Smithy

What do you like to stuff them with, that freezes well?

One thing I need to deal with before it goes off in the refrigerator is a passel of jalapenos. What happened was that I bought some -- beautiful, large jalapenos suitable for stuffing -- and then forgot I had them and bought more. There are at least a dozen. We have no party plans, and that would be a LOT of jalapeno poppers / atomic buffalo turds / whatever for us to be eating. I think I've seen casseroles along the same lines, but can't find those recipes. I've found a few good-looking pickling recipes, like this one from Fifi, God rest her soul, and this one from @FauxPas (God keep her with us!). I'm sure I've also seen things from @Shelby but haven't figured out where. I'm going to town today and have put pickling spices and salt on the shopping list, but there's still probably some sort of good main dish to make with some of these beauties. What would you do? And yes, I admit this makes my darling's point about Too Much Stuff in the refrigerator. 🙃

It was a by-guess-and-by-golly approach, but roughly speaking here's what I did: I started the asparagus, about a pint's worth of chunks, in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Once they were warming, I added about 4 Tbsp butter, in chunks, to melt around the asparagus. Once that was melted and the asparagus was close to being cooked I stirred in about 2 Tbsp Dijon mustard and kept stirring to get it to emulsify (more or less) around the asparagus. The finish was half of a large lemon's worth of juice, also stirred in. The result was a fairly thick coating on barely-cooked asparagus, with a bit of sauce left to pour over them. It was easy, and we both liked it. I'll do it again. I may try it on green beans next.

Mechanical issues struck again, this time more or less of our own making. "Why is the pump rattling like we're low on water?" I asked, "the gauge still says 2 lights." The tank isn't supposed to be empty until the gauge has been on 1 light for some gallons. We couldn't figure it out, but went to get water and pumped it into the Princessmobile's tank. That was the problem: the gauge wasn't reading properly. So for a day the poor pump was sucking air (and some water) and for 2 days after we refilled the tank the faucets spit on us every time we turned one on. Most annoying! But now I know to trust my ears more than the gauge. We had a bit of a kerfuffle today over the refrigerator. "There's nothing to eat in here!" he groused. "There's plenty in there!" I retorted: "enchiladas, leftover ham, leftover pork, beans, plenty of salad stuff!" "Yes, but I can't find anything!" he complained. He pulled everything out while I was working on something else, and demanded that I come look at it all. Grr. We consolidated, and I threw away the remaining unused tortillas and some old grapes, and allowed him to put my pinto beans into his wretched sweet deli beans. Here is the result: There's empty space on the shelves! I admit it's easier to find things now. We'll try to keep the refrigerator this sparely stocked for a while. We're shoveling sand against the tide, so to speak, but maybe we can change our ways. Dinner tonight was also spare: some of the pork roast from the Crown Rib experiment, warmed and cut and thrown into dishes of our choice again. I cooked asparagus in a butter/mustard/lemon sauce, and added my pork chunks to that. He put his pork chunks into his beans and kept his asparagus separate. It made for an easy cleanup. That pork roast is a gift that keeps on giving: like ham, it seems to be taking an eternity to use it up! While the country to our east and west is inundated, we've had barely a drop of rain. I think the plants would appreciate some rain, but they're starting to flower anyway.

Today's dinner was an easy one, with little effort: some of last night's pork roast, as we wished to eat it. This is a study in contrasts. 😉 For him: store-deli baked beans, augmented by some of my precious home-cooked beans, and with chunks of last night's pork tossed in. Alll heated in the microwave. For me: chunks of the pork, heated in the microwave, then tossed onto a bed a lettuce and spinach, and mixed with a vinaigrette. We were both quite happy with our choices, and neither was tempted to steal from the other's dish. Of such freedom is a good marriage made.

