Smithy

Speaking of storms, some whoppers blew through in the wee hours of this morning. I love the sound and light show (when I'm safely inside) and could have slept well, but there were things to secure and bring inside before resuming sleep. This morning we awoke to a plaster of maple seeds and oak catkins on every flat surface outside. I swept what I could, but I'm sure we will be doing our fair share of seed dispersion as we continue north. The worst discovery was that the pickup windows were wide open! We aren't sure which of us opened them or why, but there was some mopping to do. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be any damage. Last night was our final night for this trip in our fully-opened trailer, and my final time to do any cooking beyond reheating leftovers in the microwave. Potatoes and fish were the choice! Baby potatoes got one of my favorite treatments, adapted from a recipe in the original New York Times Cookbook. Spread one layer of baby potatoes across the bottom of a pot; add about 1/4 cup water and 2-3T butter, cover. Bring to the boil, turn the heat down, and steam, shaking the pot occasionally, about 20 minutes until the water has evaporated and the potatoes are cooked. The potato skins pop on the outside, but the flesh is tender. The original recipe includes fresh dill and carrots; sometimes I bother with that, but last night I didn't. Not shown is the green salad. Meanwhile, in a skillet, I cooked orange roughy in a mustard/lemon/butter/garlic sauce. This is a recipe we've worked on intermittently to duplicate a dish we had in Egypt that we both liked. By now we disagree about what the original was like (how brown was the fish, how much sauce, how mustardy) and we'd have to go digging through old photos to remind ourselves of the appearance. Still - whether we can call it Rodway Inn Fish or not, the flavors were pretty good. The fish was a bit cottony. I may have overcooked it a bit. That seems to happen more when I cook orange roughy than other white fish. Dinner:

I'll try that grilling trick too. I'm not crazy about radishes, but once in a while they can taste good to me. My husband loves them. When my parents bought their first house after WWII, they planted a garden. It included a row or two of radishes. The radishes came up quickly and abundantly, and only then did they learn that neither one liked radishes. Each said, "But I thought YOU liked them!" The gift of the magi. They never planted radishes again.

That certainly makes it simpler. Thanks!

Huh. No mustard either?

Here's one small data point: my husband adjusts the time for reheating coffee proportionally to the microwave wattage to get the temperature he wants. While he uses 60 seconds in our home machine (1500W) he needs 90 seconds for our 1000W machine.

Yeah, I think we'll need to change our schedule next year. We know the weather isn't great, but we have some pressing issues to deal with in early May. If I had gone home for a while during the winter, we might not be so pressed now...but it will be rough if we're more than a few days into May.

I remember that. I always thought it too heavy on the black pepper, but can see why pepper lovers would like it.

Way back last Christmas Eve, @Shelby posted about sausage rolls and I decided I had to make some. I made up two logs, thereby using up one roll of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage and one package of puff pastry. I baked some for New Year's Day as a special breakfast treat, and when our host invited us over to watch the Rose Bowl Parade I took some to him in a container. He thanked me, set them on the counter, and apparently forgot them. I have no idea whether he ever ate them. I haven't heard that he's had trouble with food poisoning, so I suspect he either handled them properly or, as a recent widower, simply tossed them out later. The remainder of the uncooked logs has been occupying freezer space ever since. Today it's windy and cool, and in 3 days I'll be cursing the amount of stuff we have to move from the Princessmobile into our house. Enough, already! Most have been cooked, and the remainder are in the oven now. Oh my, these are good. Decadent Sunday breakfast snack, or late attempt at efficiency? You decide. Edited to add: gosh, the place smells like Christmas! I had no idea until now what a strong association I have between breakfast sausage and family Christmas. Ah, happy memories.

I got around to trying this last night. I've never tasted Jezebel Sauce, and I had to make a substitution or two, so I don't know how close it came to the original. Still, it was darned good. I learned a great technique for browning and caramelizing red onions while I was at it. I also learned that simply seasoning chicken thighs with lemon zest and a touch of salt and pepper gives a lovely aroma.

The recent comments in the Jezebel Sauce topic, and a Gun & Garden recipe for this sauce to which @lemniscate kindly linked, have been bookmarked and patiently waiting for me to try them. I had to make some substitutions, and by the time it was done it may not have counted as Jezebel sauce any more. I've never had the original. so have no basis for comparison. Still...I learned a neat trick and we liked the sauce. The neat trick is for softening and slightly caramelizing red onion. Preheat a cast iron pan in a 425F oven. While that's happening, slice the onion into quarters and brush the cut surfaces with oil; put them into the pan and leave them in the oven until the faces are nicely browned. It looks pretty and tastes better. I'm also going to remember seasoning chicken thighs with lemon zest. That, plus a touch of salt and pepper, made a tantalizing smell even before I started cooking. The rest of dinner was the Spinach Madeline from Food52. Basically, it's spinach in a cheesy white sauce; we're using the garlicky peppery Hanford Jack cheese from Fagundes. We like this recipe. A lot. The biggest surpise of the evening was the combination of the Jezebel-sauce Chicken and the Spinach Madeline. While we liked each individually, we liked them mixed even better. The garlicky cheese sauce cut the sweetness of the Jezebel sauce - which may sound like heresy to some - and the Jezebel sauce lightened the spinach dish. I took a picture of the two mixed on the plate, but will not post it for fear of putting readers off their appetites. I'll just show the leftovers. It's windy and cool today, but we had some fine, still days here.

