Smithy

Thank you! We are still far from home, and I have a few more stories that may be of interest. I'll start with my trip to Tucson just before we left. My best friends, who live in San Diego, masterminded an outing for themselves, 3 other friends and me. They're all suburban dwellers who've been severely more locked down than we have due to crowded living conditions. All of us been fully vaccinated and were outside the 14 day post-vaccination window, so they decided that an excursion to Tucson would be great fun. They swung by the Princessmobile for a picnic lunch and to pick me up. Everyone packed lunches, both for ease of cleanup afterward and because of various dietary restraints. (One person is gluten-intolerant. Another can't have garlic.) My darling and I showed them around the Princessmobile and camp, then dined and visited. There were several salads to share. Mine was a tomato and basil salad, dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I hesitate to call it "Caprese" because I forgot the mozzarella, but it went over well. It featured some of the tomatoes discussed above, and basil leaves from a plant I bought some time ago and have managed to keep alive. For dessert there was a delicious gluten-free apricot and almond tart, courtesy of our gluten-intolerant guest, and a passion fruit panna cotta that I'd made. Both were big hits. I plan to add them to my regular rotation of desserts for dinner guests. I didn't take photos of the picnic, but there was a small amount of panna cotta left for later. On our first night we ate at Mariscos Chihuahua. It was strange and a bit discomfiting to actually go into a restaurant! This place's Covid-19 precautions seemed thorough and reassuring. Customers wore masks except when seated at table. The tables were spaced far apart. The wait staff all wore masks. The ventilation was good. The food was excellent, and once again I got no photos. (We all love food, but none of these friends 'gets' the food-blogging thing.) We split a bottle of wine - Chateau Souverain Merlot, a new favorite for me - and two of our party had margaritas served in massive tumblers. We split an order of oysters on the half shell. Several of us had their Camarones Culichi, which they describe as "The dish that mad us famous. Shrimp sauteed in our house spices served in a creamy green sauce, house salad and rice." It was delicious. Others tried fish with the same treatment. We tried to work out what the creamy green sauce was and couldn't get any hints from the waiter. It wasn't spicy-hot. The green might simply have been from parsley. The creaminess was quite rich and may have come from actual cream, or Mexican crema. The web site to which I linked above is under construction right now. Go here for a menu. Sorry about the dearth of photos! It gets better. The purpose of our trip was to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The ASDM is still partially shut down due to the pandemic lockdown, and some of my favorite exhibits weren't available. There was still plenty to see. Masks were required, even outdoors. They made their point with amusing displays at the entrance. The restaurant was a real disappointment, alas. Knowing the dietary restrictions of our guests, I'd said there would be plenty of choice for everyone. I've shown the Ironwood Grill in pre-pandemic times although I can't find pictures right now. It came under new management a few years ago and, in my opinion, the quality of their sandwiches went down then although they stress locally sourced and sustainably grown foods. I was counting on their salad/taco/tamale counter. It was closed! Our only options were sandwiches or pizza. My green chile cheeseburger came on a cold bun. The fries were good. I don't think anyone was impressed, but we had a chance to sit outside in a courtyard and cool down before resuming our walking. We made up for the poor lunch with dinner and a new discovery. If you're ever in Tucson, I highly recommend Bianchi's. It's a one-off, second-generation-owned Italian restaurant. Like Mariscos Chihuahua, they seemed to take Covid-19 precautions seriously, with cleanups, spacing, and masks. The young man who came to our table turned out to be the son of the proprietor, whose mother and father established the restaurant. The recipes are his mother's. He soon had us laughing through our masks, and before we knew it half of us had been talked into that night's special, the beef lasagna. Let me tell you, that lasagna was a revelation. Is "pillowy" the right word for a fluffy, delicious, multi-layered pasta dish? "Fluffy" suggests that it was mushy or would fall apart, but it held together for every delightful bite. The sauce was delicious. This was my plate before I dug in. By the time I finished there wasn't a speck of that sauce left. The salad may look like an ordinary salad, but their house dressing was also outstanding: a vinaigrette with herbs we couldn't identify. No, he laughed when we asked: "If I told you, I'd have to kill you...and my mother would kill me anyway!" Here's the rest of the menu. I've forgotten which salad my friend across the table ordered, but I managed a shot of her dinner also. This place was a wonderful find. I hope to go visit with my darling, or with more friends, another time. The next day, we went home by way of Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakhouse in Yuma. Another restaurant chain I'd never heard of or noticed! I think they'd give In 'n' Out a run for their money, yet they weren't overwhelmed with a line. Two friends added frozen custard to their sandwich orders, then shared around. It's a marvel my clothing fit by the time I got home.

