What better way to spend a day on house arrest? Cooking, eating and sleeping! I made 2 loaves of German rye today. They turned out great, froze one. That's the one kind of bread that I could not find last time at the stores. I know how to make bread but I'm saving the load of flour and yeast that I got over a month ago for very dire straits.

Sounds great! Can you tell us more about your German Rye bread? I's it the heavy dense rye that you slice very thin? Or more like a farmer's rye?

Pulled some leftover boiled chicken out of the freezer this morning. Going to have chicken enchiladas and Mexican corn (canned corn and jarred roasted red peppers) for dinner.

Still not up to baking yet and that really has me bummed.

Freshly steamed asparagus sounds like a WONDERFUL breakfast :-)

I had two days off work Thursday and Friday as I had woken up Thursday morning with a sore throat and didn't want to risk it just in case (though I didn't think it was anything more than a passing sore throat). It responded well to gargling and the phone consult with the doctor confirmed my belief so I'm going back today.

So Saturday it turned cold and the tomatoes and good bread I had planned to make bruschetta for lunch with turned into tomato and bacon soup with buttered bread on the side. Dinner was a pulled pork shoulder cooked in the oven with corn fritters using up corn from the crisper that needed a home and tartiflette that used up brie and ham that needed a home. Dessert was an Arkansas Possum Pie that looked good on the recipe (and it was).

Sunday was bakeathon day as I made two pans of hot cross buns for DH to take into work and a batch of carrot cake cupcakes for me to take into work. I usually take a batch of goodies in on Monday for the others to have with their coffee; I really enjoy having someone to bake for again as with just DH and me at the best of times it's usually not worth it. I'd just taken the cupcakes out of the oven when a co worker texted to see how I was and in the conversation told me she had baked me a carrot cake! Spooky, especially as she then said she'd make chocolate chip cookies as well and I had considered doing that myself and decided not to :-) I am very touched as it's a rare thing for others to bake for me.

Sunday lunch was okonomiyaki with bacon and extras for DH to take back to the city with him, and dinner was fish tacos with coleslaw and extra coleslaw for DH to take as he takes his lunch to work and really likes coleslaw. Last week I made pizza and sent him off with extra pizza. He texted me from work that he was feeling very superior because he had homemade pizza and the others were eating microwaved meat pies :-) Microwaved meat pies are really bad because the pastry really needs oven crisping :-P

Yum, Colleen, carrot cake sounds really good right now. I also made cake, from a recipe that Mother gave me. It was sweet, intensely sweet, so sweet that I could only eat a couple of bites, it's a chocolate cake with a layer of marshmallow cream and then chocolate buttercream frosting. The Princess loved it, LOL, I haven't heard from Mother yet.

I also decided to try out my new "toy", a burger press that I found stuck in the bottom of an auction box in the garage. It still had the price tag, and it worked amazingly well, I formed 36 patties from a mix of beef, pork and venison, seasoned it and froze them so we can have a quick burger later, it's getting busy on the farm already so a quick meal is a good thing:

I need to grind some more wheat, as flour is still not available here, maybe I'll make some bagels. This week I have a Township meeting on Wednesday, fence to repair so the cows can go out onto pasture, chicken coops to clean and the rhubarb is coming up and need mulching, as does the garlic. No problem with "social distancing" here, I have lots to do on the farm without going anywhere at all, although I'll have to cook for Mother and take her groceries again next weekend. I just went there today, and took scalloped potatoes, that cake, some broccoli/cheese soup and baked chicken thighs.

I'm still waiting impatiently for my own asparagus to grow, but I agree, it's a perfectly fine breakfast, maybe with some of Rita's rye bread, another of my favorites.

Edie, my husband would eat your enchiladas for breakfast too!

Annie

Must be a Mexican day!! I made surimi stuffed corn tortilla enchiladas and since I didn't have tomatillos used green salsa instead. Was stupendous! Dessert was Mexican rice pudding with canned pineapple chunks. That may be my breakfast tomorrow. No face masks for us - we have acreage and nearest neighbor is 10 acres away through the woods.

