Smithy

@kayb, I'm very impressed. I struggle keeping the weeds under control in a 4 x 5 raised flower bed.

We've moved eastward again a whopping 50 miles, closer to Tucson. Yesterday was a shopping day: stocking up on supplies, finding a hardware store, visiting the Babylon Market to stock up on their specialty items. We bought a bunch of the Greenland feta (Danish white, really) cheese, labneh by itself and labneh balls in oil, barberries, bulgur, some spices. Their stock is often different from one visit to the next. I couldn't find the labneh balls with pepper that I've been enjoying - which jar is almost empty - but they had a different brand with a thyme coating. I hope we like it as well. It may not have the kick of its predecessor, but we both like zaatar and I've been on my own with the pepper-coated version. We lunched outside, munching on their wonderful gyros. We bought tabbouli for later. I still think their tabbouli is the best I've ever had. It has much more parsley than mine and - I suspect this is just as important - much less bulgur. I'm glad I bought more of theirs so I could make a visual comparison. In keeping with my generally-ill-kept promise to myself not to stock up more than necessary, we stuck to the shopping list...until, that is, we were waiting for our lunch and I began perusing the fresh breads. Bags of very large, very fresh-smelling, very soft and flexible flatbreads were near the checkout counter. "What's this bread, please, and what do you do with it?" I asked. "Oh," said the clerk, "that is the bread that we Iraqis use. It's made fresh every day and brought here." He is brother to one of the owners, and a former local chef. He's also a good salesman. He went on to explain that they use the bread as a base for meals. One example is to drizzle oil over the bread, spread cooked fava beans (what I know as fool medames) over it, then add - oh, cheese or parsley or scrambled eggs. He showed me pictures. He noted that a particular Iraqi herb goes well with the beans. "And it's good for the digestion, too!" Nobody in the store knew what to call it in English. He opened a container to let me smell. It had a dry, pleasant, rather cool odor, like eucalyptus without the menthol note. What was that tantalizing smell? "It smells a bit like mint," I said. "Na' na?" "Yes," he cried, "mint! Na' na! Except not really mint." (According to this blog post, it's "wild mint". Any further information would be appreciated.) I paid an extra $11.40 for my new materials (including 2 cans of cooked fava beans), collected our lunch order, and left with his assurances to please call if I had any questions about how to cook the dishes we'd discussed. I had questions later, but by the time I called he'd gone home for the day. The resulting dinner was a photographic disaster, and I've destroyed the evidence. Breakfast this morning, however, was better: leftover burrito filling wrapped up in this bread, warmed, with labneh and tabbouli. Waleed told me that the bread can be cut into smaller sizes, sealed in bags and frozen, and I'm sure I'll be doing that with some of it. As it stales it'll make wonderful fattoush. I'm also looking forward to using it in panini or quesadillas.

Thanks, everyone, for the good responses. Next time I'll have a better system.

We've been taking advantage of this campground hookup to do intensive computer and printer work that needs steady electricity but has nothing to do with food. Consequently, many of our meals have been microwaved leftovers, or salads made from things I'd cooked in the desert. The campfire eggplant became baba ghanou and also went into a mixed salad. Oddly, the elements of the mixed salad are all things that go together in some combination: eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and onions with a dressing; bulgur, tomatoes, parsley, cucumbers and onions with that same dressing. Including both the bulgur and the eggplant seems a bit much. Still, it's a filling salad. It's especially filling when accompanied by half a sandwich, tahini, asparagus, baba ghanou and a pickle. I think I'm still working on the same jar of pickles we had when we left home. I'll have to rethink pickle stock before our next trip. At the other end of the usage spectrum: we are almost out of citrus from the ranch visit at Christmas. Woe is me! Maybe I can find citrus at some farmers' market in Tucson.

Gorgeous! It all looks delicious!

I have a question about sous vide cooking that I did 2 days ago and finished yesterday. I bagged a tri-tip steak and cooked it at 120F for around 6 hours two nights ago, then chilled it thoroughly. Yesterday afternoon I removed it from the refrigerator and (I thought) allowed it to come to room temperature while I assembled other elements for our dinner: relish of cooked onions and red peppers as well as smoked peppers; fresh tomatoes; shredded cheese; cilantro; tortillas. The intent was to dry, season and sear the tri-tip in a very hot pan to get good browning, but still have a rare interior. That's one of the benefits of sous vide, yes? The pan began almost dry, with the barest film of oil. (I had oiled the meat before adding a rub.) The left-hand photo above was taken after the meat was browned and while the interior was warming; the bag juices went into the pot at that point. The meat's interior took much longer to rewarm than I'd anticipated. It doesn't look overdone (by much) in the right-hand photo above, but take a look at the collage below: We had no complaints about the taste or texture, but I'd have liked it rarer. It cooked too much during the rewarming phase. Next time, what should I do differently if I have to cook in advance? Rewarm in the sealed bag, using sous vide circulator, before the sear?

