Category: What’s for Supper?

What’s for supper? Vol. 416: San Salami

Happy Friday! I went HOMEMAKER BERSERK this week. I know it’s Lent, but I can’t help it. It’s spring, there are a ton of feast days and birthdays, and I’m just being muscled around helplessly by the general optimism in the air like a mouse by a cat. Look, if you didn’t like that sentence, you can have your money back.

Last Friday I collected the last of the sap from the maple trees, tromped around in our tiny woods and collected a ton of dead branches, and started boiling sap. 

And I do mean started. I was using Damien’s little wood stove that he used to have in his “office” (a converted ice fishing shack), and I guess it would work to heat up a small, enclosed space, but it did not do a great job boiling sap.

I sat out there for over three hours feeding dry wood into the stove, and I never got the sap to boil. (I know it has a large surface area, which makes it slower to boil, but that’s the point: You’re trying to evaporate as much as possible, so that’s why it’s in a pan instead of a pot! I did cover it until it started to steam.)

It was pretty nice out there, anyway, but I was a little disappointed. I packed the remaining sap into some snow and put the batch I had heated into the fridge. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers?

Saturday Damien and the girls were still in NYC, so I was pretty busy doing chores. I actually went a little crazy (by which I mean I attempted to reach levels of cleanliness that other people consider a baseline) and took apart the recycling bins and scrubbed them out, scrubbed the wall and floor in the kitchen where they sit, and also took two large baskets of rusty ice skates to the dump. I had put them on the side of the road in the fall when we tore down the porch, but astonishingly, nobody wanted two large baskets of rusty ice skates, and while I was working on admitting this to myself, it snowed and kept on snowing, soooo they’ve been frozen in place until this past week. Phew, that felt good. 

On Saturday the door to the duck house fell off. We knew it was going to happen eventually, so that was a bit of a relief, too. But I forgot to buy bigger hinges, so we had to just sort of barricade the door back on in the evening

creating the impression that we are terrified of ducks. Which is not completely off base. 

SUNDAY
Chicken Caesar salad

Sunday after Mass, I took Benny and Corrie to the second largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the state, which was, well, it’s a small state. It was a cute parade, and it even stopped raining for most of it. 

Then I made my second attempt to boil sap, this time on the propane fire pit on the patio. This was equally unsuccessful, and then I ran out of propane anyway, and it started raining again, so I put the sap back in the fridge again, and worried about the outdoor sap buckets because it was getting pretty warm and some of the sap was getting pretty old. 

However, we got an egg! Our first duck egg of the year. They started laying MUCH sooner last year, but who knows why a duck does what she does. Definitely not the ducks.

First egg was a doozy:

It was a double-yolker, and I used it to make caesar salad dressing.

Jump to Recipe

I roasted some chicken breast and grated some parmesan cheese, and made a bunch of croutons with stale bread cubes toasted with melted butter, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. 

A fine meal. That dressing will wake you up!

MONDAY
St. Patrick’s Day and Syrup Day!

Monday was actual St. Patrick’s Day. We decided to do corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes this year, rather than the full breakfast for dinner we do sometimes. This meal is more Irish American than Irish Irish, but so is St. Patrick’s Day, so there you go. (Apparently in Ireland, it was common to have cabbage with bacon, and the corned beef was for export, I think? But when they came to America, the Jews had lots of tasty corned beef brisket for cheap, so they went with it. Likely the Irish immigrants were eating imported Irish beef. 

I, for my part, decided to do this:

This is me wanting desperately to boil my sap, but also not wanting my newly-scrubbed kitchen to get all sappy. People will fight me and say that it’s not sap that condenses on the walls and runs down in light brown rivulets; what’s in the air is water vapor, and what I’m seeing is rivulets of my own kitchen filth. And they’re probably right! but either way, I didn’t want to see it; so I put up plastic and set a fan in front of the window and got to berlin’.

Actually first I strained the sap through some cheesecloth, to get the bugs and scraps of bark and whatnot out. Here you can see how clear the fresh sap is. It looks just like water.

And here is the bucket I was worried about:

If you are serious about syrup, you will not boil old, cloudy sap. It’s not dangerous (although the cloudiness is caused by bacteria); it’s just not gonna taste right. Some people will mix a little old sap in with new sap, and that masks the flavor. I decided to hang onto it and boil it separately, to see what happened. 

So here is the good, clear sap, after about eight hours of boiling. You just boil and boil and boil it, and keep adding more sap in as it evaporates and makes space:

Here is the finished syrup:

Lovely and absolutely delicious. It thickened up as it cooled. The dark spots are just coagulated syrup, which serious people strain out, but I do not. 

Then I boiled the bad sap up (I only had about five gallons, so it only took about three hours), and it did thicken up and get sweet, but has a faint, I don’t know, library paste taste to it? I am going to use it to make sticky maple walnut buns, I think. 

I didn’t get a good pic of the final syrup, because it was dark out by that time. But I decanted it into six jars, four for the older kids, one for us, and one for Millie, about four ounces each; and then about six ounces of second-rate syrup in a big jar. It needs to be refrigerated, because I didn’t do the whole sterile canning process. 

SATISFYING. So satisfying, altogether. I frickin did it. From tree to jug to bucket to pan to jar. I will probably make waffles this weekend for the nice syrup. Or, it’s, sigh, supposed to snow today and tomorrow, so maybe we will do sugar on snow. 

ANYWAY, I eventually got around to making dinner, and didn’t want to give up the stove space, so I made it in the oven. I just hunked the meat, five pounds of red potatoes, three pounds of carrots, and one cabbage in wedges, into a giant pan with some water, covered it loosely with foil, and cooked it at like 400 for about an hour and a half, which is not long enough, but corned beef is corned beef. 

There is plenty of leftover meat, so I will probably make Reubens this weekend.

TUESDAY
Chicken spinach quesadillas, chips and salsa

On Tuesday, I decided to prep Wednesday’s dessert. Wednesday was St. Joseph’s Day, and St. Joseph is our family’s patron, and I love him, and wish to cook and bake for him (us).

I decided to try a new-to-me recipe for Zeppole di San Giuseppe from Sip and Feast, a site which has given me so many great recipes. I remember the first time I made a choux pastry (this is before I ever saw The Great British Baking Show), and I was sure I had messed it up, because it’s so rubbery. 

But that’s how it’s supposed to look! I’m very glad to know you can make this ahead of time. I put it in a ziplock bag and tossed it in the fridge. 

Then I made the vanilla custard, and I used duck eggs, which are so rich and bright. 

Covered and refirgerated that, too. Duck eggs are big, and the yolks are proportionally bigger compared to the whites, so you can easily use two ducks for three large chicken eggs. 

Zeppole, if you are wondering too, is probably ultimately from the Latin “zippulae,” a little treat. There is a legend that, in Egypt, Joseph supported the family by selling nice little pancakes. There’s also a theory that “zeppole” comes from “zeppa,” meaning “stump,” or wedge of wood, and Joseph, carpenter, I dunno. Or possibly from “serpula,” like a coiled snake, and you make these pastries in a coiled pattern. I actually kind of love how etymology is often just a bunch of educated guesses, because people are weird and go wandering around the world making pancakes as they go, and talking about it to people who may or may not speak the same language. 

We were having chicken quesadillas for supper, and I made the chicken thighs in the Instant Pot. Just threw them in with some water and pressed the “poultry” button. When the meat was cooked, I drained and shredded it and added cumin, paprika, chili powder, and salt. 

I had my quesadilla with chicken, cheddar, and spinach. 

You can see how I was rushing – the cheese is barely melted! But I was starving, so they tasted great. Do you know, I had my first quesadilla when I was over twenty years old. I remember saying, “What’s THAT?” in a loud, obnoxious voice. It was guacamole, and I thought it looked horrible.  I hate to think what would have happened if I had been hanging around Abu Simbel and this bearded guy with a cute baby tried to sell me some pancakes. I would have been so rude. 

WEDNESDAY
St. Joseph’s Day!

The feast day began with three dentist appointments. We have been going to this dentist for something like eighteen years and I love her to pieces. I think it’s so smart to put a fun-house mirror in the waiting room. The kids find it very entertaining, but nobody has to touch it with their grubby hands. 

When we got back, Benny and Corrie helped me pipe the zeppole. 

The recipe says: “Pipe 3-inch circles in two layers, starting from the inside on the first layer. Leave a hole in the top of the second layer for the pastry cream. Make sure to leave at least 3 inches of room between each because they will expand during baking.” We made ours a little too small, but that just meant slightly daintier zeppole, and more of them!

While the zeppole were baking, the kids went to play outside WITHOUT JACKETS, because it is SPRING, and I got out the cheese-making kit Lena gave me for Christmas. 

I was a little nervous about the milk. It doesn’t have to be fancy organic milk or anything, but it’s not supposed to be ultrapasteurized, which is when they bring the milk to a higher temp than just for pasteurizing. I had one gallon of Aldi whole milk and one of Hannaford, and they just said “pasteurized.” They both turned out to be fine. 

And cheese-making turns out to be easy! There are a lot of steps, but nothing difficult. You just need to pay attention with the timer and the thermometer. Basically you heat up some milk, add some rennet (a tablet dissolved in water) and some citric acid at some point, I forget when; heat it up some more, and then let it sit. While it’s sitting, it magically separates into curds and whey!

Then you cut up the curds  

and slowly stir it while heating it again. 

drain the whey off

and heat and drain the curds it a few more times. I did it in the microwave, but you can also use a water bath. 

And then YOU HAVE CHEESE. You’re supposed to add salt and then stretch it like taffy and then shape it and put it in cold water, but I got confused and put it in cold water before I shaped it, so the first batch was shaped, uh, like this:

But very clearly cheese! Magic!!!!

Meantime, the first batch of zeppole came out of the oven and I was DELIGHTED with the results. So light and puffy! 

and they left these cute little rosettes on the parchment paper. 
 

I made a second batch (bigger ones this time) and put them in the oven, and then started a second batch of cheese. This one turned out prettier!

I think I needed to be a little faster stretching it, to get those little bumps out, but I was still delighted with the results. 

Benny and Corrie made some antipasto platters, and I showed them how to make salami roses. You just fold the slices of salami over a narrow-mouthed drinking glass, overlapping the slices, and then gently upend the glass and slide the salami rose off. 

If we have another baby, I shall name her Salami Rose. 

Didn’t they do a lovely job with the platters? Benny did the green ones and Corrie did the red. 

Damien, meanwhile, made probably the best sauce I have ever had. And I lived in Rome for three months. I truly cannot tell you how savory and delicious it was, and I’m very sad I didn’t get good pictures. He also made some tremendous meatballs, using this recipe, and sausage, and we had that with spaghetti. 

Dang, it was so good. A sauce to savor. Meatballs to remember. A dinner to dwell on. 

Lena and Moe came over for supper, which was super fun! Those big kids are turning out so great.

After we ate, I filled the zeppole with the cream filling, dusted them with powdered sugar, and topped them with fancy cocktail cherries, which were dark red and had a somewhat sour taste, very nice. 

I was pretty proud of these. 

For comparison, here is my first attempt at zeppole, a few years ago:

 Getting a star tip for piping sure makes a difference. And the Sip and Feast recipe is vastly superior to whatever I did the first time. I think those ones were also filled with instant vanilla pudding. But you know what, I remember being way to busy and tired to make zeppole, and I did it anyway. Yay past me! Yay present me! (Future me is on her own, though.)

I had some leftover pastry dough, so I piped this rather silly St. Joseph logo

and dusted that with powdered sugar, and we ate that, too! Buona festa! It was all great, all of it. Oh, I also made five loaves of garlic bread, because we are not savages. 

THURSDAY
Hot dogs and chips

Because Mama needs a break.

I actually love hot dogs. Mustard and sauerkraut, mmm. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

I’m a little torn with the pizza, because we have lots of yummy things in the fridge left over from St. J day — marinated peppers, artichoke hearts, fancy olives, nice parmesan, not to mention that wonderful mozzarella. Obviously I won’t be putting meat on, but I’m conflicted about the rest of it, because despite appearances, it is a Friday in Lent. 

Oh, but that reminds me, I didn’t tell you how the mozzarella tastes! It tastes great! Fresh and flavorful and creamy and light. You can make it firmer or softer, and you can skip the salt, and you can add all kinds of things to it (basil, prosciutto, etc.) when you’re shaping it, and make a log, or little pearls, or even cheese sticks. I’m so delighted with this kit. It comes with five or six rennet tabs, and you only use a quarter of one per gallon of milk. A gallon of milk makes, well, I forgot to weigh it, but it looked like over a pound of cheese to me. Anyway I see soooo much cheese in my future. The whole thing took like half an hour to make, and it was easy and entertaining. You can also make ricotta with this kit, which I haven’t tried yet. 

And that’s-a my story. Oh, except also I just ordered sighhhhh an incubator, because a certain child once missed seeing an egg hatch at school because of Covid a few years ago, and this has been an enduring and understandable sorrow, so Promises Were Made. I think if we do manage to hatch out some ducklings, we’ll have to name at last one of them Salami Rose. The rest can all be Joe.

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caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 12 anchovy fillets, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two large lemons' worth)
  • 1 Tbsp mustard
  • 4 raw egg yolks, beaten
  • 3/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Instructions

  1. Just mix it all together, you coward.

What’s for supper? Vol. 415: O bagels! O fortuna!

And a happy Friday to you! It was all fortuna, no tuna, this week. Just now I changed out of my pajama pants into my yoga pants, and I’m working in bed. I am grounded for the day because Damien got up revoltingly early to drive the girls to the train station, whence they (including Damien) are headed into NYC to see famous J-Hope’s famous solo concert; and they are spending the night. But while we were on our way to school, the universe, sensing that my husband was out of town, playfully lit up all the lights on my dashboard 

I’m no expert, but I interpreted this as “turn around and go home,” so I tried to, but the car started losing power, so I turned on the hazards and tried to go to the mechanic, but it died at the fence company which is just down the road from the mechanic and also from our house and which, in fact, GPS claims IS our house. Like Instacart will send groceries there and everything, unless I make a really big fuss.