2 bucks at the library book sale. How could I pass it up? I like cookbooks from good newspapers. This one has the added cachet of promising Callifornia treats, and although I moved away from the state decades ago I still fall for the mystique. The jacket says the recipes come from restaurants, contests, and skilled home chefs, and have all been tested in the LATimes' test kitchen. The book was published in 1981 and updated 1990. Some recipes I'm very unlikely to try but there are already several that look appealing: a Tunisian tuna salad with eggplant (I know some of you will shudder at that); a chef's salad with creamy mustard dressing that incorporates bacon drippings; Steak Picado (attributed to Sal Ramos, who cooked it for food workers at the wholesale produce market in Los Angeles). Broccoli Chantilly. No, I don't need any more cookbooks! But for two bucks, how could I go wrong? Edited to add: it has several persimmon recipes. Boy, I could have used it back when we had access to overgown and neglected persimmon trees!

It's going to be sunny today, mostly, but the past few days have been generally cloudy and overcast. I haven't minded, especially in light of the weather (read: rain and more rain) to our west and east. The clouds have made for spectacular sunrises and sunsets. We've been having visitors not far from our campsite. We haven't seen the burros / donkeys themselves, but their tracks are all over. Behold one of my impulse purchases in the days leading up to the holidays! At the time I thought we might be having company for Christmas and/or New Year's. Of course, we already had the ham we'd brought from home...but how could I pass up this deal? The "deal" has been occupying space in our freezer and driving my darling crazy. "When are we going to cook this?" and "Can I slather it with barbecue sauce like regular ribs?" have been the main questions. Or, sometimes, he wondered whether he could coat it with his go-to pork breading. My answer has been a steadfast "no". I'm not going to slather this with barbecue sauce or pork breading. At last, I'd have a chance to try doing a crown rib roast. I've dreamt of crown rib roasts ever since I had a crown lamb rib roast for an anniversary dinner at an excellent restaurant outside Chicago. (I know, pork isn't lamb, but in my darling's opinion that's a Good Thing.) To my surprise the crown pork roast didn't turn up in any of my cookbooks. I turned to the New York Times and Sam Sifton's take on it: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015807-crown-roast-of-pork?smid=url-share (I hope you can see the recipe. I tried to share it). This image is the cover photo from the NYTimes' Crown Roast of Pork recipe page. Well. The first adventure was trying to tie half a rib rack into a crown like that. Turns out the "crown" requires both sets of ribs! (Go ahead -- laugh!) The muck you see on the outside is the paste I made, loosely based on what they used in the recipe, from garlic, rosemary salt, white pepper, paprika, mustard and olive oil. The interior of this "crown" was completely filled with meat, and I doubted it would produce the desired effect. Commenters on the NYT recipe had noted that it's better to leave the stuffing out of the crown's interior and cook it separately, so the meat would brown properly. I abandoned the crown idea, flattened the rack back out, and pasted it liberally with the rest of that rub. That all went into a roasting pan lined with chopped potatoes, a few ribs of celery, and a touch of water to get the cooking started. Into the oven it went: 450F, keeping an eye on the meat's internal temperature. At around 140F on the thickest part I started getting nervous and checking other internal temperatures; this meat looked pretty lean. I turned the oven temperature down to 350. By the time the coolest part of the roast was up to 135 or 140, other parts were hitting 155F. I turned off the heat and let it all rest until we were ready to eat. Dinner. He'd eaten cole slaw earlier and didn't want vegetables; I had a cauliflower / broccoli combination. The potatoes were the real star of the show, but the meat was pretty good. I hadn't overcooked it, but I'd forgotten about building any other sort of "dressing" or a sauce, except what was in the pan. This would definitely have benefited from a sauce. We have a lot of it with which to experiment! He already wants to use barbecue sauce on his. Of course.

Hello and welcome! What's your method for cauliflower steaks? What did you have for dinner tonight? I adore Texas 'cue and can be counted on to eat a LOT of it in the right places. On the other hand, the Gulf Coast has always been a great source of shrimp, oysters and fish. Are you anywhere near there?

I had a similar enlightenment. Based on my limited experience as a kid, I thought I hated pizza or any kind, and I don't think I was big on spicy food. Then came the evening my freshman year on high school when my friends wanted to go out for pizza. I went for the fun of their company. The restaurant was an old-style family Italian restaurant in town. Yowza, what great food! Pizza became a favorite after that, and later I learned that Italian food is much, much more than spaghetti and meatballs. Wow. That restaurant is still in business!

