Friday Food: Beef, Chicken, Pork, Lamb

Friday

Short version: Baked beans, garlic bread, cucumbers with ranch dip, chocolate pudding with cream

Long version: I woke up in the morning to 61 degrees in the kitchen, which is why I decided to simmer beans. Might as well use propane to heat the house and cook something at the same time.

I cooked a pot of pinto beans, which I then made into baked beans, mostly because I had some bacon left over from breakfast and the oven was already on to cook brisket.

I also baked bread this day, so I made garlic bread to go with the beans. I made the pudding because I had some cream that was starting to get just a bit sour. This whole meal was very popular with the three children at home.

Saturday

Short version: Brisket, fried potatoes, raw tomatoes, leftover pudding

Long version: The brisket I had cooked the day before, and some boiled potato slices left from making camp food for A. and the boy who were gone hunting.

I had my brisket in a very good salad.

Very large, too.

Sunday

Short version: Fried leftover Spanish omelet, raw green beans, strawberries and cream layer cake

Long version: A. was still hunting with one boy. I had made a Spanish tortilla for them to take with them that I forgot to put in the cooler. One of the children at home with me is not much of a fan of Spanish tortilla, but he does like fried potatoes a lot. So I decided to chunk up the Spanish tortilla and fry it.

This was very popular, particularly with the one who doesn't like Spanish tortilla. Win.

The cake was experimental. I had a pint of cream that was starting to sour and a box of yellow cake mix my mother had sent home with me from Colorado.

The cake was supposed to be "extra moist," and I'm guessing it's because the instructions called for three eggs. That seemed like a lot of eggs to me.

The box assured me that Betty's got my back, though, so I went with it.

I did not, however, use the canola oil called for, instead substituting butter. I also used some of that cream with the water to be added.

I overbaked the cakes, so they definitely were not "super moist," but then I added strawberry/rhubarb jam on each layer and completely covered the whole thing with whipped cream, so it was good.

Cake layers.

I actually thought I over-sweetened the whipped cream, so that the cake as a whole was too sweet, but no one else seemed to mind it. They were just pleased that I actually made a layer cake. I rarely bother with layers.

Monday

Short version: Lamb and chickpeas, rice, cucumbers, leftover cake

Long version: I had mostly made the main part of this the day before, simmering a big pot of chickpeas and a bag of lamb stew meat and a shank to make both stock and meat. Those two things, plus tomatoes, onions, garlic, paprika, thyme, oregano, lemon juice, yogurt, and cornstarch, made the lamb that went over the rice.

Tuesday

Short version: Lamb chops, leftovers, mashed potatoes, carrot sticks with ranch dip

Long version: The chops were the marinated ones I had sent along with A. for their hunting trip. He had never cooked them, so I did. A couple of kids had the leftover lamb and chickpeas, because they prefer their meat off the bone and I didn't have enough lamb chops for everyone, anyway.

Wednesday

Short version: Creamy chicken and sausage, leftover rice or mashed potatoes

Long version: I did not have a solid plan for dinner, except that I knew there was a rotisserie chicken in the refrigerator from my trip to the store the day before. Minus the drumsticks, of course, because that's what I eat as I drive home.

Some of the chicken had been eaten, unbeknownst to me, but there was just enough left for dinner. I shredded that, added a diced link of smoked sausage that had come back from A.'s hunting trip, frozen diced onion, frozen peas, the rest of someone's milk that didn't get finished at breakfast, and cream.

Steamy.

Everyone got to choose either mashed potatoes or rice, and that was dinner.

Thursday

Short version: Pork chunks and milk gravy, porky rice, cucumbers with ranch dip, apple crisp with cream

Long version: Yet another pork loin--actually a half loin this time, but I bought two--cut into steaks and chunks, pan fried, and then gravy made with milk and cornstarch.

Erma Bombeck used to claim that in her childhood home, they ate so much gravy it was a beverage. I'm beginning to feel like that, although I don't hear anyone complaining about it.

I had saved the liquid from cooking the pork shoulder awhile ago, freezing it when I had used all the lard on top of it. That's what I used to cook the rice.

Someone had given me about a dozen elderly apples. They were mostly something like Yellow Delicious, which are a bit too sweet for a crisp, but they needed to be cooked, so crisp it was.

Refrigerator check:

As always, Daisy dairy is well represented.

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

Online Educating

It's fair to say, I think, that I am something of a Luddite. I don't like technology, I am not comfortable with it, and I use just as little of it as I can get away with. 

