Smithy

Well done, @LucyInAust! I hope you show us the finished project. This has been a cliff-hanger for me.

It's morning in America. Appropriately misty here. We stumped around for much of the day, doing chores and riding bikes and reading news and then going back outside. I decided to try a couple of recipes I'd been wanting to try, and to make another stab at the sourdough rosemary loaf I like. This Food52 recipe for Brussels Sprouts Caesar has been bookmarked for a while. We both like sprouts but I'd say I have about 2 ways to do them, neither reliable. When I get them right, the sprouts taste good. When I don't, the bitter comes out and I wonder why I bother. We like Caesar Salad. This might be wonderful. First up, let me say that a food processor (something I didn't bring) would have been most welcome. Ever try mandolining 2 pounds of sprouts? I used the food pusher and a cut-resistant glove, and got through with no bloodshed, but it was a pain. Next up: I realized that I didn't have anchovies - not even anchovy paste. Well, we had bottled Caesar dressing. We'd use that for proof of concept. The bread dough came together and rose nicely. I wanted to follow up on @Kerry Beal's suggestion to use cast iron or a dome over the loaf. None of my baking stones fits in this oven, but I have a cast iron grill pan from last spring, and cast iron pots. I decided to try putting the dough in a preheated cast iron pot; the technique seems to work well for @Anna N. In retrospect, I should have read more about it to refresh my memory. It looks pretty from the top, no? But the oven spring wasn't good, and the bottom nearly burned. I think the oven wasn't hot enough, but I also think the bread needed to have come out of the pot after the shape had set. I have had problems with shaping this dough in the past. Maybe I'll stick with the batard shape, or try a loaf pan. The flavor was good, though...except at the very crisp bottom. I love scallops when they're done properly, and I am forever trying to get them right. We were in a mood for self-indulgence, so I thawed the scallops I'd been saving for a special occasion (purchased in Duluth) and got ready to try Sea Scallops With Brown Butter, Capers and Lemon from the New York Times. I had capers and lemon, and always have butter. This was a fun and easy recipe. I was downright hangry by the time dinner went on the table, and almost didn't bother with photos. After we had a couple of bites I realized that the scallops were well worth doing. We mopped up the sauce with the bread, and would have licked the plates otherwise. As for the sprouts: well, I actually don't like that bottled Caesar dressing of his, but the proof of concept was good. Next time (and I have a LOT of shredded sprouts left over) I'll make the dressing and the croutons. Time for another grocery run, to get some anchovies. And at twilight in America, the fish were jumping and feeding. One fish kept flopping just to tease a fisherman - who didn't get a bite but could see that fish flopping around. Do fish fin their noses? The rings they left on the water made beautiful interference patterns.

I bought this Peugeot electric pepper grinder for my darling in 2010 and it's still going strong. It's his favorite pepper grinder because it has a generous output and he can use it one-handed - very practical for handheld foods like corn on the cob. The light in the base helps see where one is peppering in low light conditions. I can't speak to its adjustments because he prefers a coarse grind. It's pretty easy on the batteries. I think we change them once, maybe twice a year - and this gets used at least one meal each day.

I love the creative cocktail names. That food all looks good. Now I'm pining for mussels. Thanks so much for the wharf shots, too! I've only been to Pike Place Market a couple of times, but it was a hoot.

Batesville, Mississippi, is a smallish, pretty-looking town that is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year. Its main street has a neat, kept-up look that invites one to wander the block or two worth of shops. We went into a hardware store that, although it didn't have what we were after, had an impressive range of offerings. Hand-crank meat grinders were the first things I spotted. If I'd needed any canning supplies I could have gotten them there. The best grocery store is out on the highway, in a busier area. Piggly Wiggly is an older grocery store chain that has disappeared from my neck of the woods. Here, they're keeping up with the times. The old store site, with its funny pig logo, looks closed. The new store has forgone the logo in favor of lettering only, but the logo lives on in their posters and ads. The interior is clean, bright and spacious. They have an excellent produce section, and we spent time admiring the murals as well as the produce. We picked up brussels sprouts and breakfast fruit, then moved on to the meat section. My darling is always especially interested in seeing what regional specialties we can find, and they had an impressive selection. I was especially interested in this display, far from the refrigerated bins: I guess I knew that country ham didn't need to be refrigerated before cutting, but I didn't realize that it could be vacuum packed and stored without refrigeration afterward. We came home with these meats: The sandwich and biscuit slices sounded especially interesting to me. Guess I'll have to make some biscuits now. I could use some advice here. The back of the package gives cooking instructions. It doesn't say anything about soaking the ham, but it's cured with a LOT of salt. Am I supposed to soak it first, or would that be heresy? What say you country ham experts?

