Smithy

Thanks for that insight on the shrimps' delicacy. 🙂

It doesn't take much rain at all, and seeds can lie dormant for years until the right conditions arrive. I hope I'll be able to show a quick greening-up here. The water has gone almost as quickly as it came, except that the ground is damp and humidity up enough to get plant smells. Once again I wish I could convey smells through this page! Yesterday we were amused that the giant firepit the neighbors left had turned into a large birdbath or small fishpond. Now it's almost dry again. I got the Argentinian shrimp. Now I'm not sure whether it was because it mentioned Antarctica and I thought that appealing, or the "buttery lobster flavor" tag, or simply the price or size. I didn't even buy them with a clear purpose. Skewers over the fire, maybe. Curried over rice, maybe. Shrimp Creole, maybe, or even tempura. Shrimp is delightfully versatile! You're right, that "whole pork but in a bag" is a lot of pork. We've bought those pork butts before and had them cut for us by the in-store butcher. We both like the meat and there's a lot to be done with it: slow roasting like a pot roast, or souvlaki over the fire, are two favorites. That day we had neither room nor inclination to buy it. You asked a good question about the Joan of Arc vs. Bush's Best beans. The last time we made chili using Bush's we both agreed the flavor was just...not right, somehow. Too bland, and a rather muddy flavor. Something missing, or something additional we didn't like. So we've stuck with Joan of Arc wherever possible. Yesterday we did a direct comparison of those beans as well as a can of Kroger's that we bought on a whim. Note the difference in sauce color. I thought the JoA had a bit more tomato flavor and the Kroger's had more blunt-force heat. The Bush's tasted, well, blah and muddy (or something equally indeterminate) to me. One difference is that the JoA and Kroger's chili beans are pinto beans; the Bush's is kidney. I could taste a small difference in the beans, but he couldn't. Does it matter, especially given that we add dark red kidney beans to the mix? I dunno. Looking at the ingredient labels, you can see that the Kroger's and Joan of Arc both uses tomato paste and the Bush's uses tomato puree. JoA specifies cumin (one of our favorite spices) and paprika extract; the others don't although they may be present in the catch-all term "spices". Bush's and Kroger's include sugar; JoA doesn't. Are those little differences enough really to matter? I don't know. My darling is a rote cook, and he's exceptionally fond of saying "it ain't rocket science" as he sticks to his formulas. In the case of chili it's 3 pounds burger, 3 cans each of chili beans and dark red kidney beans, 2 large (28 oz) cans of tomato puree or crushed tomatoes. Cook the burger. Put all the ingredients into the pot, along with chili powder. (Happily, our favorite chili powder from the Co-op at home got packed.) Stir over medium heat, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot, until it's thickened to the appropriate consistency. Chili powder is to taste, but it has to cook with the other ingredients. There's a story about that seasoning. The first time he made chili for me, he used half of a Very Large Container of mild chili powder. "I like to use mild, because I really like the flavor but I don't want all that heat!" he said. It nearly blew off the top of my head. I toned it down with generous dollops of sour cream. He's more careful about that now, bless him. I still got into the habit of sour cream, and occasionally garnish with finely diced onions at the table. He prefers onions alone. Dinner was good. Of course there are leftovers. We'll have to decide what to pull from the freezer to make room.

It's raining! It's raining!!! Yippee! Those who live with frequent rain or snow might not understand the joy I feel about this, but it's been incredibly dry here. Now the nearby wash is filling up with water. The plants need it. *I* need it. And yes, if it continues for more than a day I'll probably be going stir-crazy and kvetching about the weather again. Yesterday we could see the weather headed our way (I am very grateful for wireless internet) and my darling planned to make chili today. We have been carrying the cans of special ingredients (must be Joan of Arc beans, no other type) in one of the coolers since we left home. I bought them at home especially for this event, knowing that we have trouble finding this brand out here. We have been lugging those coolers around and my darling has been grousing about how heavy they are and how they never get any lighter. Now was the chance to lighten the load. Except...most of it was fire-roasted canned tomatoes, coconut milk, curry paste, refried beans and enchilada sauce. What the heck?? We spent a great deal of time -- by "we" I mean the spryer of the two of us, who knows (usually) where everything is stored and can get to it -- searching all the cupboards, then the more unlikely nooks and crannies. He needs 3 cans each of Joan of Arc chili beans and JoA dark red kidney beans. I distinctly recall buying at least 4 of each. We unearthed 2 cans of Joan of Arc chili beans and 2 large cans of tomato puree. That's it. The gremlins have hit us again. This happened to us last year. We never did figure out what happened to all the chili ingredients we had purchased and presumably packed. I wonder where the rest of the stuff I bought will turn up at home, and when? Off we raced to town, amidst blowing dust and the threat of heavy rain. We refueled, dumped trash, got water, went grocery shopping. We passed up some deals. This label still cracks me up! We loaded up on fresh vegetables, including good Campari tomatoes for my green salad. I indulged in shrimp. We got the burger and beans he needed although he couldn't find Joan of Arc brand. We got home with high wind, but the rain didn't start until the middle of the night. This morning I established that the spinach bites crisp up very well in a 450F oven from frozen. This is a great make-ahead appetizer or emergency breakfast, now that I know how to do it. Flash flood today, already subsiding. This will help the desert bloom.

