Tag: baking

What’s for supper? Vol. 347: Wouldn’t it be chili with no skin on?

In elementary school, we used to sing this Halloween round:

Have you seen the ghost of John?
Long white bones, 
With the rest all go-o-o-o-ne,
Oooooooh!
O00-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooooh!
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?

WELL, it all comes together in today’s post. 

SATURDAY
Hot dogs, hot pretzels, raw broccoli and dip

I woke up SO late on Saturday and everything got pushed forward SO far, I’m pretty impressed we had three actual distinct things for supper. 

Nothing else to report, except that I suddenly remembered a kid going through a phase of playing restaurant, and one of the featured items was “pretziles.” Which makes me remember I haven’t made homemade hot pretzels in a while. 

[Daphne Moon voice:] I don’t know whyyyy.

On Saturday, I also finally put up an extra little shelf that I’ve been meaning to put up, and now I officially have room for all my spices! If you’ll recall, this is what it looked like before. 

Then I got a bunch of spice jars and bunch of mason jars; and now I have an extra shelf as well, so here it is:

It’s . . . sigh . . . better. I swear it’s better. Only a few things are still in sacks, and everything is labelled, top and side. And I have hooks for red and yellow onions, and a little basket for my ginger and garlic. 

I haven’t organized the spices, though. There are just too many other people using them, and trying to keep them in the order I want would be asking for constant heartache.

I also still haven’t managed to re-hang the other shelf that came crashing down, that used to hold all my oils and vinegars, so that’s all crammed in there as well. It’s less upsetting if I think of it all as WEALTH, which it is. Never thought I’d need a spot just for all my various salts and peppers! My various oil! Look how lucky I am. 

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, further raw broccoli

On Sunday I did a bunch of tragic gardening (I planted a few hundred bulbs and spent the time repeatedly reminding myself that absolutely none of them are going to come up and everything just dies anyway and what’s the point, oh boo hoo hoo hoo) and also put up some more skeletons. For, uh, self care. 

We have a number of skeletons year-round, partly because it helps Instacart find our house when GPS insists on sending them to the fence company and saying that’s our house; but mostly because I have had a lifelong love for skeletons. 

This one, I think the kids named Shakespeare 

and this one, Insulon, is new this year (his eyes light up):

Then we have Baba Mailbox, which doesn’t really make sense, but whatcha gonna do:

and of course The Gardener:

and also new this year is Horbert, who lives by himself.

Here is a short video of The Hoisting of Horbert:

 

who didn’t end up as high as I expected, considering how hard it was to hold that tree down. 

Then we had hamburgers for supper.

I don’t know if it’s been a long time since we’ve had burgers, or maybe I just worked up a good appetite tragically gardening and tree wrestling, but those were some especially delicious burgers. 

MONDAY
Chili verde on rice; corn

This is a nice recipe that I discovered a little shortcut for this week.

Jump to Recipe

Normally when I make chili verde, I blister the peppers and tomatillos under the broiler, then let them sit and loosen, then pull off the skins and put the insides in the food processor, along with onion, garlic, and cilantro.

This time, I suddenly wondered what would happen if I left the skins on. I also put the onions in the oven, rather than adding them raw to the blender. Time to find out! Exciting! 

I cut the pork shoulder into chunks, seasoned it heavily with salt and pepper, browned it in oil, blended up the vegetables, and then added the resulting green salsa to the pot with the pork, and let it cook slowly on the stovetop all day. 

It turned out thicker than usual and quite a bit spicier than usual, a real sinus clearer. And absolutely delicious. Mayyybe a tiny bit bitter, but not in an unpleasant way. The family polished it off, to my delight. I might add some chicken broth in the future, to make it a little thinner, but I think I will stick with leaving the skins on. It made my life easier, and the flavor was great. If anyone knows of some reason why I should be taking the skins off, speak now! 

I was gonna make corn bread or corn muffins, but a quick poll revealed that nobody actually wants that, so I just cooked up some frozen corn, and made a bunch of white rice, and that was what they wanted. We had lime wedges and sour cream for toppings, and we really needed that sour cream to ease up the spice!

Wish I had had a little more cilantro to top it off. But it was a good meal. Everyone either has, just had, or is about to get a cold, and it’s been damp and foggy out, so this worked nicely. 

On Wednesday I also got a very subtle haircut. Usually I got to Head Whompers and pay $12 to get most of my hair chopped off, but this time I went to a Fancy Place and paid quite a bit more to get little bits here and there removed.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but Damien said my head looked fluffier, so I think that’s good. 

TUESDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins

Jubilation. This is a highly-anticipated meal (second only to ham-peas-mashed potatoes) that I hold off making until the frost is on the pumpkin or whatever. I forgot to get mushrooms, but it was still very tasty.

Here’s the soup recipe: 

Jump to Recipe

This is the soup I make in my head when I can’t fall asleep. I go through it as slowly and meticulously as possible, paying close attention to each detail, cleaning as I go, and if I don’t actually fall asleep by the end, I usually at least feel less anxious. Thanks, soup!

In real life, it was a soccer day, so I made the soup in the morning, except for the barley, and then put together the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients for the pumpkin muffins

Jump to Recipe

and then combined them when I got home, and quickly baked them right before supper. 

Full disclosure, the muffins were a tiny bit squashy (I mean technically they were 100% squashy, since canned pumpkin is actually squash; but I meant they were somewhat underdone) and the barley was a little bit chompy, because I forgot how long it takes to cook; but it was still a well-received meal. 

Piping hot muffins and a bowl of soup with tender beef, lots of wine and tomatoes, plenty of carrots and onions and pepper. What’s not to love?

Next time I need to make more soup! Some people have come around to soup recently, to my delight.

This is why I stick to my policy of just making food that seems good to me, and offering it over and over and over again. People really do come around eventually, often enough. Or if they don’t, that’s also fine. I just don’t want to fight about food. There’s enough fights. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

One cheese, one pepperoni, and one Things Mother Likes. To wit: Black olive, fresh garlic, red onion, fresh basil, ricotta, anchovy.

This absolute cartoon cat got to clean out the anchovy can for recycling

and I got to eat two pieces of this scrumptious pizza

so everybody was happy.

THURSDAY
Asian meatballs, pork fried rice, pineapple

I made extra rice when I made the chili verde, for the express purpose of having leftovers for fried rice. Wasn’t that smart? I feel like I am waking up out of a fog this week. I’ll probably live to regret saying this, but I stopped taking Propranalol because it wasn’t doing anything for my headaches anyway, and within a few days I felt much more awake and much less pukey; and without changing my diet, I lost three pounds. So. Go to hell, Propranalol. I have a real live appointment with an honest-to-goodness neurologist, and I’m going to insist they stick needles in my cheeks or install a skull steam valve or something. But no more stupid drugs that make me stupid! I’m already stupid enough! 

Anyway, the fried rice was good. I minced some ginger and garlic and threw it in the pan with hot oil for a bit, then added pieces of leftover pork and diced red onion, and then I dumped a bunch of brown sugar on top of that and let it get bubbly and dark.

Then I added scrambled egg (I didn’t think I was up for scrambling the egg directly into the rice today), some bagged broccoli, carrot, and water chestnut, and the leftover rice, and then I dumped on a bunch of oyster sauce, a little fish sauce, and quite a bit of soy sauce, and heated it all up.

Pretty tasty!

I made the meatballs in the morning, and cooked them while I was making the rice. I used a recipe I’ve used before (it’s not letting me put the “jump to recipe” button in, for some reason, but the recipe is at the bottom of the page: Vaguely Asian Meatballs), except instead of ground beef, I used ground turkey, which happened to be $3 a pound. I cooked them at 425 for about 20 minutes before dinner

and served them with a jar of sweet chili sauce, and they were delicious. Light and garlicky and just very pleasant to eat. 

I also cut up a couple of pineapples and sprinkled some more chopped scallions over everything, and it was an easy, successful meal. 

When I make two kinds of Asian-inspired food, my goal is to not use the exact same ingredients in both dishes, and I achieved this by refraining from putting ginger in the meatballs. My breath was still glowing in the dark that night from all the garlic. 

FRIDAY
Quesadillas? 

Yes, I think quesadillas. I have a bunch of spinach in the fridge that I never used, so I think I’ll make spinach quesadillas, which are very nice. 

 It occurs to me that one of those skeletons should be named John, or Chili Verde, or Tomatillo, or something. Well, there’s always next year. 

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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

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.

  5. 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.

  6. When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.

  7. 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.

  8. Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

 

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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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


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

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

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

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

 

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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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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

  1. Preheat the oven to 425.

  2. 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.

  3. Bake for about 15 minutes.

  4. Serve over rice with dipping sauce and a sprinkle of scallions.

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 346: Babe, you ok? You barely touched your Earl Gray Preminger Tea Cake

Happy Monday! Don’t worry, it’s Monday, not Friday! I just didn’t get to finish this last week, so I’m doing it now. 

Here’s what we had last week:

SATURDAY
Chicken soup with matzoh balls, challah, Earl Grey Tea Cake 

Saturday we had a little meal for Clara’s birthday: chicken soup with matzoh balls, and challah for dinner. Here’s my challah recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I once again attempted to do a four-strand braid. Last time I followed a video, and that didn’t go well (I cried), so this time I used a pictorial step-by-step guide, and I still cried. I fervently believe that if you took a CAT scan of my brain, there would just be a little missing chunk for the part for what to do when something crosses over something else. That is where everything goes haywire, whether I’m braiding or dancing or installing a light fixture or anything. As soon as one thing crosses over another thing, I just start to cry and I don’t know what to do.

But I’m an adult, and I quickly remembered it’s just bread, so I can just smoosh it together and it doesn’t matter. And I was right! 

The chicken soup was good, if not terribly photogenic.

and the matzoh balls turned out fluffy! I’m going to cling to that little victory, because of what happened with the cake. 

Clara asked for an Earl Gray tea cake, which I have made before using this recipe from this recipe from Liv For Cake, and it was a tremendous pain in the pants. So I looked around for a different recipe, and found one that seemed a little simpler, although it was intended for actual tea cakes — not only made with tea, but cut up into little cakes, glazed, and served with tea. The recipe is from Taste Made, and I made the glaze that goes with it, and also the vanilla bean buttercream frosting from the previous recipe.

So, now, in my defense, at this point, I was making soup, bread, cake, glaze, and frosting all at the same time, and I was about a week into a new migraine medication that quite magically made my headaches much worse and also gave me constant nausea. So when I got to the point where the frosting recipe said to whisk the egg whites and sugar over a double boiler, I was like

NOT 

ONE

MORE 

POT

so, I whisked the eggs and sugar over the soup. 

and you know what, this did not work great. 

Anyway, I don’t know what the hell else I did wrong, but that cake turned out so dense. It was absolutely GUMMY. It was CLAGGY. It was STODGY. It was all the worst things Prue could say about a cake. 

But, not content with a cake that tasted weird, I thought I would go ahead and decorate it in a horrendous way as well. So I thought, Hey, Clara really used to like that Barbie in The Princess and the Pauper movie with Martin Short as the villain Preminger. So I will make a Preminger cake! AS ONE DOES. 

If you’re not familiar, many of these animated Barbie movies are actually worth watching, and some of them have really good voice actors. Here’s the “How Can I Refuse” number:

annnd here’s the cake:

I . . . an attempt was made. She laughed. Hey, did I tell you how fluffy my matzoh balls were? 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, pickles, chips

Sunday I still hadn’t done my shopping, but was undeniably felled with not-Covid-but-some-fwiggin-thing, and decided to do Instacart. We had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread with cute little pickles on the side, and chips. 

Except I had an apple instead of chips, because I looked up the serving size and it was something like seven chips, and that’s just offensive. Might as well have a fwiggin apple. 

MONDAY
Domino’s pizza

Monday I forget what happened, but Damien assessed my general situation and decided that sometimes being the spiritual head of the family means insisting that we order pizza. Bless. 

TUESDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches with peppers; grapes, cucumbers

Tuesday I pulled some chicken breasts out of the freezer and we had these lovely sandwiches from Sip and Feast that I adore. They’re even better with boneless chicken thighs, but still pretty darn good with breast sliced in half lengthwise. 

Look, if nobody else in your life is willing to say that sometimes American cheese is the best cheese for the job, I’ll say it. I’ll be that person for you. 

I cooked the peppers in the same pan that the chicken had been in

and once the cheese was melted, we piled up them sandwiches.

So it’s a nice soft, sweet brioche buns, BBQ sauce, chicken coated in cajun seasoning and sauteed slowly with American cheese melted on top, some slightly charred shishito peppers, red onion rings, and more BBQ sauce. 

