Smithy

Oh, I say! The more I use this new cutting board the more I like it. I just finished the latest batch of breakfast fruit salad. The board got a workout as I chopped and poured citrus, pineapple and dates into the bowl. I'd say this was $10 or $11 well-spent at the half-price blowout sale. If I were to buy it at full price I still might think it was money well spent, except that I'm a cheapskate. The only question now is how well it will last. Here's a (fuzzy, sorry) picture of the back, so you can see the non-skid strips and dots, and the flex joints.

Basically, yes. I measured mine at 18-3/4" x 10-5/8". That length includes the handle, by the way. The actual cutting surface is 14-1/2" x 10-5/8".

It seems to be this Joseph Joseph Chop2Pot, size Large (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). My measurements are slightly different than they advertise, but it looks like rounding error. I wouldn't call them non-skid "feet" as the advertisement does, so much as non-skid strips or rails along the bottom of the board. Based on my limited experience so far, I think it's pretty good non-skid. It's certainly better than the flimsy plastic cutting boards I'm replacing.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm afraid there won't be much Irish about this post or the food we eat today. Yesterday I was in Yuma at the farmers' market for music-making. We played a fair amount of Irish music in honor of the day. I celebrated after with tacos. I kept my sparkly green "good luck" bowler on for the day, and received a surprising number of compliments in town. My counter briefly wore green the other day when I tested out the new cutting board. It folds even more neatly than I'd realized: if the handle sides are folded in, the board sides fold with them for easy pouring/scraping into a bowl. If the handle is folded at right angles to the board instead, it flattens the board. It's a nice design. The first "chopping victim" was the boned chicken leg meat we bought in Calipatria when we made that small road trip. After I'd cut it into bite-sized pieces I marinated it in one of the packaged marinades I bought way back here in Tucson. Those packages have been sitting in a cooler since I bought them, and it's time to decide whether I want more if we go back that way. That afternoon and evening were yet another in a series of windstorms. Usually even the strong winds die down by evening, but not in storms like this one. The wind was gusting to nearly 50 mph. I could see the glides pushing inward from time to time in the gusts. There was no question of skewering the chicken and cooking it outside over a campfire. I cooked it in the Dutch oven instead, roasted some brussels sprouts in olive oil and tossed them with salt, and cooked pilaf as well. We both liked it, although it was salty. "Try some white wine Worcestershire sauce on it!" he insisted. It gave the sauce an extra tang that I can see why he liked it. Something in white wine Worcestershire sauce (now known as Lea & Perrins Marinade for Chicken, if you're wondering) goes a very long way with me. I think it's the sauterne. Will I get another packet of Turkish Taouk marinade, given the chance? Maybe. I could make something like that for much less than $4 but there's the convenience factor. That night we felt the trailer rocking and rolling until 2 or 3 in the morning, and congratulated ourselves on having reoriented it earlier in the day. We had gone to Gold Rock Ranch for one more trailer dump before we head out sometime in the next few weeks. The store is still closed, but the residents are still around enjoying the "El Rocko" golf course. Unfortunately the swimming pool that was once there has been filled in, an irrevocable loss to the community as far as we're concerned. (The owner made more camping spots a few years ago and overreached her water allowance. She had to choose between the new spots or the swimming pool.) This area needs rain - it fell on the coast, but not here. Nonetheless we're starting to see more flowers.

It goes on the kushari. The kushari joints we visited always served up the bowl without the seasonings. At the table there would be a bottle of garlic/lemon sauce (the Egyptians call it "limoon") and a bottle of hot pepper sauce ("shatta" I think). We called it liquid blow torch. Holy smokes, that stuff was hot! I suspect that's the dark red container in the middle of your condiments. Although the red sauce was hot, it was also delicious at our favorite place, with a delightful piquancy and fruit as long as it was used sparingly enough that we didn't sear our taste buds. One year I bought 2 quarts' worth of it to bring home to the States. That isn't something they normally do, but they were happy to fill my jars. I closed the jars tightly, double-bagged them in Ziplock bags, wrapped them in dirty laundry, double-bagged again...basically gave them the hazmat treatment to get them home without wrecking our luggage or the airplane. Two weeks later all the sweetness had gone away, and there was nothing but savage heat. What a shame! What a surprise for our Egyptian food party!

