Category: What’s for Supper?

What’s for supper? Vol. 436: Not governed by me only

Happy Friday! This was somehow both the fastest and longest week all year. I am going to make a stab at fasting and praying for peace today, especially in Ukraine and Israel, at the Pope’s behest. Don’t forget, you can fast all kinds of ways. It doesn’t have to be like Good Friday; you can fast from sweets, or from TV, or from being a big whiny baby (impossible).  

Also today Elijah is moving out. Our fifth kid to move out. A fine day not to be able to eat one’s feelings, humph.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s artist profile, Our Sunday Visitor magazine is shuttering, as well as several other OSV publications. Of course the Lord will provide, so we are just praying that he provides until he provides, and all will be well. I truly did love writing that art series, and pretty much loved writing my monthly column for them as well, so it’s just a shame. Lots and lots of great writers were there. Although I suppose if we can survive the loss of a picture of a barrel on a sign, we can survive this.

Anyway, this past weekend we saw Benny and Clara in a production of Alice, and they were both great. Here are just two of the roles they played: Clara as the Red Queen, and Benny as Shrunken Alice. 

This is an ensemble that Clara put together with her cousin and a bunch of friends, which is very cool!

SATURDAY
Leftovers and mozzarella sticks? 

On Saturday, two unlikely things happened: One is I found three giant, handmade, high quality pillows with a really neat menagerie pattern for the living room

and the other is that I donated three bags of clothes to the same thrift store. I donated them, I tell you! My usual technique is to sort clothes into bags, then leave them under the dining room table until they get enough macaroni stuck to them, then put them in the back of the minivan and drive around with them for several months until the bag gets stepped on and ripped, and then put them in a second bag and bring them to the thrift store, who politely and reasonably declines; and then I throw them away. BUT NOT THIS TIME. 

The we did the rest of the shopping, and then for supper we had leftovers and, as far as I can recall, mozzarella sticks.

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Sunday I absolutely splurged on ground beef. I remember when ground beef was $1.29 a pound. Now it’s $1.29 to smell it, and if you actually want to buy it and take it home, you have to fax proof of income to the loan officer, and they don’t even give out lollipops anymore. We used to be a proper country, with hamburgers, and lollipops!

But before supper, Damien and I went kayaking! First time this summer. Boy is it hard to do all the things you want to do in the summer. But we went, and it was absolutely lovely. We explored this placid little river for about an hour, surrounded by a chorus of buzzing grasshoppers and the splash of irritated turtles as they turned their backs and fled. 

We paddled until we met a beaver dam on either side, and I did not fall in the water while getting out of the kayak OR while getting in. Absolutely gorgeous and perfect afternoon. And then we got ice cream, just us two grown-ups. 

MONDAY
Pizza

On Monday, Benny and Corrie and I dug up our potatoes. This was kind of an experimental crop, which I invested zero doll hairs in. Just shoved a bunch of sprouting potatoes from the supermarket into the ground in the spring, added plenty of compost, and kept it watered.

Wow, it was fun and exciting to dig them up! I had planted at least three kinds of potatoes, and we really didn’t know what we would find. 

I mean, we found potatoes! It was a very pleasant little treasure hunt. Here’s our haul:

They would have gotten bigger if I had left them in the ground longer, of course, but I was very happy with new potatoes. 

Also on Monday, Corrie started some pork butts dry brining for bo ssam. She is the one who is most excited about continuing to cook, and this is a very popular meal, and quite easy (you just have to start well ahead of time). For this first part, you just mix together a cup of salt and a cup of sugar, rub it all over the pork

and wrap it up and let it brine overnight. The salt draws the moisture out of the meat fibers but then back in again, or something? I don’t know how the magic works, but it works. 

Oh, and we had pizza for supper. One plain, one pepperoni, and one with black and kalamata olives, feta, fresh basil, and fresh garlic. 

Kind of ghastly picture, but it was very yummy pizza. 

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, pineapple; world’s biggest s’mores

Tuesday, we double wrapped a pan with heavy tin foil and started the meat cooking in the early afternoon. It needs five or six hours to cook. When it got close to being done, we made a pot of rice and then Corrie made a little sauce  of brown sugar, salt, and cider vinegar and slathered it on the meat.

This caramelizes on top and gives it an extra sweet and tangy punch and a wonderful crackly crust, with impossibly tender fat underneath. It came out spectacular. 

We got it in the oven later than I meant to, and had to turn up the heat a little higher than usual, so I was afraid it might not be shreddy and moist, but it sure was

I cut up a few pineapples and even though I forgot to buy lettuce to wrap the meat it, it was an excellent meal. If not an excellent photo or presentation.

Here’s the recipe we use, although we do only the most basic parts of it. And now Corrie knows how to make another meal! 

Also on Tuesday, we finally had everyone home in the evening, and it was finally finally time to make the world’s biggest s’mores. I had already made two giant graham crackers, two big slabs of marshmallow, and an absurdly thick giant chocolate bar. It was so much work that I couldn’t quite bring myself to make any plans for how to actually . . . make it into s’mores. Pish tush. 

Also, I was afraid the graham crackers were going to be stale as heck since they were almost a week old, but in fact they got really soft. I put them in the oven for a while to firm them up, and it didn’t help at all. So I just lit the propane fire pit and FORGED AHEAD. 

What I ended up doing is putting the marshmallow on a metal baking rack and toasting it over the fire that way. Which meant I couldn’t really flip it and toast both sides, but I did anyway, and of course I got burnt and sticky and all the dumb things you might expect. After a while I just kinda dumped one graham cracker on Corrie, dropped the chocolate on that, flopped the marshmallow on that, smacked the other graham cracker on that, and then topped it with another pan like a clamshell and held both pans over the fire until I thought maybe it was hot. 

Then I carved it into Big Mac-sized pieces and gave them to the understandably skeptical kids.

Who ate as much as they could and then escaped inside to watch TV.  So, this project was a success in that I finished it! I am trying really hard to finish projects instead of abandoning them, and I did finish it. So there. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork fried rice, frozen egg rolls

Wednesday we had a sort of complicated little outing: First I went to buy an off-brand Instant Pot from some lady on Marketplace, and then we went searching for ANCIENT PETROGLYPHS. They are in Bellows Falls, VT, and it seems like they are being deliberately kept on the DL to avoid a lot of tourist fuss? So I will abide by that! You can find them with a little sleuthing.

Not knowing exactly where they were, and spending a lot of time clambering up and down on the slippery boulders of a gorge with a hydroelectric dam nearby

 

made it all the more exciting when we finally found them!


I think I’m gonna write a whole separate post about this, but it was a wonderful experience, very beautiful and moving, somehow. These petroglyphs were carved probably by Abenaki people, several hundred or maybe a few thousand years ago, and nobody really knows why. A signpost for souls in the afterlife? A family portrait? An elaborate doodle? We just don’t know, except that they are clearly faces, and someone knew what they are — just not us. Real Richard Wilbur vibes:

A lark, because I’d been wrong
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely, 
Not governed by me only. 

Yeah, that’s what it was. 

I was there with only three of the kids, and everyone really enjoyed it. Then we went to the fabled nearby Dari Joy

where the people are friendly and the ice cream cones are enormous. And then we drove home, and then I remembered we were out of milk, and then I remembered we were out of duck food, and by the time we actually got home, it was late o’clock. 

I made some quick fried rice with the leftover pork 

Jump to Recipe

and heated up some egg rolls. And then I took the leftover s’mores, of which there was about 43 pounds, and cut it into squares, wrapped it in tinfoil, and heated it up in the oven until the chocolate was actually melted.

This is, in fact, probably the best way to make giant s’mores: In the oven. But the whole point of s’mores is that you make them over a fire, so that’s why we did it the dumb way that didn’t really work. 

It was still a mess and still kind of overwhelming! And that’s why people don’t make giant s’mores! I left the pan in the kitchen and it made great food for teenagers to pick at while yacking about whatever. And then I bundled up the tinfoil and dumped it all in the garbage, and that felt great. Better than dropping off used clothes, even. 

THURSDAY
One-pan chicken, brussels sprouts, and new potatoes

Thursday I gave all our lovely homegrown potatoes a good scrub. 

I cut up a bunch of brussels sprouts and put them in two big greased sheet pans with the potatoes, then nestled some chicken thighs in among them, and doused it all with what is meant to be a marinade,

Jump to Recipe

but I forgot about making supper until it was too late to marinate anything, so I just splashed it on top and then added extra garlic powder and salt. (This recipe calls for summer squash and zucchini, but obviously you can improvise.) It came out nice and sharp and garlicky.

The potatoes were delightful. The skins were just tissue-paper thin and the insides were tender as heck. Many of them were only bite-sized or smaller, so I left as many whole as I could, and it was a treat. 

Delicious. 

FRIDAY
Fish tacos, tortilla chips

Just batter-fried fish from frozen, shredded cabbage, avocados, I think maybe jalapeños? and salsa and sour cream. I’ll have to look it up. I do have some non-radioactive shrimp in the freezer, so maybe I’ll stir things up a bit (by cooking shrimp).

And this is our last weekend of summer vacation. The kids are at a magic show at the library, and we are going to squeeze in one last playdate on Saturday and an ocean trip on Sunday, and maybe we can get to the pond on Monday. I’m going to plant some cucumbers in the empty potato bed today and see if I can get a quick harvest before the frost comes.

Yesterday, I had the kids buy TV time by picking apples from Marvin

so I guess I’ll be making some apple sauce soon. Still haven’t picked my first round of corn, so I’m looking forward to that. And the grape vine continues to ramble around everywhere, so I added a new little trellis (well, a bendy stick) and it’s going along with it. 

Some day you’ll be able to pick grapes with your teeth while swimming in the pool. Who knew New Hampshire could be so decadent. 

One thing I do feel good about is that I have practiced yoga every single day this month, and almost every day I lifted weights, too. I made myself a motivational sticker chart, and although I haven’t been getting a lot of gold stars in food, I have been getting lots of flowers in yoga, and birds in weights.

It’s not stupid if it works!

This is your periodic reminder that I have an extremely low-key private exercise group on Facebook, where people just check in and note what exercise they have done, aiming for three workouts or more a week, and we encourage each other and share information about workouts we recommend. I’ll probably be starting another thirty-day challenge in September, so if you want to hop on, this would be a good time. 

I just now took this picture:

even though I just took this one of us a couple days ago:

and then off he went. Dang it. Ah well. 

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Basic stir fried rice

This is a very loose recipe, because you can change the ingredients and proportions however you like

Ingredients

  • cooked rice
  • sesame oil (or plain cooking oil)
  • fresh garlic and ginger, minced
  • vegetables, diced or shredded (onion, scallion, peas, bok choy, carrots, sugar snap peas, cabbage, etc.)
  • brown sugar
  • raw or cooked shrimp, or raw or cooked meat (pork, ham, chicken), diced
  • soy sauce
  • oyster sauce
  • fish sauce
  • eggs

Instructions

  1. In a very large pan, heat up a little oil and sauté the ginger and garlic for a few minutes. If you are using raw meat, season it with garlic powder and ginger powder and a little soy sauce, add it to the pan, and cook it through. If you are using shrimp, just throw it in the pan and cook it.

  2. Add in the chopped vegetables and continue cooking until they are cooked through. If you are using cooked meat, add it now.

  3. Add the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until the brown sugar is bubbly and darkened.

  4. Add in the cooked rice and stir until everything is combined.

  5. Add in a lot of oyster sauce, a medium amount of soy sauce, and a little fish sauce, and stir to combine completely.

  6. In a separate pan, scramble the eggs and stir them in. (Some people scramble the eggs directly into the rest of the rice, but I find it difficult to cook the eggs completely this way.)

  7. If you are using cooked shrimp, add it at the end and just heat it through.

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One-pan garlicky chicken with potatoes, summer squash, and zucchini

Ingredients

  • 12 chicken thighs
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1/4 cup cider vinegar
  • 6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
  • 2 tsp ground pepper
  • 1 Tbsp onion powder
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • fresh basil, chopped
  • more salt, garlic powder, and onion powder for sprinkling
  • 4 lbs potatoes, scrubbed and sliced thickly
  • 6 assorted zucchini and summer squash, washed and sliced into discs with the skin on

Instructions

  1. Combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, garlic, garlic powder, onion, powder, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. Marinate the chicken thighs in this mixture for at least half an hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400.

  3. Grease two large baking sheets. Arrange the chicken, potatoes, and vegetables on the sheet with as little overlap as possible.

  4. Sprinkle additional salt, onion powder, and garlic powder on the potatoes and vegetables.

  5. Cook about 40 minutes or until chicken is completely done and potatoes are slightly brown on top.

What’s for supper? Vol. 435: There’s a phost time for everything

Happy Friday! I ASSUME some of you are going to Mass today, har har. We went yesterday for the vigil, and now I can’t even remember why. The plan for this weekend has changed so many times, it’s like the scene in Airplane where the announcer is like, “Flight 209, now arriving at Gate Eight. Gate Nine. Gate Ten . . .” 