For sides I just served grapes and cucumbers, which is a little weird but whatcha gonna do. 

This sandwich is just excellent. I was afraid I wouldn’t like it as much the second time (you know how sometimes you’re just dazzled by a new recipe, and then you make it again and it turns out you were just having a nice day in general, and that food itself wasn’t that great?), but I DID. It’s yummy and everyone liked it. 

WEDNESDAY
Spicy penne with butternut squash, mozzarella, and spinach; garlic bread

Wednesday I was still feeling extremely punk, but at this point I was mad about being sick, so I decided to . . . show them [shakes fist migrainously at destiny] and try a New York Times recipe.

This is not uhhhh best practice. It was a bad idea. It was an okay recipe, and I’m already familiar with how much work it is to process butternut squash, so I wasn’t taken aback by that as so many of the commenters were; but it was still kind of a lot of work and just didn’t amount to much. I don’t know. I even got the nice fresh mozzarella, and I had fresh spinach and fresh jalapeños and a butternut squash from my garden, and it just tasted kind of meh. 

Oh, here is the recipe, because of course the NYT one is paywalled. And here is a picture of me with my butternut squash. It’s the very first one I picked from my garden, and this is the first year I have grown squash, so I wanted to document it. Turns out it’s kind of hard for a decent Christian lady to take a picture of herself holding a butternut squash in a way that won’t get you in trouble with Tito Edwards.

Anyway the recipe started off well enough, cooking the squash in olive oil with cumin and red pepper flakes.

I prepped the heck out of all the other ingredients, so I could just throw it together when I got home.

I even had enough time to take the leftover challah, slice it up, and make garlic bread

and you know, there’s a reason people don’t do that. It was okay, just not really a texture you necessarily want with garlic bread. 

The whole meal was okay. I kept thinking maybe if the pasta had crumbled sausage in it. I don’t know. I doubt I’ll make it again. It’s now in my head as a bad, sad dish, so I probably won’t go back to it. You may have other results.

On Thursday evening we were talking about apple picking, and how that late spring frost killed off so many apple blossoms, lots of local orchards aren’t even offering PYU apples this year. Our terrible little tree did manage to put out some terrible apples, though, and I realized I was planning to cook pork the next day, so we decided to go ahead and pick the apples that evening.

 

I suppose if I ever did even one single thing to take care of this tree, it might make better apples, but as it is, the dog and the ducks love the miserable little fruits it produces, and we have our annual little ritual of picking apples and searching for the foley mill, so it serves its purpose. I promised the kids I wouldn’t make the applesauce until they got home from school the next day. 

THURSDAY
Roast pork ribs, crabapple sauce, garlic mashed potatoes

The pork ribs were just heavily seasoned with salt and pepper and roasted under a hot broiler, and the mashed potatoes were just mashed potatoes with several cloves of garlic thrown into the water and then mashed along with it, with butter and milk. 

The apples were really especially terrible this year. 

A lot of them were just rotten and had to be thrown out, but I ended up with a few dozen that were misshapen but basically sound

so I just cut them in half and put them in a stock pot with a little water at the bottom, covered it loosely, and set it to simmer. You’re supposed to let it go for a few hours so the apples can really collapse into mush, but I didn’t have enough time, so we ended up kind of violently forcing the mostly-cooked apples through the foley mill

and then I threw in some butter and cinnamon, and tasted it, and decided that hmm, this was a year to add some sugar. 

Some years, our homemade applesauce is a lovely, dusky rose color, and it’s fragrant and cozy and wonderful, with a faint, pleasantly smoky taste that seems to come from this particular tree. Some years it doesn’t need any sweetening, and still has a beautiful nectary flavor. 

This year’s applesauce was yellowish brown and it tasted like paste.

But the kids were delighted anyway, probably because of the little red hen factor, so I didn’t clue them in that it was very bad applesauce indeed. And that’s how you do that! 

FRIDAY
Shrimp and fish lo mein

Friday I was very pleased with myself, because not only did supper turn out really good, but I used lots of leftovers successfully. I made my normal lo mein recipe

Jump to Recipe

starting with fresh ginger and garlic, and then I added some red onions I found in the fridge, then I threw in some shrimp and cut-up pieces of tilapia (I had two filets in the freezer that I didn’t cook a couple of weeks ago); then I chopped up some leftover shishito peppers (I put them in late because they were already cooked, and just needed heating), and then after I added the noodles and sauce, I threw some leftover Italian parsley on top.

Hot damn, it was delicious. 

The shrimp and fish weren’t overcooked and neither were the noodles, the veg were crunchy, the sauce wasn’t too sweet, and the ginger and the garlic were nice and sharp, and the fresh parsley really put it over the top. I was happy to end on a high note, because it’s been kind of a sucky week, and good lo mein is happy food. 

Okay, that’s it! Don’t forget what I told you, about the thing!

(I’m just kidding, I didn’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything. Who wants some applesauce? We have leftover.) 

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Challah (braided bread)

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups warm water
  • 1/2 cup oil (preferably olive oil)
  • 2 eggs
  • 6-8 cups flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1.5 tsp yeast
  • 2 egg yolks for egg wash
  • poppy seeds or "everything bagel" topping (optional)
  • corn meal (or flour) for pan, to keep loaf from sticking

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, dissolve a bit of the sugar into the water, and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir gently, and let sit for five minutes or more, until it foams.

  2. In the bowl of standing mixer, put the flour (starting with six cups), salt, remaining sugar, oil, and eggs, mix slightly, then add the yeast liquid. Mix with dough hook until the dough doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, adding flour as needed. It's good if it has a slightly scaly appearance on the outside.

  3. (If you're kneading by hand, knead until it feels soft and giving. It will take quite a lot of kneading!)

  4. Put the dough in a greased bowl and lightly cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm place for at least an hour, until it's double in size.

  5. Grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle it with flour or corn meal. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll three into "snakes" and make a large braid, pinching the ends to keep them together. Divide the fourth piece into three and make a smaller braid, and lay this over the larger braid. Lay the braided loaf on the pan.

  6. Cover again and let rise again for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350.

  7. Before baking, make an egg wash out of egg yolks and a little water. Brush the egg wash all over the loaf, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or "everything" topping.

  8. Bake 25 minutes or more until the loaf is a deep golden color.

 

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basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 5 tsp sesame oil
  • 5 tsp sugar

for the rest

  • 32 oz uncooked noodles
  • sesame oil for cooking
  • add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
  • 2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

  1. Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.

  2. Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.

  3. Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.

  4. Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.

  5. Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

 

I’ve been bowing, I’ve been scraping
I’ve been lying like a rug
And for ten long years I’ve had to pay my dues
But today I am escaping
For the last gold has been dug
It was waiting there, so how could I refuse?

I’m returning home a hero
Who’s discovered mighty wealth
And what better husband could a princess choose?
I’m the suitor who will suit her
Bring the kingdom back to health
And I’ll wear the crown, for how could I refuse?

Raise every glass and rouse every cheer
Praise that the reign of Preminger is here
Master in charge of all that I see
All hail me

And by marrying the princess
I get all that I desire
Like a moat, an ermine coat and palace views
Even though she treats me coldly
It’s a sign of inner fire
For inside she’s thinking “How can I refuse?”

[NACK, spoken]
Right, except for this one little problem, boss

[PREMINGER, spoken]
Prince Boss to you!

[NACK, spoken]
Right, the queen decided to marry her off to the King of Dulcinea next week

[PREMINGER, spoken]
What? Making a decision without me? Who does she think she is?

[NICK, spoken]
Uh, the Queen?

[PREMINGER, spoken]
You simpering simpleton!

[NICK, spoken]
Well, she is the Queen. She’s got a crown and a scepter and sits in her big fancy chair and always—

[PREMINGER]
Silencio!
No! I won’t let go!
This peasant son won’t turn and run because some reckless royal chose another beau
Ah!

It’s a temporary setback
It’s a momentary lapse
But conveniently my ego doesn’t bruise
And the moment that I get back
I will show them who’s the boss
You can bet your bullion there’ll be no “I do’s”

Yes, suppose the girl goes missing
So the king says “Au revoir”
Then I find her, bring her back and make the news
Then the queen will be so grateful
That she’ll pledge the heir to moi
And I’ll humbly tell her “How can I refuse?”

When our ceremony’s over
I’ll arise and take the throne
And that nitwit Anneliese can kiss my shoes
For the kingdom and the castle
Will be mine and mine alone
If the crown should fit, then how can I refuse?

[PREMINGER, NACK & NICK]
So get ready with the roses (So get ready with the roses)
And stand by with the champagne (And stand by with the champagne)
When you’ve got a brilliant plan you never lose (When you’ve got a brilliant plan you never lose)
Yes, before this chapter closes (Yes, before this chapter closes)
I’ll be big as Charlemagne (He’ll be big as Charlemagne)
It’s a thankless job but how can I refuse? (It’s a thankless job but how can he refuse?)
How can I refuse? (How can he refuse?)

What’s for supper? Vol. 339: Inshallah, I’ll take pistachio

Happy Friday! I see lots of you poor suckers are going back to school already. We, on the other hand, are still enjoying the last lazy days of summer, by which I mean frantically running around Doing Vacation Things and feeling terrible and panicked about summer being almost over, and also mortality (maybe that’s just me. I am fun). 

I also made two wonderful culinary discoveries this week: Collard greens, and lamb breast plate. We had two days of rather elaborate meals and then a bunch of very much not so meals. Read on!

SATURDAY
Varia 

On Saturday, the Fishers were uncharacteristically sociable. Lena was carousing with a friend in Boston, Clara met up with Dora and they went off to see The Mountain Goats; Sophia, Lucy, and Irene had tickets to see Ricky Montgomery; and Damien, after bowing to his fate and driving them to said concert, brought Benny and Corrie to see the new turtle movie. That just left Elijah, who had to work, and me, who had ten minutes at home COMPLETELY ALONE, which I spent eating TWO cartons of yogurt without explaining myself to anybody, and going to the bathroom with the door open, before going shopping. Then I picked up Elijah and, since it was just the two of us, we had dinner at Chili’s. I had some kind of salad with shrimp. I almost always order some kind of shrimp when I eat at a restaurant. It’s just good! Elijah had a burger, presumably for the same reason. We talked about Godzilla.

SUNDAY
McDonald’s 

Sunday we got to the ocean! The sky was blue, the sun was hot, and the water was about twelve degrees. Seriously, that one year when we went a few miles further south with slightly warmer water has absolutely ruined me for frigid New Hampshire beaches. I did go in the water, out of sheer honesty, but I spent most of my time on the shore saying, “Whoa, that was a big one! Woo, look at you!” and wondering if it’s as much fun to be a seagull as it looks like. 

Bunch of pictures here:

We chose Hampton Beach because, if you’re only going to have one day at the ocean, it should be ocean that has fried dough and skee ball. We packed sandwiches and fruit and Twizzlers for lunch, and hit the drive-thru on the way back for dinner. 

MONDAY
Hot dogs, chips, corn on the cob

A little yellow dinner. Sometimes that’s just what you want. (And if that’s a thing on Urban Dictionary, I don’t want to know about it.) 

TUESDAY
Nachos, pineapple

Damien mentioned that maybe the nachos I make could use a little more cheese, so I thought I would be fancy and buy a second KIND of cheese, and a Mexican one, at that.

Sadly, I am dumb, so I picked something called “queso fresco,” which is apparently known for its incredible ability to withstand heat. So we had tortilla chips with seasoned ground beef, cheddar that melted and queso fresco that did not, jalapeños, and some corn I shaved off the leftover corn from yesterday, and then sour cream and salsa. Pineapple on the side. 

It wasn’t bad, but next time I’ll just buy extra cheddar for that “more cheese” experience.

I was feeling pretty good on Tuesday, though, because I got home from my annual physical knowing my blood pressure is NORMAL. I cannot tell you how good it feels to have that back under control, after it was so bonkers for so long. I also haven’t lost the weight I gained when I tried Lexapro, but I haven’t gained any more, and I been eating nachos, so that seemed fair. And I’m not anemic and my lungs seem more or less back to normal. I guess I had Covid, I don’t know. My OBGYN was trying to convince me to go on an IUD for medical reasons, and I was trying to tell her that I don’t have any ethical problems with getting one for medical reasons, but right now I have all my other symptoms like 

and I don’t want to MESS with anything.

Anyway, we had nachos. 

WEDNESDAY
Oven fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, collard greens, watermelon

This meal came about because a few months ago, I was looking for strawberry plants and they were sold out, but they had some collard greens on clearance, so I got a few plants and stuck them in my garden. Now they look like this

and everything else in my garden is making flowers or vegetables or something, but the collard greens are just getting bigger and bigger, so it was time to figure out what they heck they are for. 

