Friday Food: The Moving Edition, Round Two

Amusingly, the first round of Friday Food: The Moving Edition was posted exactly five months ago on June 29. We need to stop moving now.

All photos in this post are from our road trip to Arizona. Fortuitously, they all feature food.

Friday

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, mashed potatoes, green salad

Long version: This is a pretty typical meal for me to make, right? Ah, but I didn't make it. This was our last meal at my parents' house in Arizona, so my mom made it. Thus, it tasted even more delicious. Also, they have a grill. Grilled hamburgers are the best.

Road trip picnic lunch. No one wants to sit down to eat after sitting in the car for five hours.

Saturday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, tortillas and cheese, green peas

Long version: This is the, "we just got back from a long trip and this is the food that will last in the refrigerator/freezer while we're gone" dinner. It took us almost 14 hours to make the 10-hour drive home from Arizona. We left my parents' house at 4:30 a.m. and arrived at our house at 6:15 p.m. I started dinner immediately upon walking in the door. A. had to finish it because I had to put the hysterical baby to bed.

I've had better days.

The baby in a happier, non-hysterical time.

Sunday

Short version: Oven-fried pork chops, roasted potatoes, green beans

Long version: The green beans were from a huge bag of fresh ones my mom sent home with me. She said she and my dad would never finish them. I have no such problem. The boys ate theirs raw, as is their preference. I roasted the rest on the pan with the potatoes, with olive oil and garlic. They were delicious.

Monday

Short version: Venison with garlic butter, potatoes, green peas

Long version: I used the last roast from Ray's deer leg for this meal. A few hours before dinner, after it was thawed all the way, I dumped some of my apple vinegar, oil, garlic powder, and lots of salt and pepper on it in the bag it was in to marinate. I browned it all over in a hot skillet, cooked some sliced onions in the pan, then added the thinly sliced venison back to the pan to cook a little more. I didn't overcook it this time, and it was quite tender and very good.

The potatoes were red potatoes. I never buy these--we always get russets--but my mother had added them to my pile of things to take home, so I did. I just chunked them up, boiled them until tender, then added lots of butter, salt, and pepper, and a little of the garlic butter I had made for the meat.

We eat a lot of frozen peas during particularly challenging weeks. A week in which we are moving  definitely counts as challenging.

Tuesday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, green beans

Long version: Nah.

Wednesday

Short version: Bacon, scrambled eggs, tortillas and cheese, cabbage and onions, apple slices

Long version: You may notice this is the first time I have ever included fruit in our dinner menu. And that is because I don't see the sense in serving any form of sugar--even a natural one--in place of a vegetable.

However.

In my zealous packing of the kitchen, I emptied out the freezer and refrigerator of all vegetables, including the peas I had been planning to make. There was a bag of apples still, though, so that's what we had.

The cabbage was leftover from a couple of days ago, but Jack and I are the only ones who like cooked cabbage.

The boys thought having apples with dinner was very exciting. Cultivating low standards in children is an excellent thing.

Low standards were also the reason they thought these caramel flavored rice snacks I got for the car were the best things ever. They were pretty good, actually.

Thursday

Short version: I can see into the future . . .

Long version: I'm posting this before we have dinner tonight, because at dinner time we will be moved into our new house*, where there is no internet service yet. But I wouldn't want to leave you without the crucial knowledge of what we ate on Thursday night. That would be cruel.

So! My plan is to not cook, because I know I will be exhausted. I have cheese, salami, crackers, apple slices, grapes, peanut butter, cream cheese, and carrot sticks that will all be presented for the children to make their own plates.

I will also be making them some grapefruit juice with the fresh grapefruits we brought from my brother's backyard tree in Arizona. They can toast to our new house with that. A. and I will be toasting with the extra-large bottle of gin on the liquor cabinet. I already have seltzer in the refrigerator for making my drink, because I may not be able to find the the nail clippers (or anything else), but I know where everything is for my celebratory cocktail.

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

* With horrific amounts of unpacking and organizing to be done, but moved in! Yay! Dealing with two houses is for the birds, man. I will never buy a second home.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have A(nother) Walker

Poppy officially started walking yesterday.

