Friday Food: Party Time!

Friday

Short version: Brisket, mashed potatoes, frozen green peas

Long version: This was the day I drove to the city for son's surgery. I had cooked this brisket the day before with the pork roast, knowing I would be very tired after my 3 a.m. wake-up and long drive to and from the hospital. 

I was. Hooray for pre-made brisket.

Saturday

Short version: Frito pie

I had a fairly big container of chili in the freezer that I decided to use for Frito pie this night. We had all kinds of fun toppings.

Well, if you consider tomatoes and red onion fun. Which we do.

The tomatoes were two small ripe ones that my sister and Poppy had found in the garden this very afternoon. Tomatoes don't last long in our house.

Sunday

Short version: Pizza, roasted green beans, sauteed calabacita and onion, strawberries and cream

Long version: One pizza, as always, was just cheese. The other had pepperoni, cooked mushrooms, and cooked onions. This was the day I had made pesto from the garden basil. So I made the pizza sauce with a jar of the roasted tomato puree I had made with the tomatoes my parents brought me last month, and some of the pesto.

I roasted the green beans--the ones my sister brought--while the pizza was in. The calabacita was a small one I found in the garden that looked slightly frosted on top, but was fine when I diced it. I cooked it with some more of that red onion, and it was very good. Also very colorful, with the green and purple together.

My sister had also brought a big container of fresh strawberries, which I hulled, sliced, covered in sugar, and then drowned in cream. As is proper for fresh strawberries.

Monday

Short version: Surprising sheep stew, rice, fruit shakes

Long version: We had yet another sheep die of bloat, this time one of the ram lambs. The problem was a particularly rich hay that was just too much for the sheep. Well, that, and the gluttony of certain sheep that ate too much of it.

In any case, this was one that was slated for the freezer anyway, so it wasn't a big loss. I was at work this day, so A. did all the butchering himself. I asked him to set aside some quick-cooking pieces, thinking I would just fry some tenderloin chunks or steaks when I got home.

Instead I came home to find a very appetizing stew on the stove. I didn't make it, so I'm not sure of all the ingredients, but I know it had mushrooms, parsley, and red wine in it. It was very good, and a lovely surprise to find dinner made.

I made some rice to go along with it, since there were now two children with sore throats. They had just the rice and broth. A very comforting sick-child meal.

The sore throats are also why I made the fruit shakes--smoothies to the rest of the world--after dinner. Well, sore throats and the fact that there wasn't actually a vegetable with dinner. Fruit is an acceptable substitute, I suppose.

Tuesday

Short version: Elk steaks, spaghetti, cucumber spears

Long version: I marinated the steaks with some mustard vinaigrette and then fried them. I also used some of the liquid from A.'s sheep stew as a sauce for anyone who wanted that.

I read the next day that Tuesday was National Pasta Day (seriously, who comes up with these random days?), and I thought it was amusing that I had served pasta on that particular day when it is not a very common side dish in our house. But I had a bit of pasta sauce left, which made excellent spaghetti when combined with a bunch of butter.

Wednesday

Short version: Birthday sausage, buttery rice, carrot sticks with curry dip, chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and a LOT of rainbow sprinkles

Long version: This was our new six-year-old's request for her birthday dinner. It had the great benefit of being very fast to make after my work day. I used the last two packages of Gianelli sausage A. brought me from New York, and there was leftover rice already.

The birthday girl helped me decorate her cake. She asked me to put an "L" (for her real name) and a "6" on there, which I did with strawberry-rhubarb puree. But then she almost completely obliterated that with sprinkles.

This Ugly Cake was a two-person effort.

The other pan is brownies with chocolate-peanut-butter frosting and yet more sprinkles for the treat she brought into school. I apologized ahead of time to her teacher for giving the kids something so messy to eat in class, but they were a big hit. At least with the students.

Thursday

Short version: Guacamole and tortilla chips, sidecars

Long version: The three younger children were gone on a field trip and didn't get home until 10 p.m. I had three ripe avocados that my sister had brought that needed to be used, as well as tortilla chips and limes from the same source. Thus, guacamole.

