Smithy

Still no response on the cornbread recipe, but I actually have a good signal and can tell about Cabin Fever, Princessmobile style. It's windy. It's blowing up to 30 mph and expected to continue that way for the next few days. It's also cool -- cold, according to my darling, whose circulation isn't what it once was. I realize that none of this is likely to elicit sympathy from those of you in winter snow storms or rain, but I bet most of you have a larger space to hunker down in. We can, and do, walk in the wind and try to find routes that are more or less sheltered, but it's still uncomfortable walking. And then Cabin Fever sets in, at least for me. When the internet signal is good I can roam online. But I've been competing for bandwidth with this holiday city of RVers, all camped within a half mile of the tower. Yesterday I addressed my Cabin Fever by tackling some of the produce I'd bought and cooking Julia Child's Provençal Potato Gratin, from the New York Times. (Here's a gift article, for curious nonsubscribers.) It's pretty easy once all the prep work is done, but the prep work involves thinly slicing potatoes, onions, and seeded tomatoes; grating Parmesan cheese; smashing garlic and making a paste of anchovies, garlic, herbs and olive oil. In my case, doing it all by hand. You would be justified in noting that Ste. Julia and her cooking partners in France no doubt did it by hand all the time. I personally would have preferred using a food processor. But it was the middle of the day, and I didn't want to start the generator. I used my trusty Moulinex, except for the paste. (For this I used the battery-powered wand blender, and decided it's worth keeping.) I think my darling may be suffering a bit of cabin fever also. Just as I'd finished all the slicing and grating, he decided we should go to town to get beer. Well. I'd already realized I had no anchovies or anchovy paste, and had been trying to think of a substitute. Now I didn't have to. Away we went, 30 miles each way, with our brief but important shopping list. An hour or two later, we were back. I made the anchovy/garlic/herb sauce, then began cooking. Cook the onions in olive oil until soft and golden (not browned), then fold in the tomatoes to warm them. Take it off the heat and begin assembly in a baking dish: a layer of the tomato / onion mix, then a layer of potatoes, then some of the sauce. Lather, rinse, repeat. Top with the last of the tomatoes and onions, then grated parmesan, and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake at 400F until the potatoes are cooked and have absorbed all the liquid. That last bit didn't actually work for me: even with the potatoes fully cooked there was free liquid, and it seemed the longer I cooked the more free liquid there was. Maybe I didn't seed the tomatoes adequately. Maybe my ingredient balance was off. No matter, though. I liked it, well enough to do it again. He was less enthusiastic about it, not (he says) because it was meatless but because he wasn't crazy about the flavors. (I only used about a quarter of the anchovies called for in the recipe, but I suspect it's the anchovy flavor that he didn't like.) There are plenty of leftovers for me!

It was very moist, not at all as dry or airy as many cornbreads I've tried (or discussed here). I'm not sure where that falls in the cake-like spectrum. I sent her an effusive compliment and asked for the recipe, and asked also whether I could share it if she shared it with me. So far she hasn't responded. That is, i think she hasn't responded. My internet has been down for most of the day. She might have responded 5 times without my seeing it!

It wouldn't fit into the Princessmobile, either! 😄

Someone - maybe @russ parsons - commented that the flavor had been bred out of them along with the strings. That may be true. I don't think they have quite the same meaty taste they used to, but I still like them a lot.

No strings in mine. Anyone else seeing this? It could indeed be regional.

Di you mean reduced to 3/4 cup, or reduced by 3/4 cup?

If she says it's okay, I will. 🙂

@Kim Shook, that looks like a wonderful spread. Considering the angst built up before your dinner, it's especially delightful to see how well it went! What made this particular pecan pie so wonderful? Do you think it was luck, or an especially good recipe?

It's supposed to turn cooler in the next few days. I'll plan on having our Thanksgiving weekend feast on one of those cooler days, so the pork roast I plan won't heat the trailer too badly. I pulled it out to start thawing today. "Ooh!" he said, "that'll make room in the freezer so I can have ice cream bars in there!" Absolutely not. We're having burgers tonight because, after I pulled things out to get the pork roast and started putting things back in, they kept falling out.