I grew up with cornflower Corning too, and let most of it go when my parents downsized. I've occasionally regretted not having it, after my husband brought a piece or two to our marriage and I rediscovered its value. This piece is an especially useful size and shape for us. The garage sale at which I found the Corning piece also yielded a small set of calibration weights ranging from 1g up to 100g. I've always wondered whether my cheapo kitchen scales are accurate, and with this set I was able to establish that they are. Total cost for the weights and the Corningware: $3. If I could have worked out a way to get their soapstone lab table home (and a place to put it) it would have been a much more expensive outing.

All this discussion about grapefruit spoons (yes, I have some) and knives (new to me) reminded me of the peach pitting spoon my parents found for me at a garage sale one year after a massive canning session at my house. I'd never heard of one before then, but I use it a lot on clingstone fruits. Here's a USA source: Stainless Steel Pitting Spoon at kitchenkrafts.com.

Good idea, thanks. Would a stainless mixing bowl discolor in the oven heat? Otherwise I have some cast iron that may fit.

For tastings, what about something edible along the lines of pretzel sticks? One of our markets does that for their salsas, jams and other condiments. I'm not much of a jam-and-pretzel stick fan, but for getting the idea of the flavor it works. Cash is of course preferable for all concerned, but what about checks? Is your venue too large and potentially dishonest for that?

It's been a month or two since I made bread. Two days ago I decided it was time, since we'd be 'home' and I had time to putz in the kitchen. This was my first test of bread-baking in the new trailer oven. I would expect a gas oven to maintain a more steady temperature than an electric oven. My baker's oven thermometer suggests that I'm wrong about that, but we were pretty happy with this loaf. The crust was soft - I'd like to get the hang of the crackle and haven't got there yet - but it made a good accompaniment to an otherwise disappointing dinner. Sourdough rosemary olive oil loaf. (Yes, I brought along my starter.) Hmm, I hadn't realized just how blurry that photo was until just now. Symbolic of how the night went, I fear. The next day - yesterday - most of that loaf became sandwiches. Here's some of the chicken salad and the braised tri-tip I wrote about earlier. I made a sandwich of each type, and we split them. I'll tell about our trip to town in another post.

Airline food is typically sad, in my experience. It didn't used to be that way, and I've seen exceptions recently with foreign carriers, but I usually buy something at great extravagance in the terminal to eat on the airplane.

Your creativity and flexibility do you credit. We started out with a camper on the back of our pickup, and like you had a tiny fridge and stove. We had a camp stove to set up an outdoor kitchen if we were to stay longer. I go through phases of stir-fry, but am married to a burgers-or-hot dogs sort of guy, who professes to love the stuff I cook but frequently chooses the Large Hunk O' Meat or a crockpot stew. We're in one of those phases right now. Please add some of your travel food and photos! We can be glamping together in different countries!

