Smithy

We're pretty casual about breakfast and lunch. Today we had leftovers from last night's "dinner and a movie" evening with friends. In the interests of keeping things simple (who, me?) I'd bought some fried chicken and oven-roasted vegetables from one of our supermarket delis. The chicken is nothing but bones and delicious memory, but there were vegetables left for lunch.

That is a Charles Viancin silicone "banana leaf" pan cover. These things are wonderful: dishwasher safe, microwave safe, oven proof, flexible and (to my mind) whimsically pretty. They have a very smooth bottom so that they make a tight enough seal to a smooth-rimmed bowl or dish that nothing can come in unless you lift the lid. On the other hand they allow air out, so they're also good covers for things like proofing bread. I keep finding uses for different sizes and styles. i generally find the round shapes more useful, so have more lily pads.

Greetings! I started to title this blog "Notes from the Deep Freeze", but since Heidih posted the first teaser photo it's warmed up nearly 60 degrees F in the last 2 days: That's both good and bad. As long as it's very cold, the sky is usually clear and the roads are dry. On the other hand, when it warms up as it has now, you don't have to worry about freezing your beer or cola if you leave it outside more than 15 minutes. There is, as I type, a frozen caramel-colored slush inside our garage refrigerator, from a forgotten bottle of diet cola that froze and exploded in our absence. On the other, other hand, we'll have to start watching out for icicle-laden avalanches off the roof. Every "warm" day the glacier slides another inch or two: It didn't clear 0 Deg F between New Year's Eve and Jan 9. "Only a fool would live here," grouses my darling. I take (an admittedly perverse) pleasure in the extreme swing of the seasons, particularly now that I don't often *have* to go someplace when it's too cold, and I can warm the house up with kitchen projects.1 That's what I plan for much of this week. Last week, during the harshest temperatures, there was a lot of baking and roasting and soup-making. This week is likely to be much of the same. This afternoon's project is cutting and roasting squash to make a ravioli filling. These are the last of my butternut squash and a carnival squash from a neighbor down the road. Roasted, ready to become filling: The carnival will need to be peeled, but the butternut was very easy to peel before roasting. This squash filling is a recipe from the much-ballyhooed Amazon Link "Sauces and Shapes, Pasta the Italian Way" by Oretta Zanini de Vita and Maureen B. Fant. I've been enjoying the book's lively writing style, and this fall when I attempted ravioli for the first and second time they came out tasting very good, but looking terrible unless I used a mold. I'm not ready for the "free-form" pasta shapes they advocate yet. 1 Well okay, prolonged glamping in warmer climes also helps.

It has nothing to do with the oranges' being seedless. My father raised citrus - mostly, but not entirely, navel oranges. We always lamented the fact that the fruit suffered on its way through the packing house, and never tasted as good as fresh off the tree. I have been pleasantly surprised at the occasional Really Good navel out of the grocery store in oh, the last decade, so there may have been improvements in the handling and shipping and storage chain since then.Unfortunately, "get it off the tree" isn't practical for most of us. Here's what else I can tell you: first, and also not very helpful, some varieties of navel orange are better than others. Dad got fed up with one variety that had been very highly touted as being hardy and early to ripen, but turned out to be relatively bland. That information probably is useless, however: just try finding out which variety of orange you're buying, and see how far you get. I have that problem with summer stone fruit purchases. Second, and most useful: try to sniff the oranges before you buy. There is a distinct aroma of "fresh" vs "tired" that, once you learn it, will steer you clear of tired, flat oranges, clementines, minneolas, and so on. I don't know how to describe it, unfortunately; it isn't rot, it isn't fungus; it's just some missing or deteriorated high note. In addition, of course, there's the usual "heft test": fruit should feel heavy for its size. The sniff test, btw, seems to work best on the sweet citrus. I never detect that sort of flatness with lemons or limes, but it's obvious with those fruit I named as well as grapefruit. Back to lemons with seeds: I generally use a squeezer, but a mesh tea strainer catches the little devils otherwise. Those yellow plastic thingies claiming to contain lemon juice never come into my house! :-) Edited to correct the inevitable misspellings.