@CentralMA, that's a delightful pair of finds! I'm especially interested in the juicer, because I was speculating recently that it would be better for juicing pomegranates than my current setup. If you have access to pomegranates (and like them) would you let us know how well your new juicer works on them? I've no idea where I'd keep one if I found it, but I can dream.

I feel your sister's long-ago distress. When I was about 5 my mother sent me out to pick the biggest, ripest tomato I could find on our small bush. The biggest, ripest tomato had the biggest, hungriest Horned Tomato Worm half inside it. Put me off tomatoes for a very long time.

Steaks cooked over the campfire last night. No live critters were detected, but if they were present they were well-cooked by the time they arrived at the table. These steaks were great: juicy, well marbled, with a good surface sear and fairly rare interiors. (Truth to tell, they needed a bit more warming and cooking after we first pulled them. We solved that with the microwave, since we'd already moved inside.) Quite the luxury! There are leftovers.

The funny thing is, we're both sailors also. The wind is a lot more fun when there's water around, though. After reading the comments about washing (or not) leafy greens, I've remembered another reason I do it: the greens seem to stay fresher and crisper that way. Time to do a side-by-side study, to see whether that's just my imagination.

What an interesting question! I don't think I've ever seen hydroponically grown greens at the grocery store, so I can't say for sure - but since I even wash the "triple washed, ready to eat" stuff I probably would. I am almost as concerned about contamination during the handling and packaging steps as I am about contamination in the field. Does anyone else reading here have an opinion about MokaPot's question?

@Shelby, this is to inspire you: my leafy greens and today's lunch salad. The greens that I washed and stored the other day make it really easy to make a salad on the spot. The spinach and leaf lettuce have been wrapped in tea towels and stored in plastic bags in the refrigerator. All I have to do is pull them out, unwrap and tear as needed. In other news: the soggy, countertop-stored spanakopita puffs crisped up very nicely in the oven on a rack, yay! 400F (probably cooler, since I didn't preheat much) for about 14 minutes. Sorry that the photo doesn't show texture. We're both still agreed that the smaller "bites" are better than the large turnover sizes.

The low humidity may be another factor. Right now our hygrometer is showing 14% inside the Princessmobile. I am drinking a lot of water and using a great deal of skin cream. (Look on the bright side, she says to herself: many RV's carry a warning not to live in them for extended periods because they aren't built to take the buildup in interior moisture. Not a factor here! ) I just read the synopsis. Yowza. I hadn't heard of that one. I remember some detective story writer -- Dashiell Hammett? -- writing about the manic and murderous effect of the Santa Ana winds when they start blowing in the L.A. Basin. When I lived there, some scientific studies suggested that there might be something to it: something about the increase in positive ions in the atmosphere. I've not thought about that in a long time. It's probably been debunked. All this dryness didn't help the spanakopita bites, though. The ones I stored out on the counter are soggy. Still good, and still best with the highest filling-to-pastry ratio. Storing them in a closed container probably didn't help. Sometime around lunchtime I'll fire up the oven and see whether the remainders get crisp again. I'm sure this would be a good use for a Cuisinart Steam Oven, but our CSO is sitting at home. @Kim Shook, I don't know why I thought I'd need to cook the puffs first. I've used your trick of making and freezing sausage rolls, then baking from frozen, more than once. I'll try that NEXT time around. Last night I could have cheerfully chowed down on spanakopita bites, but we had other, more decadent plans for dinner. Remember that last ham? It was the star of the evening. It's funny about this skillet. Until this year, it was the preferred campfire cooking skillet because of its size, and it lived outside once we were set up for the season. My darling's daughter gave him another skillet with about the same bottom area but with squared sides. He prefers that one because he can push stuff up against the sides without pushing it overboard. I generally prefer the rounder edges so I can do "that flippy thing" with the contents, but I rarely need such a large skillet. The other day he was kvetching about how many skillets we have. Did we really need them all, he grumped. If I'd actually thrown one out in a fit of pique, this would have been the one. It's earned its place in the kitchen again.