Chicken drumsticks and thighs were 99 cents a pound, so I figured chicken and collard greens sounded like a thing. First thing in the morning, I started soaking the chicken in milk and eggs (one cup of milk per two eggs) with salt and pepper.

Then I made some biscuits.  I actually have an excellent biscuit recipe

Jump to Recipe

but it only turns out really well if you bake them right after you make the dough; or maybe if you refrigerate the dough and then bake it. I never remember this, though, and always make the dough and cut out the biscuits in the morning, when I have time, and then bake them in the afternoon, because I want hot biscuits, and so the butter has softened and the biscuits turn out flat. I swear, it’s a good recipe! Just don’t leave the dough out like I do. 

Anyway, the chicken “recipe” I followed last time calls for putting a few inches of melted butter and canola oil (half and half) in a couple of roasting pans in a 425-degree oven and letting that heat up, but I had used up all the butter in the biscuits, and all I had in the house was olive oil, so OH WELL, I guess I had to use that. 

So I put plenty of flour in a bowl and heavily seasoned it salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika and I think some chili powder. I put the chicken in the pans of oil, skin side down, and let it cook for about half an hour, then turned it and let it finish cooking for another 25 minutes or so, baking the biscuits at the same time. 

And yes, I felt might accomplished pulling these two huge pans of hot food out of the oven. 

But back to the collard greens! You can make them with bacon or ham hocks, but I didn’t have either one, so I poked around until, to my immense relief, I found the website that carried the information I was too shy to google directly: BlackPeoplesRecipes.com. This is the link for vegan collard greens, and it uses liquid smoke. I always feel like that’s cheating, but at what, I’m not exactly sure. 

Anyway, you fry up some onions and garlic, smoked paprika and hot pepper flakes, and then add in some cider vinegar to sweeten the bitter collard greens. 

I washed the greens very well (because I’ve been watering them with duck poo water) and then stripped the stems off

and cut them into strips, and put them into the hot onion mixture and cooked them down a bit, then added chicken broth (no longer a vegan recipe, but that’s what I had) and liquid smoke, and some salt and pepper. Then I moved it to the Instant Pot and set it on “slow cook” for the rest of the day.

They were magnificent. 

Just a beautifully intense, smoky, savory dish. The closest flavor I can think of is kale, but the texture was much more tender, between cabbage and spinach. Damien and I thought it was just wonderful, and we’ll definitely be having this again. 

Benny helped me make a giant pot of mashed potatoes (I saved out a little pat of butter for this purpose), and I made a pot of gravy with the chicken pan drippings and some flour and some leftover chicken broth from the collard greens. 

OH WHAT A MEAL. 

I didn’t even finish the chicken or the mashed potatoes, although they were very good, but I went back for seconds of the collard greens.

Okay, I had three biscuits, because I’m a monster.

But wow, everything was so tasty. The chicken was crisp on the outside and juice and tender inside, just perfect. It felt so good to cook a big meal from scratch, which I haven’t done in a while. 

And it was nice having leftover baked goods in the house, which certain other people enjoy with jelly the next morning.

Also on Wednesday, I started some ice cream going for the next day. Mid-August, and I’ve barely made any ice cream! I made one batch of strawberry, using the Ben and Jerry’s recipe

Jump to Recipe

and one of mango-peach-nectarine, which less fancy than it sounds. I just couldn’t find any pureed mango in cans, which I usually use, so I ended up mashing up all the fruit in the house that was about the same color and just blending it together.

Jump to Recipe

When the ice cream was done churning, I put the freezer bowls back in the freezer, hoping to make at least another batch the next day. 

THURSDAY
Lamb breast plate, stuffed grape leaves, yogurt sauce, taboon; strawberry, mango, and almond ice cream

Thursday was the day I was ready to find out what I had bought on Saturday. I can’t remember what the original plan was, but I got to Aldi and discovered several packs of something called “lamb breast plate” for $2.99 a pound.

Nothing lamb is ever $2.99 a pound, so I bought three three-to-four-pound packs of it, and then went back for a fourth pack later. I put two packs in the freezer and cooked two on Thursday. 

Moses and his girlfriend were coming over, and I wanted a middle eastern meal, and I briefly, longingly considered a recipe where you slit the meat open to make a pocket, and stuff it with rice, dried fruit, nuts, and more ground lamb, and then sew it shut; but prudence prevailed, and I went with this recipe from I’mHungryForThat, because all you do is marinade it, cook it slowly, and then pour a little sauce on at the end. 

The marinade is hot pepper flakes, cumin, sumac, pepper, brown sugar, minced garlic, vinegar, olive oil, and sea salt, all of which I had, and juniper berries, which I did not, but I substituted fresh rosemary. 

Then I just rubbed it all over the meat and let it be.

So, you can see that lamb breast plate has little ribs and is quite fatty, and the meat is mostly in between the bones, plus there are sort of flaps of meat on the other side. Everything I read said that this is a severely underrated cut of meat, and is very tasty and tender as long as you prepare it properly. 

While that was marinating, I went out to gather grape leaves. I usually only make stuffed grape leaves once a year, when they are flush and green and tender. This is mid-August, and they are somewhat past their prime, and many had succumbed to beetles, but were also twining all over the place, in places grapes have never been before (I have three Concord grape vines I planted, and several wild grape vines in other spots in the yard). I found one enormous leaf, the size of a dinner plate, sagging under the burden of two overgrown wild blackberries that had fallen under their own weight and half rotted already, too much for even the birds and bugs to keep up with, and I suddenly realized I was standing right next to the spot where my old garden used to be.

When we moved here, the whole yard was overgrown and formless, and I hacked and chopped and mowed and cleared, and dug and sifted and cultivated, and moved so many rocks around, and made a clear spot to grow my little patch of vegetables, and I kept it up for several years.

I have raised beds now, in a different spot, and the old garden spot has disappeared. It’s hip-high in green again, all overgrown and thorny, just wild grapes, wild blackberries, goldenrod, whatever. And it happened so fast.

I’ll tell you, people worry about not leaving a trace when they go out in nature, and they fret about disruptive hikers piling up rocks or disturbing the natural balance of things. They don’t want the world to know that they were ever here. They don’t want to be arrogant and intrusive. Let me tell you, “leave no trace” is going happen anyway, faster than you think. You pass through and it closes right up behind you, and that’s that. 

Anyway, I got a good pile of leaves and went back inside.  Washed ’em good to get rid of any leggy passengers, and dunked them in boiling water for two minutes to soften them up, and then left them in cold water. 

Last time, we tried making stuffed grape leaves with leftover cooked rice, and it was pretty sloppy. This time, I used raw rice with a bunch of herbs and spices (chopped wild mint, salt and pepper, I think sumac, nutmeg, cinnamon, I think coriander and cumin, and I don’t know what, and minced onions) and rolled them. Corrie helped this time. 

Not the absolute tidiest production, but we made plenty of them, and for once I ran out of grape leaves and filling at about the same time. 

Then I line the Instant Pot with parchment paper, carefully piled the rolled grape leaves in it, threw some lemon slices in, and filled it about halfway up with chicken broth. Then I somewhat recklessly pressed the “rice” button.

I think they may have come out okay with this cooking method, but then I just left them there for quite a bit longer, and the end result was some rather overcooked rice. They were okay! Just kinda, well, you know what overcooked rice is like. I also wish I had used more of every kind of seasoning I put in. It was a good flavor, but I wanted more of it. 

About two hours before dinner, I put the lamb into the oven, covered with tinfoil. I also made a batch of dough for taboon bread

Jump to Recipe

which I think I like even more than pita, and it’s easier, because you’re not trying to get a pocket to form. Sometimes, if I’m make a juicy meat dish, I’ll make a big slab of taboon bread and serve the meat right on top of it; but sometimes I made separate little pieces, and that’s what I did this time. This recipe is enough for twelve little loaves about 8-10 inches across. I love this recipe because it only has to rise once, and it bakes in about twelve minutes, so you can decide almost at the last minute that you feel like making bread after all. 

Oh, and I made a bowl of yogurt sauce with fresh garlic and fresh lemon juice, and a little salt and pepper. I misread the lamb recipe, and you’re supposed to take the tinfoil off and finish cooking it and then pour some sauce on; but I poured the sauce on and then finished cooking it. (The sauce is chopped mint, lemon juice, and brown sugar.)

IT WAS STILL VERY GOOD INDEED.

Super juicy.

I would recommend getting some shears to separate the ribs, though. We struggled a little with cutting it, not because the meat was tough, but because it was so fatty. The meat itself was so good, though. Tremendously savory and tender. If you like lamb, this is a wonderful way to prepare it. 

The bread and the lamb finished cooking at the same time, and I once again felt pretty pleased with myself for hauling out all these giant, laden pans of food onto the table. 

I had hoped to make some kind of ice cream with at least a middle eastern nod, but I just ran out of time. People needed to be driven here and there and Thursday was the day the cat, as Damien put it, took his vows, and I went to drop off a kid at work and take another kid for a haircut, and I was like, I think that’s it? That’s all the people I’m responsible for right this minute? So I started to drive home, and then I remembered OH THE CAT.

Pretty rough day for the little guy. First the cut his balls off, then they forget to pick him up. To add insult to injury, we found out that this cat which we got a month ago, and who was allegedly eight weeks old at the time, is NOW eight weeks old. So he was only four weeks old when we got him, poor baby!

We knew he was younger than they claimed, but didn’t realize how much younger. No wonder he sucks on blankets. Anyway, today he is feeling frisk and fine and we just have to keep the dog away from his stitches for a week, which should be easy as pie, hahah ahaha hahahhaaa. 

Anyway, I decided to make some almond ice cream, which is the same as the strawberry ice cream recipe, below, except you add a few teaspoons of almond extract, you skip strawberries of course, and you let the ice cream freeze for a few hours, and then stir in 2/3 of a cup or so of toasted almonds, and then let it finish freezing. 

The kitchen was pretty hot by the time I got around to making this third batch of ice cream, so it didn’t really freeze up right. I don’t actually mind when this happens, as it results in a kind of ice milk with a pleasant crystalized texture. The flavor was great (I actually used 1 tsp of almond extract and 1 tsp of vanilla) and it was quite popular. It would be great with some bittersweet chocolate chips, but it was good on its own. 

Here’s the three ice creams, looking dramatic:

I also discovered that, if I really wanted to make middle eastern ice cream, I would make something called booza, which has mastic in it and is stretchy. I am fascinated with this idea and would absolutely love to try some, but chances of me making it myself are pretty low, because anything that depends on being a certain texture is not my forte. Perhaps in paradise. The leaves will close over me, all traces will disappear, and Allah will appear in a blaze of glory and hand me a bowl of stretchy ice cream. That sounds pretty great. I’ll take pistachio. 

FRIDAY
I believe we’re going to have scrambled eggs, maybe beans and rice, and leftovers. There MUST be leftovers in this house.

I leave you with one final image. This is the white board which I mounted to the front door, the door through which everyone goes when they leave the house. As you can see, it has the days of the week on it, and I BEGGED and PLEADED and IMPLORED and ABASED MYSELF to the kids, in the hopes that they might deign to write their schedules on it, so I would know before the last minute who needed to be where and when. 

Here is that white board now: 

Little bastards. Good thing I love them. Maybe I’ll make them some more biscuits, or some ice cream. 

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moron biscuits

Because I've been trying all my life to make nice biscuits and I was too much of a moron, until I discovered this recipe. It has egg and cream of tartar, which is weird, but they come out great every time. Flaky little crust, lovely, lofty insides, rich, buttery taste.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups flour
  • 6 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 Tbsp + 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, chilled
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups milk

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar.

  3. Grate the chilled butter with a box grater into the dry ingredients.

  4. Stir in the milk and egg and mix until just combined. Don't overwork it. It's fine to see little bits of butter.

  5. On a floured surface, knead the dough 10-15 times. If it's very sticky, add a little flour.

  6. With your hands, press the dough out until it's about an inch thick. Cut biscuits. Depending on the size, you can probably get 20 medium-sized biscuits with this recipe.

  7. Grease a pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

  • 1 pint fresh strawberries
  • 1-1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

For the ice cream base

  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
  • 1 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Hull and slice the strawberries. Mix them with the sugar and lemon juice, cover, and refrigerate for an hour.

Make the ice cream base:

  1. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.

  2. Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.

  3. Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

  1. Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.

  2. Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)

 

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Mango ice cream

Ingredients

  • 30 oz (about 3 cups) mango pulp
  • 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 mango, chopped into bits

Instructions

  1. In a bowl, whisk the milk, sugar, and salt until blended.

  2. Add in the mango pulp and cream and stir with a spoon until blended.

  3. Cover and refrigerate two hours.

  4. Stir and transfer to ice cream maker. Follow instructions to make ice cream. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes.)