 

Coincidentally, I also spent much of this week sweating my head off like Ted Striker landing a plane.

SATURDAY
Leftovers with tater tots

It was Corrie’s shopping turn, and that is a kid who enjoys a thrift shop, so we added that to the shopping routine. One item found and left on the shelf:

No thank you please.

Corrie used her own money to buy a game called “Farting Sheep,” and it’s actually not a completely terrible game. It comes with a whoopee cushion and you can play it without consulting the instructions ten million times. 

While we were doing that, Damien drove Benny into Boston go to the big comic con with her friend. She had a great time, found some cool merch for her obscure fandoms, and MET CATHERINE TATE. Who was so charmed by her sheer Bennyness that she gave her a free autographed photo. 

Benny said she was really nice and called her “darling” several times. Benny told her she liked Donna better than Rose, haha. 

Back home, I was pooped and asked the kids to heat up supper, which was leftovers and tater tots. And you know what?

There’s nothing more delicious than food someone else made while you put your feet up. 

This weekly planned leftover purge has been working really well, at least for me. We just heat up everything that’s still edible, and the Shopping Turn kid gets to choose one frozen food to supplement it, and anything that doesn’t get eaten gets thrown away. I’m way less neurotic about waste than I used to be, but it super duper helps me to have a system, and this system of “you get one last chance and then we throw you away, because that’s the system” is great. 

Speaking of things I’m less neurotic about than I used to be, I gave Lucy her first driving lesson on Saturday evening. 

She did great. This is the seventh kid I’m teaching how to drive, and I hardly even pulled a muscle slamming on imaginary brakes in the passenger side. 

SUNDAY
Pho

You know, I don’t remember what the people at home ate. I did not exactly cover myself with glory on Sunday. It was extremely hot, and the heat makes me feel like things are out of control, and I respond to this by taking control by tackling huge projects, which makes me hotter, etc. etc.

So on Sunday I decided I had no choice but to start digging a pond for the ducks. They have a kiddie pool and of course the stream, but these both freeze over in the winter, so we’re making a little pond in a spot where we can run a horse trough thawer into it, and also easily fill it with a hose and drain it with a pump, either into my vegetable gardens or into the swamp.

Anyway, it was a lot of friggin diggin, and SO hot, and I got absolutely coated with mud and pretty mad about various things, then went inside and had a medium-grade mom tantrum and briefly turned into Zuul. 

 Happily for everyone, Lena had already invited me out for the evening, so I cleaned up and stomped off, and got to see her new apartment, and we tried the new noodle place in town. I have somehow never had pho before. I’m a fan! 

It tasted great, and also had two of my favorite elements: Arriving half-assembled, so you can mess with it as you eat it, and arriving in an absolute basin. 

Then we went to see The Fantastic Four. I have zero knowledge of this franchise and I have a generally low opinion of superhero movies, but I really enjoyed this one. They went to a lot of trouble over the aesthetic, without being too precious about it. The characters were interesting and even showed some development over the course of the movie, and the casting was very solid. I could tell what was going on during the fighting and action sequences. And a few scenes were really wonderful, just gorgeously set up with some real emotional punch. Good stuff! And a very winsome baby, which never hurts. There is some bad language and some fleeting mentions of people being sexy or desirable (Silver Surfer is a woman in this movie), but it’s a really solid family movie for kids who aren’t super sensitive. (It does make a point of calling something “ethical” which is decidedly unethical, but the overall thrust of the plot overrides that.) 

MONDAY
Chicken drumsticks two ways, fruit salad

I had big big plans for writing on Monday, but instead I took Corrie to the doctor because her foot was still hurting from a swing injury last week. Maybe I’m biased, but I think this is the cutest foot x-ray I’ve ever seen.

Look at those little toes. Anyway, happily it looks like just a sprain, so the world’s most fabulous patient

just needs to rest that foot. The x-ray tech recognized us, which is always a sign you’re having a wonderful summer. 

Anyway I was a little rattled and couldn’t seem to get any writing done, so I decided to make some giant marshmallows. I used this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. I had planned to triple it, but ran out of corn syrup, and it was just as well, because a double recipe came very close to overwhelming my standing mixer. I poured it into two casserole dishes and let it set.

Then I roasted a whole bunch of chicken drumsticks, and made two sauces: Honey mustard lemon (as described, plus some pepper), and buffalo (hot sauce, tons of melted butter, and a little sriracha). Very popular main course right now. 

Then I made a kind of weird fruit salad with watermelon, grapes, and something called a crunch melon. Which I bought 100% because I thought the name was funny. (I may start a whole series of reels just cutting up fruit and telling dumb jokes.)

It was . . . fine. It tasted like a rather bland cantaloupe, and it was indeed crunchy, like very crisp cucumbers or I guess an apple. Not something I would seek out again, but now I know!

Now you all know. 

In the evening I went to see what I had actually done when I was digging the duck pond, and I was very gratified to see that it was (a) bigger than I remembered, (b) already filling itself with water from the surrounding marsh, and (c) already beloved by the ducks. 

When it cools off a bit, I’ll dig some more and then put in a pond liner and set up the hose and pump. Yay! It’s really easy to make ducks happy, and I guess that’s why I like them. 

TUESDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, fries

Tuesday, I was like, okay, I didn’t get any writing done Monday, and that’s okay, but today I really really have to get some writing done. So I began by sorting through all my shirts and pants and throwing out half of them and then when I was putting the survivors back, the mop handle I use for a closet rod collapsed, and all my skirts and dresses fell down.

So I was like, oh no, this is terrible! I better make some cheese. 

I made a nice hunk of mozzarella with a gallon of milk (I have this kit), and I discovered I haven’t been heating it up quiiiiite enough in the last stage, and that’s why my last few batches have been kind of grainy. But now that I know better, it comes out much smoother! Yay!

Then I was like, okay, that’s done, and now I really must get some writing done. So I made some giant graham crackers

using this recipe; and I turned my marshmallows out of the pans

and then I started on the giant chocolate bar. Which I don’t have a picture of, because I asked Corrie to make a video of me pouring the melted chocolate into the pan, and now I have a video of a split second of melted chocolate and then a splash and a scream and then nine minutes of footage of the kitchen floor with crying and soothing noises in the background. 

Man, I felt terrible. (I was using a jerry-rigged double boiler, and my hand wobbled and I splashed her with boiling hot water as I pulled the top pot out.) Luckily, we still have Desitin in the house, which is great for burns. And Benny cheered her up by telling her about the various times I burned her when she was little. So she is okay. 

So then I picked some basil from the garden and cooked some chicken burgers. I may be the kind of mother who scalds her kids while trying to launch a cheap TikTok career, but I do serve them homemade cheese with homegrown basil

so it all evens out. 

Perfectly fine meal of caprese chicken burgers and fries 

with a generous side of guilt (not pictured). 

WEDNESDAY
Mexican beef bowls

Wednesday it was Elijah’s turn to make supper! He opted for Mexican Beef Bowls, which everybody loves. 

Jump to Recipe

One of the funny things about this project, where the kids plan and make supper for the family, is finding out which parts of various meals they care about, and which they do not. I serve a lot of meals that have lots of little things in bowls, so people can customize their plates. When I made this meal, I make rice, marinated beef, sauteed peppers, roasted corn, black beans, cilantro, shredded cheese, and sour cream. Elijah opted to add the corn to the meat as it cooked, and just stuck to basic cheese and sour cream for toppings. He would have served corn chips but I forgot to buy any. 

Stupendous. Delicious. I had seconds. 

And that’s everybody! Project Kids Make Supper yielded: Oven fried chicken and mashed potatoes (Corrie); stuffed shells and french bread (Benny); cheese-stuffed potatoes and sloppy joes (Lucy); cuban sandwiches (Irene); chicken shawarma, pita, and tiramisu (Sophia), and now Mexican beef bowls. A howling success, in my view. Sometimes all you have to do is plan something for seven or eight years and then go for it!

THURSDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

On Thursday the heat finally broke, thank goodness. We had a soaking thunderstorm, and while it got hot again afterwards, the air feels so much cleaner and fresher. I did manage to get quite a bit of writing done on Thursday, which makes me suspect I just plain can’t write when it’s hot, which is unfortunate. 

I also got some fruit macerating for ice cream.

I meant to also make the ice cream, but when it got down to it, I thought I would just not. I was following this recipe for peach ice cream. Note that every last single ingredient except for lemon juice is some candy-ass fancy-pants expensive specialty item, which I complained about on Facebook while macerating.

The thing is, I truly understand that good ingredients make better food than mediocre ingredients. I get that. But having a recipe where every last damn item is the Elevated version is somehow tacky. It’s like when you go to someone’s house and all of their furnishing are in good taste, like every last single one, down to the carefully curated curtain pulls. I can’t explain why, but that’s bad taste. 

Anyway, I actually didn’t have enough peaches to make a double recipe, so I added a few nectarines and plums. Then I amused myself by putting all the peels and pits and other kitchen scraps onto a tray and bringing them out to the compost heap, which happens to be behind the pool, which happens to be where the kids were hanging out and brooding over the terrible fate of having to get out of the pool soon so we can get to Mass, and then not even eating supper until afterward, and they were so hungry! but wait! Here comes our mother with a serving tray piled high with snacks for us! Here she comes! But oh noooo, it’s actually just kitchen scraps for the compost heap! Ha ha, if only our mother understood how she looked with that tray, and how devastated we felt when we realized she wasn’t actually coming out with snacks for us!

Heh. heh. heh. heh. heh. If someone had told me how entertaining it would be to see your kids assuming you’re a complete moron and that you have no idea you appear this way in their eyes, I would not have believed you. I don’t even know why it’s so funny. I guess it’s because they’re not really wrong, but I am fifty years old and I just don’t care anymore. 

Oh, anyway, we had spaghetti and meatballs. A very pedestrian recipe, just ground beef, eggs, and basic seasonings, and I baked them in the oven. I omitted the bread crumbs and bulked up the meat with leftover rice and got no complaints. 

Clara had stopped by to pick up Benny and to drop off her car for Damien to work on, and she brought some nice baguettes from work, as you can see. 

FRIDAY
Tuna?

As I said, our plans have shifted many, many times in the last 24 hours. But either tonight or tomorrow, we’re going to see Benny and Clara in Alice In Wonderland, so that will be fun. Clara and her friends founded a little theater troupe, and they’ve put in SO much work making costumes and finding theater space and so on. I’m impressed! 

So I do now have giant marshmallows, two giant graham crackers, and a giant chocolate bar. (I made it by melting six bags of chocolate chips in a double boiler with two scoops of vegetable shortening whisked in to make it smoother and more stable, and then I poured it into a pan lined with parchment paper and put it in the freezer to set.) Obviously the world’s biggest s’mores will be happening at some point before vacation ends. It’s harder than you might imagine, finding time to make the world’s biggest s’mores! Or maybe you can imagine.  I really don’t know what you can imagine. 

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls enough for 6-7 lbs of beef – 1 cup lime juice – 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce – 1/2 cup olive oil – 1 head garlic, crushed – 2 Tbsp cumin – 2 Tbsp chili powder – 1 Tbsp paprika – 2 tsp hot pepper flakes – 1 Tbsp salt – 2 tsp pepper – 1 bunch cilantro, chopped 1) Mix all ingredients together. 2) Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.  

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

  • 1 cup lime juice
  • 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1 head garlic, crushed
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 2 tsp hot pepper flakes
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp pepper
  • 1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.

What’s for supper? Vol. 434: Shawarmageddon

Happy Friday! Hope this finds you well. It finds me listening to Mozart Piano Sonata No. 5 in G and then suddenly AN AD FOR FREAKIER FRIDAY, which is essentially a war crime. Not to mention the Lay’s potato chip ad, which features someone loudly chomping on a chip right into the microphone. WHO WANTS THAT?

Anyway, so, here’s what we had this week. Some pretty good summer meals, a new recipe, and another successful kid-made meal! To wit: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers, onion rings

Saturday is a blur. I vaguely remember angrily cleaning the refrigerator out. Don’t know if I’ve ever cleaned the fridge out without being angry. 

SUNDAY
Parking lot pizza

Sunday we went to Canobie! I got an unexpected royalty check and it was enough to pay for most of the trip, so I was feeling pretty triumphant about that. I was riding the migraine train all weekend, but I medicated and caffeinated myself to the max, and when we got there, Damien gave me his sunglasses, sent the kids away, and put me on an inflated tube, and we floated around the lazy river together until I felt a little more embodied. 

We stayed for seven hours and it was a pretty great day. I have no regrets about having all those babies, but DANG life is easier without babies.

