Smithy

There's a huge difference between a Polish dog and the standard hot dog. We aren't Costco members, but you have my sympathies!

I tried it at least once, and have tried it over an open campfire more then once. I don't recall having problems with an overly ashy taste, but I have often had problems with the whole darned thing collapsing so much that there was only a crispy shell! Heat too high, or cooked too long, I figured. If you laid the eggplant on the bare coals, I'd suggest putting it in a pan on the coals next time and elevating it slightly. If you don't want to dirty a pan in the ash, you could make a bowl of that foil. Sorry, I can't guarantee that this will appease your ancestors, since I'm speculating.

That pork roast looks like it will be wonderful. We do something similar in our crock pot, but have never tried adding soy sauce. It's something to consider. Regarding olive oil in mayonnaise: I've tried it a few times and found it to be bitter, even in small amounts. Harold McGee gave a good explanation for that in the Harvard/edX cooking class I took a few years ago. It had to do with breaking up certain compounds in the oil as it was emulsified, and producing a bitter taste. I don't remember more than that; maybe another reader here can speak up.

That is a heck of a deal, and I wouldn't have wanted to resist that! Maybe I can manage a first-Saturday sale event sometime. I'd probably find myself changing out the dinnerware! (Yes, my mug is that same almost-a-pint size.) Interesting that the Ahwanee dishes are so large and heavy, but at that lodge I can see how it would fit and I too would find that bit of history irresistable. I don't know whether they still use that line. My cousin and his wife used to go to their Christmas dinner - a wonderful luxury, from what they told me - but they haven't gone in years and wouldn't be able to shed light on it. Maybe someone else knows whether the china changed when the name changed? For those who might like to know more about the history of the Ahwahnee / Majestic Yosemite Hotel and see some gorgeous architecture, Smithsonian Magazine discusses its history and various refurbishments. On a less sunny note, The New York Times posted an eye-opening opinion piece that uses the name change to the Majestic Yosemite Hotel as a springboard to discuss other names assigned to this and other parks. The issues raised are unrelated to food, restaurants or other topics within the scope of these forums, so I won't try to post a link. If anyone wants to read some sordid history, go look for "Goodbye, Yosemite. Hello, What?" on the NYT's web site. We finished the main part of the Thanksgiving prime rib last night, this being our third meal from it. The ribs remain for another time. I tried the Hasselback Potato Gratin again, with some changes: larger slices, Yukon Gold potatoes instead of russets, considerably more seasoning and cheese, a bit longer cook time. It was better. I liked the way it came out of the baking dish in distinct potato slices, probably because they aren't as starchy as russets. There was way too much of the cream/cheese mixture, so I have the remainder in the refrigerator. I have an idea about using it in the next couple of days. When we went to town a couple of days ago for groceries, I scored a bag of small Bartlett pears. I usually ignore pears in the store; all too often they are mealy and insipid disappointments. This bag looked good.... ...and the first one, at least is the quintessence of pearness: juicy, flavorful, firm without being woody. I tried half of it over my yoghurt, but think it's better on its own. It's a grey day today: overcast, with a bit of wind, and blessedly cool. I think it's supposed to get up into the 70's today. That makes one of us happy! I think I'll be able to bake bread. I have work to do also, but may be able to post more about Tucson later today.

I've lost track, Kerry. Which oven do you have there for baking? That crust looks terrific.

I know exactly what you mean about those gloomy days when the sky is low and grey, and the wind is picking up ... and hoping for a really good snow. I hope you'll post photos if you get it. Thanks for the mayonnaise procedure. I've tried it, gotten it, sworn I wouldn't go back to commercial mayo...and then lost the mojo countless times. It may be that I like that special something in commercial mayo, but mostly I think it's because I don't get the proper consistency. With your tutorial (and thanks also to Kim Shook) I'll give it another (heh) whirl. Happens I emptied a jar of mayo just yesterday, so now is a good time to try. You are making such good use of your Cuisinart Steam Oven! Keep those photos coming!

Self-restraint after the Thanksgiving excesses? :

Hey, I'm pretty sure we have the same Christmas glassware! But mine is at home and out of reach. Enjoy some extra usage on my behalf!

