What’s for supper? Vol. 391: Durian mochi and other unforced errors

Happy Friday! 

Please read the following important update from our admin team: 

What does this mean for you? 

It means I haven’t figured out how to block bots but also allow real people to comment. I have figured out how to do one or the other, but not both, even though I am paying some rather brusque people what seems to me a lot of money to make this happen. So I’m sorry if you’ve been trying to leave comments! I will continue to chip away at it, because I really miss hearing from you.

Another wrinkle is that my computer mysteriously stopped working, so I spent most of the morning trying to persuade a backup computer to believe it really is me asking for a reminder for my passwords, because of course I don’t remember any of my passwords. And I have a migraine because these injections are not working like they’re supposed to, and the printer won’t function and the kids are trying to print out character sheets because their friends are coming over to do a planning session, we’e snowed in, I’ve got a cold, and thirty ladies from my Hadassah club are coming for lunch. 

Just kidding, I don’t belong to any clubs. Everything is fine. I can see grapes ripening from my window, and Damien is taking the little kids to see The Muppet Movie in the theater while I got to adoration, and we do have a backup computer, and it’s probably just my battery anyway. It’s a pretty sweet life. Only dumb things are falling apart right now, and nothing really important. Right? Crying a lot these days, but I always stop eventually, so it must be okay. 

And as you can see from the photo at the top of the page, I found a wonderful new addition for our family altar while I was checking out a new consignment store with Lucy yesterday. It just needed one small adjustment before it was perfect. As a bonus, we now have a wooden “L” floating around the house, which the kids are happily taking turns awarding to each other.

Here’s what we ate this week!

SATURDAY
Pork ribs, chips, watermelon

Saturday it turned out Leah LIbresco Sargeant was in New Hampshire, so boy did I drive over there and meet her! We’ve been friends for many years, but never met in person, and she brought her BABY. 

What a lovely visit. I love Leah and I love her baby. And her baby LIKED ME. He smiled at me, and talked to me, and had a nice nap on me. Wonderful. 

I stopped at an Asian market on the way home, to see what I could see. I’m always torn: Do I bring home something that’s guaranteed to be delicious, because it’s like something we’ve eaten before, in which case what is the point? or should I be adventurous, in which case everybody will hate it? I tried to split the difference, and picked out some Hello Kitty ramen, two kinds of mochi, and some spicy Chinese sausage. 

So accessible! Halfway normal! The kids haven’t tried the ramen yet, but they did approve of my purchase. And they tried the ube mochi. They said it tasted like dirt. Then I alone tried the durian mochi, and ,,,,  my friends ,,,,,

I don’t know what the human race has done to deserve durian, but on behalf of all mankind, I’m very, very sorry. Heavens above, I think that may be the very worst taste I have ever had in my mouth, on purpose or otherwise. I truly do not understand how durian is a thing. I thought people were exaggerating, but they were not! It is so aggressively foul! It’s like if you wore the same rubber boots all summer and then the boots caught fire and someone was like, hey, I bet I can turn that burnt rubber and burnt foot skin smell into blobs of chewy candy.

Like, WHY. 

I haven’t tried the sausage yet. 

I still had to make supper, though, so I just broiled some pork ribs under the broiler with lots of salt and pepper, and served them with sweet hot chili sauce and watermelon. 

A weird supper, but weirdly tasty, and took like 20 minutes to make. I also served but only modestly partook in a large basin of “chip salad.”

This is when you take the, I am not exaggerating, ELEVEN open bags of chips and other crunchy snacks, and toss them in a bowl and invite your family to eat the consequences of their actions. Which they happily did, and learned nothing. 

Corrie tried to convince me that what I had made was Chex Mix, and only in vain did I point out that . . . oh never mind. 

SUNDAY
Taquitos, chimichangas

Sunday we were supposed to go play in a waterfall, but it was thundering, so we stayed home and I don’t remember what we did. Lurked about, and then had a meal purchased entirely at Walmart.

You might be surprised to learn that this elegantly plated plate is nothing more that a simple chicken taquito and a humble beef and bean chimichanga. It’s amazing what a little innovative food design can do. 

You better believe I had more than two. Horribly delicious.

As the perfect accompaniment to this meal, we watched UHF, which is streaming on YouTube.  

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, raw veggies and dip

Monday I think I finally went shopping, which I hadn’t done yet, and we had buffalo chicken wraps, which actually had some other kind of frozen chicken, but served with buffalo sauce. I also put out blue cheese dressing, cherry tomatoes, and pepper jack cheese, and possibly some spinach.

I see something green on there, but I forget what it is. Oh, I think shredded lettuce. Also made a big veggie platter, as you can see. 

Gosh, I love wraps. Learning how to wrap them tightly has made a big difference.

Sorry, this is probably a gross picture because it has a bite out of it, but I’m forging ahead. 

I also accidentally bought a cotton candy machine at Aldi for $15, and the kids immediately got to work making the worst cotton candy any of us could ever imagine. 

This particular batch looks like cotton candy jerky. 

Corrie kept at it, and eventually managed to come up with something that actually looked somewhat fluffy and appetizing. So glad I figured out a new way for her to sprinkle sugar around the kitchen! But seriously, I think it was worth $15, and I see some possibilities for cake decorating in the future. Clouds and flames and foam for waves, or whatnot. I haven’t made a good whatnot-themed cake in a while. 

