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When I was much, much younger and able to do a lot of hiking, we went camping in the high Sierras and my camp kitchen was extremely minimal. The heaviest items were a cast iron frame with hooks, a standing grill, and a ring tripod that could hold an 18 inch cast iron skillet, also an 8-quart Dutch oven with a top that could hold hot coals, for baking. Also a couple of aluminum-clad ice chests, I still have one, that doubled as seating. With these items and a few rolls of heavy duty aluminum foil, I could cook full meals for 8 people. We had several 50s era aluminum mess kits purchased at an Army/Navy surplus store which were easy to clean, wouldn't break and didn't weigh too much. Coffee was made in a one-gallon enamel coffee pot that was 40 years old at the time - coffee was "boiled", clarified with eggshells and strained through muslin. We ate a lot of fresh-caught trout, *bacon (from a slab, that didn't have to be refrigerated), *ham, ditto, dried beef, potatoes (we took a 100 pound bag for a 2-week trip because the guys were all big potato fans). I made roasted potatoes, fried potatoes, scalloped potatoes (made with dried milk) and potato soup. *We had a canvas "cache" bag that came with a rope and pulley so it could be hung from a high branch in a tree a bit away from the camp area to keep bears out of the camp. We have to move it every couple of days because the bark on the tree would be shredded every morning and we didn't want the trees harmed too much.

That sometimes happens, check out this site: vinegar making discussion and at this site check the section under Putting Vinegar in perspective in paragraph 3. (the fingernail polish bit) and here another site The Vinegar Man's site I have some 3-gallon carboys that live in a dark, cool closet inside my pantry. I don't usually bother with real wine "mothers" I just use the unfiltered Bragg's apple cider vinegar that included the mother, put some in a carboy with the wine and leave it alone for a minimum of 6 months, sometimes adding additional wine if I happen to have part of a bottle left over or given to me. I have a pH tester and an acid test kit to make sure the vinegar is at least .05%

Yet again another topic that takes me back to my childhood (in the 40s). The cellar in my grandfather's house was partially cut into limestone bedrock and contained a very large cistern which held water from a spring that bubbled up through the stone, with a pipe about 18 inches below the top edge to carry away the water when it reached that level. Just below the level of the water there was a ledge, all around the inner cistern wall that held stoneware crocks in which were stored things that needed to be kept cooled. Considering that the house, and the cistern, was built in 1830, back then that was their only "refrigeration" for food storage. Several fruit vinegars were always "working" in some of the crocks, peach, pear, raspberry, elderberry, ground cherries, cherry, plum, gooseberry and dandelion. The latter not a fruit but made from the dandelion blossoms, first into a wine, then converted to vinegar. I remember this quite well because picking dandelion flowers was one of my first "chores" when I was very young. One of the first color photographs my grandpa took with a new camera was of me, with my face, hands, arms and clothes all colored butter yellow from the flowers. I still make a drink my great grandmother called lemon "shandy" - not the traditional ale mixed with lemonade, but rather a very lightly fermented and only slightly alcoholic lemon drink. All it requires is lemons, scrubbed well (I give them a bath in lightly chlorinated water to kill any mold spores on the surface) and rinsed and some sugar. Slice lemons in 1/2 inch thick slices and in a large jar put a 1-inch layer in the bottom, add a 1/4 cup of sugar, another layer of lemon slices, another layer of sugar and so on until the jar is full, occasionally mashing the top layer of sliced down, using a scalded potato masher or whatever will fit in the jar opening. Cover the top with one or two layers of muslin and tie or use a rubber band to hold it in place, leave at room temperature for about 3 days, longer if the weather is cool. You should by now begin to see bubbles and it should have a very pleasant aroma. If you have a jar with a spigot at the bottom, you can draw off some of the liquid this way, or you can use a scalded ladle and press it down from the top until it fills with liquid. Mix the liquid half and half with seltzer or club soda and pour over crushed ice. You can keep adding more sliced lemons and sugar to the top and keep pressing it down. There is no need to mix, the stuff percolates up through the fruit and mixes on its own.

Making yogurt is a way to preserve milk. Yogurt will keep much longer than milk because the enzymes from the lactobacillis that convert the milk are also antagonistic to pathogens. They also will delay somewhat the growth of molds. Drain the whey but do save it. Ricotta cheese is made from whey after being drained from whole milk cheese curds, usually cow or sheep's milk but it also works with goat milk or goat milk mixed with cow's milk. There is a recipe for that at the Fias Farm web site also. check it out.

