Happy Friday! Today’s post will be largely about the treehouse I’m building, but with a surprising amount of food. Well, I was surprised, anyway.
Here’s what we had:
SATURDAY
Leftover delite
We stopped at a few yard sales while we were out shopping, and didn’t find much, but then someone was giving away these gorgeous strawberry pots! Terra cotta, or at least some kind of clay, and not plastic.
I have two well-rooted pineapple tops that I may plant in the main opening, and maybe the rest can be hen and chicks or whatever it’s called. Just yesterday I found out you’re supposed to pull off the dry leaves from your succulents as they grow, and WOW is it satisfying.
Shopping turn kid chose Hot Pockets, and why not? I had one, plus leftover Korean beef bowl and rice, and a little pesto pasta for a vegetable.
My mental state was such that I got Corrie a kid’s meal from Wendy’s, and when I saw the toy, I teared up because it was just so beautiful.
Here is the toy:
Well, I guess that would be more my emotional state than my mental state. Unless you mean “mental” like the British use it. Tra la la!
SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches
Sunday after Mass, we were planning to go check out a waterfall that’s nearby that we’ve never seen before, but we were all feeling kind of gross and exhausted an unambitious. So I mixed up a big tank of sugary frozen coffee in the slushy machine and then tackled the treehouse before I lost momentum.
I wanted to start on the floor, but realized I should really install corner posts first, so they could be attached to the inside of the frame, rather than the outside. I had already done the two on the more accessible side, but, due to last week’s knuckleheadery, I had made it nearly impossible for myself to get up topside to do the other two. Damien is much narrower than me, though, so he got up there and attached the remaining two posts.
Even though he doesn’t like heights and had a sinus infection. How lovely on . . . the treehouse are . . . the feet of him . . . who bangs good nails . . . bangs good nails! [sorry, I was briefly in a Baptist choir in high school, and that one stuck].
Then I started laying the floor! First I put down all the long planks that I could, on either side of the tree, and that was so gratifying, because it got easier and easier to BE up there, the more floor I installed.
Then . . . I was not sure what to do.
Wood is straight, but tree is curved?? What do???
After much consideration, and after discarding many insane ideas, I fetched a roll of brown paper and sort of wadded it around the tree, and stapled it in place.
Then I carefully cut around the tree, and noted a bunch of measurements.
Then I pulled up the paper, laid out my wood back in the yard, and re-stapled the paper to the wood, and traced the shape of the tree onto it.
If I’m making this sound efficient and sensible, I’m telling it wrong. Just imagine me getting sweater and sweatier, getting innumerable splinters in my hands and legs, and startling the little forest creatures with my profanities as I repeatedly forgot the [whatever} either back in the yard, or up in a tree, or, if I were up in the tree, at the bottom of the tree.
So clearly all I had to do was cut out the tree shape. I thought long and hard about how I don’t have a jigsaw, and how much of a problem that really was. What I do have is a circular saw and a reciprocating saw, and one of those little Japanese hand saws. So I tried this and that, and it got pretty ugly, but the best technique I hit on was just to make lots and lots of straight cuts into the curve,
and then knock the pieces out, then cut them as smooth as possible with the hand saw.
It was THE WORST. I mean it worked, but it was so terrible. I did as much as I could (which was one board)
before I lost the will to live (which happens around 7 p.m. in these parts), and then I remembered dinner. Happily, earlier in the day, I roasted some chicken breasts, cut up a bunch of basil, and made a balsamic vinegar reduction.
Oh dang, wait, I think I also made cheese. Elijah was over and was interested in learning how to make mozzarella, so we made it together. By which I mean he was shouting instructions to me over the noise of the slushie machine, and well, something got lost in translation, and I dumped the rennet mixture in at the wrong stage, so it immediately turned into lumpy curds, rather than being one single block that needed to be chopped up. I predicted that we’d get cheese, just very grainy cheese, and I was right.
It was like if ricotta tried to turn into mozzarella but gave up halfway through. It tasted fine; it was just grainy! Like I said.
I was also determined not to overboil the balsamic vinegar, because last time I made it, it turned out way too thick. So this time, I overboiled it and it turned out way too thick. I ended up having to gouge it out of the gravy boat and kind of lay it on my sandwich like it was a ganache.
