Smithy

Is this the cooker you mean? If I were to order one I'm not sure what I'd get rid of, but I too don't want to wreck my enameled cast iron Dutch oven. Even though I bought it on blow-out sale for $30, it's become indispensible when we're traveling.

Someplace around here I saw that someone uses a Silpat cut down to size as a pot liner, to protect the bottom of the pot. I can't find the reference. I wonder whether that helps enough to protect the pot, and whether the dough still gets the oven spring it needs?

I'm very glad I remembered souvlaki a week or so ago and made it. It was good, but there were refinements I needed to make. Yesterday I discovered I hadn't thrown away the last of the bamboo skewers, so it was a good time to do chicken using the same marinade and technique. We used the barbecue grill instead of a campfire. This time, I made the pilaf I'd wished for last time around, and added the remaining marinade to it. Delicious! The perfect foil, IMO, for the chicken. It was also a good way to work a green vegetable into our diet. We've been slack on that lately, and we're both feeling the lack. We've moved to the other end of the same campground due to an imminent construction project. It's funny how such a small move can make a big difference. A grackle, with its amusing series of creative creaks, cracks and whistles, no longer dominates our soundscape. Now, it's a cardinal. I didn't even realize we had them here. Here's another gratuitous flower shot. This is quite the contrast to our home, which received about 6" of heavy, wet snow yesterday. No, we really couldn't hurry home even if we'd been planning to try.

Tonight it was my darling's turn to pick the food. "Could we please have Italian spaghetti?" he asked. This, in our family, means Prego (only Prego!) Italian Sausage and Garlic pasta sauce, with hot Italian (mama mia!) sausage, over cooked spaghetti. Nothing difficult, but true to form I've complicated it from his original. When we met, his system was to buy loose Italian sausage, crumble and cook it in a pan, drain it, freeze in clumps on a baking sheet, and store in the freezer. When the mood took him he'd (a) take out a handful of the sausage from the freezer; (b) cook a bunch of pasta; (c) microwave the pasta sauce -- in the open jar -- and then mix the sausage (I don't remember how he warmed it), the cooked pasta, and as much of the jarred sauce as he wanted. Then he'd put the jar and any leftover pasta in the refrigerator for another time. At the same time he was developing this system, before we'd met, I was learning to cook pasta sauce from scratch. We've met in the middle with this hybrid: we buy the sauce he likes; I tart it up with onion and garlic and wine and chunks of mama mia, and it all goes together. There is a funny thing about this sausage: the brand name is something like Arizona Fresh. It's made daily. I bought a 10-pack of those made-that-day sausages and froze them. A month ago. Incidentally, I like yesterday's no-knead bread even better today, toasted, with butter. That is a wonderful recipe. One good thing about fiddling around in the kitchen is that it helps distract me from the noise of the campers next door. Nice folks, with wonderful children, but they do love their couple of hours of loud radio while they're at their campfire. They don't keep the noise going to unreasonable hours, but we still haven't adjusted to having near neighbors.

Welcome! It's always nice to get new members, and it's especially nice right now when everyone is trying to physically remain separated. There are restaurateurs here, as well as outstanding professional cooks, and then there are enthusiastic amateurs and folks trying to learn. It's quite a mix. If you have questions about how to use the forums, or where to post, feel free to ask a host by PM - I am one - or ask in the Moderation and Policy Discussion forum. Who cooks at home? What's for dinner tonight?