This is sometimes a challenge, though, because of course it's very hard to avoid technology in our current culture, and most especially in education. Even more especially, in online education.

Our school has an online program in which I help students with special ed. accommodations in English. This year, for the first time, the program has a regular writing component. The students are supposed to write a two-sentence reflection at the end of each lesson. In our brave new world, we of course have had to specify that any student using AI to generate an answer will receive a zero on that assignment.

They do it anyway, but it's pretty obvious and several students have in fact failed their assignments because of it.

Something else that should have been obvious to me but wasn't came to my attention yesterday when I was working with one of my students. This particular student doesn't appear very frequently for our scheduled meeting time every week, but he was there yesterday. He happened to be on a quiz in his coursework. I can't give him the answers, of course, but I can read it to him.

So that's what we were doing. There were a couple of questions he asked to skip and come back to later, because he wanted some time to think about them. When we got to the end of the quiz, we went back to those two questions. 

I read the first one again. Silence. I read it again. And this time I hear, "Hey, Siri . . ."

What?

"Ty!" I exclaimed. "You can't ask Siri!"

"Why not?"

"Because that's cheating. You need to know the answer on your own."

"But I don't know it."

"Well, then, take an educated guess. But you can't ask Siri."

Honestly, it never occurred to me that students do this. But of course they do. I mean, it never occurred to him NOT to do it. For these kids, the answer is always available if they just talk to their phones or whatever.

In the end, he chose his answers and got a 75% on his quiz. This is a pretty good grade for him, so I was able to point out to him that yes, he can in fact pass his quizzes without the help of a computer. 

Not that I think he'll never ask Siri for the answer again, but I guess he knows now not to do it in front of a teacher.

Snapshots: More School Stuff

We only have a single key to our post office box. I'm always afraid we're going to lose it, so I found the most obnoxious keychain for it that I could.

A tiny Converse shoe one of the kids got at the health fair. It always makes me smile.

This week on our playground/track field, I removed a tiny barrel cactus, and an even tinier prickly pear cactus.

Helpfully marked with hula hoops for me by the students.

There have been many inconveniences associated with our school being under construction for two years, but it is kind of fun to walk back to my office and see this:

Giant crane!

Remember when I mentioned that I took one semester of elementary education classes in college before deciding teaching wasn't for me? That was in large part because of things like this:

Once again, God bless the teachers who will do things like this. I would rather scrub milk from the cafeteria floor (which I do).

And last, the cosmos you all helped me identify are blooming like crazy, which allows me to have a very cheery vase of flowers on the table.

Very purple, too.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: With Cucumber Photos

Friday 

Short version: Boneless pork chops with cream gravy, rice, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: These were the chops I cut from the whole loin. All I did was fry them and make a gravy in the pan with cream, water, and cornstarch.

I had made chicken stock earlier in the day with the chicken bones from the day before, and I used that stock to cook the rice.

The Armenian cucumber plants are protesting the cooler nights with brown leaves, although we haven't had a frost to actually kill them yet.

Saturday

Short version: Cheeseburgers on homemade buns, oven fries, pickles

Long version: I was baking bread, so I made some buns. And that's why I made cheeseburgers. This time, I broiled a pan of them rather than frying them on the stove. This allowed me to make ten patties and not get grease all over the stove top. But it also required me to monitor them in the broiler on the floor, which I dislike doing.

There's really no good way to make hamburgers. At least, for the quantity I need to make.

Pickles are a pretty sketchy vegetable, but I have a lot of them, so there you go.

I made a couple more quart jars of pickles with the very last of the dill plants for the year.

Sunday

Short version: Michaelmas chicken, baked potatoes, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, stabby cake with whipped cream

Long version: This was the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, although we really just celebrate it as Michaelmas. Goose is traditional for a Michaelmas feast, but hard to come by. The chicken I roasted was over seven pounds, so I figure it wasn't too far off in size to a medieval goose.

I started making a cake several years ago for my children to stab. It's a devil's food cake, because St. Michael is traditionally depicted stabbing the devil with a sword when he cast him out of heaven. Usually I just make Grandma Bishop's chocolate cake and call it close enough, but this year I used a recipe for an actual devil's food cake. It had more liquid and more cocoa powder. I followed Grandma Bishop's method, though, and poured the hot coffee over the butter to melt it and so on. 

I didn't have any yogurt, so I used sour cream and milk. And I accidentally used a teaspoon of cornstarch instead of baking soda. I realized my mistake in time, however, so the finished cake just had a bit of cornstarch in it. No big deal.