STILL DELICIOUS. Also I was freaking starving by the time I sat down to eat.
MONDAY
Chicken enchilada(?) bowls
Monday I spent a big part of the day putting in the treehouse floor. Some of the curves I had to cut were really quite curvy, and the process was completely ridiculous. I kept making inquiries on Marketplace about cheap jigsaws for sale, and finally made plans to pick up one in the evening on Monday. I figured I would do what I could until then, and then use the actual proper tool, when I got it, to clean up my work.
Not that you could possibly improve on craftsmanship like this.
The good news is, I only had to do it eight times. Anyway, I kept at it and kept at it, and I got all the pieces cut and installed. And it actually looked pretty good! I left some room for the tree to grow.
At some point during the day, I took some chicken leg quarters, pulled off the skins, and seasoned them heavily with . . . I don’t know, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, and chili powder; and then I cooked them slowly in oil in a pan. Then I cut the meat off the bone and put it back in the pan with a bottle of this stuff
because darn it, I miss cilantro. I always think I don’t eat enough leafy greens, but I must, because trying to summer cook without them is really difficult! Bah.
Anyway, I made a pot of rice and dug up some shredded pepper jack cheese and sour cream, and we had quite yummy chicken rice bowls.
Looks like we had beans, too. I guess I put some kidney beans and diced tomatoes in a pot with … I don’t know. Mexican things. They were yummy.
That evening, before picking up Lucy, I went to get that jig saw, and the dude couldn’t find it. I had to laugh, because I always think I’m the only one who does stuff like that! But no jig saw for me, very sad. But honestly the hole I cut was not half bad.
One really cute thing that happened was I had labelled the boards with letters so I would know what order the went it, and I added an arrow so I would know which way was downstream. So I’m working outside, and this bee comes around and, well
That oughta clear up a few things around here.
TUESDAY
Tuesday, I really don’t know what we ate. I do remember going to Home Depot, AGAIN, with this magnificently lucid list
which is written on a piece torn off a box of nails. I stared at the bolts for a really long time before deciding not to get any, which is what usually happens when I got to buy bolts. Then I just got a whole bunch more wood.
And Tuesday I started to work on the railing. This is where my confidence in the whole project really took a nosedive.
The railing is more sturdy than it looks, because it is nailed into the inside of the frame, and the floor is built around it. Buttttt it’s still not as sturdy as I would like, especially when I think about, you know, people who are eleven and maybe have some issues with impulse control. And physics. So I just kind of kept adding more and more reinforcements, and going on a kind of roller coaster of confidence and despair as I went. Which I always enjoy.
Ah! Irene reminded me we had bratwurst on Tuesday. I asked Damien to grill it, and I served it with the pickled peppers and onions I made last week. They got pickled good!
In the evening, I suddenly remembered I had a garden. Yipes! It had been raining off an on, so nothing was too horribly dried out, but it was not happy. So I gave everything a good soaking, and deadheaded a bunch of flowers and did this and that. My carrot patch is absurd. I DID thin it, but not nearly enough, and now we have ten thousand bushy-topped, threadlike carrots all competing for a few square feet of space.
Corrie sees absolutely no problem with this, so I guess there is no problem!
And I picked a bunch of eggplants! I have a few ichiban plants, which make long, thin eggplants, and a bunch of — okay, I forget what they are. They are streaky purple and white, and they’re producing like crazy, which makes me happy.
That night, the kids made s’mores while I stayed inside and melded into my bed.
WEDNESDAY
Pork gyros, stuffed grape leaves, fried eggplant
Wednesday, you’ll never guess, I worked on the treehouse. But first I did a bunch of prep for supper. I really wanted to use the eggplant, and also make some stuffed grape leaves before the grape leaves start to get tough. So obviously it was GYRO TIME. I made a marinade and cut up a pork butt into thin pieces, and set that marinating. Here is that recipe (oh yeah, this is a food post!)
Jump to Recipe
Then I sent Corrie out to pick me a 40 grape leaves and 40 mint leaves. We blanched the grape leaves in salted water, and I decided we’d do cheater grape leaves, with leftover, already-cooked rice. I put some fresh mint a dill and some diced red onion in a pot with a bunch of sumac, salt and pepper, butter, olive oil, and oregano, and warmed that up a bit, and then mixed in the rice. Then Corrie just went ahead and made forty grape leaves!