She had quite an audience for it, too.

She only took a couple of steps at a time yesterday, but she continued to practice--despite a lot of interference from her brothers--and is now up to ten steps or so. Never have I seen a baby so pleased with herself.

Half-empty houses are excellent for practicing walking. I have no doubt she'll be running in no time. She's got a lot of boys to keep up with, you know.

Some Progress

Our moving week is progressing about as I expected. That is, random and rather chaotic, but steady. We brought another trailer-load of things up to the new house today. I unpacked the kitchen things right away, mostly because I need the paper and boxes to move more kitchen things.

I have a lot of kitchen things. And many of them are very, very heavy. About the only downside to cooking exclusively with cast iron and stainless steel is that they are heavy as hell. I'm used to it when I'm actually cooking, but when I start adding the various pots and pans to boxes and then realize I can't actually lift the box, I can see some of the appeal of lightweight cookware.

Anyway.

I took a moving picture for you.

You're welcome.

You may notice that my "new" kitchen is not exactly state of the art. Here is the story about this kitchen that I tell everyone: When the guy we bought the house from--name of Dale--was showing me around, we walked into this very, ahem, basic kitchen and he said, in his very Western drawl, "Now this kitchen. Ev'ry woman luuuuvs this kitchen." 

And that, Dale, is probably why you are single.

Despite the lack of granite countertops--they're this odd cushiony yellow stuff--and high-end appliances, it's not so bad. Of course, my frame of reference is the 1920s-era kitchen at Blackrock, so this 1970s trailer kitchen seems pretty modern in comparison. It at least had a spot for a dishwasher and enough electricity for it. Positively luxurious.

Also, the dining room has the perfect spot for my lovely liquor cabinet.

A spot under a very bright window that makes it impossible to get a good picture, but you get the idea.

You can see that I don't have a lot of liquor in that liquor cabinet yet, but I do have a bottle of gin big enough that it doesn't fit in any of the spaces under the cabinet. Classy, no?

That bottle is just sitting there in that house, waiting on us to finish our labors and toast the completion of our move with a cocktail.

We're getting there.

A Disproportionately Irritating Thing

We are out of milk. We have been out of milk since we got home from our trip on Saturday night.

Well, that's not strictly true. There was milk in the refrigerator. But it was milk that had been sitting in that refrigerator the entire time we were gone, and so it was no longer fit for consumption. I had meant to stick it in the freezer before we left, but in all the rush to get out the door at 4:30 a.m., I forgot.

This small omission has great consequences out here in Empty America, however.

The tiny general store in the village wasn't open until Sunday morning. And when it did open, the guy was out of milk.

The slightly-less-tiny store twenty miles away isn't open on Sundays.

The next closest grocery store is fifty miles away.

The kids wanted milk to drink. A. and I wanted milk for our coffee. None of us wanted to drive 100 miles round trip to buy milk.

The most annoying part of this is that we stopped no less than seven times on our long and arduous trek home Saturday, and each of those stops was at an establishment that sold milk. I had a cooler in the car. I could have gotten milk at any time we were still in civilization. The last stop was only an hour and a half from home. I could have gotten milk then and not even needed a cooler. But I was so exhausted and mired in my own desperation to just get out of the car that I didn't think of it.

And so, we are out of milk.

A. is going to a city this afternoon to drop off our U-Haul trailer--a story for another time--so he can go to a big* grocery store and get many gallons of milk. And probably a box of dry milk for future milk-less situations.

Until then, it's black coffee with maple syrup for me, and water for the boys.

Amusing update: I'd been telling the boys ever since yesterday that they could have milk at school. Their school provides a free breakfast of cereal and milk every morning. Except this morning? No milk. I had to laugh at that, although it was very disappointing for the children.

* That should probably be in quotes, as it is nowhere near as big as a city supermarket, but it's big to us.

Home

I am home. I am tired. Fourteen hours in a car with four small children will do that to you.

But! We had a wonderful visit with family and now we're all rested up (ha) and ready to make a perfectly organized move (HA HA HA) to our new house. By Friday.

