Friday Food: So Long, Roosters

Friday 

Short version: Lamb, white bean stew, carrot sticks

Long version: The lamb was a front leg roast I pulled from the top of the meat freezer. The front legs can be a bit tough, so I put it in a covered casserole in the oven for a few hours, with apple cider vinegar, garlic powder, and salt, until it was tender. Then, at dinnertime, I sliced it and put it in a pan with minced garlic, three lonely whole tomatoes left in a can, mashed, and asadero cheese.

I had a pint jar of navy beans in the pantry that have been sitting there for quite awhile. I think I got the original bag several months ago from one of the neighbors' excess commodities food. I also had a ham bone that had been in the freezer for, um, so long I don't even know how long. So I cooked the beans with the ham bone, then added sauteed onion, garlic, and bell pepper, plus a few tomatoes from the same random can the lamb tomatoes came from. 

I had originally planned to cook it down to a drier consistency, but in the end, I basically made it into a thick soup. It was good, in any case.

Saturday

Short version: Italian sliders, roasted potatoes, fried mushrooms, roasted bell pepper and onion, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: The sliders are just very small hamburgers seasoned like meatballs, then fried and covered with Finny's sauce and asadero cheese. I love these. Easier than meatballs, but almost as tasty.

Sunday

Short version: Revenge skillet, rice, frozen corn, home-frozen green beans

Long version: The time had come to address our excess rooster situation. We had three roosters, which is two roosters too many. So at sunset on Saturday--chickens become quiescent when it's dark--A. pulled out two of the roosters and removed their heads. He hung them overnight and gutted them and de-feathered them the next day after church.

One of the roosters was the small white one that came with Rafael's flock he gave us.

He spent a lot of time hiding here in the barn, away from the other two bigger roosters that beat him up all the time.

The other rooster was the one we got from the school almost three years ago, named, by Charlie I believe, Little Man.

Little Man with his original harem, also from the school chicks.

Little Man was definitely no longer little, and he was most definitely mean. Every single member of the family had been spurred by him. So when A. carried Little Man out of the coop to meet his destiny with a cleaver, the children all cheered.

You reap what you sow, chicken.

Anyway. Given the advanced age of these roosters, I figured pressure cooking was the best bet. Also given their size. Little Man in particular was HUGE.

So I pressure cooked them. I got about six cups of meat and three gallons of stock from those roosters. I used mostly the white meat to make dinner, mixing the shredded meat with stock, green chilis, garlic, and cream cheese, and then topping it with shredded cheese and broiling it to melt the cheese.

It was good, but I think it needed more flavor. Maybe more cream cheese. I only used about a quarter cup, because that was what was left of a package.

I made the cobbler to use up some of the large quantity of Sysco frozen strawberries that I'm trying to get out of the freezer. I didn't use a recipe. It was just the strawberries, sugar, and vanilla topped with slightly sweetened baking powder biscuits.

Monday

Short version: Randomly combined foods

Long version: A work day, and another opportunity for kitchen creativity. Otherwise known as, "Everyone just needs to be fed in the most expeditious manner possible."

So! For the children: Leftover rooster meat, some of the stock, leftover rice, leftover cooked onion (remember: Just Cook the Onion), leftover corn, half a can of leftover tomato sauce we got from a neighbor (the other half was in a soup I made the day before), grated cheese, sour cream, cumin, chili powder, all combined in a skillet.

Children: Fed.

For A.: About a cup of the chicken mixture mixed with some ground beef and vegetable soup I had made on Sunday to use up some leftover ground beef that didn't get cooked when I made the sliders. I put some extra sour cream in his bowl, too, to make it creamy.

A.: Fed.

For me: The last bit of cleaned and chopped lettuce that needed to be used up, leftover roasted bell pepper and onion, some shredded cheese, and one egg I fried and chopped up, topped with the very last of the vinaigrette that I needed to get off the counter.

And thus was everyone fed quickly and many leftovers were disposed of in a tasty manner. Success.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork chops and sauerkraut, garlic bread, steamed carrots, cucumbers with ranch dip

Long version: A. bought actual pork chops this time, rather than the gnarlier pork steaks. It was very exciting, and they were very good. I just browned them and then cooked them in a covered skillet with the sauerkraut in the oven for an hour or so. 

Also exciting: I had the brilliant idea of substituting sour cream for the yogurt I usually use in my ranch dressing, because I wanted it to be less drippy for dipping. It worked, and it was good, although the texture was a little more grainy. Maybe next time I'll try half yogurt and half sour cream with the mayonnaise.

