Smithy

US dollars and Mexican pesos.

I'm pretty sure I saw those too, but thought them beneath photographing! 😄 These tortilla warmers are a surprise for me because they're so thick with padding...much thicker than any I've seen before this year.

When we're in Columbus, we like to make the trek 3 miles south to the town of Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico. There's a parking lot on the US side of the border, and it's only a couple of blocks to The Pink Store where we I can shop and admire goods from all over Mexico, and we can eat some pretty delicious food. At least, I usually think it's delicious. The margaritas still are! The shop is chock-a-block full of dishes, serveware, tortilla warmers, glassware, decorative vases and more glassware, and even a wide selection of swizzle sticks. If I entertained the way I'd like to I'd have looked harder at the pitcher-and-glasses sets. I especially liked the idea of a set held by a tabletop caddy. We really don't have room or use for it, but I liked the idea. I always have to remember to look UP as well, to admire the ornaments that hang overhead. (I'd especially enjoy having a star ornament. No place to put it, nor use for it. But I can fantasize!) My darling has much less tolerance for shopping than I do, although he did a little. He was especially hoping to find a visor, because he needs one for cycling and his current visor is about to fall apart beyond the ability of tape to repair it. "Do you want especially a souvenir from Mexico?" asked the clerk. When he said no, he just wanted something to keep the sun out of his eyes, she went in the back to look through their box of things left behind by other visitors! No such luck, but we appreciated the effort. The one thing of dishware that I'd really hoped to find was a set of clear glass salad bowls with blue rims to match the glasses and large salad bowl I have of that pattern. I saw them once, years ago, but had very high sales resistance at the time. I've never seen them since. Not shown: plenty of hand-tooled purses and clothing; furniture; even huge statues. It's a big place. Incidentally, their web site says they've opened a shop in Silver City, NM. That's a far trek for us from our present location, but might be more convenient to another reader. My darling chose a table with comfortably padded chairs, and we ordered margaritas. They are delicious, and I don't think they're especially powerful - which is fine with me. A little tequila goes a long, long way. We looked at the menu. It's been cut down since our last visit. It used to be a tri-fold laminated menu with offerings on essentially 5 pages. Now it's just a single sheet, front and back. The servers all wore masks, and spacing was good between tables. Here you can see three huge statues they have as floor decorations. I think a waiter told me once that if it isn't bolted down it's for sale. No idea how you'd transport something like this, though! I ordered a half-order of guacamole, and was surprised when it arrived looking more like pico de gallo. The avocado was under all that topping that we'd ordered. We could have had it plain, but I'm glad we got the trimmings of onion, cilantro, tomato and jalapeno. It would have been pretty flat otherwise. He ordered a hamburguesa con rajas and I ordered chiles rellenos. The rajas, sauteed green chile strips, were piled atop his burger and he didn't even notice. I, as usual, was confronted with far more food than I could reasonably eat at lunch! In the upper left of this photo you can see the sort of chairs we were sitting in. They were quite comfortable and were the reason he'd chosen that particular table. I asked later about how the chiles are prepared. The waiter told me that they're bought fresh and grilled on site to soften. Then they're stuffed and fried. I have to say that they weren't as good as I remembered them being from past visits, but that didn't stop me from eating them! I bought some place mats I'll show you later, and we walked back across the border. I was taken with a metal plaque that decorates the wall, representing Columbus and Palomas, and parts between. A US Customs Agent approached me. "Do you know the story about that?" he asked me. I told him what I'd seen, and he said, "yes, but there's even more! If you're here at sunset, the light makes a perfect reflection of it on the sidewalk!" He said he doesn't normally bother telling people about it, but since I'd been showing interest he thought he'd left me know. Maybe I'll go back at sundown to see it.

