Smithy

That's kinda what I was getting at. Just wanted to make sure I understood the message. So yesterday while many of you were dealing with cold, snow and winds, we awoke to an outside temperature of 70F. The peak temperature in the afternoon - both inside the trailer and out - was 95. I had done all the necessary prep work for dinner and lunch during the morning hours. Tabbouleh was the plan for lunch, yesterday and today - and if it lasts, tomorrow. A couple of days ago I began defrosting our last package of shrimp from somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico. I've been saving these huge beauties for butterflying and grilling, or some other treatment ideal for large shrimp. Despite those plans, ceviche seemed in order. (As a side note: freezing shrimp with the ice in which they were packed seems to be an ideal method. It took a couple of days for that interior ice to melt, so the thaw was slow and gentle. These shrimp still smelled delightfully briny and fresh. I felt guilty for tossing the shells, but I already have shrimp broth in the freezer for which I have no plans.) We're out of Mexican limes and didn't have any regular (Persian) limes, so it was nice to have a jar of frozen juice from last year's(!) batch along with us. I reserved a few of the shrimp whole for grilling, and that's going to happen tonight. There was still plenty for the ceviche. Shrimp ceviche and chips: that was dinner, sometime well after dark. There are no dinner pictures. I'll write about my exciting bread preparation and the mess it made later; we're going for a walk before it gets too hot. In the meantime, here's a bit of the local color. If you look carefully at the shoe, in there for size, you'll see a lot of mustard-yellow. That's pollen. The desert is blooming!

Got a more detailed description? My meatballers are my hands.

That sounds like the Duluth (Minnesota) Farmers Markets. They'll also probably have some preserves, honey candles and baked goods - those things that are locally produced but not relying on this year's growth. I'm surprised that Yuma, Arizona doesn't seem to have a farmers' market or three. There's widespread industrial-scale agriculture here (maybe that's a clue) but the markets that I saw 3 years ago seem to have deteriorated (for my purposes only) into giant flea markets. Maybe there's produce sold but I'm not interested in wading through the crowds and traffic to find out. I called the number listed on a website for another local farmers' market and got a restaurant!

A quick search of members from Poland turned up a few, but they haven't posted in a long time. I don't have full information about member locations, though. Here's hoping that if there are others, they make themselves known!

My grandmother's version was "well, bless your gizzard!" She usually was joking but we grew up knowing what it really means.

Welcome, Kasia! It's nice to see someone from Poland join us. Do you like to cook for yourself, or do you prefer other people's cooking? What are some of your favorite foods?

Thanks for those notes. The book is so big it's hard to know where to start, especially among all the pickle recipes. I'm glad to see some recommendations.

I knew I'd seen a microwave method somewhere, but couldn't remember where. Thanks for that; I'll have to compare methods when I have regular microwave access again. Thanks also for posting the page number.

Ah, then perhaps I won't give that one a try? I spotted The Complete Asian Cookbook on Amazon when I was linking to the vegetarian book. Have you cooked much from it?

What a great idea! For those who don't know about the above-referenced post, here's a summary of my first foray into this book. Her Dieter's Eggplant Salad, Italian Style gives a new (to me) treatment of eggplant: cube it and boil the cubes, then drain thoroughly when they're soft. She says to boil it in water with a little lemon and salt, and twice now I've forgotten. I think the lemon would prevent the eggplant from browning. The result, even without the lemon and salt, is a silky, soft (but not mushy) and almost sweet bunch of eggplant chunks. Mix the drained eggplant chunks with other ingredients: chopped tomato, celery, onion if desired, garlic, parsley, chives, capers, salt and pepper, mixed with red wine vinegar. Oil is optional, but if you leave it out you have a filling meal with a trivial calorie count. Put the whole thing over salad greens. Here's my first result: I don't have the book in front of me at the moment. When I can get to it, I'll edit this post to add a page number.

@sartoric, I count myself lucky to have scored this Charmaine Solomon book. I'd never heard of her before, but I like her writing style. I was a bit taken aback by the Hunza Pie recipe, which opens with "Remember when every "alternative liefstyle" resaurant was serving Hunza Pie?" I certainly didn't...and that's when I realized she's from the opposite side of the globe. @kayb, I have to ask: is "God love you" the equivalent of "Bless your heart"? If so, I'll laugh and apologize. Dinner last night was more of the salad, meatballs and adzika, this time all in one bowl apiece. The mess from frying was as bad as before, but fewer dishes needed to be washed.

It is indeed delicious. I've written more about the sauce and the process in this post in the Meatball Cook-off topic. The recipes specifies 4 red chilis (nothing more specific) and I substituted half a jalapeño, some red chili flakes and Aleppo pepper. I think that accounts for my making a multicolored sauce instead of the red paste they describe, but we had no complaints here.

I've been enjoying the cookbook Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & The Caucasus, and my copy is bristling with bookmarks for recipes to try. This topic has spurred me to stop bookmarking and start cooking! There are several recipes for meatballs in it. I chose to begin with "Spicy Meatballs with Adjika and Yogurt". (Those of you still in winter's grip take note: this recipe is in the chapter titled "Warming Food for Long Winters".) Adjika is supposed to be a "spicy and fragrant pepper paste from Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia". Mine came out more like a sauce than a paste, probably because of substitutions due to a shortage of ingredients: this dish calls for 4 red chilis, which I'd forgotten to buy. Instead I used a combination of half a jalapeño, some red pepper flakes and Aleppo pepper. The heat was right for us, but the texture may not have been chunky enough. Even if it isn't quite as the authors intended we liked this condiment very much. I expect to make it more often. The other ingredients are tomatoes, garlic, celery, cilantro, basil, dill, mixed with a small amount of oil and vinegar, then balanced with sugar and salt. Here it is, after I'd finished processing it: The meatballs have an interesting mix of meats and seasonings: ground pork and beef, onion, garlic, barberries, sumac, ground coriander, ground pepper - where they used cayenne I used Aleppo - and salt, bound with a paste made from bread and milk. (I loved finding a recipe that uses barberries!) Shape them, let them rest, then fry. Serve with the adjika and, if desired, yogurt. My photography and presentation skills leave a lot to be desired here, but believe me when I say this is well worth cooking and eating. We discovered that the meatballs and adjika also went well atop the salad shown above, and that constituted dinner the next night: I think these would also go well as a pita filling with greens, the adjika and yogurt. They might cook well over an open fire instead of being fried. I intend to try it.

The trailer is stifling, the dog is puffing like a steam locomotive at high pressure, the cats are flattened heat dissipators, and this human is enervated. (The other human likes the heat, but admits it's a bit over the top.) In a few short days the temperatures have gone from the 60's (F) to the 90's. It's almost as hot inside as out, and when the breeze dies it's nearly unbearable. We can't move yet: our truck is in for repairs, and we're using a loaner. All of this means an abrupt change to cooking strategy. I've lost track of the glasses of water, tea and lemonade I've consumed during the day. Any food prep needs to be done in the morning before the kitchen gets too hot. I'm not usually an early riser unless it's demanded by circumstance, but this weather has taught me a new reason for an early start! We've used the campfire for cooking some nights; we've used the kitchen stove others (with my language as torrid as the trailer) because it's too warm to want a fire. The camp stove is set up and may be pressed into use tonight. I'm out of my sourdough bread and pita, but it isn't likely to happen for a few days. We'll use the store-bought soft whole wheat loaf. Salads are playing a prominent role. Charmaine Solomon's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, included in a goodie basket I won in a silent auction last December, has a surprising treatment of eggplant: dice it, then boil it, then drain it and use in salad. I'd never heard of this treatment before. I love eggplant but have trouble controlling the oil intake when I fry it. When I brush it with oil and broil, all too often it ends up with charred or toasted slices. Roasting, then stuffing it or creaming it has been my usual method to cook it. This looked new. Solomon's recipe for "Dieter's Eggplant Salad, Italian Style" calls for eggplant, treated as above, mixed with chopped tomatoes, onion, chives, herbs, celery, garlic, capers, salt and pepper. Mix with red wine vinegar - and a bit of oil only if desired. Pour over greens, and serve. It's very good. Boiling the eggplant collapses and sweetens it in a way I hadn't expected. It has a nice texture: soft and almost silky, but not mushy. Overall, this is a very good salad (we're having it again tonight). Here's one iteration: We worked out a way to make it even better. Naturally, it involves meat and fat. Read on! I've been looking at meatball recipes in light of the eG Cook-off 75: Meatballs topic, and several recipes from the beautiful book Samarkand have caught my eye. One in particular, Spicy Meatballs with Adjika and Yogurt, looked good. I have bought and enjoyed barberries many times, but this is the first time I've seen them specified in a recipe. In this heat it took me 2 days: mix the meat ingredients and the sauce on one day, then form and cook the meatballs the next. The adjika is a spicy red pepper paste (it says in the book) that looks more like a sauce to me, but I had to make some ingredient substitutions. It is delicious, and I can easily see it becoming part of our regular condiment selection: chiles, tomatoes, garlic, celery, cilantro, basil, dill, oil, red wine vinegar, sugar and salt. Here's a top view: The meatballs are a mix of ground pork, ground beef, chopped onions, barberries, sumac, coriander, pepper, salt, and a binder of bread and milk. Form them and fry them, with or without florid language. Top with sauce... ...and yoghurt, if you like it. I do. We discovered, about halfway through dinner, that these meatballs and sauce are good on their own but BRILLIANT on the above-mentioned eggplant salad.