So Damien called AAA from the train in NY and I called Elijah at home, who is driving Damien’s car because his car is broken and Damien drove Sophia’s car to the train station, and I emailed the schools and said we were having a Fisher Flop-out, and I begged for an adoration substitute, and eventually everyone got where they belonged, but not before I vented a little emotion at the poor tow truck driver, and expressed how frustrating it was to break down so close to the mechanic. I said I considered pushing my car, but seeing as it was uphill, I didn’t think I would make it; and he said, and I quote, “Pawbly nawt.” 

But I’m on a gratitude kick lately, so I thanked God that I had remembered my phone (which I forget about half the time), that it wasn’t horribly cold out, that we had AAA, and that Elijah was home so he could rescue us, and that I had decided to change out of my robe and into a jacket this morning, so when the fence guy came out to find out why we were parked there, I only looked like a partial nutcase. (On the fact that I was still wearing my fuzzy pink flowered pajama pants, I was prayerfully nuetral.)

Anyway, poor old lady. Off she goes. 

It may be the alternator. But it may just be the battery! Pawbly it’s the battery. 

Well, here’s what we ate this week. And please note, we’re not really great at eating simply and frugally for Lent. We have other skills, like accumulating cars. We now have six cars parked in front of the house most days, and you’d think that would mean we always have a way to get where we need to be!

AND YET. 

SATURDAY
Lasagna, cannoli dip

On Friday night, Damien made a stupendous lasagna, following this labor intensive but incredibly rewarding recipe from Deadspin. Look at this gorgeous beast. 

He also made a mini lasagna for Millie. 

(It’s not actually as tiny as it looks here!) The lasagna was a delayed birthday dinner for Elijah. SO GOOD. 

and let me tell you, I made an attempt to calculate the calories for this thing, but my phone started shaking and sweating, so I just called it a day. 

Eljah requested cannoli for dessert. Actually he requested Cosmic Brownies, but I said he could aim a little higher for his 21st birthday dessert. (Recall he had a cake last week, on his actual birthday.) Then I couldn’t find cannoli shells anywhere in town, so I got cannoli chips, ricotta cheese, AND cosmic brownies. (This is important later.)

I blended together what cream cheese I could find, a bunch of ricotta, a bunch of powdered sugar, and some almond extract, and served that in ramekins with the cannoli chips, along with maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles. I swear I took a picture, because I arranged it nice and fancy-like, but it has vanished. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers featuring lasagna; taquitos 

Sunday we had probably half the lasagna still left over, so that was the star of the show. I also bought frozen taquitos and the served a few leftovers, but mainly we were all there for Lasagna, Continued. 

I brought Millie’s lasagna over and she gave me a bowl of bread pudding with raisins in it.

It tasted exactly like the bread pudding my mother used to make, and I haven’t tasted it since I was a kid. This gave Millie much delight, and me too! It happens that this is a few days after the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death, so if you think of it, please send up a prayer for her. With raisins!

In the afternoon, on a whim, I decided to make bagels. I have only tried making bagels once before, and I grievously misread how much water to use when boiling them, so they turned out pretty rough. But I did get from that day one of my favorite pictures ever: 

Just . . . look at us. The chair with the back broken off. The laundry basket full of pots and pans. Something that appears to be an inflatable foil rocket on the floor. And the toddler who is having the BEST DAY OF HER LIFE, AGAIN. It just needs a chunky couple making out in the corner and a dog furtively lapping out of a mug of beer, and it could be one of those Flemish peasant paintings where people are doing whatever the hell they want. 

This batch of bagels, we didn’t have QUITE that much fun with, but they turned out somewhat better. We followed the King Arthur Baking recipe, except I had light brown sugar instead of dark. You make the dough, let it rise for 90 minutes, cut it into lumps, 

let those lumps rest for half an hour,

and then shape the bagels and boil them,

add toppings, and then bake them.

Benny helped me shape the bagels, which you do by rolling the dough into a ball, poking your finger through the center, and then twirling them around in the air. We quickly learned that it is possible to twirl them too long, and/or too violently! Luckily, the floor is spotless. Just kidding, we threw that one away.

We made a double recipe and made sixteen (well, fifteen) bagels, poppy seed, sesame seed, plain, and salt. 

They were not as puffy as I would have liked — hard to imagine slicing these to make a sandwich! —

— but still pretty great piping hot from the oven. I love doing a little baking on a Sunday afternoon.

You can see they were fairly flat, but the texture inside and out was great, and everybody liked them and said I should make them again. Not sure how to make them puffier. Any ideas? 

MONDAY
Kielbasa, potato, brussels sprouts sheet pan dinner, oatmeal bread

For supper, we had an easy peasy one pan dish with red potatoes, brussels sprouts, and kielbasa. I cooked it halfway, then drizzled it with a sauce made of honey, mustard, minced garlic, and red wine vinegar, and finished cooking it. This is two pans’ worth heaped into one pan:

This looks faintly Flemish, too, come to think of it. 

I usually just serve one-pan dish on its own, but for some reason I felt it really needed a side dish, so I made this quick oat bread, which I chose because it was simple, but which you could make if you’re looking for gluten-free recipes (it uses ground-up oats instead of flour). It was . . . fine. 

I undercooked it (the missing chunk in the middle is where I cut a piece to see if it was done), but for some reason decided to finish it in the microwave instead of the oven., which . . . worked . . . but there is a reason people don’t do that. But I don’t know how much better it would have been if I had baked it properly. Pawbly would have been decent with some butter or jam on it. 

Honestly, I look back on this week and it’s like watching an old home movie, and you watch your past self careening around and you’re like, “oh, wow, look how crazy and silly we were back then!” Except this was four days ago. I’m not complaining! It’s been so beautiful out, with a thaw every day, and I’ve been getting fresh air and feeling pretty lighthearted, actually.

But I’m not being . . . streamlined, in my activities. Not streamlined at all. 

Anyway, you really can’t argue with hot fresh bread, and it was a decent meal. 

Monday is also the day we discovered we had several desserts in the house. See, usually we have dessert on Saturday and Sunday, but in Lent, we just have it on Sunday, and spend the extra money bumping up the food pantry donation. But we got confused and bought two desserts for the weekend, and then we realized Elijah needed a birthday dessert, and then I also bought those previously mentioned Cosmic Brownies as a birthday bonus. And then we forgot to eat them. So there we were on a Monday with Klondike Bars, some kind of ice cream things, and Cosmic Brownies in the house, in Lent. 

So I told the kids if they could come up with a liturgically plausible reason, we could just eat it anyway. So Lucy looked up some saint that starts with a C, I forget who, and then they ate Klondike Bars. It’s called the Domestic Liturgical Living and it has ice cream in it. 

TUESDAY
Vermonter sandwiches, fries

Everybody likes Vermonter sandwiches! Roast chicken breast, thick slices of sharp cheddar cheese, sliced green apple, bacon, and honey mustard dressing. The kids like this on ciabatta rolls, but they didn’t have any, so we had sourdough bread. You can see I was in a bit of a hurry because I was so hungry, so I kind of clobbered mine together, and also skimped on the honey mustard, sadly.

A tasty freaking sandwich. 

Then, incredibly enough, it was St. Seraphina’s day or something. Here is Benny, making the case. 

So obviously they had ice cream cones. 

WEDNESDAY
Gochujang pork ribs, rice, sesame broccoli 

I knew Wednesday was going to be a busy day, so I actually got those pork ribs marinating on Tuesday; and then in the morning on Wednesday I cut up the broccoli and set up the rice in the Instant Pot. So Wednesday afternoon, I got home late and just pushed the rice button, started the ribs roasting, and threw the broccoli in the oven right at the end, and everything finished cooking at the same time. Just about every other single thing in my life is out of control, but gosh darn it, I know how to plan a meal. 

The ribs were marinated in gochujang, honey, brown sugar (why both? I forget), roughly chopped garlic, and soy sauce. The broccoli was soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Good freaking meal. 

Wednesday evening, Irene pointed out it was the one-week anniversary of Ash Wednesday, so we had Cosmic Brownies. Listen. It’s a fine balance. 

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, raw veg

Thursday I took Millie to the eye doctor and the DMV so she could get her license renewed. She is 92 and not the worst driver I’ve encountered, not by a long shot. The worst driver I’ve encountered is from Massachusetts. Really just anyone from Massachusetts. 

I had made some kind of mistake when buying bread, and we only had a little sourdough, so I made half the sandwiches with sourdough and half with regular sandwich bread, and then also I used pre-sliced Aldi provolone, forgetting that that ish just does. not. melt.

So they were not the world’s greatest sandwiches, but friend-os, when you are counting calories and it is dinner time, even the worlds not-greatest sandwich tastes pretty freaking good. Also, pickles don’t count. Have some pickles!

I also made a big vegetable platter which I don’t think anyone even touched. 

It looks pretty good to me right now, though. Do I recommend processing a bunch of food photos on a Friday in Lent? Not really! Well, it depends what your goals are, I guess. 

Thursday night I more or less finished a captive ball carving. I didn’t make measurements or anything, but just winged it, so the “ball” is pretty blobby-shaped, but the kids were impressed anyway. It makes a pleasant “slock-slock” noise when it slides back and forth. I cut myself three times and had to sand a blood stain off part of it, so you could say the whole carving thing is going pretty well. 

FRIDAY
Pancakes? 

Damien, Sophia, and Lucy, as I mentioned, are off living the high life (?) in New York and won’t be back until late Saturday, so I figured no one could stop me from making pancakes for supper. I guess maybe I could make waffles.

The timing is a little silly because I don’t have any good maple syrup in the house, but I hope to later this weekend! Sonny and I have been collecting sap every afternoon and should have at least twelve gallons by Saturday, which should boil down to about a third of a gallon of syrup. Nights below freezing and days above freezing are when the changing barometric pressure really pushes the trees to start getting their sap flowing.

This is five gallons of sap:

It tastes like water, but you can discern the sugar if you focus! 

Damien dragged his old wood stove out of his office for me before he left

and yesterday, on the way to pick up the kids from school, someone had put three pots on the side of the road with a “free” sign. Really BIG pots, all with lids! Note the seltzer can for scale. 

So they just need a good scrubbing and I’ll probably use the smaller two for boiling sap. I am not sure what the biggest one with the heavy duty spigot was used for. Any ideas? I’m thinking of turning it into a heated water dispenser for the ducks, but I haven’t decided yet. 

In closing, yes, Corrie fits inside the big pot

and yes, she still looks like Baby Hermes. 

Well, goodbye! 

 

5 from 4 votes
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One-pan kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato dinner with mustard sauce

This meal has all the fun and salt of a wiener cookout, but it's a tiny bit fancier, and you can legit eat it in the winter. 

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs kielbasa
  • 3-4 lbs red potatoes
  • 1-2 medium cabbages
  • (optional) parsley for garnish
  • salt and pepper and olive oil

mustard sauce (sorry, I make this different each time):

  • mustard
  • red wine if you like
  • honey
  • a little olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • fresh garlic, crushed

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400. 

    Whisk together the mustard dressing ingredients and set aside. Chop parsley (optional).

    Cut the kielbasa into thick coins and the potatoes into thick coins or small wedges. Mix them up with olive oil, salt, and pepper and spread them in a shallow pan. 

    Cut the cabbage into "steaks." Push the kielbasa and potatoes aside to make room to lay the cabbage down. Brush the cabbage with more olive oil and sprinkle with more salt and pepper. It should be a single layer of food, and not too crowded, so it will brown well. 

    Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the food as well as you can and roast for another 15 minutes.  

    Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 414: EVIL Friday to you

A few years ago during Advent, I found this in among Corrie’s papers:

And ever since then, every time I feel like I’m not quite hitting the right tone for some particular occasion, I think to myself, “Ah, evil feliz navidad.”

So, evil Lent to you! Or, wait, Evil Cuaresma! Here, on this, the very first Friday of Lent, is an illustrated list of all the food we ate, including Fat Monday, Fat Tuesday, and honestly Fat Thursday, including some incredibly juicy and delicious steaks! YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT. EVIL CUARESMA! 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with corn dogs and bulgoki empanadas

On Saturday, the kids were helping one of their siblings move, so I had no shopping buddy, which meant that EYE got to pick out the dessert, the weekend “silly cereal,” and the frozen food accompaniment for the leftover buffet. For dessert, I picked something called Lepre-cones

just strictly for the name. I myself would not try to market a quiescently frozen treat with “LEPRE” in the title, but that’s just me. My father used to sing a song about leprosy, with the line “there goes my eyeball, into your highball,” but that is all I can remember, and it seems like enough. 

To go along with the leftovers, I picked corn dogs, which most of the kids don’t like, but which Damien and I do; and something called “bulgogi empanadas,” which sounds like something I would make. So I had those two things for supper, plus some leftover rice, because it was Saturday and there are no vegetables allowed. 

The bulgogi empanadas tasted like school cafeteria beef stew stuffed into empanadas. Very sad. The corn dogs were great, though, because corn dogs are great. 

SUNDAY
Oddly sweet pizza

Sunday after Mass, for the last day of February vacation, we drove to Salem, MA to the Peabody Essex Museum, mainly to see the Flemish Masterworks exhibit. It was FANTASTIC. Lots of variety, nicely organized into sacred art, portraits, silly stuff, and landscapes, including sculpture, which I don’t usually associate with Flemish art. I just about passed out looking at a Rubens shoulder up close. Here’s some things that caught my eye. 

 

The rest of the museum was weird but good. They have a very wide variety of art, and they tend not to organize it by date, which is a little disorienting, but thought-provoking. Their art cards were not great, and I really wished for more information sometimes, but they weren’t too editorial, anyway. It is an extremely confusing building with not enough signs, and I spent about a third of my time lost, but I did keep accidentally wandering into interesting rooms, including lots of unexpected animals. Overall highly recommended – the museum, and especially this exhibit. It will be at PEM through May 4 and is traveling around the country. 