Further to the Instant Pot quiche: this morning we had a brunch using the rest of the custard mixture from the recipe above. This time I used burrito stuffing from the freezer. I started to use some chopped roasted green peppers, also from the freezer. I'm glad I didn't. I've been using them sparingly because of their heat. This time I decided that they're simply too hot! I've been trying to use them, sparingly, since I processed them in September of 2020. Enough, already. They went into the garbage. I think they were poblanos but hadn't bothered to put that on the label. The business of timing and altitude is still a question for me. This time I gave it 25 minutes at high pressure, rather than the 20 minutes from last time around. I couldn't tell a difference in the texture. It probably is affected by, say, how much cheese is in the mixture. The salsa, by the way, didn't improve an already-good dish. Surprise!

One of the joys of having shore power again is that I can use the Instant Pot and try out recipes I've been wanting to try. Last night it was the Pimento Cheese Quiche from @JAZ's new book, Super-Easy Instant Pot Cookbook: Quick Prep, One-Pot, 5-Ingredient, 30-minute Recipes (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). It's delicious. She notes in her book that scaling things down for a 3-quart pot can be problematic. I solved the problem by mixing up a full batch of eggs and cream and saving half for another variation on the quiche. My altitude compensation wasn't quite right; the quiche was a bit watery in the center, but it was still very tasty. Next time I'm going to take it away from vegetarian and toward the Tex-Mex by adding some cooked chorizo that's been sitting in the freezer until this morning. Incidentally, the pimentos in this were originally purchased to make pimento cheese. I hadn't gotten around to that yet. They were wonderful in this!

A couple of posts ago I noted that "one fat clove of garlic" may not be specific enough for the tahini in Melissa Clark's Cauliflower Shawarma recipe. This is what I was working with: It's also possible that the age of the garlic was a factor. This was the second-to-last clove of the last head of garlic on the garlic braid we brought with us last fall. It's held up well for the winter, but isn't as good as when we set out.

It feels like that was a lifetime ago already, doesn't it? I remember the great difficulty finding any sort of cleaning supplies; you were lucky that you had (or found) that. (I've never heard of that scent; I'll have to look for it!) It's been a very long and strange 2 years. That actually looks like a great little dinner after a long day's drive. We aren't always especially hungry then, although we'd be plenty hungry if that was typical of all our meals for 2 or 3 days running.

I know exactly what you mean about the lane striping. The old lanes are still visible, even after sandblasting, because the lanes are poured individually. The paint stripes diverging from the original seams can be terribly confusing. It's especially bad in (a) crowded traffic (how I dread El Paso, and how I used to dread the San Fernando Valley!) (b) rain and (c) night. During rain and/or night driving the pavement seams are just as easily spotted as the painted stripes. Grr indeed. We do tend to eat while driving if we're anxious to leave quickly or have a long drive to go. During some leisurely drives I'll pack a lunch and we'll pull over at a roadside rest stop to eat them. Some highways don't have such roadside rest areas, or may not have room for us to park because everyone else has the same idea. Sandwiches, cheese and crackers, or salad goodies like carrots, cherry tomatoes and radishes are all easily eaten out of hand. If traffic's too heavy we wait, though. No eating when we're passing through congested areas!

