Friday Food: Pecan Pie for the New Year

Friday

Short version: Crispy elk tacos, still-frozen green peas

Long version: A. and one son were gone, so for the other three, I made tacos by quickly frying corn tortillas to make them pliable, putting in leftover elk steak, cheese, and salsa, and then frying them until they were crispy and the cheese was melted.

If the whole family had been here, I would not have done this, because I would have had to make too many. I made eight, and that's about the amount I want to deal with frying.

Saturday

Short version: Ram and elk stew, cheese, cornbread

Long version: I used one small bag of ram stew meat for this, plus the rest of the elk steak, and some beef tallow. So three kinds of animals contributed to this stew.

I made the cornbread because I found two bags of cornmeal in the big freezer when I was organizing it. I need to use more cornmeal.

Sunday

Short version: Elk chorizo and scrambled eggs, leftover cornbread, chocolate ice cream

Long version: I spent much of the day in the kitchen making the black-eyed peas for New Year's Day, as well as a pecan pie. The elk chorizo was the first thing I grabbed out of the freezer. It made a good, fast dinner, and was a good pairing with the leftover cornbread.

The only tricky thing about chorizo is that all the parprika in it makes it hard to tell when it's actually cooked.

When in doubt, cook longer. (This is with the eggs.)

The ice cream gave me the opportunity to finally use the last of the salted caramel sauce from the birthday dinner two weeks ago.

Monday

Short version: The whole New Year's Day shebang

Long version: On New Year's Day, we must ensure our health, wealth, and happiness in the new year with pork, greens, and black-eyed peas, respectively. And, in my house, rice for peace.

This year, the pork was a picnic shoulder that I cooked slowly, pulled apart, and broiled with the rendered fat and juices, mustard, and maple syrup.

I had no greens from my garden this year, but I did still have about a cup of blanched beet greens from summer before last that were still in the freezer. And then I decided sauerkraut counts, too. The cabbage was green at one point. And sauerkraut is delicious with pork.

I had made the black-eyed peas the day before. I had also made a pecan pie.

I have never made a pecan pie. I don't think I have ever even eaten a pecan pie. But one child enthusiastically informed me that pecan pie is his favorite, this while he was eating the pie provided by the school cafeteria for their Christmas meal.

I thought if he loved a Sysco pecan pie, he would really love a homemade pecan pie. So I made one.

And then I took a picture. 

I mostly used this recipe for the filling, except I toasted the pecans as recommended in this one. I was going to do the chocolate layer also mentioned in that second recipe, but that would have required yet another session of chilling, and I was kind of over the making of the pie by that point. So I just did the standard filling.

It was very good. Very nutty, and not too sweet. I whipped cream for it, too, although I have no idea if that is traditional. About half the family ate it with the whipped cream.

The only problem I had with it was that it was not very solid and pretty much fell apart while I was cutting it. I don't think it needed to bake longer. Maybe it was the fact that I used the maple syrup instead of corn syrup. The fact that all the pecan halves were left whole also made it harder to cut. 

I don't know. Everyone liked it, though, even if the pieces were not very aesthetic.

Tuesday

Short version: Tuna-rice casserole, still-frozen peas, pureed squash

Long version: I had a lot of rice left over from the day before, so I used it to make a casserole with a big can of tuna. I fried a few pieces of bacon, diced those, and cooked onion and celery in the bacon grease. Then I put in some mayonnaise, milk, and grated cheese, along with salt and pepper. Kind of like tuna-noodle casserole, except with rice.

Wednesday

Short version: Elk burgers on homemade buns, roasted potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing, cookies

Long version: My brother and one of his daughters arrived for a quick visit this day. I had been making bread the day before, so I used some of that to make hamburger buns. 

Hamburger buns rising on the counter. The two glass pans on the bottom have the buns in them. I stacked the bigger pan on top of the smaller one, and then covered the bigger one with a cutting board, thus creating a tower of buns. This way they didn't take up all my counter space while rising.

I used the very last two bags of ground elk to make the burgers. I'll have to get out some of our excessive elk stew meat to grind. Ground meat is much easier for me to use than stew meat.

It belatedly occurred to me that I had replicated a very standard traveling meal of hamburgers and french fries. Sure enough, my niece did indeed have a hamburger while traveling, but I'm confident mine was better.

The cookies were standard chocolate chip, except I replaced some of the butter with peanut butter. So good. 

Thursday

Short version: Carnita-ish tacos on corn tortillas, pinto beans, brownies

Long version: Real carnitas fry in their own fat after all the liquid from stewing it has evaporated. These weren't real carnitas, because all I did was stew the pork roast, then remove it, shred it, and fry it in its rendered fat with cumin, chile powder, and paprika.

