Well, let’s see.
SATURDAY
Spaghetti carbonara, caprese salad
A lovely meal that comes together very quickly. For our newly shrunken family, I used a scant two pounds of pasta and two pounds of bacon, which turned out to be almost enough. I followed this simple carbonara recipe from that noted Italian chef, Fannie Farmer.
For the caprese salad, we visited our squalid little garden and got the last of the basil and the few tomatoes that the woodchuck missed, and supplemented it with supermarket tomatoes. Package of mozzarella pearls, some olive oil and vinegar, some freshly-ground salt and pepper.
So yummy, and easy enough that you can shout some vague directions toward your lovely daughter as you fry the bacon, and she throws together a lovely dish with no trouble.
***
SUNDAY
Deconstructed shish kebab, corn on the cob
On Sunday, we had a sudden break in the dark, rainy, oppressive weather. The sun came out, the water sparkled, a fresh breeze came up, and we headed to the beach for one last happy wallow, bringing strawberries, grapes, and the traditional Giant Bag of Candy with us.
Before we left, I cut up a bone-in pork shoulder(?) into chunks and set it to marinate. I wanted to use the spiedie marinade in the NYT, but I guess I looked up that recipe too many times, and it’s now behind a paywall for me. (I know you can clear cookies or switch browsers, but that feels stealy.) So I put together lemon juice, white wine, wine vinegar, oregano, minced garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and dried basil. Pretty darn close.
When we got home, I cut up peppers, red onions, and mushrooms, mixed them with the pork, and spread it out in my two giant sheet pans [Amazon affiliate link]. I set the oven to broil, and when the first pan was a little charred, I took it out and moved the other one up.
So juicy and delicious. We ate it on potato rolls.
I also boiled up some corn, just plain old, good, good-bye-summer corn.
***
MONDAY
Hot Dogs of Many Nations, chips, root beer floats
My father came over and we played stinky pinkies until we couldn’t stand it anymore. For supper, I got a bunch of natural casing hot dogs and a bunch of Hebrew National Hot Dogs. It was raining again, so we skipped the outdoor grill, but laid out every kind of hot dog topping that seemed good.
We had ketchup, yellow mustard, Dijon mustard, sauerkraut, chili, pickle relish, chopped onions, buffalo sauce, bleu cheese, chopped scallions, pickled peppers, pickles, tomatoes, cheese sauce, and a cute little bulbous jar of onion chutney. I didn’t really know what chutney was. It turns out it’s some kind of purple nightmare jelly. I still don’t know what it’s for, except not for hot dogs.
My two favorite combos: The Chicago hot dog (“dragged through the garden), which is topped with chopped onion, pickle relish, pickled peppers, tomatoes, a dill pickle, mustard, and celery salt:
and even better, the buffalo dog, which has bleu cheese, scallions, and buffalo sauce:
This is a really swell combination. Makes the hot dog worth eating. I think we have a new Labor Day tradition, and it’s not very laborious.
***
TUESDAY
English muffin pizzas
Nothing to report.
***
WEDNESDAY
Oven roasted pork ribs, roast potatoes, cole slaw
The only interesting thing to report is that a bag of shredded cabbage mixed with carrot is sometimes cheaper than a whole cabbage. What a world.
***
THURSDAY
Chicken breast and salad
By 5:00, my life force was hanging down around my ankles like a pair of decrepit underwear. I had a package of chicken and several bags of greens. The greens went in a bowl; the chicken went on a pan, and then, o my friends, I sprayed it with butter-flavored cooking spray. With my last scrap of integrity, I flung some salt and pepper in its general direction and nudged it toward the oven with my foot. We also had cheez puffs.
***
FRIDAY
Giant chocolate pancake!
In which our heroine pours an entire box of pancake mix into a bowl, adds enough water to make it spreadable, stirs in a bag of chocolate chips, butters a pan, dumps in the batter, and chucks it in a medium oven. We are ditching the school BBQ today because Mama Can’t, so maybe I will take the critters out for ice cream instead.
***
Well, I notice that we are nearing VOLUME 100 of this What’s for Supper feature. How should I celebrate? As you may know, I am open to ideas of every kind, including and even giving pride of place to stupid ideas.
Everyone’s comments here crack me up.
Sat: Utah chicken salad from Tasty Kitchen.
Sun: cashew chicken and cream cheese wontons (the latter frozen, not made by me)
Mon: pasta with choice of red or white sauce (3 of 5 kids will eat red, 4 of 5 will eat white.)
Tues: leftovers because boy, did I make a lot of cashew chicken.
Wed: Chick-fil-a from my mom (who is the best). Husband took three older kids camping, so they had burgers or something while I stayed home with the twins.