I posted some pics here if you want to take a look. 

We left the park at nine and chose the nearest pizza spot that was still open, which turned out to be the elegantly-situated Salem House of Pizza. 

All your bodily needs, from the lashes of your eyes to the soles of your shoes, catered to in one spot. I was kind of fascinated by “Bread Makery.” If only there were a word for that! We have a local business called “Jenna’s Butcher” and we used to have a “The Barbery.” I feel we should RETVRN to . . . I don’t even know, whatever. Just, everyone, before doing anything, ask me. 

On the other hand, I’m the one who was very excited to have found this very old penny with a rare misprint on it. It says “ONE CENT” backwards!

So I posted about it on Facebook and started thinking about how valuable it might be if it were cleaned up, and maybe it would even pay for a new roof, and I showed it to Damien, and he gently pointed out that it was a regular penny that I was holding upside down. 

Yeah, well. I’m still starting a roof repair fund. So far, I have one cent. 

Anyway, this pizza place closed at 10 and we got there at 9:15, but they were still pretty mad! So most of us skulked outside while the pizzas cooked, but Corrie opted to have a seat inside, and have a chat with her favorite person

and I have to admit, that pizza was frickin delicious. Possibly because it was the freshest possible pizza imaginable, as they essentially pulled it out of the oven and threw it at us. But it was also very late and we had all logged our 10K steps and then some; but it was also just good pizza. We ate it on the car hood and it was fab. 

I fell asleep a few times on the way home. Sadly, I was driving. But I did wake up again right away, and filed the experience away to my “maybe we are getting too old for this kind of thing” folder. 

MONDAY
Salad with chicken, blueberries, almonds

Monday was a bit of a blur, but I did get supper on the table. Roast chicken breast over salad greens, with blueberries, minced red onion, crunchy onions from a can, and sliced almonds (toasted in the microwave). 

This salad is good with feta or blue cheese, but I didn’t buy any. I think I had blue cheese dressing on mine, and it was good. The blueberries are sweet this year. As you can see, we also had watermelon, and it was another massively juicy one. 

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, pickles

Tuesday the new swing I ordered (after the old swings broke mid-swing) arrived, and Corrie put it together herself,

and now she lives on the swing. 

Seriously, I thought she would probably like it, but I did not anticipate she would be on there 23 hours a day. We had a tire swing when we were growing up, and it was The Place, so I get it. I still remember the smell of the rubber tire, the sound of rainwater sloshing around in the bottom, the prickle of the frayed rope, the sway of the ground passing by. Dragging your fingertips over the roots of the tree as you drift through leafy shadows. Ah, summer. 

We had a blessedly easy dinner of grilled ham and cheese, with chips and pickles. 

Last night I dreamt I was in college again, and it was pretty terrible. I was carrying hay-bale-sized rolls of toilet paper upstairs for the whole dorm, and nobody even said thank you, and my friend Dena from elementary school was there, and she didn’t like me anymore.

The dream did not include one of my actual greatest college experiences, which was getting drunk as a skunk at Penuche’s, and then staggering next door to Jesus Grocery and asking for a hot dog, and the polite Pakistani cashier gently explaining they didn’t have hot dogs, but he could make me a chhham and cheese for a dollar twenty-five. Best chhhham and cheese I’ve ever had. But this one was pretty good, too. 

Tuesday evening, Sophia started prepping for her marvelous Kid-Made Meal of the week. First she shopped for and then made tiramisu, following this recipe, and she made the exact same mistake I made last time I made tiramisu, and mixed the egg custard and the cream parts together, rather than having them as separate layers. I was happy to be able to reassure her that it wasn’t a disaster and everyone would love it anyway.

I also showed her how to skin and bone chicken thighs, and she did that and made the marinade and got the chicken marinating for the next day. And cleaned up! 

WEDNESDAY
Shawarma, pita, tiramisu

AND OH WHAT A SHAWARMA IT WAS. Here’s my oven shawarma recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I still hope to use that rotisserie spit I got at my favorite store, but this recipe works great, especially if you give the meat plenty of time to marinate. 

Sophia also made pita, using this recipe. Guys, it was so much better than any pita I’ve ever made. I’m so impressed. Also, her yogurt sauce was better.

Jump to Recipe

Also, the shawarma was better! I don’t know what she did (and when I asked, she said she just followed my recipes!), but it was a completely fantastic meal. 

Served with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, black and kalamata olives. We lost the parsley, but didn’t miss it. 

Amazing. I know shawarma is supposed to be in little bits, but the chicken was so tender, we didn’t bother. 

The tiramisu was also splendid. I didn’t get a picture, because I was too busy arguing with myself that I would rather have tiramisu than get a gold star in food today (yes, I have a sticker chart, and yes, I give myself a gold star if I stick to my calorie goal. And yes, the tiramisu was a good trade). 

THURSDAY
Vietnamese-style meatballs, rice, peas, cherries

New recipe! I ended up using just ground beef, rather than beef and pork; I had lemon zest rather than lime, and I didn’t make the sauce. Still super delicious, very flavorful, with all the good stuff: Fresh garlic and ginger, cilantro, fresh mint, fish sauce, and of course the citrus zest, plus red pepper flakes and scallions. And eggs and panko crumbs, as long as I’m listing all the ingredients. I made a double recipe and ended up with about 75 meatballs, which means I made them smaller than they were supposed to be, but I thought it was a good size. The fish sauce makes them quite salty, so smaller is good. They are baked in the oven, so that’s easy. 

I made rice on the stovetop like an absolute peasant, because I completely forgot about fixing my Instant Pot, which just flashes and beeps and does nothing else. We had just plain peas, which some of my kids are weirdly enthusiastic about, and cherries. 

So kind of an odd but satisfying meal. I’ll probably make the meatballs again, and will probably make the spicy sauce, which calls for peanuts, yum. 

I also started phase 1 of  Project Enormous S’mores, which was homemade graham crackers. I made a triple batch of dough from this recipe, and put it in the fridge to chill

and I was going to make a giant slab of marshmallow, but the recipe was pretty adamant that you don’t want to make homemade marshmallows when it’s humid out, which it sure was. I think I’ll try again on Saturday. Benny is the chief S’mores lover, and she will be out of town on Saturday, so it would be fun to have all the stuff ready for Sunday.

For the giant chocolate bar element, I just keep buying bags of chocolate chips (not all at the same time, because that would be expensive. Instead, I am buying them a few at a time, which is thrifty. In some way), and I’m probably gonna melt them in a double boiler with some Crisco, and then spread that in a pan lined with parchment paper, and put it in the fridge to set. That should work, right? 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Or, as one of my kids used to call it, “pigsnetti.”

What did your kids call spaghetti? Tell me cute things! Right now, I don’t have anyone in my house who mispronounces things in a cute way. I do have a bunch of teenagers who started out saying things like “kway-sa-DILL-a” and “GWACK-a-mole” to be funny, but now it’s just habit and they just say it that way automatically, and some day they’re going to be very embarrassed in front of someone they care about. But that’s not my problem! 

The summer really is wrapping up, and I didn’t do a lot of the things I wanted to, yet. I have to get back to Corrie’s treehouse (which is still just two planks bolted to a tree!), and I haven’t made any progress on the front walkway at all. I honestly wouldn’t feel bad if I just set that project aside for the spring, but I do want to make that treehouse. We are planning one more ocean trip, but man, it went by fast!  So fast. We have a kid starting college in a few weeks, and, sighhhh, also a kid moving out into their first apartment. Yeah, I gotta get that treehouse done. 

Anyway, tell me the cute way your kid says spaghetti. 

5 from 2 votes
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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

5 from 2 votes
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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 433: Psych!

Happy Friday! In haste! In ultra haste! For I gotta do this and that and these and those, and then get a kid to a party and go to adoration. Here’s what we ate this week:

Oh, but first, last Friday Corrie made her first pie dough. She is a giant rhubarb fiend and wanted to make something with it, and everybody should know how to make a pie. 

My pie crust recipe

Jump to Recipe

includes freezing the butter for at least 20 minutes, then grating it into the flour. Which is great work for people who enjoy complaining. 

And then you scrumble it around with your fingers until it’s just barely incorporated, then sprinkle cold water on top and encourage it to become a ball. 

SATURDAY Leftovers and hot pretzels (?) 
Strawberry rhubarb pie with streusel topping

Saturday we had our usual leftovers, and honestly I was pretty sick that night, which leads me to believe we need to be a little careful about how long we keep leftovers around. Duh. 

But anyway, Corrie picked some rhubarb from the garden, washed and cut up a bunch of strawberries, and made the pie filling using this recipe. 

Then she rolled out the pie dough on parchment paper and laid it in the pan, and trimmed the edges

filled the pie shells

and then opted for a streusel topping. She had wanted to make a woven crust, but we ran out of pie dough. So for the streusel topping, we just took a package of yellow cake mix, poured a stick of melted butter on top, and scrunched it into big crumbs, and sprinkled those on top of the fruit filling.

baked ’em and they were great! Very successful. 

and you can trust that she really truly did it herself, because boy did she get mad at me when I tried to help. This is the secret to raising independent children: They get mad at you. 

SUNDAY
Beach day (PBJ for me)

Sunday I was really feeling terrible, so Damien took the kids to Hampton by himself. We’d been planning this beach trip forever, so even though the forecast was for rain, they forged ahead.

Hardly anybody else was there, because honestly the water is pretty dang cold even on a hot day. The kids did eventually go in the water in their swimsuits, because they are New England kids. Then they went to the arcade, and then to McDonalds. Moe sent me this pic of Corrie waiting for her burger, wearing one of her arcade prizes. 

I myself had a PBJ sandwich, which I have once a year or so. Pretty good! 

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps

So all summer I’ve been telling myself I have two big writing projects, and one was due in July and one was due in August, so as long as I paced myself, it would be okay. 
In fact, one was due July 28 and one was due August 1. Also I did not pace myself. So I was not okay. I spent the week writing furiously, and one project turned out really well, and one did not, and also I didn’t finish it. So I am feeling like a giant loser moron, but what are you gonna do. 

On the bright side, everybody likes buffalo chicken wraps. I had mine with buffalo chicken, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, crunchy fried onions, and blue cheese dressing. 

That night, I pitted six pounds of cherries, in preparation for some long-anticipated visitors the next day! 

When I have a lot of cherries to pit, I always start out by putting them on top of a bottle with a narrow neck, and stabbing the pits out with a chopstick.

After a pound or so, I get annoyed with this technique and just start ripping their hearts out with my fingers, which is honestly just as fast. 

I also made two batches of vanilla ice cream. Two eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups of heavy cream, and one cup of milk per batch.

TUESDAY
Smoked pork ribs, cole slaw, grilled corn, chips, cherry berry crisp with homemade ice cream

Tuesday afternoon our guests arrived! My oldest sister, her son, one of her daughters, and her three kids, whom I have never met! Absolutely lovely kids (ages 3, 2, and 3 months) and we had a really wonderful visit.

Damien smoked three racks of pork ribs, I made a bowl of simple cole slaw, and we had chips and watermelon, and corn grilled in the husk. Absolutely scrumptious. 

I never get good pictures of the best foods, because I’m in such a hurry to eat it up. So this is the best pork photo I got, but take my word, it was smoky, spicy, sweet, juicy, and insanely tender. 

I bought something called a black watermelon, which turned out to be just a watermelon with a dark green outside, and inside it was extra juicy and had a kind of vanilla taste? Interesting, not outstanding. The kids had fun watching what happens when you offer watermelon to a duck (mayhem). 

I didn’t get a pic of the cherry-blueberry crisp with ice cream, but it was yummy. I used this recipe, except I omitted the coconut from the topping. I, uh, made a quintuple recipe. 

My nephew, who is a very good sport, especially where goober dogs are concerned, spent the night, and the rest of them stayed in a hotel.

WEDNESDAY
Oven fried chicken, raw vegetables, chips, fruit salad

The next day my visiting family had a complicated day of other things to do and places to be, but we saw them again in the afternoon, this time with the addition of another niece I also haven’t seen in quite a while!

We had oven fried chicken,

Jump to Recipe

raw vegetables, chips, fruit salad (watermelon, strawberry, and mango)

I had been planning mashed potatoes and maybe biscuits, but it was tooooo hot, and a simpler meal was the right call. Nephew spent the night again, and they all left in the morning. 

So at one point I said to my niece (remember, she has three kids aged three and under) that she is doing such a great job, and she is such a natural mother. She said, “Oh, well you are seeing me with lots of adults around me to help” — implying that the way she REALLY is as a mother, when she’s alone with the kids, is not so impressive. 

