Friday Food: Turkey for the Feast

Friday 

Short version: Beef and rice soup, ham and cheese sliders, raspberry jello

Long version: I woke up in the morning fully intending to stay out of the kitchen, but once I woke up a little more, I realized I had several kitchen tasks to do that I hadn't gotten to during my week of cooking at school every day. One of those tasks was using up the last chunk of pot roast before it went bad. That's what I used for the soup.

I made the sliders with the leftover rolls from the cafeteria, which were pretty dry after being re-heated once already. So I put some of the leftover grated cheese and ham from the school salad bar in them and doused them in melted butter before covering them and baking them until they were hot. These were, unsurprisingly, a hit with the children.

Ditto the jello. Cubby chose this when we were at the store the day before, and, determined to have enough jello for once, he got five boxes and made them all. This filled a 13"x9" Pyrex almost all the way to the top, and made a LOT of jello. They were very excited. But I didn't let them eat it all in one night, because I'm a party pooper like that.

Saturday

Short version: Divide and conquer

Long version: This was the second day of Cubby's basketball tournament an hour away, and he had a game at 9 a.m., followed by another at 7 p.m. Which meant he was sitting there waiting for his next game almost all day. I took pity on him and went to the high school the tournament was held at around noon. I took him to lunch at a restaurant in town, where he got some GIANT stuffed sopapillas (stuffed with green chiles, cheese, and beef), and I got a BLT.

Then we cruised around Family Dollar for awhile before sitting in the parking lot in the van for about two hours. When we went to a gas station to fill up around 4 p.m. before returning for the second game, I got a Snickers ice cream bar and he got a Twix ice cream bar. The ice cream bar, in addition to some pecans I brought with me and ate during the game, was my dinner.

At home, A. fed the other children bean and cheese quesadillas and leftover jello. Cubby got to have some of the jello, too, when we got home around 9:30 p.m.

Sunday

Short version: Ribeye steaks, chicken stock rice, creamed spinach, raw cucumbers, lazy chocolate fondue

Long version: One of the things I had to do in the school kitchen before finishing for the week was figure out what to do with the perishable things that wouldn't last until we got back to school after a ten-day break. And one of those things was a big bag of spinach for the salad bar. I gave some to teachers and staff, and brought some home with me. That's what I made the creamed spinach from.

I hadn't made a Sunday dessert, so I microwaved some chocolate chips with a bit of coconut oil until it was all melted, put a dollop of that in a small bowl for each child, and gave them each two marshmallows to dip in it. That's fondue, right? Sure. 

Monday

Short version: Italian steaks, spaghetti with tomato sauce, raw cucumber

Long version: Last package of tenderized bottom round steaks. I browned them and then braised them in the oven for awhile in onion, tomato, basil, garlic, oregano.

Spaghetti with tomato sauce and a bunch of butter. I almost always add butter to pasta that just has a marinara sauce on it. I find it smooths out the acidity a bit. Plus, my skinny kids can use all the calories they can get.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftovers, Ms. Rebecca's green chile soup, baked beans, fresh bread

Long version: Leftovers on a non-work day, yes. I had made the baked beans earlier in the day while I was baking the squash for our pumpkin pie, because it occurred to me this would be an excellent use for the GIANT cans of Sysco pinto beans we got from the school when we shut down for COVID originally. Which was, um, over two years ago. Really past time to use those beans. But what do you do with a 6.75-pound can of beans?

You make a huge casserole of baked beans. At least, that's what I did.

So many baked beans.

I was taught to make real Boston baked beans by the MiL--bean pot, salt pork, a whole onion--but I don't make them that way anymore. I use diced onion, bits of bacon, mustard, ketchup, maple syrup, vinegar and bake it in a casserole. 

The younger kids all had some of the leftover Italian steak and spaghetti, and then they also had baked beans and fresh bread with butter.

A. and Cubby had the green chile soup, which was made by our neighbor Ms. Amelia's daughter, Ms. Rebecca. It's a hamburger and potato soup, similar to the one I make somewhat frequently, except she uses a lot more green chile in it, so it's pretty spicy.

Wednesday

Short version: Salmon chowder, green chile soup, crackers

Long version: We have been getting SO much canned salmon from the excess commodities lately. Every time the lady stops by, she seems to have a case of it. I think I have at least ten cans right now. It was a dozen, but I used two of them in this chowder.

