Friday Food: Thanksgiving Fried Rice for Two

A. took the boys to Tucson on Tuesday, which is quite obvious in my cooking. In that I kind of . . . stopped. But don't worry! We still ate.

Friday

Short version: Cube steak tacos, Mexican slaw, pinto beans

Long version: I found one more package of cube steaks in the freezer, which I marinated with olive oil, vinegar, chile powder, and cumin, then seared and cut thin for tacos.

They were a little bland, unfortunately, but nothing a little salsa couldn't fix.

Saturday

Short version: Miss Amelia's chicken soup, bread and butter, leftover tacos

Long version: I hadn't taken any meat out to thaw and was vaguely planning on making tuna patties when Miss Amelia's daughter showed up with a large jar of soup her mother had made for us. It was a chicken soup with celery, potatoes, carrots, and I think barley. Or maybe brown rice. Something kind of chewy, at any rate.

In any case, it was good. That's what most of us had. A. and Charlie, who is not a soup fan, had the rest of the cube steak plus three leftover kibbeh heated up with salsa and put in tortillas with cheese.

Sunday

Short version: Beef ribs, accidental tongue, roasted potatoes, green salad

Long version: Yeah, about that tongue . . . I did not want the tongue from the cow we bought last year. But somehow I ended up with a package clearly labeled "tongue."

Not clearly enough, apparently, as I grabbed it thinking it was another package of beef ribs and didn't realize until after everything had braised for several hours that there was one thing in there that looked nothing like ribs. Because it was a tongue.

A tongue is very, very identifiable, FYI. I mean, it looks just like what it is. And cows have very large tongues.

I've never cooked a tongue before--and wouldn't have this time had I known what it was--but I think they're supposed to be peeled first. You know, to get rid of the tough covering that has the tastebuds on it. (GROSS.)

I was kind of slicing it open and examining the edible part inside when Cubby wandered into the kitchen and asked what was for dinner.

Could I resist? No. I stuck the very-recognizable large tongue right in his face and cheerily said, "Cow tongue!"

His response? "NO WAY! Hey Charlie, we're having cow tongue for dinner!"

So then we had to have cow tongue for dinner.

It tasted fine, although the texture was a little soft for me. The kids liked it. Nevertheless, I couldn't face more dissection of the tongue, and cut up what was left for the dogs. They liked it, too.

Monday

Short version: Meat+rice+cheese, Mexican-style

Long version: This was the remainder of the meat from the beef ribs (NOT THE TONGUE) that I put in the skillet with some green chiles and salsa before adding the cooked rice and shredded cheese.

Tuesday

Short version: Vegetable and bean soup, bread and butter, cheese

Long version: A. left early this morning with the boys to go to Tucson to see family, leaving just Poppy and me at home. It was horribly windy and I was freezing all day. So I made soup, because vegetable soup and cheese is my idea of a perfect meal. And there were no militant carnivores around.

Wednesday

Short version: Second verse, same as the first

Long version: More soup. More cheese. More bread. Why cook again if I don't have to? WHEEEE!

Sampling the chocolate chip cookies we made this day. Also whee.

Thursday

Short version: Fried rice, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: In honor of the holiday, I decided we should have something other than leftovers. Although, since I used leftover rice and leftover roasted bell pepper and onion in the fried rice, I'm not sure it counts.

Please admire my fancy Thanksgiving tablescape:

Paper-plate-and-Dixie-cup turkey courtesy of Jack's preschool Thanksgiving craft project.

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

Thankful?

Yup. For this whole messy, chaotic life. And especially for the mess- and chaos-makers.

Happy Thanksgiving, my lovelies. I hope it's filled with the best kind of chaos.

Waiting on the World To Change

It is currently 31 degrees, dry, and windy. But when I get up tomorrow it will be snowing. And it will continue snowing most of tomorrow and tomorrow night.

