What’s for Supper? – Page 20

What’s for supper? Vol. 220: Livin’ it up on top

Hola, amigos. What gives? I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but there’s been all sorts of craziness going on. But enough about me. Here’s what we cooked this week:

SATURDAY
Pizza

Oh, well, we didn’t actually cook this, as it was Aldi pizza. I mean, we put it in the oven. Saturday was when we got home from our splendid ocean vacation.

Wait, I have a few last pic from last week! Friday was our last full day at the ocean, and after one final swim, the kids stayed at the house and had grilled cheese and candy, I believe, and Damien and I found a restaurant with a breezy terrace

and had llllllllobster. Note my expert technique.

You will find it much easier to crack open a lobster once you’ve had three cocktails made of lemonade, soda water, and blueberry vodka. It just makes you more dextrous overall. Oh, we also had fried calamari and seared tuna.

Dammit, I was okay with not being at the ocean, and now I want to go back. Ah well. I still can’t believe we got to go!

Four of the older kids didn’t come on vacation with us, and they had been implored and entreated and cajoled and importuned not to ignore bad food smells and not to let my flowers die and not to let the puppy become too egregious, and they listened! So it was a pretty easy re-entry. The pool had taken on a vibrant emerald hue, unfortunately, and Damien is still battling the algae. As of today, it’s only chartreuse, which is progress.

SUNDAY
Burgers and hot dogs

I think? One of our kids was moving into her own apartment on Sunday, and there was some kind of secondary hullabaloo. It’s a duck blur (duck not included). Damien cooked supper.

MONDAY
Pesto chicken pasta

I finally actually cooked something, if not using an actual a recipe. I cooked the chicken breasts in the instant pot and cubed/shredded it and mixed it with farfalle. Then I added a sauce in I made in the food processor with lots of fresh basil, lots of fresh garlic, lots of olive oil, lots of grated parmesan, salt and pepper, and — here’s the secret ingredient — two jars of pesto.

Not terribly photogenic, but pretty tasty!

While I’m on the subject, did you know you can make pesto out of all kinds of things? The most traditional kind is pine nuts, garlic, basil, parmean, salt, and olive oil, but you can use other herbs and other nuts. I once made a spinach walnut pesto that was fab.

Jump to Recipe

I need to revisit various pesti while we’re still livin’ it up on top. [sighs until dead]

Made it to the town pond around sunset for an hour or so.

We still have a few weeks left, right?

TUESDAY
Honey balsamic Brussels sprouts with bacon and eggs

A great one-pan meal which I think is suitable for any time of the day.

Jump to Recipe

It’s a simple recipe, and only a time consuming if you have to make vast quantities, mainly in trimming and halving all those Brussels sprouts, but it’s absolutely a crowd pleaser and takes no particular skill.

I wished I had had some crusty bread, but it was so good.

I didn’t even follow the recipe for the sauce, just sloshed together a bunch of honey, balsamic vinegar, garlic powder because I was too lazy to crush garlic, and salt and pepper. Mix it up with the sprouts and some chopped bacon, cook it all until the bacon is done, then crack some eggs over it, cook a bit more, and top with parmesan and hot pepper flakes. And I guess a sprinkle of holy water, if that’s the kind of day you’re having:

WEDNESDAY
Tortas, grilled corn

A new dish for us! I had told Damien steak was on sale, and he said, “WAIT.” and sent me some recipes. I checked them out and it idea seems to be “Mexican things, but with bread!” Can do.

Damien seasoned the steaks heavily with chili lime powder and grilled them rare, then cut them in slices. I found some soft rolls, and I set them out with the meat, refried beans, tomatoes, shredded lettuce, cilantro, pickled jalapeños, lime wedges, sour cream, mayonnaise, and queso fresco. I toasted my roll.

Damien also grilled some corn in the husks over the coals, and I had mine just with lime juice. At some point I guess you could assemble the sandwich and grill the whole thing, but you’d need some kind of containment system. This was a huge shambles of a sandwich. I ate mine outside because it was cooler and also so nobody could see me ravaging it.

THURSDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches

On Thursday I finally got around to excavating the jungle of my container garden, and was glad I had chosen to buy some extra basil just in case. The slugs are so bad this year. Next year I’ll . . . do better. Take care of stuff. Or whatever. Anyway, the sandwiches were good. I guess I forgot to take a picture, so here is a chicken caprese sandwich of ages past:

I heavy seasoned the chicken breasts with salt and “Italian seasoning” (I think it’s just basil and oregano) and olive oil and roasted and sliced them. We had plenty of tomatoes, basil, and leftover queso fresco, ciabatta rolls, olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper.

We were supposed to go to the drive in movies to see Inside Out and Monty Python Holy Grail, and possibly stay for The Big Lebowski, but I somehow misread the schedule, and they were showing It and Harry Potter and the Part Where It Starts Getting Crappy. So we went mini golfing instead. Corrie got the highest score, which means she won.

And now we are all set with mini golf for another eleven years.

Gosh, I hope drive in movies make a comeback because of the pandemic. Wouldn’t that be neat? The first drive in movie I remember seeing was Superman. I was wearing footie pajamas, and my father put the back seat down in the orange Subaru, and kept it down on the drive home so we could sleep.

FRIDAY
Tuna boats, curly fries

And that’s it! Hey, I know this sounds stupid because I clearly have a very rich, full, and lucky life, with photographic evidence and everything, but I am actually massively depressed and have been for several weeks and I’m having a hard time climbing out of this hole. Please pray for me and I’ll pray for you, because I know I’m not the only one. Thanks. Duck blur over and out.

5 from 2 votes

Spinach walnut pesto

You can play with the proportions to get the consistency you like. This version is cheaper than using pine nuts and all basil. Makes 2-3 cups of pesto for adding to pasta or spreading on bruschetta.

Ingredients

1.5 cups fresh basil leaves
1 cups fresh baby spinach (can include radicchio, etc.)
2 cups walnuts
3 Tbsp minced garlic
8 oz grated parmesan
1 cup olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt

Instructions

Whir nuts in food processor until crumbed.
Add basil and greens, and whir until blended.
Slowly add olive oil and blend again.
Add salt, garlic, and parmesan cheese and blend again until it's the consistency you like.

Bacon, eggs, and brussels sprouts in honey garlic balsamic sauce

Adapted from Damn Delicious. An easy and tasty one-pan meal that would work for any meal. Great with a hearty bread like challah.

Ingredients

4 lbs Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
3 lbs uncooked bacon, cut into 1- or 2-inch pieces
18 eggs
oil for greasing pan
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce:

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp olive oil
8 cloves garlic, crushed

Garnish (optional):

parmesan cheese, grated
red pepper flakes

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400. Grease two large oven sheets.
Combine sauce ingredients in a small bowl. Mix Brussels sprouts and bacon together, spread evenly in pans, and pour sauce all over. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.
Cook until bacon is almost done (almost as crisp as you like it) and Brussels sprouts are very slightly browned, 18-20 minutes.
Pull the pans out of the oven and carefully crack the eggs onto the Brussels sprouts and bacon, here and there.
Return pan to the oven and cook a few minutes longer, just enough to set the eggs. The yolks will get a little film over the top, but don't let them cook all the way through, or you'll have something resembled hard boiled eggs, which isn't as good. You want the yolks to be liquid so you can dip forkfuls of fod into it.
Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes and serve.

What’s for supper? Vol. 219: Your name on a grain of rice!

WE ARE ON VACATION! All this week we’ve been at the ocean, which we adore.

We rented this beach house back in January, but didn’t know until the very last minute if it would be safe to go. But it’s been fine! We don’t share living quarters with anyone, there has been a good, brisk wind all the time, and we like the boring end of the beach with tide pools and no cool people or entertainment anyway. We warned the kids we’d be skipping souvenir shops and playgrounds and indoor restaurants and arcades and just focus on being at the beach. And it’s been great!

But wait, I guess I didn’t do a food post last week? Here are a few of the more photogenic things we ate last week:

A very delicious pizza with cherry tomatoes and basil from the garden, thinly-sliced garlic, red onion, black olives, and parmesan. Very pretty

and did not disappoint.

They had a nice sale on steak, so I picked up a few, which Corrie helped to season

and then I broiled them, sliced them, and served the meat on mixed greens with plenty of blueberries, blue cheese, and diced red onions, with red wine vinegar, watermelon on the side.

A wonderful summer meal. This is also great with pears or green apples, rather than blueberries.

We also had sausage subs with fried peppers and onions, and here is a photo of the lovely peppers and onions

Yum.

And then we had Vaguely Asian Meatballs,

Jump to Recipe

quick-pickled cucumbers,

Jump to Recipe

white rice and sugar snap peas. A very flavorful meal, savory and filling but not too heavy.

***

Okay, on to this week! We keep meals very simple when we’re away from home, so this is more of a “yay, beach!” post, interspersed with a couple of food pictures. Of course there are tons of pics, but I’ll mostly link to my Facebook albums, sorry, lazy person. Four of the oldest kids stayed home for various reasons, so it was just the eight of us this year. And the parakeet, whom we brought for reasons.

(We did not bring the cat, the lizard, or, after much debate, the puppy.)

Corrie packed on Friday. She was very, very ready on Friday. Then she wanted to flip a coin to see if we should go on Saturday, or just go on Friday. She dibsed Friday.

