Smithy

Stylistic grids, perhaps?

I just took a taste, and I think you're understating: to me these are way, way, WAY too salty. (Morton's coarse Kosher salt.) Next time I'll use 1/2 tsp, or maybe 3/4 tsp, with this recipe. In the meantime, I'm not sure what I'll do with these. I don't have time tonight to cook more. I'll look around to see if I can find a can of cooked pintos with which to dilute them. Otherwise I'll scatter just a little into my quesadilla before grilling, and try to dilute with other, less salty ingredients. It's a shame, because the other flavors are good to the degree I can taste them.

Yeah, that was our beloved @Toliver's tag line. May he rest in peace.

Great! I look forward to seeing your take on it. I just finished the 3-hour cooking time, so took a look. First off, the lid needed wiping down. A 275F oven isn't hot enough to do anything with that oil. Lid looks okay, though. The beans were mostly cooked, but stilll a little firmer than I'd like. Their age may have something to do with that. I stirred them, added a cup or so of water,... ...and returned them to the oven. I'll check again in another hour. Meanwhile, my darling has decided he isn't going to cook pea stew today. He can do it tomorrow when I'm away for much of the day. We'll have to figure out something else for dinner. There are plenty of leftovers still. Or he can try some of these beans. Or I can make quesadillas...ooh, I like that idea.

In fact, I have a used copy of The Frog Commissary Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) at home, thanks to an early round of enabling here on eGullet. Didn't pack it. What the heck, for $5 I can enjoy it here too!

@rotuts, I've been using Maya Kaimal fairly often, but thought the pouches would be easier to store and smaller in the garbage bag. As for the pastes: I have at least 2 types of curry paste. I have coconut milk. I have stuff I could cook in them. But then I'm getting back into the intimidation stage: what quantities? What goes with what? So there they sit. 🙂 I need tutorials.

I wrote "thank you" but that was for the instructions. This cracked me up!

@rotuts, you ask a very good (and rather inconvenient) question. It's only inconvenient because I hadn't though of it, mind you. 🙂 I don't have any more packages of the Uncle Ben's Cilantro and Lime Ready Rice (at least, if I bought more I can't find it) and They Aren't Telling on their web site. Here's a photo of the nutritional info for the Ben's Original Ready Rice Whole Grain Medley, which may or may not be comparable. Yikes...pretty high on the sodium: 470 mg per 1 cup serving; 810 mg per pouch. The Passage to Asia Thai Basil & Sweet Chili stir-fry sauce is even higher: 640mg per 1/4 cup serving; 1920 mg in the pouch. I used both full pouches to make the dinner above; however, I used a lot more vegetables than the stir fry pouch called for and stretched it with water. We got at least 3 meals each out of it -- maybe 4 -- so the total sodium count from these pouches but not including the contribution of the tube steaks would be on the order of 340 - 455 mg per meal. I noticed that another simmer sauce in our cooler has a lower sodium count. I'll start paying attention to that aspect, and report on it. Thanks for the question! Edited to add: I just looked at the earlier picture of the Cilantro Rice package. It says on the front that it has 240 mg/cup. About half of the Whole Grain Medley.

It's a cool and rainy day today (hooray! rain!) so we're doing long, slow cooking projects today. For me it's Sunday Pinto Beans from The Homesick Texan's web site. Dead easy, so far. We'll see whether it's worth doing. It will be only for me: I'm out of Cooper's beans, and my darling has found a brand of "barbecued brisket beans" at the grocery store that he adores. I think they're too sweet. He thinks the Cooper's beans are too bland. Diversity makes an interesting marriage. The beans so far are promising. The cast of characters includes pinto beans, ground cumin, chili powder, black pepper, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, bay leaves, baking soda, dried oregano. I didn't have bay leaves or onion powder, so I added Trader Joe's Umami mushroom powder for extra oomph. Throw them all into a pot with 4 cups water, stir thoroughly to mix the spices (and admire the fizzing sound of the baking soda); bring to a boil. At this stage it smells wonderful! I like that combination of flavors. When they've come to the boil, turn off the heat. Put the lid on, and load the pot into a preheated 275F oven. Walk away for 3 hours, then come back and check. Now, a word about the lid. If @Porthos is reading he'll probably shudder, given his nature as a cast iron expert, but I'm looking for input here. This Lodge preseasoned cast iron Dutch Oven sat outside on our deck too long, and rust began to develop on the outer rim and in the indentations of the lid's exterior. This morning I scrubbed it with Soft Scrub, rinsed it with water, dried, then sprayed with Pam olive oil. It's sitting in the oven, supposedly curing again while it protects our beans. What do you think? Anyone? Will this work? I'll report back on the beans and the pot lid later.

