Friday Food: Camping and Traveling

Not that Poppy and I did any of the camping or traveling, but the rest of the family did.

Friday

Short version: Tilapia, fresh bread, green salad

Long version: A. had found some frozen tilapia fillets at the grocery store the day before, so he got them for our no-meat Lenten Friday meal. He cooked them in the oven covered in garlic, lemon juice, and a full stick of butter. He joked that he's going to start a cooking site dedicated to ways to get the most fat into your food.

He might not be joking about that, actually.

I had to bake bread right before dinner, so instead of frying potatoes as I had planned, I decided to just slice the still-warm bread and cover it in butter. Yum.

Saturday

Short version: Camp food for the boys, leftovers for the girls

Long version: For the campers, I made what A. calls Hobo Packets, which is any kind of food that can be wrapped up in aluminum foil and heated up in the coals of a fire. In this case, I put in boiled sliced potatoes--tossed with butter, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika--plus slices of leftover steak on top of that. I also put a couple of extra pats of butter on the steak, as it was quite lean.

Perfection for a meat-and-potatoes man like A.

In addition, they had Fritos, cheese, carrot sticks, apples, and marshmallows. The latter three were apparently all roasted over the fire on sticks. Charlie tells me he likes carrots cooked this way, but no way else. So if I want him to eat cooked carrots, I have to spear them and cook them over an open fire. 

Duly noted. And unlikely.

Poppy and I had a mixture of diced leftover potato and pot roast cooked in a skillet with a couple of tomatoes from an open can in the refrigerator, green peas, and some garlic powder. This was very good, actually, and didn't require any real cooking to get a hot meal. Hooray for leftovers.

Sunday

Short version: Tacos, with avocado! And roasted sweet potatoes/bell pepper/onion.

Long version: Yes, I get excited enough about avocado that I must use an exclamation point. A. went to a big grocery store on Friday and thus was able to get me some avocados. Avocados make everything better.

Monday

Short version: Taco meat skillet, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: Leftover taco meat + rice + cheddar and pepperjack cheese. Done.

Tuesday

Short version: Ribeye steaks, mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and onions, frozen green beans

Long version: Nah.

Wednesday

Short version: Roasted chicken thighs, leftover rice, roasted broccoli

Long version: A. and Charlie left for a special father/son trip to Carlsbad this day. To keep Poppy distracted while I was making dinner, I put the little rocking chair in the kitchen, gave her her water bottle, and stationed her attendant behind her to do the rocking.

Because I know how to please a tiny toddler.

Thursday

Short version: Curried chicken salad sandwiches, still-frozen green beans, grape tomatoes

Long version: I had quite a bit of chicken left from Wednesday, which Cubby and Jack requested I make into chicken salad. And then I had to bake bread in the afternoon, so we had fresh bread. It all worked out.

I gave the kids still-frozen green beans to eat while I was putting together dinner and then plopped some grape tomatoes on their plates. Lame, but they got two vegetables in one meal. Go me.

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

Basking

My sister sent me an areca palm as a housewarming present. I placed it in the same spot I had the Christmas tree, and the other morning I realized that it gets a direct beam of light just as the sun is rising in the morning.

Spotlight on the areca.

This makes me happy every time I see it. Lucky for me the sun rises every morning, so I have a guaranteed bright spot to my day every day.

Ha. "Bright spot." Inadvertent, but funny.

That's all. Have a bright day, my lovelies.

Girls' Night In

A. took the boys camping last night, leaving me and Poppy to live it up at home, just us girls.

I stopped short of face masks, but I did make some brownies. Mostly because I had over-floured the counter last time I was kneading my bread and ended up with about half a cup of flour that I didn't want to just throw away. And what recipe uses just a half cup of flour? Why, this delicious brownie recipe, of course.

How handy.

In all honesty, it was not a particularly thrilling afternoon and evening. We went for a walk to the post office. We read It's Spring over and over and over and over. ("In April the robin began to sing to tell the rabbit it was spring. . . " You want to know the rest? I know the entire thing by heart.) We had some dinner.

And one of us wore bright pink sweatpants, because you have to be comfortable AND stylish for a girls' night, right?

One of us also had a bubble bath.

Still a bit skeptical of this bubble business.

That girl was in bed by 6:30 p.m. I was exhausted and seriously considered going to bed right after her, but I decided that was just too lame, as well as a waste of a rare night on my own. So I watched the movie Return to Me, which is a fantastic movie and one of my favorites. It is also, more importantly, available for free on Amazon Prime streaming.

The menfolk got back around 9:30 this morning, smelling of campfire smoke, covered in smears of roasted marshmallows and with many stories*. A good night for all.