I've never made salmon chowder before, so I looked at a couple of recipes before I started tossing things into the pot. I ended up with one onion sauteed in bacon grease, two quarts of rooster stock, garlic powder, celery seed, paprika, diced potatoes, some potato flakes to thicken it without flour, a can of corn (another plentiful commodities item lately), the two cans of salmon, and half and half.

Three of the four children loved it. The fourth child ate the corn and potatoes out of it.

A. had some more of Ms. Rebecca's green chile soup. He was of the opinion that it was slightly too salty and spicy, and that both of those things could be remedied with the addition of some squash. This is what I always add to chili, and really, any soup or stew that has chiles of any kind in it is always improved by the addition of pureed squash. It thickens, slightly sweetens, and balances the flavor of the chiles. I happened to have some squash left from the one I had cooked and pureed for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, so I put that in the soup and A. was very happy.

Thursday

Short version: The whole Thanksgiving shebang, plus homemade Squirt

Long version: In our house, that's turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, dressing (because I don't stuff the turkey with it), cranberry sauce, green beans with bacon and onion, corn, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

The only differences this year were the corn--some of the canned corn from commodities--and the cranberry sauce. I usually make mashed cranberry sauce with the whole cranberries (plus water, sugar, and a little orange juice). This year Cubby decided he wanted more of a jelly, so he put some of the cranberries through a sieve.

Food shots!

This is Jack's plate, but they all looked pretty much the same. And every boy ate two plates' full. It was impressive.

Squash pie.

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

O, Happy Day

Yesterday we had a beautiful day. Sunny, warm, and perfect for drying clothes on the line and digging the volunteer potatoes from the colcannon bed.

Not bad, given we had harvested some twice previously.

My helpers and I got the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie made yesterday, too.

Cranberry sauce in progress. (Jack helped mash these later, but I didn't get a picture of him.)

Pie crust.

Pie filling. (He's drizzling the molasses into the squash from high up. More fun that way.)

This morning I woke up to howling winds, freezing temperatures, and the probability of snow. The woodstove will be the place to be today. Until, that is, it's time to load plates and sit down for the feast.

I was irresistibly moved to change the words to the slightly comical mealtime prayer:

Good food, 

Good heat, 

Good kids, 

Let's eat.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I hope you have a delicious day full of good things.

An Unexpected Hit

I was a military child, which meant we moved every few years for most of my childhood. And every time we moved, I would roll up the change that accumulated in what my parents called The Penny Jar. 

Anyone else remember rolling up change in those little paper tubes you would get at the bank? I found it very satisfying as a child to count out the appropriate number of coins and make those neat little rolls that could be exchanged for paper money.

I haven't done that for a lot of years, because our bank in New York had a machine we could dump our change into and it would count it and give us a receipt to be redeemed with the bank teller.

Here, however, we have no such convenient machine. But we do have an old peanut butter jar on A.'s dresser that has been steadily filling with change and needed to be emptied.

So last time I was at the bank, I got some of the coin papers. And last weekend, I sat down and started filling them. I only did one myself before the children started trickling in and asking if they could do it, too.

So they did. And every single one loved it, just as I did as a child.

I'm not a homeschooling parent, but if I were, this would be an excellent school activity. They have to identify all the coins and know what each is worth, plus figure out how many quarters go into a roll that's worth $10. Also, since my method of counting out the coins is making stacks of ten until I get to the amount needed, it's a sort of introduction to multiplication. 

Although the second grader in my house rolled my eyes when I pointed that out. Not so into math, that one.

The one kid who's really into guns loved tamping down the coins with a pencil, pretending he was loading his musket in the Revolution. 

The only downside is that four kids counting out loud and asking for help when they couldn't get their tubes folded over or whatever is VERY chaotic.

But we got it done!

 

The children were all appropriately impressed by how much money was hiding in plain sight in that old peanut butter jar.

So if you, too, have a large collection of change and a bunch of children, go ahead and get some coin wrappers and let them go to town. Free (educational!) entertainment that actually results in money in hand. Doesn't get much better than that.

Snapshots: The Old Gym

Several weeks ago, when I featured the old schoolhouse in our ghost village, I promised that I would also show you the old gym next to it. Today is the day! Whee!

The gym was for the school, but is a separate building, just across a small basketball court from the school. It's a pretty impressive structure, built of giant stones. Thankfully, a roof has been kept on it, and no one has started to dismantle it, so it's actually in pretty good shape.

