[Sca-cooks] Home cooked alternatives OOP

Georgia Foster jo_foster81 at hotmail.com
Wed May 2 11:03:53 PDT 2007


>What about the rest of ya'll? How often do you really dine vs eat?

Lordy, do I sympathize with the schedule thing.  With a 16 year old working 
at the gym and an 11 year old to chase, plus Laundry roulette and cat-box 
bounty to add to the usual work and school  - then gym  - then cook routine. 
  While the kids are GREAT help ... it is most helpful if they are not 
helping TOGETHER ... less bloodshed that way.  Add to that the fact that 
mom’s boyfriend is now a semi-permanent fixture for meals and it can get 
down-right festive during evening feeding time.

I make it a point of  TRYING to dine as opposed to just eating ... doesn't 
always happen, but we do TRY.  The meal is almost always scheduled for 8:00 
pm though it frequently misses that mark.  I generally try to insist we sit 
down to the meal, though that doesn’t always happen either.

Tonight is grilled steaks with mushrooms and onions ... steak marinaded in 
the freezer in a vacu-suck bag (yes, miracles do occur, I actually 
remembered to take the bag out of the freezer this morning BEFORE leaving 
for work, or AS I was leaving for work, depending on one’s point of view), 
onions and mushrooms sliced and sautéed in a little of the marinade and some 
olive oil just before serving (which requires some interesting in-pan 
segregation during the cooking process since T loathes mushrooms but the 
rest of us ADORE them).  Rice noodles with butter and herbs, and probably 
peas as the vegetable, and the remains of the green salad from Sunday.

last night ... Americanized red chili.  I cooked some 13-bean beans with 
some chopped onion, various spices in the crockpot all day.  When I got home 
from work, I added tomato sauce and the leftover sweet corn from Sundays 
dinner.  I would ordinarily add green and red bell peppers and an Achco 
chili or two but boyfriend J does not appreciate bell peppers like the rest 
of us do.  Served with flour tortillas, chopped raw onion and chopped 
cheddar cheese (not grated ... first they argue over who gets to shred it 
this time, and then there is always the chance for some extra bio-mass in 
the cheese if children grate it ...).

Monday night, baked fish filets (the bag said Rainbow, but they were a 
little pale, so I suspect Mackinaw trout was what it actually ended up 
being) and mixed rice made with brown and wild rice augmented with the 
leftover rice from Friday morning breakfast because there were not enough 
vegetables in the fridge to make it look like rice pilaf, which is what it 
was supposed to be.  I chopped in a little celery, carrot, onion and garlic 
into it as well so I guess it was sort  of pilaf … ish.

Sunday we had BBQ pork steaks, roasted red potato wedges with real bacon 
bits ( cooked some additional bacon that morning when I was making breakfast 
for the boys before they went fishing)( I say additional because there is NO 
such thing as extra bacon) and herbs from the window-box, mixed white and 
yellow kernel corn, and a big green salad of many things.

Sunday was a celebration of sorts ... we have been replacing the kitchen 
floor (two hours a night, working on it after work).  We moved the major 
appliances back into place on Saturday evening after I got home, so Sunday I 
had a kitchen again.  We also usually prep food for the week on Sunday 
afternoon, but this week I missed billiards practice on Saturday (Helping a 
friend move house).  Billiards practice happened instead of food prep for 
the coming week so the evening meals this week are taking on a catch-as 
catch-can appearance.

Saturday was frozen Lasagna that my boyfriend heated in the microwave, 
augmented by garlic bread from the grocery store and a bag of salad from the 
produce aisle.  See above on why it was all pre-purchased, prebagged  and 
pre-prepared.  He gets extra points for trying, though, because I was 
helping a friend move house 160 miles away that day and he wanted to make 
sure we had a hot meal when I got home.

Thursday night is, thankfully, blind-guy-burrito night.   A local blind man 
supplements his SSI income selling burritos and salsa.  Order on Tuesday, 
pick up on Thursday.  He makes the absolutely BEST burritos in the world and 
his tamales are incredible.  I usually buy two quarts of salsa when we 
order.  Occasionally one will get a mis-marked package (HOT vs. mild) but 
that is anticipated.

Friday night SHOULD be Chicken Picati … assuming I remember to get the 
Chicken and the remains of the blind-guy-salsa in the crockpot before I 
leave for work.





Jo (Georgia L.) Foster
jo_foster81 at hotmail.com

Never knock on death's door........ Ring the doorbell and run. He hates 
that.

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