We did whittle her essential luggage down somewhat from here.

SATURDAY
Pizza

And then it was time to go! We got to the beach house around dinner and Damien went to find hunt up some pizza while we unpacked. We don’t have an ocean view from the beach house, but I am not complaining. This is the view from the grownups’ bedroom:

One of the pizzas was sausage and ricotta, which is definitely going into our rotation. Heavens.

SUNDAY
Deli sandwiches

We slept through the 9:15 Mass right down the street, but made it to a 10:45. Masks and hand sanitizer and social distancing were all enforced, and the priest announced before communion that we should all remember to keep our masks on until right before we receive, and that if we want to receive on the tongue, we have the right to do so, but he asked that anyone who wants that should go to the end of the line so everyone receiving in the hand could go first. Then he stepped into the sacristy to wash his hands thoroughly and mask up. A good solution.

Then I did grocery shopping. Then we finally got to the beach! It’s such a good beach.

Here are a bunch more pics from Sunday.

MONDAY
Fried chicken

We packed a lunch and spent the late morning and afternoon at the beach.

More pics from Monday.

Then we went for fried dough, which is Corrie’s main reason for going to the ocean, but it was wayyyy too hot, so we had ice cream. Dinner was cold fried chicken from the supermarket and I think chips and peaches.

Damien and I popped out for drinks in the evening, but I got spooked by the crowds, so we just got some Heinekens and drank them on the beach under the full moon.

NO COMPLAINTS.

TUESDAY
Hot dogs, chips

We were expecting major storms, so we stuck close to the house on Tuesday. In the morning, we investigated the foggy, foggy salt marshes behind the house.

More pics from the marshes and the ocean before the storm.

We also made cookies and played games (I brought Bananagrams, some magnet maze games, Battleship, lots of markers and coloring pages, and cookie and cupcake mix) and read books and watched TV. It got pretty blustery, but we didn’t get hit that hard.

Then when the wind and rain stopped, we went to see how the beach was. Still very windy!

More pics from Tuesday evening.

WEDNESDAY
Steak, corn on the cob, chopped salad, bread, S’mores

Day after the storm and the ocean was still out of sorts. Lots of weird stuff on the sand, including this molted baby horseshoe crab shell,

absolute gobs and gobs of seaweed and a million rocks, and the water was murderously cold. This made for a challenging but exhilarating swimming day.

Guys, I cannot even begin to express how much easier it is to be at the beach when you don’t have toddlers or babies. No one wandered away or got lost. No one almost drowned. No one even tried to get drowned. Damien and I could go out and bob around past the breakers together while the younger kids played on the shore, and then sometimes we could lie on a blanket in the sun while the kids played in the water. No one got hysterical because they had sand in their mouth. No one got hysterical at all, or had some kind of diaper emergency. Everyone was reasonable and had a nice time. I never thought we’d get here, but here we are.

I even had help pulling the wagon.

Bunch o’ more pics from Wednesday.

The steak that was on sale at home last week was now on sale at this supermarket, so I bought a bunch and Damien grilled them. He seasoned them with salt and pepper, lime juice and tequila, and they were very tasty! The corn was just boiled in salted water, and we had plenty of pull-apart bread to stop up the steak juice.

We were all fairly exhausted and grumpy by afternoon, but I had been promising S’mores forever, and the coals were still hot after dinner, so S’mores time was upon us. I hate S’mores. They are so absurdly overrated, and the name might as well be “Goods” or “Highly Requested.” What the heck. Then we realized (a) we had no sticks to roast the marshmallows with (and not a tree in sight), and (b) the chocolate bars had already melted in their wrappers. One of the kids wanted to freeze them, but I couldn’t see taking melted chocolate and freezing it so as to re-melt it. So we laid a bunch of graham crackers on a pan, snipped the corners off the wrappers and basically extruded chocolate onto the graham crackers, doled marshmallows onto that, then balanced another layer of graham cracker on that. Then we put the pan over the coals until the graham crackers were burnt and the marshmallows were just barely heated. This is exactly the kind of treatment S’mores deserves, in my opinion. Stupid dessert anyway. S’m’less is more like it.

THURSDAY
Boardwalk food!

We had a lazy morning and a good swim in the afternoon. There were some ducks or something bobbing around, and I told Lucy that, if she could catch one, she could bring it home. This didn’t work out well when I made the same offer about a frog, but so far we are duck-free.

Here are several pics from Thursday.

At one point during the day, Corrie became The Head of Knowledge, and foretold that our youngest daughter would have rice and seaweed for dinner, but, failing that, that she would settle for a burger.

She had a burger.

We stopped at home to de-sand and then went out again in search of dinner. It turns out the kids all wanted burgers and fries, so that simplified things. Damien and I had steak and cheese, which arrived without cheese or mayo or anything, but I wasn’t gonna start passing food trays back and forth across the counter. Then we got ice cream.

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese?

I think Damien and I may pop out for an actual seafood dinner, which is something none of this particular group of kids wants or needs. But we may also answer a deeply adult call to lie around and watch TV. Damien has been working about half-time throughout the week (including virtually attending two hearings as a defendant in a free speech case) and I’ve been gloomily writing terrible things that will never see the light of day.

The great thing about this house is that it’s in quiet neighborhood, it’s a very easy walk from the beach, and there is this wonderful view from the bedroom. Two windows show the church steeple and the water tower, and the other window is the salt marsh, where white egrets swoop around and the brackish tide rises and falls throughout the day.

The ground is dense mud covered with waves and waves of cordgrass, and if you look close, there are periwinkles and little crabs all over the place.
Here are a bunch of pictures of our little trip to the marsh.
The vegetation looks like coarse weeds at first, but up close, they look more like seaweed. Fascinating place. Some of the channels are natural, but some of them are man-made, and there are complicated sluice gates with floating balls to raise them and, I guess, keep the arcades and stuff from flooding. It’s not far from home, but so very different from home!

However, we did promise fried dough back on Monday, and we haven’t yet gotten any fried dough. The Head of Knowledge doesn’t forget these things. So I think we’re getting fried dough if it kills us. And maybe, if the crowds aren’t too bad, your name on a grain of rice.

***

Okay, I guess my recipe cards this week are just for the Asian meatballs we had last week, and fried dough you can make at home.

Vaguely Asian meatballs with dipping sauce

Very simple meatballs with a vaguely Korean flavor. These are mild enough that kids will eat them happily, but if you want to kick up the Korean taste, you can serve them with dipping sauces and pickled vegetables. Serve with rice.

Servings 30 large meatballs

Ingredients

2.5 lbs ground beef
1 sleeve Ritz crackers, crushed finely
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/2 head garlic, minced
1 bunch scallions, chopped (save out a bit for a garnish)
1 tsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp ground white pepper

For dipping sauce:

mirin or rice vinegar
soy sauce

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 425.
Mix together the meat and all the meatball ingredients with your hands until they are well combined. Form large balls and lay them on a baking pan with a rim.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
Serve over rice with dipping sauce and a sprinkle of scallions.

5 from 1 vote

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved.
Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!
Add them to the brine so they are submerged.
Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

Fried dough

Makes about 15 slabs of fried dough the size of a small plate

Ingredients

4 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp salt
4 Tbsp (half a stick) cold butter
1-1/2 cups lurkworm water
2 cups oil for frying
confectioner's sugar for sprinkling
cinnamon for sprinkling (optional)

Instructions

Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Cut the cold butter into bits and work it gently into the dough.
Add the water and stir until the dough is all combined.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let it rest for 15 minutes
Separate the dough into pieces and flatten each piece into a thin disk with your fingers. If it's sticky, put a little confectioner's sugar on your work surface.
Heat the oil in a pan. You can deep fry it or use less oil and fry it in a small amount of oil; your choice. The oil is ready when you put a wooden spoon in and little bubbles form around it.
Carefully lay the disc of dough in the hot oil. Let it cook a few minutes, just barely getting brown, and then turn it and cook the other side.
Remove the dough, let the excess oil drain off, and sprinkle it immediately with sugar and cinnamon if you like.
You can keep these hot in the oven for a bit, but they're best when they're very hot.

What’s for supper? Vol. 218: In which I make poor choices with peppers

Two or three new recipes this week! And, because you’re very lucky, one of my top notch very expert photoshop jobs so you really feel like you were there when it happened! Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Buffalo chicken salad, pasta salad

The salad was mixed greens, buffalo chicken from frozen, cut in strips; blue cheese, and crunchy fried onions from a can. Clara made a nice pasta salad with one of those infused olive oils, parmesan, feta, lots of garlic, black olives, and basil from the garden.

It had a kind of potluck feel, but still a fine summer meal.

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, pasta salad, cheezy weezies

Damien made the burgers outside

and I spent the afternoon putting in tiles for the backsplash in the kitchen! I’ve never had a backsplash before, much less put in a marble backsplash by myself, and I . . . did not do it right. But it looks pretty and I am happy. I still have to do the ceiling, and then I will do a follow-up kitchen reno post. Here is my post about the walls, floor, and trim.

MONDAY
Italian sandwiches

Damien made his trademark Fancy Sandwiches For All.
He split a bunch of baguettes down the middle and drizzled the bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then layered plenty of ham, prosciutto, salami, and pepperoni, mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil, and Italian seasoning.

I know I always say that whatever sandwich I’m currently eating is the ideal sandwich, but I’m telling you, this was a good one.

TUESDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, strawberries and blueberries

If I were a millionaire, I would still have frozen breaded chicken burgers on potato bread buns with horseradish sauce every few weeks. Yum.

I went shopping on Tuesday and for once remembered to serve the berries on the same day I brought them home. Aldi berries are so cheap — I think the strawberries were $1.29 a pound, and the blueberries were 99 cents a pint — but you really cannot dawdle.

WEDNESDAY
Chili verde

Jump to Recipe

I was at the store and made my usual desperate attempt to match up my pepper list with the pepper bins and the pepper labels, and then I went home and asked Facebook what I had.

It seems I had four Anaheim peppers and a bunch of habañeros, which was a pepper error, because I meant to get some other kind of pepper, but I forget what. So that was pepper error #1. Pepper error #2 was when I heard everyone saying they were super hot, and I was like, “oh, okay, I like hot stuff, but not too too hot, so I will only use two habañeros in my chili.”

I roasted the peppers along with a bunch of tomatillos and jalapeños on a greased pan.

Then I let everything sort of steam itself under plastic wrap, then I skinned them all. This part is fun.

Then I put all the skinned peppers and tomatillos in the food processor with a bunch of onions and garlic and cilantro, and puréed it. That is fun, too, but the picture came out blurry.

I did not seed any of the peppers first. This was pepper error #2a.

I cut the pork into chunks and seared it in oil with plenty of salt and pepper. I wish I had let it brown up a bit more, but at least I didn’t crowd the pot for once.

Then I put the puréed salsa verde into the pot with the pork and let it simmer for several hours.

You can add water or chicken broth, but I wanted it fairly thick. Just before serving, I squeezed some limes over it and served it with cilantro and sour cream.

And now for pepper mistake #3: I ate so much of it. It hurt my whole face and I was sweating from my toenails by the time I was done, and I kept getting more sour cream, but I ate so much. I sopped up the sauce with tortillas, and congratulated myself for not even suffering any heartburn afterward.

My confidence continued until Thursday morning.

Thursday went something like this:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztec-human-sacrifice.htm (public domain)

But, that was some really good chili verde.

THURSDAY
Greek chicken skewers, yogurt sauce, rice

Jump to Recipe

I made a marinade out of lemon zest and lemon juice, tons of fresh mint, olive oil, honey, and salt and pepper, and marinated chicken breast chunks for several hours, then threaded them on skewers with grape tomatoes and wedges of red onion. Thunderstorms chased us inside, so we had to broil rather than grill it, but it was still tasty. Fresh mint is the best.

Corrie took this picture and is very proud of it:

And I was fairly proud of the meal overall. I served it with pita and yogurt sauce and, as you can see, white rice. Benny made the yogurt sauce.

Jump to Recipe

I spent several hours wondering if I should make stuffed grape leaves, and then realizing it was 5:00 and far too late, so I just made a big pot of rice. I made so much rice I may use the leftover for inauthentic grape leaves made with leftover cooked rice today, and no one can stop me! The wild grapes are going nuts this year, and I love cooking with foraged stuff.

FRIDAY
Eggs migas

We had a spell where we kept running out of eggs, and the kids were just WORN OUT with my incompetence and malfeasance, because they want to cook themselves heaps and heaps of eggs for lunch every day. So I got 3 dozen eggs, and then forgot I had done so, and got 5 dozen eggs.

Guess whose children abruptly stopped cooking eggs?

It’s fine. I’m trying a new dish: Eggs migas. I bought corn tortillas, which I don’t normally do. The basic idea is to cut or tear up tortillas and fry them up in oil until they’re crisp, then scramble an egg into the pieces. You can add various things in while you’re cooking, or you can serve them as garnishes/sides after cooking. I think we’ll stick with salsa, sour cream, and maybe some refried beans. I’m excited! New Mexican food really hits the spot for me. I shall report back on our success.

Okay, here’s a few recipe cards:

Spicy Chili Verde

You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!

Ingredients

5 lbs pork shoulder
salt and pepper
oil for cooking
2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)

For the salsa verde:

4 Anaheim peppers
2 habañero peppers
4 jalapeño peppers
4 medium onions
12 tomatillos
1 head garlic, cloves peeled
1 bunch cilantro

For serving:

lime wedges
sour cream
additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

Preheat the broiler.
Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.
When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want.
Put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.
In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.
When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.
Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.
Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

Greek chicken skewers

Serve with yogurt sauce. Add pita and rice pilaf or stuffed grape leaves for a nice meal.

Ingredients

4 lbs chicken, cut into bite-sized chunks
3 pints grape tomatoes
5 red onions, cut into wedges

For the marinade:

4 lemons zested and juiced
4 tsp oregano
1-2 cups fresh mint, chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup honey
kosher salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Mix together the lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, honey, mint, oregano, salt, and pepper. Add the chicken chunks and let it marinate for at least three hours.
When you are ready to cook, thread the marinated chicken onto skewers, alternating with tomatoes and onion.
Grill over coals or broil in a pan in the oven until slightly charred.
Serve with yogurt sauce.

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 217: I got sunshine on a curdy day

Hi! Back in the saddle again. Suppers last week were haphazard while I was working on the kitchen renovation, and this week because . . . I don’t know, it was hot. The best recipes in today’s post are a little vague. Sorry!

Oh, I do have one neat dish to tell you about from last week, from our July 4th party: Shrimp skewers.

I defrosted a bunch of raw shrimp and pulled the shells off, then skewered them with cherry tomatoes, and set the skewers to marinate in a ton of lime juice, some olive oil, lots of red pepper flakes and coarsely-chopped cilantro, and salt. Then Damien grilled them over the coals. So good. Exactly what I was hoping for.

I wanted some nice charred corn on the cob to go with it, but the corn has been terrible this year. Just puny and terrible. Is this true all over the country?

SATURDAY
Steak! Mussels!

Steak and mussels were both super cheap, so I bought them both, planning a special Sunday meal. I did the grocery shopping on Saturday, just to test the waters and see if everyone was still being maskless idiots in the stores on Saturdays. O MY BRETHREN, THEY WERE. Then I got the bonus of discovering that, if you want to go to confession that’s not in a small, sealed-up confessional box where six people have just been in before you without masks, you have to make a special appointment to accommodate your very special request. Bah.

I got home pretty hot and upset. I was planning hot dogs for supper, but Damien reminded me that mussels really need to be cooked asap, so that is what the man did, but not before he insisted I climb into the pool with a can of beer.

Fleischer Studios / Public domain
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Superman_presentation.jpg

For the steaks, he liberally seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder, and cooked them rare over the coals. Magnifico. I wish I had bought some crusty bread to sop up all the wonderful juices, but it was such a good meal. This pic does not do it justice, either in quality or quantity. I ate so much.

He made the mussels in a pot on the stove. His recipe: “Heat up a little red pepper flakes and olive oil, then cook up a diced onion in it, throw in some salt, and when the onion is soft, add white wine (actually we had vermouth) and a stick of butter and lemon juice, then throw in the mussels and another stick of butter and a little more wine and lemon juice, and simmer until the mussels open up.”

I seriously ate like a pound of steak and four hundred mussels, and then I drank the juice right out of the bowl.

SUNDAY
Hot dogs, chips

Sunday was . . . what. It was so hot and I found humanity so disappointing. I decided a lemon blueberry tart would make things better. But it was so hot! So I tried to put together a no-oven tart. It, too, was a little disappointing, in part because I used an unbaked graham cracker shell, which is just not very delicious. But the lemon part was good, and working in my nice new lemon-colored kitchen was very good indeed.

I used this recipe for microwaved lemon curd. It was time consuming because I was making so much of it, but a normal amount would be a quick and easy project. Will definitely make again. It is very creamy and tart. It firmed up nicely after a few hours in the fridge, and turned out just as well as a curd that you stirred for eleven hours over a hot stove. I love lemon curd so much.

As I took this picture, I remember thinking, “We’re so fancy now! I don’t even have to carefully crop out the horrific parts of my kitchen, because all of it is nice!” Then as I uploaded it today, I noticed there is a flosser on the floor. OH WELL. Nice curd, though, eh?

I used this recipe for the blueberry topping, also microwaved, but I didn’t have quite enough corn starch, so it was quite soupy, and I ended up ladling it over the tart, rather than dishing up wedges of a two-layered beauty, as I envisioned.

Someday, SOMEDAY, I will make this lovely Rothoko-esque blueberry lemon curd tart. But not when it’s hot!

MONDAY
Pulled pork, cole slaw, biscuits

The pulled pork, in keeping with life in general, was lackluster. I threw a hunk of pork in the slow cooker with some Coke, salt, garlic cloves, and some random dried peppers I found in my spice rack. I ended up adding bottled sauce after shredding it.

My idea was to make giant biscuits that could be used to make little pork sandwiches, but I think this recipe I’ve been using does better with smaller biscuits. It’s still a good recipe, very fluffy inside with a very thin, buttery shell. But the big biscuits didn’t get very lofty.

Still a tasty summer meal.

I was able to make most of it in the morning before things got too busy and hot. I put the dry ingredients for the biscuits together early on, then right before supper I added the wet and baked them.

TUESDAY
Taco Tuesday. More importantly, puppy Tuesday!

Presenting Santino, called Sonny.

He is an eight-week-old boxer and he’s pretty great. Settling right in.

