Smithy

We liked them. The browning helped with flavors, and of course the bacon and balsamic did too. They were a little softer than I'd have liked because I added too much water to cook them under a lid after they were browned. (I forgot to mention that part up above.) Once they were cooked as I liked them, I took the lid off to let the water boil off so the balsamic could concentrate and turn into more or less a glaze. That took longer than it should have, because of the extra water. Next time I'll use less water at that step.

Tonight's dinner was relatively simple: bacon rendered, then set aside; then brussels sprouts, halved, browned in the fat; then cooked down in a mix of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. All reassembled, and served. His bowl looked nice. "I need to show your bowl, not mine. Mine has too much schmutz on it." I admit: I may have been mispronouncing the word, and I may be miswriting it now. The most interesting part is that he'd never heard the word. And his parents were of Germanic parentage! His grandfather drove for the Kaiser! That led to a silly but funny discussion of Yiddish / Germanic words he didn't know. It all started with schmutz. I just hadn't dished out my bowl beautifully enough for a good photo. Schmutz. He didn't know the word. That led to "schmaltz" and "smarm" or "smarmy". Our dinner conversations range far and wide.

@Porthos and @FauxPas: I never had any Kliban cat mugs, but I have at least one book of his sketches, complete with his "love to eat them mousies" blues bit. I also have at least one set of socks with Laurel Burch cats! Next up: fun with food language. Schmutz, schmaltz, smarm (or smarmy). Well, maybe that last isn't a food term.

Does anyone have experience with the Ninja Foodi SP101? It's a relatively uncomplicated Ninja product, I think, that appeals to my best friend as a replacement for her toaster oven which is on the way out. It's this one: https://www.ninjakitchen.com/exclusive-offer/SP101WBKT/ninja-foodi-digital-air-fry-oven/ In rereading this topic I see multiple versions of air fryers and grills, but I'm not finding anything specific about this model: good, bad, reliable (or not). Advice would be appreciated. She isn't going to go for something elaborate like a programmable (Anova) or steam, but there may be something better out there that is easy, relatively inexpensive, a good countertop oven but that still makes good toast.

I just realized that I haven't shown the rest of the Taylor & Ng mug. The two "catfish" are simply mirror images of each other. Dinner tonight was left- planned-overs: ribs for both of us; beans for him; cabbage and beans and kielbasa with a bit of horseradish sour cream for me. We were again delighted. Although we claimed to love all of the food, I think we were privately pleased to have our choices. I didn't bother taking photos.

Once again I got to play with fire for dinner last night. We used to have wilted spinach salad often, and then got away from dinner salads for some reason neither of us can explain. The Los Angeles Times California Cookbook, that I wrote about here, has a recipe for flaming wilted spinach salad. The ingredient to be flamed is cognac. I used VSOP brandy, and it worked quite well. You've all seen beautiful, fresh spinach, and bacon cooking down, to I'll cut to the chase: (In case you're wondering, I had a lid ready to slap on that pan if necessary. It wasn't.) We both liked it, although we thought it too sweet and I'd only used half the sugar the recipe specified! That book has its first written note now. He confessed as we were eating that, although he liked the salad, he'd been hoping I would opt for leftovers (planned-overs, as @Anna N calls them) so he could get back to the barbecued ribs! 😄 Yesterday a bunch of Yuma aviation enthusiasts came out for the afternoon. Once they knew that we too are aviators, they were good enough to put on a show for us.

Here's the other Taylor & Ng "reprint" I carry in the Princessmobile.

That's a delightful trove, Elsie! How big is each bottle?

For clarity's sake, I probably should have written that as pee CAHN.

Pee CON, or Pih CON if I'm in a hurry.

That looks wonderful...and so much better than the sweet roll I had, followed by yogurt! Gotta make me some pita, and some egg salad, and some quick-pickled onions. Tomorrow, maybe. Thanks for the inspiration! (And @billyhill, we aren't a "bad influence" so much as "endless source of inspiration"! 😉 )

My darling says these sweet rolls are even better than the last batch. I'm glad he likes them. I had one for an early breakfast this morning. Not bad. Certainly not bakery quality, and maybe not even whomp-roll quality. (I'm sure the grocery rolls have some sort of dough conditioner.) But he says these are as he remembers his mother's sweet rolls when he was a kid, and at his age he deserves a nostalgic treat. I'll stick to my usual breakfasts: avocado sandwich, peanut butter sandwich, or today's breakfast: Yogurt, granola, fruit (in this case, a couple of cuties). I need something to counter the sugar rush from the roll!

Today's baking project, when I wasn't teasing y'all about the mug: making another batch of sweet rolls for my darling. He insists that his mother used to use her basic bread recipe, and roll up some of it with (shudder) raisins and maybe nuts. He kept insisting to me that the pecans and craisins I'd used before were excellent, but he actually asked me during our last shopping trip to buy raisins. So I did. And I used the same soft-bread recipe I used last time, but used whole milk we bought at the grocery store. (BTW, @heidih, that really was evaporated milk in the can and not condensed milk the last time around. I checked the labels in the store, as well as the label of a can I found lurking in the cupboard here, and see that I named the wrong product. Thanks for asking for the clarification.) Here's the before and after. I was much more generous with the fillings this time than the last time around. It looks to me as though these things need to be put into smaller pans, and I rather regret giving my mother's cake pans to my great-niece last fall. My darling assures me that the pale rolls in the middle look most like what his mother did. There was quite a lot of non-culinary activity today too. Dinner was a simple affair: the last jar of Maya Kaimal simmering sauce (Jalfrezi, in this case) lurking in the back of a cabinet. I'd bought some boneless skinless chicken thighs yesterday, with curry or kebabs in mind. The weather still isn't pleasant enough for cooking outside...so Maya Kaimal it was. I cooked a mix of basmati and wild rice for the bottom of the bowl. Delicious! We both thought so.