The Museum is in Salem, MA, which is THE Salem, of witch trial fame, and long ago, they decided that they were going to squeeze every drop out of that history in the tackiest way possible, which you have to admire. I mean it has all the gorgeous hand-carved colonial architecture and preserved cobblestone and quirky bay windows and whatnot, but also every last damn thing has a witch on it. Right next to the museum was the Witch City Mall, and we briefly considered getting pizza at the pizza place that was (witchily?) decorated with skeletons and a giant Frankenstein head, but it had such a heavy feeling of apathy and ennui, even for a mall, that we decided to look elsewhere. Those who are familiar with the Witch City Mall can tell me if we missed out on anything!

We ended up going to some pizza place in nearby Beverly, which serves NY style pizza. I think it was Siciliano Pizza or something along those lines. Anyway, we don’t get NY style pizza too often, and the kids were rather shocked by the thin crust and extremely sweet sauce. Is that typical? I was expecting the thin, crisp crust, but the sauce was SO sweet. 

We got one plain, one pepperoni, and one with tomatoes, feta, and spinach. The feta was also very sweet!

However, we were all Museum Hungry, so it was fine. Got home and collapsed, broccoli-fashion. 

MONDAY
Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans amondine

Back to school! And Damien reminded me that the heating element in the oven, which we replaced kind of a short time ago, broke again; so my plans to roast the giant eye of round roast beef I splurged on were foiled. (I asked about it on Facebook, but accidentally called it a rib eye, which is too splurgy for me, even for Fat Monday!)

ANYWAY, the upshot was that Damien just cut it into steaks and pan-fried it, and it was INSANELY DELICIOUS. 

Everybody got their own thick little juicy little half-pound steak, and I also made mashed potatoes and green beans amondine. I basically followed this recipe, which has you boil and blanch the string beans, and then in a pan, you melt a bunch of butter with thyme, garlic salt, and dijon mustard. I didn’t have dijon mustard, but I did have some of that stone ground whole mustard with the little popping seeds in it, and it was great. You add the string beans back into the butter and heat them up along with toasted slivered almonds (reminder that you can easily toast almonds in the microwave!) and a little more thyme. Yum. 

I really messed up the mashed potatoes, though. I just didn’t boil them long enough, but didn’t realize it until I had already drained the water out. So I tried to make up for their undercookedness by running them through the food processor; and when that didn’t go so great, I moved them to the Ninja blender and whipped the hell out of them. They did end up more or less smooth, but there was definitely Something Wrong with the texture. Oh well!

FAT TUESDAY
Dinner at the Winchester

Tuesday was Mardi Gras, and we have somehow established the tradition of going to Chili’s for Mardi Gras, so that’s what we did. I had some kind of chicken rice bowl thing and just about everyone else had some form of bacon burger and fries; and then we decided to do a “choose your own ice cream” adventure at Price Chopper. 

I picked Dulce de Leche Churro ice cream

and it was amaaaaaazing. 

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti

Wednesday of course was Ash Wednesday, and also a dentist appointment, and also time for certain people to freak out in for no apparent reason in a pretty spectacular fashion. Then we went home, had spaghetti, and remembered we were dust. 

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, vegetables and dip; birthday cake

Thursday was Elijah’s birthday, and he graciously postponed his birthday meal (which will be Damien’s special elaborate lasagna) until the weekend, but he and Sophia did make a cake. 

Twenty-one candles, count ’em. My stars. Between that and the thing at the dentist where we went to schedule Lucy’s next six-month check up and discovered that, in six months, she will be too old to see the pediatric dentist anymore, is. . . quite a thing. Last I checked, all my kids were either four, or nine, or possibly 11. But not older than that! (The other week, when Corrie turned ten, I said, “Wow, you’re a whole decade old!” and she said, “That sounds so old! Probably because ‘decade’ sounds like ‘decayed.'” So you can see she’s inherited my cheery outlook on life.) 

On Thursday I also had my very first stress test, just to rule out cardiac issues since my body is still being kind of a weird guy. My heart looks great, and the visit notes said I was in good shape for my age, which, I’ll take it.

But I was chatting with the nurses as I was on the treadmill, and of course we got to talking about kids, and I mentioned (and simultaneously realized) that I have four teenage daughters. And that was also pretty good to hear (even from my own lips) because I’ve been going around feeling like such an absolute LOSER lately, and I didn’t really know why. But that explains it! I have an acute case of teenage daughters. Who are delightful and beautiful, funny and smart and helpful, interesting and creative, but . . . it would be developmentally inappropriate for them to spend a lot of time thinking about whether they are constantly making their mom feel like crap, and I am happy to report that they do not do this! So we’ve got that going for us. Anyway, my heart is fine. I chased each kid down and hugged them individually the other day. That’ll show ’em. 

And soon it will be spring, for real. We’ve had quite a bit of thawing here, so the morning drive is full of brilliant fog banks as the snowbanks evaporate, and what’s left is a grimy, tired snow without much fight left in it. Most likely it will snow again, but it really is truly actually kind of almost spring, finally, almost.

I tapped my maple trees on Tuesday, with only the finest, most high-tech equipment

and they’re actually running really slow, for some reason. Some of them are not running at all, and I have no idea why. I tapped above a root, on the south side, with a slight upward angle, when the nights are cold and the days are warm. Nothin’. But I am getting some sap from a few trees, and I’ll boil what I get, and that will be that. Maybe next week will be better. Maybe they’re taking a gap year. A sap gap. I don’t know. 

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese, tomato soup

And I am super duper looking forward to it. I love grilled cheese and tomato soup. Also I have been using My Fitness Pal to track calories for just over a month now, and let me tell you, something has happened to food in general in that time, because it tastes amazing.

I have tracked calories before, but not using an app, and for some reason, the little ring that shows how many calories I have left in the day is very motivating. Check back in six months and I’m sure I’ll be writing another affirming essay about how good it is to learn to be comfortable in a large body, rather than worrying about calories all the time. You know, I’m fairly full of sap myself. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 413: Erasmus B. Dragon

Happy Friday! Sorry for the interruption with the website last week, and thanks a lot, OBAMA. 

We have been on February vacation all week, and there has not been one single day when I’ve been sure what day it is, except I knew for sure that the month was almost over and I had cleverly arranged for all my writing deadlines to cluster together in one giant, unfortunate . . . cluster.

But, food! I’ll just do a few quick highlights from the previous week, because I tried a few new recipes. 

One day we had
Bacon potato soup and french bread.

The french bread is, of course, not a new recipe

Jump to Recipe

but I got cute and made sixteen little personal loaves, rather than four big ones. 

Because it’s such a simple recipe, I ventured outside my comfort zone and just added flour until the dough looked right, rather than meticulously measuring it. I’m trying to give myself credit for knowing how to do things I’ve done a thousand times before.

Turned out great! At least with bread.  

The soup was more or less following this recipe from Sugar Spun Run, and maybe it’s the My Fitness Pal talking, but I had a really hard time feeling like a recipe that includes bacon, all the bacon grease, milk, heavy cream, sour cream, butter, AND CHEESE (and additional cheese, bacon, and sour cream for the top!!!!!) really truly needed as much butter as this recipe called for. So I used a little less butter. I turn sideways, people question where I went. 

It’s one of those soups where you cook it for a while, then put half of it in a blender and puree it, and then add that back into the soup. I’ve only recently become familiar with this technique of soup made out of itself, and it’s pretty good. Quite a rich, thick soup. 

I did add a bit of cheese to the top, along with a little chili powder and chopped scallions, but mostly to add color, since it was quite beige.

I’m not gonna lie, this is a ridiculously delicious soup. The kids did NOT like it, though. They really resent when I serve bacon in any other form besides, you know, baconform. Which I understand! But also, sometimes I want to make things that I like.

We also had, let’s see, meatball subs, tacos, cuban sandwiches with beans and rice, and another new recipe: Ginger chicken from a site I haven’t used before, The Woks of Life. He gives very specific instructions for each ingredient, and it was pretty easy to follow, although I fudged a few things (mirin instead of Shaoxing wine, one kind of soy sauce instead of two, and onions instead of shallots), and my sauce didn’t come out as dark as his. Most likely I rushed it, which is the story of my life. 

But YOU GUYS, it was still SO GOOD. 

Tons of flavor, tender and gingery, wonderful comfort food. I think just about everybody liked it, which almost never happens. Corrie even requested it for her birthday meal (although she later recanted that in favor of . . . well, you’ll see). 

I also made some quick sesame broccoli, which is just broccoli sprinkled with sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, pepper, ground ginger and garlic, and sesame seeds, and then roasted. Very easy and popular. 

We spent part of the week getting ready for Corrie’s party (I have now decluttered every single room downstairs, and one room upstairs!). I made a paper mache pinata in the shape of a dragon egg (which, if you’re not familiar, is the same shape as a balloon) and some kind of half-hearted decorations (a “mystical cave entrance” in the living room doorway largely made of brown shipping paper twisted into vines and tacked onto the wall, with some green and purple foil easter grass thrown in).

The big thing was the DRAGON CAKE. I’m proud of this one. 

First I baked the cake layers. I almost always use box cake mix for younger kids’ birthdays, because they care a lot more about the look of the cake than the flavor, and their parties include so much candy and snacking that, by the time we get to cake, no one’s palate is especially fine tuned. 

So then I made a batch of rice krispie treats, and smooshed it together as compactly as I could, and formed it into a dragon-ish shape. I was very proud of remembering to form it on top of the pan I had baked the top tier of the cake in, so I knew it would fit onto the finished cake. 

It would have been smart to put a layer of parchment paper under it to keep it from sticking, but I didn’t think of that! It did stick a bit, but not disastrously. 

I made the dragon on Thursday for a party on Saturday, so it would have plenty of time to dry and get stiff. I also put a cup under his chin to prop it up while it dried, because it was droopy.

On Friday, I attached edible gold foil to the belly, chest, nose horn, and tip of the tail with frosting, and then I used hardening cookie frosting (comes in a pouch at Walmart) to attach a row of spikes from the top of his head to the end of his tail. The spikes are black candy melts cut into triangles. I made a feeble attempt to put them on in size order, but mostly just shoved them in there.

Then I made the wings! I had the bright idea to use fruit rolls. I cut up some plastic straws, laid them out, stretched the fruit rolls over one side and then flipped them over and stretched another layer on the other side, and trimmed each wing into scallops; and then I used a kitchen torch to seal the edges up so they wouldn’t come apart.

I put a wooden skewer inside the long straw, to make it more rigid, and to make it easier to anchor in the dragon’s body. These also got laid out overnight to stiffen and dry out, so they wouldn’t droop. 

I tried several different ways of covering the dragon’s body, with frosting, scales, etc., and finally reluctantly settled on fondant, which I haven’t used much before. This was nerve-wracking, because at first it looked like he was just wearing a big red sweater.

and truly, I say unto you, it took KIND OF A WHILE to get him all covered and smoothed. But I kept going, and when I molded it a bit and added claws and some details with black icing, it looked okay!

I iced the cake with black and grey frosting, carefully set the dragon on top, and added more gold foil, gold coins, and gold chocolate eggs, and also a bunch of vanilla Oreo cookies that I had sprayed with gold spray.

AND HERE HE IS.

Five guests were able to make it, the pinata worked perfectly (didn’t fall apart too soon, but wasn’t completely impenetrable) and she had a wonderful time. 

Phew! We had Walmart pizza for supper and then collapsed like bunches of broccoli, respectively. 

Sunday, I had a profound desire to not go shopping, so we had our customary leftover buffet, plus a charcuterie board of whatever I could find in the fridge, which included some fancy things we got for Christmas, that I recently rediscovered when I cleaned my room. I sliced up the leftover french bread, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with flaked kosher salt, and toasted it

and it was a damn fine meal.

For reasons I can’t explain, I decided to make cake balls for dessert. I have never made or eaten cake balls before, and I found the process slightly gross (you bake a cake, let it cool, crumble it up, and scrunch it into dough with big gobs of frosting. Then make balls, chill them, and dip them in candy melt), but they did turn out looking cute and cheery.

I had one and was underwhelmed; but to be fair, I may have underbaked the cake, so maybe the whole thing was a little more damp than necessary. WHO AMONG US. Anyway, the kids liked them okay. 

MONDAY I finally went shopping, and we had
Buffalo chicken salad

Salad, buffalo chicken from frozen, shredded pepper jack cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, grape tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing. I’m being tiresome about calories, so I skipped the dressing on mine.

That night, Corrie made ice cream pies for her CALENDAR birthday, which, according to Fisher Rigamarole, is a distinct holiday from your birthday PARTY. 

She requested graham cracker crust, black raspberry ice cream, mini marshmallows, skittles, and gummy worms. She didn’t want any whipped cream or cool whip or cherries or anything. 

Tuesday
Market Basket subs, Doritos, bloomin’ onion, ice cream pies

On Tuesday we went to get her EARS PIERCED. Which was not fun, but she’s been wanting it done forever, and she’s very happy with the results. Then we went to get Market Basket subs. 

Are Market Basket subs especially good? Not especially! But we often get them when we’re going to the beach or on a day trip, so I guess they spell T-R-E-A-T. I have to admit, they’re cheap. They taste like Subway subs and cost what Subway subs should cost.

So we had that and chips and then I guess I felt weird not cooking anything, so I made some bloomin’ onions. You can use a knife to cut an onion into a blossom shape, but it’s way easier if you have an onion cutting device, WHICH I DO.

I made an attempt to take a soulful, romantic photo with one of my beautiful onion lotus blossoms, but I just ended up looking exhausted, which, by strange coincidence, I was.

I lost the recipe booklet that came with my onion machine, so I followed this recipe, which includes a nice zippy recipe for dipping sauce. 

Turned out pretty okay! I crowded the pan and was a little short on oil, but hey, the onion, she blooms.

Corrie had yet another wonderful day with most of her siblings over and lots of presents, including these incredible Bender fingerless mittens made by Lucy

And that was that! Whew!

WEDNESDAY
Instant Pot pork ribs, glazed carrots, cole slaw

Thursday I tried another new recipe: This Amy + Jacky Instant Pot recipe. Easy peasy. You mix up apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a few spices, and marinate the pork ribs in that for a while. Then you throw them in the IP and cook it on high pressure for 15 minutes, then let it natural release for ten minutes. Mine sat for somewhat longer than that because I was driving around (not to and from school, though! It’s vacation, so I was driving them to and from their friends’ houses), so they turned out a little unsightly

but I was excited, because I could tell how tender and juicy they were. You slather BBQ sauce on top and broil it up for a bit, and there it is.

