Smithy

I've driven through Las Vegas a few times, but I'm not sure I've ever stopped there. My Nevada casino experiences have been in places like Reno and Laughlin, where the hotels or dinners were inexpensive. I'm looking forward to the sorts of foods and sights we'd be able to enjoy if we went to the fabled Vegas!

We have had some beautiful sunsets here. For reasons I don't fully understand - health issues described earlier? Age? - we haven't been making as much use of the campfire as we did last spring, or even last fall at the beginning of this trip. We did get out a couple of nights ago, however, when it was calm. We enjoyed the campfire... ...and then went inside to make hash. His favorite. I've been using the avocado pulp in various dishes. If I ever have reason to freeze it again, I'll follow @Nancy in Pátzcuaro's advice and puree it with a bit of salt and possibly lime juice. Most of this stuff is bland. It's possible the loss of flavor is because the fruit was already fading before I saved it. It's certainly edible. This morning I used some in a kick-over-the-traces breakfast: Quesadilla with shredded cheddar and avocado, warmed just enough to melt the cheese and stiffen the tortilla. Stiff enough to hold, gooey with melted cheese, avocado enhanced by the cheese. Good stuff. But I think a squeeze of lime in the puree would have helped.

Add me to the list of followers! I too would be excited to have a kitchen like that in a rental. If I were the rental owner I might be quaking in my boots about the damage renters might do to the equipment. Did you have to pass a security screening, submit references, anything like that? It's interesting to see the foods available in that "upscale" market. I noticed the D.L. Jardine's sauces - a Texas product - so that store is presumably casting a wide net. I'm surprised, though, at the prices of the Australian produce. I know Australia's a huge country, but have no sense of where things are grown. Did those stone fruits have to travel a long way? They should be still in season, I'd think. A fair number of folks should be able to answer your question about miso. @heidih, @Dejah and @ElsieD come to mind immediately, but I see it used in the cookery of a lot more members than those three. If the weather stops weathering, some scenery shots would be nice...and don't worry about pistachios and nachos for dinner. Heck, some of us here - no matter how much we like to cook - sometimes settle for popcorn.

This is going to be fun! Your kitchen looks like a very cook-friendly kitchen, and I admire the contents of your refrigerator and pantry. Like you, I'm addicted to cured meats - it's generally best if I just keep them out of the refrigerator, except during splurge times. Those croissants look fabulous. I hope you'll comment on prices as you go along. In my extremely limited experience with hotel casinos, the food is inexpensive because they're counting on the casino to make money and the restaurant to keep the casino customers fed. I have trouble believing that would be true of upscale places like Bellagio. Blog on!

...and here she is: Live from Las Vegas, it's Smokeydoke!

We got around to making the chicken verde enchiladas, with a few liberties taken. I didn't have salsa verde, but I had fresh tomatillos and some truly wonderful fresh tomatoes with which to make the simmered stuffing. I had no cilantro because my darling doesn't like it. I used chicken breast from a citrus-roasted chicken of a few nights ago. The enchiladas were baked rather than broiled, so the cheese melted but didn't brown quite as well as I'd've liked. Their picture is much prettier than mine! Still, we liked the results. I've bookmarked this one to make again.

Here's the last location shot. I understand it's also from Bellagio, and it's for their Chinese New Year celebration.

@ElsieD, how critical do you think the gochujang sauce is? I have sriracha and two varieties of Tabasco, as well as some Hatch chile salsas. I'm reluctant to purchase yet another bottle of something if, say, the sriracha would be an acceptable substitute.

Here are two more food shots she sent me. She says she used to run a Thai Food Meetup group. I'll save the last location photo for tomorrow.

Perhaps I should have started with this photo first, but I've certainly enjoyed the chocolate fountain discussion. In a past life, Smokeydoke worked in a pizzeria. This is one of her productions: Looks good, doesn't it?

You and I are of one mind on that smell. Then again there was the late, great H.L. Mencken, who reported upon visiting the L.A. area, "The whole place stank of orange blossoms." Our hosts' trees were putting out sporadic blossoms - enough for me to enjoy that smell also - but not as thickly as Porthos' FIL's tree. It is worrisome - and yes, I think it's a result of an unusually warm winter. Probably a sign of times to come.

