Friday Food: Green Food

Friday 

Short version: Fish sandwiches, oven fries, carrot sticks

Long version: A. had asked me to get some fish for sandwiches. I got whole battered fillets. I probably should have gotten some kind of fish patty, but I think the fillets were better. They were kind of like a double-sized fish stick, so each sandwich had two on them.

We had some of the Big Mac sauce left from the cheeseburgers the night before, which worked well as a tartar sauce substitute with the fish.

I had made oven fries the day before, but I made more because Poppy had been sad she couldn't have more.

Saturday

Short version: Creamy sausage and potato soup, pumpkin-pecan muffins

Long version: I had all the juices from the pork roast I had made a few days previously to use, so I decided to make a soup. For the meat in it, I used a package of plain smoked sausage. And then there were also onions, garlic, carrots, celery, green peas, and, of course, a lot of potatoes. I used diced potatoes, but then also thickened it with some of the instant potato flakes I still have. At the end, I added some milk.

Soup in progress.

I made the muffins as a consolation prize for the children who are not thrilled with soup. Also because I had cooked and pureed our last winter squash this day, so I just used some of that before I froze the rest.

Poppy decorated them with the pecans. Someone get that girl a Pinterest page.

Sunday

Short version: Green food! And meatballs.

Long version: It has become our tradition to have pasta with pesto on St. Patrick's Day. This is, of course, not at all an Irish food, but it is green. And delicious.

Since we were having pasta, I took out some of the ground bull meat to make meatballs. These were not green, since they were in a tomato sauce.

The salad was green, though.

Well, except for those red tomatoes again.

I also got all ambitious for dessert and decided to use some green sugar I had and the clover cookie cutter someone gave us when we did 4-H (the symbol of 4-H is a four-leaf clover) to make sugar cookies. I hate rolling out cookies and cutting them, but I did it. 

The clover shape is not so obvious, but they were green. Tasty, too.

Monday

Short version: Small meatloaf, baked spaghetti, baked potatoes, frozen green peas

Long version: While I was clearing up after dinner on Sunday, I put together a casserole of baked spaghetti by simply chopping up the leftover spaghetti, mixing it with the rest of the tomato sauce from the meatballs, and adding the grated asadero cheese I keep in the freezer.

I didn't use all of the meatball mixture to make meatballs. The last of it I saved to make a small meatloaf, which I baked along with the spaghetti casserole when I got home from work.

I threw some potatoes in the oven, too--after pre-cooking them in the microwave for a bit--thinking I could use them for a meal later in the week.

And then half the family ended up eating potatoes, as well, and I was left with one lonely baked potato. So much for that.

Tuesday

Short version: Sheep tenderloin chunks, mashed potatoes, cucumber

Long version: I pulled out a bag of sheep tenderloin to thaw. For this meal, I just trimmed it, chunked it up, marinated it in olive oil, vinegar, garlic powder, and salt, and then fried it. Then I made a sauce for it with garlic, some cooked diced onion from the refrigerator, apple cider vinegar, and cold butter.

The rest of the tenderloin I used to make . . .

Wednesday

Short version: Sheep curry, rice

Long version: I made this in the tandem with dinner on Tuesday, so I could just heat it up when I got home from First Communion class. Besides the sheep meat, in included onion, garlic, carrots, potatoes, green peas, yellow split peas. 

I also made a pot of rice on Tuesday, so when I got home at 5:30 p.m., all I had to do was heat up the curry --still in the skillet--and add some cream to that, and microwave the rice.

Yellow sludge: It's what's for dinner.

I do think next year I might make just a few pints of chutney, because I really like it with curry. Chutney is one of those things that can get out of hand and result in dozens of jars that never get used, but I think if I make maybe a half recipe of my favorite green tomato chutney, that would be about the right amount for a year.

Thursday

Short version: Pigs in a blanket at home, fast food on the road

Long version: I was at a track meet all afternoon. 

Track shadow.

The track team got burgers and fries after the meet, which my trackster elected to eat in the car so we could get home earlier.

The pigs in a blanket at home came from the school cafeteria. Someone else has been hired to help the school cook this year, so I haven't been working in the cafeteria and bringing home leftovers. The helper had taken the week off, however, so I went in to the kitchen during one  of my breaks to help the cook with the lunch dishes. She had a lot of pigs in blankets left, and gave me a whole bag to take home.

She makes the dough that goes around the hot dogs from scratch, and they're actually surprisingly good. Everyone at home was happy with them, anyway.

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

Another for the List

I make a lot of things from scratch that most people buy: yogurt, chocolate syrup (for chocolate milk), bread, salad dressings, and many other things. I do buy some condiments, though, including salsa, mustard, ketchup, and jam.

Except I guess I won't be buying jam anymore. And it's all because of the tea party.

