Smithy

The storm's blown through with no damage that we can detect. It's cooler now and we're glad for electricity to run heaters. Shades of things to come as we move northward. I want to go back one stop to Mineral Wells, Texas, where we spent a night and visited the Mesquite Pit Bar and Grill for dinner of our choice. I've learned to ignore their fried green tomatoes, but their version of Armadillo Eggs (quite different from those of Miiller's) are quite good. There's no bacon wrapping, but there's brisket and cheese inside those jalapenos, and the breaded coating is quite crisp. I'd be very pleased to be able to make something like this, but it would no doubt be just as onerous a task as trying to wrap those stuffed chiles with bacon. My darling went for pork ribs, and we shared. You can just see the ribs at the lower left corner of the photo. The sauce on their ribs is very different from the sauce Cooper's uses. This sauce is a thick, smoky glaze, no doubt baked on during the slow-cooking process. Cooper's simply mops their stuff from time to time, and dips in their sauce if you wish, but there's nothing glazy about it. Cooper's ribs have much less smoke flavor. Both versions are good, and at both places they know how to cook the ribs to just the right consistency, but the flavors are very different.

@Maison Rustique, glad you'll be playing along! Depending on your visitors, you may find the quiche recipe a gratifying and satisfying breakfast option. Another thing to consider for your visitors is the Chorizo Chili, if you like that sort of thing. This is hands-down one of the easiest recipes I've tried so far. Onion, garlic, fire-roasted tomatoes, Mexican chorizo, pinto beans. Seasonings. Garnish if you wish; broth to loosen it if you wish. This is a case where I had no canned pintos but had used the IP to cook pintos earlier in anticipation of trying recipes. (I still have cooked pintos, and cooked garbanzos, waiting their turn.) This photo collage is from my post in the Camping, Princess Style topic when I tried it for the first time. This dish is so easy it almost cooks itself. The lower-left photo shows it after the pressure cooking; I adjusted slightly with broth to make it a bit runnier, and that shows up a bit in the lower-right photo. My one cautionary note is that the quality of this dish (and of most recipes I've tried) is very dependent on the quality of the ingredients. When there are few ingredients, poor quality has nowhere to hide. This chili was quite good, and we'd used good stuff...but in truth, it was a bit too spicy for us because the chorizo was VERY spicy. When I try it again I'll use a milder chorizo, or if necessary mix ground burger or pork in with it. We tamed the heat with sour cream although I didn't include that photo. Avocado / guacamole would have worked if we'd had any.

We drove to the nearest town today for a few things, and remembered a wine/liquor store we'd discovered a few years ago, pre-pandemic, shortly after it had opened. The owner seems to be doing well. He remembered us, more or less, based on our accents and their similarity to that of his Michigander cousin. He still has good prices. My idea of a splurge on wine has dropped drastically in the last few years, so that $15 is a bit of a splurge, but the Predator wines were worth it. It was this shopmaster who introduced me to the Predator label. "Predator" refers to their organic farming practices, with the ladybug as its symbol because of its place in the insect world. I'd forgotten this shop, and how much I like this wine. My darling had simply remembered getting a good deal on Maker's Mark. We had planned-over (as @Anna N would say) beef ribs, along with microwaved peas, for dinner. I seem to have forgotten to take a picture. I can tell you that it was all delicious, or at least as delicious as peas could ever be to me. He loved them, but then peas are his favorite vegetable. The Predator Zinfandel has a nice winey flavor, not super spicy for a zinfandel, but plenty of backbone. It was a good accompaniment to dinner, and it isn't half bad on its own. Further to the wind and the weather: after our shopping expedition and before dinner, I shot these photos of the gusts traveling across our lake. Now the thunderstorms that have been passing us by are getting very close. The wind is howling and the trailer is rocking. I'm not especially worried for our home on wheels; by sheer dumb luck the Princessmobile is pointed nearly head-to-wind, and it's heavy besides. Our neighbor next door is less lucky; his lighter trailer is broadside to the wind. He said it was pushed off the wooden blocks that support the trailer's jacks earlier today. No damage aside from slightly bent jacks, but it took some time to get the trailer properly situated again. I hope the storms aren't too bad tonight.