I agree with @rotuts about the apparent selection in the GTA. I'd love to have been there with you! The menu looks quite promising. I can't say that I've ever had liver or calamari in Egypt, so I wouldn't have been able to advise you about that. What was wrong (in your opinion) with the kibbeh and the kushari?

@Porthos, that kitchen is coming along beautifully (despite flooring-timing issues)! I'd be reluctant to leave now, if it were my house. (I know that updating can be a necessary part of getting a house ready to sell. Still, it would be difficult to give up after all that work )

Think of all the steps you save! (But I too am impressed!)

Not to diss the food, but that plate is what catches my attention. It's beautiful!

That's a beautiful set! I look forward to the results. I asked this question a few weeks? months? ago, with an unsatisfactory although well-meaning series of responses. Now I'm going to ask you, directly: how do you control the thickness of the outer crust, whether in Dutch Ovens or on bread stones or whatever? I find that in my cast iron Dutch Oven the crust is beautifully caramelized - that is, almost reddish golden brown - but downright tough on the bottom. The sides and top are satisfying for a good crusty bread. I almost need a hatchet to cut through the base. I've had the same result, without as good color, with bread on a baking stone. What should I change so that the crust is the same thickness and texture at the base, where the dough has direct contact with a hot surface, as on the sides and top, where it doesn't?

We went for water and fuel today, and got rid of our trash. When we got back I had a chance to compare and photograph the citrus squeezers we've been discussing above. I need to note that @andiesenji gave a tutorial on the use of the standard (I'll call them "Mexican") citrus squeezers way back in 2011, here. Those posts clued me in to the idea that I was using mine wrong, and that the cut face needs to go down as noted by @rotuts and @lemniscate a few posts back. The question at hand was whether the new squeezer needs to have the lemons oriented the same way. I was also curious about which of the two squeezers is more efficient. So, the setup: I had 7 lemons. I weighed them all and found 4 lemons relatively close in mass: 134, 136, 140 and 143 grams. I processed the largest and smallest in the new squeezer and the two middle sizes in the older one, so that nearly the same mass of lemon was being squeezed by each. (This was to compare the juice squeezed by each method as an efficiency estimator, but it assumes the same ratio of peel to pulp and that may not be a good assumption.) I began with the new squeezer with the rotating reamer. I cut each of its lemons in half. First, I tried putting the cut side up so that the reamer made direct contact with the pulp. The pulp got pretty well reamed out this way. It conformed to the reamer beautifully so that I had to pull it away after squeezing. Next, I tried cut face down. I got a rather pretty citrus "flower" out of the deal, thanks to the rib in the base that catch the seeds and juice! Since the lemons are shaped differently at the stem end and the blossom end, I tried one of each way: stem half of one lemon face-up; stem half of another lemon face-down; same for the blossom end. The results were the same: a more efficient reaming, it seemed, if this squeezer had the lemon halves placed cut-side up. Next, the traditional "Mexican" squeezer. I used the same methodology: two lemons cut in half; the blossom end placed face-up one time and face-down the next; same for the stem end. Right away I remembered my troubles from 10(!) years ago trying to figure out how to work this thing. If the cut side is up, the juice can't get through the holes easily, and it spills over the sides instead! The picture doesn't quite capture the spillage properly, since it's difficult to do the pictures one-handed. The face conformed pretty well to the rounded squeezing surface. When I put the cut faces down, as is proper, it all went better. Note that the lemon half is almost turned insde-out. I didn't get around to trying the spiffy method lemniscate pointed to in this video, where you cut the ends off the lemon and then put the cut face up with this squeezer. In the video, the juice SHOOTS out through the bottom holes. Gotta try that next! I wonder how much practice it takes to learn how much end to cut off? In the meantime, I'm pretty well satisfied: although the lemon should be put cut-face down in the handheld squeezer, it works better to be placed cut-face up in the new countertop squeezer. Which was the more efficient squeezer? The new squeezer got 77g of juice from its lemons. The old squeezer got 100g of juice from its lemons. When I used it on the remains of the lemons squeezed in the new one, I got another 12g. So maybe the smaller, handheld squeezer is more efficient at getting the juice out. It's easier to clean. Still, I like aspects of the new squeezer's design: it sits stably on the counter and collects the juice in its own tank, and doesn't require as much hand strength. Besides, it's fun to mess with new toys.