I had promised Poppy that we would have a tea party while the MiL was here. Tea parties must, of course, include scones. And those scones must, of course, be accompanied by jam.

We were out of strawberry jam, and I had put it on the list for A. when he went to the store. He missed it, though, and never got any. So there I was, with a tea party promised for the next day, no jam, and no way to get it that didn't involve driving 60 miles.

I did, however, have the last of a bag of strawberries in the freezer, bottled lemon juice, and sugar. And these are the ingredients for strawberry jam.

I've made a lot of jam over the years, so I didn't use a recipe. I didn't even use pectin, because I didn't have any.

I dumped all the strawberries in a pot, heated them gently (so they wouldn't stick) until they were thawed, mashed them with my potato masher, dumped in slightly more than an equal amount of sugar, added a few squirts of lemon juice, and boiled it all furiously, while stirring, until it was sheeting* on a flat wooden spoon. 

This jam was enormously popular with everyone, of course. A. especially liked it. His theory is that it tastes better because there's no pectin in it, so the flavor of the strawberries is undiluted.

Eating it on a scone is also a good idea.

Out of curiosity, I did a little cost comparison between the ingredients for this jam and a jar of store-brand strawberry jam. What I found is that this jam is about half the cost of the store jam. And it's a lot better than store jam. 

Making jam without pectin does require more sugar to get it to a spreadable consistency, otherwise it can be slightly runny. However, we don't worry too much about runny jam. Particularly since it's often used in yogurt.

So I guess we can add jam to the list of things I make now. It's a lot easier than the bread, at least.

* Sheeting is when the jam doesn't drip in individual drips from the spoon when it's upside down, but rather all gathers and falls off all along the spoon in a line.

Snapshots: Flowers and Tea

So many dainty photos this week.

Buds on the apricot tree, which turned into . . .

Flowers on the apricot tree.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely there will ever be many apricots on the apricot tree. We usually get a bad freeze or wind storm that kills off the blooms or tiny apricots. But you never know! This may be our year!

Meanwhile, in the mechanic's-pit bulb garden . . .

Crocuses!

The children associate the MiL with tea parties. With good reason, as some of you might recall if you've been reading here a long time. (Wookit da widdle baby boys!)

So of course, we had to have a tea party while the MiL was here.

Tea table.

I made scones, whipped cream, and strawberry jam*, and also put out cheese and summer sausage for the less-delicate among us who needed a heartier tea.

The mugs you see there are some of my dad-the-former-fighter-pilot's squadron mugs. Definitely not delicate, but fun for the children to use.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* Yes, I actually made the jam. I'll tell you all about that on Tuesday.

Friday Food: Roly Poly Fish Heads

Friday

Short version: Fish head chowder, garlic bread

Long version: There has been a bag of carp heads in our freezer for almost a year now. A. and the children caught the carp when they were fishing, and A. saved the heads to make fish stock.

What better time for fish soup than Lent, right? Also, I really wanted to get that bag of fish heads out of the freezer. So I thawed them and A. made stock with them.

Finny stock in process.

Despite the gruesome-looking pot, the stock came out well. Not very fishy at all. The rest of the chowder consisted of a few random tilapia fillets that had also been in the freezer awhile, caramelized onions from the freezer, diced potatoes, milk, and cream. It was really pretty good, even for those of us who don't much care for fish.

The one child who didn't want to eat it did eat at least few bites, and then mostly garlic bread. Which is fine.

If you are unfamiliar with the title of the song that I used as the title of this post, you can see the lyric video for it here, along with some really unappetizing photos of, well, fish heads. Really weird song, and I have no idea why I know it.

Saturday

Short version: Elk stir-fry, rice

Long version: One bag of elk stir-fry meat, the rest of the broccoli we got from commodities, some bell peppers I had, carrots, green peas, onion and garlic.

Obligatory stir-fry beauty shot. It didn't look quite so photogenic after it had the brown sauce on it. Tasted better, though.

Sunday

Short version: Pork, cornbread, green salad with vinaigrette, rice pudding

Long version: Big ole pork butt, cooked until tender, shredded, then broiled with mustard and maple syrup. 

Do I make this every time we have company? Yes. And everyone likes it. Or if they don't, they're too polite to tell me.

I also pretty much always make rice pudding when I have the oven on that long for the pork. It's getting warmer, and the days of slow-cooking in the oven are going to end soon, so we should all enjoy rice pudding while we can.

Monday

Short version: Sausage, leftover chowder, leftover rice, leftover cornbread, green peas, chocolate ice cream

Long version: We had quite a lot of the fish chowder left, which about half the family ate. They also had sausage if they wanted it--I cooked andouille and plain smoked--and then a choice of rice or cornbread. Or both.

Tuesday

Short version: Traveling food, tortillas with pork and cheese

Long version: This was the day we went to Chimayo, so we were traveling all day. I brought all the leftover sausage, cheese, bread, mustard, a small jar of peanut butter, a quart bag full of carrot sticks, raisins, apples, oranges, and two sleeves of crackers. 