The granola needs oil to coat the oats and help with the toasting / baking. I used olive oil because of a New York Times recipe that @heidih called out (this one). My best friend uses safflower oil. I don't know that the oil type is important except for its health benefits (omega-3 fatty acids content, for instance). At the baking temperatures I used, I don't think either of the oils you mentioned would come close to the smoke point, so you should use them and see how you like the flavors. If coconut is contraindicated, I'd just leave it out. I'm not a big fan of coconut in general. Recipe recommendations both here and elsewhere on the 'net convinced me to try it in granola. Through experimentation I've learned that a little toasted coconut gives a distinctive sweet/toasty flavor that I like, but it can easily be overpowering or overtoasted. The shredded coconut was something my friend's son bought and left at her house, and she wanted to get rid of it. I'll use it up, then finish the flaked coconut that I'd bought because I prefer that texture. Whether I'll buy more after that or simply omit it remains to be seen. I can't begin to shed light on farro or red walnuts, sorry. I think any nuts can add a delightful crunch and flavor to the granola. I KNOW that anything starting to go rancid* can wreck the batch. If you like the flavors, add those to the mix and report back! *even oats. Ask me how I know.

In truth, I'm not sure they add anything except a nice visual contrast. I bought them for another purpose, and my best friend's son used some in his granola. I decided to try it too. At least it will help me use up the seeds!

There are so many delicious-sounding granola recipes that I've ended up cobbling together and refining one that's dead simple and delicious (to our tastes). Yesterday was my best effort so far. 2c rolled oats 2T olive oil 2T honey ~1/8 to 1/4c unsweetened coconut (I happen to have shredded on hand, but flaked also works) Mix together. Spread on parchment paper on a baking sheet, and bake for around 15 minutes at around 325. (350F may be closer to what my oven is doing. Incidentally, it is not a convection oven.) At the 15 minute mark, stir in 1/4 - 1/2c chopped pistachios 1/4 - 1/2c chopped walnuts Bake another 5 - 10 minutes, until the oats are just beginning to brown. They'll keep toasting after they come out of the oven, so don't wait until they're already golden. When the mix comes out of the oven, stir in ~2T chia seeds ~1/4c roasted unsalted sunflower seeds ~1/2c chopped dried fruit (raisins this time, but it could be dried cranberries) When it's all cool, pop into an airtight container. I've very happy with the nutty crunch of this batch.

Sometimes the grape tomatoes are disappointing, though. That was our only choice yesterday that seemed to have any hope of being decent. We haven't gotten into them yet but I remember this brand being a disappointment last year. I do think the Cherubs are generally good.

Yes. I have become very fond of Campari tomatoes, even though they come in a plastic clamshell. I seek them out because they seem to be reliably tasty. At our last grocery stop in Yuma they were out of the Camparis, so I took a flyer on these Private Selection brand "Cocktail Tomatoes on the Vine". They're also quite good.

Time to go!! We went. Our last few days in the desert were more or less the same: very hot in the trailer, almost as hot outside, not a breath of a breeze. When I snapped this photo the outdoor thermometer said 97F. Hanging out so late in the season paid off: we finally started seeing flowers we'd normally expect to see a month earlier. It wasn't the lush desert bloom we love, but it was rewarding. We couldn't get excited about a campfire, although it cooled deliciously during the evenings. We enjoyed stargazing and satellite-watching instead. We enjoyed one last campstove cookout. Hash, I think, though it might have been kielbasa. One night he cooked the last superburger and I cooked a package of Zatarain's Jambalaya mix augmented with Zatarain's Andouille sausage. It wasn't photogenic, and I don't seem to have bothered with pictures. Here's a comparison shot from a taste test a couple of days later. I'll tell about that in another post. We enjoyed one last sunset and sunrise. In the time we were there, the days lengthened from 10:02 on December 18 to 12:33 on April 3. We wondered how much farther north the sun would swing before it started back southward at the Summer Solstice. We'll have to simply estimate. It's very easy to spread out and settle in when we're in one place for even a week. After all the time we'd been there, we had this to pack up in the heat: (The chair with the scorched back was abandoned by campers at a nearby spot. It's easily repairable. I bought the fabric but haven't sewn it yet. In any case we weren't going to leave it behind as garbage.) We packed slowly, the day before we left: pack a little, rest a bit. Pack a little, rest a bit. Drink lots of water. That night neither of us was terribly hungry, and we didn't want to make much of a mess. We ate salad and slices of leftover roast chicken (me) or ham (him). You've seen our campsite before we began packing. This is as we left it: We're pretty sure that when/if we come back next year we'll find that folks don't understand the value of a small U-shaped campfire ring for cooking, and they'll have destroyed it. That's all right: we know what we're doing, and if they want the oversized campfire rings for toasting marshmallows they can do that instead! At any rate they'll probably appreciate the firewood. The next morning when we left at 09:30 it was already 92F outside. We made one more stop at Gold Rock Ranch to dump the holding tanks and, we'd hoped, say goodbye to our friends there. Nobody was around, so we left a note. We admired their golf course on the way to the RV dump. Then we hit the road for Tucson. Re-entry is hard, and the campground was too crowded for our liking although we had very nice neighbors, and the afternoon temperature was 98F and predicted to continue so. We'd have had to hide from the heat inside an air-conditioned trailer, thanks to campground electricity, and that seemed silly. We moved on after one night. I have a Tucson story to tell, but I'l save it for another post.

