Smithy

I thoroughly enjoyed that discussion (maybe there's more to come?) about tunas and the varying meanings of the term! Thanks, folks! That sort of discussion really helps liven this foodblog and adds interesting information. Especially on days like today. It's almost 8 pm, the sun has been set for nearly an hour, and it's still 94F outside. I broke down and turned on the air conditioning at 5 pm, after a day away from the trailer. I'd left windows open and fans on, but my thermometers said it was 105F outside and 99F inside. A/C it was. The upshot is that my dinner plans fell apart. At lunch I'd had more of that endless salad I've prepared. It's endless, or perhaps more properly what restaurants would call "bottomless", because I get the level of chopped lettuce and vegetables down in the container, then augment it with more lettuce, tomatoes, chopped celery, croutons, and so on. After I'd had 2 bowlsful like this the container was still more full than when I'd started! That was at noon, before it got so flaming hot. When I got home, turned on the A/C, and unpacked groceries (more greens, kefir, half-and-half, coffee, kitchen sponges and pet supplies) I decided I was peckish. That potato salad I made yesterday hit the spot. What's strange is that when I'd gotten home I'd had the aroma of fast food in my memory thanks to the shopping center, and I'd decided to cook a Superburger. Nope. No Way. Not In This Heat. Not That Hungry. The potato salad was plenty. And water. Lots of water. I'll probably have a glass or two of wine and call it a night. Gratuitous photo of sand tracery from this morning's walk, when it was only 78F.

Potato salad for dinner. It took care of the red potatoes that have been sitting out on the counter; most of the parsley and green onions sitting around in the refrigerator; capers (I'm so glad I found that jar amongst my pantry supplies); lemon juice; vinegar; olive oil; and a bit of mayonnaise but not enough to make it gloppy. I was at least in my 30's, maybe my 40's, before I discovered that potato salad doesn't have to be sweet. For that matter, it doesn't have to be gloppy although the glop doesn't bother me as much as Miracle Whip or sweet pickles. These particular potatoes aren't holding their shape well, but the overall flavor suits me. And now I've used a bunch of ingredients before they could go off, and I'll have something easy to reach for when I'm feeling peckish. The little bowl of chicken salad I showed earlier today is already gone.

Last's night's dinner was some of the planned-over panade, and a couple of bites of steak before I gave it to PJ. 🙂 I'm not sure what my dinner plans will be. A few days ago I bought another rotisserie chicken and, after eating a bit of it, pulled the meat from the bones and put it all into a container. The plan was to make the Peruvian chicken stew (Aji de Gallina) that I've been rabbitting on about, now that I finally have all the ingredients. Well. It's hot outside. Really hot. 98F, and don't bother telling me that it's okay because "it's a dry heat". Although I have air conditioning in the trailer, I'm still disinclined to make a nice hot stew. So just now I chopped some of the chicken meat up with chopped parsley, capers, lemon juice and mayo. It made a nice chicken salad. Even better atop Triscuits. This may be dinner as well, along with some good lettuce salad or some of the broccoli hanging out in the crisper drawer. Seen on this morning's walk: Back in the day, only a few years ago, I was interested in harvesting prickly pear tunas and making prickly pear syrup from them. I'm pretty sure I still have some of the commercially prepared stuff from that time. When I noticed a cactus along my walk that had the fruits, I briefly considered asking the owner whether I could harvest some. Then I decided not to bother. Now look at it. Starting its new blooms; nobody ever collected the tunas. No, I'm not sorry that I didn't bother. I'm sorry to see them wasted, though.

This caught my eye at the end: My procedure, in my current living situation with a French press, is to pour enough water into the press to wet all the grounds, give it all a stir to make sure the grounds are wetted (sound familiar?) then pour the rest of the water over the spoon so it's rinsed. Voila, no dirty cutlery. 🙂 I suppose that wouldn't work in a commercial kitchen.

@rotuts, I've seen those adverts but I'm still mystified. Can you clarify the size of those totes? Roughly? The ad copy makes them sound too small for shopping and too bulky for, say, produce storage. But maybe I'm misreading.