I want those soy sauce dishes! How clever they are! What happens to the neato wooden boxes that the sushi comes in, once you're finished eating?

There is now.

Over on the Camping, Princess Style topic I've been reporting on recipes I've tried from @JAZ's latest cookbook, Super Easy Instant Pot Cookbook: Quick Prep, One-Pot, 5-Ingredient, 30-Minute Recipes (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). Questions and comments have come up, and at least two people have suggested that a new topic on the subject be started...so here it is! First of all, I should note that I've been cooking from a Review copy given to me for free in exchange for maybe writing a review on Amazon. There is no obligation for that review, but I got the opportunity to do so in exchange for an advance peek. Second of all, I'll admit that I'm not entirely unbiased. Janet is, after all, one of our Managers; her partner / sous chef / usual cleaner-up / object of charming book dedications is our Executive Director, @Dave the Cook. That said, I wouldn't be writing about this book if I didn't enjoy it. I hope others will join me. The premise of the book is that all its recipes can be done with 5 ingredients (plus the usual salt, pepper, oil...) in a half hour or less. Its idea is to simplify and speed up getting good food to the table; it also aims to demystify the Instant Pot for anyone who wonders about it, or who has one and is still befuddled by it. (My husband's daughter is such a person.) The book begins with explanations of the pot's functions and some basic troubleshooting steps. It also lists basic pantry items to keep on hand for best use of the book. It advises, without hesitation, to start with sliced ingredients from the produce or frozen food section, or canned ingredients. This part nearly always trips me up, simply because I usually buy fresh ingredients (and too much of 'em) and then have to prep them. For that reason, my timing is almost always more than 30 minutes. On the other hand, I'm only feeding one other person and I'm rarely in a rush. If I'm too rushed, I can't follow a recipe anyway! So far I've tried a handful of the recipes and I'll write about them here, with links back to the original posts if it seems appropriate. I've been hampered by generally not having an electrical connection and being unwilling to start a generator for the sake of using the IP. I've also been somewhat hampered by having only a 3-quart pot with us. The recipes are written for 5-quart or larger pots. The book notes that recipes can always be doubled but halving them can be tricky, and I've found that to be true sometimes. The book gives guidance on how to go about cutting the recipe down, but some experimentation is needed. So, for the first recipe: so far, this is my favorite: Pimento Cheese Quiche. I decided to make a full batch of custard but only cook half of it. I think it was a wise idea, for two reasons: the quiche would likely have been too thick if I'd used the whole batch in that 3-quart pot, and it would certainly have been too much for the two of us. Besides, I tried a variation with the remainders and used chorizo for a Tex-Mex spin. The custard is the same either way, and only the inclusions change. For the Pimento Cheese version one uses pimentos (of course) and cheddar cheese. I wrote more about the recipe here. (The photo is the same in that post as well as this one.) Delicious! I am such a frightful cookbook collector that I generally figure it's a win if I find even one recipe I'll go back to again and again. This is it. There may be others in the book, but this by itself makes the book a keeper for me. Next time I have company overnight, I'll have access to my larger Instant Pots...and this will be breakfast. So...anyone else want to play? Ask questions?

Please tell more about this?

We went into Miiller's Meat Market and Smokehouse just before Easter in the mistaken belief that they wouldn't be open on Monday. I'm glad we went then, because they had a sample table at which a woman was showing off some of their wares and giving our samples: smoked ham, something I've forgotten, and a baked potato casserole. I liked that so much that I bought one as part of our Easter dinner. The ingredient label is a bit scary, but the casserole was easy to cook and quite delicious. I'd like to learn to make something like that. (A recipe I just tried out of @JAZ's latest cookbook is close enough to give me ideas, but that's another post.) The cooked dish is visible in the upper right of the plate below. I very much enjoyed wandering around the shop and admiring the lemon-themed napkins, spoons and spread knives, even though I can't use them and can't think of anyone to buy them for. i also enjoyed seeing their various spreads and mixes. Their frozen meats section has some amazing items in the "Dave's Creations" section. I was surprised at their idea of "soup bones" -- see the lower left corner of this picture: The meat counter has a wonderful selection of stuffed jalapenos with various fillings, stuffed chicken and pork, unstuffed chicken, pork, beef...sausages.... I don't seem to have taken any photos of that, but we bought "gator toes" and "armadillo eggs" and "brisket stuffed poppers". The "armadillo eggs" (in this case a piece of cheese, wrapped in spicy pork sausage, with the lot wrapped in bacon) are in the freezer. We had the "gator toes" (jalapenos filled with cream cheese and pork sausage, and wrapped in bacon) and the "brisket stuffed poppers" (jalapeno, brisket, cheddar, bacon wrapping) a couple of nights ago. Delicious. I've made things like this and they're a pain to make. I'd rather pay someone else to prepare them!