I never make frosting for this cake, mostly because I don't want to haul out the mixer. Sometimes I just dust it with powdered sugar, which I prefer. But my family likes whipped cream more, so this time I made some with my immersion blender.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, cucumbers

Long version: Diced leftover chicken, leftover rice, leftover gravy, all together in a skillet. And cucumbers.

Must be a work day.

I did not serve this cucumber that was hiding near the fence. It went to the chickens.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken soup, biscuits, oatmeal-raisin cookies

Long version: I spent several hours in the kitchen this day, turning the chicken carcass into a chicken and vegetable soup--I also used the rest of the gravy in it, so it was slightly creamy--making the cookies, assembling a casserole for the next day, and on and on.

I actually ended up having to go somewhere just before dinner and didn't get home until 5 p.m. I was tempted to just slice some bread instead of making biscuits like I had planned, but biscuits don't really take that long and they do make everyone very happy. Especially important when the main course is soup.

Wednesday

Short version: Enchilada casserole, cucumbers with salt and vinegar

Long version: This was the casserole I had put together the day before. I used bull meat in it. I am SO CLOSE to the end of the bull meat. A mere, um, four years after we butchered it. Ahem.

Thursday

Short version: Baked pasta, leftovers, cucumbers with ranch dip, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: I had just a little bit of uncooked ground beef left from the hamburgers--maybe half a pound--so I browned that and added it to the roasted tomato sauce I had made on Saturday while I was baking bread. Then that went into a casserole with pasta, Parmesan, and a bunch of asadero cheese.

It's a good thing I made a whole 9"x13" pan because we ended up with two extra kids here for dinner.

The children had the pasta, along with the cucumbers and ranch dip. And the chocolate chip cookies, which also had some peanut butter in there to replace some of the butter. More protein that way, you see.

A. had the last of the enchilada casserole, plus a bowl of the chicken soup. And then some pasta.

I just had soup.

Refrigerator check:

I have nothing particular to say about this, I guess.

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

Letting Go

When my children were all very young, it was always a big event the first time they could go camping with their dad and not with me. I always expected there to be an early return due to a crying child that first time. Sometimes it happened. Sometimes it didn't.

Now they all camp at least once a year. I don't go, because I don't like camping, but they all do. And they don't need me with them all the time anymore. Dad is just fine.

This year, the two older boys--now 14 (and a half!) and 12--upped the ante. They asked if they could go on a camping trip with just the two of them. No Dad.

We said yes.

The plan was to take them somewhere pretty close just for a night. One of them had a deer hunt in the area closest to our house this past weekend, and I suggested to A. that perhaps this would be the right time for them to do their solo campout. It's only about half an hour away. It was going to be dry and warm. There is cell service there. It seemed like a good opportunity.

So A. loaded their packs, gave them many instructions, and dropped them off.

Small boys, big country.

And then, of course, both A. and I spent some time imagining all the unlikely things that could go wrong in the 15 hours they were there.

Could a mountain lion or bear have attacked them? Could there have been an unexpected storm with lightning strikes? Could someone have fallen in the fire? Could one of them have been bitten by a rattlesnake?

Yes. Any of those things COULD have happened. But none of them did. What it came down to is that those boys are comfortable camping, hiking, and hunting, and we trust them in that environment.

There were several elk that ran by in the stream bed just about twenty feet from their campsite in the middle of the night. This of course woke them up, because elk are huge and it sounded like stampeding horses, but that was pretty much it for excitement.

No deer, either, so the hunt wasn't successful. But the campout was. And I'm sure there will be many more in their future.

Snapshots: Ready for Winter and Holding Onto Summer

A. brought home a cord of cedar that needed to be stacked. It's still a marvel to me that we have children who can do that now.

The three younger ones did all of this in about an hour.

And the oldest took care of the pile by the door and some kindling. He will also be on call to split more kindling as needed.

I had thought about paying them to do this this year, but then they came in and asked if they could have a cookie. So they each got three cookies, one for each face cord of wood in a cord. There are those low standards coming in handy again.

Every year our school gets a visit from the New Mexico mobile museum. It's an RV with displays about different themes every year. This year it was agriculture, so all about crops and so on. There was this little New Mexico kitchen that all the kids loved.

It was pretty neat.

Poppy went for a walk the other day and came home with these things to be displayed.

I have taught her to see the beauty in weeds, which may be my most important legacy.

