You know, this isn’t the way I always imagined an ocean voyage. Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY
Grilled ham and provolone in pita pockets; spicy fries; raw broccoli
I do love grilled pita pockets. I grilled them in butter. They are so cozy and filling.
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SUNDAY
Steak, salad, strawberry rhubarb pie with whipped cream
Irene’s First Holy Communion and Mother’s Day! We’ve had so many parties lately, we decided Sunday would be just us chickens. Irene had a very good morning.
We planned to spend the day gardening, but it was, SIGH SIGH SIGH, windy and raining and snowing. So we made some pie together
This is Irene’s Happy Pie face. The kid just loves pie. She gave everyone mini pies from Walmart for Christmas. I think it was her early exposure to Amelia Bedelia. She just loves pie! And so do I.
I made the lattice one. I wove it for a while, then got bored and just started slapping bits of dough on. Irene’s crust was made of hearts and ducks, much like her soul.
We used this recipe from the 1896 Fannie Farmer cookbook. It was new to me, and really did taste old fashioned, especially the crust, which had a pleasantly sharp, salty flavor. The crust turned out pretty light and flaky. It was a little hard to work with, but it added more to the overall taste of the dish than the typical bland crust. I did use the neat trick of freezing the butter and then grating it with a cheese grater, so it’s very easy to incorporate it into the flour without overhandling it.
Damien made everyone steaks. I like mine so rare, you can have a conversation with it while you eat.
Raise your hand if this picture makes you feel uncomfortable! Too bad! It was my mother’s day! And the steak was delicious. (And I had a lovely, lovely day, all day, thank you. Many wonderful gifts and thoughtful attentions.)
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MONDAY
Pork ramen, coconut rice, peas
Delicious, but more of a hassle than expected, probably because I had to make so much of it. (It was simplified somewhat with the beloved Instant Pot, because I could cook the meat and vegetables, deglaze, and finish the broth all in one pot. Sometimes having even one fewer pot to wash is a big freaking deal.) I found a complicated recipe and simplified it, thus:
Sear some pork ribs in olive oil until browned on all sides. Take pork out, slice very thin, set aside. Add a coarsely chopped onion, about eight cloves of minced garlic, and a few scoops of ginger paste. Saute to brown. Add a cup of chicken broth to deglaze. Add seven more cups of broth, plus 8-10 oz. sliced mushrooms, and return pork to pot. Slow cook for several hours.
Just before dinner, have a kid cook a giant bunch of ramen noodles and some soft boiled eggs.
To serve, put ramen in individual bowls, ladle pork and broth over that, add a few halves of eggs, and throw something green on top. We happened to have some zombie scallions.
It was tasty and satisfying, and the pork was very tender after cooking all day. I adore thin slices of pork in soup.
For the coconut rice, I use this Instant Pot recipe from This Old Gal, who loves unnecessary complications. I have had about enough of This Old Gal. I did have coconut milk and coconut cream, but not toasted coconut or coconut sugar. I am skeptical there is actually something called coconut sugar.
The rice was pleasant, but not amazing. Who has a recipe that makes lovely, sticky coconut rice like in a Thai restaurant? Wanty.
***
TUESDAY
Chicken burgers, chips
I have no memory of Tuesday.
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WEDNESDAY
Chicken blueberry salad
Salad meals are my favorite. This recipe comes from The Blueberry Council, which, surely:
I wish I had chopped up the greens smaller, to integrate them more with the other ingredients, rather than making a bed for them to lie on, but the combination of flavors and textures was excellent.
So: mixed greens, broiled chicken, blueberries, blue cheese, red onions, and toasted nuts (we had walnuts and almonds. There must have been a nut sale at some point. Again, I highly recommend taking the extra few minutes to toast the nuts); and a sweetish dressing made of olive oil, wine vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper.
I served everything in separate bowls. To my delight, most of the kids chose to include blue cheese and onions in theirs. When I was that age, the harshly challenging flavor of something exotic, like yellow mustard, would have sent me into howling despair, but my kids are so much more adventurous. I never insist they eat anything, but I do keep serving things that I think are yummy, and I offer it to everyone every time. And here they are eating onions and blue cheese! I did a thing!
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THURSDAY
Nachos
Not my finest hour. My plan was very basic: tortilla chips, ground meat and pre-made taco spice, jarred cheese substance, and salsa on the side.
I had to run out unexpectedly, so I directed the meat cooking and draining via cell phone, which turned out to be only slightly less nerve-wracking for both parties than when a passenger has to step up and land a damaged airplane with the help of a pilot on the ground.
Then I dashed home and dashingly forgot that the label said not to heat the cheese in the jar. Why? Because, we discovered, it balloons up like a ghastly yellow nightmare, then collapses into a rubbery hunk. Excuse me, rubbery hunk olé.
Then I set the chips on fire.
If you’re wondering why I never clean my oven: I do. I just immediately follow the cleaning with another spill. Then I set some chips on fire.
***
FRIDAY
Penne with jarred sauce
Assuming I can figure out how to open a jar.
It occurs to me that a few of my readers may not be familiar with the phrase “and two hard boiled eggs.” Let’s fix that right now:
God bless Miss Irene on the happiest day of her life! And a happy Mother’s Day to you!
I am with Irene on this – I would much rather have pie (blueberry or peanut butter cream!) than cake any day.
No news on the cooking front from me this week. My husband and I had meetings and appointments every night this week, so it was pizza, leftover baked beans/w beef, and store-bought smoked/barbecued ribs (delicious) on a given night. And I made scrambled eggs, (4 x-large eggs beaten with 1 tablespoon of sour cream, and a little shredded parmesan cheese, constantly stirred and slowly cooked at a low temperature over melted butter) with English muffins on Friday. Pretty danged good.