What a sheltered life I've led! We keep a butter dish out of the refrigerator - and, if possible, out of the sun. Freshly toasted toast, room-temperature butter spread on with a knife. If we're out to dinner and they provide warm rolls with the classic icy pats of butter, a pat goes into the interior of the roll as quickly as possible. My husband's daughter, who grew up helping as a short-order cook, insists on toasting a LOT of toast for the gang, buttering it with the room-temperature butter as soon as the toast pops, stacking it...and letting it get cold while everything else cooks.

DINGDINGDING You got it!

Kerry, is this grand spread (no sarcasm, I know it was more grand when set out) because of the testing, or is this standard? It looks pretty swishy to be a regular occurrence.

...so, no translators for this? I confess I had to look it up. Here's a hint: that thing before the 1 is not the Greek letter pi, as I kept thinking. It's "st". I'll post the answer sometime tonight, unless someone else gets it and posts.

Yes, I found one of those a couple of summers ago. It's fun to read.

That's a new name for me. Is it this book? I see some of her others are very highly prized - must be first editions.

We went to the grocery store in Llano to stock up on a few supplies we were missing. I wanted to see whether I could find blue corn masa, thanks to a bug in my ear from Jane Butel's Southwestern Kitchen, one of those cookbooks I showed you earlier. I was also curious to see about cornbread mixes, due to a conversation begun here last year about cornbread. @heidih suggested buying a mix or two to see what we liked or didn't. Well. I need not have worried about options. Sweet yellow cornbread, yellow cornbread, white cornbread, Texas-style cornbread...this is just a small sample. I was also pleased to see that rice flour was available here, just as @Dave the Cook had noted it should be. I didn't need any of that yet, since I'm still working on the Bob's Red Mill rice flour I bought in Tucson, but it's nice to know what to look for and where to find it. I picked up a few of the mixes as well as some blue masa, not shown here. I won't get to any of it before we get home.

Nice to see that they take care of you even at uncivilized hours! That may not be the most upscale breakfast that you've shown, but it looks hearty. I can almost taste the crunchy bacon and smell all the good smells. The eggs look like they're done properly. Sometimes that's exactly the sort of breakfast I prefer!

What a delightful menu! I particularly like the note that they charge based on portion taken, rather than an all-you-can-eat buffet plan. Yes, that plate is lovely and the color is a favorite of mine. When we're traveling in the Princessmobile, I have this: When I'm at home, it's even better -- thanks to Kerry. The plating is horrid but it's all I can find online. I think the sunset photo is beautiful. There's something wonderful about northern sunsets, especially as the days start to lengthen.

On a completely different note: I now know what a pawpaw plant looks like!

There is something about the bookness of books, as someone here once said, that I find more compelling than e-books or internet, even though I have figurative tons of the first and spend plenty of time on the second. I love the heft and feel, and occasionally the (good) smell, of the paper and ink. Sometimes books have notes written into the margins and that gives them even more personality. They are more solid, less ephemeral, than electronic formats - and that is both good and bad. My darling and I spent time this evening talking about the value of cookbooks vs. internet searches and videos. He pointed out that some things simply can't be transmitted by either medium, although video may come closer than text. In his opinion, "cook until done" is utterly inadequate even though @liuzhou says that it's a common phrase in Chinese cookbooks. My darling is essentially a rote cook (x minutes at y degrees) and doesn't understand / isn't particularly interested in developing a feel for cooking beyond that level. We were eating the last of the Llano brisket at the time. Good barbecue like this seems to require a "feel" as much as a formula. How can one convey that in print, whether electronic or dead-tree? Do you suppose the next step of education, that puts video to shame, will be virtual reality? We'll need to have touch and smell added before it is useful for cooking instruction, I think.

Our cheese slicer broke a while back, and we've been having trouble finding a replacement. I went to Charlie's Store, sure that they'd have the right item among their kitchen wares. Charlie's has been a regular stop for me when in Llano. I've always come away with something: cool kitchen ware, a cookbook, once a mattress to replace ours that was failing after only 1 season of travel. (They delivered.) For once, I struck out. They had a cheese slicer, but it was larger than I wanted and I decided to wait. I still enjoyed strolling the store, admiring their goods and visiting with Kim, the owner/manager. Then I noticed something: there were no cookbooks! They were all on the sale shelves in the back room. (I didn't see any that appealed to me.) I asked Kim about it. "They never move," she lamented. "It's sad, because I really love cookbooks. I like to read them for fun. But nobody buys them any more." This seemed odd to both of us, but we agreed that it isn't good business to stock something that won't sell. Our conversation was an echo of a conversation I'd had at an earlier stop, when I'd visited the library at Fort Davis and checked out ther book sale room. It was a tiny room, and the cookbook selection was huge. "Nobody takes them," said the library assistant. We both marveled at the apparent lack of interest in cookbooks that were essentially free. I groaned when I saw a copy of "Seasoned With Sun" in great condition. I bought that secondhand just before our trip began, for - what, $8? and here was a copy marked $1. I almost bought it just to see if someone here on eGullet wanted it, but I didn't. So why is it that the cookbooks aren't moving? Two data points don't necessarily make a trend, but it does make me wonder. Of course, *I* am a fine counterexample. I don't need any more cookbooks! I keep telling myself that! But I came away from the library book sale with 4 new-to-me books, and that was after setting aside a few others that caught my eye. Then in Llano, although for once I purchased nothing at Charlie's, I went around the corner to the antiques/secondhand store, and found this: Six bucks. Yes, I bought it.

That looks perfect. Thank you!

I hope your room has enough space to accommodate your personal project! I have visions of your having to clamber up onto that bed to get enough working space. That's quite a beer selection you're showing. I'm surprised to see beer in the grocery store. It's been a few years since I was in Ontario, but I recall having to go to the Beer Store to get any beer. Has that changed, or is my memory faulty?