Meanwhile, on the dining room table . . .

A burst of summer at the start of fall.

Most of the sunflowers are gone now. There's only one good patch still in our ghost village, so those might be the last sunflowers and sage on the table until next year.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Lucky Pork

Friday 

Short version: Early chicken salad sandwiches, chicken and rice skillet, football food

Long version: This was the night I took the three younger children to the very wet football game. I gave them the choice of eating before we left, or bringing their own money for concession food.

They all chose to eat before we left. So they had chicken salad sandwiches, and then I brought beef jerky, dehydrated apples, and peanut butter cookies with us to the game.

At home, I left a skillet of chicken, rice, beans, spices, and cheese.

Saturday

Short version: Pizzas, cucumbers with ranch dip

Long version: One cheese pizza, one with pepperoni and some leftover bacon. The sauce was roasted tomato sauce, which is much superior to a sauce made with just canned tomatoes.

Sunday

Short version: Pork, cornbread, tomato/cucumber/feta salad, disastrous rice pudding

Long version: I cooked a very large pork shoulder, and some of it I shredded and mixed with maple syrup and mustard. Very typical for my kitchen. Standard cornbread, too.

And there they are.

The rice pudding is where it all went wrong.

I don't know why, but this time, the rice pudding, at the very END of the baking, dripped all over the oven. I have never had this happen before, so of course it must happen almost exactly one week after getting a brand-new oven.

If I were trying to find a substance that would wreck an oven more thoroughly, I couldn't have topped this one. The combination of rice starch, sugar, and milk is just impossible to get off the bottom of a hot oven. I turned the oven off right away and scrubbed for some time with baking soda and dish soap before I gave up and just resigned myself to the fact that my new oven is no longer pristine.

Sigh.

Monday

Short version: Leftover pork and pizza, cucumbers with ranch dip, cookies

Long version: This time I fried the some of the pork in its rendered lard. The pizza served as our starch for this meal. As did the cookies (oatmeal/almond/peanut butter/chocolate chip).

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover pork in burritos, more cucumbers, hot cocoa

Long version: I had to substitute this day, so it was lucky I had randomly cooked so much pork on Sunday. This time I just wrapped it in flour or corn tortillas with cheese and salsa. 

Hot cocoa because some people were still hungry. And there is something thrilling about getting hot cocoa--with a marshmallow!--on a random Tuesday night.

In case you're wondering, this is how I make cocoa: A tablespoon (I use an actual spoon, but I think it's close to a measured tablespoon) of sugar per mug of cocoa, plus one more for good health, slightly less than a tablespoon of cocoa powder for each mug, and a pinch of salt for each mug, all put in a pot. Add a bit of cold water and then heat this on the stove until the powders are dissolved. Then use a mug to measure out the milk, adding however many mugs of milk are needed. Heat and stir until as hot as you want it, then add a splash of vanilla. 

Marshmallows if you're feeling indulgent.

Wednesday

Short version: Meatballs, spaghetti, fried potatoes, yet more cucumbers

Long version: All the pork was gone and this is a work day for me, but I did have a bag of meatballs I had stashed in the freezer for just such a night. I took those out before I left for work, along with a bag of roasted tomato sauce. Then when I got home, I just broiled the meatballs and then roasted them with about half the sauce until they were done.

The other half of the sauce went on the spaghetti. I was too lazy to grate Parmesan, so I just added a large amount of butter to it, plus a bit of extra garlic powder and Italian herbs. 

I microwaved a couple of potatoes and then diced them to fry for A., who doesn't eat spaghetti.

Thursday

Short version: Roasted chicken pieces, roasted potatoes, sauteed calabacita/tomato/onion, raw green beans, bread with butter and honey or apple butter

Long version: Chicken leg quarters are always cheap, and so I tend to get those even though I dislike separating the thighs and drumsticks. But that way, A. and I can have the thighs, which we prefer, and the children can have the drumsticks, which they prefer.

There were four of each kind of chicken piece, and all I did with them was liberally spice them with paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a small amount of maple syrup, and then roast them at 425 degrees until they were done.

My favorite summer skillet of vegetables:

It's technically fall on the calendar, but it's still summer in the skillet.

The bread was the after-dinner, serve-yourself-if-you're-still-hungry course. We had gotten a jar of apple butter from some girls at school who had made it from apples they picked at their grandmother's orchard in the mountains. A couple of the kids really liked it and chose it for their bread. The others had the honey.

Refrigerator check:

A bit bare.

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