Since it was a snowy day and we were all home all day, I made the corn tortillas myself. 

I used my last jar of pressure-canned pinto beans, so that's going on the list of things I need to make soon, along with more ground elk.

And the brownies were extras from . . . some holiday event that required a baked treat. I can't actually remember. Whatever it was, I had stashed some extra brownies in the freezer so as not to add to the sugar overload during the last week of school. That was an excellent idea, as they came in very handy for dessert this night.

I didn't make a separate vegetable, but there were lettuce, tomatoes, and onions out for topping the tacos.

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

A Recipe for Happiness

Any of you who have been reading here for more than a year will know that I make the same thing for our New Year's Day dinner every year: pork for health, greens for wealth, and black-eyed peas for happiness. My New-Orleans-raised mother always made this, and now I do.

Every year, for my entire adult life. 

That means that I've been talking about this here for fifteen years now, and yet, I have never given you a recipe.

So now I will.

New Year's Day Black-Eyed Peas 

Ingredients

1 pound of dry black-eyed peas

1 ham bone

4 tablespoons canola oil, lard, or bacon grease

4 tablespoons flour

1 large or two small onions, diced

1 bell pepper, diced (I always use red, because I don't like green, but green is traditional)

2 stalks celery, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 small can plain tomato sauce, or half a can tomato paste

1 bay leaf

Method

1) Pick through and rinse off the black-eyed peas. I always pick through them and rarely find anything, but this last time I found a pea-sized rock, which is why I always do it.

2) Soak your black-eyed peas in a big pot. You can soak overnight, but I never think ahead that far. I just cover them with water, bring them to a boil, and then turn off the heat and leave them to sit for an hour or two.

3) Drain the water off, and put fresh water in the pot to cover the black-eyed peas and the ham bone. I always have a ham bone from Christmas, and this is a good use for it. If you don't have the bone, you can just use ham, but don't put that in yet.

4) Simmer the black-eyed peas until soft, about an hour or so. The ham bone won't be soft enough yet, but that's okay. It can stay in there.

5) Dice up all your vegetables so they're ready to add to the roux. It will look like too many vegetables. It is not.

This is what makes it taste good.

6) Make a roux with the oil, lard, or bacon fat. Heat the fat on medium heat and then sprinkle in the flour. Use a flat spoon to scrape and stir the flour around. This will take fifteen minutes or so. It will look pretty separate the whole time, but that's fine. You can be a little more negiligent to start, but once the flour starts browning, you really need to stir pretty constantly. When the flour is a medium dark brown color, it's done.

Done roux.

7) Add all the vegetables except the garlic to the roux and cook on low heat until the vegetables are soft. Then add the garlic and cook just a minute longer.

8) Dump all the vegetables into the black-eyed peas, add the bay leaf, the tomato product, and ham now if you didn't have the bone, and simmer the whole thing on low heat uncovered for a long time. Like two hours.

9) When the ham on the ham bone pulls off easily, remove the bone from the pot, let it cool a bit, and then pull all the ham off. Shred it and put it back in the pot and continue simmering.

10) Toward the end of the cooking time, you need to be scraping the bottom of the pot and stirring it frequently so it doesn't stick. This is also when you want to taste it and see if it needs more salt. I wait until now to do this because the ham adds quite a bit of salt and the whole thing reduces so much that it would be easy to over-salt it earlier in the cooking.

When the black-eyed peas have broken down quite a bit to thicken it all and there isn't much liquid left, it's done.

Done black-eyed peas. You can see it's about two inches lower than when it started cooking.

Some of my kids like these on their own, and some like them on rice. Either way, add butter and vinegar to taste at the table.

This makes a lot of black-eyed peas, but if you're going to spend four hours making anything, you'd better make enough for leftovers. Also, they freeze really well, so don't be afraid to make a lot. It just means more happiness--and delicious food--for you.

Happy New Year!

Snapshots: A Christmas Church

I forgot to include this first photo in the last post about food. So let's just drop it right here, shall we?

All the things I froze or canned that were used in our Christmas Eve chili. 

I learned something from my eldest son this week. He had put a can of seltzer in the freezer to chill quickly and left it in there a little too long. It was too slushy to drink normally, but apparently, you can use a can opener to cut the top off of cans like this and it makes a very clean cut on the can.

The lid, on the other hand, is crazy sharp, so use caution if you try this.

I am still befuddled as to why only one part of that is sharp, but it is.

And last, my favorite thing from last week.

Our neighbor about half a mile away lives right next door to the old stone church in our mostly abandoned village. Every Christmas season, he sets up three spotlights on the side of the church. Due to the darkness that surrounds the church, this has the effect of making the church glow for literally miles.