Still looking after 3 weeks for more sugar - ordered delivery from local grocery store so fingers crossed. Found a recipe for using self-rising flour for pizza crust - lots of that flour in the pantry.

Turns out I don't have any packets of taco or enchilada seasoning but I did find a jar of taco sauce. Heated the chicken and some chunked-up bell pepper in the sauce and it was pretty darn tasty! Seasoned the corn/peppers with cilantro, dill and paprika. DH went back for seconds!

Annie, that cake looks so decadently yummy! Wish I could make one but would have nobody to share it with since DH is diabetic :-( but I've been thinking about making chocolate cupcakes with a spoonful of marshmallow creme in the middle when we can start visiting the grandkids again. I can put the extras (without the marshmallow creme) in the freezer for later.

Colleen, I had to look up Arkansas Possum Pie. I generally don't care for cream pies, but that one looks like I could eat a whole piece! All day, I've been craving sweets. I have lovely mandarins, but had to put them in the fridge. I'm going to take a couple out and put them in the fruit bowl. They're not very sweet, just sweet enough. But that pie sure looks tempting!

The soup is done. I wish y'all could have been here to lick the pot. :) It was good. :)

I did a really good job of rescuing a couple of wedges of Fontina from a lasagna that never got made. They were hosting a veritable mold party. Since I don't have Linda's eye for which mold is good, and which is bad, I took goodly slices off then dug out all the little infiltrations. Just call me "Nipcheese". :D A couple of months ago, I would have tossed them and started over. Now, it's not like I have anything better to spend an hour on, and I'm certainly not about to run out to Trader Joe's. :)

I also seared a couple of huge chicken breasts. They were thick so I butterflied them. I thought if I did it the chefy way, horizontally, with one hand on top, I'd end up cutting myself. They were thick enough to stand on end, and that worked well. It's not like chicken is hard to cut through. :). The sun's going down, and the clouds are back and I'm feeling tired again, so I put covers on everything. If I don't pep put, I'll put them in the fridge and make the enchiladas tomorrow. I forgot to get beef, twice. And they didn't have the good tortillas at the chain store, so I'm going California (norte) and using wheat and the jarred sauce from TJ's which is almost like homemade.

Following Martha's tacos, I'm putting peas that need using in them. A few have sprouted, but I caught them before they could rot. I should grill some hot peppers to put in them, too, but I think I'll just use Hatch green salsa. Except the peppers need using. So maybe I should wait until tomorrow. I don't know if I have the oomph to try my torch. Mr. Picky gave it to me years ago. I got fuel, for it. And a sparker and suede gloves too. But I always lose my courage The island is soap stone, so can take fire mishaps. But I think grilling over the gas stove and cleaning it up before it can stain is as adventurous as I'm going to get for home cooking. I should make some rice to put in them, too. Tomorrow.

ETA--the rest worked. This (unrelated to virus) lingering illness is the pits. :) Even though I have energy back, it's soon gone. But having thought of the peppers, I wrapped everything up and put it all in the fridge, anyway. I think there are some tomatoes in there too, and I found a few extra little onions today, so maybe I'll make a salsa picante too. I also found a couple of big turnips! They were hiding under the pears.

plllog I totally understand. All I got accomplished today was getting one tomato plant safely tucked under bug repellent fabric. Took me all day in bits and pieces and now I'm wrecked for the rest of the evening. DH doesn't get the frustration. I have 6 more tomato plants to go. 2 days per plant to get one in the ground and protected. Previous years they would all have been done in less than one morning. I hate this.

So dinner tonight is chicken and noodles I found in the freezer. Hooray for cook once, eat twice.

Tomorrow is doctor appointment day so on the way home we will stop at our little local grocery store and hope to find milk, fresh grapes, meat, bread, and I hope apple juice for the grandbabies. It's a gamble what we'll actually find.

