Smithy

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?

I think I've noticed the periodic random rearrangement of our local Fry's, but it hasn't been frequent enough to be an irritation for us. To be honest, I prefer it to the larger Foothills Fry's (what I call the East End) that I showed above. Although the selection isn't as good - and I can envision making a special trip for truly special stuff like that mustard - I find the smaller store easier to navigate. This collage shows the entire selection of rice and most of the shellfish at the local, smaller store. Incidentally, I happened to be back at the East End Fry's today and noticed that they even had live littleneck clams at their seafood counter. (Note to @ElsieD: everything at the counter is "guaranteed sustainable" but no information is listed about the source. Hmm.) Wednesday was our "stocking up" grocery day because senior citizens get a 10% discount on the first Wednesday of each month. That's on top of the savings from having a Fry's card. Thanks to that double discount we got some great prices, and spent more money than we might have otherwise. No doubt that's what they intend. Since I wasn't alone I had less leisure to take photos, but I still managed to snap some of the produce area and deli counter. If you go back to my post about the other store you can see the size differences. Unlike the larger Fry's, this one has an indoor eating area. It was utterly bare. I guess that answers the question about eating in!

One of our missions here at the Society for Culinary Arts & Letters is culinary education and information exchange. Since 2004, members have developed and/or attended courses and workshops, then reported on them. This index of courses and workshops devoted to confections and chocolates should assist people in finding the topics. Thanks go to @Kerry Beal for suggesting that an index be developed, and to @curls for actually developing it. Workshop Reports 2009 workshop Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2010 workshop Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA 2011 workshop Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2012 workshop Woodbridge, Virginia, USA 2013 workshop Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2014 workshop Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 2015 workshop Merrifield, Virginia, USA 2016 workshop Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2017 workshop Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 2018 workshop Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2019 workshop St. Louis, Missouri, USA (2020 workshop Buffalo, New York, USA – postponed due to COVID-19) 2023 workshop Buffalo, New York, USA (at last!!) 2024 workshop Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2025 workshop Cedar Park, Texas, USA Workshop Planning 2010 workshop planning Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA 2011 workshop planning Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2012 workshop planning Woodbridge, Virginia, USA 2013 workshop planning Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2014 workshop planning Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 2015 workshop planning Merrifield, Virginia, USA 2016 workshop planning Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2017 workshop planning Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 2018 workshop planning Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada 2019 workshop planning St. Louis, Missouri, USA 2020 workshop planning Buffalo, New York, USA – postponed due to COVID-19 2023 workshop planning Buffalo, New York, USA 2024 workshop planning Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2025 workshop planning Cedar Park, Texas, USA Outside Courses Attended and Reported on by Members 3-day sugar class w/ Anil Rohira, 2005 Andrew Shotts Class at Notter School, 2007 Norman Love at the French Pastry School, 2007 Gourmet Chocolate confection class given by Richardson Research labs, 2008 Notes from Callebaut workshop, 2008 World Pastry Forum World Pastry Forum, 2004 World Pastry Forum, 2005 World Pastry Forum, 2007 Jean-Pierre Wybauw Advanced Chocolate Class with Jean-Pierre Wybauw, 2006 Wybauw Class, 2007 Ongoing Topics Santa's Spectacular Tonawanda Workshop, 2016 - present Andrey Dubovic online classes, 2018 - present Chocolate Classes - what have I learned, 2017 - present eGullet Culinary Institute (eCGI) Courses on Confections and Chocolate Confectionery 101, 2006 Q&A: Confectionery 101, 2006 Demonstration Topics There are also many topics demonstrating techniques! @gfron1 compiled a fine index of them during his tenure as a host. Be sure to check them out in this index, which includes but is not restricted to chocolate and confectionary techniques. Demo Topics

I want to report on the bread I made back here. The buns that I made are okay, but tough on the bottom. The loaf, however, is a joy: flavorful, dense enough to slice easily, soft and moist enough to make good sandwich bread. It toasts nicely. Here's the money shot. Now the question is how repeatable it is. Sure, I was using a recipe, but the choice of milk (I used mostly canned condensed, but not entirely) and flour (I'll be out of the stuff from Tucson) makes a difference. If it's repeatable, we'll be saying "Move over, Dave's Killer Bread!"