I first discovered Mimbreño dinnerware last April, during a trip through New Mexico. This enchanting dinnerware was originally designed for and used by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad on their passenger trains, in the days when the Fred Harvey Company was running their food service. The designs are based on artwork of the ancient tribes from Mimbres Valley. There's a more thorough writeup on it here, but I have to give credit/blame to @FauxPas for alerting me to the existence of a Tucson pottery place that now makes it. They even have sales! We took a trip one day to the factory. H.F. Coors (established by the younger son of Adolph Coors) is an intriguing place, starting with the old pottery-making equipment out front. The factory is clearly quite large, but the shop is compact and densely stocked. H.F. Coors makes much more china than the Mimbreño pattern with which I was so taken. While I've been drooling online over the stuff I've spotted a couple of other patterns that I also liked, one of which is a close match to some of my serving dishes at home. I went to the shop for one platter - but - well, maybe I knew I was going to go away with two. The smaller one, on the right, is part of the Mimbreño pattern set and is for the trailer. The Mimbreño set has an intriguing variety of patterns: interesting birds, fishes, geometric patterns. (The full lineup is here.) I'd love to acquire place settings of this china for the trailer. It's quite sturdy - according to this article, one sales person used to throw it on the floor to demonstrate how it doesn't readily break. The china is also oven- and microwave-safe, and they claim it can go from the refrigerator to the oven to the table without trouble. Despite its attractiveness and utility I decided I'd done my bank account enough damage for one day. Besides, we really are already well equipped with dishes. A serving platter: okay; service for 4 - well, probably not. At least not all at once. They sell factory tours, and I hope we'll be able to schedule one sometime. The kicker is that the minimum group size is 5, and it can only happen, by appointment, on Tuesdays. It will take some coordinating to make it happen. My darling, knowing how taken I had been with the stuff, made a surprise return visit the next day and bought me an early Christmas present.

Interesting! I wonder if there is some sort of connection. This grocery chain is in Arizona (multiple places) and I think I've run across it in other states. Maybe some retail historian will pop up with a link between the two.

This sounds like one of the hunting trips I went on before my then-boyfriend and I had deer rifles. We carried shotguns with slugs for the deer, as well as shot for the grouse. At lunch time our group sat in a clearing and munched sandwiches, having spent the morning with our friends' dog looking for grouse. P decided to change ammunition and go looking for a deer. (I have NEVER been successful in sneaking up on a deer in the Minnesota woods, but he was an optimist.) He was gone quite some time. On his way back to our clearing, still loaded for deer, he stepped over a log and a grouse erupted at his feet. The loss of opportunity was worth the hilarity, but we were glad to have a pot of chili back at the shack that night. (I wish your hunters far more success!)

That happened to me with a Rival food processor I'd bought, for the princely sum of $40, when I could ill afford it. (Maybe I used birthday money for it. It was still a major splurge.) In my case it was parmesan cheese that was too hard for the spindle. By that time the processor was old enough that the company was out of business and no replacement parts could be had. I'd gotten my use out of the processor, but I've been much more careful of my Cuisinart to avoid repeating that mistake.

Seen on the road to the grocery store: a 3D English version of the Chick-Fil-A billboard. I am easily amused. Seen in the grocery store: a labeler who didn't understand punctuation, or spelling? I was even more amused. Seen outside in the parking lot. It isn't every day you see a palmetto growing in the bottom of the stormwater collection system. The bottom half of this photo, shot between two grate bars, is quite dark - but I had the camera as close as I dared bring it, for fear of dropping it through the grate.

Yay for hunting season and your blogs! It's interesting to see how the season shifts; our Minnesota deer season (rifle) is long since over. I've lost track of whether the archery season is still going. I think pheasant breast could be a good substitute for chicken breast, with possibly more flavor but also more work. I'll be interested to see how that comes out. Documentation as you can on the Asian food please: I buy those things, then can't figure out what to do with them. I'm trying to get better about not making impulse purchases of odd foodstuffs, but I still have a backlog. Blog on!