Oh, Edie, I hear you! I'm getting better, thank goodness. It took a couple of days, but the enchiladas are in the oven. They're....different. I kept thinking of John Liu's refrigerator velcro. :)

I'm so tired of cleaning the kitchen!! That's not supposed to be my job. :(

The enchiladas are off the shelf (they sell tortillas in a pile on a shelf!) and kind of gummy flour. I was going to do '60's housewife enchiladas with a lot of packages, but it ended up just the tortillas and sauce, and it wasn't going to be the sauce. I roasted the jalapeños and shishitos, as well as half a red bell pepper and a few fronds of red curly kale, but I forgot to use the kale. The red bell pepper just got diced up. The hot peppers went into the Vita-Mix, seeds and all (not stems), with some good yoghurt, the end of some mascarpone that needed using, some Penzey's Bangkok Blend, which is a bunch of different peppers, cumin and coriander. It was really good! But not enough to enrobe the tortillas. Instead, I stirred it into the seared chicken, lemon rice, red pepper, and peas, and rolled them up with the TJ's sauce and fontina inside and out.. I forgot the onion. :) The only thing Mexican about this is the colors of the flag. :)

Okay. I'm back to brag. The enchiladas are really good. The gummy flour tortillas soaked up the sauce and ended up with the right texture, and if they're still a bit gummy, it's in the comfort food side of it. I should have marinated the cut chicken in the pepper sauce or something. It tastes like chicken. :) The rest worked out great, and doesn't taste as weird as I'd feared. The peas (fresh English peas) still have a little pop. I don't know how many are going to make it to the freezer...

Oh Annie.... I can tell you exactly how old that meat press is: vintage 1950. My Mom had one to make hamberger patties. This soon became my job; and I can't begin to tell you how many patties I made over the many years with that press.

At first the hordes bought all the meat at the local market and the only meat they had left was lamb. I found a couple of packages of 50% ground lamb with 50% ground beef. I made a Lulu Berger one night and then used the rest of the meat to make Shepard's Pie for dinner. My base made two so I have one for tomorrow as well. I put biscuits on top, but actually decided I like dumplings better. ( not real fond of the ones made with mashed potatoes even tho' that is traditional.)

Kate, the story I tell myself is that mashed on shepard's pie must be newfangled since potatoes come from the New World. I can't abide it unless the potatoes are really dried out and essentially turned into potato biscuits. Biscuits or dumplings surely must be more authentic if you go back far enough!

I suspect shepherd's or cottage (beef) pie is relatively new in the scheme of things, and probably came in at about the same time as the potato. Pre-potato days, few working class people had their own oven and used a communal oven. Casserole type meals were generally just a stew in a pot with a lid that you could leave in the oven after the bread was taken out, and then left for several hours while everyone worked in the fields.

At this time as well, pastry was often really hard and used more as a casing to protect something inside that you wanted to cook in a sealed container to retain its juices.

LOL! I'm sure you're right, though I always imagined shepard's pie made over a campfire. As I said, it's the story I tell myself to justify hating mashed potato topping on it. Thanks for the word for the beef version. That's something I hate even more, being promised lamb stew and getting ground beef. That's not to pooh-pooh Kate's ground 50/50--one copes. What anyone does at home is their own business. Shepard's pie is something I've seen on menus on three continents, but rarely worth my nickel.

Prior to Shepherd's Pie ... Pease Porridge in the pot, 9 days old.

I actually bought the 50/50 to make a Lulu Berger and made use of the other half pound in my pie. When we visited Ireland awhile ago we were taken to a restaurant that specializes in Shepard's pie. I don't recall what the topping was. I remember that it was very good and the meat wasn't ground. When making mine I left the 50/50 in bigger chunks. I hadn't made it in years until my Grandson asked me to make it.

That's a great idea, Kate! To leave the meat in chunks. I'm sure your pie was lovely.

I loveDorie Greenspan’s Mediterranean Shepherd’s Pie. The spices, sumac, za’atar, and harissa, give it a great flavor!