Thurs: breakfast for supper in the form of apple coffee cake, poached eggs, and bacon fried by husband who is competent at that. I always bake it when I remember I don’t want to ruin it.
Fri: pulled pork. I usually aim for meatless Fridays, but was taking a meal to a gluten-free family with a new baby and so was looking for something that worked for that. No one here likes spicy, so I made that PW Dr. Pepper pork, but without the chilies in adobo. I sub a couple splashes of A-1 sauce for the adobo sauce and everyone likes it. Hooray for the dutch oven.
For anyone who’s made it this far in the comments and still wants to know how to play stinky pinkies, I can save you some R-rated Google results: make your search query “stinky pinky merriam-webster”. (Yikes, who knew?)
(Save you *from* them, I mean!)
Mama Can’t. I like that. My life contains many such days. The giant chocolate pancake, though? That, for my kids, would make everybody HOPE AND LONG for days when Mama Can’t.
Which, come to think of it, isn’t really a bad thing at all…since they’re gonna happen either way.
Here’s to next week, Mama Can! (Because HECK you sure do, day after day after day. High five!)
I cooked three bags of Aldi’s chicken tenderloins in foil pans covered in seasoned salt and used it as follows:
Saturday-I made chicken salad with mayo, celery, onion, and grapes. Served in on sourdough bread with romaine lettuce. Sides were more grapes and a salad made with romaine lettuce. No one noticed the repetition.I cooked three bags of Aldi’s chicken tenderloins in foil pans covered in seasoned salt and used it as follows:
Saturday-I made chicken salad with mayo, celery, onion, and grapes. Served in on sourdough bread with romaine lettuce. Sides were more grapes and a salad made with romaine lettuce. No one noticed the repetition.
Sunday-I fried more chicken that I had using an overly complicated recipe called Claretha’s Fried Chicken by Ruth Reichl which involves soaking the chicken overnight. I made mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, corn, green beans, and mac and cheese from scratch. It was delicious and I doubled the recipes on purpose.
Monday-All the leftovers from Sunday, minus the mashed potatoes.
Tuesday-I made shepherds pie, which the baked chicken from Saturday and the mashed potatoes from Sunday and lots of cheese.
Wednesday-I actually meant to defrost beef. But I grabbed the wrong package and defrosted more chicken tenderloins. I think I was thinking about how relieved everyone would be not to be eating chicken that night and for some reason that made me grab the chicken. I made an easy alfredo and added baked chicken and broccoli to the top.
Thursday-Stirfry with the other half of the chicken from Wednesday. My husband was actually getting kind of annoyed at that point, he thought I was making a point or pulling a prank.
Tonight-I am ordering pizzas. I am actually half tempted to get a barbeque chicken pizza. Because that would mean I served chicken for an ENTIRE week.
I have beef defrosting for tomorrow.
Hoo boy. We started back with homeschooling this week. Let me see if I can remember what I made.
Monday: I got two roast chickens from the deli counter, corn on the cob was on sale, and so was watermelon, so I treated my watermelon-loving kids to the last watermelon and corn on the cob of the season. The corn I shucked, and then paradoxically wrapped back up in foil, and cooked in the slower cooker (no water) on Low for about four hours, nudging it up to High near the last hour due to my anxiety. It was perfect.
Tuesday: Mini pizzas and leftovers, eaten whenever, because we were down a person and it was the first day of school and I’m only one person, okay?
Wednesday: Pork chops (store brand Shake and Bake), baked potato bar, green beans.
Thursday: Burgers and hot dogs, chips and pretzels, grapes, baby carrots. Chocolate chip cookies for dessert, because I found THE BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe and it is now our house cookie, so say we all.
Friday: Gonna be pasta night and breadsticks, broccoli. Chocolate chip cookies for dessert, probably.
Oh, and you know you can print out recipes and stick them in a binder, right? Ideally you’d want them in a page protector so you can pull it out and tape it on the cabinet in front of you, but we do not live in an ideal world.
Oh, and you forgot one hot dog topping: Tony Packo’s chili. Used to be you could only get it in Toledo, but most stores carry it now, I think. It’s the best. (Native Toledoan here).
You can order Tony Packo’s on Amazon! I tried it for the first time recently, and fell in love with it…so good.
My first thought for a 100 celebration was a stupid one indeed: Have everyone else in your house cook for a week and report back. Like that’s going to happen, right? Sure would be nice, though . . . (If you can hear the longing in those typed words, it’s because I mean it would be nice for ALL of us that cook for everyone else day in and day out, even when our life force, as you so eloquently put it, is hanging down around our knees.)
Dearest Simcha, next time you offer bacon to your little savages, lay all those strips out on your giant sheet pans and nudge them in a medium oven for about 15-20 minutes. So much better than standing at the stove frying bacon that bites back with popping grease!