* The most interesting was that an elderly Apache women in full traditional dress showed up at their campsite--one that A. found way off the beaten track by a lake--with her grandson and told them that the local tribe used to have their meetings at that site when she was young. She was very pleased to come upon a tent and a fire and three shirtless boys digging holes and chopping wood with hatchets. She said it reminded her of the tribal gatherings. 

Friday Food: Dinner Delegating

There were two nights this week that I was not the primary cook. This trend may continue.

Friday

Short version: Cubby's special hamburgers, quesadillas, tomato and cucumber salad

Long version: Cubby has a habit of standing right next to me while I'm rushing to get dinner on the table, asking questions and remarking wistfully that he wishes he could make dinner.

Believe me, I would like nothing better, son. The problem is getting from wishing to make dinner and actually being able to make it. In between those two things is a lot of instruction and interfering younger siblings.

However.

In pursuit of the greater good--that is, one day not making every single meal myself--I asked Cubby if he would like to make dinner on Friday night. As expected, he was enthusiastic. I asked him what he wanted to make. "Hamburgers," he said immediately.

"And what else?" I asked.

"Um . . . quesadillas." (He already knows how to make quesadillas.)

"Okay. What vegetable?"

"Vegetable?"

"Yes. Vegetable." I suspect he subscribes to his father's idea of a "balanced" meal. That is, meat and maybe an optional starch. Vegetables don't immediately come to mind. He needed a little coaching on this point. He decided on tomatoes.

So that's what he did. I did a lot of suggesting and unobtrusively flipping quesadillas or hamburgers to avoid burning, but I tried to stay out of his way.

Raw meat action shot.

He ended up adding the remainder of a cucumber to some grape tomatoes and using the last of a jar of previously-made vinaigrette to make a tomato and cucumber salad.

Everyone enjoyed Cubby's meal. He was very proud.

A very goofy photo of the cook and his finished product.

Saturday

Short version: Leftover hamburgers, pasta, steamed carrots, ponudo for A.

Long version: I was lazy and just added butter, garlic powder, pepper, and Parmesan cheese to the pasta. The children were pleased with this. But then, they're always pleased with pasta, lazy or not.

Sunday

Short version: Daddy's roasted duck and potatoes, fried mushrooms and onions, frozen green beans, peanut clusters

Long version: A. bought a duck like two months ago when he happened to see one for a good price at the market. He LOVES duck. I can take it or leave it, so he was in charge of cooking it.

He found a recipe in which the duck is stuffed with cloves of garlic and rosemary--he substituted thyme at my suggestion, because I dislike rosemary and don't have any on hand--and then it's roasted on top of sliced potatoes. So he did that.

I made the mushrooms and onions mostly because I had an open package of mushrooms to use up and an onion that was starting to go bad. And green beans because part of my Motherhood Contract is to provide some kind of vegetable at every dinner. Even if I'm not technically cooking.

It was Sunday, so Jack and I made peanut clusters for dessert. I didn't even use a recipe. I just melted chocolate chips and a bit of coconut oil in the microwave, then mixed in roasted and salted peanuts and dolloped the goop on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

I put this in the refrigerator to firm up. About two minutes after that, Cubby asked if we could call my dad. While I was dialing the phone, Jack asked if he could have a carrot. I asked him to wait a minute, but he decided to help himself. By the time I had my dad on the phone with Cubby approximately ninety seconds later, Jack had the refrigerator door open and Poppy had the tray of still-goopy peanut clusters on the floor.

What a team.

Luckily, she hadn't had time to smear the chocolate all over. The peanut clusters were all still on the parchment paper. They had sort of slid together, but I pushed them roughly back into shape and they were fine.

It was a classic Mom Moment. Kids are fun.

They are also very prone to smearing chocolate all over their faces. Like I said: Fun.

Monday

Short version: Pot roast, carrots, green beans, A.'s Joyful Stew

Long version: Yeah, A.'s stew . . . when he prepared his duck, he found giblets. He asked me what to do with them, and I told him they're usually used to make stock. So he did that. Then he added the bones left after the kids were done eating--they never get all the meat--and simmered it some more. The next day, he added some pigs' feet and then a rabbit that Cubby caught in a snare.

Right at dinnertime, he added the potatoes left from roasting the duck and a couple of the carrots from the pot roast. He said it was Joyful Stew because it was so satisfying. It actually tasted better than you would think, and both Cubby and Jack elected to eat Daddy's stew. Charlie went with the less-exciting pot roast. Poppy ate both.

Tuesday

Short version: A Fat Tuesday feast of smothered pork chops, collard greens, and cornbread

Long version: In the northeast, Shrove Tuesday is celebrated with pancakes. I like pancakes, but I'm not from the northeast. Neither is my mother. She's from New Orleans, and so, in honor of my heritage, I made not-pancakes.