I've been working to get more vegetables (variety, color) and fiber into our diets. Fermented foods into mine also, but I'm having to sneak them into his. Salami, alas, doesn't count. The problem with all those delightful vegetables -- and I really do like them -- is the washing and chopping that must be done with most of them. Cauliflower and broccoli are special offenders that can sit, taking up far more than their alloted space, for over a week in the fridge. (I haven't figured out the right enticement to recruit Household Brownies to come do that work at night, when we're sleeping. Maybe there aren't any out here.) With a few exceptions like slaw mix I generally avoid packaged, already prepped vegetables -- partly because it adds cost and trash but also because it seems the more things are handled the more likely they are to be subject to a food recall. We see them often enough in this topic. The washing and chopping and special fixing can be meditative and relaxing when I'm in the right mood, but very inconvenient otherwise. On the other hand, I have discovered bagged convenience foods: simmering sauces and prepackaged cooked rice. I'd never have expected to bend on these, but they are a very nice way to cut prep times -- especially with sauces whose flavor profiles I can't crank out without consulting a cookbook or three. I'm not proud of these ingredient lists, but I can think of worse things. And they ARE convenient. A week or so ago I hoisted my resolve and my knife, and went to work on broccoli, red bell pepper, green onions, and a tube steak or two. Sometime later they were all simmering in the sauce, and when we were ready to eat I nuked the rice and put it under said simmered ingredients. We both loved it! I thought the sauce maybe a touch too sweet and spicy/hot for my tastes, but he said I needed to keep it around. So I've bought more. I also have a butter chicken simmer sauce and a tikka masala sauce, and several different types of rice packages. You'll be seeing them all, probably, during the remainder of our stay here. Speaking of our stay here, we've had some lovely celestial shows. This sunrise and moonset were from roughly the day I cooked this particular dinner.

And the hits keep coming! I know that C. Kimball and Milk Street triggers strong reactions amongst some of our membership, but at $1.99 this one looks good enough for me to take a flyer on it. Milk Street Vegetables: 250 Bold, Simple Recipes for Every Season Kindle Edition (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) $1.99

@Neely, that's a delightful-looking breakfast! Where did you get the basil and tomato? Your garden, a commercial source, friends..?

Earlier this week I noticed that the freezer was rapidly losing its freeze. Ice was beginning to melt. The ice cream bars we'd bought the day before were turning soft. *Sigh*. I turned off the refrigerator, emptied our two coolers and loaded the contents of the freezer into those coolers. I knew we were about due for a defrosting, but had hoped to put it off until the freezer had some empty space. What a dreamer I am! When I emptied the contents, I saw that the frost was nearly an inch thick in places. After 20 minutes or so of running a hair dryer on High in that enclosed space, it was frost-free. (The sides were beginning to warp, too. Note to self: this new hair dryer has more oomph than the old one. Use it on Low!) I reloaded the freezer. It looks a bit more ruly now. Still. We have enough food. We don't need to include meat when we go grocery shopping. And yet...I had to forcibly drag him past the meat department a couple of days ago!

I've changed my "reaction" at least twice, since I can't react both with "thanks" and "delicious", but I mean both! I appreciate the recommendation. We aren't sure yet which way we'll go home. We've gone through Las Cruces once or twice, but usually stay farther south. This time we may try to put ourselves in line with the April 8 solar eclipse. Anyway, thanks for this recommendation! It looks delicious, and I really do love a good chile relleno -- especially if I didn't have to make it. 🙂

Please tell more about this!

I should have mentioned that. I learned it from my mother: mayo and mustard (the cheap yellow kind) inside; butter on the outside. My darling prefers Miracle Whip to mayonnaise, so I usually customize the sandwich with regard to bread and spreads. 🙂