There will be more pictures. BELIEVE IT.

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese on sourdough, carrots and dip

Actually Dora made supper while I brought someone to the walk-in (well, hobble-in) clinic with a puppy-related sprained ankle. Not broken, whew! I made my own sandwich when we got home and I put pickles right in with it, because no one can stop me.

THURSDAY
Borthday! The borthday child requested calzoni, and brownie sundaes with bananas.

I forgot to take calzone pictures. Here is my basic filling recipe.

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You can definitely fiddle with the proportions. This time I had barely any parmesan, but tons of mozzarella. I had four balls of pizza dough, enough to make sixteen calzoni, assuming no one absconds with one of the lumps of dough, which someone did. Or perhaps I sat in it and it’s still stuck to my ass and I haven’t noticed yet. Here is a calzonus of ages past:

We’re gonna work up some kind of safely distanced party soon, but we did get to the town pond after dinner, and no one was there but us chickens.

And now we have five teenagers in the house again. Good thing we like teenagers!

She asked for pirate boots for her big present, which made me feel like we are doing something right.

FRIDAY
Giant pancake with blueberries; scrambled eggs

Plenty of leftover blueberries!

And now I need to get hopping on the kitchen sink backsplash and a little extra shelving, and, dun dun dunnnn, the ceiling. Well, I will not be hopping on the ceiling, but you know what I mean. I ordered a bunch of polystyrene panels and I am just going to slap them up there in the most amateurish way I can get away with. Maybe I will use a staple gun. Maybe I will use bubble gum. My main goal is to make only one trip to Home Depot, and that’s it. I know in my heart that there’s no such thing as only one trip to Home Depot, but I’m gonna try.

5 from 1 vote

Calzones

This is the basic recipe for cheese calzones. You can add whatever you'd like, just like with pizza. Warm up some marinara sauce and serve it on the side for dipping.

Servings 12 calzones

Ingredients

3 balls pizza dough
32 oz ricotta
3-4 cups shredded mozzarella
1 cup parmesan
1 Tbsp garlic powder
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1-2 egg yolks for brushing on top
any extra fillings you like: pepperoni, olives, sausage, basil, etc.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400.
Mix together filling ingredients.
Cut each ball of dough into fourths. Roll each piece into a circle about the size of a dinner plate.
Put a 1/2 cup or so of filling into the middle of each circle of dough circle. (You can add other things in at this point - pepperoni, olives, etc. - if you haven't already added them to the filling) Fold the dough circle in half and pinch the edges together tightly to make a wedge-shaped calzone.
Press lightly on the calzone to squeeze the cheese down to the ends.
Mix the egg yolks up with a little water and brush the egg wash over the top of the calzones.
Grease and flour a large pan (or use corn meal or bread crumbs instead of flour). Lay the calzones on the pan, leaving some room for them to expand a bit.
Bake about 18 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Serve with hot marinara sauce for dipping.

What’s for supper? Vol. 216: Okay by me in America

Eek, I missed a week again! My weekly menu is such a mess, because I’m still shopping on Tuesdays, both to avoid unmasked weekend crowds and to leave the weekend free for other stuff. It turns out the Saturday Shopping Trip was the cornerstone of everyone’s existence, and when I shop on Tuesday, the family’s sense of time and place becomes a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives, but not in the good way!

Anyway, last last week, the most exciting thing we had was on Father’s Day, when we had steak, four honest to goodness bloomin’ onions, and oysters.

We like our oysters with a squeeze of lemon, a dab of horseradish, and/or a spot of Tabasco sauce. If you’re wondering how one procures fresh oysters in NH, the answer is we have eighteen whole miles of coast, that’s how. Actually these were from Massachusetts, though, which is right next door. Gosh, I love oysters. I think part of the allure is that tingly “I’m not sure I should be putting this in my mouth!” feeling, like when you would forage edible weeds from a parking lot as a kid.

Okay, now for the bloomin’ onion. I will never understand why restaurants stopped serving these magnificent, community-building appetizers. These days, you can order a loose heap of “onion petals” at some places, which is so feeble and pointless, it makes me want to wreck the place up.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Behold:

Sometimes it takes the perspective of a foreigner to help you appreciate your own culture.

THEN, one of these turned up for $3 at the Salvation Army.

I was skeptical that it should call itself a “machine,” but once I went through the whole process, I was convinced that there was so way you could replicate this thing with clever knife work, so, machine it is.

I posted this on my local plant identification group, but it was promptly deleted. They didn’t throw me out, though, which I thought was sporting.

So you slice the top off and peel the skin off, then you hollow out the middle, and place it on the cutter and slam the top down. Then, as Spike says, you have to let it soak in ice water for an hour so it keeps its shape. Looks rather mystical bobbing around with the ice.

Then you coat it with seasoned flour, and then you have to carefully work the beer batter in between all the petals. Then you deep fry it. You have to kind of smoosh it up side down to get the petals to separate and fry separately. I had a video, but I seem to have deleted it. It’s on Instagram, though. You can follow me on Instagram if you want. I’m just as annoying there as I am everywhere else.

My oil wasn’t quite hot enough, and I think I was supposed to do one final snipping of the base after frying, so the petals come off more easily. We ended up having to wrestle with them a bit. But it was pretty, pretty, pretty good.

I’m not gonna lie, it was a ton of work. But I can see making a few of these once a year or so. (I made four.)

The kids liked it, and I found a good snappy dipping sauce that replicates the restaurant sauce. I can find the batter and seasoned flour recipes for you if you want, but only if you want!

Oh, and the steak was fantastic. They had something called “underblade steak” on sale, and wow, it was great. Damien made one of his miscellaneous spice rubs and grilled them rare. Perfection.

I don’t know what the recipe is. The recipe is “have a man who knows how to cook a steak and will do it for you on father’s day.”

Okay, on to this week! or last week! Whatever!

Actually I’m in such a rush today. So I’ll do another highlights reel, based on my camera roll:

At some point we had grilled pork chops and rice.

It was supposed to be gochujang pork (just the sauce slathered on the pork, skipping the carrots and onions)

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but I think I got lazy and asked Damien to take over, and he used one of his nice sugar rubs.

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The secret ingredient was FIRE.

I don’t think we had a single damn vegetable all week. Except four onions.

Looks like our old friend banh mi made an appearance.

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This surely is the queen of all sandwiches.

Actually I always think whichever sandwich I’m currently eating is the best, but pork banh mi on a toasted baguette with pickled carrots, cucumbers, lots of cilantro, and some sriracha mayo, with pineapple on the side, is truly spectacular.

Then at some point I tried a new recipe from Kathy Gunst this week: Grilled chicken with a minty cilantro marinade.

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The marinade is mint, scallions, cilantro, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. I love stuffing the food processor with leaves the kids brought in from outside.

So I just slathered it on some thighs and drumsticks and let it marinate a few hours, and Damien grilled it, and you squeeze a little lemon over it when it’s cooked. Clara made a few pans of oven roasted potatoes, and I sliced up a watermelon. Lovely summery meal.

Let’s see, what else? We had a string of very, very late nights and my brain really started to disintegrate toward the end of the week. First we had some of this action:

A few months ago, we tried to trap this bastard that keeps strewing our garbage everywhere. He is very clever and always managed to swipe the bait without getting trapped. So we gave up, and the trap was just lying there for weeks.

Until last week. Suddenly, around 2 a.m. I start hearing this horrendous distress call but about eleven times louder, interspersed with yelps and screams, right under my window. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, so, like any red blooded American woman, I woke up my husband, who graciously charged outside shirtless and armed with a flashlight and a BB gun. There was a lot of clattering and growling and general noises of man vs. nature, and then I heard him say, “Ohhh, I see.” Which was when he discovered that our favorite raccoon had become a parent, and one of those raccoon children had not inherited the family brains, but had gotten caught in the unbaited trap for no reason at all, and the distress calls had summoned about four valiant siblings who panicked and started knocking stuff over and charging around in confusion. Eventually Damien released the one in the trap and they all went away for the night.

Then the next night, we had a kid in the ER until 3 a.m. She is fine, but 3 a.m. is what we forty-five-year-olds like to call BULLSHIT. It’s just bullshit! But you know, that doesn’t stop blood sugar alarms from going off, and it doesn’t stop the cat from worming his way through a loose screen in the middle of the night and then yarping and yowling to be let in at, you guessed it, 3 a.m. He did this five nights in a row and he was soaking wet and in need of comfort each time. And I had to drive an hour to the pediatric endocrinologist in a pounding rain storm, and I had to admit that we got juice on her insulin pump receiver and I don’t know how to reset it because I am stupid, and even though I’ve made this trip a dozen times, I made a total of FOUR wrong turns. You know, I am very grateful we have a world class hospital only an hour away, but the trip has some kinda not-my-favorite associations with it. Friggin’ place where my grandmother died slowly and my father almost died several times and my daughter almost died, and the place where they thought I might have cancer and the place where we thought Corrie had Trisomy 13 and I guess when I’m driving there, my brain is just like, no, we will go this other way, instead. But, we did get home eventually, and this time nobody died. Just the opposite, in fact: Everybody is still alive! Hooray!

I forget what I was talking about. Oh, food.

Well, Benny had her heart set on making “buried treasure muffins” from the cookbook she got for her birthday, and my life was ruined anyway, so that happened. It is just a basic muffin recipe, but you spoon in half the batter, then put in a “treasure,” then spoon more batter top, before baking. Very nice.