I had made cole slaw in the morning (cabbage and carrots, mayo, cider vinegar, sugar, and pepper) and prepped some carrots to cook, so I put the carrots in the oven just before the meat went in, and it all came out at the same time.

The carrot recipe I used was this simple one from Recipe Tin Eats. This is a rare RTE recipe that does not turn out exactly as she describes, and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Hers are shiny and sticky, and mine are just kinda toasty. They’re easy and popular, though, so it’s worth making them even though they’re not spectacular. I wish I had remembered a sprinkle of cardamom, though. 

Anyway, I thought it was a great meal. 

and the ribs really were juicy and ready to fall apart with a slight nudge from the fork. 

For sure making this recipe again, at least until it gets warm enough for Damien to use the smoker again. 

THURSDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins

Thursday the older kids had their own plans, so I took Benny and Corrie out for an outing of our own. We hit a thrift store, a local place that does giant baskets of fries, the pet store, and a fancy candy store, and when I say my dogs were barking, I really mean it! I still had to make supper, and it was so late already, I figured I might as well forge ahead and make the meal I had planned, which was beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins. 

Yes, this is a weird combination, but I made it one time and certain people decided it was 100% ideal, so we’re locked in for a while. 

Here is my beef barley soup recipe:

Jump to Recipe

which I threw together in record time. I was kind of puzzled as to why it looked wrong, but when you’re FORGING AHEAD, you simply don’t have time to fret over these things!

Anyway, it was tomatoes. I forgot the tomatoes. They’re more important than I realized, and the soup was a little sad without them! Oh well. 

When the soup was simmering, I started pumpkin muffins,

Jump to Recipe

and discovered I had used all the oil for frying the bloomin’ onions, so I used melted butter. They turned out with a nice, more textured top

but the inside had a slightly waxy feel that I wasn’t crazy about. So now I know.

(I took that picture because, as I was pulling the twenty-four muffins out of the pan, I reminded myself that there would be a grand total of four people at home for dinner, and WHAT IF THERE’S NOT ENOUGH FOOD. Waste! Fraud! Abuse! Somebody alert Department Of Gnawing Everything so they can come over and fix things by clogging up the toilets and shooting the dog.) 

FRIDAY
Poke bowls

Today I am facing a rash promise I made to take the kids ice skating this week, which you may or may not have noticed is almost over, and yet we have not gone ice skating yet. There are two ice rinks around here (one ten minutes away, one forty), and neither one seems especially interested in . . . letting people ice skate on them? So we are aiming for the 7-9:00 spot, forty minutes away. Yes, in the EVENING. Maybe the world will come to an end before that happens. Of course I was counting on that to rescue me from having to do the FAFSA, and that didn’t work out, so probably we will have to go ice skating.

Anyway, first we will be eating something approximating poke bowls. Gonna cook up a bunch of rice and probably sear some Walmart tuna steaks, and I have chili lime cashews from Aldi, mangoes, some kind of green sprouts, and various pink and yellow and brown sauces. 

Saturday will be a regular day, and then Sunday we are going to a museum and will be getting back very late on the night before the first day back at school! Which is a great idea! It was my idea! Hooray! Somebody call the department of paste, frog, and caboose! I have a fever and the only cure is more measles!

I actually think I do have a fever, so. We’ll see who’s ice skating whom. 

5 from 1 vote
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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.

5 from 1 vote
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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion or red onion, diced
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 3-4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
  • 2-3 lbs beef, cubed
  • 16 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
  • 6 cups beef bouillon
  • 1 cup merlot or other red wine
  • 29 oz canned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
  • 1 cup uncooked barley
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened. 


  2. Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley. 

  4. If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes. 

  5. Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary. 

5 from 1 vote
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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

  • 30 oz canned pumpkin puree
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup veg or canola oil
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  • 3.5 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • oats, wheat germ, turbinado sugar, chopped dates, almonds, raisins, etc. optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend. 

  4. Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice. 

  5. Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 412: Food of America

Happy Friday! Happy Valentine’s Day! Damien and I are GOING OUT DANCING! Or, well, we are taking our kids to the school dance, presumably to watch the girls text each other and giggle, and the boys shove each other, and the little kids chase each other under the tables. I was discouraged (by my kids) from bringing in food, so none of this, this year:

I went to a Valentine’s Day dance in middle school, which was such a long time ago, it was still called “Junior High.” It was my first dance ever, and I had read a lot of Archie Comics, so I borrowed my sister’s bright pink dress with the flared skirt, paired with a wide, glossy, black plastic belt with a gold heart-shaped clasp, and a pair of pink heart earrings. I nervously crept through the door of the gym, and a teacher chaperone immediately cried, “Oh, don’t you look nice!” Which is how I knew I had worn the Wrong Thing. 

Thanks, brain, for remembering that in excruciating detail. So important.

Anyway, boy am I glad to be an adult. And you know what is important? Food! Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet with dino nuggets

The forecast warned us of a big storm Saturday night, so we went to the vigil Mass. But first it was the shopping turn of a child who made me very proud by picking out the things SHE WANTED, and steadfastly rebuffing the howls of complaints from her older sisters. For her frozen food supplement to leftover day, she picked dino nuggets because that’s what sheeee wanted. 

They also gave her a hard time about the weekend cereal and the desserts she chose, but she didn’t crumple. For real, being a teenage girl and actually expressing what you want, and sticking to it when your peers don’t like it, is almost heroic.

Also heroic was the leftover coconut chicken curry. I ignored all the other leftovers and just stuck with the curry, and oh my dammit, it was amazing.

Next time, I may make curry ahead of time just to have it several days old on purpose, because it was really great the first time, but as leftovers, it was MAGNIFICENT. 

SUNDAY
Buffalo wings and blue cheese dip, Doritos, hot pretzels, raw veggies

The big snow came as forecast, and in the midst of all that brilliant white, my pesky lingering headache turned into a full-blown migraine, so I noped out of shoveling and went back to bed. Bless Damien for making me feel like this was a reasonable thing to do. 

But I was feeling better by the afternoon, and it was, of course, the Super Bowl. We didn’t care about either team, but we do like hot salty football food, so I made some hot pretzels using the King Arthur recipe.

I’ve made it before, and it’s pretty easy, and they come out delicious, although they never really look like the picture, probably because I’m too impatient to roll the dough out into long enough snakes before shaping them. (And no, I never did get dressed, as you can see.) 

Anyway, you make the dough and let it rise (I used the slow cooker on “keep warm”), then cut the dough into lumps

And by the way, this is around the time of year last year I got my new-to-me cabinet and marble countertop from Marketplace, and it’s been SUCH a boon. I set it slightly lower then the other countertops, so it’s very convenient for things like kneading dough or decorating cakes. I have short legs, whatcha gonna do. 

Here’s what my workspace looked like before the new countertop:

and here how it looks right now:

If you look closely, you will see that I have discovered PVC pipe as the universal solution. 

So I have been continuing my decluttering tour, which launched, hmm, right around the time of the inauguration, for some reason. It’s turned less maniacal now and a little more grim this week, but I’m determined to deal with all the worst spots in the house by the end of February. So far I have cleared out the landing and turned it into a playroom, cleared out the laundry room, fixed and cleared out the white cabinet/craft area, re-hung the curtains in front of the gaps in the kitchen cabinets, and done lots and lots of scouring and scrubbing in both bathrooms and the oven, and also stuff like replacing a bunch of old smoke alarms and whatnot. And, I bought my very first Swiffer. 

Yesterday, I decluttered the hutch.

Before:

and after:

I have come to loathe this piece of furniture, and will replace when I can. But organizing it it led to shifting around some other stuff in other parts of the kitchen, and I had the revelation that the kid’s water bottles can go LOW DOWN ON THE BOTTOM SHELVES, and my seltzer and Damien’s soda can go AT WAIST HEIGHT because WE ARE OLD and OUR BACKS HURT. A lot of stuff in this house is still set up to keep meddling toddlers out of stuff, and we may have some problems right now, but not that! 

Okay, so anyway, the pretzels turned out nice! You brush them with melted butter when they come out of the oven, and they’re super soft and chewy and rich. 

Damien made a big pile of his excellent hot chicken wings with blue cheese dipping sauce. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

He actually made some hot, some with BBQ sauce, and some plain; and I had the kids chop up a bunch of veggies, and I bought NAME BRAND Doritos. 

An extremely delicious meal. 

We scored some points with the teenagers by enjoying the halftime show, too, and I liked that guy’s pants. 

MONDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Every year when I do the shopping around Super Bowl Sunday, there is, of course, lots of football-priced ground beef available(it was $2.99 a pound here), and I cleared out the freezer a bit so I could stock up on that. And something about buying all that beef shifts my food thoughts into irresistibly American channels, so we had some of the saltiest, meatiest, least ethnically diverse meals imaginable this week. The kids have been pretty happy. 

Monday, spaghetti and meatballs. Here is my meatball recipe

Jump to Recipe

demonstrating my less-mess technique of baking or broiling the meatballs in the oven on a rack, so they keep their shape, and the grease just tidily drains off. 

And very good it was, spaghetti with meatballs. 

TUESDAY
Pulled pork, tater tots, corn

Tuesday we had a thing in the morning, so I started pulled pork early. Here is my tasty pulled pork recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Came out of the pot niiiiiice and tender. 

so I shredded it up

and put it back in the pot with the juice, to stay warm, while I cooked the tater tots, and also one bag of hilariously overpriced heart-shaped potato . . . things. I guess I was planning to serve this on Valentine’s Day, but this was Wednesday, I dunno. They were actually pretty good. Basically mashed potato in a crisp skin, same as those smiley fries. 

The kids had pulled pork sandwiches in deli rolls, but I had my preferred mode: Hot Pork Heap. Tater tots, then pulled pork, then corn, then red onion, the BBQ sauce. You can spot the potato hearts over to the left. 

This is also really good with some of that disgusting melted yellow cheese stuff that comes in a jar, but some of us are watching our figgahs. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday I actually did some writing for once in my life, and completely lost track of time and had to ask Elijah to make the pizzas. Got home around 5:30 and finished them up, using, as you can see, the leftover meatballs, with pepperoni in between. 

Yum. 

THURSDAY
Burgers and chips

Just regular hamburgers, which I make in the oven on a rack like the meatballs, but right up under a hot broiler. 

On Wednesday, one of the schools called a snow day for one school on Thursday, and the two other schools said it would be a two-hour delay. Damien proposed a Fisher Flop-Out. I’m not saying I married him because of his ability to make up names that don’t quite mean anything but make me laugh, but I will say that this is the man who once called his kids “a bunch of freshwater jerks,” and THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE. So Thursday came and, while we slept, the other schools decided it made more sense to have a full snow day, so there you go. Fisher Flop-Out!

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

I guess the kids at home can fend for themselves, actually, because as I mentioned, we will be out dancing our fool heads out, or anyway watching teenage girls texting each other while standing next to each other. It’s a pretty sweet life, even without the yellow melty cheese. 

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Hot chicken wings with blue cheese dip (after Deadspin)

Basic, tasty hot wings with blue cheese sauce

Ingredients

  • chicken wingettes
  • oil for frying

For the hot sauce:

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/8 cup tabasco sauce
  • 1/8 cup sriracha sauce
  • salt
  • vinegar (optional)

Blue cheese sauce:

  • sour cream
  • blue cheese
  • optional: lemon juice, mayonnaise
  • celery sticks for serving

Instructions

  1. Fry the wingettes in several inches of oil until they are lightly browned. Do a few at a time so they don't stick together. Set them on paper towels to cool.

  2. Melt the butter and mix together wit the rest of the hot sauce ingredients. Toss the wings in the hot sauce.

  3. Mix together the sour cream and crumbled blue cheese. Use a food processor or whisk vigorously to break up the blue cheese. You can add lemon juice or a little mayonnaise to thin it.

  4. Serve with blue cheese dip and celery sticks.

 

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Meatballs for a crowd

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 8 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

  2. Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.

  3. Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.

  4. Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve. 

 

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Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

  • fatty hunk of pork
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for browning
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2/3 cup apple juice
  • 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

  1. Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.

  3. Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.

  4. When pork is tender, shred.

What’s for supper? Vol. 411: You can’t fufu all the people all the time

Happy Friday! The star of my week was MY NEW FRYING PAN. I love this thing. I wish it had two “helper handles” rather than one long one and one helper, but other than that, it’s everything I wanted. Tons of frying space, even heat transmission, high walls, and you can just scrub it clean with no rigamarole. Always Avoid Rigamarole, Guys; that’s my motto. AARG. 

I’ve also been enjoying the paring knife I ordered to bump up my purchase to get free shipping. Feeling very fancy in the kitchen these days. 

Here’s what we ate this week. Well, starting with last week, because it got a li’l weird:

FRIDAY
Seared lemon basil scallops on coconut rice, spicy fried eggplant, and stuffed clams 

One of my earliest memories is going to a potluck in kindergarten and barely being able to see over the top of the table, and being absolutely bewildered and overwhelmed by the array of unfamiliar foods. I vaguely felt that I wasn’t allowed to take anything that I didn’t normally eat (I didn’t even recognize some of the utensils. SALAD TONGS, what??), so I got some baked beans and brought them back to my seat. I was actually fine with this, because I knew what beans were and I liked them! But a mom came over and clucked at me for just getting beans, and loaded up my plate with a bunch of other stuff. I don’t remember what, but the important thing was that someone else was in charge. 

 Anyway, now I am fifty years old, and when I am in charge, I tend to make a bewildering array of unfamiliar foods myself. I enjoy this, but I would also enjoy a plate full of beans. 

So I seared the scallops sort of casting one eyeball at this recipe, and they turned out nice, only I used too much oil 

They do cook up fast, though, so if you happen to have some scallops, this is a very decent choice of preparation. Before I did that, I put some frozen stuffed clams in the oven, and also I fried a bunch of eggplant. 