I can see it out my kitchen window, and I love it. I had never gotten a photo of it, though, so I took the kids with me on a night walk to the church so I could take a picture of it.

Dramatic.

A closer look.

I didn't realize until after we had started walking that there was a full moon that night, so we didn't even need the flashlights we had brought.

That's the moon obscured by clouds in the sky, and on the ground are the spotlights. Kinda looks like the ground is on fire, though.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Christmas and Birthday

First, thank you so much for all the good wishes and congratulations on my birthday. It's fun to hear from all of you.

And now, food.

Friday 

Short version: Leftover elk goulash, rice

Long version: Last time I made goulash, I froze a container of it for some later day. This was the day. I didn't have the kitchen motivation to peel and mash potatoes, so I made some rice instead.

We did not have a vegetable. Except the sauerkraut in the goulash, so I guess that counts, right? Right.

Saturday

Short version: Hot tuna dip, crackers, crudites 

Long version: We had Mass at 4 p.m. for our Sunday obligation. That meant we would be getting home after 5 p.m. and everyone would be ready to eat right away. Which meant I needed to have something very fast for dinner.

As soon as we got home, I cut up some carrots and radishes and put those out with the leftover ranch dip from a school party. This kept everyone busy while I made dinner. And also got some vegetables into them.

I had a ton of crackers left from the crackers and cheese I had brought for the elementary Christmas party, so I thought maybe I'd make tuna salad and serve it with the crackers.

But then I got fancy and made a hot tuna dip, instead. I'd never made anything like that before, so I looked up a recipe and kind of followed this one.

Really, though, you could just dump the entire dairy section in with a can of tuna, and that's pretty much the dip. A whole block of cream cheese, butter, sour cream, mayonnaise (I used the rest of the ranch dip, which has both in it), grated cheddar . . .

I'm not sure it would be possible to get more fat into one dish.

It tasted good, although a bit overwhelmingly creamy. I didn't add the finely chopped vegetables, since I had put some out already, but I think that would have helped.

Sunday

Short version: Frito pie, molasses cookies and eggnog

Long version: We had our Christmas service this night at 7 p.m., so I really had all day to make a fancy dinner, but I, um, didn't.

Instead I made chili the day before, bought a bag of Fritos, and served Frito pie for dinner. 

This was mine. It does look sort of Christmas-y with the green lettuce and red tomatoes, so I'm gonna call it seasonally appropriate.

Okay, so it's not a traditional Christmas Eve meal, but I do not regret it at all. Both because Frito pie is delicious, but also because I had a very relaxing day reading and taking a walk and cleaning my house and NOT spending hours in the kitchen.

There have been a lot of hours in the kitchen lately. I appreciated the break.

I did make eggnog this day, using this recipe. (I always have to thin it out with milk after it's chilled.) We had it when we got home from church, with some of Grandma Bishop's molasses cookies. An excellent combination.

Monday

Short version: Christmas ham, scalloped potatoes, green salad with maple vinaigrette, mushrooms, chocolate roulade

Long version: Let's see . . . the ham had pineapple juice, mustard, and maple syrup on it. 

I didn't use a recipe for the scalloped potatoes. All I did was use the mandolin part of my cheese grater to slice the potatoes very thin--by far the worst part--and layer them with lots of salt and pepper and a little garlic powder over each layer, then pour in cream and milk on each layer, building it up until I got the top of the Pyrex dish.

And then I baked it with a pan underneath, because this will most certainly make a disgusting mess in the oven if not contained.

I added a bit of maple syrup to the vinaigrette, too, which was tasty.

Mushrooms are not traditional with this meal, except apparently in our house. Many years ago, a toddler son quite politely declined some mushrooms offered by the MiL by explaining that he only ate mushrooms on Christmas. I suspect he said that because Christmas was so far off in his toddler mind as to be an infinity away, and therefore he would never have to eat mushrooms.

Joke's on him, because now we have mushrooms every Christmas, and everyone has to have at least one piece. This is only a trial for two of my children, as the other two actually like mushrooms.

This year, I went out to see if there was any parsley still hanging on in the garden and found, despite many nights well below freezing, that there was. I harvested some of that amazingly hardy herb for the mushrooms.

So I have now used something from the garden in every holiday meal this year. This is very pleasing to me.

The Christmas buffet.

I did not take a photo of the chocolate roulade, because it cracked and tore in places when I rolled it, oozed cream all over, and was generally not at all photogenic this year. It was still delicious, though.

Tuesday

Short version: Toasted burritos, carrot sticks

Long version: I used the leftover chili and cheese to make burritos, then fried them in butter. I guess this is not a real chimichanga, because it's not deep fried. So we'll call them toasted.