  5. After ice cream is churned, stir in fresh mango bits, then transfer to a freezer-safe container, cover, and freeze for several hours.

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revisit abandoned spiritual practices; you may be surprised

Not long ago, I played my clarinet in a concert. It was the first performance I’ve been in for over 30 years. I used to play a long time ago, and although I never got very good, I stuck with it as long as there was a group to keep me going. It always made me a little sad to come across my old, broken-down instrument and wish I could be in a band again. So this past Christmas, my husband bought me a new clarinet, and my daughter spotted an ad for a community band, and away I went.

And guess what? I’ve gotten better. Not a lot, but unmistakably, I’m a better player than I was 30 years ago. This is somewhat counterintuitive, because, at age 48, my fingers ache in a way they did not when I was a teenager, and my lung capacity is certainly worse. I now need reading glasses to see the notes, and sometimes I still can’t see the measure numbers without sticking my face right in the page.

But my sight reading is much faster than it was, and my posture is better, too. My musical sense in general has matured. And there are more subtle things: I don’t get my feelings hurt when I’m stuck playing the harmony, rather than the melody; I’m patient with my own mistakes, and just try again, rather than getting frustrated and embarrassed and giving up.

I find it easier to listen to the director and accept that she knows what she’s talking about, rather than rolling my eyes because she’s bossy. I’m better at listening to the band as a whole, and trying to play my part as it’s written, rather than impress anyone. I also try my best to play all the music well, even if it’s not my favorite, because I’m just not as bratty as I used to be. These are things that I’ve learned to do in the last few decades, even while never so much as touching a clarinet. So now I’m a better musician.

The clarinet is not the only old hobby I’ve revisited recently, and it’s not the only thing I’ve discovered I’ve gotten better at, simply by taking several decades off and growing up a bit.

A few examples: I used to be the world’s worst baker. My biscuits were dense, my cakes were crooked and flat, my cookies were rubbery and always burnt. I could make cornbread, because it was almost impossible to do it wrong, but pretty much everything else was garbage. I resorted to mixes and store bought baked goods for decades. But then slowly, gradually, I recently started to experiment with baking some simple things from scratch— french bread, basic cakes—and guess what? I can bake fine. I’m no expert, but I’m completely competent, and the things I bake usually look like the picture on the recipe page.

How did this happen? For one thing, I’ve gotten better at assessing which recipes are going to be suitable for my skill level, and only attempting trickier ones when I know I will have the time and energy to focus on them. In the past, I would have approached an outrageously difficult recipe with the attitude of “but I WANT to” and then predictably ruined it, and then gotten angry and disgusted, and then had my confidence shattered for next time, making it harder to do well with a recipe that really was within my grasp.  I’ve also just gotten my competent in the kitchen in general. I’ve spent countless hours cooking, and many of those skills translate to baking—and the confidence and sense of self-worth absolutely translate. I don’t get flustered and distracted as easily, and if I make a mistake, I don’t automatically panic and make things worse. Some of my terrible baking was, I’ve discovered, due to me straight up refusing to follow recipes because I thought I knew better, based on zero evidence, for no reason at all. Now I know better. So now I’m a better baker!

The same thing happened with drawing. I used to desperately, achingly long to be an artist, but I hit a plateau in my rendering skills, and it became a miserable exercise because what I drew never looked anything like what I imagined in my head. Now, I can choose a subject, get an idea of what I would like it to look like, and render it pretty faithfully in a reasonable amount of time. Not every time, but fairly reliably. I haven’t had any lessons in the intervening years.

What has changed is that I’ve calmed the heck down. I have reasonable expectations, and I no longer feel like my whole identity is riding on what turns up on the page. I also don’t draw to impress anyone, but simply because I enjoy the process, and therefore focus better on the process. And that often makes for better work.

There are other examples, but you get the point.

Guess what? You can do this with spiritual exercises, as well: You can revisit long-since abandoned spiritual practices that you gave up because they weren’t working for you, or you didn’t like them, or they didn’t fit into your life, and see if they might work better for you now. Sometimes you just need to grow up a bit, and that makes a big difference.

Is there some saint that everyone loves, and they never really clicked with you? Maybe they’re not the saint for you—or maybe they were simply not the saint for younger you. Might be worthwhile taking another look and seeing if there’s more there than you realized. If not, that’s okay, too. But if it’s been a decade or more, chances are you’ll have changed so much, it will hit different this time around.

Maybe the rosary always felt like a terrible, pointless slog when you were younger, and you very reasonably set it aside, because it just wasn’t meaningful, and some other form of prayer was. But if you’re once again casting around for something to help anchor you to Christ, don’t be afraid to go back and try old things again. Relationships change, and prayer is about your relationship with God, so maybe it will strike a chord now.

The same goes for any spiritual practice that is licit, but just wasn’t working for you a long time ago. Things can change! People are supposed to change. If you let something go because it was hurting you, or because it’s associated with some trauma, that’s a different matter; but if you simply didn’t get much out of it, or it felt like you weren’t getting the hang of it, maybe give it another shot. Maybe you’re ready now.

One of the great things about the Catholic faith is that it’s so varied. There are countless ways to make and keep and renew contact with God. What works for one person may not work for another person, and that’s perfectly fine, because there are very many options out there.

But it’s also good to remember that what didn’t work for you once may work for you now. It’s thrilling and illuminating to find something new, but it’s even more gladdening to discover that something that once felt stiff and unnatural is now fruitful and profound, because you now have more capacity to appreciate and understand and receive it. This is part of what it means to grow spiritually: Discovering not only more about who God is, but who you are.

**
A version of this essay was originally published at The Catholic Weekly in May of 2023.

Image by Reuven Hayoon from Pixabay 

What’s for supper? Vol. 331: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

Happy Friday! Are you ready for some PEPPERSSSSSS!!!!!!!

But first, just like old times, there’s a little dust-up going on in my combox, which began when one reader wanted to know how it is that I’m over here eating kale salads and lean protein crumbles, but yet feeding my kids buttered corn dog nuggets and hot salt slop noodle casserole pie. A few readers jumped to my defense, which I appreciate very much, but the real answer is simple: I don’t like my kids. Please address any further questions to my menu planning assistant, who can be contacted here.  

I kid, I kid. I love yez all, more or less. 

The real question of the day is, WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS RHUBARB? 

Short version, I planted a rhubarb root in early spring, and it didn’t come up at all, but by the time I had given up hope, nobody in town was selling rhubarb anymore. Or so I thought! I stopped by the Cheshire Floral Farm, honestly mainly just to cheer myself up, because it’s so pretty up there. It’s a nursery built on top of a hill, and it’s the cleanest air I’ve ever breathed in my life. Even the birdsong has a special clarity, because the air is so clear. The man who owns it is 74 years old, and he has thousands and thousands of plants which he appears to know intimately, individually, and everything is thriving. He showed me the rows of pots with seedlings he has prepped for next spring. Next spring!

So I mentioned rhubarb, and he started hiking up to the top of the hill, and I panted up after him. There were half a dozen potted rhubarb plants about two feet high, and half a dozen smaller ones. He said, “This rhubarb has a history, you know.” It started as a plant in England that his grandfather grew, and they divided the root and brought it over, and he planted it here in New England, and off it went. I chose a smaller plant, and he knocked the seeds off and told me to dig a deep hole and fill it with manure. Then he kept walking up hill, so I followed, panting. We went through a gate, across a lawn, past a garden, and around a shed, and there, my friends, were three rhubarb plants, each as big as a Volkswagon Bug. He snapped off three stalks and presented them to me. 

So now I have rhubarb! Rhubarb for now, and for tomorrow, and for all my days to come, if I don’t screw it up. Usually I just make strawberry rhubarb pie, because it’s expensive and I only get it once a year, and that’s my favorite treat. But now I have plenty! What else do you like to make? Pickled rhubarb? Rhubarb jam? 

He also said you can chop up the poisonous leaves along with some tobacco leaves, boil them, and make an insecticide, which you use as a spray. I’ll probably leave that one alone, but I love knowing that there’s a use for the leaves besides murder. 

Okay! So here’s what we ate this week. And I apologize in advance, but I added in a lot of medical complaining, because it was that kind of week. 

SATURDAY
Hot dogs

H.O.T. D.O.G.S., and I think fries

SUNDAY
Cuban sandwiches, coleslaw, fruit salad

Sunday I took a big step forward with the patio, finally. I salvaged some pressure treated lumber from various old projects, and shoved them in around the perimeter, and staked them in place with lawn stakes. I rented a vibrating plate compactor and ran it over the soil. Then I roped the kids into trucking the gravel down to the backyard, spread that out, ran over it with a makeshift screed, and ran over it with the compactor several more times.

Then the dog ran over it several times, because of course he did. It’s fine. He’s helping compact everything. The gravel I ended up getting is not exactly what I wanted, but I did want to move forward, and I achieved that! So, hoot hoot. Next is sand, and then finally bricks. 

A few hours in, I remembered “oh, supper,” and I had a boneless pork loin or something, so I threw it in the Instant Pot along with several giant glugs of apple cider vinegar, some water, a lot of cumin and garlic powder and some salt and pepper. I pressure cooked it on high for 22 minutes and it came out non-beautiful but very tender and quite tasty. 

For the sandwiches, I had big pieces of sourdough bread, and I built them in this order: bread, mustard, Swiss cheese, pork, pickles, ham, more Swiss cheese, mustard. Mayo on the outside, fried in butter. 

There is no particular reason this heavy, greasy, carby sandwich appears to be leering at you. You’re just imagining it. 

I made a nice fruit salad with watermelon, mango, strawberries, and blueberries, and a quick coleslaw with cabbage and carrot with a dressing of mayo, cider vinegar, a little olive oil, and freshly ground pepper. 

MONDAY
Lemon pepper chicken, taboon, and muhammara (red pepper walnut dip)

Last week, I asked for more recipes with pomegranate molasses, which I had used so deliciously in the cherry walnut herb salad. Several people suggested muhammara, which is a Turkish red pepper walnut dip.

SEVERAL PEOPLE WERE RIGHT. I followed this recipe from The Mediterranean Dish, and made a triple recipe. It calls for two red bell peppers, but I had four red and two orange. I keep learning and then forgetting again that red and orange (and yellow) bell peppers are just green bell peppers at different stages of ripeness (and therefore sweetness). Red is the sweetest; orange is the medium stage. (Yellow, which I didn’t have, is the first “turning” stage.) But it’s all the same pepper. 

Anyway, I oiled and roasted them peppers, which is something I enjoy.

So pretty. 

These recipes always tell you to cover the roasted peppers with plastic wrap and let them steam themselves, to loosen up the skins; but I have found (by the scientific process of forgetting to do it) that this isn’t necessary. The skins come off just as easily if you just let them sit. 

So I pulled off the skins, which I enjoy, and yanked out the core and scraped off most of the seeds. This is about half the pepper flesh. 

And then you just whiz it up in a food processor along with toasted walnuts, olive oil, raw garlic, tomato paste, bread crumbs, of course pomegranate molasses, sugar, sumac, and salt. Now, this recipe also calls for Aleppo pepper, and says cayenne pepper is optional. I didn’t have either, and suddenly got an attack of the cheaps at the store, so I only bought cayenne.

Since I had so much dip, I divided it and added cayenne pepper (somewhat more than the recipe called for) to only one portion. 

Friends, for something so earthy, it is heavenly. This is one of these profoundly nourishing, joyful foods. It just tastes like it’s feeding your whole being. It’s wonderfully tart but not in an aggressive way. The heat in the peppered one built gradually, and it tasted good with chicken, with vegetables, and with bread. And just by itself. 

I made twelve little taboon breads. Last time I was a little unhappy with how they turned out, rather tough and chewy. Not sure if this is what caused it, but I realized that I forgot to put the pan in the oven to heat up before putting the dough on it to bake. This time I followed that step, and they turned out much more tender and fluffy. I love taboon. 

It’s so easy, and you can start it less than two hours before you want to eat. Fast as a quick bread, but with the texture and heft of a yeast bread. So good. It doesn’t puff up and separate into a pocket like pita, so don’t expect that. It’s more bready, while still being a flatbread, so you could use it for wraps, or for scooping or sopping purposes.

I just made very simple roast chicken breast sprinkled with a lemon pepper seasoning mix and cut up, and spinach, black olives, and cherry tomatoes.

Damien and I ate the muhammara steadily for lunch and snacks for the rest of the week. It was wonderful with those flattened pretzel chip things, and also really nice with baby carrots, and with cucumbers. I am completely sold on muhammara. 