I'm not sure where the shallots came from. I'll check, next time I see them. This, to me, is a tragedy that should be avoidable. There is something in the packing process that mutes or kills the flavor of the sweeter citrus fruit, in my opinion. It isn't just the navel oranges: it's also the clementines, tangelos, tangerines and to some degree the grapefruit. The best way I can describe the flavor is "tired" - as though the fruit has been sitting around forever and has lost its bright, acidic zing. Is it the sweating process? The fungicide? I don't know, but I wish someone could identify and correct the issue. There's no comparison to the fruit as it comes off the tree, and that's a shame for both the growers and the consumers. What this means, of course, is that most people never get to know the taste of a truly good orange. My best friend, who was from Colorado, claimed not to like oranges when we were in college. It took a single orange that I'd brought from home to convert her. The Valencias are more difficult to find because they're generally grown for juice. It's so long since I had one that I can't comment on how much their flavor changes from tree to market.

Yes it is! Those who wish to "dip" into previous foodblogs should check out the index here.

Jeez Louise! 1. I am such a hick. I should have assumed that a chocolate fountain like that would be readily identifiable to folks more worldly than I. You'll see some of her other teaser photos in the next couple of days, and you can feel free to tell me in what order I should have done them to prolong the game. 2. I told her you lot were quick, but y'all outdid even my expectations. So yes, Alex wins the No-Prize, with assists from ElsieD, munchymom and FauxPas. It's Smokeydoke, live to you from Las Vegas. In a couple of days. Next time, I think I'll try to run the guessing game in, oh, 2 hours.

You're better at object identification than I am. Here's the entire photo:

I'm happy to report that a member has stepped forward and volunteered to do a week of foodblogging! The blog starts sometime on Feb. 23, and I've been provided with a selection of teaser images. I've taken some liberties with the first image, to see whether y'all can identify the object from a visual excerpt. I had to look for a while at the full image before I could figure it out. I'll check in later to see how the guessing goes.

A Sufficiency of Citrus It's probably not news to anyone that I adore citrus fruit. My earliest memories are there: wandering the groves, helping Dad fertilize the young groves (or, later, suckering those suckers - oh, the pain!) and reveling in the smell of the blossoms on a warm spring day. Dad made a brief excursion into grapes, but after a few years he'd had enough and returned to oranges and tangelos. He preferred the rhythm and relative ease of citrus, compared to other crops grown in the area. Although I had no interest in continuing the farming myself, I love going back to visit - rambling the orchards, seeing new crops and getting the news. "Tangos" and their ilk are all the rage now, and along with Minneolas and blood oranges they command high prices. Nonetheless the good old navel orange is the workhorse. Taken for granted, worth less per pound, the navel orange makes up the bulk of the orangey citrus production in our area. It's a bit like lemons: the Meyer lemons command the higher price because of their exotic nature and sweet flavor, but where would we be without the classic tart Lisbon and Eureka lemons? At the left and upper right are Tangos. I'm amazed at the size of the crop those young trees carry. At the lower right is a very unusual navel orange, worth photographing for its novelty. This year, in addition to the usual selection, we added blood oranges - Moros, specifically - to the mix. I learned that the Moros and other blood oranges, with their startling deep red, are still navel oranges, as opposed to being in a class by themselves. The red pigments are a marketing advantage because of their (supposed) antioxidant properties. I've been enjoying the juice. That isn't Hawaiian Punch, nor is it pomegranate juice. It's the juice from one Moro, mixed with juice from its paler cousins. I also enjoy cooking with citrus. Lemon is easy for me to come by, but when I have access to really good oranges I like to make the Citrus-Marinated Roasted Chicken from Fine Cooking. This time I was able to mix the varieties more than usual. Aren't those colors beautiful? I also had a chance to use the cleaver that I acquired a few years ago with supermarket points during a Christmas stay. (That may give an idea of how much we spent that trip, stocking up before leaving the area! Sometimes those supermarket marketing ploys draw me in.) This cleaver makes short work of chicken bones and joints, and is the perfect size and weight for my hand. Alas, I forget just how sharp it is. I have the small finger cuts to prove it - nothing deep, just enough to make their presence known when I'm handling acids. Like citrus juice. By the way - is anyone else seeing mutant-sized shallots this year? Their flavor is good, but their size is astonishing. This is typical of shallots I've seen in the stores since Christmas. The chicken, in my new terracotta baking dish from World Market, just before it went into the oven: While that was roasting I cooked up Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Thyme, as described in the Cooking Light Diet topic. The citrus segments were my own flourish. They wouldn't fit into the baking dish with the chicken. Dinner wasn't especially photogenic, but it was good. The cooked breast meat will figure in tonight's dinner.

