On Tuesday night the stack of lab reports on our kitchen table was eleven inches tall. I know because I measured it with Nora's ruler, which is what a home-ec teacher does at 8:15 p.m. in the last week of a grading period instead of grading.
The third grading period closed today. For me that meant two late nights, Tuesday and Thursday, at the table until almost eleven, entering lab scores and checking pillowcase seams from my sewing unit. Ryan is on day shift at the plant, which sounds civilized until you remember day shift starts at 6:00 a.m. His alarm goes off at 4:45, he's been working Saturdays this spring, and by 9:00 he is asleep in the recliner with the TV still talking. He's home by three and he's great at homework duty, but his cooking lives on the patio, and the patio was 41 degrees on Tuesday.
So the rule this week was simple. Every supper on the table in thirty minutes or less, and the dishes done by seven so the table could turn back into a desk.
The five dinners
- Monday: sheet-pan smoked sausage, potatoes and green beans. The recipe is below. About $9.
- Tuesday: breakfast for supper. Scrambled eggs, cheese grits and biscuits from the freezer, left over from one of my biscuit experiments. The eggs came from Deb next door, traded for half a pound cake. About $4.
- Wednesday: chicken quesadillas made with a $4.99 rotisserie chicken from Sunday's Costco run, pulled off the bone that same night. Salsa and sour cream on the side. About $13.
- Thursday: spaghetti with meat sauce. A pound of ground beef, a jar of Aldi marinara and a bagged salad. Twenty-two minutes from cold pot to table. About $11.
- Friday: grilled cheese and tomato soup. Jack calls this "the best Friday food," which tells you what kind of Fridays we have. About $8.
That's about $45 for five suppers for four people, a little over $2 a plate. Jack ranked every one of them out of ten, Nora averaged his scores for fun (7.4), and the sausage pan won with a 9. So that's the one I'm writing down.
Ingredients
- 1 package (14 ounces) smoked sausage, sliced into 1/2-inch coins
- 2 pounds small red potatoes, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
- 12 ounces fresh green beans, trimmed
- 1 medium yellow onion, cut into wedges
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- Yellow mustard or hot sauce for the table
How I make it
- Heat the oven to 425°F with a rack in the lower third. Line your biggest rimmed sheet pan with foil if you want an easy cleanup.
- Toss the potatoes and onion right on the pan with 2 tablespoons of the oil, the salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Spread them out, cut sides down, with a little space around each piece. Roast 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, toss the green beans and sausage with the last tablespoon of oil in a bowl.
- Pull the pan, flip the potatoes with a metal spatula and scatter the sausage and beans into the gaps. Roast 12 to 15 minutes more.
- It's done when a fork slides into the biggest piece of potato with no push-back, the potato bottoms are deep golden and the sausage edges have browned and started to curl.
The one thing that matters here is room. Potatoes give off water as they cook. Spread out, that water evaporates and the hot metal browns them. Piled up, the water has nowhere to go and they steam in it. That's why I use the biggest pan I own and give every piece its own spot.
I learned that the hard way in January, the first time I made this. The sheet pan was dirty, so I used a 9-by-13 baking dish instead. The potatoes came out pale and soft, sitting in a little puddle, and Jack gave the whole thing a 4. He was being generous.
Make-ahead and swaps: cut the potatoes Sunday night and keep them covered with cold water in the fridge. Drain them and pat them very dry before roasting, or you're back to steaming. Chicken sausage works in place of pork, and broccoli florets can stand in for the green beans; add them at the same point.
Spring break starts Monday. We're driving to Chattanooga for a night in the middle of it, and I have exactly zero grading planned. Ryan asked if that's a promise. It is.
