So, dad has set a not unreasonable challenge. We're not purchasing food and instead making meals out of what we have. I'm up for the challenge as it's like a science experiment to me, because I'm not much of a cooker. This is the progress so far. I say I'm not much of a cooker. And while that's true, I do know how to cook, I just generally don't. I stick to tried and true things and rarely branch out, or things that are easy to fix; occasionally, if we have the ingredients, I'll try out a new recipe. But easy in how about an easy peasy French omelette and some fruit on the side, easy. So there's not been a lot of experimentation in the cookery department, as has been the case with the baking department.
I'm also not good with meats. I really don't know or understand meats. I know boneless chicken breast (& I either grill it or skillet fry it in Italian breadcrumbs), I know boneless thin pork chops (& cook them the same way as the chicken). I know pork tenderloin (slather it in spices and roast it in the oven). I'm a whiz with bacon, sausages, & ham (ham that dad has cooked and sliced). And sometimes hamburger meat makes a play. So, I had to ask dad for his help in identifying the meats that were frozen in the basement and what they can be used for. He pulled out some angus prime rib roast that was wrapped in pretty striped paper that he had gotten on super sale. He was going to tell me how it can be cooked, but also hung his head and said he'd wanted to save it for a special occasion. "Well, hell dad, save it for your special occasion! There's plenty of meat in here that we don't need to use that." He perked up at that and promptly put it back in it's snug position nestled amongst the other frozen meats and vegetables on the top shelf. There wasn't a lot of specialty meat in the freezer this go around. Besides the squirrel meat (which I won't touch, so he didn't even have to say it was his), the cube steak pork that's flimsier than the beef variety and you can't touch it too much (I'll let dad take care of that), a whole turkey breast, some fish he caught (white perch?), and his special fancy roast, there wasn't a lot of "unusual" meats. There were four hams in there (the man loves ham), one of which is the fancy spiral cut with really good glazing (so I'm going to insist we save that one for Christmas), loads of hamburger meat, shrimp (that we purchased fresh at the boats), catfish (not fresh), a whole chicken (I think I'll roast it for Halloween dinner), loads of pork chops, bacon, soup/stew pork (I'll make a broth soup from that later in the autumn), and leftover turkey and dressing from Thanksgiving (so we're going to have mini Thanksgiving in August. Huzzah!) But I have taken stock of all of the food in the house (canned too) and now just need to come up with inventive and good ways to turn it into meals. While I may have my go-to's, I won't cook the same thing twice in a week. So, I won't make tacos or fried pork chops or that Italian meatloaf multiple times. It's boring. Plus, while my food isn't fancy, it's a tad better quality than dad's. Examples? Take tacos. I have made real tacos before, like the Mexican street tacos, which are great, but sometimes we do not have the money to purchase limes, cilantro, or soft corn tortillo's. Dad only wants to buy flour tortillas, and it was like pulling teeth for him to purchase the crunchy corn when I was a teenager (and now that order is seared into his brain). He'll cook the hamburger meat, and mix water with tomato paste, and put that into his flour tortilla with onions, lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes. I never liked tacos until I had them at a Mexican restaurant. Do you know what was different? It wasn't 50's housewife trying out "ethnic" food. Dad makes tacos the way his mom learned how. The meat is seasoned at a Mexican restaurant, there's no soft flour tortillas (not for tacos), and certainly no tomato paste water stuff. If I make tacos and dad eats them, he loves them. But he refuses to actually make them any other way than his mother made them. Oy... Another of his go-to's is steak and baked potatoes. Sometimes he'll make that four times in a week. You might be thinking how we don't have money for cilantro and things, if we're eating so much steak. Dad buys cheap steak (not wangy, just the cheap cuts that have marbling of gristle and not of fat)... and he buys those cheap steaks on super sale. They're not good to begin with, but also I'm just not a big fan of beef, nor of steak in general. Once a month is too much for me, so four times a week is just beyond ridiculous. (There are some steaks, though not many, but I left them off my list on purpose). Another go-to, which is the absolute worst in name, image, and taste is Gravy Ground Up Beef on Bread. It looks as appetizing as the name sounds. It's bland hamburger meat, mixed with milk gravy, ladled over lightly toasted white bread. Dad makes some damn fine milk gravy, but if I'm going to eat that it'll be with a few steak fingers (which I did make once, because dad won't make those anymore) or with country fried steak, or sometimes over biscuits for breakfast. Anyways, he'll also want to make that almost every night of the week. What I'm trying to say here, is most of dad's cooking lacks any real heart or pizzaz. He's done some things well, like if he's not straying off course he does some really good fried chicken, or some of his soups are divine. However it's a mixed bag, because sometimes he'll want to use oil in his soups instead of making the roux with butter (I know you can make roux with oil, but he'll use too much oil, and oil that's cooked other things and it just ruins the soup, as it's nothing but grease). The same thing will happen to other foods he does well, like fried chicken. If he tries something different it'll be greasy, the batter will be mushy, and it'll just be gross. So, I'm hoping that for the most part I can use this food in a good way and things I know we all like, or foods that are a step up from 50s housewife bland. I've not moved out of my comfort zone too far yet. But I have made Breakfast for Dinner. So