For those of you who aren’t neck-deep in Facebook:
Happy Friday!
Today we officially cancelled our landline. If you were wondering which generation we actually belong to. It is one of the old ones. Like I said, I am 101 years old.
Kind of weird menu this week, due to (a) peaches and (b) the fact that I woke up, looked at our bank account, and was filled with an overwhelming desire to use up the food we already had in the house. Also (c) the oven wasn’t working most of the week. And (d) peaches.
SATURDAY
Leftovers and taquitos
Everybody agreed it would be okay to have leftovers once a week, as long as there are also taquitos. I can live with that! Lots of good food last week.
We had butter chicken, rice, sumac chicken, and taquitos. And it looks like some chimichangas, too.
Butter chicken just gets better (at least for few days), so no complaints from me.
That night, I made another big batch of peach butter with about sixty peaches,
loosely following this recipe.You blanch and skin the peaches, cook them for a while with brown sugar lemon juice, vanilla, and spices,
whir them in the blender, and then cook them down for (unlike what the recipe says) a few hours.
SUNDAY
Homemade waffles with peaches and peach butter; sausages
Sunday I woke up to this
but our family has gotten so teeny tiny that we all fit in Damien’s car anyway. After Mass, he put my spare on, and then, just to further increase his joie de vivre, I insisted we go over our finances for the entire month and see where the hell our money is actually going. I mention this because we actually identified about half a dozen expenses that were just plain stupid, and could be easily eliminated. Stuff like our internet service decided to randomly start billing us for a TV thing we don’t use, and Adobe thought it would be nice to get $36 a month from us just because, and yes, we have been paying for a landline and using it almost entirely to field recorded messages from the pharmacy. Anyway, probably you’re already doing this, but in case you’re not, I recommend it.
Then I made a bunch of waffles with some of the duck eggs that have been piling up in the fridge. I think I mentioned that the two young girls have started laying. It’s pretty easy to tell whose egg is whose:
The newest girls are Swedish Black ducks, and sometimes they lay white eggs, but sometimes not!
We are still getting tons of double yolks, which is cute, but confusing if you’re trying to remember how many eggs you cracked.
This is six eggs!
Here is the waffle recipe I use, from this cookbook by Mary Gubser.
Making homemade waffles always gets me a little nostalgic, because the cookbook and the waffle iron were both wedding presents. Coming up on 27 years of marriage next month! When we were first married, we ate tons of waffles because it was cheap and we were too young and dumb to figure out how to make money yet; but now here we are, over a quarter of a century later, eating waffles because the Lord in his mercy has preserved us from the burden of wealth.
But He has given us peaches! So I fried up a bunch of frozen sausages and served the waffles along with the peach butter I made, plus sliced peaches and maple syrup.
The peach butter was a little too cardamom-y by itself (not the recipe’s fault; I just wasn’t paying attention when I dumped stuff in the pot), and had almost a molasses-y taste, but together with the fresh peaches and the maple syrup, it was DIVINE. The perfect melding of late summer and early fall flavors.
MONDAY
Burgers and brats, chips, watermelon; Grilled peaches and homemade ice cream
Sunday was Labor Day, and we had a basic little cookout, just hamburgers and brats. The original plan was to grill peaches on the grill, but when it came down to it, using the oven seemed like a fine plan.
The new heating element still hadn’t arrived, but the top one, for broiling, still worked fine, so I just halved the peaches, poured melted butter over them, and sprinkled them with sugar, cinnamon, and a tiny bit of salt, and broiled them until they had a little color.
I had started vanilla ice cream in the morning (two eggs beaten, then 3/4 cup sugar beaten in, then two cups of heavy cream and one cup of milk mixed in, then put in the machine for half an hour — finally got it memorized!), and we all had peaches and ice cream.
Just lovely. Maybe next time I will make some pralines, but it was very nice as it was.