Well, those of you who guessed potatoes cut more easily than onions in that chopper were right. Like DesertTinker, I expected the potatoes to be tougher because of their tighter structure, and because of the difficulty in slicing them lengthwise with french fry cutters. My darling reports that the onions were tougher. Apparently their walled-and-water structure is stiffer, firmer than the potatoes' structure. It's important to note that the potatoes were already sliced to get the right depth, so the chopper only had to deal with about 1/2" depth per slice. We have to slice the onions too, although maybe not quite so thinly. Now that he's tried dicing potatoes this way, he says there's no going back. First, it's easiest for him; second, he much preferred the way the diced potatoes browned for his hash. He's always sliced them into half-moons before.

My darling is the Ph.D. in Egyptology. It's actually titled "Ancient Studies" but he did all his research in Egypt. When we met, he had just finished doing a walk sponsored by the National Geographic, going from the Nile to the Red Sea, following a Pharaonic trade route. When I refer to things like "Bedouin-style Tuna Noodle Hot Dish" I'm referring to dishes he invented or learned, or I learned, during trips there. I might never have gone to Egypt if we hadn't met, and I certainly wouldn't have gotten the view of its land, people and food that I did by going with him. Anyone(?) keeping track might remember that I've mentioned we're both pilots. Well, he's one of those who has enjoyed working and retiring so many times that he's had several careers. His Egyptological research was later in life.

While I'm on the subject of gadgets, I'll show you the alligator-style onion chopper that's been around since, oh, the dawn of "As Seen on TV" I think. You've probably seen them already, but here's one to be certain you have. It comes with two blade-plates, one with a finer dice than the other. My parents gave my sister and me choppers like this one long-ago Christmas. I used mine a few times, thought it okay but more trouble to clean than it was worth, and put it away. When my darling came along, he discovered it and decided it was the ONLY way to do onions. When the original broke, we replaced it. When we forgot it for the winter trip, we got one for the Princessmobile. A couple of days ago it was his turn to cook. He's been jonesing for hash. He decided he wanted to try diced potatoes rather than sliced potatoes as he usually does them. Maybe they'd cook more to his liking. He asked me whether the onion chopper would work on potatoes. We, a Ph.D. in Egyptology and M.S. in Physics, had a lively discussion about the cellular structure of onions vs. potatoes and the potential difference in effort. He decided to try it while I was out. This was the night's result. So, what do you think was easier to cut: the onions or the potatoes? I'll give you all time to mull that over and respond before I reveal the answer.

Here, as I promised, is the juicer in action. My mother rescued this venerable Wear-Ever citrus squeezer from a military family that was getting ready to move. They were going to throw it away! It's been in our family longer than I have, and I recommend it for its simplicity and effectiveness. They can still be found on eBay from time to time. The juicer is intended for lemons and limes, but my mother thought to try it on pomegranates one time when she was making jelly. Juicing those babies is/was a real pain. She never looked back. As for myself: I love the look of pomegranate arils, but I'm only good for one or two fruits before the seeds take the fun away. Juice, on the other hand, is delicious and seed-free, and considerably cheaper than store-bought Pom Wonderful juice. There are probably more efficient juicers for this purpose. I'd guess the vertical geared juicer one sees in bars would do a better job, but this one is more compact and works well enough for me. The glass is holding one pomegranate's worth of juice, about 5 oz in this case.

I use my favorite citrus juicer. I'll post a photo or two, tomorrow or the next day, depending on how our shopping goes tomorrow. You really did live in an upscale area! 😃

I peeked down the aisles and saw some gaps, but not enough to make me worry. I think the shrimp were a mix of wild caught and farmed, but to be honest I didn't pay enough attention. We're really trying to work our way down through freezer contents, so I didn't want too much temptation!

Since I had even more wait time 😠 than expected, I went back into Fry's for a more thorough tour, and to use some of a Starbuck's card on coffee. You've seen coffee in a cup. I won't bother with a photo. The short version: there is no place in this store for dining, even from the deli. I mentioned that the aisles are wide and selections large. I didn't see much difference in the meat offerings, but the gaps were surprising. It may be because Arizona is on another Covid-19 surge and the panic buying is starting up again. They have a fairly nice meat counter, fka butcher counter. It also has supply gaps. There are home meal kits that I haven't seen before at the other place. Several aisles are devoted to kitchen gadgets, dishware, small appliances. I think they carry the entire line of Instant Pot gizmos. The Asian and Mediterranean offerings may be more complete than in our store. I especially love this mustard. I didn't buy any, but probably will do so sometime this winter when I can justify "stocking up". Ditto for their rice offerings. This made me laugh, in light of ongoing discussions in these forums about what constitutes "hummus". The bakery counter was particularly arresting. Look at the colors! I especially love the luster on the cupcake frosting, and said so to the woman arranging the wares. She was very pleased... she was the artist! Bulk foods are prepackaged. The only unwrapped goods, aside from fruits and vegetables, were these bagels. I think that's all for this tour. If I think if something else I'll post. Feel free to ask questions

