[img attachment=”98244″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”whats for supper aleteia” /]
I’m sorry this post is so long. I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.
***
SATURDAY
Bagel sandwiches with egg, cheese, and sausage
I made the bagels in the oven in three batches, and burned all of them! A perfect record! I think the following may be the one and only picture I have of food this week.
[img attachment=”111999″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”corrie bagel” /]
Note the patient dog waiting for his commission, and note the child on stilts. Because it is dinner time.
I also made a quadruple recipe of blueberry muffins on Saturday evening, for Sunday breakfast. Blueberries were so cheap, I actually bought more than I could use, prompting my seven-year-old to say, “Mama! There’s extra blueberries?!?! Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get a trout — a brand new trout, that no one’s ever used! — and I’m gonna . . .
“. . . Wait. Is it not called a trout?”
She meant “trowel.” She had the idea of shovelling blueberries into her mouth with a trowel. Which is probably the best recipe for blueberries.
Muffins are very easy to throw together, and I always think I can easily make them in the morning. But I can’t, because it is morning and nothing is easily. I used this basic muffin recipe from King Arthur flour, and they turned out fine. I took some pictures, but they looked exactly like blueberry muffins, if you can imagine such a thing.
Good tips from Good King Arthur: Add the berries to the flour mixture and mix thoroughly, to coat the berries and prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cupcake tin. And remember that it’s okay to leave lumps in the batter! Overbeating gives you tough muffins, which would be sad, but not a bad band name.
***
SUNDAY
Korean beef bowl, rice, watermelon
Amazing Husband Man made supper (easy, yummy recipe) while I went to Panera and did some work (first doing the “local oaf” routine). There was only a little bit of rice in the house, despite the fact that “rice” was written on the blackboard, and despite the fact that our van has rice all over it from the forty pounds of leaky bags of rice that were recently in there. I don’t want to talk about it. Everyone got a little rice, okay?
***
MONDAY
Chicken drumsticks, chips, Brussels sprouts
I felt sad and tired looking at all those uncooked drumsticks, so I solicited recipes on Facebook. It’s refusing to fetch that thread for me, but here’s one I remember, and plan to make: La Brea Tar Pit Chicken.
There were tons of wonderful ideas. As I always do when I ask for advice, I ignored it all and just made a quick Italian dressing-type marinade and then put the chicken under the broiler. It was fine; tasted like chicken.
***
TUESDAY
Hot dogs, beans, chips
I think the kids made this. It was hot.
***
WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti with sausage
Nothing to report. It was hot. OH, but we finally knocked “adults-only evening swim with fancy snacks” off the to-do list for the summer. Crackers, brie, cherries, beer, and scantily-clothed husband by the lake at sunset. Sometimes it all just works out. (Take note, parents drowning in Babyland! Eventually they do get old enough to leave at home and you can do amazing things.)
***
THURSDAY
Chicken tikka masala and brown rice
Okay. So my friend Kyra (the one who makes those magnificent chain mail necklaces and rosaries) sent me a wonderful box of nutso food from her local nutso food market.
[img attachment=”112000″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”kyra package” /]
We didn’t feel emotionally strong enough to open the instant natural jellyfish, but the garam masala and the ginger paste smiled encouragingly. Here’s how that worked out:
I have zero experience with Indian food. Some guy said that he read 25 different recipes for chicken tikka masala, and the only thing they all had in common was chicken. And I had chicken. So I didn’t worry too much about missing kind of a lot of the ingredients in this recipe.
I had chicken breasts instead of thighs,
bottled instead of fresh lemon juice,
no ground coriander (I just put extra cumin),
butter instead of ghee,
ginger paste instead of fresh,
tomato sauce instead of paste and chopped tomatoes,
no cilantro,
and milk instead of cream.
I know.
I once read that, if you’re in confession and are all balled up with scrupulosity, just tell the priest, “I am unable to judge the gravity of my sins,” and let him work it out.
It turned out . . . good? I think? The good news is, I have an all-consuming cold, and could barely taste it anyway. Kind of a lot of work for a dish that, to me, shyly hinted at cinnamon. But after I took a few bites, my nose started running like an arroyo in springtime, so it must have been spicy, and Mr. Husband liked it.
Before I made dinner, we enjoyed a series of comic mishaps as we went to the bank, the other bank, the comic book store, the other comic book store, the candy store, the burger place, the library, the other library, a few other miscellaneous places, and of course the children’s museum, where my 16-month-old girl had a tense showdown on the musical stairs with a somewhat smaller 17-month-old boy. Oh, he stood down first, believe me. The other mom was like, “Wow, he’s never shy like this at home!” and I was like, “Lady, he did the right thing.”
So we got out of there, and then downstairs from the museum was a brand new Indian restaurant and grocery. “Fate!” I says to myself. “Fate has taken me in hand, and I will buy something in a bag that will round out this wobbly ethnic meal!”
To the helpful Indian lady, I explained my dilemma (basically, “I am white”), and she generously offered me a torrent of advice, gushing like an arroyo in spring, except that I couldn’t really understand her. I am fairly sure she said she just grabs whatever is in her cabinet if she doesn’t have the right ingredients. It was this that empowered me to use Hunt’s spaghetti sauce in my tikka masala.
I know.
After this, we suddenly had an urgent need to rush to the corporate office of the donut shop where my daughter works, and then it was closed anyway, but we’d already been out for eleven hours in a vehicle which blasts roasting-hot air on my feet; which meant that no, no, no, I was not going to do more driving to the other side of the other town to pick up rice, which had not spontaneously generated itself in the cabinet, despite being on the list.
I did, however, go to the local gas station (which, I noted with an interior sob, is owned and run by an Indian family) and got eight bags of boil-in-the-bag rice. I chose boil-in-a-bag brown rice, because I was sad about the whole whiteness thing.
I know.
We also had the dried mango candy and the chewy ginger candy, and they were fabulous. If all candy tasted like that, there would be peace on earth, and as our noses ran like arroyos in spring, our hearts would overflow with the gladness of ginger and tamarind, whatever that is.
As long as I’m single-handedly ruining Indian food, I think I’ll add capers if I ever make this again. It just sounds good. I couldn’t find any mention of capers as an ingredient of tikka masala, but why stop now? Maybe I’ll garnish it with diced marshmallows and serve it on a bed of Froot Loops.
***
FRIDAY
Mac and cheese
It’s still hot.
Oh, and I hereby escape copyright infringement for the photo at the top by providing a link to the source, which is entirely relevant to this post, which gushes and flows with cultural sensitivity like an arroyo in spring.
