Smithy

@rotuts, we used to make a tradition of Prime Rib for Christmas and/or New Year's, but this year we're on a ham kick. We got less expensive meats (sausages, stuffed peppers, etc.) from Miiller's this year. We do have a package of beef ribs from I-don't-remember-where-or-when, carefully cryovac'ed, that will make an appearance sometime this trip, but they didn't come from Miiller's. I think I bought them from one of our meat shops in Duluth. I got answers via chat from Miiller's earlier today as to our questions. 1. The beef skirt is apparently the entire skirt, not separated into the thin and thick cuts. They use the same thing for pinwheels. 2. The beef comes by truckload, once a week, from Hereford, TX. The company's name is Caviness. 3. The Chat Man was apparently talking to The Boss to get these answers, and I quote my final question and their answer: -- "Any idea whether it's feedlot finished?" --"He says it is mostly grassfed." Whether that means most of the beef is grassfed, or some of it is finished in a feedlot, or all of it gets a little time in a feedlot is unclear from that answer, but I didn't want to bug them further. Here's the website of their supplier: Caviness Beef Packers. Looks like a pretty good outfit.

Sorry for the shorthand! I've touted the Cookie & Kate Green Bean Salad with Feta and Almonds so many times that I just threw the reference out there with neither a link nor a care. My best friend and I discovered this particular recipe about a year ago and loved it. The technique for cooking the green beans, regardless of seasoning, works out well with other vegetables too -- including last night's brussels sprouts. Let us know what you think about the cookbook, please!

@rotuts, judging by the look of those packages I'd guess they were the thicker part. I'm trying to remember whether I've seen pinwheels there -- maybe? -- they're that kind of a shop. They have a Chat function. I'll ask for more information about the skirt part, and if I get an answer I'll post it here.

Last night's dinner was a much-needed change of pace, since neither of us was terribly hungry but both wanted vegetables: brussels sprouts, browned in olive oil, cooked briefly with a touch of water and a brief covering (a trick I learned from Cookie & Kate), then tossed, simmered and finished with a balsamic vinaigrette and some garlic. Some cherry tomatoes that had gone begging for salads also went in there. It looks better in this skillet photo than it does in any of the dinner pictures. Maybe that isn't saying much, but we both liked it and it was a gracious plenty. With leftovers! I owe @Franci thanks for the original lesson of browning sprouts, cut side down, in olive oil before doing anything else with them.

Here's a better photo; that one's a bit misleading because the collage cut out the wrong detail. They've labeled it as beef skirt. While I'm at it, I'll indulge in some more high-pixel shots of their lovely meat and deli selections. Beef here is sky-high in prices, as everywhere else in the country, but from what we've seen it's all high in quality although we didn't buy any of it. We came away from here with plenty of sausages, jalapeno poppers of various types, and snack sticks. They also have a freezer section with ready-to-heat dishes such as loaded potato casserole and various pastas. I didn't take any photos of those.

How about bird's eye chilis? I've never paid attention to them before but I recently realized they may be the driving force behind my preferred hot sauce. Now I have a bee in my bonnet about trying to make some, but I don't know that I've seen them in stores here.

That advert is hilarious! Thank you! 😄 As for finding cool stores: thanks for that, too. I'll be sure to tell my darling that it's all in the name of research. That'll make him feel sooo much better. 😉

Back to Llano, for a shopping trip to my other favorite food-related place there: Miiller's Meat Market and Smokehouse. (They ship, folks!) This is an old-style meat processing, butchering and packing place, with plenty of other food as well. We went for some of the sausages and stuffed jalapenos of varying types, but I had to snap plenty of photos and ogle other goods. This is the place in Llano where you can get everything you need for curing your own meats and blending your own sausages, if you don't want to buy some of theirs. Their camp food supplies seem to be pretty good too. There are plenty of preserves, both packed there and brought in from the area: They have some fresh groceries, though we've never bought any there; the fresh produce at the local grocery sttore is generally better although this fall the pickings for lettuce were pretty slim. There's a huge selection of wine, which I didn't photograph, and a fun selection of gifts. A massive selection of meats, including a good variety of jalapeno poppers of varying recipes. We bought some of those, and some sausages that have appeared in some of our meals but haven't been photographed alone. Their sign at the entrance regarding pets made me laugh because of its thoroughness. The beer packaging made me scratch my head. I never did figure out what the extra H's were all about on that box of Busch light.

Yes, that's the recipe. And I can certainly remember times in my life when, oh, cauliflower pounded into submission would have been grand fun relief!