We are still pondering the timing and route of our way home. Our usual next stop, near Tucson, seems to be available. Now that they've gone to allowing reservations it may be more problematic unless we also make a reservation. Our current campground continues to be available, but we'll have to switch campsites if we want to stay. Meanwhile, all New Mexico State Parks (which includes the Columbus, NM campground where we usually stay) are closed so our next stop after Tucson is a question mark. Two days ago I set out to try the No Knead Bread recipe from the New York Times (Mark Bittman's adaptation from Ken Lahey's book). I've been reading about it here since it came out, most recently in this post, but never gotten round to trying it. The dough was mixed and allowed to ferment two days ago; yesterday afternoon I did the shaping and baking. I'll get back to that in a minute. Thanks to an excellent dish posted by @weinoo (see here) I decided to do a skillet dinner using more of my precious Calabrese sausages, a red bell pepper, part of a jalapeno, the last of the celery heart, and a bag of baby potatoes. I love baby potatoes. These were getting along in years and needed to be cooked. The ingredients, and one intermediate step: Meanwhile, the bread: Yes, the bottom was scorched. I should know this oven well enough to know that I'll scorch bread bottoms using the recommended temperatures. Perhaps the thing to do will be to preheat the oven and cooking vessel at the required 450F, but then turn the heat down once the pot goes into the oven with the bread dough. At any rate, when the bread came out of the oven it had a lovely crackling crust and a very open crumb. And a scorched bottom. It was also difficult to get out of the pot. I had no way to pitch it out of the pot onto a rack without its bouncing onto the floor. The skillet was occupying the stove top while the steamed potatoes were browning, the rest of the ingredients were on the countertop, and there was no place except the edge of the sink to balance that hot pot so I could use a utensil to get the loaf out! Mayhem in the kitchen! I finally got the loaf out, fortunately without scorching the countertop. When I had a moment to take a breath, I took a photo of the carnage for your amusement. Dinner was a success. I needed that wine.

Congratulations, @MokaPot! Did you make it in that jar? I'd be interested to know your procedure / recipe.

Back before the holidays, a lifetime ago now, when I was planning holiday dinners, the dessert was to be a passionfruit panna cotta, more or less as shown here. Less rather than more, to be honest, because that lovely confection was assembled by a master. This was his version: For our Thanksgiving dinner I set out to try making this dessert as a first effort. Either I never got around to posting about it or it's lost in the clutter now. Forgive me if this is a repeat. I made it using persimmon puree rather than passion fruit concentrate, well, because that's what I had. The color wasn't anywhere near as intense, and it definitely needed decoration. We taste-tested and critiqued. I decorated with a drizzle of prickly pear juice. It was actually pretty good despite the appearance. It needed the passionfruit tartness. I ordered and received passionfruit puree from Amazon. The oat crumble wasn't crisp enough, so I made more in preparation for the Christmas visit from my sister. That visit didn't happen. By the time she came out a couple of weeks ago, we were into other things. So I still have a jarful of nice, crisp oat crumble. You know what? That oat crumble makes a pretty good substitute for granola on my yogurt. I'm going to use it up before bothering to make granola again. As for the passion fruit concentrate...well, maybe we'll just drink that.

That looks excellent, weinoo. Thanks for the inspiration; I think I know what our dinner will be tonight!

Thanks, @Shelby. I phoned a friend who is my age and who is my retired primary care physician. She and her husband are also sheltering in place in their winter home, in Tucson. He has asthma, and her elderly mother is staying with them, so she is taking even more precautions than I'd thought of: she wears 2 sets of clothes to the grocery store and peels off the outer layer after shopping and before reentering the truck; she double-bags everything and removes the outer bag before putting it into the truck. Of course gloves are involved. There's more, of course. We were laughing about the parallels between our employed years (sterile water sampling in my case, sterile treatment rooms in hers) and our current procedures. Like us, they aren't sure when they'll go home. Unlike us, they don't have a trailer to call their home on the way home. They're considering getting a small one so they don't have to stay in motels.

We braved the grocery store yesterday: a Food Lion, rather small, never our first-choice type of grocery store, but we were low on beer and justified the trip with the thought that it's better to shop in the less-populated places when we must shop. Still no TP, not that we need it, despite the sign restricting sales to 1 package per shopped. No bleach to be found. The meat and produce were as well-stocked as ever for that store. People were very good about keeping their distances. The checkout clerks wore gloves and worked quickly, doing their own bagging. My darling said, "wait, I can go out to the truck for our bags!" and I said, "no, they don't want us to bring them in." This was the first he'd heard of it. After we got diesel fuel and propane, we came back and unloaded everything. I wiped everything down before stowing. Then we went outside and enjoyed the fine weather. I'm glad we did; today is cool and cloudy, and there's a small chance of rain. All that fresh produce we bought...and in the end, I simply didn't want to cook! We both need more fresh vegetables than we've been eating. (I had lettuce on my sandwich yesterday.) Today I'll do it, I promise...but last night, it was leftovers premade dinners. Tuna noodle hot dish. No prettier than before. Just as tasty.