TUESDAY
Kielbasa and potatoes with honey mustard garlic sauce, mashed acorn squash
Tuesday was encouraging because the car died in the school parking lot, and I had to get a jump start. We’re pretty sure it’s the alternator, not the battery, so I have been leaving the engine running when I park anywhere, until we can get it fixed. It’s especially edifying to idle in front of one of those “Let Little Lungs Breathe!” signs.
Basically me:
Then on the way home, I stopped at the garage and asked them if my tire looked like it was worth fixing. They said it had a lot of dry rot and was pretty worn down, so yes, of course they could fix it, and get me through the winter for $40. Dave’s understands me.
Anyway, I have a good number of acorn squash in the garden this year.
I also planted a TON of butternut squash, and I didn’t get a single one. It is a squash mystery. I do think curcurbit seedlings get together and hatch a plan for how to be confusing, like kids in the back of the room when a substitute teacher shows up. But as I’ve mentioned, I did get some wonderful pumpkins.
I think I already said this last week. I’m sorry, it all blends together.
Not gonna lie, those were some elderly potatoes and some pretty venerable kielbasas I found. But that’s the point of kielbasa! It endures. I cut up the potatoes and kielbasa to be about the same size and roasted them with oil, salt, and pepper until they were almost done, and then drizzled half the honey mustard sauce over it and finished cooking it.
I served it with the rest of the sauce for dipping, and a nice bowl of mashed squash.
I made the squash thus: I cut them in half, scooped out the seeds and strings, and drizzled them with olive oil, and sprinkled on salt and pepper. I figured I could add sugar or honey if needed, but they were nice and sweet on their own. I broiled them until they got a little char
and then scooped out the flesh and mashed it. I love this, but I think I was the only one who ate it. Damien was out and Lena has moved out, and it turns out they were the only other two squash-eaters in the house besides me. Oh well!
WEDNESDAY
Chinese chicken dumplings, noodles, meatballs
Wednesday morning, the replacement oven part came! I wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong with the old heating element, but when I pulled it out, it became evident.
I’m no expert, but that ain’t right! So I cleaned out the horrible grungy crusty oven and put the new element in. This turns out to be super easy! You just unscrew the little screw in the bracket, and then insert the tab thingies into the socket thingies. I had no idea.
The freezer yielded some ground chicken and turkey, and a package of dumpling wrappers. I more or less followed this recipe, which calls for pork, so I bumped up the seasoning a bit to compensate for the blandness of chicken. I also didn’t have sesame oil, and I had a red cabbage instead of Napa. It calls for salting the shredded cabbage and then squeezing out the moisture, which I forgot to do like I always do; so it was a little wet and a little too salty. BHUT, nobody minds salty food around here, and the wetness is only an issue when you’re making the dumplings (just makes the filling a little sloppy to handle), and not when you’re eating them.
I made probably forty dumplings, but the wrappers got increasingly gummy as I worked through the pile, and eventually became unusable. I ended up with a lot of extra meat mixture, so I made wobbly little meatballs, which I browned in oil
and then finished cooking in chicken broth.
I really didn’t feel like steaming the dumplings, so . . . I actually can’t remember how I cooked them. I either simmered them in a pan of water, or possibly baked them. It’s a duck blur.
I also cooked up some Hello Kitty noodles I got at the Asian Market a few weeks ago.
I boiled them for a few minutes and drained them, and added the little sauce packets. They turned out to have a strong sesame flavor, which was pleasant.
Altogether a very fine meal, if somewhat salty. And somewhat salty.
That afternoon, I got a visit from Sally!! with whom I’ve been internet friends for something like twelve years, but never met in person! Absolutely delightful.
She brought me some bacon and ground beef from her homestead, and we went out and picked peaches to fill up her cooler. Then we sat down with coffee and just yacked. So nice.
Wednesday I also did some more seed gathering. I’m gonna make my own flower seed mixes this year and see how that works.
It’s pretty marigold-heavy at the moment, but I also have cosmos, forget-me-nots, zinnias, and lupines in there, and some blackeyed susans and a few others that I forget what they are. So a mix of perennials and annuals. We’ll see how that goes! Going to adoration today, so we’ll see what I can swipe from the church garden.