Oh yes, I like smacked cucumbers and have done it often. But yes to the raw green beans: not something that appeals to me either.

Dark chocolate, with nuts of some sort. Almonds are best, but any nuts will do!

I tried my first recipe from Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), and now that I've been charmed by the book I'm finding a few drawbacks as well as advantages. An advantage, which @blue_dolphin mentioned above, is that each recipe offers a number of variations and substitutes and ways to further develop an idea. Another advantage is the creative organization: vegetables lightly (or not) cooked, vegetables braised, vegetables cooked on high heat, and so on. The writing is great fun. It turns out those are also disadvantages. I had green beans. I wanted to find a recipe for green beans. I looked in vain for something that didn't involve grains or other beans (chickpeas, for instance) with the green beans. Nada. Except that in the index it listed "Ideas for green beans". A dozen different pages? 2 dozen? scattered throughout the book. I looked through them all and finally found one that could work on beans alone and would be compatible with the rest of dinner. It was a good-looking dressing. Then it called for mashing those beans until they split and cracked, using a rolling pin or other heavy object. I had visions of green bean chunks all over the floor unless I bagged them first, and I simply wasn't willing to do it. I cooked them instead and tossed them into the dressing. It was quite good (you can see the resulting dinner here) but I'm not sure I'd care to go to that level of violent effort on any of the vegetables she named for this dish. Maybe if I were listening to the news while I worked. So: many points for charm and creativity, but my first effort at using it is a mixed success.

Ha! Christmas dinner was at the usual time, slightly after 8 P.M. The late afternoon and early evening hours were largely occupied with telephone conversations with family and friends. That was all wonderful -- what the holidays are about! -- but I worried that the ham would be ruined from overcooking. Yes, ham. Oink. We've been toting a huge double-smoked ham from home since we purchased it last October. We'd purchased the two halves of a ham from our favorite high-end grocery store that smokes the hams themselves. We would have done it even if their normal price of somewhere between $4 and $5 per pound had been charged. To their chagrin, some trainees had mislabeled the hams as a lower-grade ham at right around $2/lb. We asked the meat manager. He rolled his eyes, said "we have to watch those kids every minute!" and then went on to say that we should take the hams at the labeled prices. We did. We cooked the first half before we left and used it for sandwiches, mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham, and various other dishes. We held this half until Christmas. I don't think I have a picture of it before it was cooked. My darling took care of getting it ready while I napped. He cut up potatoes and carrots, lined our largest Le Creuset ECI pot with them, plopped the ham atop them, and filled in the gaps with yet more potatoes. All the potatoes had been microwaved beforehand to give them a head start. Then we stuck a temperature probe in the ham, set the oven on its lowest setting (it maintained 265, according to my oven probe) and went about our business until the ham hit 160F. Then we turned the oven back down to the pilot light until we were ready to eat. Early. Which we didn't do. Meanwhile, I worked on trimming and cutting green beans with which to try a recipe from Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). The recipe in question called for mixing up a dressing that appealed to me enormously: lemon zest and juice, mustard, feta crumbles, olive oil. (Not all that different from one of my favorite green bean salads from Cookie & Kate.) I must have been pretty badly distracted by the time I was working on it all, because I took only this photo of the mixed dressing, and none of the beans in question. You've all seen freshly trimmed and cut green beans anyway, but I bring it up because of her instructions: to MASH and SPLIT the beans using a rolling pin or other kitchen weapon, in order to create all sorts of crevices to soak up the dressing. (This can also be done with cauliflower, radishes...the list goes on.) Now I ask you: would you go to the trouble of dumping a colander's worth of green bean chunks into a bag atop a board and mashing them with a rolling pin? Nuh-uh, not me, not last night. Besides, she doesn't say anything about cooking them and I wanted them lightly cooked. So at that point I reverted to the Cookie & Kate method of cooking them, and then dumped them into the dressing. Yes, it was quite good. Dinner was delicious. Yes, we were sure the ham was overcooked but no, the flavor didn't suffer and the texture suffered very little. This morning's remains show that the ham looks dry... ...but trust me, it wasn't. And we now have these leftovers with which to make more meals: slices at the top; chunks at the lower left; and potatoes/carrots/juice that my darling assures me won't last past his next turn to cook. My only regret is that we finished so late neither of us wanted dessert. That box of See's Candies I bought for the purpose is still intact.