Columbus, New Mexico is a little town about 3 miles north of the Mexican border. Its main claim to fame is that Pancho Villa led a cross-border raid into Columbus in 1916, killed a number of people, and provoked the US Army to establish a larger garrison. From there, "Black Jack" Pershing led an expedition into Mexico in an attempt to capture the Villistas. Pershing didn't succeed in that mission before President Woodrow Wilson called him back in anticipation of World War I involvement. However, Pershing learned a lot about the use of mechanization vs. animals for army purposes, and credited the Mexico expedition with helping to prepare for the larger war. Pancho Villa State Park is situated at the site of the original army encampment. If you ever have a chance to come here, I recommend a visit or two to the State Park museum as well as the Depot Museum, across the road, run by the Columbus Historical Society. Last night as we sat out on our deck we were treated to bugle calls from the hill you see at the top of this picture. It was a bit strange hearing "Reveille" at sunset, but we also heard other calls: "Charge", "Retreat", some my darling couldn't identify, and finally "Taps". I am amazed at how well the sound carried from that little instrument, played on that little knoll. Then again, there's a reason that knoll was used by the original buglers. The musician was the grandson of a man who'd served here at the garrison before it was closed down, and he wanted to pay homage to his grandfather. I snapped the photo this morning, when he was playing "Reveille" - quite a bit later than would have happened in the Army, but I'm sure my fellow campers were grateful for the delay. Yesterday and last night I finally, FINALLY! AT LAST! managed to try a recipe that's been cluttering up my browser for weeks: Melissa Clark's Cauliflower Shawarma. The recipe is originally in the New York Times (behind a paywall) but the Seattle Times was good enough to rerun it here: This cauliflower shawarma reaches for spring. The seasonings are cumin, coriander, paprika, turmeric, a touch of salt and pepper, all mixed into olive oil with which you coat chunks of cauliflower and red onion. I doubled the coating and used half to coat a couple of chicken thighs. It all went onto a baking sheet and baked at 425F for 25 minutes. Meanwhile, I mixed up a tahini sauce per the recipe. This was the one place where caution was needed, and I'm glad I set it up as a side sauce for our personal tastes. It was much, much too hot with the garlic! Note to self: when a recipe calls for one fat clove of garlic, think twice before using a fat clove of the Russian Giant variety of garlic. I won't even pretend to be modest: I think it was a stroke of genius to cook the chicken and vegetables together. They shared seasonings, the chicken yielded some of its skin fat to the vegetables, and were all done perfectly at the same time. Tender, moist chicken is a wonderful thing. The seasonings were just as good on the chicken as on the vegetables. I'll be cooking this recipe again, and again, and again.

We started escaping the heat. One way to do that is to head north, and we aren't ready to do that. We went to higher elevations instead. We arrived in the little town of Animas, New Mexico and spent the night in the back parking lot of the mercantile company that sells fuel, hardware, farm equipment and food. The town seems to be a quiet place. The mercantile's main shed, where the big equipment is held, never seems to be closed up at night. Maybe the fact that the Fire and Rescue building is right around the corner is a factor. The community park seems like a triumph of optimism over practicality at this time of year, but maybe it's better at other times of the year. We've seen ball games and practice sometimes when we've passed through. Despite the dry grass, we were glad to at last see signs of spring. We saw very few flowers, even along the freeway roadsides where rain runs off, until we were past Tucson. Have I mentioned that New Mexico is windy?!? 😆 When we arrived it was still in the high 80's, but we were able to open windows and let that wind help cool the Princessmobile down. By evening we were ready for chili, which has been in the freezer for over a month, for dinner. Before dinner, we sat out on our deck, enjoyed a few beverages and admired the road-painting machine that shared the back lot with us. The differing paint colors on the sides amused us. For those who might be reading this and are unfamiliar with American road-painting schemes, the lane-division lines are painted yellow. The roadside edge lines, what we call fog lines, are white. We had noticed on the way in that the road had some freshly-painted lines and some faded lines. Since we had no idea which way that equipment would be traveling, we made sure to get out ahead of it the next morning. This paint dries quickly, but not immediately. I made road-food sandwiches the night before, to allow for an earlier departure. Next stop: Columbus, New Mexico.

They do look pretty. If they'll grow as far north as chromedome's location, maybe I can find them at our farmers' markets in Duluth this summer. I'll look around.

Please elaborate: "chokos"? What are they, what do they taste, smell, handle like?

I picked up Anissa Helou's book. I also was reminded that I already had Andrés' and Liebowitz's books.

Not me! I've bookmarked that recipe!