Thanks! We won't eat them all at once. I'm going to try freezing some and leaving the others out. I remember my spanakopita last time around (using phyllo) lost its crispness. I think people told me I could have frozen and reheated it. We'll see!

I've never tried this in puff pastry before now, but the last time I used phyllo I decided it was too fussy for me: getting the layers painted with melted butter, or painted or sprayed with oil, was a lot of work. Puff pastry already has the fat in between layers. I'm sure there are other differences, and I'd be outraged if I bought, say, baklava and it came in puff pastry. I think puff pastry worked reasonably well here for my purposes. I worried a bit about sog and blowouts, but it was unnecessary. The key probably was that I followed the instructions to squeeze out every last bit of moisture from the spinach before mixing it with the rest of the filling. I used a fine-mesh bag and got it quite dry. Here is the filling before the final mixing: I had intended to use only 1 puff pastry sheet from the set of 2, but there was a LOT more filling than I'd realized. The first sheet went to the size of hand pies I'd originally planned. I got 4 pies and used less than half the filling. Once I decided to use the other sheet of puff pastry, I also decided to try smaller, appetizer-sized folds. I overloaded a few, and decided to see how they behaved with open ends. They did just fine: no sog, no ooze. The collage below includes a couple of the first, larger pies for comparison. The smaller bites are better, because the ratio of pastry to filling is better. There's too much pastry around the filling in the larger pies. As for the filling itself: I don't like this version as well as one I used last time, from The Olive and the Caper (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). A few crucial differences might be the ratio of parsley to spinach and the number of eggs used, but I think the biggest difference is that Olive and Caper uses green onions and the recipe I tried this time uses regular onion. I used one labeled as "Sweet Onion" but we've noticed around here that "sweet" doesn't necessarily equate to Walla Walla or Vidalia-style sweetness. I used less onion than the recipe called for, and it's still too strong. The other, very surprising thing, is that this filling needs salt! Who would have expected that, with feta cheese? So it's back to the Onion and Caper version next time, but I will use the shortcut from The Mediterranean Dish and buy frozen cooked spinach. It has to be chopped and cooked down anyway. I'll post a "money shot" of the large and small pies' cross-sections if anyone's interested in seeing the pastry to filling ratio.

...And the Wind. Continues. To. Blow. I know, most readers are stuck inside because of lousy weather and/or pandemic issues. I have no room for complaint. I generally have no sympathy for sufferers of ennui. Get up! Go do something! Go learn something! I think to myself, although I'm too polite to say so. But yesterday, the sameness and the wind (and the news, and computer aggravations) all got to be too much for me. I decided to hide out for yet another day, except for the morning walk and afternoon bicycle ride, and do something about all the greens in the refrigerator. I had romaine hearts, a bunch of spinach, a head of leafy lettuce. My darling prefers romaine hearts, chopped with a knife, for his salads. I like that well enough, but I also like variety. He now has a large tub of chopped romaine hearts (with the stem ends, because he likes the crunch). I have all the spinach and leaf lettuce washed and wrapped in towels, stored back in the refrigerator, for my own uses. Midway through this particular process - which was one of several for the day - there was a tremendous crash in the dining room. The wind had blown out several of the removable panels from our screen doors. Fortunately, nothing broke. I'm glad we got fairly thick-gauge polycarbonate rather than the thinner Plexiglass. I made salad dressing of my own favorite style: lemon and a touch of white wine vinegar, garlic, salt, olive oil. I'd been working my way through a "spicy balsamic" salad dressing that I made from a recipe in Schlesinger and Willoughby's cookbook, Lettuce in Your Kitchen (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). It was good the first time or two, but I was thoroughly sick of it before I finished it. My darling was no help; he's strictly a Good Seasons Italian Dressing (from the package mix) guy. I also worked on the filling for spanakopita hand pies based on this recipe. I'm using puff pastry rather than phyllo, and plan to make the triangle version rather than an entire pan's worth. I tell you, doing a fine dice on an onion by hand is a great way to work off aggravation, if your hands can take it. I got lazy and resorted to the food processor for chopping the parsley and mixing it with the onions and garlic, though. I didn't finish the spanakopita yesterday. I got sidetracked by computer issues - specifically, trying and failing to set up appointments for Covid-19 shots - and lost all interest in kitchen projects. I stowed everything, washed the dishes I'd dirtied (a nontrivial quantity) and took my bike out so the dog could get a good run. We sat outside by a campfire last night, then used the campstove to cook superburgers. For fun, we tried warming his burger bun in the skillet. It worked pretty well: got the bun halves warm, and soaked up the extra grease, for those who like that sort of thing. I didn't want bread. I gloried in a salad as accompaniment. (I think my plate looked better than his but we were happy with our respective choices.) It really is much of a muchness here, and will be until the desert starts to bloom, but there is one clear change: the days are getting longer, and the sun has begun its northward travel. Here's how much it has shifted since the Solstice: It's almost as good as Stonehenge.