I was not dreaming of a white Thanksgiving, if only because it makes animal care so much more difficult. They still need food and water, even if their hay is covered in six inches of snow and the outside tap is frozen. And even if the power goes out, which is a distinct possibility.

So I took some measures to ensure that no matter what happens tomorrow, I can feed and water our growing menagerie without too much aggravation.

First I placed a large tub in A.'s office--which has a door leading directly into the shop--and filled it with water. That way I'll have plenty of water to put in buckets for the horse, chickens, and dogs, with or without a functioning tap or water pump.

No one needs to go in and out of that door anyway, right?

I used some rocks to secure a tarp over part of Samson's hay in the pasture, because it's not under cover and if it snows as much as they think it will, he might have a hard time getting to it. I might have to dig the tarp out a bit, but at least once it's moveable, I can just flip it off to uncover the dry hay underneath.

For the chickens, I cooked a couple of the greenish pumpkins from the volunteer plants. They'll probably stay in their coop for a couple of days, and having food for them to peck at keeps them from pecking at each other.

And finally, for the humans, Poppy and I made chocolate chip cookies.

I suppose we could eat some pumpkin, too, but cookies sounded much more appealing.

Okay, Mama N. I'm ready as I'll ever be. Bring on the Thanksgiving snow. (But not too much, okay? Thanks.)

Greek Romances and "The Hobbit"

Charlie recently finished reading The Hobbit and was fascinated by the roman numerals used for the chapters in that book. I explained what each letter stood for and how to read them in order to figure out what number was represented.

It took me a few minutes, though, to connect that with his question this morning: "How do you type Greek romances on the computer?"

Greek/Roman, numerals/romances. Same same.

And also very funny.

Friday Food: Thanks for the Photo, Sis

Apparently, I didn't take a single picture this week. But just as I was about to start typing this up, my sister sent me a photo from nine years ago. Kismet.

Friday

Short version: Pizza elk, rice, frozen green peas

Long version: "Pizza elk"=seared elk pieces mixed with leftover marinara sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese.

Just like you would get in Naples. Ahem.

Saturday

Short version: Elk skillet, frozen green beans

Long version: A. took pity on me and prepped some more elk, deciding to make a recipe he found for a "one-pot Mexican beef and rice" or something.

You know what he made? He made meat+rice+cheese.

It always works, no matter what you call it.

Sunday

Short version: Pork roast, roasted potatoes, frozen green peas

Long version: Time for an elk break! I pulled out some kind of random, on-sale sirloin pork roast that's been in the freezer for awhile. I coated it in a spice mixture of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and thyme and roasted it until my meat thermometer said it was done.

The thermometer lied. I pulled the roast out and started slicing it, only to find it all pink in the middle*.

Worst.

So I sliced it anyway, then added it back to the sauce I had quickly made with the pork juices, some beef stock, and mustard and put it back in the oven for a few more minutes. It turned out pretty well in the end.

Monday

Short version: A smorgasbord of previously cooked proteins, bread and butter, frozen green beans

Long version: This was not my plan for dinner. My plan, however, did not include getting home late from a 4-H meeting that I thought was on Wednesday.

Oops.

I didn't realize the meeting was this day until I was halfway through my workday and unable to pivot on my dinner plan for after work. Luckily, there were quite a few different kinds of leftover meat, so I just heated all the meats up, divvied them out, added bread and butter and the green beans, and listened to all the complaints because everyone didn't have the EXACT SAME food and everyone wanted what the person next to him had.

Kids are fun.

And speaking of kids and fun! Here we have the promised photo courtesy of my sister, featuring Baby Cubby eating my knee:

The accompanying e-mail from my sister said, "You look so young and carefree." Yeah, nine years and three kids ago, I guess we did.