Hey! Hey mothers!!! You are supposed to have help! That’s supposed to be the normal thing! Mothers are not supposed to be alone with little kids all day long, doing everything themselves without any other adults! I don’t know what can be done about it, and I sure wish I had had some help myself when I was drowning in babyland. But if that’s you, at least you should know that it’s not how it’s supposed to be, and if you’re struggling, it’s because it’s ridiculously hard. Of course it’s so rewarding and we love our kids so much and we have no regrets, but it’s HARD, and doing it mostly by yourself isn’t what’s best for anyone. So there. 

THURSDAY
Sloppy Joes, Psych fries, banana splits

Thursday was the day we had the third installment of Kids Make Supper, and Lucy opted to make the crazy stuffed twice-fried pub potatoes they had on Psych, which they’ve been watching this summer. (Which I have never seen, and which turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining show.) I guess they are called “Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos,” and I haven’t actually seen the episode, but SOMEBODY ELSE WAS MAKING SUPPER, so I was in favor of it. She found the recipe on Reddit, I think. 

Here’s the potatoes with their insides scooped out, stuffed with cheeses:

and I guess you fry them once, and then coat them in something and fry them again?

She forgot to add bacon to the insides, but she did serve them with some kind of peppery sour cream dip. 

She wasn’t sure what to make for the main course, but the general vibe seemed to call for Sloppy Joes. Now, Damien and I both grew up avoiding Sloppy Joes with all our might. It was a cafeteria food that you’d see on the weekly menu and decided to bring a bag lunch that day. But I guess Lucy had it at a friend’s house, and was smitten. So I got a few cans of Manwich Sloppy Joe Sauce (HAD TO GO TO THREE STORES FOR THIS DELICACY) which is, as far as I can tell, ketchup. Anyway she fried up some ground beef and mixed in the sauce, and we had kaiser buns. 

and I had to admit, it was a . . . .well, it was an insane meal, but actually quite tasty!

I still don’t think I would ever seek out a Sloppy Joe, but it’s not terrible that I know the kids like it, and would be happy to eat it for supper again. 

I will be honest, the Psych potato things were kind of underdone, which is an achievement, because of the “twice fried” thing. The concept was there, and they looked good, but the execution was a little off, which is understandable, because it’s an insane recipe. I don’t know if she will make them again, but, hey, KIDS MADE SUPPER. 

We don’t usually have dessert during the week (well, unless we have guests), but I suggested banana splits, just because the rest of the meal seemed so absurdly American. So we had chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, topped with something Aldi was calling “Neapolitan bark.” 

And that was that!

FRIDAY
French toast casserole and eggs? 

We have lots of leftover bread in the house, so this seemed wise. 
OH it’s so late and I have to go! Goodbye! I love you!

5 from 1 vote
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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

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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!

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

5 from 1 vote
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sugar smoked ribs

the proportions are flexible here. You can adjust the sugar rub to make it more or less spicy or sweet. Just pile tons of everything on and give it puh-lenty of time to smoke.

Ingredients

  • rack pork ribs
  • yellow mustard
  • Coke
  • extra brown sugar

For the sugar rub:

  • 1-1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp white pepper

Instructions

  1. Coat the ribs in yellow mustard and cover them with sugar rub mixture

  2. Smoke at 225 for 3 hours

  3. Take ribs out, make a sort of envelope of tin foil and pour Coke and brown sugar over them. close up the envelope.

  4. Return ribs to smoker and cook another 2 hours.

  5. Remove tinfoil and smoke another 45-min.

  6. Finish on grill to give it a char.

5 from 1 vote
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Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

Jump to Recipe

What’s for supper? Vol. 432: S’more licht

Happy Friday! Let’s hop to it! Here’s what we had this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

Just a regular Saturday, chores and leftovers. I will say, first I had to spend fifty years being an undisciplined slob, but I am finally, finally learning the charms of doing little mundane things the same way at the same time every day — just stuff like feeding the animals, watering my garden, lifting weights, saying my prayers — rather than letting everything slide and then scrambling to catch up in a panic. Not that everything is neat and tidy and under control around here. But I guess I’m feeling like I’ve hit my stride a bit, and it’s really nice! 

SUNDAY
Tuna noodle for kids, pub food for grownups

For my birthday back in December, Damien gave me tickets to see the incomparable Samantha Crain, and Sunday was the day! So around noon, we took off, and set up a tent in a campground in the DAR State Forest in Goshen. 

Actually we set up the tent, started driving to the concert, suddenly realized we had set up in the wrong site,

and sheepishly dragged the tent over to the right spot.

And THEN we went to the concert. It was at The Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, and we had a great dinner. I had some kind of tasty pulled chicken sandwich and fries, and then the show was SO GOOD. The photo I took made it look gross, though, so instead, here is a picture of the wall.

Samantha Crain is the greatest. She is just a tremendous song writer, a tremendous musician, a tremendous singer. She rocked pretty hard for the first part of the show,

and then the drummer and bassist left the stage and she switched gears into a more indie mode.

Both halves of the show were great, just banger after banger. And she sang “Elk City” for the encore, which is the first song I ever heard by her, and it just about wrecks me every time. 

I really enjoyed the way The Iron Horse is set up. It’s spacious enough so you don’t feel stifled, but small enough that there aren’t, I don’t think, any bad seats. Acoustics are great, but you also feel like it’s okay to move around and eat your food without being disruptive. 

So then we got back to the campsite and decided to walk down to the lake and look at the stars, maybe catch some Perseids. We did see a lot of stars, and then we heard a weird kind of blowing/screaming noise coming from the trees. We weren’t even sure what animal it was, but it was very clearly saying “GO AWAY OR ME KILL YOU” so we scuttled back to the tent! (Pretty sure it was a buck.)

Then we went to bed, and this is the part where we are fifty years old, and I hadn’t been tent camping in about thirty years, and Damien had never been tent camping before, and we were both like, Boy, we are really lying on the actual GROUND, here. The hard, hard, really, really hard, hard actual ground. We had brought three yoga mats and an extra sleeping bag to lie on, but we had underestimated . . . how necessary beds are, I guess. So not a lot of sleep was gotten. But it was still extremely pleasant to start the day in a cool, breezy tent with leaf shadows drifting back and forth overhead, and birdsong all around.

We had brought a coffee machine and battery pack, but couldn’t get it to work, so I sat in the car like a bleary, smelly princess while Damien packed everything up, and we drove off in search of coffee. Stopped at Shelburne Falls and got coffee and muffins, and Damien and I both felt like if we stayed there a minute longer, some crusty old-timer in bib overalls and crinkly smiling eyes was gonna give us a life lesson whether we wanted it or not, and there was a good chance we would get welcomed right off the premises with garden shears or possibly a falling church tower. Good coffee, though.

Despite the terrible sleep, we both enjoyed it enough that we want to go tent camping again soon! As soon as we get a really good air mattress. 

MONDAY
Cobb salad

Good thing I took pictures of Monday’s meal, because the whole day is a blank to me. We apparently had Cobb salad: Roast chicken in chunks, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, red onion, hard boiled eggs, and avocado in chunks. I substituted shredded cheddar cheese for blue cheese. 

Very popular meal. 

I think I had mine with ranch dressing, but possibly blue cheese dressing. Keep reading for more thrilling details like me not quite remembering what kind of salad dressing I chose!

TUESDAY
Smoked pork shoulder, tater tots, grilled corn

Tuesday Damien had to get up early to do his weekly radio spot, so he started a pork shoulder smoking in the morning. I think he ended up smoking it for six or eight hours, and my dears, it was TREMENDOUS. 

 
Sadly, there is not a recipe for this; he just followed his heart with some kind of sugar spice rub and a spray bottle of cider vinegar. He used charcoal and apple wood chunks and babied this thing all day, and it was SO juicy and tender and packed with spicy, smoky flavor inside, with spicy, sweet, sticky charred crust. Amazing. 

I had mine on a sandwich with red onions and just a tiny bit of BBQ sauce, which I was hesitant to use because I didn’t want to miss the flavor of the meat. 

He grilled a bunch of corn in the husks, and cooked a bunch of tater tots, and this was a VERY popular meal. 

That evening, we made the world’s smallest s’mores: Mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and Teddy Grahams, carefully toasted over a birthday candle. 

Irene came out, saw what we were doing, and goes, “Okay, be honest. How poor ARE we??” Irene has been making me laugh since before she was born. 

But the tiny s’mores party was lots of fun! Clara came by and it was lovely. 

and the s’mores were indeed tiny. 

I don’t even like s’mores, but gosh, and I love my backyard, and I love my family. 

Later in the week when I was at the store, I got normal sized marshmallows, regular graham crackers, and regular chocolate bars, so we can proceed on to normal sized s’mores.

Naturally, the kids are now expecting the next week to feature the world’s biggest s’mores, and there is a very big part of me that wants to pull it off somehow. We did get one of those surprise EBT cards in the mail (even if you don’t qualify for food stamps, they send you a card for summer food expenses if you qualify for free or reduced lunch at school, even if the school your kids go to doesn’t offer lunch anyway, which ours doesn’t!) But the state of the country is such that I kind of want to blow the whole thing on enormous s’mores. Waste, fraud, and abuse s’mores. Abus’mores, if you will. I know there are recipes out there for homemade marshmallow, and a giant graham cracker can’t be too hard to make. Not sure what to do about the giant chocolate. Probably I could just melt a bunch of chocolate into a baking sheet, actually. HMMMM. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork quesadillas, pico de gallo 

The pork shoulder I bought was so big, I knew we would get at least two meals out of it, so meal #2 was pork quesadillas. It turned out only Damien and I and two of the kids actually wanted this. Which is nuts, because it was SCRUMPTIOUS. The melted cheese with the smoky meat was just meltingly delicious. 

As you can see, I made pico de gallo. Diced tomatoes and onions, lots of cilantro, lots of fresh lime juice, some minced jalapeños, and some kosher salt. So good. 

I cut up a whole onion, but only used about 3/4 of it, so I put the rest in a sandwich bag and thought someone could use it later. Then I put the rest of the ingredients in, and then I was like, “Oh look, there was a bag of onion already cut up! I should have just used that instead of cutting up a whole onion.” 

I tell you, life is full of surprises when you spend every day playing hide and seek with your own brain. 

THURSDAY
Stuffed shells and french bread

Thursday I had a million things to do, but it was also the day we had planned for Benny to do her Kids Make Supper turn. Last week, Corrie made oven fried chicken and mashed potatoes; this week, Benny picked stuffed shells and french bread. She did so great! We started off the bread dough in the early afternoon. Here is my recipe

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and let me tell you, when you are watching a novice use one of your recipes, it really brings home how terribly written your recipes are. I guess they are really more suited for people who are used to kind of winging it in the kitchen. Sorry about that! 

Anyway, like I said, she did great anyway. 

Got four nice long loaves rising, and only one of them was shaped really weird, which is about my record, as well. 

Then we started on the stuffed shells, and dang, the way I wrote the recipe was messed up! I fixed it (I hope), so here is that:

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She did use fresh basil instead of dried, which is vastly preferable.

I showed her how to stuff the shells, and then I ran out to pick up Corrie from her friend’s house. I didn’t want to be late, so I didn’t stop for gas, even though the “empty” light was on. Smart! So I get there, and it’s further out in the country than I remembered, so I’m like, hmm, I should get some gas. So I ask the map app where there is a gas station, and it’s even further out in the country. At this point, I’m coasting, and I finally get there, and . . . .there is no gas station. It’s just someone’s house. So I retrace my steps, coasting like CRAZY, but at this point Corrie is in the car, so of course we’re talking about what it might mean to switch bodies with a dog, so I was a little distracted and suddenly realized I was in Gilsum. Which is a very pretty town, but really falls down in the area of having gas stations. 

But it was gorgeous weather, I don’t have a baby, my phone was charged up, and I was just . . . so unbothered. We did actually make it to a gas station in Keene eventually. I guess this isn’t really a story, huh? It’s kind of an anti-story. Ten years ago, something like this would have ended up with lots of crying, several people wetting their pants, and some kind of encounter with law enforcement, if not a murderous deer. But as it was, we just got home late. 

And Benny was just finishing up stuffing the shells! So I cranked up the oven and we baked them for half an hour instead of 45 minutes, and it was absurdly late by the time we ate, but it was very delicious. And she was rightly proud of herself. 

Bread was great. We have a pressurized water sprayer Corrie uses to keep up the humidity levels in her turtle tank, and it’s very useful for putting some moisture into the oven when you’re baking french bread. Check out this lovely little fragile crust on the bread. 

She did so great! The cheese filling was rich and creamy. The other kids are starting to get enthusiastic about their meals, coming up. I’m very happy with this plan. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular old pizza. 

Last Friday, though, I made macarona bil laban and I loved it. I think one of the kids liked it, and a few thought it was okayish, and everyone else had plain noodles. So I probably won’t make it for the family again, but I thought it was so tasty, and it came together in like twelve minutes. 