Wednesday

Short version: Creatively combined leftovers

Long version: Another workday, another opportunity to clear out the refrigerator.

Charlie, Jack, and Poppy had corn tortillas with cheese and the remainder of the chicken/rice skillet from earlier in the week, plus carrot sticks with ranch dip

Cubby had the last serving of a ground beef and green chili vegetable soup I had made on Sunday, mixed with the last bit of the white bean soup, and some rice added.

A. had leftover pork and sauerkraut, plus some leftover cooked carrots.

I had a salad with leftover cooked carrots, leftover roasted bell pepper and onion, cheese, and deli ham with some of the ranch dressing.

Everyone had food and many containers were removed from the refrigerator. Yay.

Thursday

Short version: Pork, rice, cucumbers with ranch dressing, mashed squash from the freezer

Long version: More random pork thrown in the oven and cooked, then chunked up and fried in fat with spices.

I am not what anyone would call an adventurous cook.

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

Charlie's Alexander Day

Charlie came lurching blearily out of his room at 5 o'clock this morning, and I sent him right back to bed. That's just not enough sleep on which to manage a long school day.

He went back to bed without protest, but at 5:30 he was back, saying he just couldn't sleep any more.

"That happens," I said. "But it's going to make for a bit of a hard day at school."

"Yeah," he replied. "But I'm going to fight to make it a good day."

Good attitude, Charlie.

The furnace happened to be running, so he shuffled off to the bathroom to assume his favorite morning position.

Reading with his body on the heating vent in the bathroom, and his head cushioned by the carpet in the hall.

Just as he got settled, though, the furnace turned off. He shuffled back through the kitchen with a resigned expression and announced on his way through, "The day is fighting back."

Some days are like that. Even in Australia.

* If you have no idea what the title and last line of this post are referring to, you have probably not read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day as many times as I have.

Tuesday Tip: Pins of Steel

Today's tip is brought to you courtesy of Kay, who left a comment on Sunday to the effect that her clothespins have to be replaced periodically, due to the high winds on the prairie where she lives.

And I have a solution to this! Well, something that worked for me, anyway.

See, we also have very high winds here on our mesa. And I don't have a dryer, which means all my clothes get hung outside on my clotheslines. That means that my clothespins are very, very important. And also very, very well-used.

When we moved to this house and A. put up my clothesline, I had to buy clothespins. So to the Internet I went, confident that I would just find some good old wooden clothespins to order and be on my laundry-hanging merry way.

Which is when I discovered that most wooden clothespins are garbage.

They appear to have mostly fallen into the category of craft supplies. Like for the cute little Christmas tree ornament made out of a clothespin and painted like a snowman that Charlie brought home from preschool a few years ago.

Those might be great for Christmas ornaments, but they would be nothing but trouble on a frequently-used clothesline. They are cheap. And they are flimsy. 

But! While I was poking around online and researching my clothespins--for far longer than I ever thought I would do such a thing--I discovered the existence of metal clothespins. I did not know that was an option.

There are different styles, but the ones I got are kind of short and chunky, with a rubber grip part on the inside to hold clothes.

Close-up of my clothespins in the wild.

And they most assuredly do hold clothes. I have had laundry out in 30-mile-an-hour winds that hasn't come off the line. In more than two years of constant use, not one clothespin has broken.

The only downside to these might be that if you live in a wet place, they might rust, but here in the almost-arid West, rust is not an issue I deal with.

I hardly ever link to actual products, and I am certainly not getting any payment for this, but if you want to try these, these are the ones I got.

Happy line drying. May the sun always shine on your laundry and the birds never perch above your line.

Snapshots: Laundry, Animals, and Undercover Flour

 

Finally using the small drying rack the MiL sent for my birthday. Friday was pretty much the only day I wasn't working that featured good clothes-drying weather without terrible winds, so I did ALL the laundry. And ran out of clothespins. And that is why all the cloth napkins are on the drying rack. Thanks, MiL!

Jasper was VERY INTERESTED in my clothes hanging. Jasper is VERY INTERESTED in everything. Because he is part border collie and, thus, part insane.

 

Celestial sheep. That's not all wool bulking up those ladies. Some of them are very, very gravid. We expect a lamb any day now.

Is it corn? Is it flour? After dealing with two consecutive 50-pound bags of flour from Sysco that have ripped in my chest freezer (where I store it, because it's out of the way and rodent-proof), I decided to encase the paper flour bag in an empty feed corn bag. The corn bag is plastic. It won't rip. So there.