Shelby, I like the way you think! Let me add your name to the list of enablers among our membership. Thanks for the reminder about the grease atop cabinets. That happens at our house, but I hadn't thought to protect the tops of these. The very topmost center cabinet actually has lighting along the top that may not be amenable to being covered, but the two basket-shelf cabinets can accommodate some plastic protection. Porthos, you're right about shelves, although neither of us is enough of a carpenter to do it well. One of my nephews has been busily outfitting his family's trailer with shelves (he thinks shelves are left out to keep the weight and cost down) but he is a master carpenter. When I asked whether he'd take on our trailer he made it plain that we'd have to leave it with him in Minneapolis for an indefinite period of time while he worked on it. We settled for tubs. At some point I'll show the fully-loaded cabinets and the stacking and arranging that goes on. My darling's daughter was responsible for some of our convenience foods; her family came to help with wood-cutting chores before we left, and nothing would do but she had to do all the cooking. She cooks enough for an army, and does it well, and her family refuses to eat leftovers! So the night before we left Horseshoe Lake, when I wanted to minimize dishwashing, I pulled out a package of frozen stuffed peppers. Those of you who detest green bell peppers may wish to avert your eyes. They aren't my favorite either, but in this context they were good: stuffed with rice and ground meat and (she swears) Italian seasoning, although the seasonings taste far more Mexican than Mediterranean to us. The shredded cheddar topping is a good finishing touch. This nice little Corning dish was a treasure I picked up for 50 cents at a garage sale this summer. I'd never seen a small rectangle like this; it's perfect for our 2-person meals. When push came to shove I was NOT going to leave it behind this trip, so I shoved it into a cupboard cranny. Lest you think we've abandoned fruit, I'll show the breakfast fruit salad that usually accompanies his cereal. (I'm more of an apple-and-avocado person, myself, but it isn't as pretty.) I'm not sure either of us ate anything so healthful today, but that's another story. Humbug. Pass the wine.

Thanks for the enthusiastic welcome-back, everyone! I'd thought this topic might be getting old, so encouragement is nice. @suzilightning, you really should arrange to come visit us in Duluth during the hawk migration some year. @IowaDee, I hear ya. If I hadn't had a corkscrew last night I'd have been up to bottle-breaking myself. @Porthos, yes, we plan to get into Southern California again, not sure yet when. @Shelby's lovely compliment on the kitchen is a great lead-in to some of our challenges. Yes, we like the looks of it, but check out these cupboards: Notice how few shelves there are? Most of the cupboards are 12" wide and either 12" tall or 26" tall (with no shelf). Some of the 12x12 cupboards that aren't shown here are 23" deep. We've had to resort to a lot of tubs and containers to store things. There are 3, count 'em 3, small drawers for flatware, prep tools and the like, so things are hanging or stored in unlikely spots. It does look nice, but I still feel as though I'm playing a memory-concentration game : where the heck did I put xxx? Did I forget to pack it? We spent a few days at Horseshoe Lake, a conservation area in southern Illinois. When I think of the Land of Lincoln I generally think of Chicago, and think of Illinois as a northern state. However, this state is quite long, and by the time you're near Cairo you're very close to the Old South. We saw our first magnolia tree for the trip, and this cypress swamp: For dinner one evening I pulled out a package of shrimp from the freezer - as in, shrimp we'd bought in Texas last spring. (I really do hoard too much food.) There was wild rice from our northern area, and the last of the tomatoes that we'd harvested before leaving. Some of the tomatoes had ripened; some were still green. All got chopped up to go with the shrimp. As I started to cook I ran into another memory game. "I KNOW I packed garlic, at least 9 heads!" I stormed, as I opened and closed every cupboard - more than once - in vain. Finally it came to me: the garlic was in a basket. ...this basket... which has squash as well. The other basket, buried in the shadows, carries onions. In case it isn't clear, these are high ceilings. We have a small step stool in the kitchen and a 3-step tall folding ladder in the garage. I won't be needing a stairmaster in this trailer! The shrimp and rice, cooked: and plated. It was worth the exercise.

