Smithy

I'll be especially interested in your opinion of the Ajika and the Green Goddess seasoning. I made a batch of GG dressing yesterday using that seasoning and like it a lot. My first test of Ajika was a disappointment, as you know. It sounds like your mother's jams and jellies were wonderful! Of course, she was starting with good material.

OK, I'm impressed! (Couldn't find the right "reaction" and had to spell it out. )

I picked it up at Trader Joe's, and it's listed under the TJ's brand name. The label description says "Spicy, garlicky, & deeply aromatic & savory". The ingredients listed are "crushed chili peppers, coriander, fenugreek, dried minced garlic, salt, marigold"

Another member (possibly @docsconz based on name) and I have already commented to set them straight. It would be fun if more of yez did that.

Huh. Gotta go set the NYT straight, about our change to a 501(c)3 .org!

It's dry, dry, dry here. My photo programs keep showing me memories from last year, the year before, and so on...and even in "dry" years there have been more flowers and greenery. I hope the dried brush is simply dormant. The wolfberry shrubs at the base of these trees look dead, but I know that's a desert survival trick. Still, when we look carefully we find the odd mallow blossom. Yesterday he tripped one time too many over bags under a dinette bench and insisted that I find a better storage location. One bag contained treasures I'd bought at Trader Joe's last December. Some I know I've showed before, because they're regular stock items whenever I get to a TJ's: two kinds of mustard; grilled marinated artichoke hearts; sun-dried tomato salsa; pesto. I'd forgotten about my exploratory purchases! It was like Christmas all over again. I generally prefer to make my own spice blends, but the two in the middle looked appealing. Chicken was on the menu last night, so I decided the Georgian seasoning blend would go on it in place of my usual rub. The plan was to rub the chicken thoroughly and cook it in a basket over the campfire. Then the wind came up. And up. And up. Our campsite is sheltered from the prevailing winds, but this wind was from the wrong direction. I trimmed green beans while waiting to see whether the wind would die. Nope. Time to change plans, and cook inside. I chopped "baby" Yukon Gold potatoes, tossed them in olive oil and maybe a bit of salt, and set them in a very hot oven to roast in the bottom of an enameled cast iron pan. When they were starting to brown, I added the chicken. I'd thought, incorrectly, that I had a lot of chicken thighs in the freezer. Nope! There were 3 thighs and 1 breast. Everything else in that freezer is...well, there's still a lot, but there's no chicken. In the "I should have known better" category: I should have known that even in a 450F oven the chicken wouldn't brown properly. i needed to sear it first. In fact, I needed to have seared it to brown the skin, then set it atop the roasted potatoes and cooked it all at a lower temperature. The chicken wasn't overcooked, but it was tough from rapid cooking. While the chicken was not cooking properly in the oven, I was using the stovetop for the Green Bean Salad with Toasted Almonds and Feta that I've raved about before. I used pine nuts this time around. I think that part of the recipe is quite forgiving: toasted nuts provide flavor and crunch, but many different nuts will do. The green beans were the star of the show! He is "meh" about green beans as a rule, but thought these were excellent. He even went so far as to say I could feed him these any time! They would have been excellent even if the rest of the dinner had lived up to them. It didn't. The potatoes were runners-up: nice flavor, good texture, nothing to be ashamed about. The chicken...well, I've already told you where I went wrong. It deserved better. Oh, and as to the Ajika Georgian seasoning blend? Meh. The description says "Spicy, garlicky, & deeply aromatic & savory". About all I got from it was bitterness and some heat from the crushed red peppers. I tasted nothing else to alleviate that flavor. I'll give the blend another test on something. If I still don't like it, out it goes.

We do the occasional "hot dish" (the Minnesota name for casseroles) but except for tuna noodle, or macaroni and cheese, it's rare. Nothing wrong with the idea, but it just doesn't come up on our radar as often as a one-pot stovetop dinner or else the separate elements. Coincidentally, I have a recipe for a chicken casserole that I'd intended to try, but I keep forgetting about it. As you'll see, I used what little chicken we had for a different dinner last night.

@rotuts, that's a heckuva good price for a good Red Table Wine. (I had to think hard about what RTW could be.) I do wish there were a TJ's close enough for me to visit!