One of the amenities of this KOA campground is Frankie's Chuckwagon Steakhouse. They're open Wed - Sun from 4 to 8 p.m. during the high season (generally October through April), and they do enough of a land-office business that reservations are strongly recommended, even for folks staying at the campground. They do outstanding steaks - better than we do them, I think (my darling thinks that's impossible) - and I was determined to eat there as we'd done twice or thrice last year. In front of the restaurant is the realio, trulio Santa Maria grill on which those steaks (and many other meats) are cooked. This is the real deal, kept in good working order: the grill adjusts up or down as needed to maintain temperature, and lifts high enough to add more wood. The grill masters keep the fire quite hot, without being able to tell me the temperature at the grate; they faithfully use instant-read thermometers to determine the doneness of the meat. They belong to the "flip it frequently" camp of steak grilling, and I may become a convert based on their results. Inside the restaurant there are 9 tables and a rustic atmosphere: plywood walls are branded with local ranch brands - some over 100 years old. Frankie and Jerry, the original owners of this campground, are friends with the local ranchers and have a strong sense of the area's history. Maybe tonight I'll remember to take interior photos. The menu includes items other than steaks and burgers: Their wine and beer list are limited, but the wine pours are generous. The waitress noted that the winery may not be taken for granted (for instance, they weren't serving Vendange wines that night) but that the varieties were all available. I had a Cupcake Shiraz. Actually, I had two. How often have you been served a "garden fresh salad" of sad, semi-limp iceberg lettuce from a bag, with stale croutons, tasteless tomatoes and too-sweet dressing? This isn't one of them. They make their salads fresh every day, starting with whole heads of iceberg. They make their own salad dressing. This salad is crunchy, crisp and fresh-tasting, and the ranch dressing is light and creamy, with a slight tang. My darling had the butterflied shrimp, with cheesy potatoes and a jalapeno cole slaw that has a pleasant kick. This was a half-order of shrimp. He was glad he hadn't ordered more. I had the ribeye, medium rare. It was perfect. The fries were perfectly crisp and flavorful. I know you've already seen the salad, but it deserves to be included twice...it was that good. It was entirely too much food, as we knew it would be. Half the steak and both rolls came home with us, and we made sandwiches the next day.

Is that scrapple? Edit: never mind, Anna's answered....

Pearls Before Swine: the strip itself isn't food related, but check out his tweet on the same page: ...something healthy to eat in Nashville.

I can't speak to trends, but speaking for myself I'd say that if any given video is to be longer than around 5 minutes there should be a compelling reason for it. A "tourist" video that describes a product and its background - what it looks like, the region it comes from, and some of the people and sights of that region (if possible) - is an example of something that I think should be relatively short. A "how-to" video giving in-depth instruction - say, to make a specific type of cake or bread - would probably be justifiably longer. An overview or introductory video might be a great way to start. I like your idea of a series. I also like ElsieD's suggestion about pannetone.

What's stuffed into those peppers, @sartoric? Looks like perhaps some cheese (what type?) and what else?

Someday, I'm going to try nettle. It isn't as though I've never seen it in the fields, but I've never worked with it!

@liuzhou, do you have a meat grinder of some sort at home, or did you mince the meat just using a knife or two? If the latter, I admire your determined energy given your recent incapacitation.

The job description is posted here, in Culinary Classifieds. Thank you for including a reference for an additional web site.