She also brought the orange liqueur and brandy, so she basically provided this entire meal, such as it was.

We let the only child at home put some music on and we had a little party. 

Then A. put on the movie Syriana, which was very good but could never be described as a party movie.

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

Six

Today, my youngest turns six years old. That means that today is the day for this poem. 

Now We Are Six--by A.A. Milne

When I was One,

I had just begun.

When I was Two,

I was nearly new.

When I was Three,

I was hardly me.

When I was Four,

I was not much more.

When I was Five,

I was just alive.

But now I am Six,

I'm as clever as clever.

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

Happy birthday to my girl.

Growing Food: Frost Out on the Pumpkin*

Remember how I mentioned it was supposed to get right around freezing temperatures last weekend? It did, but I was so busy and exhausted from surgeries and sick kids and a guest that I just did not have it in me to fuss around with sheets and things to cover plants.

So the plants were left to their own devices. It never froze hard, but there was a little frost that settled right on the top of the plants. This meant pretty much the end for all the vined things.

Droopy calabaza.

Droopy squash.

The basil, which was planted right next to the house and therefore had some protection from the wall and eaves, survived with just a few leaves frosted, so I harvested most of it and made pesto. I ended up with ten cubes of pesto (I freeze it in ice cube trays), which is going to be the totality of the pesto to come out of the garden this year. Better than nothing, I guess. Which is pretty much my motto for this year.

Anyway.

The tomatoes also mostly survived, because they were so bushy that the top layers protected the bottom ones.

Frosted leaves on top . . .

But green underneath.

There were lots of tomatoes hiding under the foliage, and this week is supposed to be quite warm with no frost, so I have hopes for some ripening on the vines.

The remaining calendula plant doesn't mind the frost at all, and is very happy that the grasshoppers have been driven away by the cool weather.

Happy calendula.

We can have a hard frost at any time at this point in the year, so this might be the last week the plants have to produce anything. Fingers crossed, mostly for the tomatoes.

Tell me, my fellow gardeners: Is your garden still growing, or is your garden year at an end?

 * It's a song. And here it is. I just love YouTube.

Snapshots: A Surgery Story

Apologies for the late post today. It's been some weekend.

My sister arrived on Thursday for a weekend visit. As always, she brought flowers with her from the grocery store. It was a big bunch, and I separated them into an arrangement for the dining room table:

Pretty colors.

And one for the living room:

Fall flowers.

Unfortuntely, she arrived the day before my eldest son had foot surgery to remove an extra bone in his foot that has been causing him pain for years and had essentially crippled him in the past couple of months.

The nearest city big enough to support a podiatrist is 140 miles away. We were supposed to check in at the hospital at 6:45 a.m. So we left at 3:45 a.m. and I drove the whole way in the dark. That's a long way with not a lot of lights or people. There are only three villages between us and the city, and the largest of them has less than 1,000 people. So I was pretty much driving through rangeland the entire way.

I was very concerned about hitting a large animal somewhere along the way. We saw quite a lot of wildlife--a jackrabbit, two coyotes, a deer, a very fat badger, and a shrew--but they thankfully managed to get off the road before we got to them. Well, except the shrew. 

Sorry, shrew.

Anyway.

 

We made it to the hospital without incident, the surgery went well, and we came home that afternoon to begin recovery. It's a long one--a full month before he'll be 100% in that foot again--but I'm hopeful he's past the worst of the pain.

One child was home from school on Thursday because of a cold, and another one started complaining of a sore throat on Saturday. This meant that the only church attendees from our house this Sunday were Poppy, my sister, and me. I had to be there because it's a Church Lady month for me.

Morning light on the church.

And inside the church before I turned on the lights.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Sausage and Shelk

Friday 

Short version: Sausage variety, rice, carrot sticks, watermelon

Long version: We had plenty of meat around, since we spent all day cutting up the elk. This activity does not make me enthused about eating the elk, however. So instead of cooking any of the elk, I cooked some of the sausage I bought in the city when I was there on Tuesday.

I don't know if it's because this city is close to Texas, and thus Louisiana, or because the city has an Air Force base in it, but the store there had both boudin and andouille sausage. I cooked one package of each, and then, since I knew they would both be too spicy for Poppy, I also cooked two pieces of the plain smoked pork sausage.