Smothered pork chops=browned pork chops simmered in a sauce of onions, bell pepper, garlic, and tomatoes.

The collard greens came from the last bag of frozen blanched greens from last summer. There's more in the bag. I may make those greens last until I have lettuce from our garden.

Children make almost as much mess with cornbread as they do with rice.

Lovely. A lot easier to sweep up than rice, though.

Wednesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, stir-fried vegetables in peanut sauce, rice

Long version: Ash Wednesday means no meat and church at 5 p.m. I made the vegetables and rice before we left to pick the boys up from school so when we got home at 6 p.m. with an exhausted baby and three hungry boys, all I had to do was heat everything up and scramble the eggs. Peanut sauce just means I add peanut butter to my standard soy sauce/vinegar/ginger/sugar/cornstarch sauce. The peanut butter makes the sauce way better than you'd think it would.

Thursday

Short version: Ribeye and T-bone steaks, leftover rice, green peas, A.'s leftover Joyful Stew

Long version: Cubby and Jack chose the stew; Charlie, Poppy, and I ate the steak; and A. ate it all.

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

A Plethora of Possibility

Yesterday was an exceedingly boring day. The cold temperatures--it never got above 12 degrees--and the snow meant that Poppy and I didn't go outside. The boys did have school, though there was a two-hour delay and the other bus just didn't run.

The other bus brings the majority of the elementary kids, so Cubby was the only one in his class yesterday, and there was only one other student in Charlie's class.

Anyway. Poppy and I spent a long day inside. She was bored. I was bored. It was cold.*

But there were seed catalogs!

Looking at seed catalogs is an interesting experience now that I find myself with a couple of acres of bare dirt of my own. Blackrock, of course, was already fully planted with many kinds of plants, as the MiL is a very knowledgeable and active gardener.

The last two houses I lived in were rentals. This is the first time I find myself with the responsibility of planning out gardens by myself. Well, by myself with A., of course, who is also pretty knowledgeable about plants.

We could get a climbing rose for the ramada! We could put lilacs by the fence! We could plant sedum around the patio!

One nice thing about starting from nothing is that anything is an improvement. There will be some trial and error, I'm sure (lots of error, probably), but it's fun to do the planning part. Especially when it's 12 degrees outside.

* Even in the house. The living room was 58 degrees. We have to work on the heating situation before next winter.

The Traditional March Snow

For the two years we lived on the Canadian border, we experienced severe winter storms on March 14th. Both years.

Honestly, that sort of thing was one of the reasons we moved.

I was not expecting March 14th to feature heavy snow here in New Mexico. I don't think it will. March 4th, however?

This is pretty severe winter weather for our current location.

It all started with ice on Saturday night, which ensured that the subsequent snow would stick to everything. It dropped into the single digits last night and hasn't been above freezing for 48 hours now.

The big difference here is that it was almost 70 degrees the day before all this started, and it's going to be 70 degrees again on Thursday.

I can take a winter storm in March when I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be seeing winter weather for the next two months.

Friday Food: The Ponudo That Won't Quit

Friday

Short version: Pork chops, not-at-all-baked beans, bread and butter, green salad

Long version: I had a ton of beans left after forgetting to serve the pinto beans I made on Thursday. I thought maybe I could do something different with them by using some of the cooked beans to make baked beans. Except not actually bake them. And I didn't actually follow a recipe (as always), instead just adding in bacon, tomato juice, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, and maple syrup kind of at random.

I think I went too far in the mustard/vinegar direction, though, because they were much more tangy than regular baked beans. I loved this, but the boys weren't as enthused. They ate all their beans, but I think would have been happier with Grandma Brown's.

Then again, Grandma Brown isn't here and I am. Mom's Not-Baked Pickled Beans it is!

Random photo break:

The children eating popcorn at our newly expanded table. Poppy is in my chair, which she likes much better than her boring, safe chair with straps, because in my chair, she might fall off or crawl right up on the table. Excitement abounds.

Saturday

Short version: T-Bone steaks, rice, fried cabbage and onions, frozen green beans

Long version: I am seriously considering not serving rice again until my children are old enough to eat it without half of it ending up on the floor. It is a nightmare to clean up. It sticks to the floor, you see, so it can't be swept up easily. Little bits of it always remain.

Confession: I usually just leave the rice explosion on the floor until the morning, when it's dried and can be swept up completely. Unfortunately, Jack dropped his plate in the kitchen while he was carrying it from the table to the counter, leaving rice all over the exact middle of the kitchen. Couldn't leave that without it getting smashed into the floor, so I had to sweep and get on my hands and knees with a rag to get the stuck bits.