Still happy to hear about more pomegranate molasses recipes, but if this is all I ever use it for in the future, diyenu! 

TUESDAY
Tacos

Tuesday I made a bunch of taco meat, put it in the slow cooker, and then I was like, screw it, I’m going to the ER. Here’s the most exciting part:

Yes, that is my blood pressure. No, I did not eat tacos when I eventually got home, even though they had ruled out heart attack, as well as cancer and pulmonary embolism. But I do not recommend this blood pressure, at all. 

WEDNESDAY
Shawarma

Wednesday I wanted to get back to normal as much as possible, but I had lots of help! Clara made the shawarama marinade, Corrie made the yogurt sauce and Benny cut up the cucumbers and gathered and chopped the mint, and I had bought readymade pita and hummus, so it was just a matter of finishing everything up.

And very good it is, shawarma. 

At this point, I had learned that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with my heart, and all my lab work so far came back showing that I’m actually extremely healthy, except for when my terrible doctor takes me off my medication and makes my blood pressure go nutsy; so yeah, I had a big blob of yogurt sauce. Ugh, I guess I’m self conscious about my food pictures now. Boo. 

THURSDAY
Aldi pizza

Thursday I drove up to the pulmonologist in Lebanon and they did all the breathing tests. I stopped to check on my parents’ grave (they are still dead, whew), and the lilac tree and rose bushes I planted made it through the winter, so that was nice! I said a decade and went on my way. Damien bought and served Aldi pizza, and Moe came by and helped with the driving. 

FRIDAY
Spinach chickpea stew

Friday morning I found out that my lungs are very healthy, capable, and working fine! Which is great, except . . . you know, I still can’t breathe, and my chest still hurts, and my lungs still make a sound like bacon frying at night. Like, other people can hear it, so I can’t be making it up. I don’t know! I don’t know. I’m getting an echocardiogram at the end of July, and I’m going to look into chronic anemia and sleep apnea, because I don’t know what else it might be. It’s not the smoke from the wildfires, because this has been going on since November. Albuterol doesn’t help at all. Maybe I’m just making bacon in my lungs. If anyone could, I would.

ANYWAY, today we are having this lovely lemon chickpea spinach stew

the recipe for which you can find here at Saveur. This weekend I’m going to work on my patio without worrying it’s going to be my last act on earth, so that will be nice. 

Anyway, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb. Allegedly that’s what crowds of extras on movie sets are supposed to say, in order to convincingly sound like they are having a conversation in the background. Someone smarter than me can write an essay about turning food into the logos. Imma go lie down.

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

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

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

 

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 326: Wads for supper

All week long, the kids have been asking me why it is raining. I don’t know why they’re asking me. It’s not like they think I know anything. The truth is, I made it happen, partially because I like to suffer, and partly so I could make soup one more time before summer. But I didn’t tell them that; I just made the soup, so we could all suffer. (It was delicious soup!)

SATURDAY
Fried chicken caprese sandwiches, Aldi Cheetos

I bought one of those enormous sacks of miscellaneous chicken breasts suspended in frozen wads of broth, with the intention of doling them out over three meals. It actually worked, to my surprise (I was expecting doom and disaster, as usual). This chicken is actually okay, as long as you’re using it as a sort of raw material, like tofu or polymer clay, rather than as a centerpiece. 

Saturday we had chicken caprese sandwiches. If I have actual fresh chicken breasts, I will roast them with oil, salt, and pepper, but I thought these chicken wads needed more help than that. So I dredged them in eggs and milk and then seasoned panko crumbs, pan fried them, and then put them in the oven for a while to make sure they were done all the way through. 

I served them on ciabatta rolls with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and of course mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. Not spectacular, but fine. 

I haven’t really started my garden yet (we can’t plant anything but the heartiest things until May), but I’m already feeling the freedom of knowing I have decided not to grow tomatoes this summer. Homegrown tomatoes bring me nothing but grief, and hardly any tomatoes. I’m just going to excuse myself this time, and grow mostly flowers, plus a bunch of vegetables that don’t have all this weird cultural “oh yeahhhh, this here is the good life” baggage. I’m planning rhubarb and asparagus and strawberries and maybe some eggplant, probably various squashes and pumpkins, and I think some Brussels sprouts made it through the winter. And flowers! 

SUNDAY
Spicy pulled pork on tater tots with cheese

First I started some focaccia dough for Tuesday. I saw all those beautiful focaccia loaves people made over the pandemic, with little garden scenes picked out in vegetables, but I never got around to trying it. But Sip and Feast promised an easy, no-knead recipe that is best if you start it fermenting several days in advance, so that’s what I made. 

So much olive oil, goodness! I made a double recipe. 

So I put that away in the fridge, rested on my laurels for a minute, feeling domestic goddess-y and accomplished thinking about how Tuesday’s dinner was already halfway done, until I suddenly realized we also needed to eat something today. Boo.

But, pulled pork is easy. It was a bit of a strange combination in the slow cooker, but here is what I did: First I cut the pork into hunks, seasoned it heavily with salt and pepper, and browned it in oil. Then I put it in the Instant Pot with a can of Cherry Coke Zero, three clementines cut in half and squeezed, a few big dark reg, glossy guajillo peppers, a handful of little orange arbol peppers, a heaping tablespoon of cumin, and a bunch of oregano. I left all the seeds in the peppers, and just tore the tops off.

Then I pressed “meat,” which just makes me laugh. Do it! Go be meat! Away! and left it alone to think about life for the rest of the day. 

When it was almost time to eat, I pulled out most of the clementine rinds and about half the peppers, and shredded the meat.

I drained the liquid, but ended up adding some back into keep the meat moist while it was heating back up while I cooked some tater tots and shredded some cheese and sliced some onions.

I had my pile of food in this order: Tater tots, then shredded cheddar cheese, then hot pork to melt the cheese; then cool onions and sauce on top of that.

It was really good. Not a delicate or sophisticated dinner, but REALLY GOOD. I did a bunch of digging and heavy yard work on Sunday, and this was a fine reward. 

MONDAY
Cobb salad

On Monday I drove an hour and a quarter to a super Newhampshirey-ish place to pick up a free load of bricks, and let me tell you, it was a lot of bricks! A! Lot! 

I haven’t figured out exactly how many I will need for my patio, but if the answer turns out to be “quite a few,” I may have arrived. I did start digging, and I’m gonna do a lot more digging this weekend, when it stops raining. 

For supper: Chicken wads, day 2! I broiled them with oil, salt, and pepper and served them in slices with salad greens, chopped bacon, hard boiled eggs, red onions, leftover croutons from last week, shredded cheese, and those crunchy fried onions that come in a pouch.

Nice little salad, much protein. I had mine with ranch dressing. This isn’t strictly speaking a Cobb salad, which is supposed to be laid out in cute little stripes and is supposed to have avocados, tomatoes, and I forget what else — I think chives, and probably some other kind of dressing. Get off my back, man! Cobb salad  sounds better than “wadd salad!” 

TUESDAY
Sausage and kale soup, focaccia bread

Tuesday it was time to take the dough out of the fridge, that had been lurking there since Sunday afternoon. It needed 3-4 hours to rise, and then you just spread it in a pan, let it rest a little bit and then re-spread it, and then let it rise a little more, and then you can decorate it and bake it. 

I was rushing a bit and hadn’t really made a plan for how to decorate it, so I just grabbed what I could find, which was grape tomatoes, radishes, scallions, some garlic scrapes, red onions, and kale.

I thought the design turned out pretty (well, one did. The other one was kind of lame), but I didn’t know how well it would hold up in the oven. 

I actually baked it for slightly less time than it recommended, but one pan was still slightly burned, and the other was right on the verge. 

Still pretty, though! The dough is very stable as it bakes, so the design stays where you put it. I call it a success. 

Although the truth is, if you ever want me to do anything, anything at all, just offer me hot tomatoes baked into fresh bread. I will walk off a cliff with my eyes wide open, if I think there’s hot tomatoes baked into fresh bread at the bottom. 

It had a thin crust and was quite chewy, and the inside had very large air holes

(which I imagine was the result of letting it ferment for three days). I’m not a big focaccia expert, but I think this is how it’s supposed to come out. 

Guess what? Most of the kids wouldn’t even try it, because it had kale on it. Honest to goodness. Kale isn’t even that big of a deal. I feel like it’s like Sriracha sauce or Mondays or the word moist: NOT EVEN THAT BIG OF A DEAL. It’s just that people keep talking and talking about it, until everyone’s like, “oh my gosh, KALE, what is it even for, it’s garbage, only insane aliens would be in the same room with it!” Like, it’s a leafy green, it has a mildly sweet taste, and you can put it in salads or soups or whatever you want. It’s kind of dense, but who the fuck isn’t. People need to settle down about kale. 

Anyway, then I made some soup, also from Sip and Feast, with sausage, potato, cannellini beans, and kale. Very simple, easy li’l soup, tastes nice. I took a bunch of extremely blurry pictures for some reason. 

I grated some parmesan and set that out with the soup and the piping hot focaccia

and everyone stared at it and went to get some ramen or frosted flakes. I’m actually only pretending to be mad. I ate most of both loaves of focaccia myself. Can’t be mad. Too full of focaccia, here at the bottom of my cliff. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken fried rice, steamed pork and mushroom dumplings

On Wednesday, Elijah made supper, hooray! He took a cooking class last year and has a few recipes he likes. 

It was tasty if basic,with rice, onions and garlic, some frozen veg, chunks of chicken, scrambled eggs, and soy sauce. 

But nothing can beat that wonderful flavor of someone else making dinner, let me tell you. And we also got a lot of mileage out of “you telling me ELIJAH fried this” etc etc.

I stopped at the Keene International Market and picked up some frozen pork and mushroom dumplings, which I steamed in my nice little bamboo steamer,

and I served them in one of the dozens of dishes Clara brought home from pottery class. 

I’ll tell you, one minute you’re wiping bottoms, pouring juice all day long, and begging them to stop eating crayons, and then next minute you’re eating the dinner they cooked you off the pottery they made by hand. And looking the other way while they eat crayons, because you know everyone is on a journey. 

But seriously, Clara brought home some amazing pottery. 

 

and we don’t even have crayons in this house. 

THURSDAY
Koftas, yogurt sauce, Jerusalem salad, pita

Thursday I made what probably can’t really be called koftas, because they’re round instead of sausage-shaped, and broiled in the oven rather than grilled or roasted on a spit, and not on sticks. They were, however, juicy and delicious and to me they tasted middle eastern. 

I mixed about five pounds of ground beef, five eggs, and then just started slamming in anything that smelled like it belonged in a hot tent: sumac, coriander, paprika, cinnamon, onion powder, garam masala, za’atar, and salt, and a big handful of fresh mint from the yard. Then I discovered I had used up all my breadcrumbs on the chicken on Sunday, so I made about six pieces of toast, and then microwaved them to really blitz the moisture out, and then ran them through the food processor. 

When it was almost time to eat, I cooked the meatballs on pans on racks in a 450 oven for about 25 minutes.

I also made a bunch of yogurt sauce with fresh garlic and fresh lemon juice and kosher salt, and I made a nice Jerusalem salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh mint, fresh flat-leaf parsley, a little red onion, fresh lemon juice, and salt. And that was it! A simple but nicely balanced meal. 

I briefly considered making pita or maybe making taboon bread, but we still had leftover focaccia, so I just stopped at the store and bought some pita. 

FRIDAY
I think we are having quesadillas. Truly, I hated this week. Everyone was fighty and bighty, especially me, and it rained a lot, and I forgot about a bunch of forms I was supposed to fill out, and even though the sack of chicken wads worked out, it made me mad all week. The more I think about it, the more it was clearly the chicken’s fault. 

However, the ducks are growing nicely. EJ has started quacking, not just peeping, and Corrie has been great with them. They’re huge! Almost ready to live outside.

And I think the sun is going to come out this weekend. Literally, I mean, and also maybe figuratively; who can say? And I do have a lot of bricks. And ducks. Oh, and I fixed the What’s for supper volume numbering. Well, I didn’t fix it, but I got back on track. It went: 323, 324, 325, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 242, 243, 244, 245, 11. But now we’re back on track. Quack! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 241: Troubles with soup are better than troubles without soup

Happy whatever day it is! I didn’t do a food post last Friday because, I forget why. Oh, because I was complaining about the pope.  Anyway I wanted to share the results of a recipe from the previous Friday. It’s sabanekh bil hummus, Palestinian spinach and chickpea soup. I followed the recipe from Saveur and it was deeee-lectable. 

You saute some onions in olive oil, and then you toast some spices (cumin and coriander) and then grind them, then add them to the onions along with some garlic, plus allspice and nutmeg, and pepper, and cook a little longer, then add chickpeas and stock. (It called for vegetable stock, but I had chicken.)  