Tuesday

Short version: Elk kibbeh with yogurt sauce, roasted potatoes, sauteed mushrooms/tomatoes/onions, fried cabbage

Long version: Kibbeh--which is a sort of Middle Eastern meatball traditionally made with bulghur--seemed like a good use for some of the elk meat. I made it in the food processor, adding chunks of elk, onion, leftover rice, egg, cumin, salt, and pepper and whirling it around until it formed a very unappetizing and sticky paste that I rolled into balls. These were waiting for me in the refrigerator on Monday, but were just fine waiting until Tuesday.

I just baked those until they were cooked through.

The yogurt sauce is plain yogurt, mashed garlic, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and is really good on both the kibbeh and the roasted potatoes.

The tomatoes in the mushrooms were the very last of the tomatoes picked by Jack and Poppy over a month ago. Almost all of them eventually turned red. These ones were kind of sad and wrinkled, but still tasty.

Wednesday

Short version: Fiesta scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, pinto beans, apple slices

Long version: Fiesta=cheese and salsa. Obviously.

When I was roasting the potatoes the day before, I put about double what I needed on the pan and roasted them until they were soft and then removed half of them to save for the next day.

Well, I thought they were soft. They weren't, quite, which was annoying.

The pinto beans were just plain beans I had cooked a few days before to have on hand.

And we had apple slices instead of a vegetable because I'm down to cabbage and a couple of carrots for a vegetable. I even used up all the frozen vegetables. But we did have fresh apples, which is kind of odd. The kids were happy, though. They thought it was a great treat.

There are those low expectations working out for me again.

Thursday

Short version: Leftover kibbeh, bean and vegetable soup, garlic bread, cheese

Long version: I was going for a kind of minestrone with the soup, and it was kind of like minestrone. Needed more tomato, though.

The carrots in it were the tiny ones from our second planting that I harvested after the hard freeze last month. None of them were thicker than a pencil and not even as long, and I was thinking it wasn't even worth the effort in digging them up and washing them. But then I ended up with a cup of carrots for the soup, so I guess it was worth it in the end. It always is.

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

* Yes, I know current advice is that pork can be a little pink, but this was a LOT pink, and anyway, I don't like it pink. Still freaks me out, no matter what the recommendations by food people are these days.

Friday Food: Barbacoa for Days

Friday

Short version: BLT sandwiches, cucumber slices with salt and vinegar

Long version: I happened to have all the ingredients for this, as well as a great disinclination to trim and prep more of the enormous bowl of elk in the refrigerator.

Everyone liked them, of course, although Charlie ate his BLT deconstructed, because he is an odd child.

Saturday

Short version: Barbacoa soup, homemade corn tortillas, mashed squash, canned black beans, leftover peas

Long version: Thanks to the infernal time change last week, Poppy has been getting up punishingly early every day. That's why I fell asleep while she was taking a nap this day. While I was sleeping, A. decided to take care of the elk in the refrigerator. He decided to make barbacoa with it, which is a Mexican preparation involving chile and fat and long cooking.

Unfortunately, the elk requires much longer cooking than the beef called for in his recipe, so it wasn't shreddable by dinner time. It was tender enough that he could slice it, though, and serve it as a soup. So that's what he did.

It seems silly to be serving canned beans when I have 35 pounds of dried pinto beans sitting in my pantry. But since I didn't know we were having Mexican food until afternoon, and therefore didn't have time to make the dried beans, I went with the canned beans.

And for an afternoon snack, elevated pistachios:

The better to fend off hungry dogs.

Sunday

Short version: Leftover barbacoa soup with rice added, potato soup, bread and butter, cheese, tomato and cucumber salad

Long version: Sick Cubby requested soup to soothe his sore throat, so I made him some creamy potato/bacon/cheese soup. For A., I added some rice to his barbacoa and cooked it some more. Then everyone ate whatever combination of things they wanted.

The salad was made from store tomato and a store cucumber, and was thus disappointing. As grocery store food always is.

