Another week down

This week was rough. I worked seven days straight. Five more to go before I get a day off. Even though I got out at noon today, I was pretty exhausted. After a nap, I decided I wanted to cook for the week even though I worked all weekend. I made artichokes with melted butter and tortellini with peas and bacon in cream sauce for tonight's dinner. Tomorrow we will be having sausage and swiss chard lasagna. I also roasted a chicken with a lemon in it for Wednesday.

I am really liking having the dinners made during the week. I decided I needed to make smaller dinners, though. The 11 x 9 casseroles are way too much for the kids and me. Although the kids and I were fine eating shepherd's pie for three days, I still ended up having some left over.

I divided the lasagna into three loaf pans (which is how I used to make lasagna for two way back in the day). I froze two and put one in the fridge for tomorrow. I plan to make some of the same casseroles again - the kids liked the shepherd's pie and the chicken lemon artichoke pasta a lot. But, I will be most likely dividing those into smaller pans, too.

Even though I was tired today, it is so much better the whole week to have dinners made. And,I just don't like driving through or eating out at cheap places, and we can't really afford it. I also don't like most premade foods.

Yawn. Alarm set. Time for bed.

Catching up

I have been really busy with the single mom thing and the medical school rotations thing, but I have been keeping up with feeding the family. Just not keeping up with blogging about it.

I also just realized that the name of this blog is more than just about my cooking. My life is getting to the point that it's almost healthy now. I'm still working on it. I still have doubts. For example, I know that Picky, and perhaps members of his family, are reading this blog and my other blog. That is probably one of the reasons I haven't been posting that often on either.

I know he read this post because he showed up at Z's birthday party with my kitchen knife, of all things. Leave it to Picky to blemish a party day with some petty nonsense. But, I was happy to see the knife. I have to think in the Almost Healthy mindset. Instead of being worried that his family knows how I feel about their treatment of me, I should be comfortable in the fact that I never treated them badly; I bent over backwards to cook them amazing food and cater to them. It is ridiculous that I feel any sort of angst over admitting out loud that I was treated absolutely atrociously. How does that make me the bad person? If Papa Picky (Picky's father) refuses to ever come to my house again, that means I will never get bullied by him again. I shouldn't feel bad; I should rejoice.

Maybe if I complain on here about his keeping the patio table my former mother in law gave me after saying he was just going to keep it until he got a dining room table will lead to him showing up randomly with my patio table. Here's to hoping for a shred of decency. Or, he can sit outside at his new place at one of the two patio tables with seating for ten and eat take out by himself. I can still be happy that it's not my problem any more.

Anyway, had to get that off my chest. Here is some proof that I have been living, not just ruminating about what Picky's family thinks of me:

S loves talking about Mexican food for some reason, but it seems like whenever I make it, he only eats a little bit. He loves talking about tacos. In fact, he is dressing up like a taco this Halloween. I'm not kidding. Well, I made these shrimp tacos the other night, since Z has trouble chewing the steak in the steak ones I love to make. They were a huge hit.



Here is a favorite breakfast for Z. He asked for it on his birthday. It's nothing fancy, but it reminds me of my childhood. I love it that he loves it. Bananas, peanut butter, and honey:



The weather is getting beautiful. The kids and I love to eat outside, and now that Picky isn't here to object, we get to do it whenever we want. It's wonderful, even if we have to push some cheap folding tables together. I made this cajun catfish with browned butter the other night, and it was scrummy:



I was so proud of myself last Sunday. I posted on Facebook that I deserved a mother of the year award. I made baked French toast for breakfast, folded three loads of laundry, put together my new vacuum / steamer and vacuumed the house, took the kids out for a picnic lunch in a park, and we played ball there and went on a nature walk, made THREE dinners from scratch - one for that night and two for the week, and built a fort with Z. Picky blew it off saying I thought I was mother of the year for just cooking and doing laundry, but I am confident that I did more in one day as a parent than he could pull off in a month. Two months if it was football season, or if a new video game just came out. And, I got the added bonus of not having to do anything but heat up dinner all week, and we had delicious, homemade food.

Here was the most popular meal from the week - chicken and pasta with artichoke, peas and lemon:



And finally, even though I said I wasn't going to talk about Picky any more, I was pretty perturbed that he complained that I wrote about "hating his family" on my food blog. I didn't say I hated them. I said I was upset at how I was treated surrounding food, especially considering the fabulous meals (and endless creme brulee!) I made for them without complaining. Just scroll through the posts on here and check it out. But, since I already vented about it on this post, I might as well finish it off with a laugh. I was in the ER this week to admit a patient, and I saw someone's snack sitting in one of the employee areas. I will most likely never get to cook for Papa Picky again, but if I do get the honor, I think I will hook him up with something like the spread I saw in the ER:



I questioned putting this up, but then I realized he has always treated me with barely concealed hostility, almost since the day he met me. I can continue to cower and be afraid, and listen to his family members telling me how it's my fault and I deserved to be cursed at and treated like dirt on the bottom of his shoe, or I can be Almost Healthy about it and have a good laugh.