I thought about claiming I'd seen Dorothy and / or The Wicked Witch of the West fly by.

We're hunkered down in a windstorm in Kansas, possibly with rain headed our way later but not yet. Family drama and trauma has interfered with time and interest in posting, but certainly not interest in food. I'll see what I can do about filling in some gaps. We spent a week in Llano, Texas and that meant little to no cookery on my part. The electrical hookup was welcome so we could have air conditioning, though: it was into the 80's and 90's, and quite humid, during the days we were there. We enjoyed being next to the Llano River, and cooled down by swimming. We enjoyed watching kids play in the park's splash pad. We dealt with family issues. We enjoyed seeing flowers at last. And we ate 'cue. Cooper's Old-Time Pit Bar-B-Que is still our favorite place to go, now that Laird's has closed down. Cooper's isn't cheap, but the food is excellent and a little goes a long way. We had beef ribs, pork ribs, brisket, pinto beans, some of their potato salad. PIckles, barbecue sauce, beans and cheap white bread are all included. I had promised myself a ribeye steak one night, despite the price, and anticipated 2 or 3 really good meals out of it. In the end I decided against it: too many other things going on, too many other good options available. Beef ribs can be difficult to come by unless you get there early, but one day the staff were good enough to set some aside for us. I added brisket to the order once I got there. We also went to Miiller's Smokehouse for some of their goods, but I'll save that for another post.

I (literally) feel your pain. That "oh, no!" moment when the cascade starts...I've never had anything as heavy as a roast land on my foot, but it's been bad anyway.

Oh, I agree with you. It's just that among my family and acquaintances during my growing-up years, we called it a tuna sandwich or tuna fish sandwich. The only time I saw "salad" appended to that phrase in a sandwich description was in restaurant / cafe menus such as you cite. It was a linguistic observation, perhaps related to regional differences. And I agree that your household is essentially a small-order restaurant...and a fine one at that.

I believe I grew up with "tuna fish" sandwiches in central California, in which case the canned tuna was mixed with Miracle Whip (yes, really) and hard-boiled eggs. I'd forgotten all about that, as surely as I'd forgotten about preferring MW to mayonnaise when I was a kid! Somewhere along the way it simply became "tuna sandwich" to me, probably about the time I began to prefer mayonnaise. "Tuna salad sandwich" always sounded like a restaurant offering.

I'm going to quote myself as a followup: @Kim Shook, is this the Watergate salad to which you refer?

@Kim Shook, what's in the Watergate salad? I like the colors.

@FauxPas, your Easter dinner story is one for the books. It reminds me of something Lynne Rosetto Kasper said (more than once, I'm sure) during her annual Turkey Confidential call-in shows on The Splendid Table: the feasts that go without a hitch are fine, but the ones with disasters are the ones that make stories to remember and laugh at over the years!

I've never tried Bourdain's recipe, but once I tried Jeffrey Steingarten's version I've never tried another. It's delicious, it works, and it's perfect. The recipe is in his book It Must Have Been Something I Ate, and the book makes for fine and hilarious reading. Click here for the recipe in question.

You showed those limes just to get a rise out of @JoNorvelleWalker, didn't you?

The sad truth is that when we moved into our current house there was a blind corner in the kitchen cabinetry with something much like this that had fallen into the crevices and been left by the previous owners. I, er, didn't know what it was and threw it away.

