all been purchased. And often, the store isn't open when it's supposed to be. So that's not a reliable source.

The next-closest store is 60 miles away. They have a good quantity of milk on hand at all times, but it often goes bad quickly, or is actually kind of off when we open it. I'm guessing that's because they're at the end of the supply lines and so the milk has had to travel a long time and be exposed to a lot of loading and unloading temperature changes on a truck. So I avoid buying milk there if I can.

There are a few regular grocery stores within 90 miles that always have milk, but one of them has the same problem of quality as the closer store because it's on the same trucking route. In fact, almost all the stores we go to have some problem with quality and longevity. More often than not, milk starts to separate or just plain taste bad before we get to the end of the four or five gallons we buy at a time.

The absolute best place to buy milk is Walmart. It is always fresh, it rarely goes bad within the week, and it's the cheapest, too. But of course, there is only one Walmart we can get to, and it's 90 miles away. 

Where we buy milk has everything to do with where we need to be for something else, usually a basketball game or a hay run in the winter.

And how much of this I want to stare at to get to it.

So figuring out when and where to buy milk this week looks like this:

We currently have 3/4 of a gallon of milk left. The last gallon of milk we opened from that same grocery run started separating immediately, which means this one will probably not last long. I can probably water it a little bit and make it last two days, but that's about it.

I had been planning to go to Walmart on Thursday and then stop at a basketball game on my way home, since I had to be going that way anyway. But now that basketball game isn't happening.

So.

Will the very small store in the next village over be open today? Will they have milk? If yes and I can get even one gallon of milk, we're good until Friday. The hay place in the big town with the Walmart is open on Fridays, so A. could go get milk then.

I could just go to Walmart this morning, bypassing the small store entirely, but that would be a trip solely to go to the grocery store, which feels like a waste because it's so far.

If I can't get milk at the small store and don't go to Walmart today, we will be out of milk for at least two days. This happens somewhat regularly and it's not the end of the world, but it's annoying.

I know someone is going to say, "Why don't you just get a milk cow?" Because I do not want a milk cow. I know exactly how much work that would be for me, and frankly, this sort of convoluted planning is easier for me than milking every day, sterilizing equipment, making cheese, etc.

Anyway, that's where I am today: Pondering whether I want to drive two hundred miles roundtrip for groceries. Stay tuned.

* I bet you never expected anything so fascintating when you showed up today, right? Right. 

Snapshots: A Selfie and Lambs

First up, a rare selfie from the previous week: 

Might as well take advantage of the clean hospital mirror, I guess.

There were no lasting issues from the metal that got in that son's eye, thank goodness.

Next! Spirit week the week of homecoming does not fill me with spirit, because I am really bad at coming up with outfits and costumes for all the children to wear for every theme day. It's like Halloween for a week straight. It's not my favorite.

But this year I did good! I came up with some really good outfits for dress like a celebrity--one son won by dressing like our UPS guy, who is for sure a celebrity here in our remote county--and Poppy won on the day they were supposed to dress like a first responder or a hero by wearing her brothers' old Army uniform costume.

I don't have any photos of that for you, but I do have this one of a child being an outlaw on a totally random day at our house.

Any day is a good day to be an outlaw. As I recall, I got held up for some cookies.

The older boys were gone on an all-day FFA trip the day before homecoming, so I told them I would iron their clothes for the homecoming dance for them. I strongly dislike ironing, so this was a very generous offer for me. 

I used starch and everything.

I was grumbling to myself as I was ironing, but as I told A., I really shouldn't be complaining that they want to look nice instead of slumping around in sweatpants or something.

All the special-occasion clothing last week, plus all the activities that kept me away from home, made me very grateful to have the clothes dryer so I could get laundry done when I needed to.

I have not, however, abandoned my clotheslines by any means, and I was happy to be able to use them this weekend for the laundry that needed to be done again.

Dry clothes in the setting sun.

Another lamb was born on Friday, just in time for the weather to warm up, thankfully.

The two older and bigger lambs on the left, tiny new lamb on the right.

So far, they're all ewe lambs. We have one more ewe that is still pregnant, and we're hoping for at least one male lamb for the freezer next fall. We shall see.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.