This is when I started to consider a ban on rice.

A. had another bowl of his ponudo. And still didn't finish it. I think it multiplies in the refrigerator, like loaves and fishes. Perhaps we should refer to it as the Miraculous Ponudo.

Sunday

Short version: Hamburgers, spaghetti with Marcella Hazan's Famous Sauce, green peas, coconut cookies with chocolate lentils

Long version: Well, I don't know how famous Marcella Hazan's four-ingredient sauce really is, but it's pretty famous online. I've read about it many times and finally decided to make it, largely because there is no chopping involved. All you do is simmer a can of tomatoes with a peeled onion and butter, then take the onion out and smash down the tomatoes. The fourth ingredient is salt.

Now, I've read at least one of Marcella Hazen's cookbooks. She's militant about using quality ingredients. In fact, I seem to remember in one of her recipes the instruction that if you didn't have the very best tomatoes on hand, not to even bother making the recipe. Given this, I'm pretty sure she would have chastised me severely for the liberties I took with her sauce. I used store-brand canned tomatoes, my onion was starting to go bad so I had to cut part of it away, and I used salted butter instead of unsalted.

It was still surprisingly good. It's not going to become my new favorite sauce--mostly because it doesn't have garlic in it, which doesn't seem right at all--but we enjoyed it.

I made our standard coconut-flour cookies for dessert--using honey instead of maple syrup this time--and proceeded to totally ruin the virtuous nature of these cookies by adding ersatz M&Ms.

Cubby and Charlie each brought home one of those plastic tubes topped with a plastic heart top on Valentine's Day with what I thought were M&Ms inside. So I thought I would use the M&Ms in place of chocolate chips in the cookies. But when I started to open the tubes, I noticed that they were knock-off M&Ms that for inexplicable reasons were called chocolate lentils.

Yes. Chocolate lentils. Is that supposed to be appetizing? If so, it fails miserably.

The candy wasn't particularly appetizing, either, with ingredients such as "natural waxes" and various dyes. I almost threw it away, but I knew Cubby and Charlie would be mad. So I completely ruined our virtuous cookies with luridly colored fake candy.

The original recipe states that the author used "allergen-free mini chocolate chips." I think "chocolate lentils" sounds just as virtuous, don't you? They're (not at all) lentils! Lentils are healthy! Too bad they're gross. I was the only one who thought so, though. Everyone else ate them.

Monday

Short version: Leftover hamburgers, leftover rice, ponudo for A., frozen green beans

Long version: We eat a lot of frozen peas and green beans. This is mostly because every member of the family will eat these. I could expand their palates with broccolini or bok choy, but those things aren't available around here anyway. Know what is available? Frozen green beans and peas. How convenient.

A. finished his ponudo, finally. But only the giant container in the refrigerator. There's another slightly-less giant container still in the freezer. I bet it's multiplying as we speak.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, buckwheat waffles, frozen peas

Long version: I make buckwheat waffles almost every Sunday morning (buckwheat flour, melted butter and oil, eggs, a small amount of baking soda and salt, yogurt, and milk) and I always eat half a waffle straight from the waffle iron with nothing but butter while I'm cooking them. While I was doing this last time, it occurred to me I could try making a version of chicken and waffles, but with chicken-fried steak.

I ran out of rice, potatoes, and pasta this weekend, so it seemed as good a time as any to try it.

There was much confusion among the children seeing waffles on their plates at dinner. Without maple syrup. And it wasn't Sunday. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?

They liked it, though, especially when I told them they could have a waffle with syrup after they ate their dinners.

Of course, this would normally be a meal laden with wheat flour, but my version was entirely gluten-free. I coated the steak with corn flour, the waffles are made with only buckwheat flour (buckwheat, despite the name, is naturally gluten-free), and the gravy is thickened with cornstarch. Ta da! Totally gluten-free chicken-fried steak and waffles that don't taste gross.

How trendy of me.

Wednesday

Short version: Sirloin steaks, fried bread, pan-fried sweet potatoes, frozen green beans

Long version: I walked in the door at 5:15 p.m. with all four children. We had been at a 4-H meeting. Whee.

Steaks on the griddle pan, bread fried on the pan after the steaks came off, very small pieces of sweet potato pan-fried in olive oil, frozen green beans in the microwave, and we were eating thirty minutes after I got home.

I am still very sincerely grateful that I don't have to do this every evening after working all day. Working women feeding families, I salute you.

Thursday

Short version: Pork chops with leftover cream gravy, garlic bread, green salad

Long version: Let's end with a beauty shot of the garlic bread, shall we?

Beautiful (and tasty) inside and out.

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