The wind blew and blew and blew today, making us glad we'd kept the back gate of the Princessmobile closed up. It stays warm that way, but gets a bit too cozy -- make that close -- in here after a while, so we also made a point of going outside some. (The dog insisted on that, anyway.) It was a good day for puttering around inside and doing a lot of non-culinary things, as well as low and slow culinary things. We now have a lot of cooked Rancho Gordo beans and some cooked pintos. He wants to put those gorgeous Rancho Gordo beans into a carton of baked beans purchased at the grocery store deli. Over my dead body, I say. He can have some, to cut the sweetness of that nasty deli stuff. I get the rest for a savory bean dish. Not sure yet what it will be. Dinner was a set-it-and-walk-away experiment, and I'm glad I tried it. I can't be sure who gets the most credit for this potato treatment, but it was a mashup of recipes for Crispy Parmesan Roasted Potatoes from AZCentral (Arizona Republic) and Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) (eG-friendly Amazon.com link): see her Lemon-Pepper Chicken & Potatoes, p. 267. The AZ Central recipe said that grated parmesan, not shredded, was required for its recipe. I didn't want to bother hand-grating, so went for the finest shredding disk available on my Moulinex. To the fine strands of parmesan I added lemon zest, ground coriander (seed), paprika, and white pepper. I cut russet potatoes into largish chunks (roughly eighths). Lined a baking pan with parchment paper, poured enough olive oil on it to make a small pool, rolled the potato chunks in it, then coated and tossed them (on the parchment paper) with the cheese mixture. Into the oven they went, 450F for an hour. I was curious to see whether fish would take to the same treatment, and didn't want to be bothered pan-frying. Some rockfish filets and one sockeye salmon filet joined the experiment: same coating, put into an enameled cast iron pan that had 1/4" of hot oil in it, for the last 10 minutes or so. As fish finished, it came out of the hot pan and went into the pie pan that held the remains of the cheese mixture. It was generally good, and definitely low-effort. The fish wasn't at all crisp, and although the flavors were good I don't think I'd do this exact thing again. For one thing, it made a sticky mess in the ECI pan and I just finished scrubbing! For another thing, some sort of bread crumbs added to the mix would benefit the texture. The potatoes, on the other hand, were glorious: crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, with a filigree of parmesan shreds stuck to the bottom of each potato and spreading out like some delicious doily. Definitely worth doing again. This is the way to do oven fries!

Yep, that wind is picking up here, but the sun has come out and we've put the deck furniture back upright (we tip it over to avoid the seat cushions being soaked by the rain.) What I love about fog is the way it amplifies vegetative smells. Back when we spent Christmas near Pismo Beach, a hundred or two miles north of you, I got the pine-and-eucalyptus smell. No champagne last night. He isn't really into it, and I wasn't in the mood for alcohol. How stodgy of us! Go figure! (You know you're getting old when 9 hours of sleep sounds like a good way to see in the New Year....)

It's good to see you back, @SLB! It rained a little overnight, but we aren't getting the major gullywashers that are hitting farther to the west. The wind is supposed to get strong today, though, so we've closed the back deck for warmth and wind protection. At least it isn't foggy. Although I grew up with fog at Christmastime and have rather missed it, two days has been enough. Besides, fog-with-desert-brush just doesn't smell the same as fog-with-orange-groves. Can't have everything. Last night's dinner was the essence of simplicity: scrambled eggs with cheese and some of the Christmas ham. We invoked the "it's New Year's somewhere in the world" principle and went to bed early. I made it to East Coast New Year's, at least, but didn't try watching the ball drop. If I'd wanted to watch it, I probably wouldn't have had enough bandwidth anyway. The New Year's revelers have come out in force, some miles down the road, to party and ride their dune machines. They're having a grand time, and when we went for water yesterday we could see that much of the desert near the dunes was occupied with clusters of trailers. I suspect that hundreds or thousands of us are all trying a use a communications tower designed for a few dozen. So much for high-speed internet!

Oh, absolutely. There was also a light painting of (my preferred) barbecue sauce on the ribs and in that juice. None of it went to waste, believe me!

It wouldn't have occurred to me to empty the eggshell that way for cooking purposes! We used to blow out chicken eggs for Easter decorating. Even that was a lot of work for us children.