When she was done, I put them in the slow cooker with water and lemon juice, and let that go. Then I made some yogurt sauce and cut up all the eggplants, salted the slices, and laid them between paper towels to dry out a bit. I also mixed up the dry part of the batter for the eggplant.
I spent a good part of the day building a reinforcing the railing. Then, when it got close to supper time, I started some spicy french fries cooking, and when they were almost done, I took the meat out of the marinade and spread it on a pan, and roasted it.
Then I added the oil and water to the batter mix for the eggplants. Here is my recipe for fried eggplant.
Jump to Recipe
I really love this recipe. It seems mild at first, but the warm spiciness sneaks up on you; and the texture is wonderful. It puffs up and then crisps, and in the time it takes for the outside to get crunchy, the inside (the actual eggplant) practically melts. Aghh, so good.
Most of the eggplant I was cooking was baby eggplant, so it was just penny-sized, and let me tell you, that was a pain in the neck to dredge in batter and drop into oil. I burned the hell out of my fingers several times. WORTH IT.
You give it a little sprinkle with kosher salt while it’s still piping hot, and it’s amazing.
So we had an actual two-course meal: Fried eggplant and stuffed grape leaves with garlic yogurt sauce:
and then gyros, with pork, tomatoes, cucumbers, spicy fries, feta, and more yogurt sauce, hot sauce, and more fresh mint leaves. I did store bought pita because I know my limits! More or less!
I wished, as I always do when I make this meal, that I had set aside some of the marinade before I put the meat in, to use as a dipping sauce for the eggplant. Maybe next time. And I kind of wished I had made the grape leaves with parboiled rice, because they had gotten rather mushy. But these are minor complaints. It was a fantastic meal, and I was very pleased with myself and with Corrie.
At some point during the day, I made some ice cream, because Corrie was having some friends over the next day. I made one batch of coffee ice cream, which is just the sweet cream base (two eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, one cup of milk, two cups of heavy cream) plus two tablespoons of freeze dried instant coffee churned in, plus a third tablespoon stirred in after churning. I also dumped in half a bag of mini chocolate chips.
For the second batch, Corrie asked if I could make purple cow ice cream, which is raspberry with chocolate and white chocolate chunks. I could try! I started off making raspberry ice cream, but didn’t have quite enough raspberries, so I went into the yard and found a very small handful of wild blackberries and some blueberries from our poor neglected bush. Still not quite enough, so I dumped in the last of the strawberry rhubarb compote from last week’s cheesecake. So it was raspberry-blueberry-blackberry-strawberry-rhubarb flavored. I churned it and then added the rest of the mini chocolate chips and half a bag of white chocolate chips. (I pre-freeze any add-ins while the ice cream is churning, so they don’t melt when I add them.)
THURSDAY
Burgers, chips, fruit salad, ice cream cones
Thursday in the morning, I went and got a NEW (to me) SACRAMENT! Anointing of the sick. Surgery is next Thursday, so we’re getting down to it. I like our new pastor a lot, and it turns out he has a DOG. This dog was so incredibly overjoyed to see us, she bounced straight up in the air like a toy on a spring. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, Sonny bounces like that sometimes, but he’s proportioned so oddly, it has a different effect. Anyway, I got anointed, and I got to meet a nice dog, and had a good talk with the pastor, and it was a very good way to start the day.
I went out to assess the treehouse, and decided the railing was about as strong as it was going to be without some major additions, and Clara’s boyfriend is going to come over on Sunday and tell me if it needs any major additions, or I’m just being crazy. I did want to add something to function as a sort of net, to prevent people from accidentally slithering through the railing to their death below.
But also, I truly, ardenty, profoundly did not want to spend any more money on this friggin thing.
So we went to the pumpkin patch, which I fenced in early on to keep the ducks out. Actually, it was really the flower patch on the other side that I was hoping to keep the ducks out of. Pumpkins are pretty hardy even when they’re just little sprouts, but I really had high hopes for this spot. Remember this?
I was imagining a glorious blaze of color as a carpet of brilliant flowers sprung up right outside my bedroom window. Well, in just two short months, with constant attention, that plain bare soil has been transformed into
. . . this.