For my mom, who wanted to know how the kids were enjoying the multi-piece soldier and military vehicle sets she sent them, and that they opened on Epiphany: They LOVE them. Many happy hours with many vehicles and innumerable tiny weapons. (Although that girl in the sparkly pants did state that she wished she had got a stuffed cat instead of a tank. Her brothers were happy to commandeer the tank, though.)

And there we are! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Leftovers Save the Week

Friday

Short version: Curried chicken with potatoes and carrots, rice

Long version: I took out the big bag of chicken leg quarters from the freezer and used about 2/3 of them for this. All I did was poach the chicken until I could pull it off the bone, then chop the meat up. In a separate big skillet, I fried onions and sweet yellow curry powder, then added chopped potatoes and carrots with the chicken, plus the liquid from poaching the chicken, and simmered that until everything was tender. Last I added some frozen peas (one-bowl meal! hooray!) and sour cream.

I always add sour cream or heavy cream or yogurt to curry. I'm sure that's not traditional, but it's what I like. And I certainly have no lack of sour cream right now, thanks to the THREE-POUND TUB A. bought.

This is what three pounds of sour cream (and a mug for scale) looks like.  Impressive.

Saturday

Short version: Baked honey-mustard chicken, garlic bread, and frozen corn for the children, taco meat and mashed squash for the adults

Long version: I didn't have enough chicken for everyone to have some, but that's okay, because A. and I are not as enthused about chicken as the children are. We were happy with the taco meat I made a long time ago and took out of the freezer, and the children were happy with their chicken.

Well, except for Jack, who said the meat was "too sweet." Guess he's not a fan of honey-mustard (which I made by literally combining Dijon mustard and honey). But then he had three tacos after he ate about half his chicken, so he was happy in the end, too.

Sunday

Short version: Fried pork, roasted potatoes, mashed squash, frozen green beans, apple crumble with cream

Long version: Another giant chunk of pork from the even more giant package I split up last week. We're getting another cow for the freezer in a few weeks, so I'm working on getting some of the bulkier items out of there. Those huge pork chunks are definitely bulky.

I made the crumble because I had a bag of apples that I bought just a couple of weeks ago, but that were already inexplicably soft and no good for fresh eating. Almost like they got partially frozen. I hate when that happens. So I peeled them all, sliced them up in a casserole, added sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice, and topped them with a combination of oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter, and baked the whole thing along with the pork.

Is it a crumble if it has oats? Or is that a crisp? Who cares. The kids all liked it, and it used up the apples in what is actually a relatively healthy dessert, given the small amount of sugar I used in it. Win.

Monday

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, bread and butter, frozen peas, leftover mashed squash

Long version: More of the hamburgers I pre-made and stuck in the freezer. A good night for them, as we started back to in-person school this day, and it was a work day for me. We were all pretty tired.

Tuesday

Short version: Creamy green chili beef soup, cheese

Long version: I woke up this morning to this outside.

Well, actually, the sun wasn't up when I woke up, but the snow sure was blowing.

School was cancelled, and I thought, "Well, no point in cleaning up the house like I was planning on doing if all four of the children are going to be rampaging around. I shall make stock instead."

There were three packages of soup bones still in the big freezer from the last cow we got, three years ago. Better use those up before we get the next cow!

The bones were big enough that I needed to use my pressure cooker/canner pot anyway to cook them, so I decided to just use it as a pressure cooker first (not every pressure canner is also a cooker, but mine is) to make the stock, and then, while I still had it out, can the stock.

So I did. It took awhile, but at least it provided some distraction from the incredible mess and chaos that swirled around the house all day as the boys scattered every single one of their toys across every room of the house.

I just love snow days.

Anyway. 

Those bones yielded about four cups of meat, so with that, some of the stock, onion, garlic,  tomatoes, carrots, celery, potatoes, a lot of roasted green chilis, frozen green beans, and some sour cream at the end, I made a soup. Which we ate with cheese. Yup.

Oh! And I also put in about a cup of shredded calabacita from the freezer, and none of my children noticed. Ha! Now I know what to do with all summer squash: shred it, freeze it, and hide it in stews and soups in the winter. Sneaky.

Wednesday

Short version: Half tacos, half pork and sauerkraut, all frozen peas

Long version: It was a workday for me, which often means leftovers. This time I had some leftover pork, but not enough for everyone. And some leftover taco meat, but not enough for everyone.

