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Thanks Joe! Welcome to you too. Michelin has not been to Peru, so there are no stars there. However, they have the most places on the World's 50 Best than any other country.

There is this! Very good to have all those things! And it sounds like you have things mostly under control and will be underway again soon. So I won't worry too much about you, but I will try and channel some St Christopher support for you! And please let us know how things are going, if you can. 🙂

Following along.......

Rooibos isn't really tea though. It's a completely different species, Aspalathus linearis. The drink is a tisane rather than a tea.

Eventually I plan to be at our old boondocking spot in southern California, or in nearby Yuma. I plan to be in the L.A. Basin on May 1 for a celebration, and that's my only firm date. I had hoped to be in Arizona by next weekend, but the mechanical issues have put the kibosh on that. On the one hand I'm disappointed to be stuck. On the other hand there are worse places to be stuck. I have power, propane and food all readily available, and if need be (or boredom strikes) I can disconnect the trailer and drive the pickup to town, which isn't far. Here's breakfast. In the foreground, the other half of the chicken/bacon/ranch wrap i bought for dinner last night. In the middle ground, coffee in a photo cup I'll tell you about sometime, and the sad amaryllis that really, truly did not like being frozen yesterday morning. In the sink is the small pot I use to collect water for rinsing things (and then the water can go outside onto the ground).

Welcome from one newbie to another. Discovered egullet last week through a link in a post on wineberserkers.com which has evolved to much more than wine but it’s deformity worth a look see. That ceviche looks insanely up my alley and insanely good. Really want to do a trip to Peru. They have the most Michelin star restos outside of Europe, or so I’ve been told by my buddy who grew up there and is a foodie too. See you around the forum! Joe P./Intuicook

Oh, I'm not going to give up. I've been reading every yeasted gingerbread recipe on the internet and I've got my eye on one right now that I want to try. Unfortunately, it was the cinnamon in this recipe that took the flavor over the top. And it was the cinnamon that made it fail. If I had had another 2 days to let it rise it might have gotten there. From all the reading that I have been doing, I think I have figured out some things that I can add to get more flavor. One Baker in Australia put rum and Brandy extract in hers. Another used anise seed. I have powdered Ginger, stem Ginger, candied ginger, and fresh ginger. So I can use the combination of ginger to get a stronger flavor. Yes, I looked that up and ginger doesn't inhibit the yeast. I have a specific reason for wanting to make the yeasted Gingerbread. We both love gingerbread and my body no longer tolerates sugar. If I eat very much sugar I get severe leg cramps at night. I don't know why but sugar in a quick bread bothers me but sugar in a yeasted bread doesn't. Go figure. And I have a severe sweet tooth that sometimes just demands to be indulged.

Tried rooibos for the first time today. Didn’t expect to like it this much. Really smooth and naturally sweet, nice change from the usual teas.

Thanks everyone! I started working in kitchens at a very early age but mostly dishwashing, bussing tables, and prep cooking, which I really liked. As a dishwasher with brain, I would get pulled off that duty and handed a knife (or a peeler lol) and set to work prepping alongside other chefs. Loved that. Always comfortable as a restaurant worker. After a stint in the wine biz in CA I ended up using my college degree and started teaching high school English, but ultimately left that after moving from CA to GA USA to be closer to wife’s family. I now have a small boutique real estate office in town and do some modest development stuff as it comes up. Main passion seems to have stayed food and wine though. And people. The three constants in my life. This was last night. I tried to copy a recipe that required deboning a chicken while keeping it intact (left the two drumstick bones though). The whiter pic is the chicken with mayo on it just prior to putting in the oven). It was a springer mountain chicken, which is considered a better bird around this area of the country.

Please post about this!!

I thought the Kraken Burger was hilarious... first of all, how much food it is (and how much fat is probably in it!) but also, why is there no seafood in it? I'd expect some calamari or something in a Kraken burger...

That's interesting information about the sugar:flour ratio affecting yeast. Without having read anything about it before, I'd have assumed that the yeasts would love having extra sugar! I suppose the issue is that there has to be enough flour to provide the gluten, else the carbon dioxide produced by the yeasts simply escapes to the atmosphere. Does that sound right? Also, I'd never heard about cinnamon being a yeast inhibitor. That's good to know. Finally: you say this tasted good though the recipe itself was a failure. Was the flavor good enough that you might try tweaking the recipe? It could be an interesting experiment.