Tell us next year just how much stuff you got rid of. It'll be interesting to see if you still have the egg poacher, or if it has been replaced with something else, perhaps a watermelon seeder or other such useful gadget. I got rid of lots of things when I moved into my retirement apartment, yet I find myself accumulating more and more things. It seems that it's human nature to acquire things - or at least this human's nature. I believe that eGullet is an enabler. Oh, this makes me laugh! Yes, I have a great deal of cookware as a result of eGullet...and I was amazed last fall at the amount of stuff my mother had accumulated after downsizing and moving into an assisted living apartment. She was never on eGullet, but she'd find cool things anyway.

That's exactly what's happened to me: I can't see any of your photos, because a Photobucket advert keeps coming up instead. Everyone's comments on the contents makes me wish I could see them. Nonetheless, I'm impressed based on the descriptions.

I wouldn't worry much about residual detergent tastes if you follow the instructions ElsieD posted above. Another idea, if you're worried about residual fats or oils, is to sprinkle flour or cornstarch as an absorbent, then scrape, then clean as noted above. I don't know about you, but when I'm rolling doughs out on my granite top I'm already using a bit of flour for that "lightly floured surface". FWIW my granite countertop instructions also said to avoid ammonia-based cleaners because they'd mar the finish over time. I don't know whether that would also apply to marble.

The refrigerator in our trailer runs on LP or electricity. It runs fine either way, but maintains a slightly cooler temperature (a couple of degrees F max) on electricity. Based on my experience, an LP refrigerator should do just fine for you.

Am I missing something? Wrong link? Try Biscuta's link, not Smithy's. On my pooter, it shows $3.00. Or free if you borrow under Prime membership. I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. I thought Judiu was talking about "Alice's Kitchen". If she meant something else, I apologize for the confusion.

I guess it IS all relative, isn't it? I was thinking in terms of cost for a new cookbook, and you must have been thinking in terms of cost for a new paperback. :-) I've bought plenty of used books over the years and been just as happy with them. At any rate, I think it's a great little book.

I'm glad to hear there's now an e-book for Egyptian cooking. I'll have to check that out. Since the last time I checked in on this topic, I've fallen in love with "Alice's Kitchen: My Grandmother Dalal & Mother Alice's Traditional Lebanese Cooking", by Linda Dalal Sawaya. It's the family cookbook, with bits of family history and photos, and charming artwork by Ms. Sawaya. It's a small paperback book, easily carried around and inexpensive to purchase. I particularly appreciate it now that I've gone to the trouble of putting together and distributing a collection of family photos with stories for our extended family. But best of all, the recipes work... and they work in the way that practical, practiced homemakers develop ways to cook meals for their loved ones. I now can make crackers, thanks to this book. I'm getting a grip on making 2 or 3 different styles of flatbread, and the thomeyya (Lebanese version of aioli) is closest to what I remember from a favorite Lebanese restaurant in Cairo. I keep coming back to this book and digging deeper, and I'm a big fan. I'll add an Amazon link. Moderators, please feel free to make it eGullet friendly. Amazon Link

I've been participating in the Harvard/MIT/Berkeley MOOC, "ABOUT SCIENCE & COOKING: FROM HAUTE CUISINE TO SOFT MATTER SCIENCE" that was announced here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/144767-harvardx-class-about-science-cooking/ It's fascinating, a lot of fun, and a lot of work. One night we were serenaded by coyotes as we enjoyed my first-ever attempt at flan: Last night's dinner was shrimp ceviche. My darling was skeptical about a cold collation for dinner, but we went to be well-satisfied. This is going to become a summertime favorite, for those hot muggy evenings when it's just too darned hot to cook.

The weather hasn't been conducive to outdoor cookery for much of this trip. Finally, we were able to cook over a campfire during a brief warm period when the wind died down. I'm learning that my old point-and-shoot Nikon camera handled campfire shots better than my fancy digital camera; in order to get the exposure right I'll have to give some thought to shutter speeds and actually tell the camera what I want. We cooked chicken thighs that had been rubbed with honey and a mix of spices: paprikas, smoked and not; cumin; various ground chilies. The skin got a bit too charred for my taste (I was too busy fooling with the camera to control the fire properly) but that didn't stop my darling from enjoying it. The chicken meat itself was tender, moist, delicious! We also cooked eggplants, tomatillos and various chili peppers over the fire, so that today they can be turned into salsas and dips. I only got as far as skinning them. I love the way they set up thickly as a result of this treatment. Tomatillos seem to have a lot of pectin, and the resulting salsa is satisfyingly thick. I'll post a photo later.