It's a new season, and a new set of wheels. I'll miss the old kitchen, its appliances and storage - especially the pull-out spice rack. For a variety of reasons, we traded the old Princessmobile for a new one this summer. The new 'palace' is sturdier and slightly larger, with a separate room that serves as a dining room, a guest bedroom or a garage for our cycles, depending on how it's set up. The main living area is therefore smaller, and the kitchen is tiny. The kitchen will be a challenge. I'll also miss the exhaust hood that vents to the outside. Don't ever let someone convince you that a recirculating hood is as effective as one that exhausts outside. Nonetheless, that's what we have now. I'll miss having a dedicated dining table in the same area where I cook. This was our last meal in the old trailer: fried chicken from a grocery store near the trailer dealer, using paper napkins. Everything else had been left at home - including, it turned out, the corkscrew! I managed to buy a decent bottle of wine with a screw cap that night. On the other hand, the new palace's extra room is sunny. I'll show it another time. I always wanted a separate dining room where I lived; I just didn't envision that it would be in our trailer instead of our house! Moving out of the old trailer was every bit as arduous as clearing out of an apartment. Why, I kept asking myself, did I have so much cookware? Did I really need all those spices? Why couldn't we have planned last spring's arrival back home to have minimal food aboard, like those clever folks who exhaust their food supplies before moving? As I cleared out the space, I donated things or threw things away or moved them into the house to be used. It was ridiculous to have so much. In future, I would be more realistic about what we could use, and how quickly. (That determination about food was reinforced during a summer power failure that threatened our refrigerated and frozen goods, although we survived handily thanks to a trealer generator.) I resolved that, in light of the limited kitchen area and storage space, I'd learn to make my cookery simpler. Then my native optimism - some would say utter lack of realism - reasserted itself. I acquired new toys. I donated five dozen cookbooks to the Friends of the Library sale but added a dozen new-to-me books. We discovered weekly specials at our favorite meat markets, and put my new vacuum packer to use. (Who knew that a FoodSaver could be so much fun?) The week before we started loading the trailer, this is what our household refrigerator freezer drawers (shelf rolls back to reveal a deep drawer) looked like. I ask you: does this look like the freezer drawers of someone who's downsizing? The new travel season approached. I puzzled over where to put things in the new kitchen and what more to eliminate. As launch day approached I gave up on elimination and began working out what else could be squirreled into the trailer and where. Simplicity, shmimplicity. I want variety, and my toys! We have conflicting culinary goals on these trips. On the one hand, we like to travel around, experience new foods and learn about them. On the other hand, we can't resist good deals and I, at least, am a hoarder. Here's what the refrigerator and freezer looked like the day before we left: That large tray of chicken thighs in the upper left compartment is also an extra barricade for the travel-day meals prepared by my darling. When it is pulled away, here's the view: 6 (each) containers of his chili and his split pea stew. They're easy travel meals: take a couple out in the morning, let them thaw during the day, and nuke them in the evening. That didn't stop us from going to WalMart on the first night out and buying Polish sausage for even quicker cooking; the first day's travel was nearly 12 hours of driving. As we emptied out our household fridge I worked hard to shoehorn the perishables into the trailer fridge. A day or two into the trip I realized that we'd loaded 2 partially-used quart jars of mayonnaise! For easy lunches, I had braised a chicken and a tri-tip steak on consecutive days while we were packing and turned the leftovers into sandwich meat slices. That chicken was braised with onions, preserved lemons and some other refrigerator orphans. It came out wonderfully flavorful, and after it provided a few sandwiches' worth of slabs the rest has become chicken salad with a lot of chicken jelly and mayonnaise. Chicken salad with preserved lemon - what a revelation! (The photo looks more like an exposé than a revelation. I'll try to do it justice with another image later.) I doubt this will be a real-time, full-time every-meal food blog. We get busy doing other things; my photos (or the meals) may not come out; the food may be utterly uninteresting; what we're doing on a particular day may not be food-related. Nonetheless I hope to show a few interesting things along the way, and show you a bit of the southern States as we ramble. If anyone else is living this mobile lifestyle, feel free to join in!

You could have added water to fill the spaces between the blue ice blocks. That would have pushed air out of the spaces and provided better heat conduction away from the crock. I probably would have transferred it all to a plastic storage container (like TupperwareTM) to cool it more quickly still, but I admit that sometimes just leave it all in the crock and take minimal steps to hurry the cooling. We in my household aren't necessarily as diligent in quick-cooling of meat as the experts say we should be. I've also been known to just stick the crock in a convenient snow bank, but that suggestion isn't much help right now.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. In looking back at my sous vide log (not diligently kept up) I see that 140F/60C for 1:30 with a similarly treated chicken breast yielded moist and tender chicken. According to my notes the chicken was almost too tender; there was little discernible muscle fiber (it seemed more like a packaged 'meat product') and I thought that less time or lower temperature would be good. The browning step was also similar, but I didn't need to hold it in the oven afterward. I have two more sets to try, roughly of the same size but with different seasonings. Next batch I'll try warming - instead of simply thawing - before browning.