I lean more toward beef than pork, based on the color. Pork would probably be more economical, though. Looks like there's some mashed potato in there too, just below the squash.

I feared that wouldn't come out right! But yes, I thought I had a sealed (vac-sealed) package of ground beef in the fridge. Its color had been good all that time, but I did want to use it before it went off. Now of course, having looked more carefully at the package, I realize it was chorizo all along -- not ground beef. No wonder it kept!

I've been planning for far too long to make enchiladas. Chorizo and ground beef have been sitting in the refrigerator for weeks. Flour tortillas have been in the refrigerator for even longer. The red onion I bought for the purpose has been ignored, passed over in favor of sweet onions for his dishes. Day after day, week after week, when I've said I intended to make enchiladas that day he's said something along the lines that he'd been planning hash, or had his taste buds set for sausage and potato salad, or couldn't we have superburgers instead? It's gotten so easy for me to take the path of least resistance that yesterday, when I said I was really going to do it, he scoffed. We had plans for the afternoon, and got back late, so it would have been easy to let the project slide once again. Still, I persisted. I discovered that the two sealed packages in the refrigerator weren't chorizo and ground beef; they were pork chorizo and beef chorizo! I chose the pork, and put the beef chorizo in the freezer. Out came the tortillas - at least they lie flat, but they still take up refrigerator space. Out came a can of refried beans and a can of enchilada sauce from the cupboard. The red onion got chopped, then sweated in a pan; then the chorizo went in to cook. Refried beans were warmed separately. I don't have any picture of the individual ingredients, but none of it was unusual. The finished enchiladas in the baking dish were much prettier than when served - dinner looked like something we'd hesitate to feed the dog - but it was good. Note that there was no toast! Tortilla chips did the trick.

There is a principle in Quantum Mechanics that the very act of measuring or observing something changes it. I've been amazed, ever since I got my head wrapped around that idea, at how thoroughly it applies to the macroscopic world as well as the subatomic world. So it is with hash. I know I promised to quantify and document the hash-making process. I've been trying, believe me...and I've had a lot of opportunities to try. Now that I'm trying, and watching, and trying, and watching, his results have varied from crispy-nearly-black potatoes to too-much-oil to he-just-isn't-quite-satisfied. So I think the best I can do is show the latest and give the proportions. The prep work is done well in advance: he chops an entire onion and uses about half; he chops enough potatoes to fill a 1-quart container and uses about half; he uses 2 to 2-1/2 oz oil; he uses 8" or so of hot sausage of some sort. If the sausages are "standard" (hot dog) length he uses two; if it's a ring kielbasa he uses half; if it's a long sausage like Zatarain's he uses one. I'll post photos if any of this is confusing. The steps: put the oil in the 13" skillet; put the potatoes in; turn on the heat. He isn't in the habit of letting the oil heat first. Turn the potatoes periodically until they brown. We discovered the other night that the timing is different on our camp stove than on our Princessmobile stove; of all things, the camp stove seems to be hotter! But it's been TOO DARNED COLD AND WINDY to want to cook outside. Oh, he seasons the potatoes with Lawry's Seasoned Salt. He thinks it helps draw moisture out so the potatoes get more brown. What do you think - fact or fiction? When the potatoes are crisp and brown - however long that takes - add the sausage, which has been cut into coins. Stir that all until the sausage is adequately browned or the potatoes are starting to be overdone. At the very last moment, add the onions. We use sweet onions and want them barely warm but still crisp. Enjoy. Not only is it cold (by this desert's standards) and windy but it's also dry. We had a slight sprinking the other day - enough to give us a rainbow but only a few drops on the windshield. My photo program keeps teasing me with memories from last year, two years ago, and so on. There is no desert bloom this year. Still, the sunrises and sunsets are beautiful. In other news: not only have you seen a great deal of hash, tube steaks and superburgers this trip -- believe me, you haven't seen as many as we've eaten -- but there have been several pork roasts. We found a good source of boneless pork shoulder: boned, then tied with string. The leftovers are great. Last night I got creative with broccoli, using my newfound technique of steaming in the skillet. The broccoli was almost, but not quite, overcooked. It still had a bit of crispness. The pine nuts, sauteed in a bit of butter, were a nice touch.

