Lordy, what a busy week! Between running around, huge cleaning projects, cars being unreliable, prepping for parties and outings, going on field trips, making Halloween costumes, parent-teacher conferences, painting the cat green (okay, Corrie helped with that), and various alarms in the night, it was, lordy, a busy week. Here’s what we had:
SATURDAY
Aldi pizza
The kids had pizza at home while Damien and I went to our college reunion!
Great food, great company. Check out the centerpiece on our table:
Kyra, there was a chapter all about you.
For those who were with us at TMC, here is a somewhat blurry pic of the guests of honor:
Ms. Enos was there, too, but she will murder me if I post the truly amazing photo I got of her talking about being the token WASP.
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SUNDAY
Chicken thighs with fall vegetables, ice cream sundaes
A very, very fine fall dish from Damn Delicious, and a true one-pan dish (not “cook eleven things separately using every pot and pan you own and then put it all together in one pan, ta-dah!”).
I guiltily brought out the jar of “Italian Seasoning” I bought for a dollar. It has all the stuff I was planning to put on the chicken anyway. It’s like one of those packets with the matching birthday candles, streamers, balloons, plates, cups, and forks all in one. It makes you a bad person! I don’t know why.
Anyway, you cut up all the veg, drag ’em around in a simple sauce, lay them chicken thighs on top, sprinkle a little Bad Person Spice on the skins, and cook it up all together. It’s delicious and beautiful, and it’s easy for people to pick out the veg they don’t like.
I made too much, and we had tons of leftovers.
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MONDAY
Pulled pork on onion rolls, chips
I tried using apple cider for the pulled pork in the Crock Pot, plus a quartered onion, some minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Not impressed. It tasted fine, just bland. Damien put pickled peppers on his, which was a good idea.
On Monday, we went to an apple orchard with the Girl Scouts, where we learned that, during Prohibition, FBI agents burned countless orchards to prevent the making of hard cider, and the country lost more than a thousand varieties of apples! Just gone! I know they were not apples for eating, but still! The bastards. Anyway, I was very impressed by how many heirloom varieties they had at this place. Some of them tasted more like pear or banana, some were kind of bready, some were like nectar. Apples are amazing.
I made too much pork, and we had tons of leftovers.
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TUESDAY
Spaghetti with turkey pesto meatballs
Ground turkey was on sale, so I got 6.5 pounds of it, to which I added:
7 eggs
3.5 cups breadcrumbs
1/3 c minced garlic
3 Tbs Italian seasoning
1 Tbs salt
1 c parmesan
and a little jar of pesto sauce I found, probably 6-7 ounces. I cooked them in a 400 oven for half an hour or so
then put them in a pot with jarred tomato sauce. Is there anything finer than spaghetti with meatballs?
Actually, yes. The meatballs could have been beef and pork. Turkey just isn’t my favorite. It never feels like it’s completely cooked, and it needs so much help to taste like anything. They are lighter, though, so you don’t feel so bogged down afterward. Next time I try this, I’ll buy more pesto.
I made too much, and we had tons of leftovers.
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WEDNESDAY
Oven roasted pork ribs, lazy pierogies on noodles
Tried out a new side dish suggested by my friend Anne. I cut cabbage into ribbons and fried it up with a ton of butter, plus chopped onions and sliced crimini mushrooms. (This is how it looked after just a bit of cooking.)
I let it cook for a long time, maybe longer than 40 minutes, until it was tender, then added salt and pepper and some paprika.
We ate this over buttered egg noodles.
I liked it better than anyone else did. I don’t think it quite deserves the name “pierogies,” even qualified with “lazy” but it was flavorful, and vegetablish. I had a premonition and only used half a head of cabbage, and sure enough, there were still leftovers. Which I ate cold for breakfast. I cant help it; I have a cabbage deficiency.
I made too much pork, and we had tons of leftovers.
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THURSDAY
Pizza, taquitos, roast chicken with fall vegetables, pork ribs, meatballs, and noodles
It was supposed to be sausage and mushroom omelettes, but things got away from me, and suddenly it was almost seven o’clock. Luckily, we had tons of leftovers, so I heated everything up and then added some silly food from the freezer.
The roasted fall vegetables really benefitted from sitting in the fridge all week and thinking about accepting balsamic vinegar as their lord and savior.
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FRIDAY
Mac and cheese for the kiddos, I think, and I also bought 160 pieces of candy and a cubic yard of potato chips for a Stranger Things party.
D and I, however, are going out for our anniversary (20th! We did a podcast on the actual day, which was Wednesday. You can hear it here for free). I checked out the menu ahead of time, and one of the appetizers includes wild boar sausages. I mean, I’m not made out of stone.
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Terra Cotta army photo: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=672042