Those are pomegranates?? They look unlike any I've ever seen. Please tell more about them. Are the green lemons green as in 'unripe', or is that their ripe color? Can you describe how their flavor might differ from that of standard sour (Eureka or Lisbon in the USA, not sure about in China) lemons?

@shain, do the lupines have food value? They're beautiful flowers (we have many varieties in the USA) but I don't know anything about growing them for other than ornamentation.

The pocket method looks worth trying. Thanks for that link!

I hear ya. I've been experimenting with that approach, with mixed success. My biggest problem is pounding the breast thin enough. I may be starting with too-large chicken breasts; my last two attempts resulted in gargantuan rolls that were almost too unwieldy to tie. Pound, try to roll; pound more, roll, tie, SV...then brown before serving, and slice. We have liked the results - that is, thought the taste was well worthwhile - but presentation has been unimpressive. I seem not to have kept any photos to show what I mean. When you cook those rollups, then cut them in cross-section, do you have enough overlap on the roll to make a spiral, or is it more like a ring of chicken with a filled center?

That's not a promise; that's a threat. Please keep going! I'm especially entranced with the curry meatballs above, and have put them on my must-try list. The purpose of this topic is to provide folks with new ideas, and you're doing an outstanding job.

The rolls look like a nice use of that meat, FP. In my limited experience (so far) with sous vide chicken breasts I've had similar experiences. I very much like the texture, moisture and flavor of that meat for things like chicken salads, but it seems...wrong, somehow...straight up, even though it looks good. I think the texture may be too tight for my tastes, if that makes any sense.

Following up on the pork prime rib roast: last night's dinner used the remaining half. A quick sear on the outside, then into a warmish oven to finish cooking. I can't remember now, but I think I cooked the vegetables first then set them aside until the roast was nearly done. We both agreed that this was a good and flavorful way to do the pork - it didn't dry out. Today was a grocery-shopping day, and whatever progress I'd made on clearing refrigerator shelves has been unmade. (The "before" picture is on the bottom, and it doesn't show how empty those drawers were!) In our defense, we haven't been shopping for at least two weeks, and aren't likely to do so again for another two. We did a pretty good job of sticking to the list, although a few strays made it into the shopping basket. This did not make it into our basket, but gave us pause: Is this an advert for the importance of spelling, or of punctuation?

Chris, would another dried fruit work in those? I too am not crazy about raisins, but dried cherries or cranberries get fairly frequent use in our household.

I'd be willing to try something like that, although I personally am not a fan of garlic powder and would probably use minced scallions (or garlic) instead. Other additions could be preserved lemon, parsley, and/or olives. You could take it in a different direction by adding diced tomatoes, olives, capers, basil, olive oil, salt, pepper and grated parmesan cheese to the rice. (Rice puttanesca, anyone?) Add some finely chopped salami to the mix if you think you need meat. By the way: welcome to eGullet!

What glorious-looking sausages, @Steve Irby! We were on a sausage-making kick for a while, got sidetracked and haven't gotten back to it. The texture of yours looks perfect. It's strange how much more I appreciate sausage texture and structure, after trying for myself.

Lunch, using almost the last of the greens. More to the point, I want to show these labni balls that I picked up at the Babylon Market last fall in Tucson. The little cheeses are rolled in a bit of red pepper - enough for a little kick, but not enough to suggest a demolition crew - and then stored in vegetable oil. I hope we can buy more when we go back through Tucson.