Smithy

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Welcome! You'll find a lot of kindred spirits around here. My baking inclinations come and go, but we have a lot of passionate bakers here and we always love having more. 🙂 If you need help posting, or have questions, feel free to ask a host by Personal Messenger. I'm one of 'em.

My best friend, who lives in San Diego, is part of a Buy Nothing group. I didn't know that it was buynothingproject.org until now. Thanks for that! That is such a stunningly pretty mental image. Pictures, please? And then will you come organize our freezer?

In the last few days we've been working on leftovers, or what @Anna N would have called "planned-overs": pea stew, pork roast and potatoes, perfunctory vegetables of some sort. We're trying to work our way through the refrigerator and freezer contents, because next Wednesday is Old Farts Day at the local grocery store. We know ourselves well enough to know that we'll come home loaded! Gotta empty the refrigerator and freezer so we can stuff them again! 😄 Yesterday I tried my red cabbage sauerkraut for the first time, and was quite pleased with it. I posted more about that here in the Preservation topic. Last night I got around to cooking some bacon and chunks of ribeye steak that were sent home with us in a freezer package last fall after our great-grandson's first birthday party. The family loved the skewered meats and vegetables, but we were assured that they wouldn't cook it for themselves. Okay, then. We came home with it, and last night I cooked it in the oven, on a baking sheet. I sneaked mushrooms into the mix too. My darling thinks he doesn't like mushrooms, but he doesn't seem to mind them when they're wrapped with bacon. 🙂 There's a tomato or two in there also. Cherry tomatoes stuffed into the pit of the mushroom, before wrapping the ensemble with bacon, work better but we're out of cherry tomatoes. I was going to add jalapenos but got lazy. I used the package of Ben's Original Ready Rice, the Whole Grain Medley for a base layer. This is a package I bought because of the grain mix, but hadn't noticed the sodium content until @rotuts asked about it. I won't get it again because I have unsalted options that are just as convenient, but we had no other complaints about it. Overall it was a delicious and easy dinner. And there are planned-overs! To the west of us, they're worrying about rain and more rain. We're supposed to get some, but not as much; we're out of the expected path of the Pineapple Expresses headed for the West Coast. Still, the clouds have made for beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

Bumping this up to point out that there are a lot of clever ideas going on over here in the Absurdly, Stupidly Basic Cooking Questions topic about freezing buttermilk, juices, lemon zest, and other items in small portions for later use. Egg cups. Ice cube trays. Zip-top bags, even. What do you like to use for freezing small portions when you have too much of something? All too often, I freeze things like excess broth in quart-sized containers, and still can't use it all. I need to cultivate more small-sized containers, or invest in a few extra ice cube trays.

This, and similar posts following and preceding it, all could stand to be brought up in The Quintessential eG Kitchen Tips/Trucs topic! I think my silicone ice cube trays are smaller, but I think the things are marvelous.

I'm eating a salad with some of the pickled spinach stems, as well as my first sample of red cabbage kraut from Jan. 24 (11 days old). Both have nice crunch. The kraut is exactly what I'd like it to taste like (of course I'll have to try a lower salt proportion next!) The spinach stems are crunchy but I'm not crazy about the flavor. That's entirely an issue of the pickle juice. What goes well with cucumbers, for dill pickles, may not be what I want for spinach stems. Thinking about it, I rarely put dill pickles in my green salads! Potato salad, however...that's another story.

@Elle Bee - Where does the smoke go? Are there aggressive air filters that must be changed regularly? I'm probably not in the market either, but the idea of something like this that could be used inside, during a Minnesota winter, is pretty darned interesting.

India.

They do look like some animal's eyeballs! How interesting! What is the texture like? I'm guessing a gelatinous exterior. Is the dark inner part a hard seed, or more like a crunchy nut?

I'm not sure when I'll get to baking again, but these look like I need to make an excuse. Is this the recipe in question?

"PIC" may need translating, just as "PNG" did. Does it stand for "Portable Induction Cooktop"?