Here’s my recipe for fried eggplant

Jump to Recipe

It’s good to start at least an hour before dinner, because you need to salt the eggplant to draw out the moisture, then dredge them in batter and fry them, and you don’t want to crowd the pan.

They’re SO GOOD, though. Totally worth it. The batter includes baking powder, so you get those crisp, knobbly, bubbles on the outside when they fry, and the inside is just melty tender. I wish I had made some yogurt sauce or maybe some kind of spicy tomato thing, but there were no complaints.

I heated up the coconut rice from last week’s Thai meal and served it with the scallops, rather than saving it for Leftover Day on Saturday, because I knew the kids weren’t crazy about it, and I was. 

So it was a bit of a weird meal, but undeniably tasty. 

The other kids were eating pizza at the library (which is what inspired me to make a Grownup Meal), but Corrie was home, and didn’t want any of the foods I cooked, so I took the leftover eggplant batter and made a fried Corrie.

And I do believe this is what she ate for dinner. 

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet, french bread pizza

A little spaghetti carbonara, a little Thai chicken, and this and that. 

I forgot to tell the kids to save the leftover leftover ham, though. Oops. 

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries

Sunday after Mass, I did something I’ve been hyping myself up to do for weeks: I cleared off the landing. For a while, it was the bedroom of a kid who would rather sleep on the landing than share a room with siblings; and then, predictably, it became a dumping area.

Corrie and I set to work (she owes me money for a book order, and she doesn’t mind being a runner for cleaning projects, as long as someone else is in charge), and three hours and six trash bags later, it looked like this:

Instagram-worthy, no. Much much much much better, definitely. A spot for the Barbie Dream House, plus Corrie’s typewriter and sewing machine. 

I bought a bunch of cleaning products and I’ve been tackling various areas of the house one at a time, lately. Because it turns out that when I feel powerless and overwhelmed for . . . . reasons . . . . it helps an awful lot to clean something! You peek your head over the tabletop, see the news headlines, and are overwhelmed by the incomprehensible and unfamiliar chaos, and you think, “Well, I know one thing I can fix.” It helps! And it’s cheaper than heroin.

I knew I was going to be working on this cleaning project all day, so I planned sandwiches for supper. Looks like we had salami, capicola, prosciutto, provolone, basil, and oil and vinegar. I had bought some tomatoes, but the kids forgot to bring them in from the car, and they froze, so that was out, bleh. 

I did buy a jar of those pickled vegetables, giardiniera? and threw them in the food processor along with a can of black olives, a little olive oil, and some red wine vinegar, and made it into I guess a sandwich spread. I don’t know if there is a name for this, but I liked it. 

We also had fries. Always a popular meal.

Also on Sunday, I discovered that the part of the oven door that I thought was permanently black because the enamel had been burnt off, was actually just coated with burnt-on grease. So I’ve been scrubbing away at that. I just … want things clean. Cleaner. 

MONDAY
Omelettes, roast squash sticks(?), spinach

Monday I tackled the laundry room. I didn’t take a “before” picture, but it was a “there’s a floor here somewhere” situation. Another few bags of trash, and here is the “after.”

You can’t really see it, but I labelled all the shelves. But I did it in CHALK, which you can erase, because there are few things more depressing than tackling a chaotic mess and uncovering permanent but irrelevant labels you put on last time you organized it, back when you were young and still full of hope. Now I am old and full of chalk. But at least I know where my sheets are. 

Also on Monday I got a little bit mad about egg prices and decided we weren’t gonna get pushed around, so I made omelettes. Look, this is a food blog, not a “life choices that make perfect sense” blog. This is the meal I meant to save the ham for, but it got tossed (because the kids were following the rules I had made; can’t complain).

The kids tried to persuade me that deli turkey and raw onion is a normal thing to put in omelettes. IT’S NOT. That’s weird. But I was making omelettes to order, so that’s what they had. 

I myself had cheddar and spinach, which is a DELIGHT. 

As is my new pan! Have I mentioned my new pan? I really like it. 

Then I had a couple of butternut squashes which I cut into thin pieces and roasted, with olive oil, cardamom, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper. This didn’t actually work very well.

The flavor was good, but I think if you are going to cut squash into such thin pieces, it would need to be deep fried to make it crisp; and if you are going to oven roast it, you should cut it into chunks. Also it took FOREVER to cut the squash into such small pieces. 

Don’t get me wrong, I gobbled it up. It was just a little peculiar. I actually mixed it up with some leftover shredded spinach and it was pretty tasty. 

TUESDAY
Hamburgers, chips

I’m a little nervous about the future of ground beef in this country, so I decided we might as well have burgers while we can. A couple of the big kids were over, and we just had burgers and chips, easy peasy. Simple pimple. Pretend I didn’t say that. 

Tuesday I also tackled the infamous White Cabinet and Environs, which looked like this:

I remember buying this cabinet NEW, which was an incredibly splurgy purchase at the time. It was going to change my life and make everything orderly and pristine. And it did, for about eleven days. Then the shelves started falling out, and the frame got all crooked so you couldn’t put the shelves back in, and this is more or less how it’s looked ever since. It looks like it has shelves, but they randomly tip forward and disgorge their contents onto the floor, and then people stack random things on top of that. Which is not my FAVORITE. 

So on Wednesday, I got a saw and a drill and this plank of wood that’s been hanging around in the kitchen, sawed that up, and built a sort of interior frame under each shelf. Then I sorted everything and threw out three more bags of trash, and now it looks like this:

THE DOORS CLOSE. Obviously haven’t gotten up to the “and environs” part yet, and my floor looks how floors look in New Hampshire in February, so I’m not even gonna apologize for that. 

But look! Over three days later, and it hasn’t fallen apart inside yet. 

The kids are pretending to be enthusiastic about having a place for everything, and that’s good enough for me. And I found eleven pairs of scissors (not a made up number).

WEDNESDAY
Chinese pork, pineapple, crunchy rice rolls

Wednesday the plan was char siu, but I was fooling myself about being home at the right time of day to baste a roast pork. So I made a marinade and put it in the Instant Pot with the pork and set it for 22 minutes. 

I have actually done something similar, with pleasant results, on days when I have enough time to take the cooked pork out of the Instant Pot, cut it, and then simmer it on the stovetop with the sauce for half an hour or so, to give the sauce a chance to thicken up and coat the meat. 

Jump to Recipe

But it being Wednesday, I didn’t have time for that, so I just cut up the meat and served it with pineapple and crunchy rice rolls.  

Tasted fine. It did have that nice char siu flavor, even if it wasn’t all glossy and sticky and lovely. 

On Wednesday morning, I realized I had kind of painted myself into a corner with the menu. My original plan was to make injera on Thursday, and you are supposed to start that fermenting at least four days ahead of time. Obviously I didn’t do that. So what I did was prep all the stuff for Thursday’s dinner on Wednesday morning. I’m just basically riding some kind of wave of nervous energy here. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I’m trying to put it to good use while it does.

I’ve also been doing some more wood carving in the evening. I like to listen to the wonderful show Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin in the evening and use that time to whittle. Here’s a couple of works in progress:

The first one is a hair ornament, and I think I just need to sand it a bit and stain it. The leaf, I don’t know what it is. It’s a thing that helps me sleep at night. 

Makes me remember it’s almost time to tap the trees, though!  I was telling the kids how, last fall, I went around identifying all the maple trees while they still had foliage, and tying orange cloth on them so I could find them in early spring. So Irene goes, “ohhhh, so I shouldn’t have been pulling those off all winter?” 

She was kidding. Pretty sure. I somehow ended up with ten kids who are constantly kidding. I am not sure how that happened. 

THURSDAY
Kuku paka, fufu, basmati rice, ube pudding

Thursday was a snow day, so I was delighted to realize I (a) had all the time in the world to cook and (b) had already done a lot of the hard part the day before. Behold, my mise en placing:

Clockwise, that’s onion; coriander, cumin, turmeric, and cayenne pepper; and ginger and garlic. 

Here is the recipe I was following, from my new best friend Recipe Tin Eats. 

You salt and pepper your chicken thighs and drumsticks and then brown them in oil. In your NEW PAN, if possible. 

Then you take the chicken out and fry up your onion, then ginger and garlic, then the spices, then add pureed tomatoes, coconut milk, and some kosher salt. Then you put the chicken back in and let it simmer. 

I let it simmer for about an hour, and then I moved it to the slow cooker for the rest of the day. 

My dears, it smelled incredible. As Nagi points out, this could easily be an Indian dish, but it is actually North African. So I thought it would be a great time to try  that Fufu mix I bought quite some time ago. 

I have never had fufu and struggled a bit to explain it to the kids. As far as I can tell, it’s a staple in Nigeria and Ghana (which I realize is West Africa. Look, I went to public school), and it’s good for filling you up when you don’t have a huge amount of meat, and it’s also good for sopping up sauce or juices. It’s made from starchy vegetables like cassava, yams, or plantains that you boil and then pound the hell out of in a giant mortar. Or, if you are me, it’s made out this white powder from a box:

I watched a few videos and concluded that nobody in this house has had fufu before, so I could basically do whatever I wanted. So I boiled a kettle of water and slowly added it to the powder while beating it viciously with a wooden spoon, until it became a very thick dough.

Then I added more water to the pot and let it cook for a little bit, and then I took the dough and formed it into balls. This was not easy, because for some reason, when I took it out of the boiling water, it was pretty hot. But somehow I managed. 

Fufu is supposed to be super smooth and free of lumps. OH WELL.  
I decided it would be wise to also make a big pot of rice! I made basmati rice (I rinsed the rice and put it in the pot with 1.5 cups of water for every cup of rice, brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for I think 18 minutes, and then turned off the heat, fluffed it, and let it sit for another ten minutes. Turned out great.)

So here’s the chicken curry after cooking in the slow cooker all day:

Dang, you guys. The meat was incredibly tender, and the sauce was MAGNIFICENT. So savory and warming and friendly and rich, but not too spicy. (I did cut the cayenne pepper in half, which Nagi suggested might be wise.) 

I had a thigh and a drumstick and it was such a filling meal, I didn’t even eat all of it, which is kind of. . . not how I usually act. 

The kids all tried the fufu, and nobody was crazy about it, which is understandable. I thought it was super good when you pull off pieces and roll it around in the sauce.

Probably not gonna make fufu again, but it was a fun experiment. I do want to order it in a restaurant at some point, to see how it’s supposed to taste! I will most definitely make this curry again, though. Damien and I really loved it. 

While I was hunting in the cabinets for the fufu mix, I found another little international impulse purchase, and it seemed like a reasonable time to use it. 

This is just basically instant pudding. You just add hot water, stir, and pour it into molds and let it set in the fridge for a few hours. 

We opted for PURPLE HEARTS OF UBE. 

I liked it! Tasted yammy. Again, no one else was crazy about it, but at least now we know. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

The last few days were a bit challenging for the kids, so I decided to relent and serve Regular Old Spaghetti today, and they are glad. 

Oh, it turns out the plank of wood that was in the kitchen, that I sawed up to fix the white cabinet? That was a piece of Benny’s door frame that fell off. 

Look. One thing at a time. All one can do is try. 

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

 

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Quick Chinese "Roast" Pork Strips

If you have a hankering for those intensely flavorful strips of sweet, sticky Chinese roast pork but you don't want to use the oven for some reason, this works well, and you can have it in about an hour and a half, start to finish. You will need to use a pressure cooker and then finish it on the stovetop.

Ingredients

  • 4+ lbs pork roast

For sauce:

  • 3/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup oyster sauce
  • 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
  • 1/4 cup mirin
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1 tsp white pepper
  • 2 tsp Chinese five spice

Instructions

  1. Blend all sauce ingredients together. Put the pork in the Instant Pot, pour the sauce over it, close the lid, close the valve, and set to high pressure for 22 minutes.

  2. When pork is done, vent. Remove pork and cut into strips, saving the sauce.

  3. Put the pork in a large sauté pan with the sauce and heat on medium high, stirring frequently, for half an hour or more, until sauce reduces and becomes thick and glossy and coats the meat.

What’s for supper? Vol. 410: You put the child in the coconut and eat it all up

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

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet with frozen french bread pizza

Nothing to report, except that I finally broke down and ordered a new frying pan. I’ve had this 15″-inch paella pan from Aldi that I use constantly, because it’s so nice and big and I like how it has handles on both sides. 

But the metal is very thin (which is appropriate for a paella pan, but I almost never make paella), so it’s not great for frying; and I really cannot deny that we’ve been steadily eating little scraps of nonstick surface material pretty constantly for several years now. And it gets rusty if you don’t dry it after washing, which of course we don’t.  But it’s so big! And has handles!

So I bullied my money-loving heart into looking at a bunch of new pans and good used pans. Super hard to find a fifteen-inch frying pan, it turns out, except for cast iron, which I DON’T WANT. I know how to season them and I know how to cook with them. I just don’t want them, and I don’t have to explain myself! 

I settled on this fourteen-inch stainless steel one from Cuisinart, with a long handle and a short one. It cost five cents less than $40 you need to spend to get free shipping, so I also ordered a paring knife and used my new customer discount, so I got free shipping and a paring knife and a pan for less than the pan by itself. Yay!

Gosh, this is a boring story. Sorry. Anyway, that was Saturday. 

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, chips

Sunday I finally followed through on my dire warnings to the family (I really know how to market things) and forced everyone to sit down on Sunday afternoon and watch that 2021 Macbeth with Denzel Washington. Hoooooo boy, it was great! Absolutely wonderful. My eyes were bugging out half the time, and I gasped at least five times, and laughed several times, too, which is how Macbeth is supposed to be.

 

My only teeny tiny quibble is that the character of Macduff was not really anything special. You can do a lot with that role, and he really didn’t, unless I missed it. But overall, very thoroughly enthusiastically recommended. Most of the kids at home right now were not familiar with Shakespeare yet, but they followed it well enough, and enjoyed it. Corrie (who is nine) just straight up could not follow it, so she read Case Closed instead, which is fair enough. 

Next we are going to watch Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, which is his take on Macbeth. We watched The Hidden Fortress last week, which made me want to see Throne of Blood, but I thought we should see regular Macbeth first. (I think we did a free trial of Apple Whatever to watch Macbeth, and then cancelled it when the movie was over.) 