Ah Shelby, you're a woman after my own heart! Yesterday's dinner helped me prove to my darling that we really don't have to buy shredded potatoes in the freezer section. He goes for convenience and simplicity (as I've shown before) and I tend to cook from scratch, but we've been stocking far more frozen-section foods than we used to. But. Buying shredded potatoes for hash browns, when it's just the two of us? C'mon. Yesterday, I showed him. 4 Yukon Golds, with the help of a peeler, a knife, a box grater and the all-important protective glove, yielded a nice strainer full of shreds. After I shot that photo I realized the potatoes were already turning brown. I rinsed them, then wrapped in paper towels and a dish towel, and stored the bundle in the refrigerator until it was time to cook. I did this before it got too beastly hot for the day, and also prepped the brussels sprouts and bacon for the rest of dinner. Evening came, and I set up two skillets on the camp stove. The bacon started to cook...and then the bottle ran out of propane. We didn't have any more bottles. Sigh. I moved everything inside. The bacon on the left was to provide fat for the potatoes, with the additional benefit that I now have a few strips of crispy bacon to scatter over a salad. The sprouts were also cooked with bacon. I added olive oil (or was it butter?) for extra fat for the potatoes, and a bit of red wine vinegar to the sprouts. These were the crispiest, most delicious has browns either of us has ever made. I do believe he's a convert... ... except, of course, that I may always be the one shredding them. Maybe that wasn't such a bright move, after all.

We've been cooling our heels in this very nice, quiet county park for rather longer than we'd planned, waiting for our mail to catch up to us. Our heels are about the only thing that's been cooled, though. I know that back home there's Yet Another Winter Storm on the way, and the National Weather Service posted an April Fool's tweet that said summer had been canceled. I probably won't get much sympathy for temperatures in the 90's. Still, it's a bit much. Our poor refrigerator can't get cooler than 40F at night, and after 2 days the ice cube tray in the freezer still has liquid water in it. This leads me to "ways to stay cool". Shade, of course, and we're lucky usually to have a breeze. I brewed some hibiscus tea and am keeping it in the refrigerator. (Note: do not pour boiling water into a plastic peanut butter jar to brew tea, even if you intend to store the tea in it later. Good thing I've been saving the empty, cleaned jars!) I finally trotted out this relic from my parents, a gift they received, what, back in the 1970's? I've always wondered how well the evaporative cooling would work. I see terra cotta amphorae in Egyptian roadside watering stands. Last time I tried this wine brique I was none too sure it had worked. I think I must not have been patient enough. I filled the brique with water and let it sit in the shade for several hours, then shot it with my IR thermometer. By golly: adjacent surfaces at the time were 75F. The surface of the brique was 64F. Obviously it would be even better if the wine bottle, the brique or both had spent time in the refrigerator first, but it did make a difference. I emptied the water (saved it for another purpose), put the bottle in, and enjoyed a slightly cooled wine when dinnertime came. Here's my hibiscus tea (aka jamaica or karkadeh), along with a now-finished bottle of a very refreshing white wine that cooled in the brique.

The last couple of dinners have been taste tests. Last night it was yet another variety of breaded frozen fish: this time, Gorton's Breaded Cod Fillets. Tater Tots also put in an appearance. Note to self: do not try frying outside while something is baking inside. It's too much travel time. It's too easy to overheat the frying oil. This is a fish that will not be appearing in our dinner rotation again. We both thought the breading wasn't worth tasting and the fish had no flavor at all. We disagreed on the Tots, though. It seems he doesn't mind when they're almost charred black! I do. There was enough of both types (from two batches) to keep us both happy. Still, I need to remember to give pan-fried items my undivided attention. Tonight it was two varieties of tube steaks. We have a load of them now in the Princessmobile's refrigerator, thanks to our last shopping expedition. Tonight we tried Aidells' Cajun Andouille Sausage vs. Kiolbassa's Polish Sausage. I had been delighted to find Kiolbassa again -- apparently we've traveled far enough east -- and had bought Polish as well as some of their beef tube steaks that will appear later. The picture above doesn't show it as clearly as I'd expected, but the shapes were different: Aidells' Andouille was longer and thinner than Kiolbassa's Polish sausages. Even if we couldn't distinguish them by visual cues, however, we'd have known the difference by taste. The flavor profiles of Andouille and Polish sausages are wildly different, so it was a funny sort of comparison. I didn't think it terribly surprising that the Andouille packed more heat punch and less complex flavors. The Kiolbassa brand Polish sausage had a delightful "snap" to the skin. At first I vastly preferred the Polish sausage. As dinner went on, I began to have doubts. I think I've mentioned this before without getting a response, so I'll try it again. To me, most Polish sausage begins well enough but after a few bites a persistent flavor creeps out and dominates all the complexity until it's all I can taste. In music I'd liken it to a drone, or to one voice that simply doesn't blend with the rest of the choir when it should. I think it must be salt and garlic (powder??) taking over the rest of the flavors. Most Polish sausage strikes me this way after a couple of bites, but I don't know what the flavors are or what can be done about it. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'd love to find a Polish sausage that seemed more balanced, even if we had to make it ourselves - but I need to know what that all-too-persistent-and-dominant flavor is. The rest of dinner was potato salad for him, cole slaw for me. I don't usually say much about our breakfasts and lunches, because they're so much the same as a rule. Still, I think today's salad is worth sharing. Pretty, isn't it?