I had to look up menhaden, so the day is early and I've already learned something! I wonder whether either of them is as aromatic as the manure that gets spread on the fields where I grew up. Random thought for the day: is it a universal truth that natural fertilizers stink? (That may be another reason for the crystalline fertilizers I grew up helping to spread.) Hmm, OTOH compost doesn't stink. Discuss.

That reminds me, I have several packages of cornbread stashed away for testing. Bean stew is in the plans for sometime before we get home. Maybe I'll simply make some to test, and then make kayb's cornbread salad from it. Last night was the first time, in all this trip, we've used the barbecue grill. We're out of practice! My steak was quite good, but rare even for me. The good news is that I only ate half, and I'll be able to reheat the rest without overcooking it. He had taken the thinner piece, in a gallant gesture, so his was more done - perfect for his tastes. I had also made a tomato salad with chunks of finely chopped celery heart. Oil and vinegar to dress. Note to self: celery heart is better cooked then raw. These were raw. They didn't wreck the salad, but they didn't help it either.

I thought I remembered something like that from my German teacher! Do you remember the word your elders used for sweet corn, or was it simply not known in the Old Country?

That's why I wonder whether there's a regional linguistic difference in the grain names. I cited corn as an example because my best friend, who spent much of her professional life in various African countries, says that over there "corn" generally refers to animal feed, what we would call field corn. If you want to eat what we call sweet corn, you'd better ask for maize.

Sorry, there may be a Canadian vs. Yank language split here, like what Europeans and Africans call "corn" vs. what we Yanks do. What I know as oats look very different, both the wild and cultivated varieties. Tomorrow I'll add a picture of the wild oats growing around here. In the meantime, here's a good photo of the cultivated versions of wheat, rye, barley and oats. (It's copyrighted, else I'd show it instead of linking it.) I'm leaning toward the mystery grass being either rye or barley rather than wheat. I can try calling the Arizona Highway Department tomorrow to learn their standard roadside seeding mix. Unfortunately, given the Coronavirus lockdown situation, I doubt I'll get anyone on the phone. Tonight's dinner plans are grilled steaks and a tomato salad. I've made the salad, and am kicking back with a Kilt Lifter beer. My darling is on HIS computer, catching up on the news. That may be enough to put us off our feed! Edited to add: for those who want to really get into the weeds* here's a more detailed discussion of the differences. It's a PDF download, relatively small, apparently harmless, from the USDA. *I'd apologize for the pun, but it would be insincere.

That's a good question, and maybe it is rye. I've been looking around at pictures of wheat vs. rye, and gotten thoroughly confused, to the point that barley has also entered the arena of possibilities. Maybe I'll stumble over an answer, or someone else can weigh in. Since you're a master gardener I would trust your judgment over mine.

I find that some smoked cheeses are overwhelmingly smoky. I thought this Croc Smoked Cheddar had just a nice light touch of smoke, not overwhelming. Although we're still in the Sonoran Desert, we're at a higher elevation and the vegetation has changed. In addition, the freeway that passes (all too closely) by this campground has been rebuilt and moved, and the frontage road seeded with the classic Arizona highway blend. When we walk outside the campground, we're able to admire some of these beauties. Why they planted wheat by the roadside is a mystery, but it gives me a special chance to appreciate its symmetrical beauty. (Someone in an earlier lifetime snookered my darling into thinking that cereal grains were so named because the seeds were all in a series. It helps to know how to spell, doesn't it? ) Another local food source, I suppose, could be the chia that grows abundantly. I think it looks like some crazy Mid-Century Modern sculpture. Last night's dinner was our "Traditional Bedouin Style Tuna-Noodle Hot Dish". We now have quite a few prepackaged meals. This is comfort food at its finest for us, especially with liberal quantities of freshly-ground cumin. Especially because I didn't have to grind it by hand. We aren't crazy about living in relatively crowded conditions, but it's lovely to have electricity again.