A. the Amateur Stone Mason approves.

It was used for a ranch supply store for awhile, but now it's owned now by a community improvement organization. They gave us a key to the gym, since we live closest to it. Ostensibly it's because then we can open it if needed for utility people or whoever, but really, we just use it as our own gym to play in on bad weather days. 

It doesn't have heat, and it's pretty dirty, but the kids love to go in there and shriek and run around. There are basketball hoops in there, but mostly they just race around with balloons or jump ropes or remote-control helicopters or anything else that requires a lot of space. 

They don't have to worry about breaking anything in here.

There were some dances held here a few times, but mostly, it just kind of sits there. Which is fine with us, because it's pretty fun having a gym to play in that we can walk to from our house and no one else is ever there. One benefit of living in a mostly abandoned village, I guess.

Friday Food: Going Pro

Our school cook was out sick all week, and I was asked to sub for her. So I got paid to cook this week. Not something I have ever had a great desire to do, and not something I really want to do again in the future, but I got it done. So this week's post will have the added bonus of what I cooked at school, as well as what I cooked at home. All I did was follow the menu already planned out.

I'm very tired of cooking now.

Friday 

Short version: Pot roast with potatoes and carrots, frozen green peas

Long version: Still working my way through the big roasts in the freezer in preparation for filling the freezer in a couple of weeks with the cow we bought from a neighbor. 

In related news, I didn't actually ask for any roasts except brisket for this cow we have coming. My cut sheet for the butcher asks for pretty much steak and ground beef. Plus bones for stock and all the gross stuff for the dogs.

Because what's the point of custom butchering if I can't get exactly what I want?

Maybe I'll find I get tired of steak and hamburger, but since those are the things I get most excited about actually using, I figured I'd go for it.

Saturday

Short version: Beef soup, cheese, blueberry muffin cake

Long version: All the leftovers from the pot roast, plus some extra onion, a jar of beef stock, and some green chile. Tasty, if unexciting. 

I made a double recipe of these muffins, but spread in a 13"x9" Pyrex instead of in muffin cups. It's supposed to be a muffin recipe, but I just call it cake, because that's pretty much what it is. Delicious, but questionable as a healthy breakfast option. It is good for dessert, however, and much appreciated by the children. Especially after a dinner of soup.

Sunday

Short version: Roast chicken, roasted potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing, math cookies

Long version: These were the two chickens from the four A. butchered awhile ago that he thought were young enough for roasting, rather than just for stock.

The math cookies were a recipe for no-bake cookies Cubby brought home from school. His math teacher had his class make the cookies because they were working on doing stuff with fractions, so they had to convert decimals into fractions and double it. Or maybe halve it. 

I'm not clear on the actual mathematical functions that were involved, but the end result was cookies. Cubby liked them so much that he asked for the recipe to bring home, and that's the one I used. They only have peanut butter, honey, oats, chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and vanilla in them (and coconut, which I didn't have), and were much less sweet than any other no-bake cookie I've ever had. That, in addition to the protein in the peanut butter and nuts, actually makes them a pretty respectable cookie, nutrition-wise.

I love that he actually titled it "Math Cookies."

Monday

Short version: Leftover beef soup, pizza, carrot sticks

Long version: I had made the crust for one (half-sheet-pan-size) pizza the day before while I was baking bread. The crust was baked, and I had baked some of the sauce on it, too. I stuck the whole pan in the refrigerator, and then when I got home from work, all I had to do was grate asadero cheese to top it and bake it all another ten minutes or so.

This works well, although it does require a lot of space in the refrigerator.

At school this day, all I had to do was boil some hot dogs and heat up an industrial-sized can of pork and beans. 

Tuesday

Short version: Cafeteria hot dogs, chicken-stock rice, frozen green peas

Long version: There were some hot dogs left from school lunch on Monday, which I brought home. I fried them in butter to warm them up. I didn't have any buns, so I made rice instead, with some of the chicken stock I was simmering on the stove from the two chicken carcasses.

At school this day, I cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal for seventy people. Granted, most of it was pre-made, but it was still a lot. Turkey (just breasts) and gravy (from a packet), mashed potatoes (not pre-made--it takes about an hour to peel and chop potatoes for seventy people, in case you were wondering), mashed sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows (yuck, but a specific request), rolls (frozen), and pumpkin pie (fully cooked and frozen) with generic Cool Whip. 