A very good tutorial on goat cheese making is on this site: Fias Farm I have used her recipes many times and they are excellent. You also might consider making cajeta, the caramel made from whole milk, rather from the canned, sweetened condensed milk. There is a world of difference in the end result, I got the recipe from my neighbor, who is from Durango, Mexico (emigrated legally 34 years ago) and it is authentic, although she has modernized it by the way it is cooked. It is easy and well worth the effort. Dulce de leche or cajeta Of course, it you don't like cajeta/dulce de leche, there are many recipes for different goat cheeses. More recipes here: New England cheesemaking supply And for recipes in which to use the finished cheese, try this site. The goat cheese and sundried tomato torte is wonderful.

For Hispanic and/or Mexican recipes, look for "chivo" chivo picante another Dominican site: recipes for European recipes look for "chevon" this site has a PDF document with recipes for chevon and "cabrito" which is baby goat. Chevon recipes Mexican recipe for goat enchiladas Chivo enchilado Equadorian recipe: Braised goat In the L.A. area chivo and in season cabrito, can be purchased at Vallarta supermarkets and many carnicerias (meat markets). In Lancaster/Palmdale I have purchased cut-to-order goat meat from at least 6 different markets. I have found that the goats raised in this area, which are mostly fed on commercial feed and not allowed to free-graze (because there is no suitable grazing in the desert), do not develop the strong flavor in the meat that one finds in grass-fed animals. It is much milder than some of the "lamb" I have purchased - I do not care for lamb but do like chivo. It makes a fantastic chili, it is quite low in fat and roasts or rotissierie roasts from the "saddle", shoulder and rump need to be larded a bit, however if braising, this is not necessary. Braised goat shanks, (I have them cut crossways into 1 1/2 inch sections) are excellent.) Copeland Family Farms in northern California used to have a web site and sold chevon sausage, as well as cabrito and other products. Excellent quality meat.

This site has an explanation of the pink seal applied by the Consorzio which certifies the product. Otherwise, as noted above, the color of the producer's label means nothing more than they happen to like a particular color and design. It doesn't mean the same as Johnnie Walker Red, Black, Gold and Blue that indicates age.

I have a couple of very large pressure canners. One is fairly new, one is very old and they both work. I have replaced the lid gasket on the old one a couple of times. This site explains a lot. Pressure canners I have purchased from this vendor. Check the canning forum on their site. There are some very experienced canners on the forum. Canning equipment You can use smaller ones for canning in small jars but you need at least a 15 quart if you want to can stuff in quart jars. I have a 30 quart (the new one) and the old one is a 36 quart.

I have all of these, plus a couple of others I found at stores, such as the kitchen store in the outlet mall and at Target. The large pop up one fits nicely over a large SS colander which is where I have apricots and peaches. pop up mesh food tents small food tent large food tent

I have already passed on my love of the kitchen arts to my daughter and in turn it is being passed on to her children, now nearly grown up. How time flies and I look even more often back to my early years and those who influnced me most. The things I remember most about my great-grandmother was her never-ending love of food and herb lore, reading stories and memoirs that described foods of her younger years, foods she discovered on her travels. My favorite memory of her is that of her presiding over the tea table as the entire family gathered every afternoon, she sitting upright on her favorite chair, with her little feet on her needlepoint footstool. Her posture ramrod-straight, partly because of the "stays" she always wore from the time she came downstairs in the morning, until she went to bed. She loved the traditional (English-type) seeded and fruited cakes, scones, muffins and tarts as well as the southern specialties produced by our cook. My grandfather's cook was a force of nature in herself. Although she grumbled about kids being "underfoot and into mischief" she truly had a world of patience and would tie a big apron around me, stand me on a kitchen chair at the huge kitchen work table and let me "help" prepare smething. She was a Gullah woman and did not read or write but had in her memory hundreds of very complex "receipts" for all kinds of cakes, cookies, pastries and pies as well as soups, stews, casseroles, puddings and so on. Even with the most modern equipment and oven, I have never been able to reproduce the volume she achieved in an angel-food cake, whites beaten by hand and baked in a wood stove with the temperature measured by holding ones hand in the center of the oven for a few seconds. My maternal grandmother was a fine cook herself but did not do a lot of it because her time was taken up with management of the house. However she did love to bake and especially new recipes. When Softasilk cake flour introduced the Orange Chiffon cake in 1948, my grandmother made one and it was such a hit she immediately baked several more (large family). She had a "secret" recipe for hickory nut cake that was incredibly delicious. I wish I had the recipe but it was one of the things no one could ever find after she passed. My paternal grandmother was from a long line of acclaimed cooks in the area and I was always allowed to visit them during the county fair where she always came away with armfulls of blue ribbons and cash prizes. Especially prized were her canned fruits, peaches, pears, jams, jellies and preserves. Every jar was a work of art. Part of my fascination with doing things the old-fashioned way, or re-creating old, lost, abandoned or forgotten recipes, is solely due to the love of food and cooking that was absorbed through my pores as a child in my grandfather's house. This all skipped a generation because certainly my mother never cared much for cooking or baking as a homely art. She bought a bakery and ran it successfuly for several years but this was mainly because she was bored with small town life, after having lived in big cities after she and my father divorced. My stepfather enjoyed living in a very small town, although his office was in a small city (West Bend, WI) he liked coming home to the village. I do have a large collection of cookbooks (I have a huge number of books, not just cookbooks) as well as various collections of antique kitchen gadgets, cookware, early electrical appliances and odd bits and pieces I have been gathering for 50 years. All will go to my daughter and she can pass it along to her children if they want it. I do hope they enjoy the things as much as I have and get a sense of the generations that have been involved in bringing us to the point in time. They are fortunate in that we have television programs, not just the current crop of celebrity chefs but also historical programs, for example, the National Geographic program a few years back that recreated a bakery of ancient Egypt. And I am immensly pleased that they are interested in these programs.

