Happy Friday! Happy Valentine’s Day! Damien and I are GOING OUT DANCING! Or, well, we are taking our kids to the school dance, presumably to watch the girls text each other and giggle, and the boys shove each other, and the little kids chase each other under the tables. I was discouraged (by my kids) from bringing in food, so none of this, this year:
I went to a Valentine’s Day dance in middle school, which was such a long time ago, it was still called “Junior High.” It was my first dance ever, and I had read a lot of Archie Comics, so I borrowed my sister’s bright pink dress with the flared skirt, paired with a wide, glossy, black plastic belt with a gold heart-shaped clasp, and a pair of pink heart earrings. I nervously crept through the door of the gym, and a teacher chaperone immediately cried, “Oh, don’t you look nice!” Which is how I knew I had worn the Wrong Thing.
Thanks, brain, for remembering that in excruciating detail. So important.
Anyway, boy am I glad to be an adult. And you know what is important? Food! Here’s what we ate this week:
SATURDAY
Leftover buffet with dino nuggets
The forecast warned us of a big storm Saturday night, so we went to the vigil Mass. But first it was the shopping turn of a child who made me very proud by picking out the things SHE WANTED, and steadfastly rebuffing the howls of complaints from her older sisters. For her frozen food supplement to leftover day, she picked dino nuggets because that’s what sheeee wanted.
They also gave her a hard time about the weekend cereal and the desserts she chose, but she didn’t crumple. For real, being a teenage girl and actually expressing what you want, and sticking to it when your peers don’t like it, is almost heroic.
Also heroic was the leftover coconut chicken curry. I ignored all the other leftovers and just stuck with the curry, and oh my dammit, it was amazing.
Next time, I may make curry ahead of time just to have it several days old on purpose, because it was really great the first time, but as leftovers, it was MAGNIFICENT.
SUNDAY
Buffalo wings and blue cheese dip, Doritos, hot pretzels, raw veggies
The big snow came as forecast, and in the midst of all that brilliant white, my pesky lingering headache turned into a full-blown migraine, so I noped out of shoveling and went back to bed. Bless Damien for making me feel like this was a reasonable thing to do.
But I was feeling better by the afternoon, and it was, of course, the Super Bowl. We didn’t care about either team, but we do like hot salty football food, so I made some hot pretzels using the King Arthur recipe.
I’ve made it before, and it’s pretty easy, and they come out delicious, although they never really look like the picture, probably because I’m too impatient to roll the dough out into long enough snakes before shaping them. (And no, I never did get dressed, as you can see.)
Anyway, you make the dough and let it rise (I used the slow cooker on “keep warm”), then cut the dough into lumps
And by the way, this is around the time of year last year I got my new-to-me cabinet and marble countertop from Marketplace, and it’s been SUCH a boon. I set it slightly lower then the other countertops, so it’s very convenient for things like kneading dough or decorating cakes. I have short legs, whatcha gonna do.
Here’s what my workspace looked like before the new countertop:
and here how it looks right now:
If you look closely, you will see that I have discovered PVC pipe as the universal solution.
So I have been continuing my decluttering tour, which launched, hmm, right around the time of the inauguration, for some reason. It’s turned less maniacal now and a little more grim this week, but I’m determined to deal with all the worst spots in the house by the end of February. So far I have cleared out the landing and turned it into a playroom, cleared out the laundry room, fixed and cleared out the white cabinet/craft area, re-hung the curtains in front of the gaps in the kitchen cabinets, and done lots and lots of scouring and scrubbing in both bathrooms and the oven, and also stuff like replacing a bunch of old smoke alarms and whatnot. And, I bought my very first Swiffer.
Yesterday, I decluttered the hutch.
Before:
and after:
I have come to loathe this piece of furniture, and will replace when I can. But organizing it it led to shifting around some other stuff in other parts of the kitchen, and I had the revelation that the kid’s water bottles can go LOW DOWN ON THE BOTTOM SHELVES, and my seltzer and Damien’s soda can go AT WAIST HEIGHT because WE ARE OLD and OUR BACKS HURT. A lot of stuff in this house is still set up to keep meddling toddlers out of stuff, and we may have some problems right now, but not that!
