Smithy

I mentioned before that we had a bunch of food -- too much for two people reasonably to eat -- in the Princessmobile, and that some had come from home. Let me tell you the story of The Spaghetti Squash That Would Not Be Used. Back last Labor Day Weekend, my darling and I visited his daughter and her family at their place in Ottertail, (western) Minnesota. DIL and I have a tradition of making salsa, and more salsa, and yet more salsa during that weekend - enough to satisfy our families and give some away. It's a fun time, and it gives us an excuse to make multiple trips to Buehler's Produce, as shown here. Buehler's is a wonderful place, with produce of every midwestern description, most of it grown locally. They also carry cheeses and jars of locally made condiments. We spend a lot of time checking out the offerings, figuring out what to serve the families, and egging each other into far too many extras. ("This looks like a great mustard!" "Hey, check out this syrup!") Labor Day Weekend is the official end of summer vacation in Minnesota. Resorts and restaurants begin to wind their businesses down, although the seasonal closures may wait until mid-October. As a result of the expected drop in custom, Buehler's had their squash and melons marked down. I came away with a carnival squash, a watermelon, and a spaghetti squash. I think the spaghetti squash cost $2. It probably weighed 10 pounds. "What are you going to do with that?" asked my DIL, who is gluten-intolerant. "How about we have spaghetti with it one night?" I replied. "It would be gluten-free spaghetti, so you could eat it too." She looked skeptical, then allowed that she already had the meals planned, then elaborated that "her boys" wouldn't touch something like that. I brought the squash home with the rest of our bounty. "What's that?" asked my darling. "Spaghetti squash!" I replied brightly. "We can use it as a substitute for pasta!" He gave me the fisheye. Weeks passed. The squash reproached us from atop our kitchen cart. Every once in a while I glanced at it guiltily. I'd deal with it later. I was busy with my part-time occupation, and my darling did most of the cooking before we left for the winter. He didn't have a clue what to do with it. When it was time to pack up, the squash joined other impulse buys in a cooler, waiting for the right time to use them. "Why is this cooler so heavy?" groused my darling. With flour I'd bought last spring in Tucson, and jars of spaghetti sauce, and condiments that wouldn't fit into the refrigerator, the squash was in good weighty company. Somehow, that squash eluded use. When my darling wanted spaghetti, he wanted pasta. I considered other possible uses. I looked at recipes, and found (among other things) that kitchn.com refers to it as "Mother Nature's Little Joke on Pasta". Heck, there were lots of possibilities! Why was I having so much trouble choosing one? I've done spaghetti squash before! When I drove to San Diego to visit my best friend for a week, the squash went with me. She and her husband are creative and adventuresome cooks: masters of low-fat, delicious, thrifty cooking. Surely we'd enjoy this. She looked at that squash and glared at me. "Don't bring that into the house!" she said, "we spent months trying to work out what to do with one, and never want to go through that again!" Back it came with me to the Princessmobile, a week later. The time finally came after New Year's. I won't claim that it was a NY Resolution, as such, but I really do need to deal with all the food we're carrying. I had a package of lovely sausages from home. I had several jars of tomato preserves from home, including a jar of @ElainaA's slow-roasted cherry tomatoes with basil that had been taking up refrigerator space. And I had that spaghetti squash. It was tough. After a couple of tries at cutting it, I poked the rind all around and microwaved it until juices started to flow so that the rind would soften. No wonder this thing had held up so long and so well! I hoped it would have plenty of "meat". Below, the rest of the steps: I sliced the squash in half and roasted it until the strands would separate out, then pulled and scraped them from the shell. Meanwhile, I sweated some onion (not shown) then added the chunks of sausage to cook, then finished it with the jar of tomatoes, and tossed that with the squash strands. We ate. I'm sure we put grated parmesan on it at the table, but I can't find a picture to prove it. We admired the sunset. The cooler was 10 pounds lighter, and we had a delicious dinner with delicious leftovers: enough for at least another meal each. Would he eat it again? In a heartbeat! Would I do it again? Maybe. Someday. But I'll be more sure of when I can use that squash, and who might want to eat it, before I buy another one.