Impossible!! Just, er, not quite what Taylor & Ng had in mind. Probably because they didn't think of it. 🙃

Such great answers! I kinda hate to tell the actual story; these are so much better. 🙂 It's a catbird. The design team Taylor & Ng did a lot of fun kitchen stuff, at least in the 1970's. I have quite a few of their original mugs, either with funny French puns or with various animals doing The Naughty in funny poses. My sister gave me a couple of reissued mugs, and this is one of them. This morning, for whatever reason, my first thought when I saw the winged cat that I first showed you was "why does Pegasus look so funny?"

Some might disagree. 😉

@kayb, those are lovely. Brioche dough, eh? Maybe I should try making a King Cake. But then I'd have to figure out who would get them. Goot a link to your recipe?

I see some of yez looking! Quick, it's a Rohrschach test! (I promise to tell my first thought later today.)

Thanks, Shelby! I wanted to both "laugh" and "thank" on that post. You get the prize for first response! This morning my darling rhapsodized over last night's ribs. "These were just as good as Cooper's!" Well, I respectfully disagreed, but then I don't like Cooper's pork ribs as well as their beef ribs. At any rate, the sticking point was the sauce: he thinks it's perfect; I think it's too hot and too sweet. (I do wonder whether the McCormick marinade I used the first time around with this sauce helped cut the heat and sweetness.) I'll keep messing with the sauce, and try some recipes for myself. eta: but we are both delighted with the texture and flavor of the meat itself.

Quick! What's the first thing / creature you think of when you see this cup? (I'll show the rest of it later, after some of you have answered. I amused myself this morning. I amuse easily.)

Interesting! Without your explanation I'd have thought they were, oh, Pippin or Granny Smith green apples because of their appearance What are they like inside?

So, the barbecue sauce and the latest batch of ribs. I rubbed them with a different spice blend than I'd used before, from the same shop. It has brown sugar and a bunch of spices; I'm not sure it really made a difference tonight. Remember this barbecue sauce? It was the clear winner last week for both of us. Much better than the Jack Daniels. Well, my darling still loves it but I've changed my mind. It's still much better than the Jack Daniels, but I want to keep looking. I'd like to correct my comment to @Porthos, who noted here that he'd look for the Kinder's but not the Hot variety. I wrote in response that it isn't really all that hot. I was wrong. I took a spoonful of it straight up, and after a few seconds of tasting sweet and smoke and tomato I got hit with heavy pepper. And it stayed with me. And I noticed it on the cooked ribs, all through dinner. While I was cooking, I took out my remaining small sample of Cooper's barbecue sauce. It quite definitely has a lot of vinegar in it. I tried drizzling just a touch of vinegar over a bite of ribs to see if that got me closer to what I want. Note to self: don't use red wine vinegar for this!

That's an amazing credit! My best friend and her husband, in San Diego, had a terrible shock with their gas bill last month. The news is that next month's bill will be considerably lower (again) but in the meantime she's making a point of not using her (beautiful, envy-worthy) gas oven and range any more than absolutely necessary. I'm not convinced that the gas usage for their uncomplicated cooking is anywhere near enough to affect the household bill, but it's their house and their calculus...and if she can bully him into microwaving a can of beans rather than cooking it on stovetop, who am I to argue? It's different in the Princessmobile, of course. We have a microwave oven as well as the propane-powered stove and oven, but we can't use the microwave without running the generator -- and the generator runs on gasoline. We haven't done a rigorous BTU analysis, but our sense is that we use less propane than gasoline in this rig in the normal course of operations. Besides, you can't flambé anything in the microwave! (Or if you do, it will be excitingly unfortunate. 😉)

I'll admit that the electric versions (Foodsaver, for example) are ridiculously fun and gratifying because they're so quick and make such interesting noises. Still, these bags are more easily reusable and the system is much more compact and easy compared to packing a Foodsaver in the Princessmobile. The patent probably expired. The bags in the links I posted above look suspiciously similar.

In fact, I was all set to do a Flaming Spinach Salad tonight from the L.A. Times California Cookbook! But no, he wants pork ribs. They're seasoned and in the oven now. This is a good opportunity to show off my extremely handy vacuum packing system. It's one of the best Amazon purchases I've ever made: it works, it didn't cost much, and it doesn't require electricity. I'd include an Amazon link, but they say it's "currently unavailable" and nobody knows when it will be back in stock. I guard these bags carefully! Now that I'm looking, however, I can see quite a few similar sets -- with and without hand pumps. Like this one (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). or this set (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) or this set of replacement bags (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) or...well, I guess I won't worry right now about running out! I'm still taking care of these bags!