It barely all fit in the pan.

So much sausage. And all eaten, except for one piece of the smoked sausage.

The watermelon also came from the store in the city. There were bins of watermelons outside the store, and I checked one on our way in to make sure they were seeded. The one I saw was, but the child that was with me picked out a watermelon just before we checked out, and we ended up with a seedless one.

You all know my feelings about seedless watermelons.

Nevertheless, we ate it. And you know, it was pretty good. Not as good as a really good seeded watermelon, but better than a bad seeded watermelon.

Saturday

Short version: Elk steaks and stuff

Long version: The day before while we were butchering, I had put some elk steaks in a marinade of oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, ang garlic. I was at a baby shower in the afternoon with two of the children, but A. was home with the other two, and he grilled those steaks.

They were really good. The children who were with me had some of them when we got home around 6:30 p.m., along with some roasted butternut squash I had made the day before. The children who were with A. had them with bread and butter, I think.

Sunday

Short version: Asian pork ribs, rice, corn on the cob, pots de creme

Long version: When we make pork ribs, we always put a barbecue kind of spice rub on them. However, we had used up all our chile powder and paprika making elk chorizo, so I needed to do something else.

That something else was vaguely Asian, in the sense that there was soy sauce and ginger involved.

For the initital slow and covered cooking in the oven, I rubbed on salt, brown sugar, ginger, garlic powder, and a random sample of a spice mixture that included sugar, turmeric, and coriander. There was quite a bit of liquid left after the ribs were tender, so I drained that off, de-fatted it, and reduced that with soy sauce, vinegar, and more garlic powder and ginger. I poured that sauce over the ribs and then broiled them to make them crispy.

It all worked out. They were delicious. 

Oh, I think I never told you that I got tired of running out of chocolate chips and bought a 25-pound box of chocolate chips through the school Sysco ordering program. Twenty-five pounds of chocolate chips is a LOT of chocolate chips. It gives me a great feeling of security and abundance.

I decant some into that old peanut container there. That's a bit more convenient than hauling twenty pounds of chocolate chips out of the big freezer whenever I made pots de creme.

Monday

Short version: Various leftover meats, garlic bread, raw cabbage, watermelon

Long version: We had leftover elk steaks, ribs, and smoked sausage, which I apportioned out according to preference. 

I had made the garlic bread the day before while I was baking bread, so I just warmed that up in the microwave.

And the last of the seedless watermelon. 

Tuesday

Short version: Shelk loaf, baked potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I know this constant combining of words to describe our random meats is probably annoying, but I just can't help myself. This was ground sheep and ground elk. Hence, shelk.

Anyway.

I combined them because I thought that might tone down the sheep meat some. I find that to be quite strong in flavor, as does at least one of the children. That child--or anyone else--didn't seem to notice the sheep in this, but I sure did. It had an unpleasant aftertaste to me. Thankfully, I was the only one, and it was okay for me if it was mixed with everything else in my salad.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: I went straight from work to the first First Communion class with our future communicant, and we didn't get home until just after 5:30 p.m. This is why I had planned on leftovers. Most people had the shelk loaf, buttered rice, and salad. One child elected to have his shelk loaf in a sandwich. I had some in a salad.

Thursday

Short version: Pork, cornbread, sauerkraut, roasted green beans, rice pudding

Long version: A pork sirloin roast, slow-cooked and then broiled with mustard, maple syrup, and salt. I made the rice pudding because one child had a sore throat, and the oven was on anyway to cook the pork. And then, since there was rice pudding, I made cornbread.

My sister came for a visit this day and she brought the green beans from a store she stopped at on the way here.

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

Growing Food: An Early-morning Tour

Let's see what's in the garden this sunny and cool morning in October, shall we?

Tiny calabacitas.

A not-tiny watermelon.

Exuberant calendula.

Stripey squash.

Healthy basil trio.

New growth from the asparagus.

And lots of green tomatoes.

All good things. 

However.