Thank you for allowing me my moment of sarcasm. If you need me, I'll just be over here frantically throwing stuff in the back of the van and driving it ten miles up the road over and over again.

It's gonna be one hell of a week.

Friday Food: Using It Up

This week was all about eating perishables before we left for our trip to Arizona. And apparently, also all about fajitas.

Friday

Short version: Leftover Man Skillet, fried eggs, leftover pinto beans, raw cucumbers and grape tomatoes and ranch dip, fresh pineapple

Long version: This was the day of our Fun Family road trip, which meant that I had recently visited a grocery store. And that is why we had such thrilling and highly perishable items as cucumber, grape tomatoes (the only kind worth buying at a store), and fresh pineapple on hand.

Just a little bit of deprivation is very good for cultivating gratitude. Because when you only have access to fresh pineapple once a month and you know once it's gone you won't have it again for another month? That pineapple tastes extra-sweet. And this one was already really sweet.

Almost as sweet as this girl.

Saturday

Short version: Venison fajitas, leftover pinto beans

Long version: It seems the mule deer around here are even milder in taste than the white-tailed deer in New York. A. really needs to go hunting.

Anyway.

I had labeled this bag of venison "stir fry meat," but since we had had stir fry just a few days previously, I used it for fajitas instead. For some reason, recipes for fajita marinades online all seem to include soy sauce. And lime juice. Who am I to question the wisdom of the internet? I used both, along with chili powder and cumin, which isn't included in most recipes, but which I consider to be mandatory in any sort of Mexican food.

I guess I'm a rebel after all.

We usually use sharp cheddar cheese with tacos or fajitas (and everything else), but I had picked up some queso fresco at the store the day before. The name literally means "fresh cheese," and it's meant to be crumbled on top of Mexican food. As you might guess from the name, it's a very mild cheese, like fresh mozzarella. Pretty good, but it kind of disappears into the food and you can't really taste it. Maybe that's the point.  I think I prefer the sharp cheddar, though.

Monday

Short version: Venison with onion, garlic, and tomato; fried bread; green peas; cauliflower with garlic

Long version: The venison was three small roasts that I marinated with olive oil, apple vinegar, garlic, salt, pepper, and thyme, then seared on my griddle pan. I put the onion in the middle part of the pan where it wasn't as hot.

And then I took a picture. Because why not.

After the outside of the venison was nicely browned, I took it off, sliced it, then put it back on the pan. I also added diced grape tomatoes and garlic to the onions, along with some of the marinade. After all that was off the griddle, I used it to fry the bread.

I cooked the venison a little too long, so it was a bit chewy, but still tasty.

Tuesday

Short version: Oven barbecued chicken, rice, green salad

Long version: Stop the presses, because I followed a recipe. I KNOW. There's something about chicken that motivates me to search for different ways to cook it. Maybe because I don't really like it that much.

Anyway, I made this recipe using four drumsticks and four thighs. I don't know how many pounds I had, but I halved all the spices and everything and it worked out just right.

The chicken itself turned out really well--the marinade did indeed make it moist and flavorful as promised--but the reduced juices at the end were waaaay too salty. The recipe does warn that they end up salty, but the sauce was really inedible.

I was going to make baked potatoes, as the oven was on for so long, but I completely spaced on actually putting the potatoes in and only remembered about twenty minutes before dinner. Rice to the rescue!

I hated to just throw away all that juice with all those spices in it, so I put it in the rice. I forgot, however, that there was sugar in the spice mixture, and the resulting slightly sweet rice was kind of weird. I added some sour cream to mitigate the sweetness, which helped, and it was fine.

If I did this again, I wouldn't bother with the juices. The chicken itself was good, and I liked the method. I might try it with Cornell chicken next time.

Wednesday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, serendipitous bread and butter, green salad

Long version: When I picked up the boys from school, Jack was the proud possessor of a baby food jar of butter he had made himself in class that day. At that very moment, I had bread baking in the oven. I considered this a sign that instead of roasted potatoes with our cheeseburgers, we should have fresh bread and fresh butter.

This was a good decision.