Well, hell / nertz / doggonit / take your pick I may have learned something I really didn't want to learn. We wanted fish, and I didn't want to cook outside (it's still blowing, windy, and cold). We'd been saving a nice package of walleye filets his daughter gave us last fall. The seal on the freezer package had failed, and I didn't want to risk freezer burn. It's a sin to waste good walleye. I also wanted to try @Dave the Cook's (and our late lamented Toliver's) guidance for cooking Tater Tots. I've mentioned before that I hate frying inside closed spaces. The Princessmobile is one such space. I girded my loins and fried inside anyway, being careful to raise the oil temperature slowly and check its readiness as I went, to minimize spatter. The fish was battered in, of all things, Hungry Jack pancake batter per my darling's daughter's excellent results. The Tots went into a cast iron pan and were barely, rarely, ever so gently turned to allow even browning. I will admit without hesitation that the Tots were the crunchiest, most delicious Tots I've ever cooked. The fish was also delicious. There was minimal spattering. I had to filter a small amount of oil back into the used-oil bottle, but not much. Was it worth the extra trouble? I think so. My darling is not convinced regarding the Tots, but will go along with me any time I want to make the extra effort. Thanks, folks. I've learned a thing or two!

i had forgotten Peter Ustinov. I'm not sure i ever knew what an excellent mimic he was. What a delightful, funny clip! Thank you.. eta thoughtful as well Edited to add even later (there's a lot to unpack from that video): was "Peter and the Wolf" a regular association for him, or just something for this program?

Aaand, we're having another wind/dust storm. Is it this year's weather, or our aging, or a bit of both that lessens our enthusiasm for cooking outside? Whatever the reasons, we cooked inside last night and tonight. Last night, the wind died in time for us to cook outside, but we'd already made other plans. It was tube steaks again. I'd bought some new varieties, and we had a taste-test comparison augmented by gently-steamed asparagus. In the process, I realized that I've been using the Princessmobile's 3-burner cookstove all wrong. When there are two large skillets in play, the favored front burner must be ignored so the two large utensils can be properly centered over their respective burners, in the back. I suppose it should have been obvious, but I only realized it last night. (Insert head-slap and "D'Oh!" here.) Here were the tube steaks we tested: I thought both were good. I thought Aidells' Andouille was hands and fists above Zatarain's version of the stuff. Now I just have to keep reminding my darling of that! Chores took a great deal of time and energy today. Meanwhile, the wind was building and dust was filtering into everything. This is a holiday weekend, but we noticed a lot of rigs clearing out in the morning rather than waiting until late in the day as usual. We're sure it was because of the weather. I had intended a dinner stir-fry using the last of a batch of mixed prepped vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots) as well as some mushrooms languishing in the crisper drawer, accented by some pork. It turned out that the mixed vegetables had gone from mixing to decaying, too much to be salvageable. I was getting hangry. Never mind necessity, hunger is the mother of invention. I grabbed the last of the cooked pasta corkscrews from a couple nights ago, the last of some delightful pencil-thin asparagus we've been working on, and a dry salami that I unearthed from somewhere - how long ago, and where, did we get that? Pasta Alfredo, with chopped salami and asparagus. Too bad I wasn't thinking clearly enough to remember the mushrooms! If you look carefully, you'll see that the sauce broke. Don't look. It was delectable anyway.

We had the leftovers from the pasta dish last night. They were delicious. As always with cooked pasta in a sauce, the cellentani were considerably larger than they had been on the first night of the dish. There ensued a long, rather nerdy discussion about whether the cross-section of the cellantani would be uniform when cooked, due to the length of the tube. If liquid flows into the tube during cooking, there would be swelling from inside AND outside the tube. With a relatively long tube like this one (a longer helix than gfweb's cavatappi), the middle portion of the length might not swell as much as the end portions. The same would apply to the sauce, which gets absorbed, if it's thin enough to run into the tube. I have some cooked (drained, unsauced) cellantani in the refrigerator. Maybe I'll cut a few apart and make some measurements. Maybe somebody has already done this. What do you think? Would a short helix cook differently than a long helix? Would it matter for a particular dish?

Thank you for these pictures, @shain. It's a fascinating virtual trip for me. I believe the top fruit (pink exterior, white interior with many many seeds) is a dragon fruit. Is that right? What about the bottom fruit? Loquat, perhaps?