Soo … zwischen uns: I have three major restocking modes: 1) a very good Japanese friend brings me sake & assorted snacks when she has a business trip to Germany (minimum one per year). As we live pretty close to Frankfurt, she enjoys a weekend at our place, and I get some treats. 2) We still go to Japan for holidays. Last one was summer 2024, next one is this summer 🥳 3) As my sister lives in Bonn we typically visit close-by Düsseldorf regularly, which is home to the largest Japanese expat enclave in Germany. Great for fresh items (pastry, meat) as well. So, I am usually pretty well stocked - great for family & special entertaining events. Current display, sorted by “eat first” (top shelf), potato crisps & associated nibbles (middle shelf) and rice cracker & (semi-)dried seafood (lower shelf). And in one of the drawers: doubles & sweet snacks.

This is my bread baking for the last couple weeks. Last week I made sourdough bread and rolls. The Stars aligned for me and it was some of the best that I've made. Didn't do anything different so I just got lucky. Few days later I made Italian breadsticks (grissini). They were okay but not a recipe that I will repeat. They were more chewy than crispy. Carlos love them so they weren't a total failure. Then I made yeasted gingerbread loaf. That was a fiasco. I started it at 7:00 in the morning and it wasn't ready to go in the oven until 4:00 in the afternoon. It just wouldn't rise. I thought maybe my yeast had gone flat but I decided to do some internet research and found out the problem. I've always had problems with very sweet dough rising but I found out that there is a limit to how much sugar you can use for the amount of flour. This recipe had double that sugar. Further research revealed that cinnamon is also a yeast inhibitor. Who knew? The most you should use is one teaspoon for 3 cups of flour. This recipe has two tablespoons. So this time it wasn't me, it was a bad recipe. It tasted good but it wasn't worth it. So yesterday it was back to the basics. Just plain old baguettes. Nothing fancy but they taste good.

Thank you and you're welcome! It's Happy Egg brand - Free Range on 8+ acres. They raise hens with 10x more space to roam than what you'll find on most farms. These are the blue shell eggs. They have brown too. The color of the yolk is determined by the feed. From Google AI - Happy Egg Co. hens are fed a specialized, nutrient-rich diet consisting of grains like wheat and barley, designed to promote hen health and produce high-quality, dark-yolked eggs. The diet is often supplemented with marigold and paprika to enhance the yolk color, along with essential vitamins and minerals for shell strength.

Warmer than at home 😀. It was 83 yesterday. The water is too cold for me to swim in, but I fully admit to being a wimp. I rarely get into the water in the winter, no matter the location. There were many other, hardier people swimming in the ocean yesterday. A “cold” front is moving in for the next day or so which is supposed to bring brisk winds and dangerous boating conditions. We moved over to the house yesterday. The road was actually in fairly good island condition until the very end. The directions we were given were terrible, so we ended up on a scenic tour of the area. There seems to be lots of new construction, as well as many properties for sale. Interesting. The house is in the Chalk Sound area, which is a more remote part of the island. The sound itself is protected National Park. You can swim or kayak in it, but there’s no motorized boating allowed. View from the house. The pool is supposedly heated, so I might try and go swimming later. Results doubtful 😂 There’s a private access to the water below the house, with kayaks to use. We will not be kayaking. I always end up going in circles. The kitchen Welcome basket from our on island host, filled with the junkiest junk food ever. If my niece and nephew were here they would be thrilled! I have found that junk food, especially chips, is actually one of the most expensive things to buy on an island, so it’s a nice gesture. I am saving my junk food ration for conch fritters though. As an aside, we went grocery shopping before coming to the house, and I was pleasantly surprised by the variety and cost of the food. It was more than at home, but not even close to the grocery prices we pay on St. John. They had a wide variety of organic food, lots of fruits and vegetables in good condition, and a large bakery selection. I did not check out the meat or frozen sections, but overall it was a very good experience. By the time we were all settled at the house it was getting dark, so we went to the closest restaurant to the house for dinner, Las Brisas. I did not take pictures of the restaurant because it was dark, but we will probably go back for lunch at some point. It’s an open air waterfront restaurant, with a pool that guests can swim in if they want to. I think there are tables on the beach that are open at lunch, but it was too dark to tell. We had a dining companion The menu is massive. We shared some conch fritters. They were really good, jammed with conch. The fish of the day was snapper or grouper. I saw the snapper going out to other tables and it looked really good, but I wanted shrimp since I cannot eat them at home. Blackened shrimp with peas and rice and vegetables Husband had a grilled lobster with peas and rice and salad No dessert.