The salad greens were almost half beet greens, because the bitter cold this week* meant that I needed to pull the beets lest the greens just freeze. So I have a lot of beet greens on hand. I actually prefer them raw in salads, though I find it best texture-wise to mix them with crunchier lettuce, like romaine or iceberg. And lucky for me, what's the only lettuce available in the nearest (20 miles away) grocery store? Iceberg. And what kind of lettuce is available in the next closest grocery store (50 miles away)? Iceberg and romaine hearts.

Yay for beet greens to redeem boring lettuce.

Thursday

Short version: Beef fajitas

Long version: Didn't we just have fajitas a few days ago? Yes. Did anyone care? No. The package of fajita beef was the first one I grabbed from the freezer Wednesday night, and I thought that was a good idea because it would use up my one remaining bell pepper and then I wouldn't have leftovers. An important consideration when one is leaving for a week-long trip.

By the time you read this I'll be in a speeding box with four small children, dispensing drawing paper and snacks and answering "Are we there yet?"s with, "No. Try not to think about it."

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

* It got down to ten degrees on Monday night. This didn't faze the collards, but that's too much for beet greens.

And Now, To Watch the Paint Dry

(And this post might be about as exciting as that activity.)

Everyone, your attention, please.

I have finished painting. I repeat, I have finished painting.

Well, as much as I'm going to finish before we move into our new house by the end of the month, anyway. 

I don't know how many hours I've spent total, but almost every Monday and Wednesday for the past six weeks, as soon as I put Poppy down for her afternoon nap, I would rush up to the new house, paint madly as quickly as I could, then rush home again in time to pick up the boys from school.

It was kind of stressful, actually, and also very tiring. But I knew that once we were moved in, I wouldn't regret a single bit of paint I had gotten on the walls.

I got the living room done, the dining room, Poppy's bedroom, the entryway, and the hallway. I did not paint any of the bedrooms besides Poppy's, the two bathrooms, or the kitchen, although they all could have used it. 

I also didn't do as careful a job as I might have wished. I just did not have time. And in this case, done is definitely better than perfect.

I'm pretty pleased with what I did get done. Wanna see*?

Let's start with the living room, shall we? And its infamous paneling.

Those afters actually don't show the finished product, because I painted the brown baseboards too. Close enough to get the idea though.

Now, Poppy's room. Remember how I said the whole thing was covered floor to ceiling in paneling even uglier than the paneling in the living room? This is it.

Seriously, what is up with this? It looks diseased.

I couldn't get a good after picture because there's no natural light in there and it's too dark. This was the best I got. At least you can tell the paneling has been covered up.

Next, the dining room. I wasn't going to bother painting this, because at least it didn't have any gross paneling in it. It did, however, have flat white paint on the walls that was covered in spots and stains. The whole house was painted in flat paint, as a matter of fact. Flat paint is impossible to clean.

Plus, it looks, well, flat.

I don't seem to have a picture of the whole thing done, but here's the progress picture.

Yes, that light fixture on the right is broken. That's on A.'s (very long) list.

I didn't take a picture of the entryway, but it had the same flat white paint as the dining room, and also had that same ugly border thing near the ceiling that the living room had. Now it's the same yellow as the dining room.

Last, the hallway. These walls had more flat paint, this time an odd pinkish white that just looked kind of dirty. I painted it a kind of ivory color. Though it's still a narrow hallway with nasty brown carpet.

All this paint, incidentally, was custom-mixed by me. And the reason it was custom-mixed is because the former owner left behind some paint that I decided I might as well use. Unfortunately, it was a kind of ugly orangey-yellow. So I pretty much just mixed that with white paint in different combinations to make various shades of light and lighter yellow, or just mostly white with a slight yellow tint.

As I told A., it means all the room colors are very harmonious, because they're all in the same color family. Sounds legit, right?

Of course, it also means that I can never touch anything up without painting everything all over again, because I'll never to be able to match the current random colors.

Anyway.

The painting is done. For now. There may be some more at some point--like those bathrooms, or maybe Cubby's room--and probably also some brown carpet remediation, but for now, I'm calling it quits so we can work on actually getting moved in by December 1. Wish me luck.

* I spent a minute trying to get the before and after pictures side-by-side before giving up and figuring you can get the picture (ha) as is.