and peace to His people of girth.
Happy Friday! I started off this week determined to eat sensibly and serve vegetables every single day.
That! Did not happen!
Here’s what we had:
SATURDAY
Cuban sandwiches, fries, lemon meringue pie
Saturday, Moe was in town to see some of his friends graduate, and in the evening, we belatedly celebrated his birthday. In the morning, I made a couple of pie crusts, and made them pretty decorative while I chatted on the phone, completely forgetting what happens when you bake meringue on top of a pie. I made one crust with a braided rim and roses and leaves, and the other with overlapping discs. I amazed myself by cutting out a random number of discs, and then discovering I had made exactly the right number!
I always manage to know exactly what’s going on when it matters the least.
I don’t remember what recipe I used for the curd filling, but there is not a lot of variety among recipes, really. I did use duck egg yolks, which are the most wonderfully yellow things in all of creation. Then I made the meringue and piped it over the top, and, as I mentioned, of course it puffed up in the oven like it’s supposed to.
almost completely obscuring the crust. I consoled myself by thinking about the monks who would carve beautiful details even in the backs of pews, because that would be for God alone to see; but the truth is, I also forgot to refrigerate the pie crusts before I blind baked them, so there was less secret, exquisite beauty that gives glory to God, and more just blobby, shapeless pie crust under meringue. Which gives glory to God in its own way, because it’s pie.
I saved out one lemon, cut it in thin slices, and candied it , and left the slices to dry while I went out and did a bit of shopping. Came back and made the Cuban sandwiches. I was running very late, so I just heavily seasoned a boneless pork loin with salt, pepper, and garlic powder and roasted it. Maybe I put some cider vinegar in there, I don’t remember. I let it cool a bit, cut it up, and made them sandwiches: Bread, mustard, swiss cheese, pork, ham, pickles, more cheese, more mustard, bread. I fried them in lots of butter.
We haven’t had cubans for a long time, and they are deeeelicious. Here’s a non-Instagrammable picture of our festive dining room table these days.
Ketchup and ducklings, baby. It’s a good life. (It got even better the next day, because I requested that, as a special mother’s day act of service, they drag the loveseat out onto the side of the road. Nobody took it for several days, and now it’s been rained on three times, but one can’t have everything.)
By dessert time, the candied lemon slices were still pretty sticky (they really need to dry overnight) but oh well. Also, I forgot that I ran out of lemon and candied some lime, but they’re so sweet, I don’t think you could tell the difference.
Poor Moe was too tired to stick around and make us watch a musical, which we were absolutely ready and even enthusiastic to do, but it was nice to see him!
SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, Doritos, Italian ices
Sunday was, of course, mother’s day. We went to Mass and Corrie made me a mother’s day hat out of the prayer card, which I allowed because I think it was an AI image. Take that, robuts!
I got home and ate a donut and then a cinnamon bun and then another donut, and then pursued my heart’s desire, which was something in my garden, I forget what, but I did take this picture of my beautiful compost heap
and THEN, Damien and Corrie and I got the floor joists up for the tree house! They were already screwed onto the tree, but I had finally gotten the right drill bit and washers, so we screwed holes and attached the wood with nice big lag bolts. The next thing to do will be to box it in and add some diagonal supports, and then I will be able to climb up there and work on it, and it should go a lot faster. (Here one must imagine my grandmother muttering, “kenahora, kenahora,” and spitting three times to ward off the evil eye.)
I don’t have a pic of the work we got done, but here is a picture of me and Corrie being absolutely useless while Damien uses power tools.
Well, I guess I’m not in this picture, except in that Corrie let me take a picture of her solely because it was mother’s day.
Nice spot for a tree house, though, right?
We had yummy Italian sandwiches for supper
and the kids gave me excellent, thoughtful presents — a flower pot with a water reservoir, a wooden lazy susan I can use in cake decorating, a glass hummingbird feeder, a copy of one of my favorite movies, Moonstruck; and a Swiffer Wet Jet, which I have been loudly and repeatedly pining for. Lena crocheted me a long garland of beautiful white and gray stars, and Elijah painted me a picture of an old man confounded by ducks. I also got a mug that said it was from my favorite child, which came with a mystery card with messy coloring and strange misspellings, that was signed only with a dog’s paw print. We are still trying to figure out who did this!
They also gave me lots of candy, which I ate immediately. Then we had Italian ices and watched some Daffy Duck cartoons and I went to bed happy and absurdly full of sugar. Another wonderful mother’s day.
MONDAY
Leftovers and potato skins
Monday I kinda had to go shopping, which I hadn’t done over the weekend, but luckily I still had the previous week’s leftovers banked. So we had that, plus stuffed potato skins.
Those terrible frozen potato skins are really good, dang it.
TUESDAY
Salad with chicken, strawberries, feta, almonds
Tuesday morning, the weather was clear, so I got to work on my clothesline. There were four bolts I wasn’t able to unscrew, so I buzzed away at them with the reciprocating saw, then whacked what was left with a sledgehammer, until they succumbed.
Highly satisfying.
I dragged the parts (two U-shaped pipe arrangements, and two long wooden boards) over to the swingset to prop them up while I reassembled them, and that is how I discovered, maybe for the fourth or fifth time, that there are four pipes held down with four bolts each. Last time I counted them, this made twelve bolts total; so I had gone to Home Depot and bought ten. Why? No idea. Sometimes I will spend money, spend money, spend money, spend money, and then suddenly cheap out over two bolts. That is probably what happened.