The weather has been awful most places. I know yesterday the L.A. Basin was getting rain again, so the wind you had isn't surprising. As to paper plates and disposable pans: I actually have some of that stuff on board. The paper plates are the large, stiff Chinette ovel platters that would house a generous steak and potato. I got them I think for a time when we needed to be even more water-conscious than usual, which is pretty strict anyway. The reusable pans were salvaged from my DIL, who brings army-sized quantities of food when they come visit. It's already prepared, and we just pop it into the oven. Trouble is, I can't bring myself to throw away or recycle the pans afterward! So I wash them and take them someplace where using and tossing can be justified...and then keep hoarding them. I really do recommend that treatment of carrots, but it is fiddly and time-consuming. The beauty of it is that there are scraps of carrot left over that are too stubby or too narrow to make it into the "steaks". I could make a ginger and carrot soup out of them, or use them in vegetable stock or a mirapoix. So far I've just been nibbling at them. The trouble with "now you don't have to share all of your goodies" is that I have to buy some to send to her! Yeah, I've been watching the weather over your way. I hope your garden recovers. Or can it be replanted now, in time to do something this spring?

We aren't close enough to make that practical. Shipping charges would be cheaper than fuel.

The Paragon is now down to $59.97 at RC Willey. It's looking more tempting...even though I wouldn't be able to play with it for a few months.

Our trip to the L.A. Basin went according to plan; Christmas did not. Part of that is because we were trying a new plan. For time out of mind, our extended family has gathered for Christmas. This meant us taking the Princessmobile from the L.A. Basin up into Central California, where I grew up, or over to the Coast near Pismo Beach, where my cousins now live. This year, for a variety of reasons, the family gathering was not to happen. We had plenty of time to decide what else to do. My sister lives in Reno, Nevada. We are spending most of this winter in the desert near Yuma, Arizona. We decided to split the difference, more or less, at Death Valley, California. Oh, the plans I had! The Christmas menu was based on some wonderful short ribs I'd bought last Labor Day weekend at Amor Pork while visiting my daughter-in-law, and on this cook-in-advance holiday feast from a class I took last September. The specifics were: Braised short ribs Potatoes roasted in duck fat Slow-cooked green beans (a family favorite that breaks all the modern rules) Caramelized carrot salad with bearnaise and thyme Freshly baked bread Passion fruit panna cotta with oat crumble and some fruit decorations ...all accompanied by some really good red wine I'd been saving That was just Christmas dinner. I had plans for other wildly extravagant meals and snacks: Sausage rolls, basically from @Kim Shook's and @Shelby's takes on the idea King Arthur Flour's Holiday Breakfast Strata Puff pastry tart loaded with marinated grilled artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes from a recent Trader Joe's trip, and chunks of sausage brought from home Cheeses on crackers, possibly including a pimento spread made in the Princessmobile Shrimp ceviche Shrimp pasta Walnut-stuffed dates Duck confit, pork rillettes and candied King salmon - all booty from another class I'd taken last fall at home Various goodies picked up at the Sonoran Desert Harvest Festival when we were in Tucson Fruit-studded holiday bread, akin to stollen ...and, if that weren't enough or we wanted simplicity, we had plenty of other supplies. Fresh basil with which to make pesto and cook chicken, or spread it on bread. Fixings for plain old spaghetti with marinara, or pasta carbonara, or potatoes dauphinois, or nice light green salads with or without spinach, or the famous broccoli salad with bacon. Failing all that, we had plenty of tube steaks and frozen peas. We had everything we needed, and then some, for some glorious feasts of the break-the-diet variety. I'd been hoarding lovely stuff from home. I had been able to augment those supplies in early December, when a sanity break driving trip to San Diego and the L.A. Basin had given me access to places like Trader Joe's and the Oasis Date Gardens. I had come back to the Princessmobile from that trip loaded with purchases. (My darling is still kvetching about the weight in one of our coolers that will not be used to store oranges from the home ranch this year. Hey, we'd realized we weren't going to the San Joaquin Valley at our usual time. Why not use it for containment? I want some of those TJ's items when we get home!) So, that was the plan. We left the L.A. Basin on Sunday morning relatively early, before the northbound traffic toward Las Vegas got too crazy. We considered staying overnight on the high desert one night before going into the regulatory confinement of a national park, but looked at the weather and made it in one day. We chose well. The rain and snow began to move in that night. Neither of us fancies towing the Princessmobile over a snowy pass. By Monday, the weather was really going sour, as it did in much of the USA. At least we were at a low enough altitude (~200' below Sea Level) that we got rain and wind, but no snow. I began decorating the trailer and doing advance prep for the Christmas feast, keeping my fingers crossed. The panna cotta requires an oat crumble to be cooked in advance for the base. I did that, and after it was cooled put it into an airtight container until it could become the base for the panna cotta. The carrot "salads" can be done the day of the feast, but they can also be cooked in advance, then rewarmed and sauced just before serving on the day of the feast. The whole idea of that class was to have things already cooked so you could visit with your guests while the finishing touches were getting done. I cooked the carrot steaks. The process is fiddly enough that it really IS better done in advance. We continued checking the weather, a task that was severely limited at our end by next-to-no internet. My sister had a lot of high terrain to deal with between her and us, and the snow line just kept going down. Finally on Tuesday, after long telephone consultations, we collectively decided that she was better off staying home. On Wednesday, Christmas morning, we all knew she'd made the right decision. See those low clouds? It was like that through every pass she could reasonably have taken into the Valley. The winds were ferocious, too. It was worse over at the Coast, and we were glad to be sheltered. Still. It was just the two of us for Christmas dinner. Somehow, it didn't seem as important to have every single dish that I'd planned. I didn't make the panna cotta. I didn't make the bearnaise for the carrot salad. He had beer at dinner, being more of the beer persuasion than the wine persuasion anyway. It was good. I enjoyed using the special dishes and the special Christmas linens. We never had to move the table out of the way to inflate the mattress for my sister's bed. I had a mountain of dishes to do afterward; our deal is that I wash and he puts away in the morning. No, it wasn't good. It was delicious! And we enjoyed it. But I must say, I've been off the idea of elaborately prepared dinners since then. It's only been 2 weeks. This may not be a permanent attitude change. But boy, do I still have a lot of stuff to use!

