Smithy

I take it the fermentation was not pleasant?

These are months from purchase date...so I won't be taking any chances with it. As it happens, I've never tried freezing a prepared corned beef. You Enablers (I'm looking at you especially, @rotuts) tipped me into buying meat that I simply couldn't resist although I didn't need it. 😉 If I do anything of a sous vide nature with one of the corned beef packages, I'll report here. Otherwise, I'll bow out but continue reading with interest.

@rotuts and @gfweb, thanks for your input. The truth is, my darling and I were always pleased with a commercial CB that we'd boiled, with potatoes. Got a good dinner or two that way, then used the rest with sandwiches. I think I'll do that, at least with the one that hasn't been frozen. Reubens are calling me rather insistently. Trying the sous vide treatment on one of the frozen ones, now, that still sounds like a fine experiment. But I'll keep the time short. Mush isn't what I want.

You think the 48 hours would produce a slightly better result? Two of the commercial CB's are frozen. One is not, but has been kept chilled very cold in its original package since I purchased it.

That looks excellent. I have a few corned beef briskets squirreled away from sale times. Although it can't be the same as yours, since mine is already corned, I'll try your time and temperature when I get to it. Am I looking at a flat cut here? (I have both flat and point cuts.)

So, @Ddanno - what sorts of foods do you like to cook and/or eat? Given your location, is it easy to get fresh seafood? Are you near a fishing area? "The South Coast of England" covers quite a bit of territory. I don't recall seeing fishing fleets near Brighton, for instance, but if you're near Dover or Falmouth I'm sure it's a different story.

Thanks for the music and movie references, folks. FWIW the Duluth folk musicians with whom I play play a LOT of Cape Breton fiddle music. It's one of many, many reasons I'm glad to be home.

It does far more than appeal. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

I knew that. But thank you. 🙂 🤎

I'm home! I spent the night before last at a Walmart parking lot. Although I gave the company plenty of money for pet food items and other things I needed then or would need soon, their deli was closed when I started shopping. That was okay; I enjoyed the last of the chicken and rice dish I'd made a week or two before. I also celebrated: finished one fine (by my lights) wine and opened another. I was almost home, and I had the blessed sound of frogs at the pond across the way. The first I've heard in months. Yesterday I arrived home around noon, finally got the Princessmobile parked on our snaky driveway, and began the fun of unpacking and enjoying being home again. The dog and cats felt the same way. It feels as though I've been gone forever, but it was actually only 4 months, as opposed to the 6 months my darling and I were gone each year. It feels longer. One factor is that I'm back a month later than usual. I have the green jungle ("yard") to prove it. The ramps are up. The chives are already about to flower. I've started laundry and emptied the boxes that have been waiting for me. Hallelujah, the capers I ordered back here have arrived! The packaging was superb. I've been on a considerable venture and adventure, and am on my way to establishing my new life. There's a mountain of chores and a sea of choices ahead of me. But I'm glad I went, glad to be back, and glad that I wrote about it here. Thanks for coming along, folks, and for your comments (culinary and otherwise) and encouragement. Maybe it's time to revive the Best Use of Stale Bread topic?

@Maison Rustique - what a fun haul of books! I hope we'll see some explorations of (and maybe cookery from) them as your life settles. It's fun to see so much shellfish content...but I'm especially interested in "Liberace Cooks". Did he really? 🙂 Was he as flamboyant a cook as musician, I wonder?

So...have we established that a panade doesn't include eggs and cream? Or is it simply a bread pudding by another name? I've consulted my copy of McGee's On Food and Cooking (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) and am no more enlightened; he uses panade in the sense of stiffening a souffle, and says a panade is like pastry cream but without eggs and with butter. He's using it as an element of something rather than an end in itself. Like the way one binds (homogenizes) a meatloaf. It may be that I adopted Judy Rodgers' idiom without realizing she'd pulled a Humpty Dumpty on us. Whatever...I call it good. I just finished a bit of the leftovers as a late breakfast, and I'm glad there's more. The photo doesn't do it justice!

Welcome! As you already see, you'll get plenty of answers, and sometimes lively discussion, if you ask questions. 🙂 Come on in, have a look around, and enjoy cooking and eating (and drinking) with the rest of us! What sorts of foods do you like to cook and eat?