we have some cheese scrambled eggs, French toast, and bacon. Then tonight was going to be something else, but I didn't have enough time, so it'll be for Saturday. It's a tamale pie, which I have made once before and everyone liked it. Cornbread, that once it's cooked, you poke holes in it and drizzle it in enchilada sauce (The Sister and I make our own and it's so good), then topped with cooked and spiced hamburger meat, then cheese, and you cook all of that to get it all hot and melty. Then top it with whatever, which the enchilada sauce I make will have a little left over, dad just canned some fresh salsa, we do have sour cream. I'm also going to make some spiced black beans and corn to go with it. And for dessert, oven baked cinnamon sugar flour tortillas cut out in spooky shapes. It was a Halloween recipe I pinned, but I do have spooky cookie cutters, so I can make bats and why not?! So, tonight's dinner was changed after dad brought to my attention his roast beef. He likes to cook a roast (God, we usually have roast four times a month.... can you tell I'm also not a huge fan of roast), and then slices the leftovers and freezes them, so he can make sandwiches at a later date. Only his sandwiches are roast beef on white sandwich bread with mustard. Boring! So, I found a roast beef patty melt that looked good. I was going to make it on the French bread we have, so I could use it up, but when I went for it some rodent *ahem, mom* had eaten most of it, so it was just regular bread I used. I also forgot to cut and sautée onions until it was too late. Plus we didn't have fresh mushrooms, so I wasn't going to use the canned variety. I made the dipping sauce, but I did it by taste and of a smaller portioning. So, I just add the ingredients until it didn't taste like mayonnaise or sardines. I also added the garlic to this instead of on the sandwich. Oh, it was good. There was also homemade coleslaw (just white cabbage and carrots as we don't have red cabbage) and cucumber infused water to drink. And a dessert too! Fried Honey Bananas. I've made those once before too. I messed up before and didn't follow the directions accurately. Did a small batch correctly this time and it's better my way, so I used the other two bananas and did it my mess up way. Yum. (It's that I mix less water with the honey, mix the cinnamon in, and mix the bananas together in that and pour it all in the hot skillet - it's like freakin' Bananas Foster - the original way just wasn't as punchy, because the honey hadn't caramelized slightly). Yeah... so, not much out of my comfort zone yet. Though I'd never made roast beef grilled cheese sandwiches, I'm the grilled cheese sandwich queen around these here parts. It's either sharp chedder or colby jack, or brie with ham and granny smith apple, or rotisserie chicken breast with cheese or turkey with cheese or ham with cheese, or a different fancy cheese I've purchased a little of like havarti or goat with some jam... and ham. So, roast beef was the same equation as chicken or ham or turkey. Easy peasy. The black beans will be new. And the Thanksgiving dinner will be sort of new-ish. Thanksgiving dinners around my house are both Yankee and Southern. Mom has to have her yankee stuffing and her gravy (which I love her gravy), and her succotash and her either real cranberry sauce or whole bean canned cranberry sauce, and her ancient recipe of pumpkin pie (I like pumpkin and the spices for it in things like muffins or cookies or sweet breads (not the French sweet breads of innards), but I'm not a fan of pie, nor of this pie. Dad has to have his things. Giblet gravy (turkey innards and hard boiled eggs... and yellow food colouring (? - why? You can't make that mess look pretty) - blech), his cornbread dressing (which is super yum), jellied cranberry sauce, and his pecan pie (which is good). They both insist on green beans and mashed potatoes too. We're lucky we also don't have to make green bean casserole because that's stuff is gross. If that doesn't explain it, I eat turkey breast only (not a fan of poultry dark meats), dad's dressing, mashed potatoes, jellied cranberry sauce, green beans, mom's gravy, dad's pecan pie. However, this is not going to fly for my Thanksgiving in August; because that is way too much food and ain't nobody got time for that. There's some light and dark meat I've pulled, and what we had of dad's dressing. I'll crack open a can of green beans, French cut, and add some dried cranberries and a tad bit of bacon grease to those (don't knock the bacon grease y'all. A little goes a long way and it makes things taste so amazing). Perhaps if the potatoes we have are good, I'll roast them with some autumny herbs, and I'll think of one easy dessert to whip up. Perhaps something apple-y (only because we don't have a pumpkin or any canned pumpkin and we do have three apples). Boom! And that's it. Oh wait! We have a package of turkey gravy that I'll add apple juice and sage to. Mom's gotta have something akin to her gravy, and since I haven't mastered the art of making gravy from scratch, I can easily fancy up a package of it. It's not a far stretch though, as I've been doing this quartered down version of our ridiculous Thanksgiving for Halloween for a couple of years now. We get a rotisserie chicken from Sam's (not as salty as Walmart, nor is it gross like Winn Dixie) and I do some fancy, though not fresh, green beans, either mashed or roasted potatoes, some good rolls from the freezer section (dad's big on the cheap you-bake-em rolls). I always make my butternut squash soup, and there'll be some sort of dessert. But this year, I'm aiming to roast that chicken in the freezer for our Halloween dinner. (The photo at the beginning of this post is of a Halloween dinner. We had leftover dressing in the freezer and fresh green beans that year.) Now, I just need to figure out dinners for the rest of the days in August. I'm up for the challenge, but can I see it through without throwing my hands up or a pot across the kitchen. We shall see.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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