She made them almost all by herself, except for working out the math of a triple recipe.

And she let Corrie help and didn’t lose her temper, which earns her a medal. We decided to use fresh cherries instead of jelly as the buried treasure. Here is my Benny Rabbit explaining how to get the pit out of a cherry. There is supposed to be a video here. I hope it shows up.

Oh yeah, and I cut Benny’s hair. She is eight, and this was her first haircut. I’M FINE.

Clara also did tons of baking this week. She made buns and scones and cookies and I forget what else. It’s a miracle I didn’t gain a hundred pounds during this lockdown.

Yesterday, I ended up being out so late, I asked the kids to scrounge up something for supper, and Lena made scrambled eggs in tortillas with hot sauce, which I happen to find delicious. Damien was out taking pictures of Ghislaine Maxwell’s house and interview locals for a story he was doing for . . . The Miami Herald? And he found out he has to testify in a right to know lawsuit, and I won an award from the Catholic Press Association for my marriage and family column. It was a weird day. And I found out the liquor store is still closing early, but I squeaked in.

Okay, so now it’s July 3 and we decided to cancel our giant annual Independence Day family reunion party. This was one of my dad’s favorite days. When he died in April and we couldn’t have a family funeral or wake, we thought that surely by July, everything would be back to normal and we’d have the greatest July 4th party ever in his memory. Ho ho ho. Ah well. Next year. I am missing him a lot. Sorry, this isn’t a very good food blog this week.

But here is what we have on the menu for July 4th. Yes, this is just for our family. It’s America, dammit, and you can’t make us stop eating.

Grilled brats with onions three ways
Cheeseburgers
Sugar rub chicken thighs
Some kind of shrimp skewers, possibly Mexican
Potato salad
Grilled corn on the cob
Every kind of chip known to mankind
Watermelon boats filled with fruit salad, possible in pirate ship (patriotic pirate ship) form
Red, white, and blue jello cups with berries
Chocolate and vanilla frozen pudding cups with whipped cream
Ice cream
Dark and stormies

And we have fireworks with ludicrous names, and no end of sparklers. And as soon as I’m done writing this, I’m going to move all the furniture out of the kitchen because I’m going to put new linoleum down, which we want to get done before next week, BECAUSE . . . . we’re getting a boxer puppy next Saturday.

Not entirely to put the cat in his place, but it couldn’t hurt.

***

Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)

Ingredients

1.5 pound boneless pork, sliced thin
4 carrots in matchsticks or shreds
1 onion sliced thin

sauce:

5 generous Tbsp gochujang (fermented pepper paste)
2 Tbsp honey
2 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
5 cloves minced garlic

Serve with white rice and nori (seaweed sheets) or lettuce leaves to wrap

Instructions

Combine pork, onions, and carrots.

Mix together all sauce ingredients and stir into pork and vegetables.

Cover and let marinate for several hours or overnight.

Heat a pan with a little oil and sauté the pork mixture until pork is cooked through.
Serve with rice and lettuce or nori. Eat by taking pieces of lettuce or nori, putting a scoop of meat and rice in, and making little bundles to eat.

Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.

5 from 1 vote

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

5-6 lbs Pork loin
1/2 cup fish sauce
3/4 cup sugar
1 minced onion
1/2 head garlic, minced or crushed
2 tsp pepper

Veggies and dressing

carrots
cucumbers
vinegar
sugar
cilantro
mayonnaise
Sriracha sauce

Instructions

Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can.
Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight.
Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler.
Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread.

5 from 1 vote

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

Instructions

Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved.
Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!
Add them to the brine so they are submerged.
Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

Kathy Gunst's cilantro mint chicken

Ingredients

12-18 chicken pieces with skin on
lemon wedges (optional)

for marinade:

1 bunch scallions, greens and white, chopped
2 bunches cilantro
1-1/2 cups fresh mint (about 80 leaves)
1 cup olive oil
juice of four lemons
cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

Instructions

Blend all marinade ingredients together in food processor to make a lumpy marinade. Slather all over the chicken and let marinate for several hours or overnight.
Grill or broil the chicken.
Serve with lemon slices to squeeze over the cooked chicken.

What’s for supper? Vol. 215: The plural of clafoutis

Doesn’t it seem like we just did this? We did! And now we’re doing it again.

SATURDAY
Pizza

No memory of Saturday. Oh, I think we were sifting piles of dirt through a metal grate to get the rocks out, and I sent a kid in to make six pizzas. Think of that, moms still stuck in babyland! Someday you will be able to send a kid in to make dinner for 12 so you can stay outside and keep doing what you want to do (even if it’s sifting dirt through a metal grate). Hang in there.

SUNDAY
Shawarma

I set the meat and onions to marinate the night before. Normally I use boneless thigh meat, which I think is the best for chicken shawarma,

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but since Damien was grilling, I got bone-in, skin-on thighs.

Always a delightful meal. I was planning to make fried eggplant, but had stupidly left the eggplants on the windowsill, so of course they went bad. Secretly relieved I didn’t have to fry anything. It’s really an easy and delicious recipe, but frying is frying.

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Anyway, we had spent the day moving eleven tons of sand, and sitting down seemed best.

MONDAY
Beef burritos with guacamole

I have only ever eaten frozen burritos before, so I didn’t honestly know what a good burrito was supposed to taste like. The price of beef has shot up ridiculously, so I had two of those awful chubs of ground beef.

I fried it up with fresh garlic and lots of chili powder, red pepper flakes, and cumin. I wanted to make it relatively mild for the pickier kids.

I made up a bunch of guacamole

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and a bunch of beans and rice

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which I made somewhat hotter than usual with the addition of some chilis in adobo sauce.

And that’s it. I had mine with some cheese and sour cream. There may be some salsa buried in there, too; who can say.

I thought it was tasty. I definitely didn’t need more than one.

TUESDAY
Chicken nuggets, chips, veg and dip/graduation dinners

On Tuesday we got caught up with celebratory graduation dinners, and took Moe (who graduated from high school) and Sophia (who graduated from eighth grade) out to the restaurant of their choice, which turned out to be a moderately-priced family sandwich place. Works for me! I had something called an Italian Stallion, which, to my disappointment, included no stallion meat at all.

WEDNESDAY
Blueberry chicken salad; plum and peach clafoutis

Simple salad for a hot day: Mixed greens, broiled chicken, feta cheese, toasted almonds, and blueberries. I forgot to get red onions, but those are good on this salad. I had mine with wine vinegar.

It being June, I attempted to get fancy with the plating:

Turns out it’s harder than it looks to strew wildflowers in a way that looks natural, but does not look like you are actually eating daisies.

The meal seemed a little skimpy, and we had a house full of lovely fruit, so I made two . . . well, I made a clafoutis, and then, while I was at it, I made another clafoutis. I could look up the plural, but where’s the fun in that?

A clafoutis is a very simple baked custard with whatever you want in it.

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You can add chocolate and hazelnuts, grapes if you’re crazy, bananas if you’re a sociopath, or pears or apples if you’re not sick and tired of apples, or I guess cherries is the most famous kind. I did actually have cherries, but did not feel like pitting them. So I made one with plums and one with peaches.

Aren’t they gorgeous? The batter takes like three minutes to make, but they do have to bake for about forty minutes. You can eat them warm or cold. I, ahem, did both, over the course of 24 hours.

We sifted some powdered sugar on top before we ate them, and they were absolutely delicious, and so beautiful. Sometimes the kids get mad at me for ruining fruit by baking it, but not this time.

La pêche:

Out of sheer honesty, not everyone likes clafoutis. Two of my favorite things in the world are custard and fruit, but I’m not everybody. But the kids were mostly in favor of it.

THURSDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, chips, Rainier cherries

Everybody likes these sandwiches. I bought four long baguettes and a combination of cheap and expensive cheeses and meats. I made tons and tons of olive salad with green and black olives, a few jars of giardinera, and several cloves of garlic, all chopped up in the food processor with olive oil and ground pepper.

Everyone’s happy when I call them to dinner and the table looks like this:

You can make this a hot sandwich, but we absolutely did not want to turn the oven on. Everybody got some chips and some rainier cherries, and I had my sandwich outside.

OH SUMMERTIME. Oh sandwichtime.

FRIDAY
Fish tacos

Nothing fancy. Just frozen battered fish, avocados, shredded cabbage, salsa, sour cream, and cilantro. Maybe I will make some lime crema. And maybe we will put the AC in today!

Oh, this is your annual reminder that frozen grapes are very good indeed. Just wash them and shake off the excess water and put them in the freezer. I like red grapes the best for this. It’s a beautifully refreshing little sweet treat for the hot weather, better than ice cream.

And fine, I looked it up. The plural of “clafoutis” is “clafoutis.” As it should be.

Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). Cook for 45 minutes or more.
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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.
Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming.
Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.
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.
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.
Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two.
Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.
Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly.

Beans and rice

A good side dish, a main course for meatless meals, or to serve inside carnitas, etc.

Ingredients

3 cups uncooked white rice
1 15-oz cans red or black beans, drained
1 20-oz can diced tomatoes with some of the juice
1 diced jalapeno
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
1 small red onion, diced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
chili powder
cumin
salt and pepper

Instructions

Cook rice. Add rest of ingredients, adjusting spices to taste. If it's too dry, add more tomato juice.