Experiment that paid off

I bought some acorn squash, planning to roast them with sugar and butter. But, tonight I got a wild hair (is that how that saying goes?) and decided to cube it up and add it to pasta. It was delicious. Peeling and cubing even half an acorn squash is a royal pain in the arse, however, so if you can get it already prepared, go for it.

So, I will try to remember everything that went into the dish. It was really tasty, even though Picky did his best to hide his worried face when I said I was putting acorn squash in the pasta.

I sauteed the cubed, peeled acorn squash (1/2 of a large one was all I could handle, but a whole one would have been better, in retrospect) in 2 T of saved bacon grease (if that grosses you out, just use butter) and 2 T of butter
I added half of a diced onion
Just over a pound of mild Italian chicken sausage, whole
and few handfuls of mild rainbow colored mini peppers, cut into thin rings

After the sausage was browned on both sides, I added a few T of concentrated tomato paste, a few T of diced garlic, 1/2 cup of chicken broth covered it and let it simmer

I made a pound of angel hair pasta

I added cup of water when the sauce reduced, and cut the chicken sausage into bite sized discs and put them back in the sauce and made sure they were cooked all the way through. I sprinkled a T of flour over the sauce and sausage and added a cup of sour cream and salt. I tossed in the pasta and put lots of fresh grated parmesan over it. Yum yum, and everybody ate it. S picked around the squash (you can't win 'em all), and Picky had three helpings!

Z's birthday meal

So, on the morning of his birthday, Z asked for macaroni and cheese and bacon. I had to add peas, because I am like that. Picky asked three times if Z asked for the peas. I almost threw peas at him.

It turned out really yummy, and it was actually quite popular. So was the ice cream cake!

Parmesan ties it together

I haven't had the time to blog at all that much since starting med school. I still cook as much as I can. I rush home before evening review to try to squeeze out a hurried homemade meal. Sometimes (OK, all of last week) I forget to defrost meat for dinner. So, we had carbonara pasta, tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and roasted brussel sprouts (thanks Stefania!). All with freshly grated real Parmigianno-Reggiano on it. Yum yum.

Picky's Father's Day Menu

Salad with fresh tomatoes and red onions and cheddar cheese and my salad dressing (Even my no veggie eatin' brother asked for seconds on salad. Seriously)

Buffalo wings made with my roasted hot sauce (Oops, forgot to buy the wings when I went to the store. We had tons of food, anyway).


Sweet mini pepper "poppers" with roasted hot sauce and cheese

Corn (Red and white sweet corn. It was delish)

Smoked BBQ baby ribs with a dry rub, homemade BBQ sauce on the side (Killer)

Mac n cheese (I used Paula Dean's recipe. Ehhhhh, too eggy)

Brownies a la mode with hot fudge and mini M n Ms (No one wanted the M n M's. I made the brownies with new Hershey's Special Dark cocoa. They were the best I have EVER had, I am serious).

Oh, yeah.

Pictures now posted!

Roasted chicken, white noodles and snow peas

This is a total comfort food meal for me, and a real standard in our house. Even before I became a real foodie, roasting a whole chicken was a form of therapy for me. I had one particular friend, Turtle, with a good sense of smell. He would come from up the hill and sop up the drippings in my poor-excuse-for-a-roasting pan whenever I had a particularly hard day.

I have officially given up on a Cook's Illustrated (no! really!) recipe because it is too high maintenance, and I like my results better. I am not rotating my dang chicken every 20 minutes or so, and please, let me slather it in some form of fat. It just comes out so much tastier! I used grapeseed oil on and under the skin, sprinkled it with Trocomare, and shoved a whole peeled lime in the cavity. I will never go back to butter. It was so tasty.

White pasta

8 oz egg noodles
2 T butter
2/3 cup sour cream
Trocomare

This is a basic super easy white sauce I do. I just cook and drain the egg noodles and add the butter and sour cream and Trocomare (an herbed salt blend). This is gobbled up by everyone in the house, and can be easily added to and made a main course. Add roasted chicken leftovers and spinach and cooked garlic. Or, add peas and prosciutto.

Glazed snow peas

oil
Snow peas, ends trimmed
carrots
grated ginger
diced garlic
honey
soy sauce

Heat oil in skillet. Add snow peas and carrots, cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add ginger, garlic, honey and soy sauce, and cook one more minute, or until garlic just opaque.

Peas and tortellini

Picky is off to school with a sammich, apple, and cookies in his lunch box. But, I still have three mouths to feed here for lunch. S stayed home from school, and Z is on a hobbit eating schedule. We had our favorite lunch: tortellini and peas.

Fix your packaged (I use frozen) tortellini according to the label instructions. During the last minute of boiling the tortellini, toss in at least half a cup of frozen peas (I eyeball it, but I eyeball everything. Thus my crappy results with bread baking). Drain, add butter and seasoning (hooray, Trocomare!) and enjoy!

Jennifer beat me to it in the comments on my last entry of lists of foods the picky one won't eat. My Picky won't eat peas. She said "peas (what are you? three years old?)?"

HA HA HA HA

My two and a half year old, eight year old and I gobbled this up!