Smithy

I'm afraid the paper plates and plastic cutlery (if I find some) will continue until I can dewinterize the trailer and put water in the tanks. That will require warmer weather, but I can't get there until the Princessmobile is ready to start traveling again. And yes, I'm getting tired of it! I was supposed to be in those warmer climes by now!

The article does mention the tradition of the crab (or crawfish) boil as a launching point, but this is apparently waaaaay past that. Pasta, really? Or even a big bucket of fried chicken, although I'll admit it could look like it had started that way once my darling and I were done with a bucket. I think I'd draw the line at anything that requires cutlery. Good idea, @Maison Rustique, about being otherwise busy. 🙂

I made another, shorter trip to town and was less overwhelmed but still disinclined to take pictures. Part of that is because I was driving when I saw the most interesting things: a restaurant named "Canaan Thai" and specifying Thai cuisine; many huge grocery stores; a small grocer whose name I didn't catch but that stated "we have camel and goat meat" on the side of the building. Lots of Mexican joints, pizzerias, and so on that I'm used to seeing, but also plenty of offerings from cuisines we wouldn't see in Duluth. I think this town has a broader ethnic mix than Duluth does. In addition, I was near the local university and that always broadens the variety of cuisines. I'm sure I could feast inexpensively and well here. Before that trip I enjoyed (really, I did) a bacon cheeseburger for brunch at Hardee's when I discovered I'd come in too late for breakfast. Too bad, but this was good and plenty filling: I savored it as I allowed my hair to finish drying after a marvelous shower in this truck stop's facilities. Clean, spacious, plenty of hot water and plenty of pressure. They provide the towels. Lovely. Truck stops have come a very long way since my first experiences with them. Just now I finished dinner, selected from refrigerator contents loaded from the home refrigerator: ham, potatoes, and roasted vegetables. The potatoes got a dollop of butter after microwaving; both the potatoes and the vegetables got a slathering of that wonderful House Dressing I've been rabbiting on about. Kono wine in the stemware. I decided tonight that I'm going to do dishes, in as water-sparing a way as possible, but I'm tired of stinting on tableware in the name of a winterized trailer. So stemware it is. Tomorrow I hope to hear from the mobile mechanic. Even better, tomorrow I hope the mobile mechanic can send me on my way with a fully operable Princessmobile.

File this under the "strange but not important, I hope" heading. In today's U.S. version of The Guardian they have an article about "dump dinners". No, it isn't the sort of dinner where you throw everything into the slow cooker or casserole dish and cook it. Nor is it the dump cake where you throw everything into the cake pan and bake. Nope. If this article is to be believed, there is now a TikTok fad in which people cover the table with foil and throw all the food onto it. No bowls or plates or flatware. And of course they film and post it. Here's the article, which may or may not be unlocked: The dump dinner: spaghetti is now being served straight on to the table – but why? https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/feb/03/dump-dinner-spaghetti-served-straight-onto-table-why?CMP=share_btn_url Has anyone else heard of this? I don't have (or want) a TikTok account or the recent US version, so I'm not in a position to confirm it. Maybe it's an outrageous canard.

Hello, @aliiaashan - do you cook for yourself only, or for family and/or friends? What are some of your favorite cuisines? This is a good place to look for information about new cuisines, share information about your own cuisine, and make culinary friends. Come on in, look around, and enjoy getting to know the place! If you have any questions about how the forums work, or where to post, feel free to use the PM (Personal Message) system to ask a host. We also have Help files here.

@Jacksoup, I wish I'd known about dehydrating the Meyers and preserving them that way, back when I had ready access to them! If I ever get another glut of them I'll try it.

Without having tried it myself, my guess is that if you toast some and store them unground, you'll be able to keep them in pretty good condition for at least a week...maybe 2 weeks? A month? From what I've read, the degradation in flavor begins when the peppercorn is broken apart, i.e. ground. A good way to test your own tolerance for flavor degradation would be to devise a flavor comparison, if you have the equipment to do it. Toast some peppercorns and store them in one grinder for, say, a week; toast another set and grind them the day of the test. See if you can tell the difference. Keep working at that until you reach the level of perfection vs. convenience that works for you.

That looks delicious, and I love tabbouli! You mentioned mint and parsley, but do you not include cilantro? My recipes call for equal amounts of parsley and cilantro, with a bit of mint. Not that it matters: I've been taken to task here for the relative amount of bulgur, so I'm certainly no expert. 🙂 More to the point: what sort of dressing do you put on the tabbouli? Oh, and...did you make those spring rolls, or buy them prepared?