THE SMELL.

Simmer for about half an hour, add in fresh baby spinach, fresh lemon juice, some kosher salt, and a little more olive oil. Look-a here, now.

It was so good. The earthy spices combined with the bright lemon juice and the tender chickpeas and spinach made it a surprisingly interesting dish, considering it’s just broth with chickpeas and spinach.  Damien and I absolutely loved it. Definitely adding it to the Friday rotation. 

I’m kind of mad about this, but I’m now fully converted to the notion that fresh ingredients are worth the trouble. Sometimes you just plain don’t have the time or energy, and then it’s a blessing to use convenience foods! It’s fine, it’s not a moral issue! But if you can grind spices and squeeze lemons and crush garlic and chop herbs, oh man. Do yourself a favor. It eventually stops feeling laborious and extravagant and just feels like the normal way to cook, and it elevates your flavors so much.

Of course I still buy bouillon powder, rather than making my own stock, and I still routinely buy frozen pizza dough and so on. Let’s not be silly. I know you’ll agree that I draw the line at exactly the right arbitrary spot. I KNOW YOU’LL AGREE.

Damien and I were both insanely busy all week. Just tons of writing, and we had two birthdays, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t even remember. Also Sophia went to Rome with her high school class, and we had to get both cars fixed (my car was doing something that was causing people to stop me and say, “Excuse me, do you know your car is–” and I would have to sigh, “Yesss, I am aware,” and I drove around like that for over a week before I had a chance to get it fixed. So penitential, much litany of humility. Damien’s car was fine, except for the brakes, pff), and Lena taught the dog to roll over, which was more emotionally fraught for the whole family than you might expect.  Also the dryer broke, and I hit some lady’s mailbox on the way home from band. I really kranged it good, and it was very cold out, so it shattered, so I had to knock on her door and say, I’m sorry, I hit your mailbox, and there was a very old, unclothed man sleeping in the living room with purple old his legs sticking out. Probably can’t really blame the dog for that (I do not take him to band). 

I did manage to get the one stinking maple tree tapped finally, though. It’s a long story and probably nothing will come of it, but I really hate not finishing projects, so I’m forging ahead. Look-a here, now!

 

I’m sorry I keep saying that. I’ve been listening to funk music lately and it stuck, for some reason. 

SATURDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Words cannot describe how long ago that Saturday and those hamburgers were. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese

We had these sandwiches on ciabatta rolls. I really hate cooking with an iron frying pan, but it does come in handy for laying on top of a puffy sandwich and weighing it down when you’re trying to get cheap Aldi cheese to melt. 

MONDAY
Southwest chicken salad

I drizzled some chicken breasts with something called elote seasoning, which seems to be mostly chili powder, salt, and dehydrated cheese powder, and roasted the chicken, and served the chicken slices over mixed greens with shredded cheddar, some corn sautéed in olive oil, and chipotle ranch dressing, with corn chips. 

I feel like there were beans, but maybe they remained in the realm of hypothesis. Anyway, it was a good salad. 

TUESDAY
Lasagna, Mars cake

Tuesday was Elijah’s birthday celebration, and he requested Damien’s amazing lasagna, which he makes using the Albert Burneko recipe. Absolutely stupendous. Creamy cheese sauce, ultra savory tomato sauce with meat, just fab. I always get a terrible picture of this lasagna because, once he sets it on the table, no power on heaven or earth can slow me down.

It weighs about 87 pounds and it’s so good. 

I also made a Mars cake. Elijah likes Mars a lot, and I thought it would be nice to throw together a little fondant Mars Perseverance Rover with wheels that turn and a little gum paste Ingenuity helicopter with a rotor that spins, how hard could it be??

Well. I took a chance and broke away from my filthy box cake ways and used the King Arthur “Simple and Rich Chocolate Cake” recipe and it was exactly that, simple and rich (and chocolate, and cake. And a recipe. You guys, I’m so tired). And the cake turned out very well! I made a simple frosting with butter, a little salt and vanilla, powdered sugar, and milk, and the Mars part was pretty enough.

Then, well, things got out of hand a little bit with the robots

What can I say, an attempt was made. The good news is, he turned down my original idea, which was a galaxy mirror glaze cake with a surprise Mars-shaped heart baked right into it. So like when you cut space open, there’s Mars inside! Just like in real life! So we didn’t do that, which is good, because I can’t do that. Instead, we had the robuts, held together with toothpicks. They would have been better if he had let me put candy eyeballs on them, but I learned just in time that he actually feels strongly about robots and eyeballs. Look-a here.

WEDNESDAY
Tacos

Man, it’s a good thing I wrote this down, because I don’t remember this at all. What a week. I fell asleep on the couch so many times. 

THURSDAY
Mussakhan and taboon bread, tabouleh 

This I do remember. This is the second time I have made this meal, recipe also from Saveur, and it was just as popular this time. It’s quite easy, but packs a huge punch with flavor. You just have to get your chicken parts and onions marinating several hours ahead of time, and then you just roast it up.

Just before it’s done, you fry up some pine nuts and toss them over the top of the sizzling hot chicken, which you have lavishly spread over the piping hot taboon bread,

Jump to Recipe

which you have whipped up a few hours before dinner because you believe in yourself. Actually I timed it a little wrong and the chicken was ready a few minutes before the bread, so people started eating it before I could put it on the bread. A minor disappointment, soothed by the implied compliment that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on that chicken. I still had my chicken on bread, and I spooned up plenty of the lovely sumac-laden roasting juices to ladle over the tender, dimpled taboon. 

This meal is so good, you can’t imagine. The chicken is so juicy and the mixture of spices is just heavenly. You got the happy salty little bread cloud floating underneath and it’s really just hard to stop eating. 

I also picked up a few boxes of tabouleh, already mixed with seasoning, so you just had to pour hot water over it to wake it up, and then I added some chopped tomatoes and cucumbers and feta cheese. I ate, uh, kind of a lot of that, too, even though it was just boxabouleh. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular old pizza, whew.

Oh, I was planning to tell you about the whole other cake, but I guess that belongs in next week’s post! I mean this week’s post. I did start it on Thursday. Well, next time, I’ll tell you allll about it. It just about killed me. 

And now it’s Tuesday. We got a massive dump of snow, the power is out, and I guess we are going to have corn flakes and melted snow for supper. 

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 240: Challah round the world

I have a message for you: You’re going to be okay. I hope that isn’t the wrong thing to say, but it keeps coming into my head, so I’m passing it along.

And now for what we ate this week! My lame excuse for the title is that we had Italian soup, Jewish bread, Palestinian soup, Korean stir fry, Mexican quesadillas, and I guess American Jell-o. I guess pulled pork is American, too. The steak, however, was out of this world, ho ho ho ho ho. 

SATURDAY
Steak and Jell-o

Saturday was Corrie’s birthday, and she had this very definite dinner request. Actually she wanted steak and blue Jell-o, but I didn’t get started early enough in the day to make that happen from Jell-o powder, so we got a few packs of baby’s very first pre-made gelatin cups in assorted colors, and she was pretty happy. 

Her party is supposed to be tomorrow, if it doesn’t get cancelled by yet another snow storm, and I need to get started on that cake today. It will be an under-the-sea theme, and I HAVE AMBITIONS. They include Jell-o.

For the next photo, regarding the steak we had, you may want to engage your custody of the eyes, because it’s a Friday in Lent, and boy. 

First I’ll tell you how Damien cooked the steaks: Season the steaks with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Get an iron frying pan screamingly hot and throw a few cloves of garlic and some olive oil in, and then cook it three minutes, then spread some butter on it and cover it and cook it for another minute, then flip it and do the same thing on the other side. May or may not need to cook it more after that, depending on how thick the steak is. 

Okay, here’s the picture, and don’t say I didn’t warn you:

Sigh. It was so tender, so juicy. 

I’m starving. This is fine. 

SUNDAY
Pizza 

Museum day! It was the very last day of February vacation and we made the trek to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, which Damien and I have been to before, but the kids have not. It’s a wonderful ride that takes you way up in the Berkshires, and the museum itself is excellent, and they have FREE ADMISSION THROUGH MARCH. I shared a few photos of our trip here:

Very nice. We stopped for pizza on the way home at a little Greek place, Village Pizza in Greenfield, MA. Tasty pizza, friendly service, clean and cheap.

This was the trip where I finally let the kids use the DVD player in the car. We’ve never had a vehicle with a DVD player before, and I’ve been holding off using it because I am a big believer in the value of both scenery and boredom; but this was a pretty long haul, so they watched some Harry Potter thing on the way there, and Barbie as the Island Princess on the way home. Now Corrie is going around gleefully singing, “Some people say that we’re VERRRRRRRmin, but we’re just misunderstood!” Those Barbie movies were not half bad! 

MONDAY
Chicken broccoli stir fry with rice

Boneless, skinless chicken breast was on sale, so I got a few pounds of it and cut it up small, and a few pounds of broccoli crowns and cut them up small, and I made a batch of simple sauce that I was pretty happy with. I used the sauce in this recipe from My Korean Kitchen, which is meant for a noodle dish, which also sounds delicious.

The sauce calls for equal parts oyster sauce, soy sauce, and honey, plus some minced garlic and sesame oil. Nice and easy but tons of flavor. I had two open bottles of oyster sauce and wasn’t sure how old they were, so I smelled them both and they both smelled like old feet, so I used them both. 

I threw in some mushrooms and I think maybe some onions, and it was delicious. I cooked the chicken about 3/4 of the way through before adding in the broccoli, because overcooked broccoli is so very sad. 

I made a big pot of rice in the Instant Pot. I also made a little fruit salad of strawberries and mangoes.

I love to have something sweet along with the strong umami flavor of the oyster sauce. 

TUESDAY
Italian wedding soup, challah

Snow day! Actually a remote school day, because they knew there was a storm coming, so they sent the kids home with packets so they could get work done and the day at home wouldn’t count against their summer vacation. Okay with me. And a good day for soup and bread. 

And this was tremendous soup. Simple, but powerful. I more or less followed this meatball recipe from Sip and Feast, except I had ground chicken instead of turkey, and shredded manchego instead of grated parmesan (and I used about twice the cheese that was called for). The other ingredients are breadcrumbs, grated onion, eggs, a little milk and olive oil, pepper and kosher salt; and then it calls for fresh basil and parsley, which I didn’t have, so I just dumped in a generous handful of [shield your ears] dried Italian seasoning, which is probably, I don’t know, oregano and parsley and basil. These are small meatballs, and I baked them on parchment paper in the oven. 

I did run into a small snag, wherein I was mixing the ingredients by hand and trying to stifle my increasing alarm at the wet, pulpy texture of it. Was it really supposed to be this gritty? And why was it that color? And how could this possibly be enough for a double recipe??

Then I realized I forgot the meat. So I put in the meat in the meatballs and then they were fine.

Follow me for more cooking tips. 

The soup, I first sauteed some diced onions and carrots and wedges of zucchini, then added about ten cups of chicken broth. Then I threw in the meatballs and kept that warm all day. When it was almost supper time, I added several handfuls of baby spinach and a cup of ditalini, and simmered it until the pasta was done.

So not really traditional Italian wedding soup, but extremely tasty and warming, and a wonderful shimmering gold. 

I also made a couple of challahs. I made two separate batches, and accidentally conducted a science experiment, one with a control challah

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and one eliminating the oil. Challah needs two rises, and I didn’t realize I forgot the oil until after the first rise, so I decided to just see what would happen. (This was after I had almost made meat-free meatballs, so I was trying to be kind with myself at this point.) 

Then I decided, oh, what’s the worst that could happen, I’ll just quickly learn how to do a four-strand braid, rather than my usual technique, which is to make a big challah with a little challah lounging on top. I followed this helpful video from Jamie Geller, which was helpful for a minute or so until my battery died, and then I had no idea what the hell to do. Even when I’m not exhausted and extra dumb, I am very very bad indeed at left-right stuff, and get unreasonably confused. I can see that it’s simple, but that doesn’t help! My brain goes, “Okay, I see, I see, I see . . . HWAA????”

So this is what I made:

Eh, it’s still bread. I brushed them with egg wash, let them rise again, and guess what, they came out looking lovely:

I took the advice to keep the braid loose, and some real magic happened in the oven.

So we had a really good snow day meal of soup and bread. 