Peace and good to all here – Susan, ofs
You don’t have to like This Old Gal’s recipe, that’s totally fine, but it’s pretty poor form to publicly trash a fellow blogger in the manner that you have in your post.
Lady, when I’ve trashed someone, you’ll know it.
…”Make that three hard boiled eggs!”
Ha! I love that movie.
I spent the last few days at my parents’ because my sister was in town. Basically have not cooked this week. Well, there’s always the weekend.
The Blueberry Council pic is awesome.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/coconut-milk-sticky-rice-with-mangoes-233842
amazing. I’d double the salt if using kosher salt. also, regular old cane sugar is fine.
I clean my oven, too! Every year. Or two.
We had two first communions, a university graduation and a final job interview all within a 14 day period. I broke out into a full body rash from head to to ankles which is what happens when your cortisol levels go crazy and hook up with your son’s poison oak infested camping gear. I went to the ER when I started to wheeze. I felt light headed but it could have been merely a panic attack, that it was all too much and I might die.
Hubby got the job! We felt the hand of St. Joseph in all of it because two companies began to compete against each other for him on the feast of St. Joseph the worker. I knew he would come through for us. He always has.
I didn’t cook for almost a week due to out of town stuff. We celebrated the nicest graduation dinner at an amazing old house/restaurant in the tiny town of Trinidad. Trinidad is so gorgeous I couldn’t get over it. The redwood forest goes right to the Pacific coast, with little hamlets and flowering trees/vines scattered along winding roads. Some of the houses look haunted, some are abandoned and some are beautifully restored. There was one abandoned one with this giant buck kicked back and sunning himself on the porch. It was only yards from the ocean. The little college town of Arcata has a farmer’s market every Saturday morning with live music and incredibly well crafted food and coffee. I had lightly grilled oysters in a vinaigrette and a pork tamal with mango salsa for breakfast. My kids bought me handmade gifts for mother’s day from local artists. A really sweet goth chick made me earrings right in front of me with real stones and gold beaten on an anvil.
Almost the whole way to and from HSU from San Francisco is through forests, next to and over pristine blue rivers. My husband kept shouting “Look at the river!” There were about fifty of them so he yelled it that many times. We were listening to classical music. It felt like an Audi commercial.
I wish I had known it was so gorgeous up there because I would’ve visited my kid at college at least once. Oh well. Now I know. Maybe John Paul will go there. He’ll probably turn into a giant hippy if he does. I can take it just as long as he doesn’t go for dreadlocks.
Congrats on the job! Will you have to move?
Thanks :)! We’re going to split it up 50/50ish. Summers in SB, and something like fall/winter in our old hometown. He will commute on Fridays from the Silicon Valley headquarters. The rest of the week he will be at the SF office which is really close to where our daughter Sophia works. I’m excited (life is more vibrant in a metropolis) and also a little down because I’ll miss him so much. That’s the only way we could afford a home there now (our old house tripled in value, is still too small and now out of reach.) We will need to rent out the new one part of the time. We will do it on Airbnb unless they get rid of it like they did here.
I really need to write a book about it all, but I’m too scattered. The latest title in my brain is “Douche Brand”, in honor of Ugg, and comes via my son Blaise (who made his astute observation before they came after the humans)…Funny, because the last company we worked for was taken over by a hedge fund from NY called Advent. The slaughter came on a Monday after the Saturday evening Christmas party (yep, during Advent), and I SWEAR the CEO’s address to the slaughter-ees was about the time in his life when he worked in a slaughter house (lambs) in New Zealand. He was a really nice guy. I think it was his strange little way of saying sorry. He ended up getting his throat cut too.
There are no other jobs here except for the hospital, university,a handful of tech, real estate and Hollywood commuters. The other big employer (Ugg) is presently being slaughtered on behalf of a handful of people in the C-suite and the hedge fund raider. Strange world we live in. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the CEO (who has made out like a bandit) always preached on his soap box about the company being “one big family”. Now he’s running for mayor. He lives in my neighborhood, and I’ll need to smile and wave at the beach. A few years ago, at the Christmas party (Wizard of Oz theme!!!!) They put his GIANT disembodied head on a screen as “The great Oz” (Such a bad choice on his part.) He gave this rousing speech on how great it all was (while they sucked the life out of Mainstreet USA, fed the multi-headed beast best represented by Amazon) and a band played with special effects and go-go dancers in scanty outfits. They reminded us that Uber would take us home while they refilled as many glasses that needed to be refilled. I turned to my husband during the speech and mouthed “Hunger Games.”
The new company is a unicorn, getting ready for an IPO in a couple of years. All of that funny money reminds me of playing Monopoly. We haven’t had the best of luck with that.
I was humbled by your interesting meals and then I got down to “Nachos” and felt I wasn’t such a loser in the kitchen after all. There’s an exploded baked potato mess in the bottom of my oven that should be cleaned before the tuna casserole goes in tonight (yes, boring; but comforting). How do you get your family to eat a salad as a main course? My family eats salad regularly, but they consider it a side and something you eat (in the European style) at the end of a meal to round it out. My husband would sigh pathetically if I told him we were just having salad for dinner (no matter how much protein was in it) and he’d probably give me that I-know-you-can-do-better-than-this look, which would make me angry and ruin my appetite.
Here in hippyville, I mean Vancouver island, there is almost no other kind of sugar.
I like how you have the picture of the nacho while it’s burning. It reminds me of the time I put frozen wings into a giant pot of boiling oil and huge flames burst forth. My Eagle Scout son was there while our kitchen was burning, and instead of helping his mother locate a fire extinguisher (or even a lid), he took out his cell phone and began filming for his snap story. I’ve never seen his snap story, but my daughter tells me it’s great and that EVERYBODY loves it and thinks it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how prominently I figure in it…