Breakfast this morning: yogurt, half of an excellent avocado, and the new batch of granola. The usual these days. The granola is better. I like the crunch; the sweetness is about right; the raisins aren't too intrusive. (He would say the same about the cranberries.) But I'm still getting mighty tired of yogurt for breakfast! Its benefit is that it's easy, quick, healthful...and probably lower in calories than the avocado toast I might otherwise have. The scales this morning told me that something has paid off in weight loss, so I'll stick with it a while longer. This morning's walk took me out across area that I haven't gone on foot yet this season. I was rewarded with a string of mallow bushes that are starting to blossom. Everything here needs more rain, but we'll take what flowers we can get. I was also rudely reminded that one needs to watch one's footing even out in the open. Ouch! Next up: lemon squeezers.

All your posted dishes look delicious, but the top photo here is flat-out gorgeous. Maybe "gorge-ous" would be a more appropriate way to spell it in this case. I just finished my November batch of LGD ("what's that stuff?" asked DH, but he thought it was okay on whatever I used it for) and I may have to make more soon rather than later. Our cookery and eating at home have been very pedestrian lately. Thanks for the inspiration to explore more.

Our vaccinations were cleverly scheduled for yesterday afternoon, so I could do some fun things in the morning. If you believe we had anything to do with the scheduling, I've another story to tell you. Nevertheless it worked out well for me: I could go make music with friends in the morning, and run errands on the way back before picking up my darling and heading for the clinic. Like a moth to the flame, I was drawn back to the kitchen store with the going-out-of-business sale. I had some specific purposes for going, but also gave myself permission to peruse without massive sales resistance. The back of my mind was yelling about More Stuff. The front of my mind firmly told it to shut up and let me have fun. I didn't buy that wooden tortilla press! It was there, same price, looking lonely - but I still don't know where I'd put it and y'all convinced me that I didn't need it. I also didn't buy any party lights, though I picked them up and put them back down more than once. Here's what I did buy: A folding cutting board, more substantial than the flexible plastic sheets one finds everywhere these days. This also has a non-skid base, unlike those flexible sheets. I've been thinking this looked like a good design ever since I spotted it, especially after the 50th time I'd tried to scrape finely-diced onion into the cooking pot and had some land on the floor instead. (Yes, I know that's the "beauty" of those flexible sheets. But they warp in the dishwasher and skid around on the counter unless there's a towel under them, and then they aren't very firm. I don't like 'em.) The board is dishwasher-safe. I think it will fit in the dishwasher, but won't know until we get home. A jalapeno topper / corer. Too cute to pass up. Small, pretty. I hope it works. If it doesn't, I'm only out $4. A bread knife. I don't really need another bread knife, here or at home, but I decided it's either a good backup or a good gift for some friend. Besides, I like this shopowner. For his smile and silly jokes I'd have been tempted to buy out the remainder of his stock! Finally...taDA! They had one more citrus squeezer like the one I bought last time. I scored! No, I don't want two. I bought this for a friend. I just realized that I owe y'all a series of tests and photos comparing the operation of this squeezer with that of a standard squeezer, and which lemon orientation works best. That discussion began here and went on for several posts, but I didn't have lemons at the time. Now we have lemons. As soon as I work out what to use them for I'll start squeezing and photographing. Anyway, that was my little shopping haul.

My most ambitious thing today may have been making another batch of granola, by tweaking the last batch I made. This time it was 2 cups oats, freshly purchased (Bob's Red Mill); 2T honey, 1T olive oil and 1 T vegetable oil - maybe a little more, to make sure all the oats were coated. Maybe 1/4 c coconut flakes. The oven indicated 350F but I didn't use a thermometer; nonetheless, I baked it all for 20 minutes, stirring at the 15 minute mark; removed the pan and stirred more, then gave it another 5 minutes, until it was beginning to look golden brown. After I pulled it from the oven I added 1/2 c each raisins and dried cranberries - less than last time around - and 1/4 c sunflower seeds and 1/2 c chopped walnuts. The initial taste tests are promising. I'll know more tomorrow.