THURSDAY
Chicken nuggets with peach butter and BBQ sauce, chips
Thursday we had a dentist appointment and I thought it was the first Cub Scout meeting, but it turned out I got the day wrong; but in the meantime, I had planned a meal of convenience, which I was not mad about.
So I had a lot of time freed up before dinner, and spent it trying to get a photo of the downy woodpecker who keeps coming back to the feeder.
(Here you will have to imagine a really good picture of a downy woodpecker, because I certainly didn’t get one.)
I also made a harvesting tool for myself, to pick the peaches on the high branches. It’s made of a metal pole, a flower pot, and a catching basket from the game Trac Ball, which I got on the side of the road; and zip ties. It . . . kind of works.
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If the peaches are very ripe, they fall right into the pot. If they’re not very ripe, it’s a struggle; and the struggle causes other ripe ones to fall off and bonk you on the head. I need the top to have a little rake or claw, to pluck the more reluctant fruit off. I’m so mad I didn’t think to call it a “Peach Reacher,” though!
Anyway, we had signed up to bring dessert to a back-to-school cookout, and Damien asked what I wanted to bring, and I said PEACHES, which is a fine all-purpose answer to any question. But when it came down to it, I didn’t want to bring just a bowl of peaches, so I dug into the freezer again and found a few packages of empanada dough discs, and I made a big pot of peach pie filling, loosely following this recipe.
and I made 20 empanadas, or I guess hand pies.
Then I brushed them with an egg wash and sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on top.
I also have a good amount of peach filling leftover, and I’ll probably make a pie.
FRIDAY
School cookout
I believe they are serving hot dogs. The kids who are not going will be making and eating mac and cheese and watching Frasier, I’m guessing.
And I just suddenly realized I signed up to give blood in an hour! Last time I went, I was just under the limit for iron, so I just went and gobbled up a can of tuna, some raisins, and a pack of instant cream of wheat. Now I’m mustering all my metabolic powers and manifesting that iron into my finger blood. Wish me luck.
Update: My iron was too low again. But first I had to wait for an hour in the hallway of an LDS church, because they overbooked again. I guess I should take iron pills or some shit. Anyway, I went from the blood drive to adoration and then picked up some of the kids while Damien picked up others, and he went to bail out an adult kid with a car that wouldn’t start, and I zipped home to drop off some kids and bake the empanadas, and then back to the cookout.
The empanadas turned out yummy!
Probably could have done with a dust of confectioner’s sugar on top, so people knew for sure they were dessert; but they did all get eaten.
I stopped at Auto Zone on the way home and a VERY strange person hooked the little computer up to my car, and it said my battery and my alternator and my whole starter system and charging system are all fine. So I guess the car just doesn’t start sometimes because it just doesn’t want to. I truly cannot argue with that.
One-pan kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato dinner with mustard sauce
This meal has all the fun and salt of a wiener cookout, but it's a tiny bit fancier, and you can legit eat it in the winter.
Ingredients
- 3-4 lbs kielbasa
- 3-4 lbs red potatoes
- 1-2 medium cabbages
- (optional) parsley for garnish
- salt and pepper and olive oil
mustard sauce (sorry, I make this different each time):
- mustard
- red wine if you like
- honey
- a little olive oil
- salt and pepper
- fresh garlic, crushed
Instructions
-
Preheat the oven to 400.
Whisk together the mustard dressing ingredients and set aside. Chop parsley (optional).
Cut the kielbasa into thick coins and the potatoes into thick coins or small wedges. Mix them up with olive oil, salt, and pepper and spread them in a shallow pan.
Cut the cabbage into "steaks." Push the kielbasa and potatoes aside to make room to lay the cabbage down. Brush the cabbage with more olive oil and sprinkle with more salt and pepper. It should be a single layer of food, and not too crowded, so it will brown well.
Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the food as well as you can and roast for another 15 minutes.
Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish.