Smithy

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.

If you'd like to go down an eG rabbit hole as to that expression, you can see what we did with it 5 years ago when I questioned a similar usage in this topic. Warning: the discussion is scattered over quite a few posts!

I'm afraid I have nothing to report. I found those lithium batteries, or ones very similar, at local vape shops. They were pretty pricey: I've forgotten now, but at least $5 apiece, and maybe more like $8 apiece. I decided I'd better try to get the old batteries out of the holder before spending that kind of money. They are spot-welded in place. Would my soldering gun take care of that? Maybe. I have a friend who is an excellent tinkerer who might have been able to do something with it, but he was busy. I think it might also be possible to rig a different power supply altogether; it wouldn't look as pretty because the battery pack wouldn't go back into its holder, but it would make the blender usable again. While I was pondering all these possibilities, I got busy with other things...and then found a deal on a much simpler, much less expensive rechargeable wand blender. So there my KitchenAid set sits, still with no power. The wand blender I picked up isn't nearly as good (no speed adjustments, only a whisk and a double blade) but it does most of what I want. I haven't given up on the KitchenAid - that is, haven't given up enough to throw it away or sell the parts - but I left it at home when I went traveling for 6 months. Sorry I don't have better news for you. I still think there are possibilities, but I can't show you how it's done. If YOU figure it out, please post!

That is a wonderful mural and a great story! Thanks!

Lest I forget -- sorry for the data dump, but I'm doing some catchup right now -- I want to note the comparison between the two corkscrew-type pastas I've been carrying around, thanks to @gfweb oh, months ago. We both thought that the Barilla Cellentani looked like a longer version of the Cavatappi no. 87 made by DeCecco. We were wrong. In these bottom two pictures (above) the corkscrews on the left are DeCecco Cavatappi and the corkscrews on the right are Barilla Cellentani. The DeCecco are slightly larger and seem to have a slightly larger bore. Is that a function of the number? Is there a different size of each of these? I don't know. I mixed them in the latest version of mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham. I know gfweb doesn't like the inclusion of ham or anything else in his mac 'n' cheese, but I still owe him thanks for the suggestion of these corkscrews and their use. The previous attempts to use this stuff have left me wondering what their advantage is. In this dish they provided good structure - lots of room for good gooey sauce to run in, and bits of meat to hide among. Maybe I'll keep stocking this type of pasta. I just realized that the photos look almost fluorescent orange, like the boxed stuff. It wasn't that color in real life! Still, it used up the last of the Buffalo Chicken Cheddar, and some frozen shredded cheddar, and it was easy...both in the original version and as leftovers. Also in the "lest I forget" department: I promised to show this wonderful mural painted on the side of a Del Sol grocery store in Yuma. We're long gone from there, but I want to share it anyway.

For those of you who like to look in high-end grocery stores, I have one last trip to a Stater Bros to share. This one is in Indio, Calif and we went there specifically to get more of those wonderful New York Style Calabrese sausages before moving too far away. (I think it's pretty funny that a company titled "New York Style Sausage Co." is in Sunnyvale, Calif, but there you go: for those of you unfamiliar with the geography, Sunnyvale is in the Bay Area of California, near San Francisco and San Jose.) We needed a few things like fresh produce, half and half, cereal and pet food, but the only thing I bothered to photograph was the meat counter. Hubba, hubba! Look at the selection! Look at those tomahawk steaks! And look at the prices!! $4.99/lb for party wings, anyone? For once we didn't yield to the temptation to buy more meat. It was fun to look, though. Across the street is a farmer's market that we think must be a single owner, with the fields immediately adjacent. We didn't stop to check it out, but we loved the inflated strawberry. Quite the eye-catcher. Finally, on the way between camp and Indio, we visited the Oasis Date Gardens. They still aren't fully open due to pandemic precautions, but you can call in an order and pick it up outside. They still have the best dates of any we've tried: not too dry, but well enough tended - in this case, that means frozen for a critical time period - that we're sure nothing will hatch in them. There's nothing like opening a bag of dates to find it crawling with bugs, and that's happened with another grower's dates. As you see, the grounds are still beautifully tended. We got a date shake to go, and shared it.

As promised, last night was a study in contrasts between his cookery and mine. He cooked hash, one of his absolute favorite dinners to cook and eat (as you already probably know). I give you the prepped ingredients and the cooking process. Note that his cooking style does not involve standing over a hot stove or racing between stove and counter. Dinner - ready for its closeup, Mr. DeMille: And the dinner table, and the post-washup counter.

You are such an educational resoure! What is the dressing like, please?

Does "tamarind leaf salad" mean it's using tamarind leaves? If so, what do they taste like? I've only ever had tamarind seed pulp.