Damn, Dave, you may start a run on these things. I see on eBay that the prices are all over the map. Did you get a sense of whether most still have good blades? Does a potential purchaser need to worry about dull blades on some of these previously-owned Moulis?

Doesn't the CreamI recipe book have a coffee ice cream recipe? I need to find my copy and see, because I though I spotted one. I also need to find the booklet so I can look for the dairy-free ice cream recipe that demanded oat milk, since I bought a carton of the stuff and have had it cluttering my cupboard, unopened, ever since the party for which I bought it last fall didn't happen. lindag may be late to the party, but I've hardly touched my machine and I bought mine before she bought hers!

My copy of The Sultan's Kitchen (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Ozcan Ozan describes Müceddere (that's how he spells it) as a rice pilaf with chickpeas, green lentils and caramelized onions. Your recipe doesn't list chickpeas, and he actually includes orzo and tomatoes in the recipe. I thought the book included a photo, but I can't / don't know how to / call it up on my Kindle copy to compare. But yes, yours looks a bit more cohesive than I remember it being. I wonder if you needed to rinse the rice more, or the lentils? Or maybe the tomatoes and orzo in my recipe make it looser...or I simply don't remember either! As for the Greek seasoning: it sounds to me as though you needed to add lemon, although maybe you did separately from the seasoning. I tend to distrust garlic powder and onion powder; some is good and some is vile. I don't have a Greek Seasoning mix I can recommend, so I'm not much help except to ask about lemon!

The recipe calls for 3 minutes on high pressure, then quick-release. We're at 4000' and hot, so I cooked them for 5 minutes with quick-release.

I mentioned that I've been putting the Instant Pot through its paces while we have shore power. Two days ago I was busy cooking chickpeas and pinto beans for various recipes I want to try. Ironically, I was cooking these beans so I'd have the equivalent of canned beans - for simplicity! 😆 Yesterday, then, I had time to try out a delightful carrot recipe from @JAZ's latest cookbook, The Super Easy Instant Pot Cookbook: Quick Prep, One-Pot, 5-Ingredient, 30-Minute Recipes (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). One thing that strikes me about a 5-ingredient cooking list is that the outcome depends very much on the quality of the ingredients: there isn't much opportunity to mask poor quality with such a short ingredient list. This wasn't poor quality at all. I'm not a big fan of carrots, but I'd eat them like this any day. My darling loves 'em and commented, looking at my face when I tasted, "this might even convert a carrot skeptic like you!" I also think it's a good example of the cooking adage that foods from the same family tend to go together. Carrots and cumin are related, and they seem to be very compatible. In case you're interested, the ingredients are butter, cumin seeds, carrots, and a touch of salt. Water for the pressure-cooking stage. That's all. I'm showing them still in the pot because by the time we got to dinner the poor things were a bit shriveled. The instructions DO say to serve them hot. I needed the pot for another recipe, so I tried keeping these warm in the oven. It wasn't enough to preserve the appearance, but the flavor was still great. The other recipe I tried was a chorizo and pinto bean chili. Once again, the results all depend on the quality of the ingredients. This chorizo was a bit hot and I think next time around I'd cut it with a bit of ground beef. Still, a touch of avocado (which we didn't have) or sour cream (which we did) tamed the heat. The sour cream garnish didn't make it into the photo collage below. My new placemats from The Pink Store did! The carrots were delayed not only by the need to use the IP for another dish, but also by a pop-up social event. We heard music coming from the group picnic shelter nearby. When the chorizo chili had reached the pressure-cooking stage, I went over to investigate. A fiddler and banjoist were playing. Sure, come on over! they said, so we brought over a guitar and fiddle, and we all spent the next hour or so playing music, punctuated by the usual jam-session game of "do you know this one?" until we found something we could all do. Meanwhile, the chili minded its own business in the pot, and the pot kept it warm. It's really nice to have a suite of easy, no-effort meals that cook themselves.

Thanks for that insight. I didn't think much about the currency symbols because I took them for granted; the menus at this place have done it that way as long as I've paid attention. If I had thought about it, I'd have shrugged and said it was just another example of the funny misspellings throughout the menu...not that I could do half as well if I tried to write something in Spanish.