Not a flower in sight. I think there are two little purple thingies in there somewhere. The rest is all just bullshit that was already growing there, but now it’s growing better because I tore out blackberries and Virginia creepers, and composted it. Hooray! The good news is, there are several tomatoes plants in there that seeded themselves, presumably from the compost, and they’re doing great! Whatcha gonna do. Gardens, man.
Anyway, what I was saying was that I actually put up the fence to keep the ducks out of the flower patch; but since there are clearly not going to be flowers, I figured I might as well use that fencing (which I got on the side of the road anyway). So I started to disentangle it from the pumpkin vines. I had to cut two pumpkins off, which is a bit of a shame, but oh well. Then I found one last pumpkin, and that procedure was a bit more involved.
Poor thing! I ended up gradually bending the wire just enough so we could push the pumpkin out, and it did finally pop out, no episiotomy necessary. We’ll see if it rots or heals. Poor pumpkin. Poor everyone.
I also found Tulip, one of our Pekins who has been disappearing for large swaths of the day and every night. I figured she must have a nest, and I was right. I don’t know how many eggs she has, because she was pretty furious that I found her, and I don’t need any of that action. Ducks, man.
SO ANYWAY, so then I had some fencing! Not quite enough to go all the way around the three sides, but I was able to patch it with some cattle fencing from a failed grape arbor project. I stapled it in place and then pinned it down with all the 1×4’s and leftover bits of 2×4 I could find.
At this point I had come to feel extremely awful about the whole project. All I could think about was children tumbling down out of the sky onto the rocks below, with any survivors being swept downstream and ultimately nibbled to death by ducks.
And that is how I knew it was time to quit for the day. Also I was out of wood.
Corrie’s friends came over and played in the pool until the inevitable rain came, and then Damien cooked burgers, and I made a little fruit salad with watermelon, grapes, and nectarines.
I opened the second jar of refrigerator pickles, and whew, they had just gotten more vicious! I am so pleased with these pickles. I love a good snarly pickle. Woof!
The ice cream was also a big hit.
I didn’t have any because I put chocolate it all of it, but the kids proclaimed the multi-berry one my best ice cream yet, so that was nice!
FRIDAY
??Tuna
This morning I went to see the treehouse, and you know what? That sumbitch is really strong and stable. Maybe I will have to put some posts under two corners to make it stronger, but maybe I won’t. Probably I’ll get some kind of specialized metal reinforcement pieces and bang those on, and that will be that. Moe offered to go to Home Depot for me to get the last little bits of wood I need to secure the wire fence, plus two extra 2×4’s just because (because you never have enough 2×4’s) and then I just need to add a kind of sill to attach the ladder to, and then it will be . . . .done? Maybe? For now?
Well, they’re about to cut my head open, so I guess I’m right up at the end of this project, whether it’s done or not! Tomorrow we are going to Rhode Island to visit my niece and maybe swim in the ocean if we can. Right now I gotta get to adoration, and then I’m going to ask this cute guy with pretty eyes and long legs to take me out to dinner. He’s been hanging around a lot lately, and I think he likes me! Wish me luck.
Marinade for pork gyros
Marinate thinly-sliced meat for several hours, then grill over the coals or broil in the oven. Serve wrapped up in pita with cucumbers, tomatoes, french fries, hot sauce, and yogurt sauce. This marinade is enough for about five pounds of meat.
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4
medium tomatoes
diced and smashed a bit
-
2
onions
grated
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2
Tbsp
oregano (or a large handful of fresh oregano, chopped)
-
1/2
cup
olive oil
-
3/4
cup
lemon juice
-
2
Tbsp
paprika
-
12
cloves
garlic, crushed or minced
-
kosher salt and pepper
Fried eggplant
You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.
-
3
medium
eggplants
-
salt for drying out the eggplant
3 cups flour
-
1
tsp
baking powder
-
1
Tbsp
cumin
-
1
Tbsp
paprika
-
1
Tbsp
red pepper flakes
-
2-1/2
cups
water
-
1
Tbsp
veg oil
-
optional: kosher salt for sprinkling
-
Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture.
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Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming.
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Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.
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Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.
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Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.
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Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.