It was time to move on. We need to start working our way homeward. The unlikely green carpet of the desert has dried to crackling brown, although the bushes and shrubs are still doing well. Our shoes, once painted mustard yellow with pollen from wading through that greenery,... ...are clean again. We've done our share of spreading the pollen about on the desert floor. Despite my whinging about the heat, we'll miss the quiet of the wash nearby, with its bird song and occasional leaf-rustling breezes. We've had the privilege of seeing a full-blown desert superbloom. The blossoms we had celebrated are fading, but some new blooms are starting that we'll be sorry to miss. Honey mesquite, hitherto unnoticed, caught our attention with the sweet perfume of its new blossoms. Maybe it's velvet mesquite. Anyway, it's almost citrus-sweet, and I never knew that smell before this year. We cooked over the campfire one last night for this location, and divided our time between watching the stars and watching the fire as it burned down. I think we saw more than a dozen satellites, as well as the ISS, in under an hour. Then it was a simple dinner. I gave a nod to the alliteration (for "extra points") in the Challenge: cook your way through your freezer topic, and came up with Bacon, Brats, Brussels Sprouts and Spuds. (The bacon was seasoning the sprouts and spuds, but needed to be listed first for the alliterative connection.) While I was at it I blistered and softened 3 eggplants over the fire. The next day I peeled them and stowed the flesh in a little lemon juice. They're quite soft. Half has already gone into baba ghanoug thanks to some tahina sauce I'd made the other day; the other half will probably go into an Egyptian salad, but I haven't made up my mind yet. Sultan's Delight is also a lovely thing, but it's more work and more calories. The peeled and softened stuff may not look like much, but it's silky and good, just waiting for other ingredients to make it downright delicious. This is a wonderful way to use excess cooking heat. We've moved on eastward, to a commercial campground outside Tucson. We've traded the quiet and birdsong of the wash for the noise of a freeway; satellite and star watching for neighbors' party lights. It's a bit of a reentry shock. Still, we had a good view last night of the barest sliver of a new moon: and, when we were ready to come inside, a dinner of breaded and oven-roasted pork steak with tomato/cucumber salad. ...and Yippee! We have 110v power without starting the generator!

When you show the pattern she was trying to make, are you referring to the white spiral, or to the straight but ragged-lipped slash across the top? The spiral wasn't made by cutting. The straight slash was.

I'm in awe of the entire trip, and glad you're posting about it. Many thanks! If I were to see those glasses, that plate and spatula, I'd have to take them home too. Have you blown your luggage weight limit yet? What is the ambient noise like? It looks like you're frequenting pedestrian malls so there isn't much traffic noise. Do I have that right, or is it your skilled photography that makes it so? Do you have to shout over others' voices, or over blaring music, to order your food?

Persimmon is so full of pectin that if you mash it, cook it and let it cool it'll set up like a pudding on its own. I've done that with just a little cream added, and thought it was pretty good. Those look like Fuyu persimmons, which are sweet and not at all tannic when ripe (unlike the Hachiya persimmons that were our only option when I was growing up) so you can also eat the ripe ones out of hand. I've done that, and I've added them in fruit salads. If I had a lot of ripe Fuyu persimmons I'd also give a go at charring slices of them over the grill along with a selection of meats and vegetables. I've never tried that but it seems worth trying. As for the unripe persimmons: I'd try a pickle or a chutney with those. Somewhere I have a bunch of persimmon recipes from the 1940's that I always intended to post here lest they be lost. If I can find them(!), I'll start a topic on it.

@paulraphael, I just discovered this old post. Would you elucidate, please? I'm not sure whether you meant that the tart can be taken off its bottom plate and put directly on a griddle for rewarming, or put plate and all on the griddle. If it's to be taken off the plate, do you need a special piece of equipment (say, a very large spatula) to move it around? I'm envisioning a tart that's 8" - 10" diameter, and that sounds unwieldy unless it's still on the plate. Or are you talking about small, hand-sized tarts?

I Do Not Need Any More Cookbooks. I keep saying that, and acquiring them anyway for one very good reason or another. $0.25 at the library book sale. One quarter of a dollar! Well, of course I couldn't pass it up. (Payment goes into an honor box. Since I'd just spent 3 very comfortable hours using their electricity and air conditioning I overpaid a bit.) This book looks like fun. Chapters are by month; subchapters are holidays or parties or festivals. There are plenty of photos and descriptions of each occasion, followed by recipes ranging from the savory (Pecan-Crusted Rabbit with Wilted Greens and Creole Dressing) and spicy (Jalapeño Corn Bread) to the sweet (Chocolate Chess Pie, Chocolate Coeur à la Crème, and Three-Chocolate Bark with Spiced Pecans and Dried Cherries are under Valentine's Day). Name a southern US party occasion, and you'll find a food to fit. Heck, I've already gotten my money's worth out of it, for the entertainment of looking through it.