Most of the recipes I found called for meat, so I just read a bunch and winged it. I cooked a few pounds of farfalle, and browned up a bunch of minced garlic in a lot of butter. I added the garlic butter to the yogurt sauce and stirred in some lime juice, aleppo pepper, and green za’atar, which is kind of a weird combination, but it worked! So I drained the noodles and mixed them up with the yogurt sauce, and then topped the whole thing with the toasted pine nuts (dry toasted in the microwave) and more chopped mint. 

Absolute comfort food. So yummy.

My mother would have adored this dish. I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t really get into experimenting with cooking until after my parents died, because they really would have liked some of these dishes! We did have my father over for dinner shortly before he died, and we had some kind of shrimp scampi, which I remember him loving. You can have a really complicated relationship with someone and still get a lot of pleasure out of cooking them a meal.

Heck, you can get a lot of pleasure out of cooking a meal that a dead person with whom you’ve had a complicated relationship would have enjoyed, for some reason. What do you know about that? Oh death. O life! Mehr licht. S’more licht, if you will. 

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French bread

Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!

I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
  • 5 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive or canola oil
  • 10-12 cups flour
  • butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
  • corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

 

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Stuffed shells

Just a basic recipe. You can add meat to the sauce or spinach to the cheese, or anything that strikes your fancy. Serves about 10.

Ingredients

  • 2 12-oz boxes jumbo shells
  • 2 32-oz tubs ricotta cheese
  • 8 oz grated parmesan cheese
  • 4 cups shredded mozzarella, divided
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 Tbsp dried basil
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 4-5 cups pasta sauce

Instructions

  1. Cook the shells in salted water, drain, and rinse in cool water. Mix them up with a little olive oil so they don't stick together. Or if you will be using them soon, let them stay in the pot of cool water.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix into the ricotta cheese all the seasoning, the beaten eggs, the parmesan, and 3 of the cups of mozzarella, setting aside the rest of the mozzarella.

  3. Spread a little sauce in the bottom of an oven-proof pan or dish. Spoon a few tablespoons of the cheese filling into each shell and lay the stuffed shells close together.

  4. Top with the rest of the pasta sauce, and sprinkled the remaining mozzarella on top of that. Cover loosely with foil and cook for 45 minutes or longer, until it's bubbly. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 431: Not a bad record for this vicinity

Happy Friday! This week, we launched something I’ve been wanting to do for years: Kids Make Supper. That’s the snappiest name I can think of, but the concept is sufficiently thrilling to me. The kids all kinda sorta know how to cook and bake, but I wanted them know how to to plan and make an entire meal for the family. So this week, we started! With Corrie, whose natural habitat is the kitchen. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with French bread pizza

I honestly have no memory of Saturday. I suppose we went shopping. I remember making like three extra stops, but I forget why. 

Oh you know what, we had a great dessert, though, because I planned in advance! We had cherry-blueberry crisp with rhubarb ice cream. 

Now I do remember. On Friday I harvested my first rhubarb from my beloved rhubarb plant, which I put in the ground a few years ago, and whose mother plant is a descendent from a plant the nursery guy’s grandfather brought over on a boat from the old country. 

It never turned red, but it was definitely ripe. I made two batches of rhubarb ice cream more or less following this recipe from Zoë Bakes, except rather than reserving some of the rhubarb mix as a sauce to pour on top, I just folded it in to the ice cream after it came out of the machine. 

I also pitted a bunch of cherries. I had bought something like eight pounds of cherries because they were $2.49 a pound and I was powerless to do otherwise. 

Here’s what your hands look like if you’re having a good July: Garden dirt under your nails, cherry juice on your fingers. 

In retrospect, maybe I should have cleaned my nails before I started pitting cherries, but ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? (P.S. this line expresses one of the dumbest ideas ever. I just want that on the record.) 

So I did those things on Friday night, and then on Saturday afternoon, it was super quick to put together a cherry-blueberry crisp. The last few times I attempted a fruit crisp, it was definitely fruit, but definitely not crisp; so I tried a recipe with oats, and it turned out GREAT. 

The recipe calls for shredded coconut on the topping, but not everyone here likes coconut, so I skipped that. It was perfect as is. Mayyyybe a tiny bit too sweet, but nobody was complaining. The tart rhubarb ice cream really set off the juicy, syrupy fruit, and it was truly everything a summer dessert should be. I was very pleased. 

There’s enough rhubarb left on the plant to make one other thing, but I haven’t decided what, yet. 

I see from my camera roll that we also went to the pond on Saturday! Here is Benny catching a water lily I tossed to her. 

Oh what a life. 

SUNDAY
Grilled pork chops, smoked chicken wings, grilled corn on the cob

Damien is still learning the ropes of his new (to him) grill, which has a charcoal part, a propane part, AND a smoker. AND it’s next to the patio, which is nice! His old grill (the late great Interchangeable Cinder Block Meat Altar Situation) was marooned way off on the other side of the yard under the trees, and it was lonely. 

It’s under a tarp here, but you can see the new location. And see my pretty patio! Lots of stuff blooming, including a bunch of violas that seeded themselves in the cracks between the bricks; and lots about to bloom. 

Sunday we were supposed to go to the ocean, but one kid after another got sick. And each one was sick with a separate thing! Amazing. So we decided to be smart and stay home, and Damien grilled and smoked a bunch of meat and corn in the husk. 

I don’t think I’ve ever had grilled pork chops before. Man, they were delicious. Excellent spicy crust outside, juicy inside. 

For the pork, he made a marinade of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and a few tablespoons of brown sugar, garlic powder, salt an pepper. 
For the chicken wings, he made a sugar rub with lots of cayenne pepper and paprika, and then smoked them for a few hours; then he slathered them with BBQ sauce and grilled them long enough to make them sticky. SO GOOD. 

On Sunday, we also set up the tent Damien got last year for $5. It hadn’t been out of the bag yet, so we had no idea what to expect. 

It’s very nice! Much more spacious on the inside than it looked like it would be, and it’s just a very pleasant design, and does not smell weird or anything. 

It does have a rain fly; we just hadn’t put it on yet in this picture. Damien and I have both been tent camping before, but not together, so we’re going to do that this weekend. 

MONDAY
Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes MADE BY CORRIE

Corrie’s big cooking day! She really did it 90% on her own. I just supervised and clarified, and occasionally demonstrated.

First she made an egg, milk, salt, and pepper mixture for the chicken, and let that soak for a while. 

Several hours later, she peeled a bunch of potatoes, cut them into smaller pieces, and left them in a pot of cool water. Then she preheated the oven and put a stick of butter and a cup of oil in it.

Then she added spices to flour and dredged all the chicken in it

and carefully added the floured chicken, skin side down, to the hot pan of butter and oil. Then she started boiling the potatoes. 

About half an hour later, when it was sufficiently browned on the bottom, she flipped it. 

She did need some help for this part, because we were making so much chicken that you really had to get your whole arm into the hot oven, and it was tricky. 

While the other side of the chicken was cooking, she drained the cooked potatoes (again, I helped with this, because she’s just ten and that was a big pot!) and added milk and butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes, and mashed them.

And then the chicken was done, and she served her meal!

She was very proud of herself, and rightly so. Everything was delicious. And because it was her meal, we had No Vegetable. 

We went to the pond Monday evening, too! Lovely spot, and there was only one other family there, and for some reason they left when it started raining. 

TUESDAY
Koren beef bowl, cucumber salad

Tuesday we somehow had three separate medical appointments that couldn’t be rescheduled, so we divode and conquered. More or less. 

Got home, made a quick and tasty meal of Korean beef bowl

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over rice in the Instant Pot, and a simple cucumber salad. 

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and it was nice. I did take the time to use fresh garlic and ginger, which really pays off. 

This photo was taken on top of the hamper in my bedroom, which leads me to believe I was hiding from my family. 

WEDNESDAY
BLTs, salt and vinegar chips, sharky fruit salad, ice cream pie

A birthday! A birthday for Lucy.  She and Sophia and Irene made a couple of ice cream pies. One was a pineapple, for the TV show Psych (?) and I guess one was Homer 

and because she didn’t want a cake this year, I decided to make the most festive fruit salad I could think of:

I tried to make those banana dolphins, but the bananas were so ripe, the snouts kept falling off. She still liked it, though. 

All the kids got her weird and thoughtful presents and feted her throughout the day, and it was a nice time. 

Happy birthday, my deary dear. 

Wednesday night, we had a little tragedy, though. Bebe the duck never came home with the others. We tromped around in the dark for a while looking for her, but there was no trace. We hoped maybe she just wandered too far and was holing up under some leaves somewhere, but it did not seem likely.  

THURSDAY
Caprese chicken burgers, chips

Thursday we looked again for Bebe, but I guess she’s just gone. Probably a coyote took her. Poor Bebe, she was my favorite. All ducks carry on and make a ruckus for no reason, but Bebe elevated this to incredible levels. She was the loudest, rowdiest, silliest, bossiest, nuttiest duck ever, and I will really miss her!

Here she is, executing a classic Bebe move of wandering off from the flock, yelling at them, getting stuck in some branches, and then falling into the water. 

 

I hope she bit the hell out of whatever caught her. 

So on Thursday, I drove out to Spofford to pick up some SLATE. I am still a brick girl at heart, but gosh, slate is beautiful. 

I am going to use it to pave the area in front of the front door. It’s a similar process to laying bricks for the patio, but it’s a much smaller area, and the pieces of slate are much bigger than bricks, so I’m lying to myself that it’s going to be a simple and fast project. 

While I was gone, Damien and the kids got supper together. My garden is making SO much basil, it’s wonderful. 

I thanked Damien for always being so supportive of my projects, and he said, “I love your projects. Everything you do either increases the property value, or makes it completely unsellable.” And he’s right! Sounds perfect to me. 

I forgot to put the fruit salad away overnight and it’s been incredibly hot in the house all week, so I just fed the leftovers to the ducks. They were understandably slow to warm up to it., but eventually they ate it. The thing about ducks is, eventually they will eat everything. 

FRIDAY
Macarona bil laban 

Something new! I saw a reel of this and it looked tasty. I haven’t settled on a specific recipe yet, but it’s pasta in a garlicky yogurt sauce with fresh mint, with toasted pine nuts on top. It’s often served with spiced ground beef, but I’m just doing the meatless version for today. Prolly gonna make some plain pasta, too, so people have options. 

We had an exciting moment when my daughter texted us about a lost duckling at a local store

but by the time we texted back to say we would take it, Fish and Game had located the rest of the flock and reunited the family. Which is obviously the best outcome, but we’re a little disappointed. But then Damien pointed out that it’s a wild duck and would just fly away when its wings grew in, anyway! Our domesticated ducks are not built to fly, so we don’t have to clip their wings or anything. So, all for the best. Still. Le sigh. That is the other thing about ducks: Ducks come, and ducks go. Le sigh. 

Anyway, I think I’m gonna try digging up my garlic and see if it’s done yet. If it is, I’ll make supper with it! What a joy to cook with home-grown food. 

Also, wish us luck for our camping trip on Sunday! And look at us, trying new things in our old age! I didn’t expect that, but I’m digging it. But yes, we are going to bring a power pack and a coffee machine. Because we are old. 

5 from 1 vote
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Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

 

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Korean Beef Bowl

A very quick and satisfying meal with lots of flavor and only a few ingredients. Serve over rice, with sesame seeds and chopped scallions on the top if you like. You can use garlic powder and powdered ginger, but fresh is better. The proportions are flexible, and you can easily add more of any sauce ingredient at the end of cooking to adjust to your taste.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar (or less if you're not crazy about sweetness)
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 3-4 inches fresh ginger, minced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3-4 lb2 ground beef
  • scallions, chopped, for garnish
  • sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.

  2. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.

  3. Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds. 

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spicy cucumber salad

A spicy, zippy side dish that you can make very quickly. 

Ingredients

  • 3-4 cucumbers, sliced thin (peeling not necessary)
  • 1/4 cup rice vinegar or white vinegar
  • 1+ tsp honey
  • 1 tsp sesame seeds
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1/4 tsp kosher salt

Optional:

red pepper, diced

  • 1/2 red onion diced

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Serve immediately, or chill to serve later (but the longer you leave it, the softer the cukes will get)

What’s for supper? Vol. 430: deal w/ ur own Beans

Happy Friday! This will be the shortest WFS post known to man, because I have had and continue to have SO much to do. But I just had to share something. 

This morning, I woke up, started the coffee, let the dog out, fed the ducks, collected eggs, fed the dog and the cat, cleaned up a mess the cat had made, looked at an oil bill, and then went into the kitchen to take my meds. And here is what I saw:

and I laughed so hard the dog came over to see what was up. DEAL W/ UR OWN BEANS, said the child who cleaned the kitchen last night. And you know what, they were my beans, and I hadn’t dealt with them! I was rushing around and looking for some quick protein for lunch, so I had half a can of beans, and I forgot to recycle the can. It happens that I overheard this child complaining about this last night, and they also has some pretty hard feelings about the way I bought fruit, even though fruit attracts fruit flies.