So, back to Llano. I mentioned before that I forgot quite a few things this trip. (I'm still missing some of them!) Some our housesitter can send along; others are too large or heavy to be worthwhile. I went to Charlie's Hardware, my favorite cooking / kitchen store in Llano, to see what I might be able to buy. I love going to Charlie's, perusing the goods, shooting the breeze with Kim and buying something. This time I was specifically looking for silicone ice cube trays (how could I have forgotten those??) and a replacement for my mixing bowls. I gave my good Pyrex mixing bowls to a great-niece last fall when she was setting up house in her first apartment. Heck, I have plenty of mixing bowls at home, and my darling carps about those glass bowls. I'd replace them with some of the metal bowls from home. It was a good plan, but I forgot to pack the replacement bowls. Charlie's has a wonderful selection of bakeware, appliances, cookware, doodads, gifts, and tea towels. I've never seen a wooden spoon as large as the ones they had (note the one lying on the shelf because it was too big to hang!). I don't know where one would be used, except perhaps in a cauldron. Double, double, toil and trouble? She had silicone trays to make very large and very tiny ice cubes, but not the size I wanted. I decided to let our housesitter include ours in the next mail shipment. She had beautiful stainless steel mixing bowls, all larger than I needed. She had some great tea towels! And a better out-of-stock notification than I usually see. Nothing from her cocktail sets or kitchen gear worked for me, alas. I bought a present for a new baby, finished my visit, and left.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Breakfast this morning was pretty grinchy. The last of my Neufchatel went on this bread just after I snapped the photo. I dream of Christmas breakfasts like we used to have, or even had last year (cinnamon rolls! eggs! sausage or bacon!) but wasn't up for making any of it. My darling had his usual breakfast cereal. We'll do better over dinner. That will be early in the day, and he's making most of it. I'm sniffly this morning but not bad; I've had worse colds. Cold/flu hot drink helps suppress the symptoms. I do wish The Powers That Be hadn't decided to sweeten their cold/medicine drink mix with aspertame rather than sugar or honey! I hate that stuff. I used to be able to avoid artificial sweeteners by using Walgreens' generic brand, but they jumped on the no-sugar bandwagon too. 😠

What lovely and inspirational photos, and great ways to use the Creami! Thank you for those! Now, please explain what you mean about the outer lid being the single point of failure. First: do you mean the black locking lid that holds the pint in the processing jar, or the grey lid that snaps onto the pint for storage? Second: what happened? (You didn't, er, drill a hole through one of those plastic lids, did you? 😉) You make me wish I had my Creami handy so I could try some of these recipes. No room in my current location.

When we first started coming to Llano another of my Cooper's favorites was their potato salad. It has dill pickle chunks and something like roasted red pepper. It isn't sweet. It almost has a mashed-potato texture. My darling isn't crazy about it, probably for the same reasons I like it, so on the first night I ordered a side of potato salad for one. This is what I got! 2 oz! 1/4 cup! I forget how much I paid for that, but afterward i knew to order it by the pint or by the quart. And now I think I'm over it and won't need to order it again. I think I can make some I like at least as well.

So...lately we've been eating pork, and ham, and sausage, and pork ribs, and yet more pork. If we don't change things up soon I think we'll start communicating in grunts and squeals. There's a lot of catching-up to do, but first I'm going to go back to dear old Llano, Texas. That was in early November! The park along the riverfront gets decorated every year for "Starry starry nights in Llano" with lights twined around hoops defining the walkway, and lighted decorations along the path. It wouldn't start until after we left. Here's a very small sample. This year I realized that they had a display series for "The 12 Days of Christmas." I think it's new this year. At the bottom of this collage you can see the Partridge in a Pear Tree and one of the 8 Maids a-Milking. Sometimes I think we should stick around just once so we could experience it as it's meant to be seen, but that would mean staying until December. We prefer to be farther west by then. Besides, this park has a 7-day limit on stays. We've never tested to see whether it can be stretched, although we suspect it can. There are several reasons we prefer to be farther west. Weather is one of them. We were treated to a BEAUTIFUL thunderstorm/light show one night, off to the east and passing over Mineral Wells, TX where we'd spent the previous night. It wouldn't have been a good time to still be there; in fact, we'd considered skipping Llano altogether because we weren't sure of the storm track. I was glad when we decided Llano would be safe; I had plans that involved food and other shopping there. One of the food-related reasons, of course, was Cooper's Old-Time Pit Barbecue. We got food from there several times: beef ribs, beef brisket, and even once some pork ribs. Mineral Wells has the better pork ribs. Cooper's has the better beef. I'm not sure what to make of this car in Cooper's parking lot. On the first night, we very much wanted beef ribs and knew they sell out quickly, so asked them to set some aside for us. When asked, they'll set aside the requested amount, wrap it tightly and keep it in a warmer until you come for it. As you can see, the ribs looked a bit overdone by being held that way. After that, when we wanted ribs we simply went earlier and wrapped / held them ourselves. Still, the ribs were delicious as you can see above. No complaints here! Every time I visited, I stocked up on beans, barbecue sauce, and pickles. Soft white bread a couple of times, too. That helps ameliorate the overall cost of the dinners, but mostly gets things that I don't yet know how to make as well. (Note the optimistic "yet"!) I'm going to have to start trying to make something like their barbecue sauce myself. I'm already almost out of what I stockpiled, and with all the pork we've been eating it will run out soon. I've worked out that it's a vinegar-based red sauce rather than the sweet stuff he prefers. That comes from Mineral Wells. Oh, and while we were there we tried to hook up with a mobile repairman to figure out why our freshly-serviced generator was leaking oil. Ended up figuring it out for ourselves, at our next stop.