Beautiful photos, as always, and you really make me miss my times, a lifetime ago, on the New England Coast. But...what I really want is... ...Those Plates. Gorgeous! Do they come with the rental, or do you pack your own?

You're right... some in our household like it. 🙂 I'm more pleased with the jelly. It's going to help some potatoes or rice in a few days. Tonight's dinner is breaded and baked pork steaks, and (slightly overcooked, doggone it) asparagus with butter. You've all seen it before, so unless the pics are fabulous I won't bother. Tomorrow I'm off on an excursion with friends for a couple of days. I may not be updating here until I get back on Friday. Edited to add: the dinner was very much to our tastes and the asparagus was not, as I'd feared, overcooked. The picture isn't stellar but the dinner deserves to be remembered. So does tonight's moonrise.

Those are gorgeous!

Oh, the delight of chicken jelly!

On another note: I haven't said much about the dates I bought in Dateland on our way here last November. The Medjools that I bought have been a disappointment compared to those we usually buy at the Oasis Date Gardens. The Dateland Medjools have been tough and dry. Maybe they'd have been better if I'd steamed them, but I've been too lazy to try. Today I broke into a different package: the Khadrawy. This variety of date is one of my favorites: typically softer than Medjools but still with a nice flavor and chew. These were soft, juicy as dates go, and a delight. They're a nice addition to the latest batch of fruit salad. They'll also be good for baking, as long as I save some for that purpose.

I'm still watching for comments from others, to no avail! Are the shallow sides to allow better circulation around the chicken and promote browning, do you think? And why not the trussing? Here's what I ended up with: tender, perfectly done chicken meat and sorry, flabby skin. You can see in the photo that the bones are falling apart and the meat is falling off the bone. The breast meat is juicy, not dry. After a bit of judicious sampling I ended up with a container of sliced breast meat, chunks of meat - whatever I could get from around the bones - and almost-intact wings and legs. The plastic bag holds the carcass for broth. The juice is now chilling in the refrigerator. I'm not disappointed with the doneness of the chicken, but I'm not sure this is better than my usual, quicker, high-heat roasting method in a roasting pan. I'll have time to try this again, with the cast iron skillet, after we get home. Thoughts on the technique and my execution of it are still welcome.

It's getting hot here. The temperature today is predicted to be close to 90F with no wind, which means it will be even hotter in the trailer. Yesterday it was almost as hot outdoors, but with a breeze the Princessmobile was bearable. The high temperatures of course affect our cooking plans. Last night it was superburgers outside on the camp stove. You've seen them. They were good. They were more thoroughly cooked than the previous superburgers, and not as spicy-hot. It lends credence to our idea that the spicy heat drains away with the juices, or else gets tamed by cooking. When I visited my Best Friends in San Diego this winter I was introduced to a new way of roasting chicken that Mr. Best Friend had discovered online. This couple lives a very comfortable but minimalist lifestyle, so I'd been surprised when they'd added a large cast iron skillet to the kitchen arsenal. They did so for this method of roasting chicken. In short, it is: Preheat the oven, with the skillet in it, to 450F. Rinse and pat dry a whole chicken, then oil it. Season with salt and pepper, or as desired. When the oven and pan are at temperature, pull the pan out, place the chicken breast side up in the pan, and return it to the oven. Do not cover the chicken. Turn the temperature down to 350F. Cook until the chicken is done, about 2 hours. Well let me tell you, this was a delightful roast chicken: crisp dark skin, nothing overcooked (not even the breast meat). I decided I had to try it. We'll be needing sandwich meat soon and cooked chicken lends itself to a wide variety of easy meals. I bought a chicken a couple of days ago for the purpose. First problem: it's too hot to cook in the trailer in the afternoon, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. So this morning, before I got too hot, I fired up the oven and got ready to cook. Second problem: I realized this morning that none of the cast iron skillets aboard the Princessmobile is big enough for the chicken! Enameled cast iron was the closest option, from a heat-retention standpoint. I opted for our enameled cast iron Dutch Oven rather than the shallow Descoware casserole dish. Would the high sides matter? I didn't know. The material is important. Whether the geometry matters I don't know. Here's what it looks like so far. The top two photos are of the chicken before cooking. I trussed it, because that's what you do with chicken even though Mr. BF didn't. The bottom photo in that collage is what I'm looking at right now. I cooked it to an internal breast meat temperature of 150F, at which point all juices were running clear when I poked the chicken. I knew the temperature would coast upward while the chicken was resting, and it did. So far I'm unimpressed. It's nothing like the results Mr. BF got. Is that because his oven's temperatures are hotter than mine? (They have a convection oven.) Is it because of the high sides of the pot? The skin isn't the lovely crisp golden brown that it should have been. I do think it'll be crackling on the back. You should have heard it sizzling in the pot! I'll take more photos and finish the report after the chicken finishes resting and we cut into it.

