HEY I just remembered that there are brussel sprouts in my fridge.

Hot pots and baking dishes

Last weekend I had to bake the pie for our family dinner night down at Home Farm, due to my oven being broken. When I got there and put the pie in the oven, I decided to look for potholders right away; I didn't want to be frantically looking all around the kitchen when the pie needed to come out. Well, I looked everywhere - no potholders? When Roommate came in, I asked him where they were.

"Oh, we don't have any!" he replied lightheartedly. He ran up to his room, and returned. "You can have a welding glove! I could only find one."

"Thank you, Dear," I replied, keeping an iron grip on my facial expression. When he rushed back out again, I side-eyed the welder's glove (HOW MANY metal fragments do you want on your pie?) and found myself a set of clean dish towels instead.

Today, unfortunately, I am going to have to make family dinner down there again (Oh, Larry, fix my oveeeeeeeeen). I bought a set of potholder to donate to the boys' household. Sheesh.

Chicken

Picking the scraps of meat off leftover roast chicken is an absolute GUARANTEE that the phone will ring and it will be someone I do need to talk to. Hands greasy, glasses slipping down my cute li'l nose. Exasperation. But it was about a potential painting sale, so worth the hasty hand-washing.

I do have a really lovely pot of chicken/veggie/rice soup on the stove, now. I'm going to try to make some naan to go with it; I've never made that before. Cherry pie, perhaps.

Recipe Day

Because I love you and want you to eat well:

Chicken Continental:

5-6 chicken thighs, with skin for god's sake

1 can condensed cream of chicken soup

1 cup rice, uncooked

Some veggies, your choice.

Water

salt/pepper/herbs

Oven to 350F, 175C. You'll need a 9x13 baking dish, but I use one that's a bit deeper than usual, because the casserole starts out kinda soupy.

Pour a little oil in a frying pan and pop the chicken thighs in there, skin-side down. We're not cooking them completely, here, just getting a little browning on the one side.

Chop your veggies. Onion, bell pepper, squash, carrot, sweet potato, celery, whatever. Frozen corn or peas are nice, and don't even need to be chopped.

Chicken browned a bit, now? Ok, take it out of the skillet and place the pieces in the baking dish, skin-side up. Toss the veggies in the remaining oil in the pan. Once again, we're not completely cooking them, just stirring them around a few minutes until they're hot. Then they go in the pan with the chicken.

Toss the dry rice in the skillet. The condensed soup goes in, then enough water to make it a soupy, gloopy mess. You can add more water later if you don't have enough. Salt, pepper, and add herbs to taste. An "Italian herb mix" is pretty good. Get it nice and hot, and dump it in the pan. Stir things around so that the rice, veggies and chicken are mixed together. The chicken needs to stay skin-side up.

Cover the pan with tinfoil, and put it in the oven for 50 minutes.

After 50 minutes, remove the foil and put it back in for another ten. If you need a little more liquid, put it in before it goes back in the oven. 10 more minutes in there, and the chicken should be done and the rice soft. Delicious!

Cooking

   It is intensely adorable to have a kid come home from school, sniff the cooking aromas in the air, and light up with joy. “OMG I’m so hungry you made soup/chili/lasagna/chicken/pot-roast!!!”

   Makes me happy. There’s soup on the stove simmering right now.

Healthy Choice (?)

   Your mother’s voice (for better or for worse) lives inside your head forever. MY mother was a complex person and we had our ups and downs. She passed away nearly twenty years ago. One of her claims to fame was that she was a spectacular cook. And, as a fully Appalachian cook, she felt about the terms ‘lowfat’ and ‘reduced salt’ the way other people feel about getting shot or stabbed.

   This afternoon, after WAY too much damned busywork, I went to the grocery store. I was hustling through trying to get a dual list of items for my own family and items for my brother’s family for his upcoming visit. I picked up a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup, thinking happily about a chicken and rice casserole that my mother used to make. Then I noticed that the blasted thing was ‘salt free’. Instantly, as if she were standing right behind me, I heard my mother snarl “WHAT THE FUCK!”