I think I finally have time to update, and maybe keep up, this blog. We've been having musical adventures and medical misadventures, which register at opposite ends of the Fun Meter but are equally unrelated to food. As a result I've been photographing fairly often but disinclined to post. For New Year's Eve I indulged my love of making things flame, and cooked my version of the New York Times' Creamy Pan Roasted Scallops with Fresh Tomatoes (that should be an unlocked article in the link) with good cognac to flame it. I wrote about doing the same last year, here. As with last year, I used shrimp instead of scallops. I thought it delicious. To my disappointment, he noted at a later date that he hadn't really liked it. It seems that his idea of seafood is (a) to avoid it or (b) if necessary, eat it fried. That's okay, I had a great time cooking it and eating the leftovers! A week or so later we went to a holiday party and it gave me an excuse to go on a baking spree in the days before the party. The pecans came from the Texas Hill Country; I'd purchased them last fall in Llano. Note to self: no matter how good they are, they're even better with a bit of oven toasting. The Bourbon Pecan Pie from George Graham's Acadiana Table (someday I'm going to buy one or two of his cookbooks) was as big a hit this year as it was last year. Good thing I took a picture before I loaded it up for the party, because none came home. My second pie was David Lebovitz's Chocolate Pecan Pie with Bourbon, although I left the bourbon out in case we had teetotalers. This was a simpler pie to make because it required less cooking of the filling. I liked it better than the non-chocolate version, but it wasn't as popular with our crowd. As it happened, I had more filling than would fit into either pie shell. I pulled out some sheets of phyllo and made a rough pie crust, then mixed the leftover fillings and poured them in. That stayed home. The phyllo dough was too crumbly to make a good shell (I'd bought it by mistake; I'd wanted puff pastry but picked up the wrong package) but in truth I liked this hybrid filling best! Not shown: @Tropicalsenior's beloved Instant Pot New York Style Cheesecake. It's always a hit. I did end up bringing some home, but since it's a hit here too that's all right. I came home not only with my own leftovers, but also with a substantial amount of sliced ham, a small amount of an excellent spinach salad, and partial containers of two different store-bought potato salads (one with mustard and egg, one with dill and sour cream). We ate those up fairly quickly in the ensuing days. I shared some of the ham and dessert with a camping neighbor who's become a good friend. I also made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for more than one of our dinners. Delicious! My sandwich had a bit of sauerkraut added after the pan frying was done. I've been working to add live fermented foods, and more fiber, to our diets. Well...to my diet anyway. I'll tell more about that in another post. All the holiday decorations are down, but the Christmas poinsettia lives on and brings us lots of cheer.

We have one at home and one in the Princessmobile. I rarely use it, but my darling uses it all the time for chopping onions as well as potatoes. A couple of years ago we figured out that if he diced onions, then potatoes, for his beloved hash that the potatoes essentially cleaned the grids. In both vegetable cases you have to slice the vegetable into rounds first (with a knife) but he finds it quite quick and convenient.

VIDALIA CHOP WIZARD EZ Cleaning Lift Tab - Two Pack (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) Helping out here, a bit. Incidentally, there's a help article on inserting links -- including Amazon links -- here.

Everything blue_dolphin wrote is very helpful, but this is especially helpful. I'll add that I actually have plates that are so wide they just barely fit into my cabinets! I suspect that wall-cabinet depth is probably standard, but if it isn't you should consider that too.

I had the unfortunate and wild (to me) experience of moving into an apartment with NO DRAWERS in the kitchen some years back. This was in northern Minnesota, you understand, so a very different culinary perspective. I had to set up several baskets and bins that sat atop the kitchen counter to accommodate the flatware, napkins and cooking utensils (spatulas, stirring spoons, knives, etc.) that I felt I needed. If you don't use drawers, where do you keep those things? Do you really use so much fewer than we do? Please show where you store them, and what they are. I may have to reassess my kitchen.

Yet another: Flavour: Over 100 fabulously flavourful recipes with a Middle-Eastern twist (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), by Sabrina Ghayour, $1.99

Several Kindle cookbook deals crossed my email and consciousness this morning. Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) for $3.99 (Lukins, Ross and a host of other authors) Something Warm from the Oven: Baking Memories, Making Memories (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Eileen Gouge, $3.99 Preserving Italy: Canning, Curing, Infusing, and Bottling Italian Flavors and Traditions (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Domenica Marchetti, $2.99 The Great Book of French Cuisine (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), Henri-Paul Pellaprat (with intro by Jeremiah Tower), $3.99.

I had no idea! I thought Hydrox was the cheap knock-off imitation when I was growing up!

@jedovaty, I think @gfweb and @Okanagancook made good points about remodeling for resale -- in time for YOU to enjoy the results -- and, of course, making compromise choices along the way. When we redid our kitchen my husband couldn't see why I thought it important, and neither did our friend who was a general contractor. Contractor looked at it and said, "what's the matter with it?" and my husband said, "that's what I've been saying!" Then I showed the drawers and cabinet doors falling apart. The flooring that was starting to show bad wear. There was more. My contractor friend asked our budget. When I told him, he said, "Double it" and that turned out to be more or less the case. Still, we've been delighted with our kitchen since it was redone in 2012. As for decisions: I drove my husband crazy, bringing home multiple cabinet panels and wood samples and flooring samples, leaving them around in strategic spots. Eventually we made all the decisions and got rolling. Were there things I wanted to do but didn't? Sure...but for over 11 years now it's been our happy kitchen, and the focal point of the house. If you want to see what the kitchen looked like in 2005, before remodeling, you can go here. The post-remodeling photos are scattered a bit more, but they start here.