Monday

Short version: Leftover barbacoa and rice with cheese added, sliced cucumber with vinegar and salt

Long version: A. had said he was going to make something with the ground beef I had taken out, but he decided we should finish up the barbacoa first. So I heated it up with some cheese and added sour cream to the kids' bowls so it wouldn't be so spicy.

Tuesday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, garlic bread, coleslaw

Long version: The ground beef was still in the refrigerator, so I made two batches of meatballs. I browned them under the broiler, then cooked one pan with barbecue sauce for dinner this night and put the other in the refrigerator, covered with marinara sauce, for the next day.

I made the coleslaw because I had a quarter of a cabbage that needed to be used, and all of my children love coleslaw. It occurred to me as I was grating cabbage and carrots and making a damn mess--as I always do when grating cabbage and carrots--that I would probably make coleslaw a lot more frequently if I could buy those bags of prepared coleslaw vegetables.

But I can't buy those bags, so it remains an infrequent but always appreciated treat. Probably for the best.

A. finished the last bowl of the everlasting barbacoa.

And speaking of everlasting, these are the last flowers from the mixed bouquet my sister brought with her when she came to visit us . . . four weeks ago.

Okay, so I actually chucked these flowers on Tuesday, but that still means they lasted for over three weeks. I find that a bit alarming.

Wednesday

Short version: Meatballs with marinara, pasta with marinara, leftover coleslaw

Long version: I had made the marinara sauce the day before when I had the food processor out to make the meatballs, so all I had to do was bake the meatballs and boil the pasta.

I put some Romano cheese on a few of the meatballs for A., and Charlie came in the kitchen and said, "I know what THAT smell is, and I'm not eating dinner."

I assured him that there would be no stinky cheese on his meatballs, though he continued to look highly suspicious until he sat down and sniffed his food.

I was very glad I had mostly prepped this the day before, as this was the day I felt the onset of what Charlie has been referring to as "the family plague."

Thursday

Short version: Barbecue beef, baked potatoes, frozen peas

Long version: I felt pretty awful this day, but colds wax and wane, so during one of the waning periods I shoved a frozen chuck roast in the oven and later, a few potatoes.

At dinnertime, all I had to do was pull the meat apart and add barbecue sauce, plus nuke the peas.

I also used a couple of the baked potatoes to make myself some potato and cheese soup. Some of the cheese also went on the baked potatoes, because I was out of sour cream.

Not the best meal, but this is what happens on sick days when takeout isn't an option.

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

Introductions Are in Order

So.

As of yesterday, we have a horse.

Everyone, meet Samson.

Samson, meet everyone.

Samson was given to us by one of the teachers at the school, who also co-owns a ranch down the hill and runs the quarter-horse breeding program there. Her family has had a horse operation for generations, and to say she knows horses is a great understatement. Samson was the horse her own daughter, now grown, learned to ride on and won many competitions with.

Samson is now 22 years old and has bad teeth, which means he can't just graze on pasture like all horses do here. He needs special senior horse feed, which is expensive and requires someone to actually feed him twice a day. 

On a large ranch, this care quickly becomes burdensome and impractical, as well as expensive. So Samson really couldn't stay where he was, but they didn't want to just put him down, because besides his teeth, he's in very good shape.

So she thought of us. I had asked her about riding lessons for the boys when we first moved here, and she thought maybe we would like Samson.

We would.

Samson is an exceptionally calm and well-trained horse, which is just what our children need. According to the lady we got him from, who taught her own two daughters to ride on him, there is no safer horse for children. Good thing, as I know exactly nothing about horses and wouldn't know what to do with a horse that isn't basically like a huge, well-trained dog.

His implacable nature is also useful given that Jasper--who apparently has a deep distrust of horses--spent all day yesterday by the fence, barking at the horse.

Samson was unimpressed.

Samson is living in half of the back pasture with the chickens. It's a little louder here than what he was used to, but it doesn't seem to bother him.

Welcome to Crazytown, Samson. We're so glad you're here.