This narrative now goes back to Llano, perhaps for the last time this fall. We bought dinner from Cooper's several nights: beef ribs and brisket, and more ribs and brisket, and of course the sides that I wrote about before. My darling disliked the idea of buying more than we could eat in one evening because he thought the leftovers couldn't measure up to the original. I wanted to stock up! We settled the discussion early during the stay by buying more ribs than we could eat -- the first night, in fact -- and seeing what we could do about reheating the leftovers. Remember these? That was way more than the two of us could eat in one sitting. In fact, I think we each ate one rib for dinner. This meat is very rich, very fatty, very good, and each rib is huge. This isn't that particular dinner, but you get the idea. The side dish is curried cauliflower. So there we were, he worried about all that meat going to waste and me determined that it would be fine so I could justify buying a lot more before we moved on from the area. We spent a lot of time researching how to reheat the ribs. We found a charming article that began, "If you're lucky enough to have leftover ribs,..." and knew we were on the right track. The method: put the ribs on a rack of some kind, cover, and reheat slowly in a low oven. The covered dish in a low oven was easy. The rack was a different story. What did we have that would fit in there? He hit on a simple expedient: flatware! A flatware rack! Worked like a charm. Who needs fancy racks, anyway?

None of our meals recently has been very interesting; last night was leftovers again. At least we're working our way down through them!! As I go back through my photos, I see things I meant to talk about but haven't yet. Ever seen an emu egg? I hadn't either, until our stop for propane a few weeks ago. I was sorely tempted. I asked about what the eggs are like, and was told that they taste a lot like chicken eggs. A lot of chicken eggs. One emu egg is roughly the equivalent of 8 chicken eggs. I was curious, but wasn't sure I was $25 worth of curious. My hesitation saved me, because the place was closed every time we went by after that. Much later, I wondered how I'd get one open anyway. I didn't get a picture, but a bin below this one held shells that had been blown out and then carved with decorative patterns. It looked like power tools had been involved. Those shells are tough!

Porthos, I'm so sorry it hit you so hard. Thank you for your well-wishes for us. I hope you're well on your way to recovery; I'm looking forward to reading about the great stuff you're cooking in your new kitchen!! My darling is still a bit sniffly but generally feeing good. I'm generally feeling good. And...drum roll...my home test kit just came out negative! YESSSS!

I expect you're right that it was a setup, but I still thought it was funny. Part of my dark amusement at it is due to the explosion of people who took to the road during the pandemic, and who drastically changed the dynamic of parks and camping. If we hadn't been experienced boondockers already, we'd have been in a world of hurt for campsites in parks this year, given the new trend of many campers reserving in advance, then not using the campsite. More than one article this year has talked about "sold out" campgrounds being maybe half full, with campers who need sites being turned away. I also have a certain amount of disdain for "influencers" and their nonstop staged photos. Once in a while is fine, but are they living for themselves, or for other people's opinions? I think most of us here know the answer to that question.

It's rained a little over the last couple of days, and last night the fog moved in. Fog! In the desert! The humidity right now is 45%! Not something we're used to out here. My sister sent us a box of Harry & David Royal Riviera pears as a Christmas present. I tried the first one on Tuesday and was sorry for my misjudgment. I've been firmly leaving them alone except for checking. Today my patience paid off: Perfection! It's really brunch, though. We spent far too much time this morning trying to work out why the portable pump was so slow to transfer water from the pickup tank we'd refilled yesterday to the trailer tank. We have a few ideas, nothing conclusive. It may be that the pump is simply wearing out. Yet another thing to troubleshoot, and somehow fix! That reminds me of a story I read in the New York Times earlier this week. I thought it was a real howler, and at least some of the commenters thought the same thing although others were far too shirty about it. (I stopped reading comments after about the 10th one.) I give you, as a gift from a NYT Subscriber, this great read from Caity Weaver: I Lived the #VanLife. It Wasn't Pretty. (Link didn't work. Try this: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/magazine/van-life-dwelling.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkTFUZAybQVNcuvByAiL_Rybp5gn7wIW2ZVjtGy-UTDM6A50LJL-JFVucE4g66FpVHIaN9A7t71PNeNEhgDFahrsrbwc4MZn8-94z2AzM_jtedUb01tGOyM2C3c-wvzeCz51jOKjW_ANyp2nMiJwZnqJtnZAvqjSROnvGZZ7Yzjtpu3v4hBYR5RiMBZUSJtvrvDRZ9OLaWf02Wq1l2C6wCB2alzZPL4KkAcQ5TFVvFUHt-hG42499ZM9sUV73tNLNDLHaNpsGWnlcgB-bZsw)

Did he say why?