Today's sunrise was the first clear one we've had in a few days. Blowing wind, blowing dust...we're enjoying a calmer day today! Someone, somewhere - @gfweb, here, maybe? - convinced me that I just had to try cavatappi, even as I've been deciding to cut back on the variety of pastas i store in the Princessmobile. Naturally that meant I bought both cavatappi and cellentani, because they look so similar and I found them in different grocery stores. Last night was the chance to try cellentani. I've been hoarding, and fending my darling away from, packages of New York Style (that's the brand name) Calabrese sausage. As far as I know I can only get it at Stater Bros grocery store, a very localized Southern California chain. I bought it last December while visiting friends in Claremont. I doubt I'll get another chance at it this trip. I broke out a pound of it for last night's dinner. Other ingredients included half a diced red onion, the last of my oven-roasted tomatoes stored in olive oil (and frozen), some of the delicious oil left over from the TJ's marinated artichokes, minced garlic, cherry tomatoes about to head south because we aren't eating enough salad, tomato paste when I realized the sauce wasn't tomatoey enough, pasta water to lengthen the sauce, and grated parmesan. It was good. I'm glad it was good, because there are a lot of leftovers and there's also cooked but unsauced cellentani. But. Was this the best kind of sauce for the cellentani? Neither of us thinks so. The sauce barely infiltrated the hollow core of the pasta. I probably needed something runnier, maybe more saucy. What do you think? How should these helical tubes be used to best advantage? I've looked in the Pasta Shapes topic to no avail.

I think we'll have to allow @atg to elaborate on the purpose. Since the original question was how to get the skin off the potato without ripping the skin, I assumed the skin was the desired part. Stuffed skins? Fried potato skins like one gets in the snack aisle at the grocery store? (I confess, I can't image how dental implements would have accomplished it.)

Do you mean the entire peeling intact, or in two halves? I've no idea how it could be done with an entire skin; maybe someone else here does. I've seen videos that claim you can pull the peel off in intact halves by cutting the potato (skin only) around the waist, so to speak, then dropping in boiling water. Here's a video that shows the technique. I haven't tried it, but maybe this will help you.

At last, a chance at some street food yesterday. This food court was set up outside the arena at the annual Silver Spurs Rodeo. Check out the wild colors of the cotton candy! I used to love that stuff, back when I was barely tall enough to see it spun onto a stick on the spot. Haven't had it in years, and wasn't interested in an entire bag of it. There were a couple of barbecue places. These folks were delighted to have me take pictures of them. They were still setting up. It looked good, though I wasn't ready to eat. This gentleman was also pleased to pose. I thought the setup looked great, and I heard later that the drinks were worthy. Those who didn't want Jack Daniels could get beer. I don't know what else was available. This place surprised me. Bemidji, Minnesota! About as far from home as i am! I finally settled on street tacos and stuffed jalapenos from this place, which I photographed from front and back. The young woman tending the grill in the back had a very spangly, very starry, red-white-and-blue cowboy hat. I didn't get a better picture of her. The tacos and jalapenos were excellent. The jalapenos were stuffed with tender brisket, some greens and tomatoes, maybe some onion, then wrapped in bacon, grilled, with cheese atop and some sort of maple-bourbon sauce. One taco had pulled pork, another had brisket; both had sweetish chili beans and the usual accompaniments. I had ordered two of each intending to bring them home and share them with my darling. I hadn't expected their size or messiness. There was no way to transport these! I enjoyed them all by myself, with not one whit of guilt.

We rarely stay at campgrounds. Right now we are boondocking, and have been doing so for much of the winter. There are commercial dump stations not far away (if you count 20 miles as "close") and the same goes for water. When we're traveling, we occasionally stay at commercial or Forest Service campgrounds along the way and take care of waste / fresh water as appropriate. In some states the modern Interstate Highway Rest Areas also offer those amenities. Feel free to PM me about some of the resources we use to find these places. The snag we're hitting, more frequently every year, is the trend toward demanding reservations for campgrounds. Online. In advance. Aargh. We don't like schedules!