I need to remember that this summer. My lovage plant is massive, and never gets enough use.

Well, maybe I'll have to try the Kewpie. I'm sure this is the Japanese product. It appears I'll have another trip to town before we leave, so I'll have one more chance at temptation. My darling is getting his hash settled! Well, not in the colloquial sense of that phrase, but he's fine-tuning it to the consistency he's been after for years. Dicing potatoes finely has been one of the keys. Not crowding the pan has been another. Many of you have suggested that, and he's finally seeing that you were right. We were short on potatoes and tried supplementing them with Tater Tots. They probably should have gone in sooner; they weren't crisp as they should be. The actual potatoes were quite crisp, as he likes them; the onions were still crisp as well. The kielbasa was labeled Polish Kielbasa (not smoked, and not spicy-hot) but now we can't remember which brand he tried. The prep work was done yesterday and the garbage went out today. Anyway, it was good, and the campstove got some use.

I always had the idea that Kewpie was a sweet mayo, and I detest sweetness in mayonnaise. (For that reason, Duke's (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is one of my favorites.) However, I didn't see any sweetener in the Kewpie, unless I read too fast, and I did see something about spices. That piqued my curiosity. So, those of you who've tried it and liked it, or not, or gotten over it: what's the flavor profile?

Yesterday I did a last load of laundry for this trip. The laundromat shares a building with an Oriental Gift Shop that I visited years ago. When I could walk away from the laundry, I went into the gift shop, which carries quite a bit of food and cooking implements as well as a boatload of non-culinary items. The window displays are inviting. I love ornamental fans and pottery. These vases are beautiful, I think, and none was over $50. I wasn't tempted: wouldn't fit in the Princessmobile, nor would it go with our house decor. But I could enjoy looking. I could also see woks, rice cookers, skimmers, scoops and so on inside. Inside, there are scarves and dresses and a wild array of makeup and doodads - false eyelashes, wigs galore, beads - and toys and...well, I could have spent hours, but I only had minutes. Given the inexpensive cost of the vases, and the cavelier way they'd stowed the Zojirushi rice cooker, I thought I might find a real bargain. Nope. $235. They know what they have. On to the frozen and refrigerated food sections. This is just a very small sample. Can you make out the frozen octopus? I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I'd run out of rice. I stopped here and considered, but left it alone. There was a fine selection of sauces and oils and spices, and many curiosities for me. If I'd had any idea of its quality, I might have tried this one. But I don't, so I didn't. Here is the one thing that tempted me. I have read so much on eGullet about Kewpie mayonnaise, and I've been curious about it. Here was my chance! Then I decided that I wasn't $6.65 curious. Maybe some other time, some other year. Maybe I'll get a chance to try it without buying a whole package.

I don't think we called it a "foldover" or had any other special name for it, but you reminded me that when I was a child we did that a lot. Peanut butter and margarine, or bologna and margarine, or even margarine coated with sugar. Yum! (Suppers were much more balanced and healthful. 😎)

The wind came up this morning during our walk, and increased all day. The nearest reporting station shows it gusting over 40 mph. Grr. At least we were set up to cook inside tonight. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was covering my food bets with multiple preparations. Tonight it was Peruvian Chicken, using this recipe from Fifteen Spatulas. Take Aji Amarillo paste... ...add lime juice, olive oil, salt, cumin and other spices, and use it to marinate chicken. She spatchcocked and marinated a whole chicken. I used thighs, and let them sit in the refrigerator a couple of days. Bake about 40 minutes at 450F, until done. I served it with rice... the last basmati in the Princessmobile, along with the last of a package of wild rice. If I had any sense I'd leave it at that until we get home. I'll probably buy more when we go shopping next. Dinner was wonderful. Almost too hot... that chile paste packs a wallop. Next time I'll dilute the paste a bit. We liked it well enough to expect a next time.

