Captain spent some time this summer fixing fence posts. Couple of reasons for that. First, the fence is close to 30 years old and needs maintenance every so often. Second, if the fence isn’t working, steers get out, and I have to help chase. This brings out the Rhino Woman in me, and it ain’t pretty.
One night he was still working on it when I got done working, so I walked out to see his progress. It gave me a chance to play Mrs. Farmer for once. At one point, he couldn’t find something called a fencing tool and said it was in the shop on the work bench, could I please go get it. Sure...if I knew what a fencing tool was. He gave me a long, detailed description that sounded easy enough to spot, so off I went. I stood at the bench and look at all the stuff. I recognized all of the hand tools and most of the power tools, but I wasn’t seeing anything that looked like what he described. Great.
Luckily, he had also said there was a box of fencing staples next to it, and I know what those look like, so I found the tool--not on the work bench, by the way--and took it to him. I told him the next time he wanted this particular tool he needed to tell me it was the one that looked like a parrot. Mrs. Goodwrench, I am not.
In between fixing fence posts that particular night, Captain had supper going. He’s taken over a lot of the cooking duties since he quit milking cows, which is a nice break for me. We had smoked ribs and grilled sweet corn. Memo to us: buy your ribs at a meat market, not the grocery store. The corn was good, though!
In between being Mrs. Farmer and eating supper, I toodled over to the neighbor’s because she had been to the Amish vegetable auction in Saint Charles and picked up some cabbage for us. Captain wanted to try his hand at making sauerkraut. Don’t ask me why because that stuff is nasty. He tried a cheater method last year that was an epic fail, so he is going to try it the old fashioned way this year. I told him good luck with that and keep it far, far away from me. What do you suppose I ended up doing every day? Helping skim the scum off the top of the crock. Joy and rapture...NOT! Sadly, he drained off too much of the brining liquid and had another epic fail on the sauerkraut. Aw, gee, I’m all torn up about that!
After dinging around with the sauerkraut, which was in the furnace room in the basement, I went to the freezer to get something out for supper and realized it was getting bare...as in I could see the bottom of it, which hasn’t happened since we bought it 12 years ago! I zipped in to the meat locker the next afternoon to get the last of the beef we’d had butchered a few months ago. Uh oh. No burger left. All steaks (rib steak and sirloin) and roast. I know, I know, I know...I should not complain about having nothing but steak to eat, but geezaloo, I just want a plain old burger most of the time, especially in the summer when we can grill them. And I hate beef roasts. H-A-T-E them.
We get our butchering done at Owen’s Locker in Pine Island, and while I had Rusty’s undivided attention while I was paying the locker rental fee, I asked him about ordering pork ribs or pork butt that Captain could put in the smoker. After much discussion, his advice was to buy half a hog and have it processed to specific instructions. Okie dokie, put me down for that.
Then I asked if they had open appointments for butchering a steer in the next six to eight weeks, since we were down to pretty much nothing in the freezer. Affirmative on that, but when I got home and mentioned that to Captain, he claimed we didn’t have a steer ready.
Excuse me?! There were two dozen critters out there in that yard, and I know darn good and well at least six of them were market weight and would make good burgers! Dude, what is wrong with you?! Then I get the impish grin and the comment, “You’re so easy to rile up.” Isn’t he precious?
I was right, and there was a perfectly good steer for butcher out there, and he went to the locker last week. In the meantime, we had changed our hog order to a whole hog, which I picked up last week. While we wait for the beef to be processed, we are enjoying bacon, pork chops, and ham.
Pork chops are hard to “spruce up” if you aren’t smoking or grilling them, but Captain’s mom has this awesome recipe that we like. Maybe you’ll try it and also like it!
BAKED PORK CHOPS AND POTATOES
6 pork chops
6 to 8 russet or Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced thin
1 medium onion, sliced in thin rings
1 can cream of mushroom soup (or cream of chicken, up to you)
Milk
Salt and pepper
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Season chops with salt and pepper and brown lightly in a skillet. Grease a 9x13 oven safe baking dish. Layer sliced potatoes in bottom of the baking dish. Layer sliced onions over potatoes. Empty soup into a small bowl, fill the soup can half full with milk and stir into the soup. Pour soup mixture over the potatoes and onions. Place chops on top of everything. Bake uncovered until potatoes are tender, at least 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Enjoy, and let me know how you like it!!
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