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I went into town for a few supplies. I'm sorry: I was overwhelmed by the first place I visited, the nearest Fleet Farm. This place is huge. It has massive areas of hunting supplies, pet and livestock supplies, gardening supplies, machinery, automotive supplies, clothing (work and casual), assorted hardware, barbecue equipment, snack food of types I generally avoid. I was looking for a propane tank heater to try for better performance in these cold temperatures. I'll tell you in the morning whether it helped, if I can tell. The strange thing is, I walked in and thought "WOW! I could spend hours in this store wandering and having fun! WOW! I need to take a lot of pictures and share them around!" About 15 minutes later I was thinking "WOW! I've spent hours in this store wandering and I'm exhausted! Lemme outta here!" So, no photos. They do have a lot of culinary equipment, but I can't show it to you. I had the same experience a few miles later, when I'd grabbed more salad mix from a mega-mall masquerading as a grocery store and only then realized that the wine I was after was in a different building altogether. Sorry, no photos here either. I did get more bottles of the Kono Sauvignon Blanc that's my current favorite. By the time I got home, unpacked everything, installed the new equipment, and did other routine chores, I was hangry. I'm very grateful to my best friends at home, whom I've mentioned before, for many reasons including helping get the Princessmobile unstuck and loading the refrigerator. Tonight an additional reason was the dinner they'd packed for me from the remains of a dinner we'd shared 2 nights before I left. Slices of pork roast from their latest locally-raised happy pig. Cauliflower from their garden, steamed, with cheese over the top. Persian rice, complete with raisins. I didn't get any of the tahdig, but I'm not complaining. I am very grateful for these friends, for many reasons, but tonight I'm especially grateful that they packed this Care Package for me.

Now that it's the work week and shops are open, I called around to see if I could find someone to come deal with my mechanical issue sooner than Wednesday. I could, but the place is so far away that the callout fee would exceed the camping fees for here for another couple of nights. Looks like I'm staying here. Later today I'll head into town for a few supplies. Maybe there will be something worth showing you. Brunch today was a reheated potato salad using one or more of Samin Nosrat's dressings. I say "one or more" because I can't remember and couldn't tell whether the original was the House Dressing discussed above or her Creamy Sesame Ginger recipe. I do know that after I heated the salad, added feta cheese sprinkles and a hard-boiled egg and heated more, it needed more dressing. I used the Creamy Sesame Ginger dressing. Here's a gift link to that recipe in the NYT. I like it, though not as well as the House Dressing. I'm glad I didn't make a double batch. Samin Nosrat's Creamy Sesame Ginger Dressing. Maybe I'll like it better if I ever get around to making the slaw I'd intended.

Thanks for that. @blue_dolphin has posted links to it in other topics also, but it's nice to see it again here. For those who don't have a NYTimes subscription, here's an unlocked link to that recipe.

Despite being "stuck" here I put a lot of time to good use. It is the first of the month, and traditionally the time to pay bills. I did. I took care of other business. I walked, and walked, and got my boots wet in the snow because I DIDN'T COME PREPARED FOR SNOW -- I was supposed to have left that all behind by now! Woe is me, poor me -- but again, things could be much, much worse. Midday meal -- was it a late lunch of the first half of dinner? -- came from the Hardee's attached to this truck stop. The basic Starburger: meat patty, cheese, onion, tomato, lettuce, mayonnaise, extra pickles and no ketchup, at my request. Hardly gourmet fare, but better than it looks here. I scrounged around and found a packet of cocoa mix in late afternoon, when I was getting cold, and loaded a freeze-dried ice cream ball from a friend into it. Pretty good. I forgot to take a picture, but the sugar helped my hunger and fatigue. I'll post a photo of one in action later, I promise. Final day's dinner -- if I show you every salad I eat in the next few weeks it will look a lot llke this, so I won't bore you with repetitions. I really, really like the House Salad Dressing from Samin Nosrat's Good Things (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) (Kindle version on sale right now!). I'm glad I made a large batch!

Do you have a ruler, so you can measure the hole diameter? If so, and if you have access to the shops I mentioned or associated supply shops nearby, you might be able to get what you need without buying a huge pack.

I have to admit, the vent holes don't bother me. Why don't you like them? Given the number of toothpicks you have in there, I bet you could find a small rubber or cork stopper to fit in there. At least, you could in the USA but I don't know your shopping situation. Could you improvise a stopper with crumpled aluminum foil? It would probably collect water, especially during the washing-up, but it wouldn't stab su esposo, el pobrecito. Depending on the diameter, one place to look for stoppers might be in an auto shop or machine shop if there's one nearby. Tubes with liquid (brake fluid, for example) are often stopped with small stoppers when the connection is opened for some work, to keep the contents from dribbling out.

I have yet to try deboning an entire chicken (with or without the legs) while keep it intact! My best friend, a physician, says she looked at the procedure and said "oh, this is easy" and spouted some surgical knowledge of hers. Someday maybe I'll try it. Yours looks wonderful.