Tonight we had my attempt at rolled and stuffed chicken breast (think Chicken Kiev, or Chicken Cordon Bleu) as the culmination of a sous vide experiment. A few weeks ago I pounded the bejeezus out of gargantuan chicken breasts until they were flat and thin; layered basil pesto, chopped parmesan chunks, some pepper relish I'd made and a bit of mozzarella onto those breasts; then rolled and tied them. (The rolls were huge, thanks to the size of the breasts and the layers I'd put in.) I tied them, vac-bagged them and cooked them sous vide for 60 min at 60C, with thanks to @haresfur for the basic time and temperature starting point. Then I froze them. Today they thawed. Tonight I dredged them in Bisquik, then beaten egg, then a combination of panko and Italian-seasoned bread crumbs. Pan fried them until they were brown, then set in a low oven to finish rewarming while we watched a movie. They looked pretty. The flavors were excellent. The breast meat was dry. Did I cook it too long or too hot at the sous vide stage, or hold it too long in the oven tonight? I don't know, but I'm inclined toward the former. I have 2 other packages of sous vided chicken rolls with different seasonings but the same time and temperature in the water bath, so I can try different post-sous vide treatments; meanwhile, someone may have advice based on my description. I know @rotuts has posted about sous viding his chicken roll-ups, carefully labeled. Incidentally, rotuts' rolled stuffed chicken breasts look tidier than mine. Advice on rolling the darned things is also welcome.

Here's another favorite of mine: the Emsa Perfect Beaker. It has volumetric measurements in tsp, tbsp, ml, cups, fl, oz and pints. Its conical shape allows good precision, and it seems to be pretty accurately marked based on water weight measurements I've made. Along similar lines is the Oxo 2-oz angled measuring cup. They make larger sizes too, which generally have handles and take up more space. What I like about this is that it's graded in tbsp, oz and ml and very useful for small quantities.

Thanks for the Saveur link. I'd seen this technique (and done something similar in a wok, for tea-smoked duck) but forgotten about it. It'll be the ticket for me for the next few months. What kind of wood did you use, and how long did you smoke the corn?

That slim iSi spatula is another favorite that I'd forgotten about. I've all must abandoned my other spatulas in its favor. Thanks for the reminder. A bowl scraper and a dough cutter/scraper are two other gadgets took me a long time to discover and quickly became indispensable in my kitchen.

Ooh, thanks for the reminder about measuring cups, @FrogPrincesse! One of my favorite kitchen tools - I have one for each of my present residences - is the Perfect Beaker. I love its multiple scales so that I can do cups, tablespoons, milliliters and 3 other volumetric scales. The 'what do I have in both places' train of thought leads me to another favorite set of gadgets: the silicone covers like this Charles Viancin poppy-shaped cover. They make a great seal; they're microwave- and oven-safe; they come in a variety of sizes and designs. I picked this link based on cost and size, but there are many more choices. I have them ranging in size and shape from 'cover a mug in the microwave' to 'cover a casserole dish in the oven'. If I were doing gifts I'd consider giving a package with a mug, a small cover and some wonderful drink mix.

Looks like a mess to eat.

curls, I haven't tried that particular recipe yet, but I've been enjoying the use of mesquite flour since I discovered it at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. They were out of it the last time I visited, but were willing to send me more at their store price + the cost of postage. The bags I have at present come from two sources: Flor de Mayo Arts and Kokopelli's Kitchen. I'm afraid I can't read the web address clearly for Kokopelli's Kitchen on my bag, but here is their listing under IndieBound.org. In both cases I got them through the shop at Organ Pipe. When I run across the shop's contact information again I'l post it here.

Yeh, that's what I keep saying. Truly, it isn't much money for any given sale-priced book - less than a fancy cup of coffee, or going to a movie - but like any collection or habit, it adds up. I take consolation that electrons don't weigh much and aren't likely to collapse my bookshelf.