   I very nearly dropped the soup, and had to lean over to contain my laughter. I didn’t think standing alone in the soup aisle laughing hysterically would be seemly. I will add salt to the casserole, Mom. It’ll be ok, I promise.

Deviled Eggs

   Two things about my mother. One, she was an absolutely fantastic cook*. Two, she passed away at age 61, a couple years before my daughter was born.

   K was born on my mother’s birthday, in the 4th week of July. It has been an interesting experience watching her grow and seeing how many things she has in common with my mother. One of the first recipes she was ever able to make ‘on her own’ as a kid was deviled eggs. Once you’ve peeled the eggs, it’s just mashing up the yolks with mayo and some spices, then spooning them back inside the whites. Once she finished a batch and I tested one. I kid you not, spontaneous tears sprang to my eyes. She had achieved the *exact* flavor of my mother’s deviled eggs. It just hit me, y’know? Ever since then, whenever K makes them, she always asks me “Just like Grandma’s?”

   There’s a batch of deviled eggs in the fridge, the first we’ve made this summer. They are savory and very good.

* Also she was very consistent, so her recipes tasted the same every time. I’m a decent cook, but I tend to do things a little different every time.

Herbs and spices

   I can’t tell you how much it improved my life when I started taking the shaker tops off my herbs and spices and just dumping them generously into the recipes. I just baked a pumpkin cheesecake recipe that called for 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and a ‘dash’ of nutmeg and clove. Jeez. While cloves need to be handled with respect and restraint, I dumped so much cinnamon and nutmeg in there. It smells amazing. Half a teaspoon. Bah!

Thanks, Tumblr, I learned something and I’m using it daily.

   In other news, the large pumpkin that I baked yesterday and cooled on the back porch overnight yielded about 26 cups. I packed ten freezer containers, made the dessert for today, and have some in the fridge. It turns out my border collie adores pumpkin as a snack. He was begging while I was working, and I told him he didn’t want any. When I offered him a taste he did, very much, want it. Hmm. Nutritious, I guess!

[ID: a skillet full of apple slices and cranberries before cooking and after cooking]

We used to spend Christmas evening with my husband’s family, and I never had to make a Christmas dinner. While I don’t miss having to get in the car and travel on Christmas, I do miss the family time and the lovely buffet dinners that I didn’t have to cook. This year I made crockpot ribs, rice, sauerkraut, and fried apples for our holiday dinner. Fried apples is a dish my mother used to make, and it always makes me nostalgic. I tossed some cranberries in, too, because I had them around (why not?!) Right at the end of the cooking I dumped brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in. So good. Also makes a spiffy breakfast the day after!

“Santa”, in the person(s) of my husband and daughter, brought me art supplies yesterday. To which I can only say OH GOODY! New tubes of paint, new brushes, blank canvas - intoxicating. 

Wake up and Cook

   Our big family Thanksgiving is, thankfully, cancelled; all three of my husband’s sisters are probably high risk for Covid for one reason or another and better safe than sorry. I’ll just be cooking for the four of us, one guest, and a take-out tray for my father and his partner. However - it’s still a very big meal with a lot of different dishes! The things that came from our own farm are: potatoes, pumpkin, herbs, onion, and bell pepper. I used to raise turkeys every year, but I can’t get them anymore locally. 

   I started out this morning with pumpkin pie. One with crust and one without.

The cranberry sauce I made a few days ahead of time; it keeps quite a while.

   We’ve had some cold weather, even temps below freezing, but my herb garden is in a protected spot with a lot of stone around it for thermal mass- so it’s still in pretty good shape. Fresh herbs! Parsley, sage, rosemary and . . oregano.

   If I need emotional support, I have staff for that:

   Turkey goes in the oven at 12:00. Onward we go . . . 