Okay, so anyway, the pretzels turned out nice! You brush them with melted butter when they come out of the oven, and they’re super soft and chewy and rich.
Damien made a big pile of his excellent hot chicken wings with blue cheese dipping sauce. Here’s that recipe:
Jump to RecipeHe actually made some hot, some with BBQ sauce, and some plain; and I had the kids chop up a bunch of veggies, and I bought NAME BRAND Doritos.
An extremely delicious meal.
We scored some points with the teenagers by enjoying the halftime show, too, and I liked that guy’s pants.
MONDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs
Every year when I do the shopping around Super Bowl Sunday, there is, of course, lots of football-priced ground beef available(it was $2.99 a pound here), and I cleared out the freezer a bit so I could stock up on that. And something about buying all that beef shifts my food thoughts into irresistibly American channels, so we had some of the saltiest, meatiest, least ethnically diverse meals imaginable this week. The kids have been pretty happy.
Monday, spaghetti and meatballs. Here is my meatball recipe
Jump to Recipedemonstrating my less-mess technique of baking or broiling the meatballs in the oven on a rack, so they keep their shape, and the grease just tidily drains off.
And very good it was, spaghetti with meatballs.
TUESDAY
Pulled pork, tater tots, corn
Tuesday we had a thing in the morning, so I started pulled pork early. Here is my tasty pulled pork recipe:
Jump to RecipeCame out of the pot niiiiiice and tender.
so I shredded it up
and put it back in the pot with the juice, to stay warm, while I cooked the tater tots, and also one bag of hilariously overpriced heart-shaped potato . . . things. I guess I was planning to serve this on Valentine’s Day, but this was Wednesday, I dunno. They were actually pretty good. Basically mashed potato in a crisp skin, same as those smiley fries.
The kids had pulled pork sandwiches in deli rolls, but I had my preferred mode: Hot Pork Heap. Tater tots, then pulled pork, then corn, then red onion, the BBQ sauce. You can spot the potato hearts over to the left.
This is also really good with some of that disgusting melted yellow cheese stuff that comes in a jar, but some of us are watching our figgahs.
WEDNESDAY
Pizza
Wednesday I actually did some writing for once in my life, and completely lost track of time and had to ask Elijah to make the pizzas. Got home around 5:30 and finished them up, using, as you can see, the leftover meatballs, with pepperoni in between.
Yum.
THURSDAY
Burgers and chips
Just regular hamburgers, which I make in the oven on a rack like the meatballs, but right up under a hot broiler.
On Wednesday, one of the schools called a snow day for one school on Thursday, and the two other schools said it would be a two-hour delay. Damien proposed a Fisher Flop-Out. I’m not saying I married him because of his ability to make up names that don’t quite mean anything but make me laugh, but I will say that this is the man who once called his kids “a bunch of freshwater jerks,” and THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE. So Thursday came and, while we slept, the other schools decided it made more sense to have a full snow day, so there you go. Fisher Flop-Out!
FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa
I guess the kids at home can fend for themselves, actually, because as I mentioned, we will be out dancing our fool heads out, or anyway watching teenage girls texting each other while standing next to each other. It’s a pretty sweet life, even without the yellow melty cheese.
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
-
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.
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Melt the butter and mix together wit the rest of the hot sauce ingredients. Toss the wings in the hot sauce.
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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.
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Serve with blue cheese dip and celery sticks.
Meatballs for a crowd
Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs.
Ingredients
- 5 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
- 6 eggs, beaten
- 2 cups panko bread crumbs
- 8 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
- salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.
Instructions
-
Preheat oven to 400.
-
Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.
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Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.
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Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve.
Clovey pulled pork
Ingredients
- fatty hunk of pork
- salt and pepper
- oil for browning
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2/3 cup apple juice
- 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
- 1 onion, quartered
- 2 Tbsp cumin
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 tsp ground cloves
Instructions
-
Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.
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Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.
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Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.
-
When pork is tender, shred.