I confess, the day-glo red and green cherries are always off-putting to me, but I recognize them as being traditional. :-) Peirogi, your "Bishop's Bread" sounds like a Christmas stollen except for the chocolate chips. Does it taste like that? Maybe she tweaked a stollen recipe and gave the name an appropriate twist? I love your description of the pierogies, even though I cut them out of the quoted part. Sauerkraut in pierogis! How I wish I'd made more kraut last fall!

McDonald's. Poutine. What a concept!

And that brings me to a question. One of the reasons I'm considering a mandoline is for slicing potatoes. When I slice raw potatoes with a knife, the slices often stick to the blade, and that is very annoying and slows my slicing considerably. How does one prevent the potato slices from sticking to a knife blade? It doesn't seem that potato slices would stick to a mandoline blade ... My knives that have small concavities along the blade do the best job of releasing the potato slices. But I still have to break the suction, so to speak, of a large potato slice against the large blade. I agree that the mandoline works well for this task. But perhaps the pros here can give a hint on knife technique?

Thank you, Shel. I've been lamenting the fact that I don't have her cookbook with me to cook a commemorative feast; now I have what I need.

We waved goodby to the saguaro cactus that look like congregations of orators and celebrants, and the barrel cactus with their rosettes of "pears" that something eats - I don't know what - and moved westward. The desert has changed again, and water makes a more stark difference than ever before. Water districts out here make a point of saying, "Food Grows Where Water Flows". Wars have been fought, and may be again, over water. I grew up playing in irrigation ditches and taking canals for granted, and only in my teenaged years began to realize how different my local landscape would be without it. I wonder how many people actually think about where their water comes from, and how it relates to our food? Last night's meal was a rescued leftover. Sometime last week I'd tried to make chicken breast rollups with a filling of sweated onions and spinach and something else - I forget what. The whole roulade thing didn't work at all, and it turned into a very nonphotogenic meal of skillet chicken over a pilaf of wild rice and brown basmati. The flavor wasn't bad, but the whole thing was dry. Last night I gave the leftovers a Southwestern twist. We had bought chilies at the grocery store: poblano, jalapeno and a third type I've forgotten. I blistered them on the stove top, finished softening them in the oven, then peeled, deveined and chopped them. A couple of the "New Mexico Road Kill" red peppers went through the same toasting and chopping routine. The lot was added to the chicken/rice/tomato/sauce simmering in the skillet. The finished burritos didn't get photographed - perhaps we were too hungry - but the chicken, rice and peppers, along with sour cream and grated cheddar (decidly un-Mexican) showed that sometimes, leftovers can be better than the original. We're hunkered down, out of the 30 mph wind in a brake of trees. The weather forecast indicates that the wind will be dying later this week, so perhaps we'll be able to cook over an open fire. For right now, we're grateful to be in a snug trailer.

We've been working on leftovers lately. One aspect of my cooking is that I almost always make more than we need for a given meal, and we usually eat lightly at breakfast and lunch. Occasionally some small bit of leftover pork roast and sauerkraut may call so strongly that one of us pulls it furtively from the refrigerator at an off-time, without even offering to share. The smoked prime rib from Thanksgiving gave us 2 good full meals, with some to spare. Two nights ago it was time to use more. I had the wonderful beef gel from the original roasting. I had prime rib begging to be cut into chunks. I had baby potatoes. Chopped parsley. The only thing to do in addition was to braise brussels sprouts with bacon, and that's what I did. Voila, dinner in our last night in Tucson:

Yeah, I, too, wonder how much I'd use it and what I could use in it's place for whatever I might use it for. I bought a cheapo plastic mandoline at some grocery store, for about $8, to see whether I'd use it enough to justify a better one. So far, this one has done well enough: for the occasional gratin or other times when I want very uniform slices, it's good. I might someday spend $40 on a good one, but not until this one dies.

I don't see anything wrong the storage method, either, but I wonder whether the vacuum sealing is necessary, given that it will be kept in the refrigerator. Assuming you do vacuum seal it, how will you pull a vacuum without getting liquid into the seal? (Note, I haven't played with vacuum packers at all, so the answer may be obvious to experienced vacuum sealer users.) Congratulations on your batch!