An earlier sense of the word "croc", but still IMO an amusing name and slogan: "Careful...it bites!"

I wish I had regular access to it, although it might be hard on the waistline AND the bank account. I bought a chunk of their smoked cheddar and the extra-sharp cheddar you see in the photo above, I think at my last Trader Joe's visit. I think I liked the smoked cheddar better, but they were both great.

I don't know how universal the closures are. We are in the habit of using the Princessmobile's facilities anyway. Freeway rest areas were open along the way. Surely the truck stops are also; the truck traffic continues to shift goods around and the truckers need those facilities. This campground has restroom and shower facilities for campers only, but I don't plan to use them. I probably won't use their laundry room even, although ours is piling up.

We've moved. We had a final good walk, and a fascinating sky. Note the arrow pointing our way: go north now, it seemed to be saying. We had one final campfire, and intended to have one final outdoor-kitchen dinner so that he could cook his beloved hash outside. I have no photos of that, because the mechanical gods decided to have their laughs with us again: within minutes, the propane bottles for both our lantern and our (recently converted) Coleman stove ran out. We don't have more. The lantern's propane bottle usually lasts a full season. This one lasted no more than a month. Converting the stove to propane was easy and, I admit, a more convenient fuel source, but it appears that the fuel doesn't last nearly as long as the liquid Coleman fuel. I'm glad we still have the old cranky pump and tank, and the fuel. He cooked inside. We thought it was better than usual. Perhaps he's been cooking it at too high heat all this time. The next morning we packed up, with a few minor electrical misadventures related to using the pickup to charge the trailer's batteries. Nothing that we couldn't overcome. Then, with considerable reluctance, we hit the road and headed for Arizona. We had a fine tailwind the whole way. Traffic on the freeway seemed to be a bit down, but the biggest changes we could see were the nearly-empty parking lots. The Pullman, above, looked like it had no business although it has a large parking area where people can camp overnight. It's supposed to be a truck stop. It's competing with the major chains some 20 or 30 miles east. We stopped there a few times in earlier years, and liked the young (east) Indian couple running the place. We couldn't tell whether they were still open. We didn't stop, of course: we have plenty of road food, at least for now. While we were setting up at our next place - a KOA campground with hookups and healthy distance between units - my darling groused yet again about the weight of the coolers that we originally brought to fill with citrus, as we have in previous years. Those coolers were filled with overflow pantry and refrigerator items when we left home. The plan was to have them empty by New Year's, when we would have been visiting our old ranch. Our route never took us that way. Once I knew we weren't going there, I began feeling free to stock up at Trader Joe's and other favorite shops I can't visit at home. "These are magic coolers!" he groused. "We've been traveling with them for 6 months and they're no lighter now than when we started!" What an ingrate. I ask you: who wouldn't like such a gizmo in these times? So I promised to cook from them last night. I warned him that it would mean more partially-used containers in the refrigerator. The puff pastry and the pancetta came from the freezer, actually. The pancetta I found while defrosting last week. It's traveled all the way with us from Duluth! I didn't finish it, but I finished the puff pastry. Puff Pastry "pizzas" with marinated artichoke hearts, pancetta, and sun-dried tomato. I remembered the asparagus after the first pie was in the oven. He was pleased at my keeping my promise. We were both pleased with the dinner. It will be interesting to see how the leftovers are today.

All this discussion about bread baking in CI, or ECI, reminded me of the Loafnest topic. The Kickstarter campaign was finally funded, but the cost was mighty high for those of us in Canada or the USA. Did anyone here ever spring for the Loafnest?

A discussion over here reminded me of this topic and the Loafnest. Did anyone here ever spring for it? If so, what do you think of it?

That is a lovely turn of phrase, Anna.