It was very odd to be "cooking" all that pre-prepared food, but I wasn't about to volunteer to make half a dozen pies and several dozen rolls from scratch, so frozen it was.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken slop with peas, leftover rice, peaches

Long version: I had pulled the rest of the meat off the chicken carcasses after simmering them for several hours to make and reduce chicken stock. I chopped up that meat and heated it with some of the stock--thickened with corn starch--and frozen peas and served that over the rice.

I wasn't sure anyone would really eat that much of this, but of course they all loved it and wanted seconds and thirds. There wasn't enough for that, though, so I got out a jar of peaches and everyone got some of those after dinner.

At school, I made nachos, which featured cheese sauce from a can, ground beef, and pinto beans. And some chips that were stale because the bags had apparently popped open due to the elevation gain getting to our school. They weren't stale when I served them, though, thanks to the MiL's trick of spreading stale chips on a baking sheet and baking them in a low oven until they're crispy again.

In this way, I saved two large bags of tortilla chips. Thanks, MiL.

Thursday 

Short version: Lotta stuff

Long version: Cubby's team was playing in a basketball tournament in a town an hour away. We got out of school a couple of hours early for our Thanksgiving break, so Poppy and I hopped in the van and went to the tournament. Poppy got a corndog at the concession stand there, and Cubby got a cheeseburger and chips. 

When we got home around 7:15 p.m., we all had some of the leftovers from the school lunch, which were mashed potatoes and meatloaf. A. had some of that, too.

A. brought the other two home after school and fed them quesadillas with canned refried beans and cheese before they went to judo.

They got home around the same time we did, and the children all got a small sliver of the last piece of cafeteria pumpkin pie with the fake whipped cream that was also from the cafeteria.

At school, I made meatloaf and re-heated the mashed potatoes and rolls from Tuesday. 

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

A New Mexico Tradition

I have learned many new things since moving to New Mexico, a place with a very long and unique history. One of those things is the job of a church mayordomo. 

There's a little history of the word and its associations here, but in the present day, the mayordomo is what is referred to as a sacristan elsewhere. Mayordomos care for the church and prepare for the service. So, cleaning, turning on (and off) the heat in the winter, opening and closing the church for services, ringing the bell, making sure all the proper materials are on hand before services, and so on.

Our very small church only had two ladies doing this, and they really wanted some more help. Which is how I ended up being a mayordomo in a tiny village in New Mexico.

Because I have to get there early and stay after Mass, I go in a separate vehicle. A. brings the kids later. This means that when I unlock the door at 7:15 a.m., I get to go into a completely silent church.

A bit dark, too, since I have to turn on the lights, obviously.

As I was sitting in there Sunday morning before anyone else showed up, I was thinking how rare it is nowadays to be in a building that really is completely silent. No humming machines or movement of any kind. When the heat is off in the church, it is really silent. 

So restful.

And then I shatter the silence by ringing the bell, which is actually pretty fun because it's a real bell with a long rope to yank on. How many people get to do that anymore?

Although I am a somewhat reluctant mayordomo, there are some compensations. Silence and bells. Both rare in the modern world, but still appreciated.

Snapshots: Seasonal Decor

Okay, so I'm actually not really into "seasonal decor" because I have nowhere to store it when it's not in-season. And because I just can't be bothered to change things like that out all the time. I can barely keep my house picked up and clean, much less with seasonal decoration.

But if I have to move all the squash into A.'s office anyway so it doesn't freeze in the 18-degree night . . .

Seasonal! (My mother gave me the metal Pilgrim turkey almost 20 years ago. Yikes.)

"Why am I seeing pumpkins everywhere?" Poppy asked. Because they're seasonal decor, child! 

Most of the squash were too big to be used as decorations, though, so they got stored in a festive (and seasonal!) pile under the front of A.'s desk.

The wires are not seasonal. They're always there. 

Not pictured are the seven GIANT calabazas that also went into A.'s office. I'm sure all this squash in there will increase his productivity. Ahem.

Another change to the house due to the season is the addition of two lights in the dining room part of the kitchen. There has never been quite enough light in there, despite two wall lights and a light over the table. I spent a LONG TIME looking at light fixtures online before buying two matching plaster ones that we hung on either side of the dining room. 

Let there be light.

It's hard to photograph lights, and it looks kinda weird in that picture, but I love them. Just enough light added to the room that I don't feel as if I'm squinting into the gloom while we eat, but not so much that I'm squinting from the glare. Yay.

And last, basketball season begins Monday.

The requisite huge shoes have been purchased, and we're ready to go.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.