The clouds this predawn look like contrails from aerial dogfights. Don't know whether that's what's going on, but there is a Marine Air Base nearby. As I'd planned, and as suggested by @DesertTinker, I made another pot of The Homesick Texan's Sunday Pinto Beans using the same seasonings but omitting the salt entirely. The aroma was maddeningly good all day -- as good as the previous day's pork roast! When the beans were essentially done, I put the previous batch of beans in, added a bit more water, and put them back in the oven to get to know each other better. They look dry in the photo, but with a good stir their texture was fine. Still too salty, though! So I think as long as I'm using Morton fine sea salt I'll use 1/4 of the amount called for in the original recipe. We had taco salads, of a sort. He used chips to push his around, and I used a spoon. I have a lot of these beans remaining, for quick dinners or snacks. Maybe i'll have a breakfast burrito!

Really, I'm thinking along the line of capers, to include in green salads or tuna salads...but even capers have a lot of variety. For instance, I don't like most vinegar preserved capers, and prefer the salt-cured version. I've been saving dill pickle juice since, well, I emptied the jar of pickles. 6 weeks? Longer? Figured this was a good opportunity to use some if it, although it's been going nicely into my tuna salads.

I had to think about that and take a few more slugs of beer to process it. Thanks for that insight!

Has anyone ever tried pickling spinach stems? I like to use them sometimes for crunch atop a salad, but have never tried to pickle or preserve them. I got lazy today, and just covered them with pickle juice rather than trying to actively ferment them with salt. The color balance in these two pictures is goofy: the raw stuff on the left was a little greener, and the stuff on the right isn't as vivid, but that has to do with my photographic efforts. I'll report back when I have results. If anyone's tried this before, what did you do and how did you like it?

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*Sigh* more enabling! Until now I didn't know about the All-in-One Dutch Oven Cookbook for Two (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). Now it's in my collection. It's a good thing Kindle cookbooks don't weigh as much as regular cookbooks.

Janet was good enough to post her recipe for Chili con Carne here after I asked. It obviously isn't the entire book, but it gives you an idea of what's in that book.

If I understand the question correctly, there are a lot of cookbooks out there that produce an entire dinner dish in a single pot. Here are a couple by our own @JAZ: Dutch Oven Dinners: A Cookbook for Flavorful Meals Made in Your Favorite Pot (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) has The Best Chili recipe I've ever eaten (although my husband prefers his own version) The Ultimate Instant Pot® Cookbook for Two: Perfectly Portioned Recipes for 3-Quart and 6-Quart Models (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) She's done a lot more Instant Pot cookbooks, and as far as I know most or all of them use only that one pot. Is that the sort of thing you mean with your question?

I've mentioned before that pork is probably my darling's favorite meat. He's been jonesing for a pork roast...old-fashioned pork roast, the way he likes it. We've had one from home in the freezer, vacuum-packed, about 3 pounds. We finally hauled it out and cooked it the time-honored way: atop a layer of potatoes that had been nuked to give them a head start, covered with Lipton's Onion Soup mix, and cooked low and slow until the meat was done. Oven temperature was around 275 - 300F, which is as low as I can get on the bottom rack. We let it go a few hours until the meat reached 165F, then turned the oven off (it stays warm due to the pilot light) and let the meat coast until we were ready to eat. I have been quietly working to shift our meals toward more vegetables and less meat, but I must say this was FABULOUS. Unctuous. Delicious. Yes, fatty. Note that there were a few vegetables, but they weren't the focus of last night's meal. We carved the meat off the bone this morning and sliced it. The potatoes are in another container. We figure we have at least 2 meals each, maybe more. Since we still have leftovers from previous dinners as well, I don't think there will be much proper cooking going on for the next few days. Oh, except I need to cook more beans! Last night's sunset:

I'm very glad you tried the recipe and reported back! I like it when people try something I've written about, whether it's my own invention (quite rare) or someone else's. Besides, your link prodded me to go back and find where @lindag had said I could subscribe to her emails. I've done so.

My current batch of kefir, in a pop-top milk jug, has blown its lid twice already today. Pretty funny, but I think it's time to put it into the refrigerator. 🙂

Some of last night's leftovers for lunch. The stuff is dry, probably because the potatoes soaked up the bacon grease and moisture. It's also bland. Or it was until I added kimchi. That's livening the dish up! But I don't think it's really the desired flavor profile...at least I'm getting in some fermented food.

I've never tried the Kitchen Basics brand; my go-to purchased stock has been Swanson's low-sodium broth but I never use it all at once. Thanks for this recommendation. I'll have to try it.