I fried the pork with a jar of rinsed sauerkraut (hooray for the Megaton cabbages!) and heated the taco meat with cheese in corn tortillas.

Luckily, the half of the family that does not appreciate pork and sauerkraut does very much like tacos. Even better, Cubby was the only child who wanted the pork, and thus the only child who needed a separate starch. I had just one serving of leftover roasted potatoes in the refrigerator, which I fried for him along with the pork. 

I just love it when things fall into place like that.

Thursday

Short version: More leftovers

Long version: I had an unusual Thursday workday because Charlie's teacher needed a substitute, so we had more leftovers for dinner. Some of the same leftovers as the night before, as a matter of fact.

The same three family members had the same kind of tacos with the same leftover meat, plus the same peas, also leftover.

The other three had leftover beef soup, with cheese. And thus did I reach the end of another successful week of carefully nourishing my family. Ahem.

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

T.T.: How To Can a Bull

Not that I expect this information to be particularly useful for most of you. However, I feel like my purpose on the Internet is to keep a record of all the random and bizarre things I find myself doing, for that one person somewhere out there who may one day be staring down hundreds of pounds of very tough bull meat.

You never know. One day, it could be you.

So, let's get this party started!

Since my bull meat was stashed in the freezer, it first had to be thawed. This takes a really long time. I put the bags of meat in the sink overnight, and they still had frost all over in the morning. So then I filled the sink with water to help them thaw some more.

Appetizing.

When I thought it was thawed enough, I hauled out the pressure canner and got my water heated in the bottom of it. Plus started heating the clean jars in the oven to sterilize them.

Blurry sterilized jars.

I had to trim some of those random cuts and cut them into smaller pieces.

And got bloody water all over the counter. Also appetizing.

Even with all my thawing efforts, the meat was still a bit frozen in the middle. No matter! That's what a microwave is for! At least, that's what my microwave is for at this particular moment.

Once all the meat was trimmed and cut (except for the stuff I had to do very hurriedly after I had already started filling jars because I underestimated how much meat would fit in my seven jars), I set up my prep station next to the stove.

Clearing the counter enough to set all this up is one of the hardest parts, honestly.

I did just a few jars at a time to allow the others to stay hot in the oven until I was ready for them.

So then I heated the meat in the microwave to make sure it wasn't freezing cold--cold meat in a hot glass jar seems like a fast track to cracked glass to me--and stuffed it into the jars.

The most appetizing thing of all.

Each jar got a teaspoon of salt in it, too. I used this flat wooden baton-like thing Cubby carved for me when we were still living in New York to slide down the inside sides of the jars and get rid of air pockets.

Then the rims were wiped, hot lids put on, bands screwed on, and into the canner.

Here we go!

Quarts of beef have to be kept at pressure for 90 minutes. Because I'm at a high altitude, I also have to adjust the pressure higher.

I used all the tips given to me by Karen. in the comments of this post to do this the last two times, and both times, all the jars have sealed. Hooray!

So! Here's what she told me. The meat is raw-packed with no liquid, just the salt. The canner is vented at about medium, rather than at a high temperature that results in crazy boiling. On my propane stove, I kept it at 5. When the canner lid is removed after the pressure is released, leave the lid ajar for a bit, and then take the lid off, but leave the jars in the canner for a couple of hours before removing them. Karen. said two hours, but I think I took them out after an hour and a half.

And with all of this . . .

It's a bull! In jars!

So there you have it. Next time you help your neighbors butcher an old bull, you know what to do.

Snapshots: Catching Up

Because last week's Snapshots featured only photos of our ice-fishing expedition, I have some older photos that I'm now going to drop here. Yay! 

I asked the MiL to send me some bay leaves from her (indoor in the winter) bay tree for my birthday. She obliged with a giant branch that filled an entire quart jar with bay leaves. And that jar smells SO GOOD. I might open it sometimes when I don't even need a bay leaf, just to inhale.

Christmas is over, all the decorations came down the day after Epiphany, and I never showed you what was on my front door. Let's remedy that now! Some of you might remember that I can't make wreaths, but a branch cut off the bottom of the Christmas tree with a fake pinecone and birds? That, I can do.

Having animals means moving hay.

And those animals were more than happy to clear up the loose hay left in and around the trailer.

Building a very small snowman with very long arms.

Under the watchful gaze of Samson (can you spot him?), who was sure we would shortly be tossing some of that delicious hay through the barn window.

And there we are! My life, snapshotted.