The plants continue to sprout leaves, but there still aren't the flowers we've come to expect by this time of year. This morning it was 38F when we awoke! The flowers won't be in a hurry, since we seem to have returned to January. Oh, and the wind is blowing again! Or still. Take your pick. But we have had more lovely sunsets thanks to the unsettled weather. The weather isn't really much of an issue today. We're taking it easy by design, having gotten #2 vaccine yesterday. No major side effects, for which we're grateful, but we have been building a stockpile of planned-over meals. One of those meals was corned beef and potatoes. We wish we'd put more potatoes into that pot! The plan was to have one or two dinners from that, and use the leftover slices of meat in sandwiches. The meat was done to perfection: that jiggly texture that you get when a brisket is cooked just enough to start melting the collagen. The meat was fork-tender. I insisted that we had to have good vegetables to go with it; he would have been happy with microwaved frozen peas, one of his favorites. We compromised: I prepped asparagus and nuked it until it was tender-crisp. No complaints on either side. We could easily plow through that brisket in a couple of days! Yesterday we had half a sandwich each on the way to the clinic, but last night we took a deep breath and finished that green chile stew that just keeps getting hotter but losing flavor as we add more to it in a vain attempt to calm it down. I am definitely not buying packages of Hatch chiles labeled "medium hot" again.

I laughed at the food photo and description, but this is no laughing matter: This is Good News (IMO) and something I'd asked about earlier. I too will be interested to know how the mining company adapts.

What *I* want to know is why that split looks so lovely and delicious in your bread, and so like incompetence in mine!

All that talk about deserts and dust led us to reminiscences about my darling's research trips in the Eastern Egyptian Desert, and the times I was able to accompany him. That was tent camping, with someone else doing the (very minimal) cooking and washing up. We ate simply but well. One dish he was never able to convince his driver or guide to eat was what he dubbed "Traditional Bedouin Tuna Noodle Hot Dish". The moniker is outrageous because it was his own invention and none of his crew would touch it. Tuna and feta together, yes. Tuna and noodles together, sure. All three (and some onions) in the same dish meant he'd be eating it for dinner that night and all subsequent meals until it was gone. We love it. I have no idea where I bought these noodles. Some little farmers' market store, no doubt. Maybe the shop near my DIL's place. At any rate, I used it last night. The tuna cans are just visible above the cheese boxes, but you've seen canned tuna before. There's nothing complicated about this dinner. It makes what we consider to be good leftovers. The finishing touch is freshly-ground cumin. We love the fresh, citrusy scent those seeds release. I asked what he thought about the noodles. He didn't notice anything unusual about them. I thought they had a bit more toothsomeness, more bite if you will, than our usual noodles. Was it because they're genuinely better than the stuff we usually buy? Did I actually manage to cook them only to the al dente stage for once? It's a mystery. Maybe it's just my imagination. Seen around on our walks: years-old rock graffiti, desert lily getting ready to bloom, dirt patterns made by the latest wind storm. If you look closely at the center of that arc you'll see last year's plant skeleton. I don't remember the plant species, but there's a lot of it around and none of it has started to grow yet this year. Spring is late.

This, among other comments, made me laugh... ...and this is simply amazing: It's amazing because it's such a lovely gift and a treat that you have it, but also because somehow you had to get it UPSTAIRS and, I presume, will be taking it with you when you move. Thanks for the tour. Like Anna, I have trouble imagining things without the visuals.