It's strange: the holiday season this year seemed more of a non-holiday, but as I think about it I realize it needs to be broken up into multiple posts anyway. I'll start with what has defined our holiday season every year for more than a decade: helping a dear friend celebrate her birthday on Midwinter's Day. This year, she turned 99. She's still sharp, and living in her own house, and energetic enough to pursue her own projects although she hasn't the energy she once had. Heck, I'm her daughter's age and I don't have the energy I once had. This friend is astonishing. Her daughter lives with her and took care of all the food planning and cooking. To celebrate the momentous event, she went out and bought bucketloads of flowers to be put into bouquets and distributed around the house. I helped with the food preparation. It went this way: "What can I do to help?" I asked as the daughter was chopping vegetables. "Can you deal with a pineapple?" she asked, frantically. Of course I can. I cut one of those things up about every 2 weeks for my darling's fruit salad. It no longer feels time-consuming or intimidating. Away I went on that, then on the citrus, and the berries, until I had something like looked a lot like this (admittedly, this is our latest trailer salad, not the birthday salad - but it looked much like it): Then came the bouquets. Flower arranging isn't my long suit, but I think by then it was "any old port in a storm" for our hostess. I got going on that while she slogged on with the rest of the dinner preparations. We four sat down to baked salmon, steamed vegetables, mixed wild and white rice, and the fruit salad. Later, more guests came over for cheesecake bites, hot cider, a cake, conversation and music. Part of the tradition for the past more-than-a-decade has been the music. My darling and I bring out the guitars, and we generally do a mix of standard Christmas carols that everyone knows, goofball science-parody versions of Christmas carols that we know from college, and show tunes. I don't have any photos of the spread, but the next day when we left we were invited to take a bouquet! It graced our table until just a couple of days ago. This was a lovely visit, well worth the nuisance of going into and out of the L.A. Basin, and we hope to do it again when she turns 100.

Capitalizing on New Year' resolutions, perhaps?