I wish I *had* a dining room and dining room table. Alas, in our house there is none. In the family's houses where there were dining tables, they definitely weren't set with place mat until getting ready for a meal. At holiday times it was more likely to be a tablecloth and centerpiece; those were on for the duration with the possible exception of removing the centerpiece to make room for a smaller one, or dishes of food, at meal-time. Your description reminds me of the modern bedding sets complete with pillows in shams. The shams have to come off, or entirely different pillows are pulled out from some hidey-hole, at nighttime. Form over function: extravagance for its own sake?

When I was losing weight I did much better weighing-in just once a month....I found it too easy to get discouraged weighing every day. Have someone hide the scale. Weighing weekly - same time, same condition - did it for me. I felt like weighing every day was crazy-making, like watching the stock market and trying to make sense of it. ;=)

The Adobe Deli is about 8 miles east of Deming along NM 549 (turn right on Lewis Flats Road and go another mile) in what used to be a one-room school house. The owner began the deli when he moved from Brooklyn; looking around at the building, my darling commented that the chef is clearly "old-school". The place has a lot of attitude and funky atmosphere, and we've always enjoyed it in the past. We amused ourselves with the menu entries and the taxidermists' exhibits along every wall and on every shelf. Having said all that, I'll admit that this trip was a disappointment. We arrived hungry, after a hard day of doing town-type errands (including mountains of laundry). The bartender was excellent, and the selection of draft beers more than adequate. On the other hand the waiter seemed to be in over his head with no help; sometimes it took him so long to reappear after taking an order or going to ask a question that we wondered whether he was also the cook. There were also off-putting odors: mixed with good food smells were a strong smell of cigarette smoke and an even stronger smell of disinfectant. I hope they were just having an "off" day, and that this isn't the sign of decline. If this had been our first visit, it would have been our only visit. I was curious about the appetizers, and we split a plate of Santa Fe Shrimp: shrimp coated in cream cheese and roasted peppers, then breaded and deep fried. The cheese oozed messily and hotly from every bite, and was thick enough that my darling questioned whether any shrimp were involved. We could have settled for that as a meal, but were determined to pig out and order an entree each. We've had steaks there in the past, and they were good; this time, we settled for burgers, and they were excellent: juicy, done just as we'd asked, with almost all the condiments we'd ordered. (Someone forgot the bacon I requested on mine, but with roasted peppers and cheese it took me a while to miss it.) We had to ask for mayonnaise (the waiter wasn't sure there was any to be had!) and mustard. I think this time I've learned to avoid the house fries, though: they're wedges of potato, cut lengthwise into 8ths and fried; unfortunately they were soggy. I remember thinking the same thing last time. Note to self: avoid the "house spicy fried potatoes" in the future. My darling's onion rings were good. I took a picture of the shrimp, but unless I can get a photo editor working it isn't worth posting. I didn't keep any of the shots of the burgers. The place is very dimly lit, with candles at each table. I am reluctant to use a flash in a place where diners are enjoying quiet conversations, so settled for ambient light and a slow shutter, not anticipating the moody look that would result. It really doesn't look as sinister as this! Kinda looks like the animals are getting ready to pounce, doesn't it? The menu boasts a broad selection of steaks, ribs, fish (and other seafood), and poultry. They also offer, tongue in cheek, other fare: "Roadkill Rabbit Reuben (sandwich): Fresh off 549. Price TBD" "Big Foot: Rare find in the Florida mountains. Served the same way." "Your meal may not be what you expected, but it's what Van thought you damn well need. Visitors to the kitchen will be charged 20% extra." The next day was a travel day. We moved from Columbus, NM to Tucson, AZ; from Chihuahuan Desert with its scrubby creosote and arid landscape to Sonoran Desert, green and lush by comparison. Just don't get off the trail and into any of the dozens of varieties of cactus. Along the way we passed a lot of farmland: pecan orchards and pepper fields and cotton. At one lonely intersection we realized that the red things along the road were spillage from a truck hauling red peppers. Talk about picking up local ingredients! We stopped to collect some of the better spillage for our own use. A man who stopped to make sure we were all right said that yes, they'd come from the pepper farm down the road. He didn't know the variety, but said they weren't hot. So... anyone recognize this variety? Each pepper is 4 or 5 inches long. What are they good for? I did use some in last night's food, which was unremarkable in flavor and definitely not photo-worthy. They weren't hot. They are pretty.