Lime Crema

Keyword Budget Bytes, crema, lime, lime crema, sour cream, tacos

Ingredients

16 oz sour cream
3 limes zested and juiced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together.

Recipe Notes

So good on tacos and tortilla chips Looking forward to having it on tortilla soup, enchiladas, MAYBE BAKED POTATOES, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

Clafoutis

a simple baked custard, usually with fruit. Very easy to make, very pretty. This recipe makes two round 9-inch clafoutis, but you can make individual custards in ramekins if you like.

Ingredients

3 cups whole milk
9 eggs, beaten
1-1/2 cups sugar
4 tsp vanilla
6 Tbsp butter, melted
1-1/2 cups flour
any kind of fruit you like
confectioner's sugar for sifting on top

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 325.
In a bowl, mix together the milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and butter. Add the flour in gradually (sifting it into the bowl if you want to make it really smooth) and beat the batter until it is smooth.
Pour the batter into two pie pans. Then carefully add the fruit on top, distributing it evenly or making a design if you like.
Bake about 40 minutes until the center is soft but not jiggly. The top should be slightly browned.
Serve immediately, or chill to eat later. Sift confectioner's sugar on top before serving.

What[wa]’s for supper [last week]? Vol. 214: The highlight reel

I didn’t do a What’s for Supper? last week. I didn’t actually publish anything last week. Turns out I can actually be shut up! For a week. But that’s it.

Here’s the yummiest meals we had:

SUNDAY
Beef koftas and Jerusalem salad

Something new for us. Koftas are ground meat, onions, and seasonings formed onto sticks and then grilled. Wikipedia says “Kofta is a family of meatball or meatloaf dishes found in the Indian subcontinent, South Caucasian, Middle Eastern, Balkan, and Central Asian cuisines.” But that’s it! Nowhere else! I read a bunch of recipes from various regions and concluded that you could add anything but grape jelly and consider it an authentic recipe. (After I wrote this, I dreamed that I saw someone making koftas with grape jelly, and I thought, “Dammit, now I have to fix that paragraph.” But it was just a dream. If my father were here, he would comment, “I dreamt I was making koftas in my Maidenform bra.” There was always a Maidenform bra joke.)

Since it was our first time, I decided to keep them relatively bland. I used ground beef (I mean lamb is like $15 a pound), onion, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper, nutmeg, paprika, and za’atar. It is bound together with, uh, wet toast.

FABOLOUS.

Sidenote: if you don’t have a food processor, may I suggest you slap on your mask and hop on over the Salvation Army and find yourself one? Don’t be a snob, get the one in Harvest Yellow with the missing foot, as long as it works. Having a food processor has expanded my cooking so much. If my brother Izzy read my blog, I’d made a coulis joke here, but he doesn’t, so I won’t.

Anyway, for the koftas, I combined the ingredients very thoroughly, smooshed the meat mixture onto the skewers as tightly as I could, and refrigerated them for several hours, but many of them still fell apart when Damien grilled them. He ended up using an oiled cast iron griddle on the grill. They were EXTREMELY tasty and juicy, really bursting with flavor. The kids really liked them, which means I can probably get away with turning up the spice next time.

There is a technique wherein you extrude the meat through the neck of a soda bottle, too.

It’s not any uglier than me just smooshing it on with my hands, and probably somewhat less horrible than me inserting cheese into sausages.

I have my doubts about the part where he puts some cheese on the grill and then just rolls the cheese up around the meat. I guarantee you, that wouldn’t work if I tried it. BUT, look at the part where he dips it in yogurt sauce and then rolls it in french fried onions! I don’t know. Maybe it would be a case of potato tornados all over again, and I’m not ready to relive that.

Anyway, the koftas we made were swell, if not exactly beautiful to behold. I made plenty of yogurt sauce, and a nice Jerusalem salad on the side.

Jerusalem salad is just tomatoes and cucumbers, parsley and red onions. I squeezed a few lemons over it and drizzled a little olive oil on it, and maybe some kosher salt, I forget. Maybe some mint. We have no end of wild mint in the yard, so I hope I put mint in.

MONDAY
Chicken nachos

I’m including this meal because it was way more delicious than it should have been. I came up with it on the fly when I was at Aldi and discovered that the price of ground beef had gone up over a dollar a pound. They had some kind of frozen chicken tenderloins, whatever those are, so I bought a bunch.

I honestly didn’t think anyone would like this meal, but it was quite popular. I cooked the chicken in the Instant Pot with WATER. I remember being tired at the time. Then I pulled it out of the water, shredded it up, and put a disgusting amount of Tajin chili lime powder on it.

I put the chicken on chips and sprinkled a disgusting amount of cheese over that, and put it in a hot oven until the cheese was melted. I set out sliced jalapeños, sour cream, salsa, limes, and queso which I had microwaved.

Look at that queso, glowing in the twilight.

TUESDAY
Grilled sugar rub pork ribs, cole slaw, biscuits

Damien uses some variation of this sugar rub

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for all kinds of meat. He says the most important parts are the sugar, garlic, and chili powder, and then everything else is whatever he has on hand.

These ribs turned out SO GOOD. Look at that lustrous caramelized sugar. It’s sweet and hot and charred, just magnificent, and comes out so juicy.

I made this biscuit recipe again and it turned out just as good this time, so it’s definitely a keeper. It has eggs and cream of tartar, which I’ve never seen in biscuits before, but gosh, it works. I made twelve big biscuits and cut the rest of the dough into squares, which amused me.

Very basic cole slaw, just cabbage, mayo, vinegar, sugar, pepper. Tastes like summer. Here’s a slightly more complicated recipe I use sometimes:

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THURSDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, pasta salad, tiramisu

It was Dora’s birthday, and this was her requested meal. I grilled the chicken and served it on ciabatta rolls with fresh sliced mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and freshly-ground salt and pepper.

She made herself a pasta salad using those Frankie’s Oils with some nice feta cheese and sun dried tomatoes. Damien made tiramisu, and we forgot to get rum, and the espresso pot was missing a part. Guess what? It’s just as good with whiskey and strong coffee. I only got a crummy picture, but it was creamy and lovely and delicious.

Okay, that’s it for last week’s foods. Recipe cards below.

Oh, and yesterday a kid asked to visit the newly re-opened Salvation Army, so we went. GUESS WHAT I FOUND FOR THREE DOLLARS.

AS SEEN ON TV.

So, hold onto your butts.

koftas

Ingredients

5 lbs ground beef
3 onions
1 head (head, not clove) garlic
2 bunches parsley
5 slices bread
salt and pepper
1.5 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp paprika
2 Tbsp zataar

Instructions

Put the wooden skewers in water to soak for about thirty minutes before you plan to form the kebabs.
Put the onions, garlic, and parsley in a food processor and chop it.
Put the meat in a large bowl and add the chopped onion mixture to it.
Toast the bread, then put it in a bowl with warm water to soften it. Squeeze the water out and add that to the bowl with the meat.
Add in the seasonings and squish it up with your hands until all the ingredients are well combined.
Using your hands, form logs of meat around the skewers. They should be about an inch and a half in diameter.
Grill over coals if you can. If they fall apart too much, you can cook them on a hot oiled griddle, or broil them. Turn to brown all sides.

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.

Coleslaw

Ingredients

1 head cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, grated
5 radishes, grated or sliced thin (optional)

Dressing

1 cup mayo
1 cup cider or white vinegar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
pepper to taste

Instructions

Mix together shredded vegetables.
Mix dressing ingredients together and stir into cabbage mix.

What’s for supper? Vol. 215: In which I get carried away with chickpeas

Hey, who wants to talk about food? I do! Here’s what we had this week. For goodness’ sake, don’t skip over the biscuit recipe.

SATURDAY
Burgers and chips

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig from early morn till night.
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig up everything in sight.
We dig up diamonds by the score [not really].
A thousand rubies, sometimes more [actually not even interesting rocks].
But we don’t know what we dig ’em for [increasingly true].
We dig dig dig a-dig dig [accurate].

It seems unfair that this song should still be going through my head, but I suppose I deserve it. Damien made burgers on the grill, which is better than I deserve.

SUNDAY
Lemon honey mustard drumsticks, broccoli and dip, biscuits

You’ll be surprised to learn that we spent Sunday digging in the yard. We’re almost done, though! Really!

In the morning, we watched mass on Facebook Live, then drove to the church to receive communion. When we got home, I roasted up a bunch of drumsticks with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I made a sauce with lemon juice, honey, and mustard, and mixed up half the drumsticks with it, and left the other half plain, and put it all in the fridge. The longer the chicken sits with the sauce, the yuhmmier it gets.

I really wanted biscuits, and I do believe I’ve found the perfect recipe. It’s a little fussy, with more ingredients than seems strictly necessary, but my goodness, those were some perfect biscuits.

Light and airy on the inside with a paper-thin crisp outside, and wonderfully buttery.

I, uh, had five. They were small! (I made a quadruple recipe and got 48 smallish biscuits.)

This was a very pleasant, picnic-y kind of meal after a day of hard work.

We started moving some of the dug-up rocks to a different part of the yard, which is very disorderly and overcome with vicious blackberries, so I am very pleased. It almost looks like someone lives here now. And the hard labor is a good thing. A very good thing. Many, many times this week, I put down my phone and went out to the yard with a pair of clippers or a shovel and took care of a problem I could take care of. I don’t think I have solved racism yet, but anyway I’m sleeping better.