Braised Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Thyme last night. This was good, but I didn't like the thyme in it. I may have used too much. Oddly, my darling liked it very much and he is not usually a thyme fan. The instructions were very clear for braising to the tender-crisp point. I thought this was very pretty in the pan! (The citrus was my own addition because I had leftover slices from the citrus chicken I was roasting.) The sprouts did their usual drabbing after the sauce was added, so it wasn't as pretty on the plate. It still tasted good.

Yuma now has a Middle Eastern grocery store! I've been watching that space for at least a year, wondering whether the signs were going up or coming down. Last fall there seemed to be activity. This spring there appeared pennants. Now open! I strolled in yesterday to check it out. There's a deli section and a meat counter. The shelves are pretty well stocked. There are 4 different varieties of zaatar. They have an impressive suite of pickles and spices, as well as canned and dry goods. Best of all, they carry the Greenland feta cheese that we like so much! It isn't as large or as ethnically varied as the Babylon Market in Tucson, but it's only been open about 6 weeks. The people are at least as friendly and helpful as at the Babylon Market. I asked about asafetida, given the current topic on Cooking with Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian India. They didn't have it but were willing to try to get it in. I told them it wouldn't be worth it unless a local asked for it. They did have an impressive selection of Indian teas. I ordered a chicken shawarma sandwich. It was huge. It was very, very good...better than this photo might suggest. I hope they do well with the Yuma Queen market.

I'm sorry you're feeling like the Lone Ranger. I keep bookmarking things, especially based on what you post here. FWIW I have the Chicken Verde Enchiladas up for tomorrow night, and a riff on their Braised Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Thyme for tonight.

Me too! Amazon's about to have a run on the darned things.

What a great idea! I am sooo doing that - perhaps without the honey. Hmm, one of my favorite variations on the classic BLT is to add avocado. I'll bet that cornbread with bacon and avocado would be a good combination. I went shopping yesterday - good thing, since the wind is howling and rocking the trailer today - and picked up more cornmeal as well as some buttermilk. Experiments to continue soon.

It will be at least 3 weeks until I have access to a store that sells asafetida. How important is this particular seasoning? It seems to appear quite often in the recipes. Those pancakes look particularly inviting.

An Avalanche of Avocados One day when I got home from a trip to town (we were still at the ranch at the time) I found a box full of avocados next to the doorstep. Haas avocados. Ripe Haas avocados! I'm not talking about a small box, either: this was about the size of a 2- or 3-gallon bucket. There must have been 6 dozen avocados in there! Our host's tree had started dropping them abruptly due to the previous weeks' cold. He'd shared some with his dad, and then brought a bunch to us. "Don't worry if you can't use them all; they probably won't last long and some may not be all that great," he said. Still. This was a gift not to be wasted, if at all possible. I shared a dozen with our cousins. That left 5 dozen avocados. They've figured heavily in breakfast. They've worked their way into burritos, enchiladas and salads. Still, it's difficult for 2 people to work through that many - especially when my darling is indifferent to them. What to do? I've read that they lose their flavor when they're cooked. I'd heard that they could be frozen, but I couldn't remember where, or whether special steps were needed. One refrigerator drawer's worth was all I could manage in cold storage. It was time for an experiment. I scooped out the flesh of each avocado, working around the parts that were already going black, and packed them in freezer containers. I covered them with plastic wrap to block out any air, and froze them. I kept looking at those containers in the freezer. The green remained green. How would it taste? Would the texture suffer? Today I opened a container to find out. Green color, check. I scooped out some of the frozen flesh and tasted it. Good taste, check. Texture? Well, maybe that's suffered a bit, but it's certainly usable. I added some to tuna with capers, riffing off an idea from the Cooking Light Diet. I don't recommend freezing avocado if you don't have to, but if you are avalanched with them as I was, this isn't a half-bad way to save the bounty.

I've added it to my list, thanks. One of the things I like about the CLD is the array of recipes it throws my way. I'm a big fan of canned tuna, but hadn't considered pairing it with avocado in a salad, as opposed to mixing a tuna salad and putting slices of avocado on the bread separately. I took a page from their Tuna, Avocado and Pickled Onion Sandwich. I hadn't gotten round to making the pickled onion yet, but I had capers. I didn't want a whole sandwich, so I used crackers. How close the calorie count is I don't know, but I'm satisfied and I KNOW the fat and carb count is lower than it would have been with my usual approach to tuna salad sandwiches.