And that is how it came to pass that a teenager who lives in my house had the inconceivable experience of having to clean up someone else’s mess. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THAT WOULD BE LIKE, CAN YOU????

They don’t realize it now, but I’ve given them a great gift: The chance to feel self-righteous. That really is what makes the world go ’round. I get annoyed that my husband doesn’t turn off lights, and he gets annoyed that I don’t put towels in the laundry. I snap at my kids for leaving ice pop wrappers all over the place, and they roll their eyes at me for not dealing with my own beans. We’re like the island where the entire economy is based on taking in each other’s laundry, except everyone is mad about it. And then the cat throws lentils all over the place, because he’s just trying to do his job. 

The good news is, there’s plenty of summer left! I just asked the kids what they were doing on Sunday, thinking we could do a day trip to the ocean if they were free, and they answered with such hostile suspicion that I decided . . . well obviously we’re going to the ocean. I love the ocean. Maybe they’ll have beans there. 

Anyway, how are you? We had a big, superfun party here last Friday, which is why I didn’t do a WFS that day. In the morning, I went to Millie’s memorial service, and her sister, who is also a tiny, wiry, white-haired, bright-eyed taker of no crap, got up and told a story about the time Millie went to meet her boyfriend’s family and went to cut a pickle, and it flew off the plate and landed right in the grandfather’s lap. I brought a little bouquet with the peonies I had stored in the fridge as buds during peony season, and that was that. Requiescat in pace, my friend. 

Then the party! Lots of family and friends came, Damien grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, smoked chicken thighs,

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and brats, and we had millions of chips and millions of sodas, Benny made square brownies that looked round

and I made 18 cups of Shine, Perishing Republic Jell-o

I also made 15 pounds of this potato salad from Sip and Feast and ate most of it myself. You have to brine it overnight before adding the mayo, and it was a pain in the tuchus, but I gotta say, that was not a bland potato salad, and the texture was great. Would make again. I did add hard-boiled eggs and chopped celery, because I like that.

We had vegetable platters with dip, and tons of watermelon, and people brought fruit salad, a more German-style potato salad, and a lovely tabouli salad. And we had ice cream, and I bought uhhh 10.5 pounds of candy. And we rented the cotton candy machine again! I got sticky all the way up to my armpits, but it was so much fun. Couldn’t find temporary tattoos OR face paint, so I got edible paint meant for cakes, and it certainly does cling to the skin, it certainly does! My sister brought sparkler and fireworks and we had glowsticks and pool time, the little guys enjoyed the sandbox, and maybe best of all, people brought musical instruments.

 

And it didn’t rain! It almost always rains on our July parties, but this day was sunny and breezy, just perfect. A lovely day, including THREE babies. Here’s a bunch of pics on Facebook if you’d like to see. 

 

We dearly missed family that couldn’t make it, but like I said, there’s plenty of summer left. 

Then the Sunday we had leftovers, and then Monday, Damien cooked some food I bought that we didn’t cook; and then Tuesday, we had Aldi pizza. On Wednesday, I shredded up the leftover chicken and made quesadillas, and on Thursday, I went shopping and got ingredients for Italian sandwiches. Which I did not take a picture of, but I did take a picture of the lovely basil I gathered from the garden. 

I have been assiduously pinching off any hint of a blossom, and it’s paying off! Or maybe it’s just a good year for basil. Either way, usually my basil gets all leggy, but this year I have four lovely basil bushes. 

What else is new? I got a haircut. One of the ducks (Faye) died. We saw Superman and the kids liked it but I thought it was meh. The 10.5 pounds of candy are mostly gone, except for a few Tootsie Rolls and seven or eight mini boxes of Dots. 

Today we are having spaghetti and Damien has promised to take the kids to the pond. I have so so so much work to do (I’d been telling myself I had one big project due in July and one in August, which is true; but it turns out one is due July 28 and one is due August 1. 

I shall now go and deal w/my own beans. Adieu. 

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Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups brown sugar
  • .5 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp chili pepper flakes
  • salt and pepper
  • 20 chicken thighs

Instructions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit. 

  2. Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 427: PRODUCE!!!

Happy Friday! If you read closely, you will notice that pizza shows up not once,

not twice,

but three times

this week. The reason for this is that pizza is delicious [winks and says bon apetit]

But there were a few days we managed to escape its saucy and seductive charms, and so the other major theme of the week is FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. That is to say, produce! Because it is spring! And also, I have a little story to tell. 

One afternoon, I was parked along the street, waiting for a kid to come out of school. It was a fine, sunny afternoon, and I had a bunch of other kids in the car, including one who was learning how to read. She saw a delivery truck with letters on the side, and asked, “Mama, what does ‘p-r-o-d-u-c-e’ spell?” So I turned my head to say, in a loud voice so she could hear me in the back of the van, “Produce.” But it happened that a teenage boy was passing by my open window right when I turned my head, so I startled him by inexplicably shouting “PRODUCE!” right in his face. 

He jumped and scurried away, and I laughed pretty hard at this poor kid, and kept on laughing about it as we drove around town picking up kids and dropping them off and doing this and that. 

And then.

We got everything done and were finally headed home, and as I passed through the downtown, you’ll never guess who I saw. Yes, it was that same poor baffled kid whose face I had yelled in half an hour before. So I did the only thing my heart would allow me to do do: I drove up next to him, rolled down the window, and screamed as loud as I could “PRODUCE!!!!!”  

I should be sorry. But I’m not. That poor kid. 

Anyway, we sure did eat a lot of fresh produce this week. Produce!

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and pizza

Okay, no produce on Saturday, but that’s not what Saturdays are for. There were not tons of leftovers, especially since I was setting aside the leftover chicken for Sunday; so we got a couple of Aldi pizzas and all was well. 

But speaking of leftovers: Before I went shopping, I had a little tantrum about how much the car smelled like garbage, so I did a thorough investigation, and it turned out to be garbage. See, last time I was at Millie’s house, her son said he was gonna throw out anything I didn’t want, so I emptied her pantry into a laundry basket, and then I ran out of room, so I emptied the rest into what I thought was a clean trash can. I was planning to bring them to Vincent de Paul, but instead of course I drove around with them in the heat for a week, and guess what? That trash can wasn’t empty! It had garbage at the bottom. Which turned into juice and leaked out all over the back of my car. 

So I got a knife and cut the carpet out, and I have no regrets. I also used baking soda and soap and hot water and bathroom tile cleaner with bleach, and scrubbed the hell out of it, and if you’ve ever done a job like this, you will know that . . .it still smells a little bit like garbage. But less every day. 

Anyway, one thing made me laugh: No disrespect, not even a tiny little bit, but here are some of the foods I found in her pantry:

It’s like she was shopping at some special Old Lady Market that you don’t get admitted to until you’re at least seventy years old. Cheddar cheese soup. CREAM OF SHRIMP. DID YOU EVEN KNOW THIS EXISTED? Bless, as my southern friends would say. 

SUNDAY
Chicken quesadillas, chips

Like I said, on Sunday I used the shredded chicken which was leftover from last week’s “enchilada bowls” to make quesadillas with. I also went to the flower farm and used my mother’s day gift certificate, did a bunch of yard work, made supper, and then sorted all the clothes Corrie dragged out of her room last week, and also, yes, brought the non-garbage-smelling basket of food to Vincent de Paul. so I felt pretty accomplished by bedtime. 

MONDAY
Pasta primavera

Here comes the produce. 

I more or less followed this recipe I found on Reddit “from Sirio Maccioni’s Le Cirque.”  It wants you to blanch the broccoli, zucchini, asparagus (from my garden!!), green beans, peas, and sugar snap peas individually. I can see the sense in this, because vegetables are different densities and take different lengths of time to blanch properly. 

On the other hand, I didn’t wanna. So I just dunked it all in boiling water for three minutes, and then dumped it in ice water, then drained it. 

It truly is a pain in the ass of a recipe, and you end up using four different pots and pans. Truly a dinner for which you will want to bring all your mise en place skills into play. 

But dang, it was delicious.

I had half-and-half instead of heavy cream, so I just made a little flour roux, and that worked fine. The vegetables I blanched together all willy-nilly turned out great. Nothing was overcooked or undercooked, and I had zero regrets. This recipe calls for toasted pine nuts, and that was a very pleasant little subtle addition. 

I think maybe one of the kids ate it, but that’s about what I was expecting. I just have to make this dish every 2-3 years and get it out of my system. 

TUESDAY
Waffles, sausage, eggs, fruit salad

Even though I have started selling duck eggs on the side of the road and sometimes make as much as $4 a week, I still have a surfeit of duck eggs; so I used a bunch of them for homemade waffles. 

Some decent breakfast sausages were on sale, and I cooked those, fried up a bunch of eggs, and made a fruit salad with watermelon, strawberries, grapes, and blueberries. 

A very pleasant meal. The fried eggs are chicken eggs, because that’s what the people want. 

WEDNESDAY
Greek chicken salad, cram

I guess the pasta primavera made me feel like it was the 80’s again, which got me thinking about Greek salad, but I got mixed up with the endless salad bar at Papa Gino’s, and narrowly avoided bringing home sesame seeds, orange jello with mandarins suspended in it, cottage cheese, and rock-hard croutons. 

Instead, I heavily seasoned some chicken breasts with lemon pepper seasoning and garlic salt, roasted that, and cut it up, and served it on salad greens with kalamata olives, feta cheese, and cherry tomatoes. And ranch dressing, because I forgot to get anything else. 

It was fine. You know what would have made it a really nice meal? Some soft, puffy, golden pita bread.

You know what I made instead? Cram. 

You KNOW I’ve made pita bread before. I have no idea what happened this time, but yowza, it was terrible. It was Corrie who said it tasted like cram, and I can’t argue with that. It sure wasn’t lembas cake. 

Anyway, here’s my salad bar and cram dinner. 

It was fine. I’ve had worse. 

THURSDAY
Rubber chicken/pizza

Thursday was pizza #2, because Damien and I went to the NH Press Association dinner and left pizzas at home for the kids. And Damien won TWO awards, first place for Investigative Series and second place for Community Service journalism. I am so proud of him!

They serve the same buffet every year: salad and rolls, butternut squash ravioli, roast potatoes, green beans, and chicken, with some kind of cream cake for dessert. I’m not complaining; I just think it’s kind of funny that someone decided this was the ideal menu and must never be altered. Someone’s grandparents never took them to the Papa Gino’s endless salad bar, and it shows. 

This being a collection of journalists, I was sitting next to someone with a flask of Irish whiskey in his breast pocket, but I settled for a can of ginger ale. This was after two weeks of no sugar, and it absolutely kicked my ass. I fell asleep on the way home and woke up very confused and sick, and went to bring my eggs in from the roadside cooler and one pack was missing! I was so mad that someone would steal my eggs! Who does that?!? Then I realized someone had also left money in the money jar. So, like, someone bought some eggs. This doesn’t happen often, and it took me by surprise. 

The next day I woke up with a terrible ginger ale hangover. All are punish’d.

FRIDAY
French bread pizza

YES, PIZZA. I bought several baguettes and some sauce, and any minute now I’m gonna get up and make a batch of mozzarella, and make pizza with that. Today was the last half day of school for all but one kid, who has one last lingering orphan day on Monday, for some reason. This morning I dropped off the kids and then went to the doctor to see what the heck is wrong with my ankle, because it turns out hoping it will go away by itself for six months is not best practice, even if you ice it at night. 

I got X-RAYS, which I LOVE. I just like seeing my bones. They’re so beautiful! I asked the x-ray tech if I could see them, and he was very pleased to show them to me. He said he thinks bones are beautiful, too, and he just thinks it’s really neat that he can see people’s skeletons, which is how I would hope an x-ray tech would feel. 

As maybe you can see, there is no fracture, hooray! The doctor said probably a sprain that triggered achilles tendinopathy, and I just need to wear a brace for 4-6 weeks, which is fine. She didn’t say “go away, you giant dumb baby, and stop wasting everyone’s time,” which is what I always assume all doctors are going to say. 

Anyway, I picked up the kids and we got home and I basically insisted they watch the dumbest TV show they could think of, because it is summer vacation. I feel like I had something funny to tell you, but I didn’t write it down, so now it’s gone. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 426: You may want to write this down

Happy Friday! I didn’t have anything extra on my calendar this week, and it was sunny every day, so I was able to just . . . do the things I am in charge of, and it was immensely satisfying. 

You know what else is satisfying? Food! Especially when you are hungry! I don’t know if other people have made that connection, or if I just invented it.