Finally, I can go back to some dinner successes. Last night was a surprise. After our driving tour (and having gorged on roast pork sandwiches before leaving) neither of us was particularly hungry. We foraged for leftovers in the refrigerator. My plate may not look attractive, but it was excellent and the food went surprisingly well together: potatoes from the roast pork; the last of the green bean salad with feta; my version of cole slaw. His plate had the inevitable piece of toast, but no cole slaw. I was surprised at how well the tartness of the beans and slaw played off the rich depth of the potatoes. Two or three nights ago I had occasion to finally finish this pecan oil. I bought it in New Mexico some years back and kept forgetting to use it because we kept it in the outside refrigerator due to its size. I almost threw it away when we were packing for this trip, but decided to test it. Refrigerator storage had saved it: no hint of rancidity. I have a very good nose for rancid tastes and smells. We've been using it. Now I may have to get more! I used it to pan-fry salmon in a modified version of the halibut recipe that came out so unsatisfactorily. This time I cooked the fish in the skillet only, per @Dave the Cook's suggestion, rather than finish it in the oven. I still had some panko/lemon zest/parmesan breading mix from the previous attempt, so it was simply a matter of skinning the salmon, pulling out flour to dredge, and beating an egg for the in-between step. In the meantime, I used the steaming with butter / evaporating for a sauce method discussed here to treat some mixed vegetables. I need a name for that technique. "Borrowed with butter"? Nah. @weinoo, @gfweb, or someone else probably knows an actual name for it. Here's a money shot. The fish was much more properly cooked (possibly still needed less time), and he even liked it although he isn't a fan of salmon. Note the cook's treat: a scrap from skinning that I still dredged and fried. It was more breading than fish. Delicious!

Getting back briefly to the dust storms: yesterday, before we left, I made another batch of fruit salad. I had time to admire, and photograph to share, the beautiful contrast of colors between Cara Cara oranges and blood oranges. I also had 2 different varieties of dates: Khadrawy and Medjool. Medjool are large, relatively sturdy and great for stuffing. Khadrawy are softer, juicier, and better for baking. Not that I've been baking with them, but it's fun to compare types. Before I did all that, however, I had to clean some surfaces. This is a fairly constant activity, except that we're getting pretty casual about it everywhere except on food-contact surfaces. Behold the side-table: Last night I managed to knock a full glass of water onto the floor. As a result, half the floor has actually been mopped!

We learned something yesterday on our tour. Well, we learned several things: for instance, the areas where citrus and dates are grown, and the locations of some fruit stands. This post is about an epiphany. I've shown you rather haphazard pictures of the row crop process we see between the Princessmobile and Yuma: plowing, sprinkling, planting, rapid growth, harvest; lather, rinse, repeat. It goes fast, and each field seems to produce multiple harvests before the final planting of grass, if that's what it is, as cover crop. Around here we usually see broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and possibly some lettuce varieties. But what was this we spotted yesterday? It looked like broccoli or cauliflower, but we'd never seen flowers and growth like that. Could a new crop have been planted and harvested so quickly without our noticing? If so, what was it? How could we have missed it? We pulled over to look more closely. It STILL looked like broccoli, maybe cauliflower, but I've never seen growth like that. There were no discernible heads that I could see. When broccoli turns yellow in my refrigerator it's because the flowers in the crowns have started to open up ... very unappetizing sight ... the road to ruin. I try to cook it before that stage. I parked and got out. Nobody drove by and said "Hey! What are you doing!?" so I took a closer look. It sure looked like broccoli. Then I began to see some unpicked heads, as well as cut marks on the main stalk where heads had been harvested. Who knew? I'm sure you gardeners knew that broccoli would keep sprouting. I thought it was one head and done. (It's okay to laugh at me.) In this picture, you can see the stumps where 3 heads had been cut from the stalk at its lower right. Here's an even better shot of a cut stump. You can also see an uncut head just above it, partially hidden by a leaf. Okayyy...this field of broccoli had not been summarily plowed back into the field, as we've seen earlier in the season. But why? A field or so later, we found out why: (You'll have to look carefully to see the bees. I wasn't about to open the window for a better shot.) Pollination and seed collection. I don't know how seeds are collected on this industrial scale. Here's a link to an article I found last night for the home gardener: How to Save Broccoli Seeds at Home.