I had a surplus of cucumbers in the house, and the kids were hanging around, wishing they were pickles, instead (the cucumbers), and then one of them asked if they could MAKE pickles. Absolutely! It’s something I’ve been meaning to do forever, so I was thrilled they came up with the idea themselves. 

Having kids is weird. I, at least, am always trying to find the right balance between doing things simply because I want to do them, and doing things I don’t especially enjoy, as a good example for the kids. Which they won’t ever follow unless it actually appears to be appealing, which it won’t be, unless it’s something I actually want to do. Anyway, whether through my example or not, they spontaneously made the leap from wanting pickles to making pickles. Yeah, I’m gonna take credit for that. 

They followed this Bobby Flay recipe , except they made spears instead of chunks. They refrigerated them overnight and realized that, if they put them in jars, they could make LABELS. 

So this is what they made:

and

These kids will go places. Remains to be seen where.

TUESDAY
Hamburgers, chips, veggies and dip

Tuesday I finally decided I was tired of thinking about it, and picked about a hundred peaches. They’re not ripe yet, but they don’t have any green on them, and I live in fear that the tree is going to split if I wait too long. Here is one branch I didn’t get to when I was culling a while back:

There is such a thing as too much fecundity, she said, as her fiftieth birthday drew near, with no sign of, well, anyway. 

I put the peaches in paper bags and scrunched them up so the . . . ripening gas won’t escape, or whatever. I’ve been checking them every day, and I think they are getting riper? I’m going to make peach cobbler and ice cream, to start, and blanch and freeze what we can’t use right away. 

I made burgers mainly so we’d have something to eat pickles with. 

They turned out so good! Sharp taste, very snappy texture. A complete success. I was very impressed. 

Also, the recipe called for three garlic cloves, but the kids don’t know the difference between cloves and heads (they do now); which means they left tons and tons of leftover garlic cloves in the fridge, freshly peeled and neatly bagged. Score!

WEDNESDAY
Pork Spiedies, fries

A real recipe!

Jump to Recipe

Corrie and I made the marinade in the morning, and I cut up the pork and onions and she cut up the peppers. This is a nice marinade with a bright taste, and the fresh mint adds a little interest. That reminds me, I gotta pick a bunch of mint and freeze it for the winter! 

When it was almost supper, I cooked a bunch of spicy french fries, then moved them to one pan and broiled the pork,

and I cooked the peppers in a pan on the stovetop with some salt and pepper. 

We were out of mayonnaise, which is what we usually put on toasted rolls for spiedies; but Sophia found some horseradish sauce, and that was perfect.

It looks like a divinely-elected sandwich, and is, in fact, a very tasty meal. Moe came by to watch a movie with the kids, so that was fun. 

Poor Damien has been traveling a lot this week, covering hearings and whatnot, but I bullied him into looking at the lawn mower in the rain, and he shamed it into working for a bit, so I mowed until the lawn mower rebelled again. But having some of the yard look less abandoned again was a relief. And I did a bunch of weeding and moving stuff around, and counted my pumpkins, and I turned a giant sloppy brush pile into a tidy stack of useful sticks, which is always satisfying. 

THURSDAY
Pizza

Thursday Lucy had a dentist appointment and then we had to check out this consignment store, then Elijah needed a ride to work, and we did back-to-school-shopping, then we got ice cream and dropped Sophia off at work. This photo is notable because all the kids are either smiling or at least making normal faces, which means we were having a VERY NICE DAY INDEED. 

They are nice kids and I like them. 

Pizza for supper. I discovered a pack of forgotten Italian sausages, so I made one HEARTY pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and leftover peppers and onions from the spiedies

and one plain, and one half plain and half rather pretty, with feta (left over from last week’s salad), cherry tomatoes (left over from buffalo chicken wraps), fresh garlic (left over from dill pickles), and basil (from the garden). 

I had promised the kids two plain cheese pizzas, but they had to struggle along with 1.5. We have a ridiculously delicate pizza topping equilibrium hashed out, and usually I can get away with one divergent pizza (with anchovies or something) out of three; but I deviated from the norm 1.5 times this week, and this caused some disgruntlement! So I reminded them that we had just eaten REGULAR ice cream cones, rather than our usual JUNIOR size, and they saw reason. But I had to let them watch Frasier for a while. 

I did finish both mowing and weed whacking the yard, much to my satisfaction. And I tore out the last of the sugar snap peas and prepped the bed for carrot seeds, but I lost the packet! My plan was to start the carrots now and let them stay in the ground over the winter, and then dig them up in early spring before they flower. But I guess the new plan is to complain about how I lost the seeds. Complaining is always in season. 

FRIDAY
Poke bowls

Gonna make some rice and cut up some ahi tuna (which is crazy cheap at Aldi), and I have . . . I don’t know what, bean sprouts, sugar snap peas, crunchy noodles, mango chutney, and salt and pepper cashews. Peaches! Grass clippings. Invisible carrot seeds. An old computer battery. And this lamp, and that’s all I need. 

And that’s it! That was summer vacation. Well, one weekend left, but our big plan is to sort through water bottles, of which we have 936, and go to confession (unrelated). Some kids start school Monday, some Tuesday, and some Wednesday. We’re going to take another stab at visiting Trap Falls on Sunday, because the sun is supposed to pop in for a bit. I’m not thrilled about having to get up early again, but the trade-off is that it’s almost soup season, apple season, and bread season. And complaining season. I can’t wait.

I just told the kids I was heading out, and one said, “Oh, to adoration” and another one said “adoration, yaas queen” so . . . who knows. They’re good kids. And they do make good pickles.