Harrumph. I just finished downloading my extensive cookbook library to a new device, and when I saw the cookbook count I decided to diligently avoid this topic. "No more e-cookbooks for a while!" I said to myself. But this book, unwieldy though it is, has been a favorite among my dead-tree books and it's too heavy to carry along. I bought it. Thanks, I think.

I mentioned in the previous post that I'd kept my options open for tonight's dinner. I'm glad I did. I didn't have the packaged marinade for beef that I'd thought, but I do have a lovely espresso-ancho chile rub that my sister gave me. Some time ago I bought an inexpensive cut of beef and most of it went into an unholy-hot green chile stew. I cut and chunked the remainder today, then coated it with the espresso-chile rub for a campfire dinner. We dithered longer than we should have over how and where to cook. The wind was dying. So was the light. So was our energy. At last, we started a campfire. I had already chunked and microwaved some potatoes, and added quartered onion rings to them after the nuking. I also chopped some fresh asparagus to add at the last. There's an art to campfire cooking. I wanted a good hard sear on everything, not the gentle heat from well-established coals. I separated the interlocking halves of a campfire "basket" that under normal circumstances would be clipped together so the contents could be flipped. In this case, one half held the beef and the other held the potatoes and onions. When the contents were nearly cooked, I added the asparagus to the potato/onion basket. After a little more cooking, I tossed everything into a giant salad bowl, and we ate. The verdict: delicious, with some caveats. It needed more asparagus. It needed liquid of some sort. Melted butter did the trick, but in past years I've actually done a marinade and cooked it down, then turned it into a vinaigrette. and that would have given a better result. In past years I've also had cherry tomatoes to add, but we happen to be out. Finally, he thought the meat too tough. I rather liked the chew, but if I'd cut the chunks smaller we both might have liked the texture better. We used to do campfire grilled dinner salads like this on a regular basis. This is the first of the year, and we're leaving in a couple of weeks. It's nice to do something like this again.

Happy spring! I realize it's a few days after the Equinox, but I was away in San Diego on the actual day and I don't have any worthy food photos from my visit to share on this blog. We ate Thai takeout one night and home-cooked goodness the rest of the time. I've commented before that spring is arriving late here, but the flowers are at last showing themselves. We were talking this morning about how the pandemic has allowed us to spend more time here than usual, because we haven't made the long traveling/visiting loops we'd normally make. In a normal year he'd have been more restless to move around and I'd have been more anxious to visit people. With the simple expedient of a car rental, and with certain socially distanced events, I've been able to get the social contact I needed. It has also helped that this winter has been cooler than usual. A few years ago I was expiring from the heat by March. This year it's been too cool and windy for us generally to want to sit outside, with or without a campfire, to cook. We still hope to do a bit more fire cooking before we move on for the season. It's very windy again today, so once again we aren't likely to have a campfire. I have beef thawing and ready for a marinade (preferably for skewers and campfire cooking) and chicken thighs thawing for a Peruvian treatment that will start using the jar of aji amarillo paste I've been carrying around. The candidate recipes for the latter are this recipe for Aji de Gallina from The Spruce Eats and this recipe for Peruvian Chicken from Fifteen Spatulas. I just remembered that I don't have the cilantro recommended in the Fifteen Spatulas recipe! Oh, well. It looks easier and I'm leaning toward it anyway. Yesterday was a blustery day, entirely unlike the forecast. Again it wasn't good for cooking outside, but it had its own compensations. We settled for grilled cheese and ham sandwiches on sourdough bread. "Settled" is the wrong word. "Luxuriated" would be closer.

Score! A friend's neighbor in Yuma is gone for several weeks and invited anyone interested to help themselves to the citrus harvest. I picked half a dozen each of pink grapefruit and some mandarin orange variant. The mandarins are delicious. The grapefruit have yet to be tried. A single orange blossom is perfuming my room as I write.

Left-handedness is a huge issue with certain equipment and setups, it's true! My mother was a leftie although she grew up at an time when it was actively discouraged in school, so she wrote right-handed. She preferred some left-handed setups in the kitchen, and I still tend toward them. That said, I'm a rightie. As you surmised I needed my right hand for the camera, but before that I needed it for the knife and chopping, so the left hand managed the board.