I mentioned that FauxPas had given me a copy of this book that she'd picked up at a used bookstore: Ryan Clark is a local (Tucson) chef whose training took him away from Tucson and eventually brought him home. He has a fun, easy-going writing style and inventive recipes that encourage one to "play with your food!" and to play with flavors and substitutions to match your own preferences. (He doesn't say that in the baking section. There, he includes comments like 'allow 10 minutes to cool, if you can'. ) The book includes recipes that don't seem terribly unusual but look like good renditions (roasted red pepper hummus; Meyer lemon curd for seared scallops); distinctly Southwestern takes on food (Chorizo roasted pork belly, smoked salmon croquettes with chipotle aioli); downright unusual ingredients (rattlesnake hushpuppies with orange pepper jelly). A fair number of recipes take advantage of modernist equipment, and the beginning of the book introduces and encourages sous vide, handheld smokers and cream whippers such as the iSI. However, this book is plenty accessible even without that equipment. I had a pot of chickpeas simmering on the stove as I perused the book. Chickpeas are very useful, I think, when one is looking for easy and cool food. By the way - if you haven't yet found a good way to prevent boilover from a simmering pot, consider investing in something like this Kuhn Rikon Kochblume spill stopper lid. Works like a charm. I decided that part of the batch of chickpeas would become roasted red pepper hummus, more or less along the lines of his recipe, except that I started with roasted jarred red peppers and freshly cooked chickpeas. I had cubes of lemon juice in the freezer; one came out to thaw. This is good stuff. We've been snacking on it and I doubt it will last long, but with more chickpeas to go and that jar of roasted red peppers not finished it will be easy to make more. Breakfast this morning was avocado and that hummus on a warmed tortilla. I succeeded in wrapping the darned thing tightly enough to make a proper, nondrippy burrito, but was so excited I ate it before remembering to document the feat with a picture.

It is when I see things like this, apparently simply thrown together because the technique is so familiar and ingredients readily available, that I think I really need to work harder at learning to stir-fry and stocking the proper ingredients. I always like the results when I do it, but haven't managed to incorporate the knowledge into my cookery the way you (and @Dejah , and many others here) have. Thank you for the inspiration. I look forward to the rural interesting food report!

Here's the February 20 post. Thanks, JohnT, for the date of the post, to make it easy to find. Perhaps HungryChris will be willing to post it to RecipeGullet also, as suggested.

Do you know if it was wider than the typical 8' width of a vehicle? I don't see how it could have been, back then, but it makes me wonder given the spacious appearance.

It's taken us at least 3 passes through Tucson, but @FauxPas and I and our spouses finally managed to connect! We had a lively behind-the-scenes correspondence, in which she clued me in to more culinary opportunities than could be squeezed into our visit. Next time we go through I'll be better organized to take advantage of the Farmers' Markets. In addition, the Food Truck scene is intriguing. We found an evening and a set of culinary opportunities that worked for everyone. FauxPas and I were all hot to try Molecular Munchies (sorry, the link goes to a Facebook page) for its Modernist techniques and locally-sourced burgers. My darling isn't tuned into modernist food, but he's never met a burger or a beer he didn't like. Molecular Munchies was going to be parked at the AZ Beer House with its dozens of taps and even more bottles. I don't know whether any of it particularly sang to Mr. FauxPas, but he was happy to be the Chauffeur and Designated Driver, and partake of the food truck's wares. They picked us up at the park, and away we went - farther east in Tucson than we generally go, chatting merrily the while. Eventually we found the place - let's hear it for Google Maps - and found a parking spot. As it turns out, the AZ Beer House is not a brew pub, but rather a newly-renovated (and not quite finished with its renovation) former auto shop with a massive variety of beers, ciders, spritzers, sodas and so on. This is the sort of place where people can just hang out visiting, sipping their drinks, reading their e-books. Some patrons had (quiet, well-behaved) dogs with them. Children sat at tables playing board games. We chose a table near one of the doors - those roll-up doors that once allowed vehicles to come in or leave a maintenance stall. We chose that spot partly to be near a door, but mostly because the door was near the Molecular Munchies truck. We went to the bar and made our purchases, then sat and visited, and pondered the food truck menu. I loved the little note in blue at the bottom of that chalkboard. It's faint, so I'll repeat it here: The burgers are cooked sous vide, then finished at the truck. The brioche buns are made by their company also, and were soft and delicious. We each chose a different setup of ingredients: condiments, fries vs. onion rings, and so on. FauxPas and I opted for Sriracha Slices to be added to ours. Its stiff jelly consistency was interesting. As I recall, it packed a sneaky wallop: not very noticeable in the sandwich at first, but then the heat burst in. I liked it. I liked my burger, too - and the onion rings, and the fries. I also ordered deep-fried mushrooms in a Kilt Lifter batter. Those were very good, and have turned me on to a new Arizona ale. I don't know how widely Kilt Lifter is distributed, but I've found it in a few Arizona places since then and hope to continue finding it. I'm anxious to try using it in a beer batter here at 'home'. The last treat of the meal was carbonated grapes. Makes me want to go buy a carbonater now! They took us home, much later than I think they'd intended to be out. We had a grand time and were glad to have such good guides, and have someone else negotiate the traffic after dark. FauxPas gave me a book from a local chef that I've been enjoying; I'll write more about it later.