I'd forgotten this aspect of wind storms: every counter surface is gritty now. We won't talk about the floor. At least the refrigerator is clean! The pork saga from a few nights ago has a couple of funny follow-up stories. After I wrote that story he told me that the entire dish had been unpalatably cold. This was news to me: mine was warm and the plates were heated, and he hand't mentioned it the night before. It turned out that he'd covered the entire serving with the cold tzatziki sauce (I hadn't noticed) and it had cooled everything down. No, that wasn't how it was supposed to go, I told him. We ate microwaved leftovers for lunch, with the sauce on the side to add at each bite. Ah, he said, much better. He liked the meat and veg dish. He liked the tzatziki, especially when he learned that its base was yogurt rather than sour cream. BUT, he said, those two dishes don't go together! (I didn't try convincing him that they're a traditional partnership. Heck, AnnaN had to remind me of that last year. Strangely, he liked the combination then. What can one do, but laugh?) The rest of the story I think I'll call pork revenge. There was still a clod of pork shoulder left that I hadn't cut to use yet. I'd intended it for something like a stew or stir fry, or properly skewered kebabs when we wanted to cook outside. Nope. He wanted comfort food: breaded and baked pork steaks, cut the thickness we prefer. I obliged to make up for the souvlaki trauma. These are nearly 1" thick. I did a good job slicing, didn't I? We got 2 meals each out of this. We may make another run to Calipatria before leaving this area. It's so hard to see the last of that fine pork shoulder! And I still want to do things other than breaded/baked or roasted with it! The sunset before the wind began. Stormy weather brings its own beauty.

We're having a windstorm today, the first in quite a while. With gusts predicted as high as 40 mph, the farmer's market in town was cancelled. The upshot is a quiet day at home in the Princessmobile, and time to defrost the refrigerator. Usually by this time in the trip I would have defrosted once or twice already. This year's weather has been enough cooler and, apparently, drier that I've beeh able to hold off. Still, it needed to be done. I suspect the power consumption will go down now. And look: there's actually some empty space in there! Yesterday we were in town for a medical appointment (not vaccine #2, alas) and stopped at the nearby Burger King for Whoppers. I have to commend the staff for their careful observance of COVID-19 protocols. Even cash can't be passed directly from hand to hand. The restaurant was painfully empty - a common and unfortunate sight - although the drive-through was doing steady business. I studied the operation while awaiting my order, and was surprised to see the updates in electronics. I feel like such a hick! Note the tickets displayed on their screens (I enlarged that photo)...no more paper tickets hanging from a rack! The burgers were good although they'd cooled too much by the time we'd driven to a scenic spot to eat them. It's been a while since we've eaten BK burgers. We think they're far better than the Carl's Jr burgers we've had lately. I still haven't gotten him to try In`n`Out, but the line is so long at their single Yuma store that I'm not willing to wait either.

We plan to be back around May 1 if the snow is gone by then, but probably not sooner than that. We'd like to take a few weeks getting home as usual so we can see some other areas, maybe even get to the Gulf Coast. Our timing and route will depend both on weather and vaccine availability. We've had #1 and hope to get #2 before we leave. Here's how I know we won't be heading home for a while yet. A friend sent me a video from a fly-in chili feed that he attended yesterday, and I've taken a screen shot. That's Mille Lacs Lake, in the middle of the state. No way will my darling consider heading home while it looks like that! 😄

I have to get more lemons to try a comparison, but I think you're right. When I get more, I'll post photos and results, and test @rotuts' hypothesis above while I'm at it.

I saw the first mallow blossom of the season. There are several different varieties of mallow in this area, and although the leaves have been rehydrating, if you will, we haven't seen any blossoms until yesterday. Here's the blossom, and below it is last year's remains of a seed pod from a nearby mallow. When we bought that beautiful pork shoulder in Calipatria a couple of weeks ago, I reserved some of it for souvlaki. Yesterday was going to be the day. My intent had been to skewer it and cook it over the campfire, along with a melange of fire-grilled steamed potatoes, asparagus and some too-long-neglected cherry tomatoes. During the afternoon, before it got too warm in the trailer, I did all the prep work and let the pork chunks marinate in oil, lemon juice, garlic and herbs. The tomatoes went into the marinade as well. I mixed tzatziki sauce and put it in the refrigerator until dinner time came. We haven't been doing nearly as much campfire cooking this year as in previous years. How much of that is the cooler weather, and how much is increased laziness? We don't know. (I firmly deny that it could be aging!) When it came time to cook there was no interest in cooking outside, so it all became a sauteed salad over pilaf. Dinner, before the tzatziki went onto the plate: I was delighted. He wished I'd done another pork roast! 😐 He thought the pork too chewy this way. Would the flame grilling have made a difference in the flavor or texture? I don't know. The meat wasn't overdone, but it was more firm than a low-slow roast would have been. I know I'll enjoy the leftovers. When we married nearly 24 years ago, we promised to be each other's best friends. We didn't promise to agree on all things culinary.