Thanks for that. Based on the small unadulterated bit I tried, it isn't something I'd want to put whole into my mouth and allow to dissolve. However, I think you're saying that some people might like it just like this but I might more appreciate the sesame oil / maybe soy variety? Have I got that right?

The nori experiments have begun. In case it wasn't clear, I've never knowingly tasted nori and had no idea what to expect. The stuff is in sheets stacked atop each other in that little plastic container. It seems a little goes a long way. With that in mind, I made some of the nori oil @Dave the Cook mentioned here, a few posts ago. Is it perfectly emulsified? Not by a far cry; we have no blender in the Princessmobile and the wand blender was really only up to chopping it into tiny bits. Still, I have the oil to try on something. Tasting notes: the sheets are oily. The flavor is briny like the ocean - what I expected - but also rather fishy, like fish that's been sitting a little too long. I think I was expecting something more like the bright brininess of good, fresh oysters. I had reservations about the flavor, but decided to go ahead with the oil and with the recipe to which @blue_dolphin linked here. (Incidentally, not one of our 4-footed companions would touch the stuff.) Yesterday I tried the recipe blue_dolphin had suggested: Lemon Sole with Burnt Butter, Nori and Fried Capers, from NOPI. It isn't unusual for me to take liberties with a recipe unless I'm actually testing it for someone, and yesterday was no different. I didn't even know there was such a fish as lemon sole! We didn't have any, but we still have fish from the Wild Alaska company. I wanted to try the recipe using salmon and sablefish. I'm still trying to find fish recipes that my darling will love as much as I, and that's an especial challenge with salmon. His face fell when he saw I had pulled out fish to cook. He hoped against hope: "Will you fry it?" "Nope," I said, and his face fell again. Actually, I fibbed a bit about not frying the fish. The original recipe says to broil that lemon sole 8 - 10 minutes until cooked, then keep warm somewhere while the sauce is being made. I ask you: would any thin cut of fish stand up to that much broiling? Maybe lemon sole is thicker than it looks in pictures. I was quite sure our fish would not take that treatment. I dusted it with pancake mix, shallow-fried it a few minutes' worth until it was done, then set it aside in the oven to stay warm while I made the sauce. (Incidentally, I shallow-fried it in the same oil I'd used to fry the capers. One less pan to clean, and as you'll see that was a good thing.) Before starting all that, I'd made yet another batch of Cookie + Kate's Green Bean Salad with Toasted Almonds & Feta, using pine nuts to stand in as the almonds. I kept the salad in its skillet in the warmish oven, same place as the fish, while making the burnt butter sauce. Note to self: Do NOT start cooking dinner while there are dishes from afternoon prep work in the sink! It doesn't matter if it's only a couple of jars, the stuff adds up! Actually, this photo is from when all the prep work was done and before I began cooking, but you get the idea. Back to dinner: it was a SMASH HIT. In truth, I'm not sure the nori added anything...but it certainly didn't hurt. For once, I didn't overcook the fish: not even the salmon, which is considerably firmer and tighter than sablefish. For once, he liked both fish. He said, both last night and this morning, that I can cook those beans and that fish recipe any time. But. Behold the "before and after" scenes of the wreckage! I washed last night, he put away this morning, and it nearly did him in. Tonight it will be hash. He cooks. 1 skillet, 2 bowls, 2 spoons, and the prep stuff will All Be Washed And Put Away this afternoon. 😉

I'd open it. If I didn't like the smell I'd (heh) chuck it then. I think it should be plenty safe, based on your description. Unless it was vacuum-packed, I don't think I'd keep ground beef in the refrigerator that long. I may have done it, can't swear either way though.

What a shame. I've been with Fine Cooking for, well, a long time. Well over 10 years. 20? Not sure. As long as eGullet? Again, not sure. I'll miss the magazine. I'm trying and failing to remember what cooking magazine to which I subscribed that died (last year? two years ago?) and for which I was offered a replacement subscription to Magnolia. I looked at it once and knew Magnolia wasn't for me. After some discussion (all truly cordial) I was refunded half my subscription, and the other half went to extending my Fine Cooking subscription. I think I'm still subscribed 3 years out. I'll have to see what happens next.

1. I agree that refrigerator looks awkward. Even the Princessmobile's fridge seems better thought out, although it's a lot smaller. 2. No, absolutely you are not giving us too much detail! 3. Will you have to eliminate a lot of your cookware, now that you've gone with induction? If so, will you put it in storage until you're sure about the induction stove, or will you summarily get rid of it?

FWIW *I* like the floor, but I'm curious to know your answer. Of course, we'll see it all as time progresses. Thanks very much for letting us watch the process!