When the movie was over, we had supper, which I had cleverly prepped in the early afternoon. Roast chicken with salt and pepper, tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, olive oil and vinegar on ciabatta rolls; and chips. 

Actually I think we were out of olive oil. 

I forgot, I also made a sort of bread pudding in the afternoon, just for a snack. We had a pile of stale french bread from last week, and there was an unopened carton of eggnog left over from New Year’s Eve.

I know that sounds like an insanely long time ago! but it was sealed up and it tasted fine. So I tore up the bread and put it in a buttered casserole dish, mixed some eggnog together with a bunch of eggs and poured that over the bread and let it soak for a while. Then I dotted it with butter and topped it with cinnamon sugar, and baked it until it was firm, probably 35 -40 minutes.

Not stupendous, but pleasant, and I felt thrifty to have used up some old food, and the kids were surprised to have a fresh-baked little snack in the afternoon. 

MONDAY

Monday was Sophia’s driving test, and she passed! Woo hoo!

I have now taught six kids how to drive, and only four of them have hit my parked car, that I can remember, and only one of them was somehow mad at me for it. 

The next one in line to get her license is this punk

and as you can see, she already knows the basics. (SHE IS SEVENTEEN, SOB.) 

I don’t remember what we ate on Monday. Oh, ham. Plus hot pretzels and peas. No wonder I didn’t take a picture. 

TUESDAY
Thai chicken thighs, coconut rice, tomato and cucumber salad

Tuesday, I didn’t have to go anywhere besides the regular run, so I was pretty hyped to have time to try two new recipes: First Thai Tumeric Chicken (Gai Yang Khamin) from Recipe Tin Eats. For once in my life I was smart and did not tell the family that I was going to be using fish sauce, which, as we know, smewws wike cat fwow-up.

The marinade only has a few ingredients, but there are several powerhouses in there: Fish sauce, oyster sauce, crushed garlic, and turmeric, plus brown sugar and pepper. I was sadly out of white pepper (I think I used it to fend rabbits off my tulip bulbs), so I used black. 

Nice marinade. 

Then, while that was marinating, I was even more hyped to make the side dish that Nagi recommends, which is coconut rice. Now, I love coconut rice far, far more than is reasonable. I mean it’s something I think about kind of a lot. If you filled up an entire room with coconut rice and told me I had to eat my way through to the middle to rescue my child from death, I would do it, and then lovingly take her hand, ask her to hang on a second, and then go ahead and eat the rest of the coconut rice. 

The government, in its wisdom, sent me a random EBT card (which we don’t usually qualify for) because we qualified for reduced lunch at some point, but because of Covid(?), and our school (which we don’t go to; and the school we do go to doesn’t offer lunch) didn’t serve school lunch over the summer, and they felt bad about it, or something? This isn’t the first time this has happened. Anyway, I had a magic money card, so I bought a big sack of jasmine rice. I feel that the more government stupidity you can convert into rice, the better, so I got a really big sack. With elephants on it!

Here is the Recipe Tin Eats recipe for coconut rice. You have to rinse the rice, of course, and then soak it for an hour. Then you drain it, add warm coconut milk with water and some sugar and salt dissolved in it, and cover and cook it in the oven for 40 minutes, then let it rest 15 minutes before fluffing and serving. I did it exactly like she said and it turned out SO GOOD. Absolutely fluffy and light, evenly cooked, wonderfully fragrant, not sweet, but rich. Oh man. 

She also said this chicken and rice is often served with tomatoes and cucumbers, so I made up a big bowl of that with no dressing or anything, because I figured the kids might want something really straightforward. 

The chicken is simple, but it does need to be basted twice. It didn’t turn out with a thick, sticky sauce like hers did, but maybe that would have happened if I left it in the oven a little longer, or basted it more thoroughly. It was still extremely tasty, and juicy!

The turmeric was the star, and the oyster sauce and fish sauce just gave it a sort of robustness, and the whole effect was very warming and pleasant, a little bit tangy, but not aggressive or spicy; and the flavor permeated the meat. It wasn’t wildly popular with the family, but they ate it. Maybe I will experiment with the sauce and see what I can do to make it thicker. 

All in all, quite a delicious meal. 

The kids were meh about the coconut rice! Can you believe that? I was forced to eat my way through the entire roomful almost all by myself. 

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, veg and hummus, french fries

Wednesday is just always a day of shenanigans, so I planned a very easy meal. I even splurged on a few bags of those “quick cook” fries, which I was delighted with when I tried them one other time. Well, it DIDN’T WORK. They were just as slow as any frozen fry! Very disappointing. I was forced to drown my sorrows in hot dogs while I was waiting. 

THURSDAY
Spaghetti carbonara

On Thursday, my beautiful new pan finally arrived. The paring knife has yet to come, but I hope they didn’t forget, because I gotta pare some stuff. But look at this lovely pan:

PIC 

(There is no pic, actually, because I managed to crack the faucet last night, so poor Damien is in there putting a new one in, and I don’t want to bother him.) 

Sadly, it came after I already fried up three pounds of bacon for spaghetti carbonara; so the horrible old paella pan had a fittingly glorious swan song, I guess.

Maybe I posted this picture

with the caption “Spectacular new image from the Hubble telescope. This is a protoplanetary nebula with an unusual amount of infrared radiation. God is such an artist.”

and I guess today I should probably share the zoomed-out version, which is this:

I still think it’s pretty!

Goodbye, old pan. You were always terrible, but at least your handles didn’t fall off. 

Damien is making some rash statements about how now I can throw out the old pan. I don’t really know what he means by that. It’s something old and gross for which I have frequently professed my hatred, and he wants me to just get rid of it, like it’s garbage? What if I need it? 

He knows me, so when he saw me transforming into a pan goblin right before his eyes, he hastily suggested that maybe I could use it in my garden. And now you know the main reason I have a garden: So I can put old crap in it, to avoid throwing it away, which would give me a deep and personal pain that you might not be able to understand if you grew up flying to Hawaii for Thanksgiving and having a mariachi band at your First Communion party.

Anyway, I went out into the yard (which, unlike some people’s childhood yards, has neither a hydraulic pool cover nor an aviary) and got my new stock pot, which I recently bought for myself for a treat, and which was full of ice with feathers floating in it, because. . . look, it’s complicated. I had my reasons. I cleaned it very thoroughly. And I AM going to use my old, gross stock pot in the garden. It’s going to be a garden pot. With handles! 

You know what, I don’t like your tone. I’m not saving you any coconut rice. 

So I prepped all the bacon and the cheese and ground pepper and whatnot

Pretty pretty! and then this comes together nice and quick. YUM YUM. It’s fine for me to have seconds, because I did twenty minutes of pilates today. Well, more like eighteen minutes, with two minutes of shouting, “Come ON, lady!” 

And I didn’t overcook the pasta!

FRIDAY
Mussels and eggplant??

So Friday, I knew the kids were going to be at a library lock-in event, where they would be fed pizza, so I thought it was my chance to make something nice for me and Damien. But it’s Friday, so fish. Well, one thing and another, blah blah blah, and by the time I got to the fish counter, I was a little rattled, and came away with a pound of scallops, some fingerling potatoes, and two big eggplants. Because menu planning is kind of my THING. 

There are various recipes using at least two of those ingredients together, but I think I’ll probably just do something really simple with the scallops, like sear them and serve them with lemon butter with hot pepper flakes or something, and then maybe do fried eggplant slices.

Jump to Recipe

Maybe some noodles or risotto or something. And throw the potatoes out the window! Throw them in the garden. 

Have you seen my garden? This is my garden today. 

I’m growing snow. It’s going great.  It’s organic. 

Like many people, I spent a certain amount of time this week tear-assing around the house scrubbing stuff and fixing little things. By the time we get through the last confirmation hearing, this house is going to be spotless. Which is good, because at some point, I’m going to fill the whole thing up with coconut rice. The whole thing! 

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Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

What’s for supper? Vol. 409: Lucid cooking

Happy Friday! Sorry so late! I’m running so late today. First I slept extremely late, woke up, and decided to go back to sleep and try having a lucid dream; and the thing I chose to do with my powerful mind was go into the community house basement rummage sale and discover a box of antique toothpicks, and when I opened the box, I found both toothpicks and a tooth inside. Just like I planned.

Then I decided I might as well get up, and then I ran to Home Depot for some unthreaded off-white 1/2″ PVC T connectors, because Damien is at the point in his project where he know he needs one now, which means he’ll be glad to have five within an hour.

Yes, the piiiiiipes frozzzzzzze despite all our normal New England precautions, and then theyyyyyy burssssssst despite all our thawing efforts. So he has been down there in the crawl space for two days, putting new pipes in, and insulating everything in sight. Gentlemen, if you are wondering what women want, they want someone who can fix things and also be a nice guy to his family while doing it. This is what we want. 

And we want water, which we will have by the end of the day! In conclusion, winter is stupid, but my husband is my hero. 

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet with pizza pockets, homemade apple sauce, tapioca pudding

We had our usual assortment of reheated goodies, plus pizza pockets.

It was Corrie’s Shopping Turn, and part of the deal of Shopping Turn is that you get to pick the two weekend desserts. (You also get to pick the weekend “Silly Cereal,” and you get lunch at your choice of drive thrus; and you get to influence the snack purchases for the week, plus you get to pick the pot sweetener for leftover buffet.)

But we somehow forgot to pick dessert! But! I had done some fruit decluttering in the morning, and had started some apple sauce cooking in the morning. 

For applesauce, I quarter the apples and put them into the slow cooker along with the peels and cores, with a little water and let it cook all day. (I had a ton, so I filled up the Instant Pot, too.) 
When they are mushy, I run the apples through a food mill

(the only tool I’ve ever found that works for this job) and add a little butter, some cinnamon, and sometimes some sugar or honey, sometimes not. 

I myself would eat warm homemade apple sauce for dessert, but not everyone feels that way. But! I had also picked up a box of tapioca on a whim, and I thought MAYBE if I made some tapioca pudding, and we had warm, cozy, homemade applesauce and warm, creamy, fluffy tapioca pudding, that would be a nice dessert for a chilly, blustery day? 

Well, I WAS WRONG. Damien and I had actually signed up for an hour of adoration for 40 hours of what have you, and then we went out for pizza. So we came home as the kids were eating dessert. 

I said, “Oh, how did you like your grandma dessert?”
One kid said, “Yeh.” 
One kid said, “Meh.”
And one kid said, “Never do this again.”

So I won’t! But I ate most of the tapioca pudding all by myself, and, right or wrong, I have no regrets. 

SUNDAY
Marry Me Chicken, french bread

I ran across this recipe from Sip and Feast, and it looked incredible. I don’t think I’ve had a bad recipe from this site yet, and this one was also a win.

I could tell it was one of those dishes where you would want some bread to sop up the extra sauce, so I started some dough for this basic french bread recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

It was quite chilly in the kitchen, so I sprayed the crock pot with baking spray, put the dough in, and set it to “keep warm.”

Started like this:

and an hour later we had this:

A successful rise, I would say! It actually baked a tiny bit on the bottom, because it really ran out of room (this is a recipe for four long loaves, so it was a lot of dough). I rolled out the loaves and set them for a second rise, this time on the stove top with the oven on and slightly opened. 

Ideally, I’d bake the bread right before dinner and have piping hot bread along with the main course, but I’d never made this chicken before, so I figured I’d play it safe and get the bread baked and then focus on the chicken. You see? Wisdom. Or whatever. 

The bread turned out sightly pale, but it was baked PERFECTLY inside. Extremely fluffy and soft

with a really thin, crusty crust. Probably could have given in another, like, 2.5 minutes in the oven and gotten a crisper crust, but I’d rather err on the side of not overbaked. 

Then I started the chicken! I had such insanely pneumatic chicken breasts that I cut them into thirds, lengthwise, and beat them flat with my marble rolling pin. Which I took a picture of, so I might as well share it. 

Then you salt and pepper the chicken breasts, dredge them with flour, and then you sear the chicken in the oil you have drained off the sun-dried tomatoes. 

Oh, my mother would have loved this recipe. 
When the chicken is done, you take it out and add a little more tomato oil to the pan, and brown up sliced garlic

and then add the sun-dried tomatoes, then white wine, then chicken stock

then cream

then baby spinach

and then freshly-grated cheese

You cook this sauce down a bit to thicken it up, and then you add in the chicken, and let it all enjoy each other’s company for a while. 

And that’s it! You serve it with some fresh basil on top, and YES, I was glad to have fresh bread to sop up that incredible sauce. 

My photos did not turn out great! It looks a little bit ghastly, actually. But it was actually fabulous. Rich and fresh and just delightful, absolutely dancing with flavor. It was fun to make, too. Most definitely adding this in to the “special treat” list of dinners. It wasn’t horribly expensive, but it took a lot of active cooking time, because you have to let it cook in between each ingredient addition. Totally worth it, but not a weekday meal!

MONDAY
Mexican beef bowls, black beans

Monday was Inauguration Day, and the kids had the day off for MLK Jr. Day, and I sort of muscled Elijah into taking them sledding, which we haven’t done yet this year. I wanted a really popular, hearty meal (to warm up the kids and to cheer up the grown ups), so this was pretty good. 

Here is my recipe for the beef marinade, which I truly love.

Jump to Recipe

It’s very rich, and the little sparkle of lime juice is very pleasant. 

I also started some black beans cooking in the Instant Pot. 

Jump to Recipe

and when they were done, I moved them to the slow cooker and used the Instant Pot to make a big bunch of white rice. So we had rice with the meat and gravy on top, plus beans, cilantro, corn chips, sour cream, some corn I blackened a bit in a pan, and lime wedges. 

Always a very popular meal. I originally put my beans in a dish that a child then revealed was the dish that used to hold gerbil food, and that was less popular, with me. 

Pretty sure it was the same kid who (completely unmaliciously, probably unconsciously) did this to my kitchen candle

This is the candle I use to heat the tip of a knife to make drainage holes in milk jugs for my winter sowing. Which I’m not doing this year. But STILL. Leave my candle alone! 