I salute you! With that time frame I'd probably go with peanut butter sandwiches. 😅

One of the (presumably) obvious things about traveling solo in the Princessmobile is that preparation and setup take roughly twice the time as when there were two of us. For example: in the Good Old Days, he'd be doing outside prep chores while I was making lunches. We'd share some exterior duties, like hooking up the trailer, stowing the Anaconda (that's the massive 50A power cord that weighs half as much as I do), doublechecking that nothing is left behind and everything is working properly. Now it all falls to me. I learned, among other things, that the serious disadvantage of camping under a tree is all the debris that drops onto the glides and has to be swept off. Sure, the tree protected the Princessmobile from hail, but instead dropped wet leaf litter and seed pods. Ah, well. It would have been a bit quicker if I hadn't bothered to document my road-food sandwiches, but I decided to take pictures. I made 2 sandwiches so I won't have to do it tomorrow. Both are generous: one on the Prairie Los Angeles Heritage bread, and one on sourdough bread I've had stowed in the freezer. Here are the meats and cheeses: and the evolution of the sandwiches themselves: (Incidentally, with these sandwiches I finished off a small jar of pickle relish and a large jar of pickles. I'm making headway in the refrigerator.) I'll tell you what: the storage containers that Wolfe's used for enchiladas are coming in very handy now. As it turns out, a less obvious disadvantage to solo travel is navigation. I had 2, count 'em 2 GPS systems. One kept cutting out. The other hasn't been properly updated. Eventually they both agreed on what to tell me to do, when they were both talking, because I'd known more or less which route I wanted to take and kept going that way until they capitulated. That is, I thought they had capitulated.... Remember I said I really, really wanted to avoid Kansas City? I found myself taking the Turnpike eastbound, right to the edge but slightly north of Kansas City. Road closures. Construction. Breathe, Smithy! And near the end, there I was looking at "Liberty, Missouri". 3 or more exits worth. Right where I'd told @Maison Rustique I didn't want to go. 🙂 I waved a silent, and general, hello to her, not knowing exactly where she was, and eventually got out onto open freeway again. The other thing that doesn't work as smoothly is eating. Sure, I had those great sandwiches. In the Good Old Days the passenger would have opened the cooler, fished out a sandwich and napkin for the driver, and the driver would have had a leisurely meal when driving on non-busy roads. Nope. I had half of one sandwich at a rest area, and pressed on. The rest is all in the refrigerator for tomorrow, or the next day. I made it to my intended destination in southern Iowa: the Lakeside Casino, formerly known as Terrible's. In past years we've been here a month earlier. This year the goslings in the flotilla are larger than in past visits, having grown somewhat larger than puffballs with legs. I was Very Hungry by the time I went through the rigmarole of establishing a reservation (required even though the RV park is mostly empty) and setting up. Of course I could have had leftovers, or another half-sandwich. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to the restaurant, since my darling and I had almost always gone there to dine on our way home and there might be painful memories. I decided to chance it. If you're interested in seeing their entire weeknight menu, take a look here. In most years past, I've opted for their "Awesome chicken sandwich" and it has sometimes been awesome, sometimes more average. This year, I was more inclined to try their fish and chips. Then I noticed that they had a prime rib sandwich (until supplies run out). I asked about it. Turns out the prime rib in the sandwich is shaved, or shredded, or some such. Nope. For just a few dollars more, I could have this: We never splurged to that degree here. My darling always felt that his (our) home-cooked ribeye steaks couldn't be beat, and he wasn't interested in risking money or calories on a lesser product. Besides...in his later years he always claimed to prefer pork. I ordered a draft beer, the first I've had in a very long time. It came, and I sipped and pondered, then ordered. What the heck. I'm almost home. It's almost a special occasion, and also a sad one. (Last visit, we were together. Two or three visits ago, Iowa Dee was still alive. I don't like the trend.) I ordered the 12-oz prime rib, medium rare, and prepared myself to sip and enjoy and remember. Well. Before I could say "Sam Adams" the dinner was delivered! I really hadn't intended to have beer with that dinner, but I wasn't even a quarter of the way through the lager. It wasn't a bad combination, just not the wine-and-beef I'd had in mind. No matter. The rib was good. The horseradish sauce and "au jus" provided were excellent with it, and the sour cream quite good on the potato. The vegetables were, well, "filling" is the best I can say for them. I took a few bits of the prime rib and enjoyed them immensely. I ate about half the potato and all the vegetables, and brought the remainders home to the Princessmobile. So now I really, truly won't have to do any food prep before I get home. I may buy something anyway, but if I do it will be because I simply can't resist. Or obligation in a Walmart.