Right after I'd left the grocery store with stuff for our dinner, I got an invitation to a friend's house for a feast. Heck, we could put off our own feast to another day. "What can I bring?" I asked, and offered things like cranberry salad, Hasselback potato casserole, green beans with bacon. She asked for the green beans, so back I went to get more than I'd already bought. Five pounds of green beans. You ever wash and trim five pounds of green beans? It's definitely a labor of love. I bought them one day, trimmed and cut them the next, cooked them up -- after dreaming about them all night --with a pound of bacon chunks the morning of the party. (My darling, who loves to make up songs, is in the process of writing a ditty about how they interfered, days in a row, with his desired plans. The working title, and refrain, are "them darned beans". 😆) You ever try to fit a pound of cut bacon into a tall stockpot, render it down until nearly crisp, then add almost 5 pounds of cut green beans into that pot? Of course it all fits, but stirring it is a real treat. I was using the biggest pot in the Princessmobile: the 12-quart stockpot we generally use for stews and chili. Eventually it all got done. I kept tasting and adjusting, wondering why it seemed so flat. "Needs salt," I finally decided, and I'm glad I did. It didn't need much, but the bacon hadn't done enough. I transferred it into our Lodge Dutch Oven, which had been well-preheated, for transport to the party. It was an hour's drive from our camping spot, and I wanted it kept warm. The Dutch Oven, wrapped in two towels, held the heat well. Sorry, but we were all too busy gabbing, eating, cleaning up, making music in the post-feast jam session to take any pictures. There were turkey, ham, gravy, 2 types of potatoes, salads galore, relish tray, cocktail shrimp, bread, beans, yams, and of course desserts. The only photo I have is from a piece of cornbread brought by another guest. I've asked to see whether she'll share the recipe. It's her copycat version of a cornbread from one of her favorite restaurants. Good stuff!

Holy moly...$49 for one back then?! The mind, she boggles. There are some funny comments in that topic, though. Thanks for the reminder!

Someplace in the last few days I made a nicely stacked sandwich using sliced chicken I'd bought back in Duluth before we left. "Hmm," I thought, "the stuff is getting a bit mushy. Tastes okay. It's nearly a month old, though. Better use it up." I couldn't finish it. It didn't really even taste like chicken any more. I ate a few bites, removed the chicken and had a very nice spinach / pickle / cheese sandwich with mayo. Even the dog wouldn't eat the meat! The sun is moving southward toward its solstice rising-point on the right side of that big notch. Even over 2 days you can see a bit of movement!

First, a trip to the grocery store. The two major grocery stores we shop at here are Fry's (part of the Kroger chain) and Albertson's (soon to be merged with Fry's, if I understand correctly). There are other grocery stores here: 3 Walmarts, 2 Del Sols that cater more to the Hispanic crowd, 1 Sprouts "Farmers Market" and a partridge in a pear tree (sorry, couldn't resist). A Trader Joe's was supposed to be built in the more upscale area of Yuma, but I heard about it a few years ago and see no evidence that it's happened. They may have changed their minds. Anyway: we usually shop at Fry's: we like their selection, they have excellent prices if you consent to being tracked by using their loyalty card, and you get points off gasoline or diesel. It's a pretty good system for us all around. Oh, and they have very special deals for senior citizens on the first Wednesday of the month. I call it "old farts Wednesday". Our first visit once we arrived was after a few weeks on the road, and required a lot of stocking up on produce, beer, bread, wine, paper goods...it was a big trip. I took no photos except of the cart full of bags, here in the topic about using self-checkout or waiting for live humans. We usually bring in our own bags, but forgot them. I think the baggers use too many bags, but they'll be used for other purposes or recycled when necessary. It was certainly no time for us to wait on ourselves. My next trip was to pick up a few things for our Thanksgiving feast, and since I was operating alone I had more time to poke around and take a few pictures. You'll see more as the season goes along. These shots were from the Foothills Fry's, at the easternmost end of Yuma. It's the newest and most upscale part of the city, and the size and selections in the store reflect that. Massive produce area with astonishingly low prices (I need to do something with the more perishable items today). I'd never seen or heard of a pink pineapple. I didn't buy one, so can't comment on the flavor. In light of the price differential, they might do better with sales if they offered samples. Maybe they do sometimes, and I wasn't there at the right time. They have an "ugly duckling" or some such named area offering special prices area on produce that needs to move quickly: bags of onions, tomatoes, potatoes and such are 99 cents; bananas are also cheap. I bought both tomatoes and potatoes there. Their seafood department is a sight to behold. I noted Dungeness crab, and thought of our dear departed @David Ross and his contributions to the Dungeness Crab topic. I didn't buy any that day, but need to make plans to do so before they disappear. The meat department is also massive. I'm showing just a very small subset of the meat and seafood departments. More pics will be along, by and by. The "ethnic foods" area allowed me to find coconut milk, which I needed, and Bragg's liquid aminos, which I decided I didn't. The pomegranates in this collage were back in the produce area. Good price for those huge things! The next day, after I got home, I made my darling's latest batch of breakfast fruit salad from my purchases. That funny yellowish thing in the picture with the oranges is my knife sharpener. I'm pretty sure it was @rotuts who put me onto the Edge Pro system, and I have one tucked away here in the Princessmobile. Call me a heathen, however: when that blue blade was too dull to cut the orange peel, I grabbed the easy, quick sharpener you see in this picture. A few passes through, and I was good to go. Not shown: 5 pounds of green beans. I'll tell about that in another post!

I didn't see anything to interest me there yesterday, but Black Friday is young yet! And there are lots of listings on Amazon. I may find something, thanks. Right now I need to take advantage of the fact that everyone else apparently competing for the same cell phone tour seems to be asleep or out riding. A town's worth of trailers with 4-wheelers and other motorized toys has sprouted for the holiday weekend, as it always does, near the Interstate and the dunes and the cell tower. Last night the little internet service we could get was S--L--O--W and, of course, reminded us of how spoiled we've become in the last 10 years or so. I have a chance to catch up on the last few days, if I don't dawdle!