I love the buttery flavor and interesting texture of macadamias: the crunch followed by nearly melt-in-your-mouth. They are tough to crack, though! I once bought a package of shelled macadamias, figuring the extra price was worth it. Alas, I hoarded them and they went rancid. In the freezer. What a waste. So, if/when I make it back to the L.A. Basin, where would I look for these particular chocolates? I guessed they came from Costco (of which I am not a member) but maybe there are other sources? Your comment that the place is littered with them sounds promising.

I just remembered that we got a food-related gift for Christmas. What reminded me was the sad realization that we'd come to the end of it. Oh my, these were good! I generally prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate, but these were perfect. If I ever spot 'em in a store, I'm buying some.

I wondered the same thing. I always order my Whopper with no ketchup and extra pickles, and this was no exception. With it all tarted up that way the patty was difficult to distinguish. I tried a bite of patty alone, to see what I thought of it. That was the basis for my saying it tasted like a slightly dry, slightly too thin burger. Was there a flavor difference between this patty and a beef patty? I'd have to try them side by side to see. Either way, I've had better burgers...but I've had worse, too.

I'm bumping this up with a short report that we tried the Impossible Burgers in Whopper form at Burger King a couple of days ago. My sense of it was that the patty was thinner and drier than I'd have liked, but I've had meat burgers with exactly that description. I asked my DH what he thought of his burger, and his response was "it's good. I've always liked Whoppers." I told him after he'd finished what it was, and he said then he was doubly impressed because he hadn't noticed a difference. Then he asked me, "How many calories did we save?" I had to admit I'd forgotten to look. "Well, did we save money?" No, it cost us a couple bucks extra. We might try them side-by-side with the regular burger sometime, for a better comparison.

In my opinion, "just brownies" is an oxymoron. Those look delicious, and I'd be very pleased to see a plate of those at a meeting I was to attend.

@ElsieD noted the Mealthy lid to do the same thing, in this post last June. I think the questions raised about the need to shake the basket contents, and how one would go about it with an Instant Pot, are still good questions. How DOES that work for the Ninja Foodie? That is, does the Ninja Foodie require basket shaking - and if so, how difficult is it?

How strange! It's $3.99 for me.

Welcome! You're right that this is a good place for exchanging information and encouraging cooks, bakers, drinks mixers, the lot. This statement puzzles me a bit: Are you suggesting that you spent all that time and didn't enjoy it? Or am I misreading somehow? Please tell us more about Island Falls, Maine. No cake yeast available up there? How big / small is the place? What sort of meals do you like to cook for yourself?

Amazing, indeed! I love it that she's gone print-on-demand through Amazon to make this book available. Here's a link, for those interested: Usha's Pickle Digest: the Perfect Pickle Recipe Book. I've linked to the paperback, but there is also a Kindle version for a few dollars less.

Oh, I'm sorry for this news. He seemed like a nice guy from his posts. @Jaymes recommended that I look him up when we were passing through Oklahoma, precisely because he had a kind heart and was interesting in person. We were always in too much of a hurry while passing through the state for me to try. Now I won't have the chance.

Huh! Well, thanks for the votes of confidence. It'll take a day or two, because we're moving tomorrow, but here's a preview.