I just got an irritated text message from my best friend, bemoaning the "artisan bread" she'd picked up at the store. Its crust is so thick that it cut her gums. She prefers soft crust, as does my husband, for the mouthfeel. I like a crunchy crisp crust, but have come to realize that it can be overdone. By "overdone" I mean too thick and therefore too hard, not too brown. I come to the assembled experts here with my question.... How does one control the thickness of a crust, so that it's crisp and crackly but not so thick that it's difficult to bite through?

I had barbecued cabrito in Texas a year or two ago and thought it excellent. This was at a place that really knew its 'cue. The meat was tender and delicately flavored, different from anything else I'd had. I would eat it again, but since my DH wouldn't touch it I would only get it again if I could have a small serving at some restaurant or somebody's home. Interesting that there's a slaughter-your-own place near Fontana.

Yes, those miners might think he's a bit of a poofster (or whatever the equivalent Oz slang would be) for snapping photos of food! I'm impressed by that salad, but given that I don't like pumpkin l might have needed to look at another option. Even that spinach wrap, if it had been available! None of the meal options looks as large as I'd expect for physical laborers. Is that because they can pick and choose, and get more than one entree if they wish?

It is dry, dry, dry here...and still windy. These bushes were much greener at this time last year, and flowers were beginning to bloom. Only the creosote bushes have started sprouting flowers so far. A couple of weeks ago my best friend's son cooked dinner for us all when I was visiting in San Diego. He cooked a couple of recipes from the New York Times: Grilled Sesame Lime Chicken Breasts and Cucumber Salad with Soy, Ginger and Garlic. (I know they're behind a pay wall. Sorry! Ask and I'll give the details I can.) Both dishes were delicious, and would have been relatively simple if I hadn't been feeling draggy yesterday. The marinade for the chicken and the dressing for the cucumbers are similar: soy sauce, ginger, sesame oil, garlic. The chicken marinade gets lime zest and juice also. Fish sauce goes into the salad dressing. The cucumbers are to be sliced thinly, salted and set in a colander for 15 minutes to drain, then rinsed and pressed to eliminate the liquid. I, er, missed the 15 minutes part and left them sitting much too long, and never could get enough salt out. Some recipe comments have indicated that pressing between paper towels without salting does the job. I'll try that another time. I used boned chicken thighs instead of breasts, as Jim had done. (Jim started with boneless/skinless thighs; as you can see, I kept the skin on.) We were going to grill over the fire outside, and when the time came just couldn't deal with lighting a fire, letting it burn down, and so on. We chose the easy way and I cooked the chicken on a rack in the oven. The chicken would definitely have benefited from direct grill heat, but it was good. I think this could be done as kebabs. It was supposed to be served over rice, but I'd already eaten leftover rice and he doesn't eat as much as he used to at dinner, so we skipped that part. This crummy photo was taken before we piled cucumber salad or leftover green beans atop the plates. The recipes are both good. I'll try them over fire next time. The sliced cucumbers led to an inevitable discussion / reminiscence about how his mother used to slice cukes and store them in vinegar with sugar, as a quick cucumber pickle. Maybe, he says, white balsamic vinegar would do the job too. Maybe it will. I've promised to do it for him next time I get cucumbers.

Yes, this is fascinating! I spent 20 years working for a mining and mineral processing operation. The old-timers told me about their pre-microwave habits of bringing hefty lunches wrapped in foil that they stored (or reheated, as appropriate) in warm places: the engine compartment of a loader or locomotive; the area immediately next to the pellet processing furnace. There were a lot of pasties (meat or stew inside baked dough, intended to be eaten out of hand) back in the day. This being northern Minnesota, warm food was vital for months on end. They all went home after the shift was over, though. I toured a remote gold mining operation in British Columbia where the workers were bused in for 2-week stints, but never thought to ask about their food. Please do keep the information coming!

It's interesting to see Mazola described as "liquid shortening". Is it the same product that we now call Mazola corn oil, or were there changes made?

No need to feel gun-shy; it seems to me you did CK and his empire (and us) a favor. "Simply" has now landed in my library collection. I had a $0.30 credit due to expire, so the book set me back a whopping 69 cents! It looks like it will be a fun book. Thanks, Toliver.