Wednesday

Short version: Birthday sausage, roasted potatoes, salad with vinaigrette, brownies with ice cream

Long version: This is what I chose for my birthday dinner. I made it, too. That way I'm assured of getting exactly what I want.

What I wanted.

There were three kinds of sausage: a green chile and cheese sausage one child had requested at the grocery store, boudin, and plain smoked sausage. I ate the plain one, because I do not like spicy things.

My eldest son made the brownies. I had bought the fancy Dreyer's chocolate and peanut butter ice cream, thinking A. and one boy would be gone hunting, so a smaller container of ice cream would be enough. But then they were here, so A. got the gallon tub o' chocolate, and everyone got to have both. Also leftover salted caramel sauce, if they wanted it.

Thursday

Short version: Elk steak, garlic bread, green salad with vinaigrette, leftover brownies

Long version: I've been baking bread non-stop this month--between co-workers and neighbors, I've gifted 24 loaves of bread--but we haven't had a lot to keep for ourselves. So I haven't been making garlic bread lately. Gifting season is over, though, so now all the bread I make is for us. And I made garlic bread.

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

44

Happy birthday to me! 

Today I turn 44 years old. I'm celebrating by running a 5K with my kids.

To appreciate how odd this is for me to do, you'd have to know me in real life. Although I did all the sports and running and things when I was younger, I do not do them now.

Or rather, I didn't do them until recently. 

This year I lost almost 30 pounds* and started running again using this Couch to 5K program, and now . . . well, now I'm going to run a 5K.

Scene from one of my early-morning runs.

I did the last "training" run on my schedule on Christmas Eve. I figured that since all of that schedule was to train for a 5K, I might as well run one. And it seemed fitting to do that on my birthday.

My children wanted to know WHY I wanted to do such a thing on my birthday, the one day in the year that I can do whatever I want (ha). And what I told them is that I'm doing it to show that I still can. Or rather, can again.

I am not, of course, going to be running in an official 5K. The nearest one of those would be over a hundred miles away. Instead I drove my usual running route in our village using the trip odometer on one of our vehicles to figure out how many times I would have to run it to get to 3.1 miles. 

I have to run it five times. So that is what I'm going to do today, with three of my children accompanying me.

It's certainly not going to be the fastest 5K ever completed**, but I will complete it, and that's good enough for me.

* Because I myself am nosy and always want to know how people do this . . . I used the MyFitnessPal food tracker and kept my calories to 1200 a day for four months. Not very interesting or fun, but it works.

** Update: It took me 43 minutes. Very far from a fast time, but I didn't walk once! I just ran slow enough that I was just faster than a walking pace. Ha.

A Tuesday Christmas Recap

It's a Not-Sunday-Snapshots! Featuring photos taken with my new cell phone. My Christmas request from A. this year was a new cell phone to replace my several-years-old one with a cracked screen that wouldn't hold a charge anymore. I also asked him to do all the set-up for it.

He did, so now I have a much better camera to take my very not-professional photos.

Like these!

How it started . . .

And the aftermath.

Actually, that messy living room is not as bad as it could have been, since I was diligent about gathering trash in one bag and reusable bags in another as presents were opened. I really dislike the carpet of wrapping materials all over the floor. It makes it hard to walk around, and inevitably someone loses a gift under the mess.

Anyway.

Speaking of gifts! This is the knife one boy made for his brother.

I believe he modeled it on a style of knife used by the Bedouin. Welcome to Christmas with multiple boys.

Our family is definitely a bunch of readers, and we have added a new reader to the club.

She got a reading light for her bed so she can read for a few minutes at bedtime, just like her brothers, and she is thrilled about this. Bookworms 'r' Us.

It was always traditional in A.'s family to have whole nuts in Christmas stockings, which I do with our children, as well. After the stockings are investigated, I gather all the nuts into a communal bowl for eating.

This year, I used a new bowl my dad made to corral the nuts, and I made it the centerpiece of our Christmas dinner table.

With the same arrangement of weeds that was on the table at Thanksgiving, made Christmas-y by some random gold leaves that were, I think, in a bunch of flowers my sister brought me last year, and the cardinal wreath ornament chosen by one of my sons years ago at a farmstand store that sold Christmas things seasonally.

There was, of course, the much-anticipated Christmas feast. I'll save the photo from that for the Friday Food recap, but I will just mention here, as particularly appropriate for the day that used to be all about growing food on this site, that I used parsley from the garden in the meal. Parsley from outside. That's a seriously hardy herb.

We finished up the day watching A Christmas Story, and that was a wrap (ha) on Christmas Day 2023.

Ready

 

And now to bed, to dream of the joyous day to come.