I find, for myself, that "I'll be able to use this soon" is right up there also. Remember at the start of this trip, when the refrigerator and freezer were jammed chock-full? We're making progress on getting them less jammed, but the progress isn't obvious. My darling quipped today about some fairy tale in which the pitcher of milk was always full, no matter how much you poured from it. I don't remember that particular story, but this freezer does keep on giving. Most of this stuff was brought from home, although some was purchased on the road specifically for holiday feasts that didn't come to pass. There's still a package of beef short ribs from home, but we bought the shrimp in Yuma. I'll tell about Christmas and New Year's later, if anyone's interested. In the last few days I've been pulling things from odd corners and cooking them, in the name of making room and contributing to food turnover. I'll admit right now that we plan to shop tomorrow at a favorite grocery store with an irresistable meat department, so all our work will likely be undone. Yesterday it was country-style ribs that I'd bought last fall, at the the same place that had supplied the beef short ribs and a few hams. My darling usually does these in the slow cooker, drowning in barbecue sauce. Since we are boondocking at present I had the opportunity to try an oven very-slow-cook. I coated the (still-frozen) ribs in a spice rub my sister had given me at Christmas a year ago, ...loaded it with a few potatoes into our enameled cast iron pot, and loaded that into the oven. The next few hours I spent cycling the oven between 300F (the lowest marked setting) and pilot-light only, trying to maintain a fairly low temperature as the ribs thawed then cooked. The meat got beautifully tender and stayed juicy, in a way I've never seen in the crock-pot. On the other hand, this pork came from a better source than we usually get. Was it the meat, or the cooking method, that made the difference? As the done-time approached I prepared parsleyed potatoes and broccoli on the stovetop to supplement the pot-potatoes. The broccoli was one of those things I'd bought for a holiday breakfast feast (see King Arthur Flour's Holiday Breakfast Strata recipe) and then never gotten around to doing. The broccoli was still surprisingly fresh! My darling, who always cooks country-style ribs in a slow-cooker full of BBQ sauce, was happy with these results. I had painted the ribs with sauce during the last bit of cooking, but preferred this balance of sauce to meat flavor. There was plenty of sauce at the table. When we get back to electricity, will he change his method? Probably not.... I'll tell about the spaghetti squash in another post. Meanwhile, here's a bit of local color for those of you in the snow: Rush milkweed, aka skeleton milkweed, in case you're wondering. It's all over the wash uphill from us.

It was a Kliban cartoon of a cat, playing guitar and singing that catchy little tune. I remember it well! May even still have the book. I'm with @Nyleve Baar on the sticky glue traps. Years ago I went through the process of trying to de-mouse my kitchen (and the rest of the rental house). I began with live traps and relocating the mice about 10 miles up the road. Friends and family laughed, of course, and assured me that the critters would be back. I never knew whether those particular mice made it back, but it didn't make a dent in the population and I assumed it was because I didn't have enough live traps. I added sticky traps, thinking I'd be able to free the mice from the glue. Not a chance. They clearly died a horrible, slow, terrifying death. I stopped for a while, until they went beyond the pale and got into my Girl Scout cookies. Then it was war! I moved on to snap traps: quick and deadly. I don't remember what bait I used, but I got rid of the little devils.

@rotuts, I have a love/hate relationship with that plastic threaded spout attached to the cardboard milk or cream carton. It seems an unnecessary use of plastic, but it does make for a spill-proof container. That spill-proofness is important when we're traveling. Since the waxed-cardboard cartons don't seem to be recyclable anyway, I think it's more a personal kink on my part than any practical reason to object to that plastic spout. I don't remember whether I was in Northern Ontario or South Africa (I know, about as far apart as possible) when I first encountered milk--in-a-bag. Never saw it in my U.S. places of residence. It's interesting to read about the development of the system, and to know that it has turned up in parts of the U.S.

Is that something you can summarize here?

@Kim Shook, you put on the sort of spread I'd like to put on. Even if we had a large enough group to justify it, though, I doubt I'd have the organization skills to pull it off. Between those meals and the Christmas sweets, it looks like you're feeding an entire neighborhood! I can assure you that the smoked salmon spread would not have gone to waste if I'd been there, or any of my family. You may send it to me, if you wish! On the other hand, that darling candy cane dish with olives would be a magnet for me and ignored by my husband and all of his kin. Lovely folks, but some of their dislikes mystify me. I hope your Burning Mouth syndrome - or whatever it is - is resolved quickly and fully!

Thanks for that link, Anna. Questions: Did you use less spinach than the recipe suggests? What would you do differently, if anything, to cut down the richness? I may be trying this recipe very soon, since it looks good and I happen to have everything except that much spinach.

I do think they end up with slightly different textures, so yes - that makes it interesting. I also like the combination of flavors of the different beans. This time around, I tried the "hurry up" method: no soak, boil for an hour and a half, then add the seasonings and extra ingredients (tomatoes, chilis if you use them) and simmer another 45 minutes. It wasn't thick enough, so I added a pint of jellied bean liquor that's been taking up space in the fridge. That thickened the lot and added nice flavor that had been missing. The results were good, but in future I'll stick to the slower method: soak the beans first, then drain, then do a quick boil and a long slow simmer until it's all properly done.