Whilst looking through my pictures, I remembered a success of my own invention from a couple of days ago. I think I was too glued to the news to think about posting it then, but I was happy enough with it to want to share it: asparagus (fresh) with cherry tomatoes (sitting around too long, needed to go), lemon zest, fresh ginger, olive oil, soy sauce at the table. We are in one of the major winter agricultural areas of the country, and I love the variety of fresh produce here (although, oddly, it has to be purchased at grocery stores). It would be to my benefit to celebrate vegetables far more than I have been. When we go to the grocery store I tend to overbuy on the produce, then scramble to treat it properly before it goes off. He's the same way about meat, although it doesn't present the storage challenge because it can be frozen. The upshot is that our dinners look huge and almost always yield leftovers. The breaded and baked pork steaks were nothing new. The asparagus was. I wrote down what I did, for future reference. I'll be doing it again.

I wish I'd taken a better picture of this last night, before the beans cooled off and got piled into a storage container. Green beans, boiled just enough to cook through but not enough to lose their crunch. Drained, tossed with butter, olive oil and LGD. Delicious! Even my husband liked it. I say "even he" because, although he'll eat almost anything, he looks askance at olives. I don't think he's too fond of capers, either. But he liked this.

When we did our big stocking-up shopping last week, my darling simply couldn't resist a good price on his favorite...ham. Oh, boy. Another. Ham. It isn't that I dislike ham, it's just a lot of food for two people: as has been observed here and elsewhere, there's the Dorothy Parker quip that "eternity is two people and a ham". Anyway, yesterday we cooked it for the first time. It was good. Possibly a touch overdone; we cooked it in a 250F oven, pulled it at an internal temperature of 140F and of course it coasted up. Next time (I'm sure there will be) we'll pull it at 130F. As far as I'm concerned, the bigger hit was the green beans. I boiled them until just barely done, drained them, then tossed with butter, olive oil and Vivian Howard's Little Green Dress. Delicious. Forgot to get a closeup until this morning's picture of the leftovers. He liked them too! We both noted that the ham, potatoes and LGD-dressed green beans all complemented each other. It's not unusual for our dinners to be so eclectic that the various elements clash with each other, or at least compete for attention instead of working together. These were very complementary. Venus and the rapidly-aging moon put on quite a show this morning. It's been blowing like stink the last 3 days. We got out walking early today before the wind came up. I'll probably spend most of today hiding inside. I need to make fruit salad, and I'll probably take down the Christmas decorations (sob) and it's my turn to cook tonight. If I run out of steam it'll be ham; otherwise, I have several recipes to choose from for delicious chicken or fish treatments.

Even when the weather cooperated enough for us to travel the Gulf Coast, the "fresh shrimp" we got at stores was almost always flash frozen. When I asked in one small shop about really fresh shrimp, the clerk gave me the "you've grown a second head" look. He explained that the shrimp was always flash frozen on the ships to maintain freshness. He stressed that it was vital to do that with the shrimp caught far offshore, like the Royal Reds. That said, I have fond memories of spotting small trucks along the roadside with shrimp...truly fresh shrimp, just caught that day by a small local fisherman, still in the shells, possibly swimming an hour before. I could pay a little extra to have them headed and shelled, or do it myself. I don't remember the price differential, but for short-term expediency I think I went with the whole shrimp. That was the most work and the best flavor. It's been some years since we went that way, so I don't know whether those trucks are still around. I hope they are. Hmm, maybe that's why my Shrimp Bolivar has never been repeatable.

About this time last year, we got into a discussion about stuffed jalapenos. (Yes, I'm back to armadillo eggs and their ilk!) @FauxPas linked to this recipe, and perhaps made it. @blue_dolphin showed her results here. @chileheadmike showed his ABT's here, and @ElsieD showed her results from the linked recipe here. I finally decided to try the baked version of jalapeno poppers that blue_dolphin and ElsieD had done. I did this after thawing a bunch of bacon in preparation for wrapping it around the jalapenos. The spendwithpennies version has you slice the jalapenos in half, stuff each half, top with a panko/melted butter mixture, and bake. It sounded like a great Friday evening dinner. Success! Instead of bothering with the bacon, I added finely-chopped Genoa Salami from a roll my sister had given us for Christmas. I'm beginning to the think the meat and stuffings don't need to be very specific, unless you're trying to roll it around a stuffed pepper. This treatment was delicious, and think the recipe must be very forgiving. Next time maybe I'll try the spendwithpennies verion of Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Poppers. Maybe they won't be very different from chileheadmike's Atomic Buffalo Turds, although I notice something extra in the filling. @chileheadmike, what is that nestled between the cream cheese and the bacon in your photo here?