I always think you are brave doing this alone anyway, but doing it in winter? I do not think I'd have the courage to do that. Especially with all the bad weather going through the country lately. Do you have an ultimate destination?

A delivery dinner. Spicy crayfsh with Chinese cabbage and potato slivers over rice.

A firemixer would definitely work but is surely out of my price range. @Kerry Bealwho has some available? What are the details?

Keep playing with it, changing or adding one thing each time. Miso glazed broiled salmon, over sesame ramen with memba, avacado, yu toy and garlic crisps

Sorry for the slow progress and the frigid temps. I’d say you’re underway - you’ve departed your home port and are making progress, even if it’s not as much as you’d like. I’m looking forward to following along in this adventure from my sofa which is blessedly safe from mechanical failures!

Grr. If by "underway" you mean "gone from home", yes. If by "underway" you mean "making solid progress" then the answer is different. I left on Thursday, Jan 29, so I could attend a precision trailer driving course the following day in St. Cloud, MN, a couple of hours' drive from home. The course was yesterday. I'm now only about a 30 minute drive from the course, and spending another night here due to *GRRR* mechanical failures. At least I have shore power, and I'm grateful for that. This trailer is really not built for subzero camping, despite its adverts. Propane does not like to vaporize at 20F below, nor even 10F below. It is Not Fun to awaken to frost on the floor and ice on the animals' water bowls, knowing that the propane tanks are probably still half full but have to be changed anyway. So...I've discovered that my darling's preference of fast food from the service stations is defensible after all, because the last thing I want to do is fire up the oven and dirty up dishes when there's no water in the Princessmobile. The trailer was winterized* last fall, and I want to be sparing of what goes down the drains from the water bottles I packed. That means I need to minimize dirty dishes. So far on my travels I've been through a bucket of fried chicken from my favorite grocery chain back home -- an indulgence before leaving! -- and a couple of green salads on paper plates, with salad dressing from Samin Nosrat's Good Things cookbook. I've eaten half a Ranch Chicken wrap (the other half for tomorrow, probably) and a sausage and egg biscuit from the truck stop where I'm parked. A "breakfast sandwich" of dubious lineage yesterday morning, along with some nondescript potato twinkies (not their name) that even the dog wouldn't eat. Can't think what else there's been. It isn't that I don't have choices. My freezer is well packed with frozen ready-to-heat-and-eat dinners, both from Trader Joe's and from my own cookery. The refrigerator compartment is stuffed with remains of my last few weeks' cooking frenzies, as well as an amazing collection of condiments. I have my best local friends to thank for this. They volunteered, more than once, to help me load the trailer and get it ready to go. When I realized that I'd need help getting it pried loose from the ice and snow outside my house, and that time was short on the remaining "normal" packing, I took them up on the offer. While Mr. helped me with snow and ice removal, and anchoring things down in the pickup bed, Mrs. moved everything from the house refrigerator to the Princessmobile's refrigerator. And I do mean everything. I'm pretty sure there are 2 bottles of fish sauce in there, for example. She also cleaned the house refrigerator. These are true friends! (Confession: I returned a 1 L jar of homemade sauerkraut after she left. That stuff is old, and I still haven't tried it, and I decided to worry about it after I get back home.) I haven't bothered taking photos of the fast food I've purchased so far, but there will be other opportunities, perhaps more than I'd like. In the meantime, here's what I'm drinking tonight, celebrating Shore Power and Heat!! *For those who don't know, "winterizing" a trailer means draining all its tanks and water lines, and running a nontoxic RV-safe antifreeze through the system. That way, no ice should develop to damage water lines or fittings. But you can't flush out and replace it until you're above freezing temperatures.

That looks and sounds delicious to me. Was that your main? I would be happy with that as a main - my husband would say "where's the meat?"😉

Thank you. Yes I do love coleslaw and Costa Rica makes a salad that is made with a fresh pickled cabbage that is delicious. It's just that poor abused rotten cabbage that I hate.

@gulfporter, it was Seghesio that turned me on to just how lovely a Zinfandel can be. I've learned since then that there are other excellent Zins, but Seghesio was my first...and most of us know how fondly we remember our firsts. 🙂