Dejah, that's generally my experience with stir-fries. I'm pretty sure that if I did it more often it would go more quickly, but the chopping and prepping is necessarily a major part. What's the dark green in the picture above? Green onions, or did you get that from the bok choy? You are a trooper. First, cooking when you don't feel like it; second, cooking something Ronnie wanted rather than what you wanted (now he owes you!); and third, cooking such complicated things! I adore chicken piccata but wouldn't consider it a quick dish. And that stromboli! Beautiful!

Anna, thank you for reminding me about larb! We need to revive that topic, don't we? It's another high-spirits-of-20-somethings story. I spent one summer and fall as a part-time bartender in a pub in York, England. We part-timers were all about the same age and we thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. On more than one occasion after closing we'd hie off to Mick's parents' house and do serious damage to their stock of liquor (pub-sized bottles, purchased from the pub owners with their blessing because Mick worked there). At some point in one of those parties I developed the hiccups. A bad case of hiccups. Nothing stopped them: not holding my breath, not "7 sips of water slowly" or any of the other remedies I was raised to try. Mick kept insisting: "try my way!" I finally agreed. He took a spoonful of sugar and dripped just enough vinegar into it to turn the crystals translucent. "Take this," he ordered. I demurred: "You *hic* don't expect me to *hic* take *hic* that, do you?" He did. There may have been a certain amount of physical persuasion involved. But I took it. It tasted wildly vile...but the hiccups stopped immediately. To this day that's my remedy on the rare occasions I get hiccups. The day I convinced my now-husband to try it, he nearly threw up after swallowing it. But it worked!

Description, please?

Our aforementioned cases of Covid-19 seem to be mild. I'm pretty much over it, and my darling is a few days behind me but generally okay (except for being grumpy as a peacock caught showing when the sprinklers turned on). We're counting our blessings -- I, more than he, so far -- for getting off lightly, but neither of us has been terribly interested in cooking or eating. This is where things like the massive Christmas ham shine. Last night it was (most, not all) of the stew of goop, potatoes, and carrots from the original roasting. Tonight it was grilled ham 'n' cheese sandwiches. There's nothing special about these sandwiches from a culinary standpoint. However, they're easy and delicious, and require minimal effort and cleanup. Did I mention that they're delicious? Earlier in the day, as the mood took us, we ate cereal, snippets of cole slaw, or the Christmas green beans. Lots of coffee. I'm past needing cold medicine, but he began today. *Sniffle Honk* Rain last night, but the best part was the clouds yesterday afternoon presaging the rain to come. Much of the country is getting too much of the wet stuff. We got just a little.

We all have them, running through our lives: the first encounter with some new food, and the realization that a world awaits. Or maybe that first encounter is a happy memory because of the surroundings and circumstances. Or maybe it's a funny story about something you loathed then but remember fondly now. (To this day, I use the horrid but effective hiccup cure I learned while tending pub in England.) Over in the Breakfast topic, @billyhill mentions cooking (Mexican) chorizo and eggs for breakfast. I flashed back to my first encounter with that dish: aboard a sailboat with 5 college friends, and Francesca -- an accomplished sailor and cook -- feeding us chorizo and eggs for breakfast, with tortillas. I think that was it: no sour cream, no garnishes, certainly no fancy dishware. It was marvelous. I'd never had anything like it. The ocean air may have added spice; being with good friends on high adventure certainly was a marvelous seasoning. My experiences with ground meats before then had been limited to hamburger, bologna, and pepperoni. "This is wonderful!" I exclaimed, "what's in this sausage?" Cesca looked at me, grinned and winked. "Don't read the label." 😄 To this day, I can't cook chorizo and eggs without thinking of her and that trip. I'll bet everyone here has equally evocative stories. C'mon. Spill.