We've been away most of the day, and dinner tonight was quite easy but will be repeated at some point. I'm going to write instead about yesterday's dinner: the next trial of the pork / laab burgers. I couldn't be bothered to break apart and remix what I'd done, once I realized I'd forgotten the ginger that may or may not be necessary anyway. Instead, I used the $30 wand blender and food processor attachment to mix up a sauce of ginger, garlic, cilantro, lime (juice and peel) with a bit of salt and olive oil. I used that sauce to augment my burger, as well as the asparagus I cooked up. The verdict: the sauce was almost exactly what I thought it needed! It has a slightly bitter taste due, I fear, to too much lime peel. Still, it very much perked up the burger. And the asparagus. And, I think if I'd done potatoes, it would have been great on that too. Very nice flavor profile. My darling was pleased that I was pleased, but didn't find the sauce as much of a game-changer as I did. To him, they were burgers. He's never met a burger he didn't like. Some are more exciting than others. These weren't in the top tier, but they were fine. We'll have no trouble finishing off the rest of the burgers, and I'm pleased with the enhancement of the sauce.

Daaang. I'm going to look for those, next time I'm near a Trader Joe's!

My husband and I had our quiet, probably-not-fussy Thanksgiving dinner planned. Roast pork, hasselback potato casserole, green beans, cranberry salad, maybe creamed corn for him. Dessert to be announced, or maybe to be ignored. There are just the two of us, after all; one doesn't eat much any more and the other shouldn't. RIGHT AFTER I left the grocery store, I got an invitation for us to come to friends' for Thanksgiving dinner! So...I'm cooking and bringing the green beans with bacon as our contribution, along with some wine. We'll have our private feast on Friday or Saturday. Not bad, eh?

I'd be tempted to get another cordless KitchenAid unit, except it was so expensive and it's so useless now, all because tthey changed the styling slightly and the new battery pack won't fit the old unit. With that kind of planned obsolescence, I'm not going for the expensive units again. And I'm still carrying a grudge against KitchenAid! 😂

Sometime in the night, a ferocious wind came up and woke us up briefly. This morning it's still windy, but nothing like it was. The clouds must be associated. The larb burgers are still sitting in the refrigerator. Yesterday he decided he wanted to get the rack of pork ribs out of the freezer and have them. We got half the rack out anyway. The other half is sealed and back in the freezer. I did the low, slow thing in my trusty Descoware pan. We were able to find a mutually acceptable barbecue sauce at the grocery store the other day, and I'd forgotten to apply a spice rub, so I slathered the rack with Kinder's Gold. We were happy!

A friend of a friend was fascinated by the movie "Nomadland" and even more fascinated (upset?) that we never watched it. Too much bandwidth for us, and probably not representative. Maybe someday I'll try, when we aren't on metered wifi.

What @lemniscate said. We have driven by it a few times, looked at the congested area and said, "not for us!" A few friends and acquaintances have gone for a week or two. They say that Quartzite is the place to go if you want to hook up with RV technical expertise -- for instance, convert to solar power from someone who knows what he's doing. A few others love the social aspects of it. But we live out in the country during the summer, and have no particular wish to move to a city during the winter. 🙂 Day visits (say, to Yuma) are good enough.

I followed your link, then I remembered that another favorite Northern Minnesota restaurant serves laab moo. During the pandemic shutdown they offered it in meal kits: all the ingredients, ready to cook if necessary and put together and eat. I brought it home and served it more than once, and my husband liked it. Their version looks quite close to what's in your link. I don't recall the Duluth Grill version and the New Scenic Cafe version being as different as this discussion suggests, but last night I was expecting flavors more nearly like the laab moo.

In fact, I don't have any in the Princessmobile and spent some time looking for decent substitutes. Soy sauce (which I also don't have -- it's now on my shopping list) and miso were listed as possibilities. I used miso and some dried mushroom powder. From the little amount required, I doubt it made much difference. Thank you, Kerry Beal and gfweb, for the explanations! You've saved me trying to work out whether to buy liquid aminos! (I'm sure I have, or had, an unopened bottle of Bragg's in the cupboard at home.) In the substitution department I also didn't have Sriracha! Actually, I may have some squirreled away in a back compartment, but I opted instead for an easy and delicious substitute. I fell in love with Mazavaroo, a Mauritian delicacy, when I visited friends in South Africa. They brought some back for me last year. It's a hot, piquant chili sauce that I haven't tried making but really should. I'm sure, like every other chili sauce in the world, it depends on the variety of chilis available. Its texture is nowhere near the smooth texture of Sriracha, but it provided a delicious kick to the meat.

I wonder whether pheasant would lend itself to confit. Have you ever tried that?

I was hoping to get a laugh out of that! But thanks for the clarification. 🙂