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and taquitos

Looks like some bo ssam, spiedies, chicken pie, and pizza pockets, plus of course taquitos. 

Note the peppers! A bona fide vegetable!

The family is not nearly as enthusiastic about Leftover Buffet Saturday as they were when I inaugurated it, but I still absolutely love it as a weekly staple. It saves money (I generally spend less than $10 on Saturday meals), it saves time and mental energy (I always know what’s for supper!), and it doesn’t force me to clean out the fridge once a week, but it sure encourages it. And I have a much easier time throwing out Perfectly Good Food if it’s been given a second chance and still didn’t get eaten. Very Marie Kondo, with a lot fewer nameless ziplock bags of sludge lurking in the back of the fridge. So I’m pretty proud of this new thing I invented: Eating leftovers. Feel free to copy this idea. 

SUNDAY
Omelettes and hash browns

Sunday I did the thing I’ve been threatening to do for weeks now: I cleaned Corrie’s room. First I sent her up to bring down one big bag of trash and as many clothes as she could find, and try to put all the books in one spot. Then she went to a birthday party and I went in and did the fling zone method I invented, and I listened to the first two of “The Fall of the Aztecs” episodes of The Rest Is History. I’m not a big podcast person, just mainly because I’m a late adopter in general, and don’t want to rush into any new fads. But The Rest Is History is FANTASTIC. Incredibly entertaining and compelling episodes about people, places, and events you may never even have thought to wonder about, and all rigorously researched and frequently very funny. Damien often plays it in the car when it’s his turn to bring the kids to school, and it is not exactly PG, but in general I would be comfortable playing it for kids ages 10 and up. 

So that took probably three hours, including removing the old bunk bed and putting a single bed in. Well, first I had to repair the bed, because it was Millie’s old bed (it’s a really pretty white wooden bed with spindles at the head and a sea shell carved on it), and I couldn’t get it out of her house, so I ended up uh sawing it in half. The actual repair was fast, but it took me FOREVER to figure out which piece went where, somehow. (There were four pieces. I’m just. . . not good at some things.) 

I knew this would take all day, so I planned a quick meal: Frozen hash browns and omelettes with your choice of cheese, Canadian bacon, and mushrooms. Nobody picked mushrooms. 

I use about three eggs per omelette, but I speed it up by cracking all the eggs into a bowl and beating them, and then measuring out about half a cup of beaten egg per omelette.

They were not delicate and beautiful, because I was TIRED, but they tasted fine. 

Perfectly fine. I lay down for a while and kept thinking about how tomorrow, I was going to put together a pen for the new ducks, so they wouldn’t keep getting stuck in the stream and need Damien to come get them, but then freak out like lunatics when he does come get them. Eventually I realized I was expending so much mental energy thinking about it, I might as well go ahead and do it.

We have an old trampoline frame, which I put together upside-down and then stretched chicken wire around it and fastened it with zip ties. Easy peasy. By the time they ducks are big enough to jump over the fence, they’ll be big enough to roam freely but still come home at night, and we won’t need the pen. I highly recommend having an old trampoline frame in your yard! You can use it to make an enclosed garden, too. 

MONDAY
Pizza

Monday I planted a ton of flower seeds finally, and I potted a bunch of pansies in hanging buckets from Aldi, and made a little flower area — a garden, I suppose you could call it. This week, you may have noticed, I’m in the business of inventing things that definitely haven’t already existed for millennia — in front of the deck

Daisies and day lilies transplanted from elsewhere in the yard, and clematis seeds in the pot on the left. I feel like I also planted some kind of seeds between the lilies, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see. Life is so exciting when you routinely hide your own actions from your conscious mind. Either way, it won’t matter, because any seedlings I plant will get eaten by rabbits.

But I had fun. I finally got to use my new Japanese weeding sickle I got for Christmas, and dang, that thing is useful in about six different ways. It’s also one of the few tools I put the little plastic sheath back onto when I’m done, because dang, that thing is sharp. (Yes I cut myself.) I’ve also been using my hori hori knife a lot. I really think the Japanese are onto something. 

Monday I also found a NIB electric rotisserie on the side of the road, plus a vinyl countertop in great shape! Corrie also got some kind of wooden shelf thing that she feels will be useful. I don’t know where she gets these garbage-picking ways. Some people are just born pack rats. Probably a recessive gene. 

So, a ROTISSERIE. Just think of the meat we can slowly turn. We can eat like Hobbits! We can eat like Henry VIII! I can make SHAWARMA WITH THAT LAMB I’VE BEEN SAVING IN THE FREEZER. I remember when the kids were little, we would go shopping, and the three exciting things were: Free cookie, lobster tank, and “the chicken ride.” And now we shall have a chicken ride of one’s own. 

I also remember going shopping with my son, who was so incredibly terrible in the store that every time I got back I would tell my husband “I am never taking him out of the house again.” And now he is a children’s librarian. You never know. 

TUESDAY
Musakhan and taboon

On Tuesday, I got some chicken marinating in the morning and measured out the ingredients for bread, wrote a ton, and then did some extensive cleaning out of old flower beds. Then, with the gracious permission of Millie’s family, I dug up a white peony and a purple lupine from her yard and moved them into my yard.

The peony is doing great, as peonies tend to do. The lupine is not super happy about the move, but I think it will pull through. I had bought a bunch of crazy cheap perennials from the local garden club, and added those to this garden, so now it has tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and crocuses in the early spring, and then alliums, speedwell, some asiatic lilies, purple lupines, white and pink peonies, pink dianthus, purple garden phlox, siberian blue irises, and shasta daisies for the late spring/summer. I hadn’t really planned a pink, white, and purple summer garden, but it just worked out that way, and soon it will have a background of goldenrod, so that works out! 

The chicken was mousakhan, or Palestinian chicken. I use this Saveur recipe and I was a little sad because I was a short on sumac, which is an important flavor in this dish, giving it a wonderful sour-bright tang. I subbed in a bunch of lemon pepper seasoning, and it wasn’t quite the same, but not a terrible idea. 

Got home from the afternoon run and made the taboon dough. Here is that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

It has to rise for an hour, so while it was doing that I put the chicken in the oven and did a little more gardening. Then I rolled out the dough and stretched it onto a giant pan and baked it for about 12 minutes.

It was a little bit gummy, to be perfectly honest. I think I rushed mixing the dough. But still, piping hot bread with savory chicken on top, sprinkled with sizzling hot pine nuts and fresh parsley. Pretty, pretty good.

You just tear off what bread you want and then help yourself to chicken, and the juice from the chicken seeps into the bread and it’s pretty great.

I had mine outside. 

And then I went inside and had some more!

WEDNESDAY
Regular tacos, chips and salsa

Wednesday I decided to mow, and gave the pull string thing a mighty yank, and yanked it right out of the lawnmower. So instead of mowing, I tackled the area with the potting table (or, as I absentmindedly called it much to Corrie’s delight, “my plant desk”), where I have just been flinging basically everything yard-related all year. I threw out three bags of rotten crap, tossed some disreputable wood onto the scrap pile, organized my extensive collection of empty flowerpots, dragged a lot of old chickenwire out of the tall grass, and reconfigured the whole thing using that countertop I picked up. 

Pretty swanky! I need to slap something on the underside of the counter to seal the wood and make it last a little longer. There is, in fact, wood sealant in this photo, and it is a thing I may actually do, because it’s June, which is the month when I actually do things. 

Then I quickly made some very boring tacos. I had a “chub” of ground beef — the kind that is wrapped in plastic printed with a photo of meat, which is not as reassuring as they think — and added salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, and cayenne pepper, and we had shredded cheddar, salsa, and sour cream, and tortilla chips. Basic but fine. I was HONGRY. 

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada rice bowls, black beans with spinach

Thursday it suddenly got quite hot. When I get hot, I get angry, and suddenly the things I’ve been ignoring become intolerable, so I often end up doing gross and heavy jobs on the hottest days. Hey, it’s an ethos.

This time, I cleaned out the fire pit, which was all overgrown and kind of foul (SOMEBODY had pulled the old straw off the strawberry bed and just dumped it, and it was rotten and stinky and full of slugs); and then I was so sweaty and grubby I figured I might as well face the six tubs of broken bricks and gravel that I had deserted on the side of the patio when I made the patio uh two years ago and have been avoiding thinking about ever since. 

I thought maybe I could use the sand to fill in some eroded spots in the driveway, which is unfortunately uphill and on the other side of the house. So I did one load, then another, and then another, and then decided, you know, death comes for us all eventually, things fall apart, the driveway will erode, and what can one do, really. Definitely not drag any more of this shit up that hill, I don’t care what Kate Bush says. 

I complained about this problem I had invented until Damien suggested maybe the fire pit could use some gravel and sand, and that happens to be downhill. That man is brilliant. 

I also dragged the old plastic play house out of the blackberries and across the yard to the duck house

and was extremely proud of myself for inventing a system where you could store hay in a special little house that’s sheltered from the rain and conveniently located next to the animals, until a friend pointed out that this what’s commonly known as a “barn,” and I didn’t actually come up with it. Then Damien reminded me of the time when I was pretty, pretty tired and came up with the idea of plastic bowls.

Whatever! I am living life fully over here, enjoying my specially curated grass-adjacent flower area, my outdoor plant desk, and my weather resistant hay house, and if you people keep pushing me, I won’t tell you about the incredibly convenient portable food I once invented, which you can carry with you by, get this, affixing it to a piece of bread. It has lots of protein in it, because it is made of nuts, of all things, that you process in some way. I haven’t worked out the kinks yet, but I am thinking they could be blended up into something almost resembling butter. So it would be spreadable! Wouldn’t that be handy? I bet it would taste good, too. 

(This is a faithful rendition of an idea I actually had one time, when I was, yes, pretty tired, and invented peanut butter. You’re welcome.) 

Anyway, on Thursday I invented chicken enchilada bowls. I took some chicken breasts and seasoned them with Tony Cachere’s seasoning, on the principle that, if it’s orange and sprinkly, it’s probably more or less Mexican or whatever. I browned the chicken slowly in oil in a pan, and then shredded it in the standing mixer. Then I sliced up a ton of onions in the food processor and browned them slowly in the pan that I had cooked the chicken in. Then I mixed the chicken and onions together with a can of red enchilada sauce and put that all in the slow cooker. 

I also made a batch of black beans, and I threw some spinach in there, and left that to cook all day. 

Jump to Recipe

Late afternoon, I made a big pot of rice, and we had rice with the saucy, oniony chicken, beans, shredded cheese, sour cream, and corn chips, with lime wedges. PRETTY GOOD. 

I was pretty pleased with myself for inventing this entirely new dish. As I was writing it up just now, I went to add the new tag “chicken enchilada rice bowls” and discovered that I had already used that same tag.

Do you know what this means? I INVENTED IT TWICE. Science should study me. That’s how good I am. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle casserole 

Sophia volunteered to make dinner and this is what she wants to make, so I am not arguing. 

And that’s my week! Last night I dreamed I had signed a contract for a new book, and I came up with this brilliant plan of taking every essay I had already sold to this publisher, and just billing them for it again. Toward the end of the dream, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this wasn’t how you do it, and then I woke up. 

I tell you, between me and the ducks, there’s just not a lot of brain action around here lately. But it is Friday!

Print

taboon bread

You can make separate pieces, like pita bread, or you can make one giant slab of taboon. This makes enough to easily stretch over a 15x21" sheet pan.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups bread flour
  • 4 packets yeast
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

Print

Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 16-oz cans black beans with liquid
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1-1/2 tsp salt
  • pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Put olive oil pot of Instant Pot. Press "saute" button. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes until onion is soft. Press "cancel."

  2. Add beans with liquid. Add cumin, salt, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Close the lid, close the vent, and press "slow cook."

What’s for supper? Vol. 425: Two pies for Millie

Happy Friday! Before we get to the food, I want to acknowledge the passing of my beautiful friend Millie, age 90.

She had a rough couple of last months, but rallied so much at the end, everyone thought she was getting better. She visited her grandchildren and ate a lobster, and then she died in the night. 

I really loved her, and she loved me. I don’t know if you could say we knew each other deeply, but we felt strangely sympatico and enjoyed each other a lot. Please pray for Millie and her family! 

Okay, Millie would totally agree it’s time to talk about food now. Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

We had tons of leftover chicken because two of my brothers and two of my nephews had been over on Thursday. In fact they came back in the evening after dinner on Saturday, so we had them a total of three nights! I haven’t seen my brother Jake or his kids in years, and it was pretty great. Sonny has literally never been happier. I don’t know what it was, but he feel hysterically in love with Jacob and stayed dialed up to eleven the whole time he was here. They were incredibly good sports about it. 