So I keep saying. My darling, however, is a true desert rat. You'd think we'd have figured out our differences before we got married.... We moved on to Tucson. Ah, Tucson! When Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved from Tucson to a farm in Virginia and then wrote about the experience in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she described Tucson (I paraphrase) as a food desert and utterly artificial way of living. I don't know whether her opinion has changed, but from what we see when we visit there's a thriving local-food scene and a growing movement for environmental awareness. Farmers' Markets abound. Magazines such as Edible Baja Arizona celebrate and encourage the growing Southwestern food tradition and the small artisan operations. I should note that they do not exclusively discuss locally-produced food and wares; they featured the Babylon Market a few years ago. That shop specializes in Middle Eastern foods, with plenty of imports, and is one of our routine stops when we stay in Tucson. We stopped and shopped at the Babylon Market one day, but bought less than usual because we still have stock left from last spring. That's all right, though: we made up for it elsewhere. Spoiler alert: @FauxPas is a world-class enabler and an excellent guide.

That certainly is an impressive interior! I'm not sure how they fit all that in, but I think I'd much prefer their refrigerator to ours. :-)

That's quite the feast! Better looking than what we did in our illicit dorm cookery. It looks like they put their electric kettles to good use, as well.

It seems non-cakey cornbread would be an absolute requirement for madeleines anyway, but I appreciate the assurance that these aren't cakey. If I leave out the sugar that will make them edible to the diabetic in our family. Now, if I can work out a way to omit the egg another member of the family will be able to enjoy them. (Our lot has quite a collection of food problems nowadays.) OTOH I don't want to wreck the recipe. Experiments are in order. :-)

So much for "far from the madding crowd". Right after I posted that comment about avoiding the Black Friday crush and enjoying a quiet morning, the ATV's started cruising by. Fortunately, most of them are considerate and pass slowly and at a distance. This dust cloud didn't reach us. We traveled fairly quickly after Llano, intent on getting far enough west to avoid the capricious Texas "Northers" that can drop the temperature a good 40F in less than an hour. The Texas hill country is lovely: hills and woods, fine picnic areas where one can stop for a night or three (we stayed only one night), and - for better or worse, freeways when one wishes to use them. With apologies to anyone from the area who might be reading, this is my sole impression of El Paso: a spaghetti tangle of freeways to be got through as expeditiously as possible. This doesn't show the traffic snarls we encountered. On the other hand, the bilingual signage can be entertaining. I was especially amused by this Chick-Fil-A sign: It's unfortunately blurry, but it continues the motif of cows encouraging people to "Eat Mor Chikun". In this case, the cows' plea is in wildly misspelled Spanish. Columbus, New Mexico was a good place to stop, reprovision, take advantage of a few days' worth of paid electricity. They also have stunning skies. Breakfasts were typically more of what I've already shown you: in this case the labneh balls on crackers, with avocado: I made more yogurt in the Instant Pot. I fired up the Joule to sous-vide some chicken thighs I'd packed with Hatch hot chiles. Those, combined with leftover pinto beans from Cooper's in Llano, became the basis of burritos one night. That sous vide experiment had a happy outcome: the chicken juices, combined with the chile bits, cooked down in the skillet into a very nice sauce. I'll be doing that again. We also used a container of lovely green chile sauce from a cooking class I'd taken in Duluth last October. Another container gone! We didn't eat out as much as we usually do there, but I dropped in on The Borderland Cafe to see how they were doing, and to bring home some burgers one night. The place looks clean and they say business is hopping. I caught them just before closing, and I hope that's the reason it was empty except for me. I suspect most of the town rolls up between 6 and 7 p.m. The burgers and fries were good, but suffered a bit from being taken home to the park instead of being eaten there. It took me two morning visits to get a couple of their burritos for road food; those sell out quickly as quick portable lunches. The Borderland Cafe folks really know how to wrap a burrito tightly so that it doesn't slop all over. I haven't figured the trick out yet; I suspect it involves much less stuffing than I usually do, and drier stuffing at that. Columbus is a nice place for walks, and I was somewhat sorry that we didn't stay longer, but we were On A Mission to get farther west. We left behind some souvenirs found along the path, and hit the road again.

Is this the eG discussion to which you referred, @Toliver?