Oh, as for the challah with vs. without oil, the one without oil was somewhat less supple to work with, but I could honestly hardly tell the difference when I ate them. Here are photos of the insides of both:

Did I remember to make a note of which is which? I did not. I remember thinking that mayyyyybe the one without oil tasted a little dryer, but it also might just have been the power of suggestion. I think maybe the first one is the one without oil. It does look dryer, but honestly, you could not taste much difference. So there you have it. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken spinach quesadillas, chips and salsa

Boneless skinless chicken breast was also on sale, so Damien broiled it up with a bunch of hotsy totsy spices while I was running around, and Elijah shredded up a bunch of sharp cheddar cheese, and I made quesadillas to order. 

I had mine with chicken and spinach, no jalapeños, and it was very fine.

I’m adding spinach to more and more things, and no one can stop me! When they dig up my barrow millennia from now, they will say, “WHO WAS THIS POWERFUL WOMAN, AND WHY ARE HER BONES SO STRONG AND FIRM AND RIDDLED WITH SPINACH?” Yes that is how it works. I have an online degree, it is how it works. 

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, baked potatoes, peas

Went back to the recipe I used last time for pork nachos,

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but this time I just served the pork on sandwich rolls. Also this time I split open the chipotle peppers and let the seeds spill out, which upped the spiciness a little bit.

Part of my reasoning for making this dish was that Damien was being interviewed for a documentary on Thursday, IN THE LIVING ROOM, and we did clean up the house as much as we were able on short notice, but I thought if it smelled good in there, the muddy floor would be less visible? I don’t know, maybe that only works with me. Anyway I made pulled pork. 

Here’s another Lenten carnal detachment test for you: I cut up pork in big chunks, seasoned them heavily with salt and pepper, and browned them in oil 

then chunked them in the Instant Pot along with some orange quarters, a can of Coke, some bay leaves, three chipotle pepper, and a heaping tablespoon of cumin. Closed the lid and valve and cooked it on high pressure for 24 minutes. Opened it up, oooooh . . . 

Picked out the bay leaves, oranges, and peppers, and poured out most of the liquid (but saved it for gravy, as it’s a very tasty gravy), and shredded the meat

It should be mega mega tender and easy to shred. I served it with toasted rolls, thinly sliced red onions, and bottled barbecue sauce, and some peas on the side just for green.

I also splurged on baked potatoes, as you can see, which hardly seems like something to splurge on, but big potatoes are expensive, especially for ten people! But everyone does love them every once in a while. I briefly considered having baked potatoes with pork on them, but I’ll save that adventure for some other day. 

FRIDAY
Sabanekh bil hummus (Palestinian chickpea spinach stew)

A new recipe. Don’t ask me why I decided to try a new recipe when I’m supposed to be making an under-the-sea cake, but that is what I planned. It does smell absolutely scrumptious so far, and it’s cheap and Lent-y, and who knows, maybe a couple of people will even eat it. I’ll keep you posted. The recipe is from Saveur.

It comes together pretty quick. You have to saute some onions, then toast a few spices and grind them up, then add the spices and some garlic to the onions and cook that, and then add in chickpeas and stock, and simmer. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Gosh, it smells amazing. 

Later comes spinach and some fresh lemon juice. 

If I’m feeling like a hotshot, maybe I’ll make a Giant Taboon to go with it. There’s always the possibility of a Giant Taboon. 

I think I forgot to tell you what the secret fiendish thingy was in the last food post! Several people did spot and correctly identify it, right in the bowl of butter chicken. 

It is the little stopper for the cream carton.

Nicely stained with turmeric, too. 

I must have pulled it off and then dropped it into the cream, and then poured it into the pan and then served it to myself and then taken a picture of it. Follow me for more etc. etc. At least I didn’t eat it. 

Okay, that’s a wrap! I think I may have to reschedule Corrie’s party, but I’m not sure, and this cake needs to be started quite a ways ahead of time. It looks like a pretty big storm, AGAIN. Gah, I am so tired of snow. We did pop outside and gawk at Jupiter and Venus blazing away about an inch and a half away from each other last night, and that was pretty neat. I suppose if they can show upand put on a good show, so can I. Hup! 

5 from 1 vote
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Italian Wedding Soup with pork meatballs

Lots of variations to this pleasant, nourishing soup with little meatballs.

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

  • 4-5 lbs ground pork (can mix in some ground beef or turkey)
  • 5 eggs
  • 2-1/2 cups bread crumbs
  • 4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1 Tbsp oregano
  • 1 bunch fresh Italian parsley, chopped fine
  • 1 to 1-1/2 cups freshly-shredded parmesan
  • 1/2 cup butter for frying

For the soup:

  • 3 lg carrots, diced
  • 1 lg onion, diced
  • 8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 16 cups chicken broth
  • 3 cups white wine
  • 3-4 cups raw kale, torn into pieces
  • 2 cups uncooked small pasta like ditalini
  • pepper
  • more parmesan and Italian parsley for garnish

Instructions

To make the meatballs:

  1. Thoroughly combine all the ingredients (except the butter) with your hands. Form them into small meatballs. In a large, heavy pot, melt the butter and lightly brown the meatballs in batches. They do not need to be cooked all the way through, as they will continue cooking in the soup.

To make the soup:

  1. Remove the meatballs from the pot. Put the onions and carrots into the butter and cook until they're slightly soft. Add in the garlic and continue cooking until the garlic is fragrant but not too browned.

  2. Add the meatballs back in. Add the broth and white wine, the kale, and the pepper to taste. Simmer for several hours.

  3. About half an hour before serving, add the uncooked pasta and turn up the heat to cook.

  4. Serve with shredded or grated parmesan and coarsely chopped Italian parsley for a garnish.

 

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Challah (braided bread)

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups warm water
  • 1/2 cup oil (preferably olive oil)
  • 2 eggs
  • 6-8 cups flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1.5 tsp yeast
  • 2 egg yolks for egg wash
  • poppy seeds or "everything bagel" topping (optional)
  • corn meal (or flour) for pan, to keep loaf from sticking

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, dissolve a bit of the sugar into the water, and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir gently, and let sit for five minutes or more, until it foams.

  2. In the bowl of standing mixer, put the flour (starting with six cups), salt, remaining sugar, oil, and eggs, mix slightly, then add the yeast liquid. Mix with dough hook until the dough doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, adding flour as needed. It's good if it has a slightly scaly appearance on the outside.

  3. (If you're kneading by hand, knead until it feels soft and giving. It will take quite a lot of kneading!)

  4. Put the dough in a greased bowl and lightly cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm place for at least an hour, until it's double in size.

  5. Grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle it with flour or corn meal. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll three into "snakes" and make a large braid, pinching the ends to keep them together. Divide the fourth piece into three and make a smaller braid, and lay this over the larger braid. Lay the braided loaf on the pan.

  6. Cover again and let rise again for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350.

  7. Before baking, make an egg wash out of egg yolks and a little water. Brush the egg wash all over the loaf, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or "everything" topping.

  8. Bake 25 minutes or more until the loaf is a deep golden color.

 

5 from 1 vote
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Pork nachos

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs pork butt/shoulder, trimmed and cut into pieces
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for frying
  • 2-3 oranges or clementines
  • 3 chipotle chiles
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 can Coke

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pan. Heavily season the pieces of meat with salt and pepper. Brown the meat on all sides.

  2. Transfer the meat to the Instant Pot. Add the Coke and the rest of the ingredients. Close the lid, close the valve, and cook on high pressure for 24 minutes.

  3. Discard bay leaves and orange peels, remove meat from broth, shred, and serve.

What’s for supper? Vol. 239: Spot the fiendish thingy

Happy Friday! Happy Friday indeed. 

As if a long, rambling post about some stranger’s dinner weren’t entertaining enough, today’s post comes with a little bonus game: A scavenger hunt. Yeah!

One of these photos has something in it that doesn’t belong. Did I notice it while I was cooking? No, I did not. Did I notice it while I taking the the photo? Again, not at all. I will give myself credit for managing to notice something was amiss before any foreign objects went down my gullet, so I have that going for me. I remember when I swallowed a penny and the doctor said my mother had to, well, find it, and she was pretty mad. 

You know, this is the only way to start off a food blog. The only way. 

Anyway, the thing. The pearl of great price. The fiendish thingy. See if you can spot it! See if you can guess what it is! See if I care! 

Here’s what we ate (and almost ate, before we were like, “agghhh, what is that??”) this week:

Oh wait, first, last week, on Friday we had pepper and egg sandwiches and fruit salad. Quite tasty. All I did was cut up two red and two green bell peppers and a sweet onion, fry them in olive oil until they were somewhat soft, and then scramble about ten eggs into it

and serve scoops of it on soft rolls with a little salt. 

We had fruit salad as a side dish and it was a nice little meal.

Always glad to find another meatless meal that’s reasonably popular. You can definitely add cheese to this sandwich, but it didn’t need it to be hearty and filling. I had mine with a dash of hot sauce. 

SATURDAY
Chicken burgers and chips

Busy day, easy meal. I had mine with bottled aioli. I took a picture but it looks gross, as anything dripping with aioli is likely to do.

SUNDAY
Hot wings, hot dogs, droopin’ onion; strawberry ice cream, chocolate M&M ice cream

Sunday was the Super Bowl, which we didn’t care much about, but it’s fun to make football foods. Except that we were all exhausted, so it was only a little bit of fun. I cooked up some hot dogs, Damien made hot wings with celery and blue cheese sauce

Jump to Recipe

which turned out very tasty indeed

and I made an onion blossom which turned out . . . edible. I have an onion blossom cutter that I use once a year. It’s usually a happy occasion, as you see here (you will not be able to see the video below if you have an ad blocker on):

because I am easily amused; but I dunno what happened this time. I lost the directions, I wasn’t paying attention, and I was just so freaking tired, so I cut the end of the first onion off, and of course there was nothing to hold the petals together, so it was just a loose collection of onion fringes.

Luckily, I had bought two onions, and I figured out my mistake with the second one. But don’t worry! I also managed to screw up the batter somehow, so even though the second onion got cut right

it definitely did not fry right

Ah well. I ate it! Don’t get me wrong, I ate it.

I also ate a bunch of hot wings, goblin style. 

For dessert we had two kinds of ice cream, one batch of strawberry

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with additional sugared strawberries on top, which turned out well even though I wasn’t paying attention and used all cream instead of cream and milk

and one batch of chocolate M&M. I used the Ben and Jerry’s recipe for chocolate ice cream and, you’ll never guess, I messed that up, too! Everyone said it was good, but it’s really not supposed to have flecks of chocolate all through it. OH WELL. I’m the only one who was complaining. 

MONDAY
Butter chicken and rice

Monday’s dinner went much better. I made butter chicken using this easy recipe from RecipeTin Eats. Or maybe all butter chicken recipes are easy, I don’t know. 

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs were on sale, to my delight, so I cut them into bite-size pieces and marinated them in a marinade made of Greek yogurt, lemon juice, turmeric, garam masala, chili powder, cumin, fresh ginger, and fresh garlic.

Ghee is super expensive right now, so I used butter to cook it in (and you know, it’s not called “ghee chicken,” so there you go) (yes I know what ghee is). I melted a bunch of it in two pans, added in the chicken and cooked it through,

then stirred in a punch of tomato puree and heavy cream, a little sugar, and some salt. HOO HOO.

And that’s it! Such fun to stir the white cream into the brilliant yellow turmeric marinade and red tomato puree. You let it simmer for a while and then serve it over rice.

I know I bought some cilantro to garnish it, but it disappeared into the bowels of the refrigerator and has not emerged.

This is just a mild, cozy, warming, pleasant curry that about half the kids liked, which is pretty good. I thought it was completely delicious. Great comfort food. 

So here’s an Indian food question for you: If I’m serving Mexican food and I want the whole family to eat it, I’ll make it mild, and people who like it hotter can add tobasco sauce or something similar to their portions. Is there something like this I can put on the table to hot up Indian food? Some of us really like spicy food, but I don’t necessarily want to make the whole thing spicy.

TUESDAY
Pork nachos

I was actually feeling a little gloomy about this meal. Pork was super cheap so I felt like I had to buy it, but I was not looking forward to producing something that smelled amazing but came out super bland. WEWLL, for once throwing random things into a pot paid off. And for once, I wrote down what I threw in. 

Jump to Recipe

I cut the pork into chunks and seasoned them heavily with salt and pepper, and browned them in oil. Then I chunked them into the Instant Pot and added a can of Coke, three quartered clementines, a few bay leaves, about a tablespoon of cumin, and –here’s the key — three large, extremely occult-looking dried chipotle chili peppers I found in a bag. 

I closed the vent and pressure cooked it on high for 24 minutes and hoo man. That meat was ready to collapse. 

I picked out the bay leaves and orange peels and peppers, which, in retrospect, I could have cut open; but they were sufficiently spicy intact

pulled out the meat and shredded it, and made one pan of meat on tortilla chips with sharp cheddar cheese with jalapeños, and one without. 