A couple of years ago I tried a meat subscription service that had looked promising. My darling was unimpressed, and I found it difficult to use the meats in ways he'd like. He always found the steaks tough. Well, they are grass-fed steaks. I've had tender ones, but I never managed to do it with him. I cancelled the subscription after 2 deliveries. This package is a relic of that subscription. It sat in the freezer through all our health mayhem, and I promised myself I'd cook it during this trip. Given my erratic cooking, I think it's been out and back into the freezer a few times. Last night, I made up my mind to sear it and have a steak salad. Or tacos. I hadn't decided when I pulled it out (again). I unwrapped it. Huh. This wasn't what I'd expected! Well, it should sear easily. I blotted it, gave it a very light coat of olive oil, then dosed it liberally with Lawry's seasoned salt while I got a grill pan screaming hot. The idea was to sear the outside and have the interior still pink. It worked, kinda. Not as pink as I'd have liked. Dinner. Remember that I was either going to have a steak salad or tacos? Phooey on that. It was neither. Flavor not bad, but this meat was chewier -- not in a good way -- and more difficult to cut than any I remember getting from this company before. I'm glad I didn't subject my darling to it. I don't know whether the repeated thawing and freezing had anything to do with the texture, but it couldn't have helped. I ate some of it. The rest is in the refrigerator until I decide what to do with it. My canine companion knows what he thinks I should do!

<Cue Don Henley> Nobody on the road... Nobody on the beach... "Boys of Summer" is one of my favorite songs, and it echoes through my head every time I go for a walk here. It's the reverse situation, of course: the place is emptying out for the summer. A few hardy souls stay here year-round, but my hosts/landlords will be leaving in early May. By that time the snow should have melted in Minnesota, where they're headed. The owners of my favorite house here left this morning for their home in Washington. I'm not sure what to make of this place. It has a healthy raised-bed garden. As you can see, the tomatoes are done already but there're some good-looking vegetables and greens. I'm not sure whether these homeowners are still around, but I think they've gone for the season. This morning it was mashed avocado on sourdough bread, with a sprinkling of lemon and Spike. Chased by a mixture of kefir and juice. Yesterday as part of my effort to cut down on deli meats and cheeses in the refrigerator, I had this "wrap" for lunch. Not shown: Triscuits for crunch. Dinner last night was slightly more interesting, but also less successful. I'll give it its own post.

Over here there's a discussion about plastic clamshells and plastic waste in general: how to avoid it, whether to avoid it, what to do instead. I'm writing about a related problem: what should we use to store produce for best refrigerator life and quality? My best friend is not prone to overbuying produce, but she does like to have a variety of fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator in small quantities. She does not like to waste food. She lives in San Diego. Now that the plastic produce bags ubiquitous in most of the USA have disappeared from California grocery stores, she's looking for good solutions to the produce storage question. For example: she used to wash lettuce, wrap it in a cotton towel, and put that in a plastic produce bag and into the refrigerator. It would last for a week or two until it was used up. She'd keep the sturdy vegetables, like carrots, celery and broccoli, in the plastic bags in which she'd bought them until they were used up. And so on. The California grocery stores now only provide compostable produce bags. As noted here, the bags don't keep the produce nearly as long or as well. Now the question is: what to do instead? What qualities are needed for a good storage solution? 1. She doesn't want to buy plastic storage bags (Glad, Zip-lok, etc). 2. In her household, containers of water with vegetables stored in them (celery, green onions, herbs) are an invitation to disaster in the refrigerator. 3. She wants some sort of flexible bag material to envelop said vegetables, for storage in the crisper drawer. She doesn't want a bunch of glass (or hard plastic) containers. 4. She can sew. That leads to the question: what exactly is it that made those plastic bags so good for produce storage? Was it their ability to cut off oxygen? Moisture? Something else? More to the point, what's a good substitute? Right now she's looking at rip-stop style nylon, that we all use(d) for backpacking stuff sacks. It's flexible, washable, and helps cut off oxygen. But is that what's really needed? What materials, or material characteristics, do we need as a substitute for those wasteful plastic produce bags?

Thank you. So why are they exposed to / packed with TSP in the first place? Fattens them up for a better weight?

I still hope @Paul Bacino weighs in with why his shrimp didn't have TSP: how he knew it didn't, and why it might have in the first place.

Until now, I had no idea that what I think of as a cleaning agent was used as a food additive. I stand educated.

Sorry, please translate TSP in this context? I know it can't be "teaspoon" or "trisodium phosphate"....

That's a striking color contrast! I'd only heard before of red snapper. Thank you.

It all looks good. What is the wrapper?

I went ahead with the panade. I started it even though I wasn't hungry, then while I was cooking I ate a bunch of salami because I was hungry. But. Now I've finished the bread cubes, sliced onion, sliced red bell pepper, kale, some spinach, a couple of mushrooms, and a chunk of applewood-smoked Gruyere that's been riding with me since before I left home. There are a bunch of plastic containers out of the refrigerator and cleaned. Of course I had to do a taste test, though I wasn't hungry. Pretty darned good, and I'll have several meals out of the deal. Those meals, of course, will go into the plastic containers I just washed. Can't have open space in the refrigerator now, can I? 😀