Pumpkin patch

   My husband decided to plant pumpkins (an awful LOT of pumpkins) on the site where our prior compost heap was. That got them and their sprawling vines away from the main garden and presumably gave them the kind of rich site they prefer. (Our compost heaps, by the way, are roughly 2 meters by 2 meters wide and nearly shoulder-height). That was working very well until we went away for a week and the nearest tree decided to keel over on them. The unfortunate cousin who was watching over the farm in our absence went out to find the top of a black locust square on top of the pumpkin vines and also bashing down the pasture fence. She had to fire up a chainsaw to get the fence free - what an awesome young woman! - but left the rest in place.

   When we got home and looked at it, it seemed that trying to remove the tree top would cause more damage than just letting it stay there. The vines could either survive or not.

    Jeez. They survived, but what a mess. Now it’s late September and the pumpkins are turning orange.

   It’ll be a . . Halloween pumpkin hunt? Foraging through the weeds and around the dead branches. I don’t know how we end up with situations like this, but we so often do.

   The butternut squash, on the other hand, grew in a more orderly manner and produced a dozen-ish good-sized squash. I cooked one of them this morning and used it to make mock-pumpkin pie. My daughter and I are going to eat that as a solid, filling breakfast for the next few days. Yes, pie is breakfast. Far healthier for you than a bowl of sweetened cereal. I mean: eggs, milk, pumpkin (or squash) puree, and a minor amount of sugar. Doesn’t that sound like breakfast food?

Who will pill the cat

   It was a very busy day here. I used to try to relax a bit on Friday’s so I could keep up with the kids on the weekend - but weekdays and weekend ceased to have any meaning months ago. I got out early (I am not terribly heat tolerant) and picked wineberries. Came home and did random cleanup, as we are having an ‘unbirthday’ party for my daughter tomorrow. Her bff is from a religious tradition that doesn’t allow birthday celebrations (?) so we have an unbirthday party (no cake or presents when her guests are here) and her friend is allowed to come. Strange, but you do what you have to do for a best friend. I had a LOT of cooking to do and some garden veg to deal with. Zucchini bread; four loaves! 

   The only drama was - medicating the cats. The vet had given me worm pills for Rocky and Misty. The pills clearly only work if they are inside the cat. I can do this*. I started with the big boy, a 19 pound tabby. He was unenthusiastic about the pill, but willing to work with me for the promise of immediate treats. I had a tin of wet food sitting right there where he could smell it. Most cats cannot be bribed this way, but my Boy is just a very sweet cat. One down! One to go. The elderly black is a petite and reserved cat. However, in this instance, she was willing to fight like a tiger to avoid the pill. I managed after only a few tries to get it down her, as gently as I could. Then I gave her a nice spoonful of the wet food to make sure everything got swallowed. She grudgingly accepted it, still glaring at me. I continued with tidying up the kitchen. Until about ten minutes later, when she threw up voluminously all over the floor.

   Sigh. So much for that medicine.

(this - is what peak performance looks like)

[ID: a very large white and tabby cat sprawled full length across a green rug. He is in mid-yawn, with lots of fangs.]

* Not entirely accurate, but I was trying to think positive.

Follow up of the week

  I posted several things without pictures this week, and want to add those in now that I have time.

This sad mess got sorted through. There was enough onion left in the onion drawer for me to cut up a small bowl of them to cook. I will have to buy some from the store, now, but we’ll start seeing new green onions from the garden in     late April? Or early May, anyway.

   The remaining apples from last fall because applesauce and a few apple treat for the chickens. They are always happy to get food scraps as treats!

My usual method of growing sweet potatoes is to buy a couple from the store in February, cut them in half, and root them in potting soil. They start off very slow at first, but by the time the danger of frost has passed, here, they’ll be little vines ready to go outside. Once outside, they become BIG vines very quickly. Our area does not have a long enough growing period to start them outdoors.

   A little cutting from my basil plant grew roots in a jar in my kitchen, so I’m going to plant that, too, instead of cooking with it. Just have to respect its tenacity!