We’re all sleeping better. Some of us in our parents’ beds, but whatever.

MONDAY
Chicken enchiladas, pineapple

We had a bunch of smoked chicken thighs left over from . . . something. So I shredded those up and added them to chicken I shredded after pan-frying it in oil with plenty of chili powder, salt, and cumin. I basically follow Pioneer Woman’s recipe.

You know, my enchiladas are kind of gross. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but undeniably kind of gross. They’re just really flabby. Are they supposed to be flabby? I just don’t know.

TUESDAY
Hot dogs, Bugles

All I have to say about this meal is that the Bugles had a A Quiet Place: Part II tie-in, for reasons known only to Bugles. I bought them to make Lena laugh, and it worked.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken burgers, pasta salad

And what a pasta salad it was!

Dora gave me a set of fancy infused olive oils for mother’s day. They are Frankie Muniz’ special olive oils, and very good they are, Frankie Muniz’ special infused olive oils for mother’s day. She went with the basil-infused one.

She added cherry tomatoes, plenty of fresh garlic, parmesan cheese, and I guess salt and pepper, not sure what else. I advised her to use a ludicrous amount of whatever she added to the pasta, so it wouldn’t be bland, and she was listening. You could almost hear the flavor. So good. I ate so much.

Oh, Wednesday was the day we went to the BLM rally.

I was smiling in a friendly way in this picture, honest!

As a side note, Frankie and Paige Muniz say: “Learning about Ultra Premium Olive Oils is one of the best things to ever happen to us.” You might want to print that out and show it to a child who wants to be an actor when he grows up.

THURSDAY
Pork, pepper, and onion skewers; roasted chick peas, sugar snap peas

I chopped up a pork butt and set it to marinate with my spiedie marinade, including fresh wild mint the kids went out and picked. This is an excellent, easy marinade. You want to add more stuff, but everything in it packs a big punch, and it’s perfect as is.

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The plan was just to broil up the meat and serve it on rolls, but it was a little skimpy, so I decided to add some peppers and onions, and then Damien offered to grill it outside, so I put it all on skewers, which takes a long time, but on the other hand, once the idea of meat on a stick comes into my head, it’s very hard to get it out.

So.

Marinating is magic. I feel like not enough people realize this. The lemon juice breaks down the fibers in the meat and lets in all the other flavors, and it was like eating a . . . hot juicy meat cloud with charred edges. Delicious beyond all reason.

The side dish situation had become confused, so I took the opportunity to roast up some chick peas, which the kids remember fondly from back when I was counting every penny and figured out that roast chick peas were marginally cheaper than chips. I drained and rinsed eight cans of chick peas and spread them out in pans, drizzled them with olive oil (Frankie Muniz’ garlic infused olive oil) and seasoned them heavily with pepper and kosher salt. Then I baked them in a 300 oven for about two hours, stirring occasionally. They came out very crunchy, but about half still had a little chewy center.

The kids were not as thrilled as I expected to have their old friend toasted chick peas back in the game. I like chick peas so much. They are so straightforward. “Here,” they say. “I can offer you what I am, which is a pale legume, through and through. No tricks, no razzle dazzle, just some textured protein, plus a cute little skin just for fun.” They are like sitting on a couch in the afternoon, reading a book you have read so many times, you can almost recite it, and it’s kind of boring, but maybe you want to be bored, you know? They’re not too shabby with the manganese, either. 14% of RDA. Well done, chickpeas.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

I bought a ton of canned tomatoes while under the impression that tomatoes go in enchiladas. So I guess I will make a big pot of sauce with onions and garlic and wine and olive oil.

And maybe, just maybe, we will dig.

Oh, I have some pictures of that mango coffee cake I made last week. It was good, not great.

A lot of trouble (lime zest! toasted pecan streusel!) for something that tasted like normal coffee cake; and I must regretfully admit that baking doesn’t do mangoes any favors. Now I know!

5 from 1 vote

pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix together all marinade ingredients.

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

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

Serve in sandwiches or with rice.

What’s for supper? Vol. 214: Hot, hot, hot

Last week, it was snowing. This week, it was in the 90’s, so we went all in with the summer food. No ragrets!

SATURDAY
Double cheeseburgers!

We had another long day of lugging rocks, and Damien grilled. I was so hungry, I almost ate my own hand along with the burger, so I didn’t get a picture.

SUNDAY
Cumin chicken thighs and chickpeas with lemony onions, pita, and yogurt sauce

We haven’t had this dish for a while! Very popular. Extremely juicy chicken with a fabulous skin, crunchy, flavorful chickpeas, and piquant onions.

It’s just an excellent meal.

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The yogurt marinade is just a few ingredients, but you want to set it up early so you can marinate the chicken for at least a few hours. That’s how the chicken gets so juicy and the skin gets so fabulous. Then you can walk away from it for the rest of the day, and throw the chicken and chickpeas on a pan to cook in the oven,

and make the yogurt sauce and lemony onions while it’s cooking.

So much flavor with very little effort. I actually only found the lemons in time to make the yogurt sauce, so I quietly used lime juice in the marinade and the onions, and no one noticed.

MONDAY
Grilled meats

We usually have a big family cookout on Memorial Day. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Damien did make his excellent sugar rubbed smoked chicken thighs

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and beer brats with onions three ways on his amazing interchangeable cinderblock meat altar situation.

Delicious as always. I had my beer brat with onions boiled in beer and a sweet, hot mustard of some kind, and it was very tasty.

Dora made potato salad

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and I cut up the first watermelon of the year.

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese on sourdough, little pickles, cherries

A very fine summer meal. There was some consternation over the fact that I only bought one package of ham, so I offered to have salami in mine, which caused even more consternation. I’m not saying ham and salami are interchangeable, but they’re . . . you know what, I’m not on trial here. I took my plate outside, where only the birds were shouting

WEDNESDAY
Caprese chicken sandwiches, fries

Another summer favorite. The tomatoes are improving. I roasted the chicken breasts in olive oil and plenty of salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and I had some sliced provolone instead of mozzarella. We had the sandwiches with ciabatta rolls, tomatoes and basil, chicken, and plenty of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and kosher salt. The pepper has mysteriously disappeared.

Someday, I will make a balsamic vinegar reduction, but on this day, easy was perfect.

THURSDAY
Carnitas, beans and rice

J.R.’s Art Place carnitas recipe to the rescue again. Pork butt, salt, pepper, oregano, Mexican coke, oil, oranges, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves.

It’s so tasty and so easy, but I’m gonna adapt it for the Instant Pot next time I make it. Summer is when I like this appliance the best, because you can make a hot meal without turning the whole kitchen into an oven.

I also made some quick beans and rice.

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It was too dry, so I glopped in some Goya Culantro Cooking Base. It wasn’t the best beans and rice I ever had, but it was fine. Love the carnitas. Some salsa verde would have made this meal perfect.

FRIDAY

Today I intend to make this mango crumb coffee cake, eggs, and something called “baby cakes,” which seem to be small, round hash browns. The only reason I bought them is because they are called “baby cakes.”

Since I haven’t made dinner yet, I don’t have a picture. But I do have a picture of my menu blackboard.

I can see I’m going to have to start hiding the chalk.

Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.

potato salad

Ingredients

3-4 lbs potatoes, scrubbed (peeled if you like)
3 ribs celery, stringed and chopped
1 med red onion, diced
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1/8 cup olive oil

for dressing:

1 cup mayo
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/8 cup vinegar
salt and pepper

Instructions

Put potatoes and the three eggs in pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down, cover loosely, and simmer until potatoes are easily pierced with a fork (15 minutes or so)
Drain the potatoes. Fish out the eggs, peel, and chop them.
When they are cool enough to handle, cut them into bite-sized pieces and mix them up with the olive oil.
Add the chopped eggs, celery, onion, and parsley.
Mix together the dressing ingredients and add to potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate and serve cold.

5 from 1 vote

Cumin chicken thighs with chickpeas in yogurt sauce

A one-pan dish, but you won't want to skip the sides. Make with red onions and cilantro in lemon juice, pita bread and yogurt sauce, and pomegranates, grapes, or maybe fried eggplant.

Ingredients

18 chicken thighs
32 oz full fat yogurt, preferably Greek
4 Tbsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp cumin, divided
4-6 cans chickpeas
olive oil
salt and pepper
2 red onions, sliced thinly

For garnishes:

2 red onions sliced thinly
lemon juice
salt and pepper
a bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
32 oz Greek yogurt for dipping sauce
3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

Instructions

Make the marinade early in the day or the night before. Mix full fat Greek yogurt and with lemon juice, four tablespoons of water, and two tablespoons of cumin, and mix this marinade up with chicken parts, thighs or wings. Marinate several hours.

About an hour before dinner, preheat the oven to 425.

Drain and rinse four or five 15-oz cans of chickpeas and mix them up with a few glugs of olive oil, the remaining tablespoon of cumin, salt and pepper, and two large red onions sliced thin.

Spread the seasoned chickpeas in a single layer on two large sheet pans, then make room among the chickpeas for the marinated chicken (shake or scrape the extra marinade off the chicken if it’s too gloppy). Then it goes in the oven for almost an hour. That’s it for the main part.