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, veg and dip, cheez balls

Tuesday I listened to the news until I got the sudden urge to tear apart the refrigerator, scrub everything down, throw out half our food, and reorganize everything. 

So we had that going for us. I’m still trying to get the kids to go along with this system where produce goes in the doors, for high visibility, and bottles and jars go in the bottom drawers, for easy access, but it’s a losing battle. Which is apparently my favorite kind. 

In keeping with this sentiment, I dropped off my car for inspection, pointed out where I had put it back together with zip ties, and asked them to just do whatever was one step up from zip ties. I love our mechanic. They totally understand us. And get this: When I take my car in, and then Damien and I show up together to pick it up, they talk to me about it. Because it’s my car!

For supper, we had buffalo chicken wraps, for which some of my kids have an almost baffling level of enthusiasm. Tortillas, ranch or blue cheese dressing, buffalo chicken (or sometimes I just get regular chicken and serve it with buffalo sauce), shredded pepper jack cheese, shredded lettuce, and crispy fried onions from a can. I forgot to get tomatoes. 

It really is a good wrap. I like it as a salad, too, but there is less general enthusiasm for that in this house. 

I also made a giant, rather festive platter of broccoli and sweet peppers that I meant to serve along with the beef bowls. 

And I put out one of those barrels of Cheez Balls or whatever they’re called. Quite an orange meal, overall. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday was when the pipes froze and burst. Here’s the dog’s water dish in the morning:

The duck’s water thawing thingy also broke, and the stream is frozen over, so I gave them a big pot of hot water to enjoy, and they really did. Whatever else you can say about ducks, they do know how to enjoy themselves. The turtle’s heat bulb also broke! I got him a new one, and it was really hard to tell if he appreciated it or not. 

My car was done, and it cost sighhhhhhh a little less than $600, which is better than more than $600. I also had to get my driver’s license renewed. Last time I did this, I was half zip ties myself, so I was looking forward to getting a new picture. The old picture:

I guess this new one is better?

Making you get your picture taken after waiting at the DMV for forty minutes is the equivalent of when you go to the doctor and they take your blood pressure, and it’s a little high, so they review all the things that are wrong with you, and then they weigh you, and then they re-take your blood pressure, and GUESS WHAT? That didn’t help! OH WELL. (Actually my blood pressure is fine these days! Normal! If that don’t beat all.) 

We had pizza for supper, and I made it early in the day but forgot to cover it, so the dough got kinda crusty and unpleasant, but oh well. Pizza’s pizza. Nothing fancy, just one cheese, one olive, and one pepperoni. 

THURSDAY
Chinese(?) soup, rice, potstickers

Thursday I defrosted the pork filling that was leftover from New Year’s Eve dumplings, with the intention of making nice little meatballs with it. I have done this several times, and it usually works?  But this time it did not. 

The meat just fell apart in the pan, so I decided to just fry it up in a big slab, and then divide it into bite-sized pieces. Which also didn’t really work, but I was in too deep. 

I made a big pot of chicken broth, simmered some fresh garlic and ginger in it, then added in the pork, which was already seasoned and had cabbage and carrot shreds in it. Then I broke up some seaweed sheets in it, and shook in a bunch of soy sauce and some sesame oil, and some chopped scallions, and let it simmer for a while. 

It was not terrible! It tasted persuasively Asian. I made a pot of rice and cooked some frozen pot stickers

and it was a decent meal. But I told the kid who cleared the table not to bother saving the soup. It was fine, but I didn’t think anyone would want seconds.

I had actually bought some tofu and planned to fry it up and put some cubes into the soup, but I couldn’t get the package open. So now we live tofu another day. (This joke implies that I pronounce “tofu” like “too-foo,” which I do not.) 

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese, tomato soup, pickles and chips

And a nice, easy, pleasant meal to round off the week (or, to eat while you quickly finish up your food post; your pick).

Damien is finishing up the pipe repair, and we have water again! He’s still down there insulating the hell out of everything. (Obviously we already have insulation down there, and pipe insulation, and heat tape, but that was some cold snap.)

And now my story is all told. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see what’s inside this box of toothpicks. 

5 from 1 vote
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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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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.

 

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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. 408: Are we cumin? or are we dancers?

Happy Friday! Let’s hop to it, she said, while propped up in bed. Here’s what we had for supper this week, which turned out to be a combination of quite good food and fair-to-bad life management otherwise:

SATURDAY
Domino’s, cheesecake with strawberries

A belated birthday celebration. I made my top secret cheesecake recipe, the details of which I have been sworn to secrecy about; but the general advice for this mile-high, lusciously creamy megalith (or I guess megaτυρί) of a dessert is:

Put the cheese out the night before, so it’s really truly at room temp; mix it only lightly, so as to introduce as little air as possible, and scrape down the bowl often, or else stop mixing and drop the bowl a few times, to knock the air out; wrap the pan thoroughly in heavy duty foil and bake it in a water bath, and then, without opening the oven, turn the oven off and let the cheesecake sit in the cooling oven for a few hours before you take it out and chill it; and chill it overnight. So essentially you need to start two evenings before the day you eat it. 

What I do NOT recommend is: Press the graham cracker crust into the pan, but forget to bake it before pouring the cheesecake batter on top; forget to grease the pan before adding the batter; and bake it way high up in the oven so the top gets absolutely roasted brown. Also do a poor job wrapping the pan, so a little water leaks in.

But I did all these things. 

So, NOT MY FINEST WORK. But, still, cheesecake, and lots of it! I cut some strawberries into some sort of non-specific flower shapes and pressed some sliced strawberries onto the sides. Forgot to take a pic of the whole cake, but here is a wedge

and here is a piece with a scoop of strawberry sauce on top:

I made the strawberry sauce by cutting up two pounds of strawberries and heating them in a pan with the juice from one lemon, plus the lemon zest, and 2/3 cup of sugar. I simmered this for about twenty minutes, then got annoyed and threw it in the food processor and pulsed it a bit. Then I put it back in the pot and stirred in a roux of about two teaspoons of cornstarch. Simmered and stirred for another five minutes and then I chilled it. 

This cake was a bit of a mess, so I was glad for a little bit of zing from the lemon in the topping. Really not as bad as it might have been, with all my errors. Everyone liked it, and it was pretty. 

SUNDAY
Leftover buffet

Sunday we were back on our leftover grind. Looks like we had some rotisserie chicken, chicken biryani, pasta salad, and something in tinfoil that I can’t quite make out; plus lots of pizza pockets. 

I have clearly been making too much damn food, but it’s just not an area of self-improvement that I have the will to take seriously right now. 

It was the first weekend in a long, long time that we weren’t both crazy busy and sick, so didn’t plan anything, and happily spent a lot of time carving wood for no particular reason. I’m really, really enjoying this hobby that I have no plans to monetize or make useful in any way.

It’s a creative and artistic outlet like drawing, but since I’m a rank amateur, I have very low expectations for myself (unlike with drawing); and it feels great to use my hands and muscles, which is something I really miss over the winter when I’m not building anything or working in my garden. 

I had so much free time on Sunday, I looked ahead and made a double recipe of pie crust for Tuesday’s dinner. Here’s my pie crust recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I take the “do not over handle” advice for pie crust really seriously, and honestly don’t even completely incorporate all the flour until I roll the dough out. I mean I leave it slightly disorganized in the bowl, and only use the rolling pin to finish making it into actual dough, if that makes sense. It would be more satisfying to have a neat round ball of dough to start rolling out, but I do get really flaky crust this way. 

MONDAY
Meatloaf, baked potatoes, peas

Ground beef was on sale in a way that makes me think there is some sports event coming up? I’m not being coy; I’m genuinely 100% out of the loop. But ground beef prices are a sign of sports just as surely as little birdies are a sign of spring. (If little birdies were on sale, I would buy a bunch of those, too.)

So I made a ton of meatloaf, which we haven’t had in quite some time. This is strategic, so my family still continues to think of meatloaf as a treat. When I was growing up, we had meatloaf so often that my father made a little song about it (“Meatloaf on Monday”), which my mother did not like.

HOWEVER, my meatloaf recipe is quite delicious, so I could probably make it a little more often. If ground beef were on sale more often! Come on, football! Shake a leg! Shake a foot! Shake a ball! 

Here’s my recipe:

Jump to Recipe

and it came out absolutely monstrously yummers, which is how meatloaf should be

I buy fatty ground beef and then cook it in such a way that I drain out the fat. Does this make sense? I don’t know. I feel in my heart that it’s the most virtuous thing to do, but there is no actual evidence for this. Good meatloaf, though. 

I was somewhere or other in the afternoon, so I left directions for one of the kids for when to put the meat and potatoes in the oven, and it worked out swell. Served with microwaved peas from frozen, which I also try not to serve too often, but honestly I could probably get away with more. Peas are something else I love now, but hated as a kid, because I’m so old, we had canned peas, which are the color, consistency, and taste of mud. Happy to report my kids like and appreciate frozen peas. 

TUESDAY
Chicken pie, roast carrots

Tuesday morning, I smugly pulled the pre-made pie crust out of the fridge, and made the chicken pie filling. This is a wonderful and lavish dish which i made because, I don’t know, it was Tuesday and I like pie. 

I used red onions because I was out of yellow, and dried thyme rather than fresh, and I used a bunch of leeks rather than the celery I used last time. Leeks are what the original recipe, which my friend Rebecca Salazar wrote, calls for, and YES, I took a joke picture of the leeks under the bathroom sink. I’m not made of stone. 

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Anyway, this is a joyfully delicious dish. How could it not be, with these ingredients?

I got a little cute with the top crust, and used a cookie cutter and one of those cut-out rolling pins to add some detail

Then I took a kid in for a driving test, and let’s just say that through a combination of said child not listening closely to instructions and then not wanting to ask anyone for clarification, and me driving a car that I haven’t super duper gotten around to putting the bumper back on, we . . . did not do the driving test. And went away sad. 

But how sad can you be when there is chicken pie?

Last time I made this, I was very impressed at how well the pieces held their shape. This time, the gravy turned out a little thinner, for some reason. 

Possibly if I had let it sit for a bit before cutting it open, it would have been more cohesive. I’m not really convinced this was a flaw, though. It was truly heavenly. 

The potatoes were actually a little under done, but this didn’t even slow me down. Next time I will give it an extra ten minutes in the oven, though.

You can see that I made roast carrots for a side dish, because that’s what I wrote on the menu, and apparently Corrie had been looking forward to this all week. I was planning to follow this recipe, but got my wires crossed and did the wrong one, and then realized it was wrong and tried to finesse it, so we ended up with slightly underdone carrots roasted in olive oil, brown sugar, garlic powder, and pepper that were ALSO DELICIOUS. 

Corrie thought the carrots were great. Damien and I thought the chicken pie was great. THE REST OF THE KIDS HAD RAMEN. I don’t care! I’m making it again, and soon! Might make a smaller one, though. Might not. 

WEDNESDAY
Oven fried chicken, Prongles, more peas

Wednesday morning, I threw a bunch of chicken drumsticks in a bowl with milk, eggs, salt, and pepper, and then I drove over and dropped off the relics of St. Helen and St. Peter at my local church!

 

I figured someone in the area once owned them before they ended up at the Salvation Army, so it makes sense to keep them local. The pastor will be displaying them for veneration on their holy days, and I think they’re going to be incorporated into the high altar at some point.

My brother-in-law built a reliquary and my sister made a glass fronted case for them, and my niece sewed a beautiful cloth to drape over it.

I got them authenticated by Sacra Relics (and fervent thanks again to everyone who pitched in to fund that!) and it turns out the St. Helen one is a first class relic, but the St. Peter one is a piece of his altar. I will be talking with Sean Pilcher more soon, to get more information. All in all, it was sad but a bit of a relief to have them out of the house. We had them in the living room and it was a little too easy to forget they were there! But I am grateful for our extended visit. What a to-do. 

Wednesdays are a little snazy in the afternoon, and I generally spend three hours in the car, just going back and forth over the same 15 miles or so. So I prepped the seasoned flour for the chicken ahead of time. Here is my oven- fried chicken recipe: 

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and I just asked Benny to pick up where I left off, and she did great!

I served Prongles, as planned (that is store brand Pringles, which I can never remember the actual name of. Don’t ask me why I can remember “Prongles,” which isn’t the name of anything), and searched around for a vegetable and lo, I found more frozen peas. So much for not serving them too often. Hey, Three Things, and One Not Brown. We did it, folks. 

I also put my bumper back on. Basically.  

THURSDAY
Tacos

Thursday we had a big medical appointment for a kid an hour an a half away, and I left feeling (accurately) like I was kinda dropping the ball, and then I missed my exit, and then, as we were driving through Plainfield and I was yapping about how, when I was growing up, we always hated Plainfield because the Plainfield track team had a wonderful track made of these sproingy rubber nubbins, and our track was just dirt with grass growing on it, I got pulled over.

IT WAS WEIRD.

(Not the above sentence. The sentence works out, if you read it carefully.)

The officer explained that we were being recorded, and then said that someone had been following me and called 911 to say that I crossed the center line and almost hit a truck. That. . . didn’t happen, which is what I told him. He then said he was watching me and I was weaving all over the road, and he asked me if I was tired, drunk, angry, distracted, upset, on medication, lost, or driving a car that was making me drive erratically. The absolute truth is that I was all of those things, except drunk, because it’s Thursday, and this is what peak performance on a Thursday looks like for me: Everything but drunk. But I truly don’t think I was weaving, and I most definitely did not cross the center line. 

So I just kept doing the “Gee, I don’t know!” thing, which was accurate, and then he asked for my license, and here is where I started to feel a little bad, because my license has expired. I did have an appointment to renew it, though. You can renew your license online, but I had a desperate desire to get a new picture, since my old picture was when I — look, I’m not exactly trim and slender now, but I had an entire additional chin five years ago. So I made an in-person appointment, which had not happened yet.

For some reason I don’t understand, he did not give me a ticket for this. I think he didn’t like the look of my car, which was absolutely whiskery with zip ties (I had to add a few more in the hospital parking garage), and was looking for a reason to pull me over. But I turned out to be just this lady drinking Coke Zero and yapping at her kid, so he just told me to be more careful, with the result that I was just about hysterical with nerves all the way home, and drove way, way worse. 