The kids wanted to eat at the Mexican restaurant right across the plaza from the church, so we did that. That was at around 3 p.m. I thought maybe this very late lunch/early dinner would prevent the usual voracious consumption of any and all food in the car on the way home. It did not. By the time we got home, the only thing left was half the jar of peanut butter. And they were still all complaining of being hungry.

So when we got home at 7:30 p.m., I microwaved corn tortillas with corn, leftover pork, and salsa to feed the hordes.

Wednesday

Short version: Pork tacos with homemade tortillas, chili beans, pureed squash

Long version: There was quite a lot of pork left, so I made corn tortillas and fried the rest of pork with spices for a filling. I had one bag of chili beans in the freezer, which I pulled out to thaw. While I was doing that, I saw the bag of pureed squash that was also in the freezer and also took that out, because the MiL, who was still here, likes squash a lot.

Thursday

Short version: Bull Big Macs, oven fries, squash

Long version: A. ground twelve pounds of yet more bull meat on Monday. I used some of it to make cheeseburgers this night. 

The only challenge with using the big griddle pan is that there's no lid to melt the cheese. Which is why I use an inverted skillet.

A. had asked if it would be possible to make the same kind of sauce that Mcdonald's uses on Big Macs.

Why, yes. And here's the recipe I followed. I didn't have any pickle relish, so I just diced up some dill pickles. I also used the optional ketchup, because I thought it tasted right that way. Not that I'm a great authority on McDonald's. I haven't had a Big Mac in probably twenty years.

I was also making bread this day, so I made hamburger buns as well. The only thing missing for an authentic Big Mac experience was tomato slices. Well, and the fact that they weren't gross because I used good meat, cheese, buns, and toppings.

Refrigerator check!

Lotta empty space in there.

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

Chimayo

We have returned! Intentions have been prayed for*! Wow, that was a LONG DAY!

Let's see how it went, shall we?

I was shooting for an 8 a.m. departure, and finally managed to get everyone in the van at 8:15. Not bad.

A. is a great proponent of the backroads style of road tripping. That is, he avoids freeways if possible. It is possible to avoid the freeways to get to Chimayo, if you're willing to drive winding mountain roads. That is what we did to get there.

This route brought us to Fort Union, which was supposed to be a field trip destination for the elementary children a couple of years ago when the wildfires closed it down. 

There are very extensive ruins to explore, but I stayed with the non-ambulatory child at the (quite thorough) little museum while A. took the others to run amongst the ruins.

These smaller ruins are right when you drive in. The rest of them are farther back and require a lot of walking.

Then it was back in the van for a rather, um, nauseating ride. At least, for those of us in the back. I had been sitting in the middle seat with two of the children, but had to switch with one of the children who was all the way in the back and found the curvy road to be too much for his stomach.

I had to admit, though, that the nausea was worth it for the spectacular views.

This was the best photo I could get of them from my seat in the back.

We stopped one more time, in Trampas, to see the church there and to eat lunch. Construction on this church started in 1760, which makes the church older than the country in which it currently sits.

We couldn't go in, but I did admire the door.

After lunch eaten standing around the van--sausage and cheese sandwiches--we all piled back in for the last part of the trip to Chimayo. Everyone was VERY over driving at this point, as we had been traveling for five hours already.

After turning off the main road in Chimayo, everyone but me and the non-ambulatory child got out to walk the rest of the way to the church. I drove the van the rest of the way and met them there when they arrived. They were disappointed because what I thought was about a three-mile walk, based on the maps I had seen, ended up being only about a mile. They did not consider this a sufficient distance for a real pilgrimage, but given the amount of traffic on the road before we turned off, I think it's still as far as we would have wanted them to walk.

Coming up from the parking area is kind of confusing, because the church itself is above you. All we saw at first was a garden area with lots of statues and an open area with an altar and benches where they celebrate Mass outside sometimes.

This side of the garden area runs along a stream, which is always very exciting to see here in dry New Mexico.

Also in this part, there was a giant old tree that died. Instead of cutting it all the way down, though, they cut it so maybe twenty feet of it is still standing. This is being carved into a depiction of Jesus' Ascencion, according to the artist, who was working while we were there.

That's the tree in the background there, with scaffolding around it. The artist was using a chainsaw when we saw him, but I must assume he will use more-delicate tools as his work progresses.

To get to the church itself, we walked up a sort of ramp.

The ramp is to the left of this magnificent door. I'm not sure what was behind this door. There was a notable lack of informational materials at this site.

Up we go . . .

The church is quite small and not particularly architecturally appealing from the outside. This is true of most adobe churches. They look like mud-covered mounds, mostly. There was a very nice archway leading into the church courtyard, with a rose climbing over it.