The cat was not. I guess he felt left out, and sulked in the bathroom much of the time, and only started gracing us with his presence again a few days ago. It’s so funny. When I was growing up, cats were mainly decorative creatures that you didn’t interact with much. I was not prepared to even be aware of this much of the emotional life of animals! 

SUNDAY
Pork spiedies, fries, berry crumble

Sunday of course we all went to Mass, and then after we had some final donuts and the fellers started their long drive home, I got some pork marinating for supper,

Jump to Recipe

then roped the kids into moving some rocks around for me, and I started rearranging the garden in front of the house. This involved excavating and moving a giant granite post and digging up many dozens of day lilies, and I don’t really have a clear plan yet, but I certainly did dig up a lot of day lilies. 

The plan is to make the path diagonal to the door, rather than perpendicular to the house. I thinnnnnk I’m going to build a sort of permanent stone wall/planter under the double windows on the right, and then fill everything in with shade perennials. We do have a lot of rocks. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this.

Supper was spiedies. The pork is cut into chunks and marinated — and if you do this recipe, do try to get fresh mint, because it really makes a difference! — and then you roast or grill that along with a bunch of pepper and onion chunks. 

Actually I made two pans, and roasted the meat in one and the veg in the other, and then combined them. I mention this so you don’t think it’s okay to crowd the pan. 

Then you toast some rolls and spread them with mayo, and pile on the meat and vegetables. 

Ohhh. So good. 

It was ice cream sundaes for dessert, and I got a little offended at how much they wanted for a little bottle of caramel sauce, so I tried that Instant Pot recipe for caramel sauce. You take the labels and tops off the cans of caramel, cover the tops with tinfoil, put them on a trivet, and add water around the cans, halfway up. Then you close the lid and pressure cook for 40 minutes. You’re supposed to do a quick release, but I forgot I was making caramel, so it did a natural release. 

So, the important thing to know here is that one of these cans turned out to be fat free sweetened condensed milk. God alone knows what that could possibly be made of, but I certainly didn’t buy it on purpose. But when I read that you were supposed to take the labels off anyway, I surrendered to my fate and just cooked them both. 

When I took the tinfoil off, it was pretty obvious which was which. 

Or, it was pretty obvious that they were two different kinds of condensed milk. Hmm. 

Anyway, you let them cool for a bit, then add some vanilla and beat it up until it’s smooth. One was a little lumpier than the other and wasn’t getting smooth fast enough with fork beating, so I threw them both in the Kitchen Aid and whisked them together. 

And that was the most delicious caramel I’ve ever eaten. It tasted like Werther’s. I guess probably I’ll be just buying regular sweetened condensed milk, but I’ll definitely make this again. 

Note: When it cools, it gets a little blobby, so if you want caramel that oozes, you should warm it up. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, vegetables and dip

Monday I sat myself down and sternly reminded myself that, harsh and unjust as it may sound, someone who wishes to call herself a writer, and in fact who wishes be paid for writing, must actually write something at some point. So I wiggled and whined and complained and got up to clean a bunch of stuff, but eventually ground out a couple of essays. 

It was Memorial Day and the kids were home, and there was lots of fresh whipped cream left over from the sundaes, so I figured I might as well make dessert with all the berries I got because they were on sale. I can’t find the recipe I used, but I seem to remember I fudged it anyway, and then I got confused with the struesel topping and didn’t use enough flour, and by the time I figured that out, it had already gone pasty, and was not going to be streuselly at all. 

However, you can’t really go wrong with blueberries and strawberries with something sweet baked onto the top. 

It turned out just about every person living in that house had been helping themselves to the big bowl of whipped cream in the fridge, which I can’t complain about because I didn’t tell them not to, and also because I ate about half of it myself, so there was only a little bit of fairly deflated cream left, and it was actually the perfect companion to my hot berry splat

It was splatty and DELICIOUS. Man, I love berry season. 

TUESDAY
Fish tacos, guacamole and chips

Tuesday we had a meeting, and it turned out that Damien and I were not actually needed, so we ended up just chilling in a waiting room for an hour, and it was actually lovely. 

Got home and made some quick guacamole 

Jump to Recipe

and we had fish tacos with batter-fried fish from frozen, sour cream, salsa, guacamole, cilantro, lime wedges, and — not shredded cabbage, because they didn’t have cabbage (#aldistyle), so instead I put out one of those bags of chopped Asian salads, which is mostly cabbage. 

We haven’t had fish tacos for a while, and they were great. 

Didn’t even notice the rogue carrot shreds. 

And yes, I wrote another essay. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken pie with bacon 

Wednesday was the day I found out Millie had died. I had been meaning and meaning and meaning to go see her, but I wasn’t even sure if she was home or at the nursing home, so I called her house and no one answered, so I called the nursing home, and they put me through to her room, but no one picked up. So I figured I would just go. But I didn’t want to come empty handed, so I made a couple of mini pies for her, hoping she’d be well enough to eat them. She loves chicken pie. 

Here’s my chicken pie recipe. It really outrageously savory and tasty. It has bacon, leeks, potatoes, and chicken. (I’ll put my recipe for pie crust below the chicken pie filling recipe.)

Jump to Recipe

I cut out little feathers for the top of the crust, brushed them with duck egg yolk, and baked them up. Very pretty. 

Then I went to the nursing home and they were like, yes, she’s here, no, we can’t find her name, no, she’s not here, we’re sorry, we don’t know. And I got a pretty bad feeling, so I called Millie’s daughter, and that’s when I got the news. She was so apologetic that they hadn’t called, if you can imagine — I’m just the neighbor! — but I think they actually did, and I didn’t pick up because I didn’t recognize the number. 

So, well, I pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and bawled for a while. Then I went to the chapel and said a decade for Millie. I still had time before I had to get the kids, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I mooched around a thrift store and found a Lady and the Unicorn tapestry pillow which I was pretty sure Clara needed, and I was right about that. 

It turned out she was still at work, so I traded her the pillow for a bunch of fresh baguettes, a day-old sourdough loaf, and some pastries. She went with me on the school run and I was pretty glad to have some company. Then we all went home and, well, ate bread steadily until it was supper time. Like it says in the Bible, when you are sad, eat bread, and then pie. I think it’s in Proverbs. 

The pie was gorgeous. 

The potatoes were a tiny bit underdone, though, so I put it back in the oven and finished it up. Man. Really nice crust, too – thin and flaky. 

It didn’t exactly hold together as a solid, but I don’t know if that’s what you want in chicken pie anyway. 

That evening, I was potting some flowers and some of Millie’s children came over with some beautiful handmade items from her house — a quilt, some sets of placemats, and two quilted bags. Lovely. They invited me to come in and pick out anything else I might want. So I went over and it turns out she had an entire room I didn’t know about, and it was absolutely stuffed with every conceivable kind of fabric. I had to laugh because she always talked about how cluttered her house was, and I always said it didn’t seem that cluttered to me; but I guess the whole time, even if she didn’t go in there, she could FEEL that other room. I know she had plans for all of that fabric, too. Quilts, bags, clothes for her grandkids, clothes for her grandkids’ dolls, and so on and so on. I have never met a more hardworking person in my life. 

Really wish I had gone to see her one day sooner. I really do. If there is someone you have been meaning to visit, please go ahead and do it now!

THURSDAY
Bo ssam, rice, steamed broccoli, pickled carrots and radishes

On Wednesday, I got a hunk of pork brining for bo ssam. On Thursday morning, I took a look at the schedule and realized it was going to be a DOOZY, so I started the pork cooking in the Instant Pot, rather than in a low oven. I also threw a bunch of carrots and radishes in the food processor and started them quick pickling. 

Then I duct taped myself to my computer and wrote another essay. Also got the kids to Mass (Ascension Thursday is still on Thursday in our diocese!), took a kid to a meeting at the school she’s transferring to, got cash for a field trip, went back to Millie’s house and got a dresser, and picked up the kids, and we had a schedule complication where a kid had to be at a place and she was okay with being early but not THAT early, so we launched Operation Kill Time Without Spending Money, and lurked about at the park for a while. I did lose Corrie, because of course I did, but then we found her, and got home. 

My friends, that house smelled of FEET. Very bad feet, like malevolent. Feet that want you dead and damned. I was kind of baffled, because the windows are open and yes, we have teenagers, but we also had teenagers yesterday and it didn’t smell like this yesterday. So I did some sniff-sleuthing, and figured it out. 

It was the pickled radishes. 

I have made pickled radishes before! They just smelled like vinegar! I have no idea what happened here, but BLURGH. 

I mean, yes, I ate them. In the car, on the way to the art gallery, because goodness knows it didn’t already smell bad enough in my car already. 

Also I had two hampers full of canned goods from Millie’s pantry, because I am gonna bring them to Vincent de Paul, but first I have to make sure they’re not eleven years old. 

Oh, so the bossam was actually not that great. It came out of the IP kinda dry and tough, and I was a little low on brown sugar, so when I put the last little topping on and put it in the oven to glaze up, it was a little lackluster

and I mean that literally. It usually comes out of the oven absolutely GLEAMING. And I forgot to get lettuce to wrap the meat and wrice in. But it was fine. 

Oh, I forgot to link to the recipe. Here it is. I don’t usually make the extra sauce; I just do the salt and sugar brining, and then the brown sugar-cider vinegar-salt thing for the top. And usually it turns out great! 

Poor Damien has been driving around all week and went straight from Concord to the court house in Keene to the art show. Anyway, Lucy’s work was extremely cool, as usual. 

 

Blessedly, Sophia took the other kids to see the art show after they ate, and stayed to bring Lucy home afterward, because Damien and I were just about deconstructed with exhaustion. Damien’s been doing a million extra things this week — getting the pool into shape, performing minor surgery on one of the ducks, fixing the lawn mower, and so on. And just cheerfully agreed to figure out how to move the hose spigot to the outside of the house, so I don’t have to go in the scary basement. 

The baby ducks have been spending their whole day outdoors this week, and only coming inside for the night. They get along great with the big ducks! Coin immediately recognized them as Guys He Is In Charge Of, and busily herded them toward the pen where the food is. So I have no worries that they’ll do fine when they start spending their nights in the duck house. They need to grow some more grownup feathers, so they stay warm and dry enough. 

They still pile themselves on top of each other all the time, which cracks me up. They have NO concept of personal space, and basically live on top of each other as often as they can, despite having an acre of land to roam around on; but they are also apparently completely oblivious of each other. 

I am so very fond of these dumb, dumb creatures. We don’t know yet if they’re girls or boys, though. If there is one boy, that will be fine, in proportion to the number of females we have — but if there are two or more boys, we’re gonna have to figure some things out! 

Right now, Shaq and Tulip (the pekins) are still yeeping, and only Zippy has learned how to quack. Hilarious. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Today, I’m gonna go back to Millie’s house and get her bed, which feels A LITTLE WEIRD, but it’s a beautiful little carved wooden bed, painted white, and Corrie really needs a bed. Millie would be so absolutely delighted to know that she’s getting it. 

And we shall have spaghetti for supper. One of the kids mentioned that we are having spaghetti a lot lately. And she is right! We are. 

5 from 1 vote
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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

5 from 1 vote
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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup veg or olive oil
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup red or white wine vinegar
  • 4 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup fresh mint, chopped
  • 8-10 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 4-5 lbs boneless pork, cubed
  • peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, cut into chunks

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

    Mix up with cubed pork, cover, and marinate for several hours or overnight. 

    Best cooked over hot coals on the grill on skewers with vegetables. Can also spread in a shallow pan with veg and broil under a hot broiler.

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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Rebecca's chicken bacon pie

Ingredients

  • double recipe of pie crust
  • 1 pound bacon, diced
  • 4 ribs celery, diced OR one big bunch of leeks, diced
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 bunch thyme, finely chopped
  • 3 chicken breasts, diced
  • 2-3 potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 6 Tbsp butter
  • 6 Tbsp flour
  • 3 cups concentrated chicken broth (I use almost double the amount of bouillon to make this)
  • 2 Tbsp pepper
  • egg yolk for brushing on top crust

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425.

  2. In a large pan, cook the bacon pieces until they are browned. Take the cooked bacon out and pour off most of the grease.

  3. Add the onion and celery to the remaining bacon grease and cook, stirring, until soft. Return the bacon to the pan.

  4. Add the thyme, pepper, and butter and cook until butter is melted. Add the flour and whisk, cooking for another few minutes.

  5. Whisk in the chicken broth and continue cooking for a few more minutes until it thickens up. Stir in the chicken and potato and keep warm, stirring occasionally, until you're ready to use it.

  6. Pour filling into bottom crust, cover with top crust, brush with beaten egg. Bake, uncovered, for about an hour. If it is browning too quickly, cover loosely with tin foil.

5 from 1 vote
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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

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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!

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

5 from 1 vote
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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

For the brine (make double if pickling both carrots and cukes)

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved. 

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.