Not gonna lie, I really thought by the time I was fifty years old, I would have my shit together more than this. But I do not. I do have a little bit of life insurance, and I bought myself some new socks the other day. I’m trying. Maybe I should go get those relics back. 

Then we had tacos, and then we went to Lucy’s art show, and I forgot to take pictures! But she good at art. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Thank goodness for spaghetti. I mad an appointment for both cars to get inspected, and I rescheduled the driving test for today, and if they give me a hard time about the car, I’m going to take it pretty hard. But not learn anything! Never learn anything, that’s my motto. 

Oh, I forgot to explain the title. See, I got a bee in my bonnet and reorganized my spice shelf. It doesn’t look any nicer, but it’s ORGANIZED. The categories are: Indian, Indian Overflow, Middle Eastern, Asian, Mexican/Peppers and Spicy Blends, Herbs and Seeds, Baking, and Everyday.

These categories are fairly bogus, because there is a lot of overlap. I put the Scezhuan pepper in “Asian,” rather than in “Peppers;” and I put cumin in “Indian,” when it arguably belongs in “Middle Eastern, “etc. etc. Cinnamon could go in almost every category! But I organized them according to how I tend to actually USE them, and so far, it’s been really hlelpful. Also, I have SO MUCH CUMIN. And have spent a lot of time with Lucy lately, and she plays a lot of The Killers. So that’s the title. 

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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Meatloaf (actually two giant meatloaves)

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground beef
  • 2 lbs ground turkey
  • 8 eggs
  • 4 cups breadcrumbs
  • 3/4 cup milk OR red wine
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

plenty of salt, pepper, garlic powder or fresh garlic, onion powder, fresh parsley, etc.

  • ketchup for the top
  • 2 onions diced and fried (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450

  2. Mix all meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and seasonings together with your hands until well blended.

  3. Form meat into two oblong loaves on pan with drainage

  4. Squirt ketchup all over the outside of the loaves and spread to cover with spatula. Don't pretend you're too good for this. It's delicious. 

  5. Bake for an hour or so, until meat is cooked all the way through. Slice and serve. 

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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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.

What’s for supper? Vol. 407: Model citizen

Happy Friday! Today has been my week to slowly come back to life. A little yoga, a little writing, and actually, in retrospect, kind of a lot of cooking and baking. As I was reviewing my photos for the week, I noticed the theme was ORANGE, plus yellow and red. You could do worse in the middle of January. 

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, chips

Usually Saturday is Leftover Buffet, but I had some thawed boneless skinless chicken thighs that needed to be used ASAP, I forget why; so after I shopped, I made these sandwiches from Sip and Feast. 

It’s a few steps, but doesn’t take any particular skill, and you get a tremendous payback in flavor and texture. You season the chicken thighs, brown them in oil, and lay sliced cheese on them and cover them. While the cheese is melting, you cut the tops off a bunch of shishito peppers and blister them quickly in a pan, and slice up some red onion. Serve it all on soft brioche buns with BBQ sauce. Just delicious and delightful.

Saturday night, I made a double batch of King Arthur Flour Chewy Cranberry Orange cookies, which I made for the first time before Christmas. They are super easy (everything just gets dumped into one bowl) and very cheery, friendly cookies. Doesn’t look like I took any pictures, but they turned out very similar to the pic on the site, which tells you how easy they are! I did end up baking them for a slightly shorter time than recommended, based on past experience.

SUNDAY
Rotisserie chicken/Chili’s 

On Sunday, we were supposed to go to my sister’s new baby’s baptism.  The kids were too sick to go, so I bought a couple of rotisserie chickens, fries, and raw vegetables for them, and planned for me and Damien to go to the baptism, then go out to eat. But I woke up with a rotten sore throat, which is no kind of gift to bring to babies across state lines. Boo! I want to see my family!

However, I soon realized that we were actually sitting pretty for the day. Damien and I had gone to the vigil Mass on Saturday, so — get this, people with little kids: On Sunday morning, my son got everyone up and dressed, and took them to Mass in his car, and what I did was stay in bed, not get dressed, and slowly sip coffee.  Incroyable. 

I milked this situation as long as I possibly could, and then realized that, because I was home on Epiphany, I could mess around with some king cake. Baking when you really don’t have to and you’re not in a hurry is a very different experience from, well, every other kind of baking.

We usually have some kind of cream cheese-filled king cake on Mardi Gras, so I tried something different: Rosca de Reyes. I’m on a King Arthur Flour jag, so I used their recipe, which is supposed to look like a crown with jewels. 

I made a double recipe of the dough, and then decided we really needed candied orange peels, so I made up a bunch of those, using this Epicurious recipe. You cut the ends off, score it into quarters, and remove the peel and pith.

Then you, uh, eat all the peeled oranges. Because you are sick, and need the vitamin C. 

I actually used a ruler to cut the peel into 1/4-inch slices, because I have made peace with the fact that I shrimply cannot eyeball fractions of an inch.

You simmer the sliced peels in water, rinse them twice, and then simmer them in sugar water for 45 minutes. 

Pretty pretty. Note: I doubled the amount of oranges, but used the same amount of sugar and water for simmering, which worked fine.

Then you drain the peels again and toss them with more sugar and spread them out to dry. At this point, I finally read to the end of the recipe and discovered the peels are supposed to dry for 1-2 days, which, oh well. I did pop them in a low oven for half and hour and they turned out great. I LOVE candied citrus peels. Gotta make more. 

Back to the sweet bread! You let the dough rise, then roll it out, slather it with melted butter, and fill it with cinnamon, sugar, orange or lemon zest, and whatever else you like. What I had was some slivered almonds, dried cranberries, lemon zest, and something called tutti frutti that I got from the Indian section of the International Market

and I was pretty pleased with the combination.

You roll the dough up like for cinnamon rolls, and form them into a ring around a center, like greased ramekin, to keep the shape.

I put most of the candied orange peel on, but then decided to take most of it off before baking. You are supposed to snip vents all around, which I did, but didn’t make them big enough, so they partially closed up. I did stuff some candied orange peels into the vents, which was a good idea. And don’t forget to add a baby, or a dry bean, or something for someone to find!
Then you brush the bread with egg wash and bake.

And they turned out great!

Very pretty, shiny, and bright. 

Would have been absolutely splendid if I had some candied cherries to decorate them with, but I was pleased. 

I overbaked them a tiny bit, which I always do, and it was pretty finicky getting the piping hot bread rings off the piping hot ramekins, but overall, a success. I strewed the rest of the orange peels over the top when they came out of the oven. 

Tender inside, halfway between bread and cake, rich and medium-sweet. 

Nobody found the dry bean I hid inside, and then I went back for seconds before bed and found it in the last piece, so that was a little anti-climactic. The person who finds the bean (or baby or whatever) is supposed to throw a party on Candlemas, and if anyone does that, it will probably be me, so there you go. 

Oh, so for supper, Damien and I figured we had already been planning to eat out, so we splurged and Door Dashed Chili’s, and then locked ourselves into our room and ate it without taking any pictures. Long live Chili’s.

Cheers Beer GIFfrom Cheers GIFs

Not gonna lie, the rosca de reyes was a lot of work, and I probably won’t make it again. I guess when it comes down to it, sweet bread isn’t really my favorite. I’d rather either have regular bread, or else something much sweeter. I do want to try one of those star-shaped epiphany cakes, though, because dang, those are pretty. 

MONDAY
Pork nachos

I had made a double recipe of king cake just out of sheer habit, but we only ate one, so I brought the other one to Clara’s place, which gave me a chance to finally see her apartment. It’s very nice. Full of light and pretty things, and it smelled good.

But otherwise, Monday was super duper vacation is really really over now day. It began with my car inexplicably falling off itself.

What appears to be blood in the grass is just spray paint from some Halloween costume project. But it fits. 

I’m pretty sure this is a job for zip ties, but it’s been too freaking cold outside to really deal with it, so I’ve just been driving like a model citizen, so as not to attract any unwanted police attention, because you are required to have two license plates in this state. Also because my driver’s license expired. I’ll deal with it! I’ll get to it! Model citizen!

In keeping with the general tone of day, I grimly hurled a hunk of pork into the Instant Pot and added, I don’t know what, cider vinegar, cumin, salt and pepper, chili powder, and pickled jalapeños and a bunch of the juice, and pressed the “meat” button. When the meat was done

I shredded it and made two pans of nachos, one with just chips, meat, and cheese, and one with cheese and also some kind of horrible melty jar cheese stuff, more japapeños, and a bunch more cumin and chili powder.

and served it with salsa and sour cream.

And it wasn’t that good! The kids ate almost none of their special mild weenie tray, and I just bundled it all up in tin foil and put it into the fridge until it’s time to throw it away this weekend. And so Monday passed. 

I see from my camera roll that Monday was also the day I locked myself in my room and tried out this lip plumper that I ordered right after having hernia surgery and turning fifty. I won’t be sharing the pictures, but my conclusion is that some lips are probably fine as they are. Especially if you’re otherwise a model citizen. 

TUESDAY
Beef barley soup, artisan bread

Tuesday it was still cold and horrible out, and I sure wasn’t making much progress with the million looming deadlines I have, so it seemed like a soup and bread day. I had bought a bunch of beef when it was on sale, so I made a huge pot of beef barley soup

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which is always nice. Then, although I’ve had no success with this in the past, I decided to make some of that “artisan bread” (which always sounds like a euphemism to me, like “sandwich artist” or “sanitation engineer”) which you don’t have to knead and which you bake it in a dutch oven, which I don’t have. I thought it might work out this time, though, because I discovered that Nagi of Recipe Tin Eats has a recipe, and Nagi is the last honest person on the internet, and writes out her recipes so they are actually useful. Stuff like “Dough will be wet and sloppy – not kneadable, but not runny like cake batter” and she tells you in the recipe where to look in the video, to make sure you’re doing it right. I feel like Nagi is on your side, in a way that no one else is. And she has such cute little hands.

Anyway, I made the dough, and it was wet and sloppy, not kneadable, but not runny like cake batter

and let it rise for about three hours while I went out to do the afternoon school run and errands. When I came back, it had doubled in volume and was wobbly like jelly and the top was bubbly, just like Nagi said. 

I did the alternative to the dutch oven instructions, where you flop the dough onto a hot pan and then immediately fill another pan, below it in the oven, with boiling water, and then slam the oven shut and let it steam while it bakes. 

Turned out great!

Crusty and crunchy on the outside, tender and chewy on the inside

Everyone liked it. Nagi does it again! Next time I’ll form the dough so it’s piled up a little higher and I get a slightly rounder loaf, but it was great as it was. The flavor is plain as can be, but it’s so simple and easy, and you can’t beat piping hot homemade bread with a big pot of savory soup.

This recipe fit in perfectly with my typical weekday, where I have a little time in late morning, and then I’m out of the house for several hours, and then I’m home about forty minutes or half an hour before we want to eat. She also includes instructions for making the dough the day before and refrigerating it overnight before you bake it. 

I made a very large pot of soup, intending to enjoy it again over the weekend, but tragically, it got left out overnight. Memory eternal, soup. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken biryani, naan 

Wednesday I had an irresistible urge to make chicken biryani. I was planning to open Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni, and see how it matches up to the recipe I usually use, but couldn’t find the dang book. So I went back to this basic, reliable one from Simply Recipes , but I goosed it with some of the wonderful biryani masala mix my friend Marissa sent. Normally I make the recipe as directed and then transfer it to the slow cooker for several hours, which is the only way I’ve ever been able to get fully and evenly cooked rice for biryani. So I got up to this point, 

which you can see has the chicken, spices, golden raisins, and liquid, but no rice yet, but also no room for rice. So I nervously took a chance and moved it to the Instant Pot, added the rice, and set it to high pressure for six minutes. 

Then I got distracted for a long time and forgot I was making supper, so I don’t really know how long it was until I checked on it, but when I did, it read “BURN,” which the Instant Pot does randomly, sometimes when it’s burnt beyond rescue, sometimes when it’s just whatever and fine. So I released the pressure with great trepidation, and . . . it was PERFECT. 

Dang. This is such tremendous food. So fragrant and comforting. I had bought some naan on the way home, and brushed a little melted butter on top and warmed it up in the oven, and topped the biryani with chopped cilantro and both toasted almonds and chopped up salt-and-pepper cashews, it was delightful.

Looks a little off because I was eating it by the light of the Christmas tree, but believe me, it was top notch. At first it seemed like it might be too mild, but the flavor built and warmed with every bite, which tells me I did it right! Biryani forever. 

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, salad, pasta salad

Thursday I finally got Christmas packed up. I stripped the tree and threw it out the window (this was more fun when we used to live on the second floor, but it’s still a satisfying little ritual) and got everything all wrapped up and packed away, and vacuumed up forty metric tons of pine needles, and ruthlessly threw out a lot of tacky crap that we never use.

It was a good day to be busy all day and have an easy meal for dinner: Chicken burgers! Yay. 

I didn’t really have a plan for a side dish, but there was enough this-and-that in the fridge

that it was pretty easy to throw together a decent pasta salad. 

Cilantro, back olives, canned diced tomatoes, shredded parmesan, diced raw peppers, and salami, and then some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

A very pleasant meal. I had my chicken with horseradish mayo. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I can just feel how much cheese is in this house, so we really need to have some lavish mac and cheese. I don’t really have a recipe; I just make a bunch of white sauce and then throw in whatever cheese I have, plus some hot sauce and sometimes some mustard. I mix that with cooked macaroni, pour into a buttered casserole dish, and top it with buttered panko bread crumbs and bake until you can hear it sizzling, and you cannot deny, that’s good stuff. 

And now I have to actually do that, and then run off to adoration. I’ll pray for yez all! Model citizen over and out. 

5 from 1 vote
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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion or red onion, diced
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 3-4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
  • 2-3 lbs beef, cubed
  • 16 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
  • 6 cups beef bouillon
  • 1 cup merlot or other red wine
  • 29 oz canned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
  • 1 cup uncooked barley
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened. 


  2. Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley. 

  4. If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes. 

  5. Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.