But of course, if you have been following closely, you will know that even if I had bought the “right”number, that would have brought the total up to twelve, and I really needed sixteen.
So I said a long string of Yosemite Sam things and put my tools away for the day. Good thing I can cut out exactly the right number of pie dough discs without counting them, though.
In my defense, I did manage, with great effort and concentration, to NOT bolt the clothesline together in such a way that it could not be removed from the swingset that was propping it up. I was pathetically proud of that, too.
The rest of the day was chock-a-block full of errands, and I didn’t really leave enough time to roast some chicken for the salad, so I put it (it was bone-in breasts) in the Instant Pot with some salt, pepper, lemon juice, and water, and pressed the “poultry” button. Did it come out delectable? No. But it was fully cooked and tasted faintly of lemon, and it wasn’t dried out, so there you go.
Mixed greens, strawberries, crumbled feta, toasted almond slices, and crunchy fried onions.
Looks like I had mine with ranch dressing. Oh, and I made some leftover hot dog and hamburger buns into okayish croutons. I drizzled them with olive oil and seasoned them heavily with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and just shoved them in a hot oven until they were crunchy. I usually use butter, and I usually toast them slowly in a low oven, but these were fine.
We also had more lemon meringue pie, because I had made two pies for eight people.
WEDNESDAY
Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwiches
Wednesday, the only thing on my calendar is Ascension vigil (Ascension Thursday is still a holy day of obligation in our diocese! One of the few places where Jesus doesn’t obligingly hang around until Sunday), but the only thing I can remember about the actual day is that we were so busy and exhausted, there was no way we were gonna do that. It was raining all day, and I do remember getting a bunch of writing done, so that was good.
For supper, I got out a bunch of cheese, then fried up a bunch of bacon and toasted a bunch of bagels, and kept those warm while I fried a bunch of eggs in some of the bacon fat. Look how tidy they turned out!
I have gotten very good at compensating for how tilted my kitchen is. (These are just chicken eggs from the store. The kids do not like duck eggs.) This is also the moment where I was like, huh, I guess we’re not eating a lot of vegetables this week after all. What with the eggs fried in bacon fat, and the no vegetables.
Maybe I was just super hungry, but I thought these were the greatest sandwiches ever.
Or maybe I just haven’t had bacon in a while.
THURSDAY
Rainbow noodles and cheesecake
Thursday we lurched off to Mass in the morning, and then some kids felt sick and needed to get home, and Irene had a dentist appointment, and I was so confused and off schedule by the time we got back, I completely screwed up the rest of my day. I basically just ate everything I could find, and eventually ejected myself from the house purely so as not to eat the furniture.
I thought some errands would bring me up to the time I needed to pick up Corrie, but they did not. So I ended up going to like eleven different places, including two pharmacies and two thrift stores. I was pretty proud of myself for not buying anything at the thrift stores. I did find two new packages of reusable beeswax food storage covers, and carried them around the store for a while, but then pictured myself constantly finding reusable beeswax food storage covers wadded in random places around the house with dog food and kid hair stuck to them, and that helped me decide that someone else could have them.
I also talked myself into and then out of a citrus juicer which is slightly nicer than the one I have, but not that much nicer. I also took a picture of this item
but was not even tempted to buy it. Looked it up at home and it’s a watermelon cuber. I am glad I did not spend a dollar on that!
Anyway, Damien had to be in Concord all day, and by the time I got home and thought about supper, which was supposed to be buffalo chicken drumsticks, baked potatoes, and peas, it was late enough that the realization that the chicken was still frozen felt pretty insurmountable. Much like that sentence. Go ahead, try to mount it. I’ll watch.
I consulted with the kids, and we settled on noodles with butter, plus a mother’s day cheesecake that nobody had bought, due to man’s inhumanity to man. I was a little bummed that it didn’t sell, because it was a cute cheesecake, and also looked like it was just plain on the outside, and you don’t see the chocolate until you cut it.
Secret chocolate! It looks underbaked in the middle, but that’s just because I’m bad at cutting stuff. Except for rusty bolts. I’m good at that.
FRIDAY
Tuna boats, popcorn
Speaking of cheesecakes, before I go to adoration, I have an order to fill, yay! Three mini chocolate swirl cheesecakes, one mini plain, plus three mini pumpkin pies and one mini apple pie. I’m so curious about what occasion this order is for, but I’ll probably never know. Just gonna make the cheesecakes and pies.
Damien took Corrie to TWO appointments this morning, and this afternoon, he is chaperoning her and Benny at a coding competition. I hope he gets a mug for father’s day! I think he’s earned a mug.
Basic pie crust
Ingredients
- 2-1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
- 1/4 cup water, with an ice cube
Instructions
-
Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.
-
Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.
-
In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.
-
Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.
-
If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.
-
If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!
-
If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.
-
You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.
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Belated Happy Mother’s Day if I did not say it before! Ascension Thursday is still on Thursday for us, too. I read that the Amish take the day off because they believe it is the completion of Christ’s sacrifice, which was very interesting to me. I am excited to be bringing a mixed green salad with strawberries, feta cheese and toasted pecans to the church choir potluck this Sunday – excited to be bringing it because it is easy and good, and that is a win/win right now! Good luck with all the spring projects – your compost looks great (I do the thing where you don’t do anything and eventually you get very nice dirt) and the site for the tree house looks like a lovely place to retreat.
I admire your carpentering skill. That’s something my mother had but which didn’t get passed on to me. And I admire your baking skill. Something my grandmother had but ditto. Have a perfect week!