I'm afraid you're only half right. Yesterday I started sniffling; today I used home tests (from 2 different production batches) and tested positive both times. My darling doesn't seem to have it; at least, his test came back negative and he shows none of the symptoms. i'm not in bad shape, but not as energetic as I might be -- and I'm certainly put out about the kink this throws in our social plans!

I suspect that I'm not the only one to be reading at least some of the 'Best cookbooks of 2022' articles that pop up in our online newsfeeds. I don't remember now which particular article of 'Top 10 favorites' led me to these choices, but I simply had to take a look at them. I put in a request at our library, expecting to have to wait weeks. Nope! They all came at once, within days of my asking! @blue_dolphin has been doing a wonderful job of discussing and showing off I Dream of Dinner (so you don't have to) (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) but if she ever talked about the charming chapter names I missed that part. Here are some examples: Under the Pasta section, the contents listing says Many recipe titles and dscriptions are equally charming: "Godmother's Egg Salad" is described as "Egg salad meets the Godmother, the mother of all Italian subs from Bay Cities Deli in Santa Monica, California." Near the back she has a section titled "Recipes by cravings, mood & realities" -- a very pragmatic approach! I very much like the layout of the book, although I haven't cooked from it yet. Heck, I haven't cooked from any of them yet but thought they were worth mentioning here -- with a shout-out to efficient libraries! The other books have barely been touched, too: opened, yes, cooked from, no. On the Himalayan Trail (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) promises to be as much travelogue as cookbook for me. At a quick glance it has many ingredients I'm not likely to source without a lot of effort -- and these days, I have other priorities. Still, it's a beautiful book and will teach me about Kashmiri cuisine and a part of the world I've never seen. Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is written by the USA's first Puerto Rican food columnist, according to the writeup, and it in many ways is a love story to her family. The fact that there's an entire chapter devoted to fritters makes me think I need to delve into this one when the weather gets warmer (for outside frying) and before I return the cookbook. I am a sucker for Arabic food, and Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is calling out to me. I haven't been baking bread much, but it has recipes for various kinds of Arab breads. Just now when I opened the book I spotted "Roasted Whole Chile-Spiced Fish with Citrus-Tahini Sauce" and "Winter Tabbouli with Orange and Fennel." Both of those are on my must-try list, along with their version of toum: a garlic dip that's the Lebanese answer to aioli. This also is a sort of family cookbook, although not nearly as personal as Diasporican or as Linda Dalal Sawaya's Alice's Kitchen: a Lebanese Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), one of my all-time favorite cookbooks both for its recipes and its family stories and pictures. How much I'll get around to posting about cooking from these books is anyone's guess, but I'm certainly enjoying looking through them!

My recent fun stuff: My sister sent us a box of Harry & David's Royal Riviera pears. This used to be a Christmas tradition during my parents' later years: buy boxes for families and friends, and one for all of us. After they both died, we stopped. It's a nice flash of nostalgia. If I can actually get them while they're ripe and not gone mealy, it will be even better! (I picked out the first one this morning, and it was a bit firm yet.) A friend down the road gave me this great set of potholders, oven mitt and towels: I love the sentiment.

Sorry! Yes, we're well (a bit sniffly at the moment) but have been busy getting ready for holidays. Since you've asked, I'll restart this. Thanks for asking!

There's a bit more discussion over here about the Asian version of this "forever soup": Asian-style Master Stock

Wow, @Porthos! Congratulations! It looks terrific, even with unpacked boxes!

@haresfur, is that an electric oven, or gas-fired? It looks lovely.