It appears you can. I just found this at H-E-B, for instance. Since that's a Texas grocery store chain it doesn't do you any good, but I may be able to buy some in a week or two. If so, I'll report back!

I really hadn't thought about how the nose-to-tail movement would help drive the revival of this sort of dish in restaurants. This will be fun and interesting!

@blue_dolphin, is that small bread, or are those immense radishes?

I never thought of that strategy! In my case, nobody who came over would be surprised if I forgot and left the shower cap on.

Okay, this may be a silly question but I'll ask it anyway. Can you un-spot-weld something? Will a spot welder work to detach the old batteries from their connectors?

Welcome, @Evan Rahilly! Where in the San Joaquin Valley are you? I grew up near Visalia (Ivanhoe, if you're close enough to know that place) and still have relatives in Fresno. I wonder how you keep the temperatures cool enough for charcuterie at this time of year. We'd love to see your setup. Aside from the geographic connection, allow me to welcome you to the forums. C'mon in, look around, join in the conversations! If you need help figuring out how or where to post, feel free to ask a host. (I'm one of them.)

I'm inclined to agree with you. I got it as a (requested) Christmas present because we spend months on the road, living off the grid, and I didn't want to have to start the generator to run a wand blender. The waste of all that equipment for want of a viable battery, however, really rankles. Even if they offered separate battery packs, or used batteries that could be purchased at any hardware store, I'd feel better about it.

Still more nori experiments. I cooked shrimp using the same Browned Butter with Nori and Fried Capers sauce from the recipe I tried a few posts ago. I also tried the nori oil @Dave the Cook mentioned here as a sauce for lightly cooked broccoli. The setup and cleanup were much more orderly this time. Here were all the ingredients, ready to go before I cooked; the rest of the prep dishes were already washed and put away. I'm afraid my orderliness was almost the only successful thing about the dinner! 😄 See how much less counter space was occupied? On the left, before cooking. On the right, after washing-up. (It may not look like fewer dishes to you, but it was. In fact, he used the "noticeably fewer dishes" to argue this morning that I couldn't possibly have made the same sauce as before!) So, here was dinner. I served the rice, shrimp, sauce and broccoli all in the same bowl for myself. His sauced broccoli was in a separate bowl. I'm afraid this treatment of shrimp was a bust for him. Last night he didn't want to say more than "you've done better things with shrimp" for fear of hurting my feelings. This morning I got him to be more specific: to him it was thin, watery and bland. I thought it pretty good, although nowhere near as delicious as the fish had been. The lesson here is that one person's delicate is another person's bland. I could have perhaps thickened the sauce or made more to compensate for the rice. Perhaps if I'd cooked the rice in seasoned broth it would also have helped. At any rate, I won't be doing this with shrimp again. The broccoli got lost in the shuffle/kerfuffle over the shrimp and rice, and he made no mention of it. I personally think the nori oil went well with the broccoli. It may be a good complement to other vegetables. In non-food news: we were lucky enough to be in a rainstorm a few days ago, and were rewarded with a glorious double rainbow.