That meat was so good! Sweet and spicy and flavorful. I skipped the sour cream and salsa, because I just liked the meat so much. I was terribly pleased. Nothing sadder than flavorless pork, but that day, we were not sad.

Tuesday was Valentine’s Day but I had to take a rain check on Damien’s offer of dinner out because I’m on official band nerd and it was practice night. It was, however, very romantic when he replaced not one but two broken refrigerator door shelves, which somehow broke even though the Frigidaire company makes its components out out of only the finest eggshells held together with fairy spit. He glued one back together with Flex Paste, and the other one is just some random stick. 

I guess it’s a PVC pipe? I cannot tell you how much it has improved my life to have these shelves back in my life, so everything isn’t all stuffed into the main body of the fridge, rolling around and crammed in sideways and upside and all horrible. It was like the third world in there. 

WEDNESDAY
Kofta meatballs with yogurt sauce, Jerusalem salad, giant taboon

Ground beef was also on sale, on account of the football, but again I was feeling a little glum about my prospects with it. We’ve had hamburgers, and spaghetti and meatballs, and meatball subs, and meatloaf, and Korean beef bowl, and bleh, I’m just tired of it all. 

SO, encouraged by my success winging it with the pork, I pulled out all the spices I could find that looked middle eastern

and dumped them into the ground beef, along with some eggs and panko crumbs. This time I didn’t write anything down, but basically if it smelled good, I shook some in, and if it smelled really good, I shook a whole lot in. I made about 40 large meatballs and put them on metal racks on a baking pan (to be cooked at 400 for about 25 minutes).

(Koftas are actually ground meat formed around sticks and grilled or roasted. My kids just simply absolutely cannot get over how turdly they look, though, so I make them in meatball form.)

Then I made some nice yogurt sauce with fresh lemon juice and fresh garlic and a little salt

Jump to Recipe

and a Jerusalem salad, with tomatoes, cucumbers, a little red onion, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper, and fresh mint and parsley. 

This was going to be the entire meal, just the salad and meatballs and sauce; but I kept thinking how nice it would be to have a piping hot taboon bread. But we didn’t have bread flour, and also I needed to make a few extra stops, so I didn’t think I would have time.

WEWLL, it turns out I can do my afternoon errands and run to the supermarket and get home at 4:15, wash up, start the taboon, and still get dinner on the table at about 6:15. How about that! The dough needs an hour to rise, and then it needs a little resting time, but especially if you are making one big slab of bread, rather than individual portions, it’s incredibly non-fussy. Especially if the people eating it are non-fussy. 

Is this what taboon is supposed to look and taste like? 

I HAVE NO IDEA. But it was 6:15 and I put out a piping hot flatbread and a tray of sizzling, savory meatballs, and by gum, people ate that supper. 

Gosh, it was delicious. The meatballs were juicy and fragrant, the bread had a light, salty, tender crust and pillowy insides, the Jerusalem salad was fresh and piquant, and everything was set off beautifully by the cool, sour yogurt sauce.

I set out more chopped parsley and mint to sprinkle on top of everything. Just a joyful kind of meal. 

THURSDAY
Pizza

I couldn’t remember how many pizzas we eat these days, so I made four. I made one pepperoni, two plain, and one with fresh garlic, a lot of feta, red onion, and spinach, and some olive oil drizzled on top. 

Really good stuff. I love a pizza that has a softer cheese under a layer of mozzarella. 

FRIDAY
Ravioli

At the kids’ request. Damien and I may sneak out for a belated Valentine’s taco or something. I’m very fond of him, you know. 

So next week is vacation and Corrie and I are going to tap some maple trees.We have surprisingly few on our property, but there are a few. We’ve tapped trees before, back when we homeschooled. It’s fun, if you’re easily amused. We got some silicone tubing and you just drill a hole in the trunk and cram it in, and collect the sap in a milk jug over the course of days or weeks, depending on how many trees you have and how much you want. Sap is really just barely sweet. It takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup! Then you boil it down and evaporate most of the water, leaving the sugar, and that’s maple syrup. I expect to get about half a cup of syrup this year.

The other thing is, we looked around the house and thought the main thing that was lacking was four pekin ducklings, so Damien went out and ordered them. He’s going to start building a duck house this weekend, and we’re going to have a brooding box innnnnnn the bathroom, and we’re going to have a movable duck run, and, that is the plan! Get ready for a lot of viaduct jokes, although I will tell you right up front, I don’t really know vi. 

Don’t forget the foreign object scavenger hunt! If this were a proper food blog, there would be a prize, but I think I’ve been pretty open about what kind of operation I’m running here.  

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Hot chicken wings with blue cheese dip (after Deadspin)

Basic, tasty hot wings with blue cheese sauce

Ingredients

  • chicken wingettes
  • oil for frying

For the hot sauce:

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

Blue cheese sauce:

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

Instructions

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

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

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

  4. Serve with blue cheese dip and celery sticks.

 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

  • 1 pint fresh strawberries
  • 1-1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

For the ice cream base

  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
  • 1 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Hull and slice the strawberries. Mix them with the sugar and lemon juice, cover, and refrigerate for an hour.

Make the ice cream base:

  1. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.

  2. Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.

  3. Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

  1. Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.

  2. Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)

 

5 from 1 vote
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Pork nachos

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs pork butt/shoulder, trimmed and cut into pieces
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for frying
  • 2-3 oranges or clementines
  • 3 chipotle chiles
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 can Coke

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pan. Heavily season the pieces of meat with salt and pepper. Brown the meat on all sides.

  2. Transfer the meat to the Instant Pot. Add the Coke and the rest of the ingredients. Close the lid, close the valve, and cook on high pressure for 24 minutes.

  3. Discard bay leaves and orange peels, remove meat from broth, shred, and serve.

 

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 237: Creative naan compliance

Look up! I just flew by! No, not in the Chinese spy balloon. I’m in an airplane, off for a quick visit to a very dear friend, and I’ll be back late Monday. Whee!

Meanwhile, here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Tacos

Or really tostadas without beans, because something happened that I honestly never thought would happen: We ran out of tortillas. We’ve had a ludicrous tortilla backlog for so long, I had truly forgotten that it was something you need to buy at some point. So I did not, and so a few people had soft tortillas with stale edges, and a few people had rather elderly crunchy tostada shells. 

They were fine. We were hungry. And that has made all the difference. 

SUNDAY
Chicken sorta-caprese sandwiches, chips

Chicken breasts were on sale, so I broiled them with olive oil, garlic powder, oregano, salt, and pepper, sliced them, and served them on baguettes with tomato and basil and miscellaneous cheese. The miscellaneous cheese part was tolerable, but then it turned out we were out of balsamic vinegar, which caused a stir. I had mine with olive oil and red wine vinegar.  

It was fine. Honestly, I will eat just about anything on a baguette. I would eat a baguette sandwich, like bread on bread. Serve it in a bread bowl, I don’t care. 

MONDAY
Monday, Damien and I had to go to a meeting at 5:30, so I set the kids up with lots of ramen and leftover chicken, crunchy noodles and a few vegetables and eggs and things, and told them to have what they wanted. We two went to Wendy’s, and I had some kind of burger with crunchy fried onions on it. My word, it was delicious. I rarely have a burger and fries at a fast food place, but every once in a while, yes. 

TUESDAY
Chicken biryani and naan

Oh, now here we go. I’m thinking a lot about Indian food, but I wanted to get started with a recipe I’ve tried before, so I made this mild chicken biryani. As I remarked on Facebook, of all the cuisines I have attempted to cook, Indian food is the most straight up fun. All the colors, and of course all the smells. It’s just a good time. 

So in this recipe, you sear the chicken thighs in oil, then cook up your onion and ginger, then turmeric and cardamom in the oil, then add the jasmine rice in, put the chicken back in, and add cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, golden raisins, and chicken broth. Cover it up and let all those beautiful flavors meld together as the rice cooks. 

I know from experience that the rice is always still a little chompy at the end, so I make it in the morning and then move it to the slow cooker and keep it warm all day. (Full disclosure, I managed to slop a lot of the chicken broth out onto the floor, so there wasn’t really enough liquid in it and it turned out chompy anyway. But still delicious!) 

I also really wanted to make naan, and I had pretty good luck with the King Arthur recipe last time.  My bread flour had mysteriously disappeared, and I also mysteriously got it into my head that I wanted to knead it by hand, rather than using the stand mixer. I don’t know why, and I don’t know why I didn’t change my mind when it became apparent that it wasn’t going well, but that is what I did. I kneaded that dough forehhhhhhhver and it just didn’t get any smoother, but stayed all knobbly and mottled. 

So eventually I gave up and set it to rise, and did this and that, and came back and cut it into 24 pieces, and decided I really didn’t have time to fry it before it was time to go. 

And that was probably the first good decision I made with this naan, because waiting until just before dinner to cook it meant that Corrie was home, and she wanted to help. Guess what? She was genuinely helpful. 

Naan cooks up really quickly, in less than two minutes, so you want to be rolling out one piece to get it ready while the first piece is frying. You throw it on a very hot, dry pan and watch for it to start forming these bubbles 

and then flip it over and cook it for an even shorter time, and that’s how naan gets those characteristic brown circles. They are fried bubbles. 

Anyway, Corrie was great at it. She has a wonderful feel for cooking, and doesn’t get flustered, and immediately figured out what to watch for and how to time it. 

She brushed each piece of naan with melted butter as it came off the pan, and we had piping hot bread to go with the biryani, which we topped with toasted silvered almonds and chopped cilantro.

Splendid meal. Delightful. 

What next for Indian food? I need more ideas! I get overwhelmed and I never know what to do next. 

WEDNESDAY
Korean beef bowl 

Wednesday was busy-busy-busy, and I didn’t have a chance to start dinner until it was evening. Korean beef bowl to the rescue.

Jump to Recipe

Even with fresh ginger and fresh garlic, it comes together super fast, all in one pot, and it’s just tasty and satisfying. 

I made a pot of rice in the Instant Pot and chopped up some scallions, and there it was. It actually came together so fast that it was done by 5:00, and suddenly realized I could actually get a yoga workout in before dinner. Which I did, very grudgingly and wobbly-ly. 

The worst part was, fresh off a workout, I only felt like eating one reasonable portion of food, and then I was completely satiated. Which is baloney. It’s propaganda, that’s what it is. 

THURSDAY
Pork gyros

First of all, I would like to say that if I were a grocery store selling fresh SAGE, and some lady who has already been to two stores came in looking for fresh OREGANO, this is NOT HOW I WOULD PACKAGE IT. 

Humph. Anyway, if anyone needs some sage, come see me. I don’t even like sage. Wanted oregano. Don’t care if it’s organic. 

Nevertheless, I forged ahead and made a nice marinade

Jump to Recipe

with fresh garlic, fresh rosemary, DRIED oregano, red onion, honey, and olive oil, and got the pork sliced and marinating by 10:30. Sliced up some more red onions, cubed a bunch of feta cheese, made some yogurt sauce with garlic and fresh lemon juice,

Jump to Recipe

chopped up some mint leaves, and cut up a bunch of cucumbers. I briefly considered prepping some eggplant to fry, but that seemed like a bridge too far. 

Dinner time hove around and I pan-fried the meat in batches

and cooked a few pans of seasoned fries, and set out the meat and fries and all my prepped toppings with pita bread. And some hot sauce. 

SO GOOD. So tender and juicy. This particular recipe is a lot more herby and sweet than spicy, but you can add as much heat as you want with the hot sauce, and be generous with the garlicky yogurt sauce, and it’s fab. When I was done eating, I had to wipe off not only my phone but my glasses. 

FRIDAY
Pasta with Marcella Hazan’s red sauce

At least I think so!

Jump to Recipe

Damien is shopping and cooking this weekend as I flit and float away like a giant balloon, but please do not shoot at me. I mean no harm. I promise to come home again. 

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Korean Beef Bowl

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

 

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honey garlic marinade for gyros

Marinate thin strips of pork for several hours, then grill or broil. This is a mild, somewhat sweet marinade that makes the meat quite tender.

Ingredients

  • 4-5 lbs pork shoulder or butt, sliced into thin strips
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 red onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • small bunch fresh rosemary, chopped
  • small bunch fresh oregano, chopped
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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

 

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Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce

We made a quadruple recipe of this for twelve people. 

Keyword Marcella Hazan, pasta, spaghetti, tomatoes

Ingredients

  • 28 oz can crushed tomatoes or whole tomatoes, broken up
  • 1 onion peeled and cut in half
  • salt to taste
  • 5 Tbsp butter

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients in a heavy pot.

  2. Simmer at least 90 minutes. 

  3. Take out the onions.

  4. I'm freaking serious, that's it!