I zipped in and out as quickly as possible too, but I didn't see any place set up for eating in. Maybe the Starbuck's had a table. I'm sitting in the parking lot. Maybe I'll mask up and stroll back in for another look. If so, I'll get more pics. 🙂

The buffet food was served to me, from behind glass counters. The same is true for other deli selections and sandwiches made to order. The salads and cheeses I showed, and sandwiches to go, were all wrapped and in the open so anyone could grab them.

I'm cooling my heels in town today for non-culinary reasons, and I'm getting to see how "the other half" lives. In this case, "the other half" is the newer, eastern end of Yuma. The town began at the Colorado River, and as it grows it's sprawling eastward toward the mountains. The newer housing developments and RV parks are out here. The Fry's grocery store at this end of town is HUGE: 2 or 3 times the size of the Fry's we usually frequent, with massive selections and very wide aisles. Here's a peek at their produce area: Their deli area has salads and sandwiches to go, and an extensive cheese selection. They also make sandwiches to order and offer the usual complement of cold and hot dishes. I happen to know their fried chicken is excellent. I opted for the Chinese deli today. After much dithering I decided to splurge and get 2 entrees so I could compare their spicy sesame chicken with their regular sesame chicken. I had no idea how generous the portions would be! This came to the princely sum of $7.99. It's much more than I can eat, or want to eat for lunch, so the leftovers will serve us well. It's good, too. Not too spicy, not too bland.

(We didn't actually cook over the campfire tonight. We just enjoyed it, then fired up the camp stove.) Burgers and buns came out well. I'd have liked my buns to have softer bottoms (no snickering!) I'm looking for ideas. My best guess is to put the rolls on a screen atop the baking sheet, to allow air circulation and reduce the heat at the bottom layer. Suggestions, anyone?

My plans for the day changed entirely, and I found myself with time to make bread. Thanks to my best friend, I have discovered Yet Another Bread Book. Last week I visited her (yes, in San Diego) and we baked bread. The first effort was using my go-to sandwich bread recipe, from a Peter Reinhart class, adapted inexpertly to whole wheat and done without the use of scales. Can you say "brick," boys and girls? (I had kept protesting that I'd given up on using only whole wheat. I've never been happy with the results, and this was no exception.) The next day, we used what was once her go-to recipe. You'll note that (a) it uses volume instead of weight and (b) it uses a mix of whole wheat and regular flour. I'm so used to baking by weights that it seems odd to use volumes any more, but we liked the result. So I snapped a photo of the recipe in question, and my own used copy of the book is winging its way here. Today I kept notes on the weights that came out from my flour measurements, but I confess that if the bread tastes as good as it looks I may just go right on with volume measurements. The mass came together nicely. I used the last of some Tucson honey, and a combination of King Arthur Bread Flour and some of the artisan bread flour from Barrio Bread in Tucson. There's a relationship between dough temperature and rise rate. Most of us who bake bread have heard about it - perhaps even read the formula - but I've seen it in action now. Her neighborhood and kitchen are cool: maybe around 70F that day. Her oven doesn't have a pilot light. Mine does. Our trailer today was in the high 70's, maybe even low 80's, and our oven provides a natural warming environment on the back of the stove, where the oven vents. What took about 2 hours to happen in her kitchen took 30 minutes in mine! I punched down the dough after 30 minutes and let it rise again to double the size, then shaped and let it rise again, all in the time it had taken for the first rise in her house. This bottom pair of pictures is, I kid you not, 1/2 hour apart. (While the dough was rising, I established that the leftover salmon cakes are a fine carrier for mayonnaise and salt.) The raw and finished products. We needed both a loaf for slicing and buns for burgers. I need work on shaping, and the bun sizes could have been a bit bigger. Still, I think these will be good. Here's a comparison of the last Orowheat commercial whole wheat burger bun and the largest of my baking product for today. I think my efforts will do for superburgers and sandwiches.