No photos are permitted in the sanctuary, which is as it should be, in my opinion. The style of the church was very much like other old adobe churches I've been in. They're all narrow and long, with wood vaulting at the ceiling. Most are painted in a folk art style, with bright colors, especially on the altar. This one was, as well.

 

This style of decoration is not my favorite. However, I do always appreciate the sacrifice of these people, most of them desperately poor, who spent so much time and probably some of their scarce money to build these churches.

Chimayo is known for its holy dirt, which sounds like a joke, but I assure you it is not. There is a small room off the main sanctuary that has a dirt floor. There is a hole in the floor, with trowels in it, and people go there to dig up the dirt and rub it on whatever it is they need healed. This room used to be accessed through the sanctuary, but now there's an outside door to it, no doubt to mitigate the traffic in the sanctuary.

The room leading into the dirt room is lined with photos of people who have requested prayers for healing, as well as walls of crutches left by those who have been healed. In fact, there are photos all over the site, with signs asking for prayers for everyone in those photos. Although I did say a general prayer for everyone in the photos, I must admit that I couldn't study them in any detail. Too heavy to dwell on for too long.

All of the children said they wished we could have been there for Mass--daily Masses are at 11 a.m.--and I had originally thought we would do that. It didn't work out on this trip, but we'll probably go back for that. Maybe in the summer. You may have noticed the trees all over. I would like to see the site when there are leaves on all the trees.

We ate a very late lunch at the Mexican restaurant right across from the church, and then got back in the van. This time we went back mostly on freeways, through Santa Fe. This brought us through the town of Santa Cruz. There was a sign pointing to the old plaza and church, which of course we had to go see. 

Unsurprisingly, it was an adobe church. A very large adobe church by the name of Santa Cruz de la Canada. We couldn't go in, which was a shame, because I looked up photos of the interior later, and it is spectacular. Construction of this church began in 1733, although it was extensively restored in the late 1800s.

There were men working in the front of it, so this is the only photo I took of it.

We were pretty maxed out on stops at this point, and it was getting kind of late, so we just went home after this. Everyone was very glad to get out of the car when we did get home around 7:30 p.m., but they all agree we should go back, so I guess it was worth the drive for them.

* Several of you are dealing with some very heavy things, and I am very sorry to hear that. 

Road Trip!

We're on Spring Break! Hooray! 

Also, the MiL is visiting for the week. The confluence of these events inspired me to suggest a road trip.

This is very out of character for me. I do not like driving long distances--unfortunate, given our location--and I really don't like driving long distances with all of my children. At least one of those children hates the car and has since he was an infant, which is challenging.

But I do really want to see Chimayo.

Chimayo (accent and spoken emphasis on the "o") is a somewhat famous Catholic pilgrimage site in the mountains north of Santa Fe. During Holy Week--the week leading up to Easter--many thousands of people travel there, some walking for days, some on their knees.

I want nothing to do with those sorts of crowds, but I did think it would be an appropriate place to visit in Lent.

It's going to take us probably a bit over three hours to get there. The plan is to stop where we turn off the main road and unload everyone who can walk so they can do a mini-pilgrimage to the church. It's about three miles, which I think is about as far as our youngest family member will want to be a pilgrim. I'll drive the one child who can't walk the rest of the way.

Despite the distance and the no doubt unhappy children we will have at some point during the day, I am looking forward to it. And I promise to take some pictures and tell you all about it tomorrow. Or possibly the next day, depending on how long it takes me to recover.

The photo is totally appropriate to the topic at hand, because that's our church behind the rusty racks, boards, and barbed wire on the F-250 that I had to drive on Sunday.

P.S. We will, of course, be taking some time in the sanctuary to pray. So if you have any intentions you would like me to pray for, go ahead and put them in the comments, anonymously if you want, and I'll do that.

Snapshots: Sneaky Winter

I woke up Friday morning to this:

Not spring-y.

I was very glad we didn't have to go anywhere. It melted pretty quickly after it stopped snowing, because this is March, not January.

I've been using a random succession of coffee mugs for years, none of which I really loved. They were all just things we had around. After my last coffee mug got broken, I decided to buy one that I really wanted. It had to be big enough--I got a 16-ounce size, although I don't fill it all the way--and the right shape.

Perfect.

I like that shape because the slighly narrower neck keeps the coffee hot a bit longer. It's also narrow enough that my small hands can grip around that part.

I love it. It makes me happy every morning. 

Poppy requested a somewhat involved hairstyle this week.

Pigtails turned braids turned buns.

Unsurprisingly, her hair was not still in this style when she got home. She had taken all this out and had put it in a ponytail.

And last, I substituted in the phrase-cube classroom on Tuesday. This was my phrase for the day:

Representative of my attitude this day, I'm afraid. (And STILL, no comma. Boooo.)

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.