Our forecast is getting perilously close to freezing overnight this weekend. Specifically, on Friday. None of these plants can take any kind of frost. This time of year always comes with decisions about covering plants versus letting the garden season end with a frost. 

Whether we cover them or not mostly depends on if the forecast after that one night looks good enough that it would be worth letting the plants mature for another week. This year, given the delay in getting any harvests at all, I'm probably going to be more proactive about covering plants in an attempt to salvage a bit more food out of them.

We'll see what happens on Friday. I suppose if worse comes to worst, I can always start looking up green tomato recipes. Got any good ones?

Snapshots: Butchering

Before we get into the main event of our week, I'm just gonna drop this photo right here so the butchering photos aren't the first thing people see when they see the post.

This is a 1960 Studebaker coupe.

That was parked outside of church last Sunday. When one child and I stopped to look at it, the older gentlemen who just bought it came out to talk to us. It's apparently been sitting in a barn in the village for 30 years, and only has 29,000 miles on it. The guy who bought it is bringing it back to his home in Flagstaff, Arizona, to restore it.

Okay! Now on to the butchering!

Last Sunday, A. took the middle son hunting. He (son, not A.) had a tag for a bull elk in an area only about 40 minutes from our house. A friend of ours who is really into hunting had been bow hunting there just the week before, and had actually scouted the water tanks and so on in the area the day before son's hunt. He told A. exactly where he saw the elk, and how to get there. 

The hunters left at 6 a.m. and when the rest of us got back from church at 9 a.m., there was a message on the machine that they had a bull elk on the ground and were going to start skinning it.

If you've never seen an elk, you should know that they are very big. They're the largest member of the deer family here by far, and are second in size only to the moose on this continent. I have a photo for a handy reference.

Warning: Dead animal photo ahead .....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

It dropped right where it was shot, so they didn't have to track it at all. Good shot, son. From a hundred yards, too.

Luckily, the kill was only about a mile from where the Honda was parked. But that's still a very large mass to move that mile. A. skinned it, gutted it, and boned it out right there where it fell. Then he put about half of it into a game bag and hiked it back to the car. He did the same for another trip, which means he did four miles round-trip, carrying around 100 pounds of meat on his back for two of those miles.

Son, meanwhile, carried back A.'s pack, which was almost as heavy as he was. Strenuous hiking all around.

The same friend who had been so helpful before the hunt had called me asking if they had had any luck, and upon hearing that they definitely had, actually drove to them and helped our son carry out the head. They brought the whole head out for two reasons. 

One is that sawing through the base of those antlers would require a saw much bigger than they had, so popping the head off at the neck with a knife was much more practical.

The other is that elk are the only land animals on the entire continent that have ivories. That is, they have non-functional teeth in the back of their mouths that are actually ivory because they are vestigial tusks. Son was very enthused about these, so of course they had to be packed out as well.

Red meat, especially game meat, needs to be aged for at least a week. This helps with both the flavor and the texture. We couldn't hang this meat because it was already boned out, and the weather was also too warm, so we put it in big coolers with big blocks of ice, draining off the water and adding more ice as needed, until Friday. That's when I was done with my work week and could help with the butchering.

Butchering an animal this big is no small task. We started at 9:30 a.m. and I didn't finish cleaning up until 4:30 p.m.

The butcher shop in action.

Of course, since all four children were home, all four of them wanted to help. They're all proficient with a knife, so I gave them the trimmed pieces to cut stew meat and steaks. They also spent a lot of time turning the grinder.

We ended up with three boxes of more than a hundred pounts of steaks, stew meat, ground meat, stir-fry meat, and some we ground with extra fat to make chorizo sausage.

Elk in a box.

And then I could finally scrub down my hard-working dining table.

Much better.

We've already tried some of the steaks, and I am so pleased to tell you that this elk is very, very mild in flavor. Such a relief, given the last elk I had to use that was in full rut and tasted like it.

This is just the beginning of hunting season. Between A. and the two older boys, there's still a deer hunt and two more elk hunts to come. Plus we have a ram that is going to meet his freezer reward this fall. 

I think it's safe to say that our iron requirements are going to be met this winter.

There you have it! My carnivore life, snapshotted.