The chickpeas and the onions may start to blacken a bit, and this is a-ok. You want the chickpeas to be crunchy, and the skin of the chicken to be a deep golden brown, and crisp. The top pan was done first, and then I moved the other one up to finish browning as we started to eat. Sometimes when I make this, I put the chickpeas back in the oven after we start eating, so some of them get crunchy and nutty all the way through.

Garnishes:

While the chicken is cooking, you prepare your three garnishes:

-Chop up some cilantro for sprinkling if people like.

-Slice another two red onions nice and thin, and mix them in a dish with a few glugs of lemon juice and salt and pepper and more cilantro.

-Then take the rest of the tub of Greek yogurt and mix it up in another bowl with lemon juice, a generous amount of minced garlic, salt, and pepper.

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Beans and rice

A good side dish, a main course for meatless meals, or to serve inside carnitas, etc.

Ingredients

3 cups uncooked white rice
1 15-oz cans red or black beans, drained
1 20-oz can diced tomatoes with some of the juice
1 diced jalapeno
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
1 small red onion, diced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
chili powder
cumin
salt and pepper

Instructions

Cook rice. Add rest of ingredients, adjusting spices to taste. If it's too dry, add more tomato juice.

What’s for supper? Vol. 213: Pied beauty

Holy cow, that was a fast week. We worked hard and ate hard this week.

Wow, that does not sound right.

Well, here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Meatloaf, cheezy weezies

Saturday was big dig day. Dig dig dig!

Why dig? Well, like everyone else, we don’t know what the summer is going to look like, so we went and bought a 20-foot above ground pool! To prepare the ground, you have to make it level, and remove all the rocks from the soil, so nothing pointy or poky makes a hole in the bottom.

Well, as you can see, there are a lot of rocks.

The ground is also not level, so we’re just . . . digging some more. And in some cases, hitting a giant hunk of gneiss with a sledgehammer until it’s flat enough to cover with soil. It’s an immense amount of work, but I am openly, obnoxiously enjoying having the whole family working wholesomely outside together on a project. Eventually we’ll get this done, and then we’ll level it, cover it with sand, level that, put down some foam, then a ground cover, and then POOL. Pool pool pool!

Oh, so I didn’t want to stop digging, so I sent Dora in to make some meatloaf.

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SUNDAY
Cobb salad

Well, approximately. We had lettuce (which I didn’t bother chopping), tomato, cucumber, avocado, hard boiled eggs, bacon, chicken, and some kind of shredded cheese, and some kind of dressing.

You’re supposed to have chives and Roquefort cheese, but nobody was complaining. They were too busy complaining that I only made four pounds of bacon.

You know, I’ve been beating myself up over my careless, slipshod ways because the grocery bills have been so high lately. So high, for like . . . two months now . . . oh. Yeah, right about the time we started having twelve people home 24 hours a day, I started spending more on food. SHAME ON ME.

Next time I’ll get more bacon.

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, raw veggies and dip

This picture makes me laugh because at first you’re like, “oh, good for her, look at all the vegetables” and then you’re like “wait, is that a demitasse cup brimming with french onion dip?” Yes, it is, and I licked it clean.

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken salad, hot pretzels

Tuesday I went shopping. This is a great meal to throw together in a short amount of time: Salad greens, buffalo chicken cut into strips, crunchy fried onions from a can, shredded carrots, and either blue cheese or shredded pepper jack.

It’s better with ranch dressing, or buffalo ranch dressing, but it’s also good with whatever you have, if you’re hungry enough.

WEDNESDAY
Grilled pork ribs, cole slaw, strawberry rhubarb buckle

Damien made a sugar rub for the pork ribs, and grilled them over the coals. Nice and juicy.

Lena made a nice snappy peppy coleslaw.

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Look at that lovely color on the pork (no filter!). That sugar rub is magic– lots of flavor, and it gives it a wonderful caramelized crust.

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It says “chicken thighs,” but you can use it on all kinds of meat.

Now let’s talk about rustic fruit desserts!
Rus!
Tic!
Fruit-des-serts!
[clap!clap!clap-clap-clap]

There are a lot of them, with lots of subtle variations, but there are more names than there are variations. You know what pie is. You know what a crumble is. But what about cobbler? What about crisp? What about betty, buckle, slump, and grunt? The answer is: some are oven, some are stovetop, some are steamed, some have streusel, and some are just from Connecticut, so who knows. And honestly, which is more fun? Just quietly knowing something, or looking it up and then insisting your kids stand there and listen while you read out loud about it? I think we know.

I wanted to make something that was just fruity on bottom and sweet and crumbly on top, but I couldn’t find any cornstarch, so I ended up making a buckle, which is a sort of coffee cake with fruit layers. It was quite easy, and pretty delicious. And pretty.

It has a layer of cake, then a layer of strawberry, then cake mixed with sugared rhubarb, then a streusel. We had it with whipped cream on top, because it is Wednesday, my dudes.

When I shared this picture on Facebook, I captioned it “O my chevalier!” It’s okay if you didn’t understand right away that I said that because it’s a buckle. That’s a weird joke and doesn’t make sense. HOWEVER, don’t you think I should write a cookbook in the style of G.M. Hopkins? You’d buy that, right, you weirdo? I could call it Sprungform Rhythm Pans. I could call it Carrot Cake Comfort. I could call it . . . PIED BEAUTY THAT IS MADE OUT OF ACTUAL PIE.

I use my college degree all the time, why do you ask?

THURSDAY
Meatball subs

Dora to the rescue again. I was so useless on Thursday, and I’ll tell you why, so you can feel smart. I got up and grabbed my two morning pill bottles, which have my green thyroid and purple blood pressure pills in them. I thought to myself, “Huh, they’re white, that’s weird,” and I swallowed them. Then I thought, “Ooh, I need to call in a refill for these.” So I started calling it in, and then I was like, “Hey, how come these bottles have someone else’s name on them? That’s so weird!”

So yeah, I took someone else’s drugs, for no reason at all. That’s how dopey I was before I started to feel the side effects of someone else’s drugs, which included dopiness. (Luckily, the dopiness and a headache, because of course there had to be a headache, was all that happened.) I can’t explain how I could have come to do something so stupid, but there it is. I’m sure this brain fog will get better as I get older though, HO HO HO HO HO HO HO.

Anyway, here is the meatball sub:

And here is the oven-baked, less-mess meatball recipe:

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FRIDAY
Pizza

All I have to say about this is we are now a six extra large pizza family. Five pizzas is enough for dinner, but not enough for people to have cold pizza for breakfast the next day, so now we make six. I’m a good mother.

5 from 1 vote

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

Preheat oven to 450
Mix all meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and seasonings together with your hands until well blended.
Form meat into two oblong loaves on pan with drainage
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.
Bake for an hour or so, until meat is cooked all the way through. Slice and serve.

Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.

Coleslaw

Ingredients

1 head cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, grated
5 radishes, grated or sliced thin (optional)

Dressing

1 cup mayo
1 cup cider or white vinegar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
pepper to taste

Instructions

Mix together shredded vegetables.
Mix dressing ingredients together and stir into cabbage mix.

Strawberry rhubarb buckle

You can substitute in all different combinations of fruit. Makes two buckles in 9-inch pie dishes. Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream

Ingredients

4 lbs strawberries, hulled and sliced
4 stalks rhubarb, stringed and diced

For the cake:

1 stick butter
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
4 cups flour
1 cup milk

For the streusel:

1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp almond extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease two 9" round pans

To make the cake:

In a bowl, beat together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the vanilla and sugar.
Stir in the baking powder, salt, and nutmeg
Alternate adding in the flour and the milk, a bit at a time. Set the batter aside.

To make the streusel:

Cut the butter into pieces, and then add in the other ingredients, mixing until it is crumby but not pasty.

To put it together:

Spread about 1/4 of the cake batter in each buttered pan.
Spread the sliced strawberries on top of that.
Add the rhubarb to the remaining batter and stir to combine. Spoon the rhubarb-batter mixture over the strawberries in each pan as evenly as you can (it's okay if it's gloppy).
Sprinkle the streusel topping over the batter in each pan.
Bake for about an hour, until the top is a bit browned and a toothpick comes out clean.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

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

Preheat oven to 400.
Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.
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.
Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve.

Spinach walnut pesto

Ingredients

Instructions

Bacon, eggs, and brussels sprouts in honey garlic balsamic sauce

Ingredients

Sauce:

Garnish (optional):

Instructions

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Vaguely Asian meatballs with dipping sauce

Ingredients

For dipping sauce:

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Fried dough

Ingredients

Instructions

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Spicy Chili Verde

Ingredients

For the salsa verde:

For serving:

Instructions

Greek chicken skewers

Ingredients

For the marinade:

Instructions

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

Instructions

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Calzones

Ingredients

Instructions

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Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)

Ingredients

sauce:

Serve with white rice and nori (seaweed sheets) or lettuce leaves to wrap

Instructions

Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

Instructions

Pork banh mi

Ingredients

Veggies and dressing

Instructions

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Kathy Gunst's cilantro mint chicken

Ingredients

for marinade:

Instructions

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

Instructions

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

Instructions

Fried eggplant

Ingredients

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

Instructions

White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

Instructions

Beans and rice

Ingredients

Instructions

Lime Crema

Ingredients

Instructions

Recipe Notes