*bump* When this topic was last active, frittatas were unusual enough that many of us had never made them. In rereading this topic I see discussion about what defines a frittata, and how the definitions are different in Italy, its original home, and the United States. That was 10 years ago. The food landscape has changed greatly, thanks to the expansion of the internet and TV. Last night I used a frittata to rescue cooked collards that I knew wouldn't pass muster in the household - not because they tasted bad, but because the other household human objects to cooked greens on principle. (I can't claim credit for the idea; thanks go to @kayb.) It was a delicious way to make refrigerator space as well as rescue those collards. Frittatas are going back into my regular rotation of food. How about you? How common do you think frittatas are now? Do you cook them often? Do you use a recipe, or a general formula, or just throw things together?

It really is a good book, kayb. It's the sort of book that is entertaining to read regardless of whether one cooks from it. The few recipes I've tried from it have been good. I'm still having trouble cooking from an ebook and tend to use it less than I might if it were a physical book. Thank you for the frittata recommendation! It was a good opportunity for a one-pan meal on a night when it was raining(!) and blowing and cool enough for us to appreciate having the oven on. Asparagus, roasted peppers, onions (two types), bacon and the collards, surrounded by eggs, milk and cheese - what wasn't to like? It was a one-pan meal except for the prep dishes, and we both loved it. The collards were unobtrusive but added a nice flavor that I could detect because I was looking for it. We'll have the leftovers sometime today. Edited to add: leftovers for breakfast. Here's a better photo of the finished product.

We rode in the heat one day to a campground with a small store, interesting history, and quirky architecture. One resident has cobbled together a fence from downed wood found along the washes, with occasional junk decorating the top. I had a bee in my bonnet about getting a Klondike bar before we leave the area for the year. There arose a terrible dilemma: what flavor of Klondike to pick? I didn't know they made Rocky Road, Caramel Swirl, Cookies'n'Cream...in the end, we both chose the classic. The ocatillo are blooming, about a month later than usual. The blossoms look like birds of paradise perched atop every branch. The hummingbirds love them. Campfire cooking has been the order of the day, for many days. Papa's pan has been instrumental in vegetable cookery over the fire. A grill basket has done yeoman's work for grilling chicken, burgers, or - in this case - pork steaks. These steaks weren't quite done enough, and it was a shame because they were gorgeous in the package. A little microwaving took care of the doneness, but didn't help with the texture. The solar 'oven' has been in use for light vegetable cooking, vegetable rewarming and defrosting. Last time we went to the grocery store I overbought vegetables, and a bunch of collards has been reproaching me from the refrigerator every time I looked in. The outer leaves were starting to yellow. I knew I wouldn't soon be ambitious enough to do the dolmades described here by @blue_dolphin but couldn't bring myself to throw them away without at least trying to do something with them. Yesterday the green leaves (stemmed and cut into squares) went into the solar cooker with a touch of water, some onion and oil. The result: Okay, it doesn't look pretty but they're nicely wilted and taste reasonably good. I'm not sure I'll get them past my darling without further disguise. Got any suggestions about what to do with them? I can spice them up as in the gingered collards discussed here but that still won't get past the "Eww! Cooked greens!" reflex. Mix them into a pilaf or an omelet, perhaps? Fry them up with potatoes, my original thought? Or is this a lost cause? In other news: the heat finally broke today and I defrosted the freezer again. Look at all the space! It would be nice to arrive home with so little to move back into the house, but it will probably just mean more room to load up on shrimp if we make it back to the Gulf Coast. Note, also, that I'm not showing the contents of the refrigerator.

This may not be new, exactly. I've seen and read about things like this before and thought they were bound to be useless. However, earlier this week I was in Bed, Bath and Beyond with a 20% Off Entire Purchase burning a hole in my pocket. I was looking for, oh, a food processor or kitchen scale that I couldn't resist. I didn't find anything big or even pricey, but I found this: Huh. $5. Worth a try. (No, I did not use the wonderful coupon to bring it down to $3. I still have hopes for that coupon.) 5 bucks seemed a small enough risk for another gadget that might or might not work. It made short work of the parsley for that night's dinner: much shorter than my painstaking finger technique, and much neater than my slapdash knife technique. Next time I have kale or collards, I'll post about it here.

@sartoric, that Charmaine Solomon cookbook has an interesting set of cuisines: Thai, Indian, Asian and ... Cajun?! She really jumped the ocean there, didn't she?