I believe whales are intelligent. The slaughter and processing of whales is horrible. They are dragged up the ramp into the factory ships and some are still alive when they begin peeling off the hide and blubber. I have a film of a mother whale with a nursing baby, "harvested" and after processing the mother the whalers watched and made jokes about the baby following the ship for days until it starved to death because it wasn't big enough to make it worth harvesting. It was a Norwegian ship.

I put a little apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a bucket and drop in a piece of peach or apricot. In a 16 oz spray bottle I mix an ounce of Avon Skin-So-Soft oil, an ounce of Listerine mouthwash (actually I use a generic) a couple of drops of Dawn detergent and fill (carefully so it doesn't foam up) with water. The fruit flies will gather in the bucket and if you set the sprayer to spray a wide pattern, it will knock down most of the flies in the bucket. I have tried just about everything and this has been the quickest way to get the most of them. I make sure that absolutely everything that might be harboring the little devils is thrown out. My last problem was a sneaky rotten onion that had fallen out of the back of the basket in which it was stored. I keep most fruit out to ripen in wire baskets, but cover the baskets with the mesh "umbrellas" that are made for picnics. They are made from very fine nylon, too small for fruit flies to get through.

I have a bottle of 50-year-old Pedroni-Cesare and a bottle of 75 -year-old Giusti Reserva Condimenti, etc., etc., that a friend brought back from Italy. These are "sipping" or apéritif "vinegars" and my friend advised me to pour 1/4 oz over crushed ice and add seltzer water. They are both delicious. I have several other bottles of various ages and most are fine for drizzling over cheese, meat, in salads, and so on. I found one rather inexpensive one that is quite good, in fact, it is (to my taste) superior to some that are much more costly. It is produced by San Giacomo and comes in a neat little squat, square bottle with a wide cork stopper. I found a single bottle at Marshall's, (of all places) and it was marked down to 11.00. I actually bought it for the bottle, but was very plesantly suprised by the flavor.vendor #1 Chefshop has a great selection of both balsamic and other vinegars.

PETA is not as squeeky-clean regarding the treatment of animals as they would have everyone believe. My very first personal experience with the results of PETA meddling was when one of my basenjis, sold to a couple in Pennsylvania, was released from her crate at a dog show, along with several other dogs, in 1981. My beautiful bitch puppy (just 8 months old and already with 9 points toward her championship) ran into a busy street and was struck and killed by a car, as were three other dogs, and several others were injured. The puppy's owners had a 7-year-old daughter who saw the incident. She was traumatized too. This was not just another puppy, I had imported her mother from Australia at considerable expense, had bred to a top-winning dog who had produced several champions and who had excellent temperament(also a substantial fee). She was to have been an important part of my future breeding program and was the only bitch puppy in the litter. The PETA activists left behind flyers that said "caging live things is cruel." When I learned what had happened, I would have liked to chase those awful things calling themselves people, in front of a car and let them feel the impact, the terror and the pain. It is 25 years later and I am still so angry about this heedless and horribly inhumane action that I actually believe I could kick the bejeezus out of anyone who admitted to being a PETA member in my presence. Ingrid Newkirk has made multiple statements that she believes that all domestic animals should be made extinct so they could no longer be "exploited." She is the worst kind of fanatic. In my opinion she should be extinct. It is a great tragedy against nature when any living creature becomes extinct but that is what will happen if these PETA activists get their way. Who will give a place to this breed of ducks and who will spend money on feed for them if they can't be used to produce foie gras? Would you spend money on pasturage and grain for cattle if you couldn't make a profit? I don't think so. The saddest and strangest thing is that these legislators that vote for these food bans can't understand this point and what is even more ridiculous is that some of them have financial interests in business that actually produce animal products. I believe animals should be treated humanely and I think the battery raised chickens and turkeys should be better regulated as should cattle feed lots, pig farms and the manner in which they are slaughtered. I also believe that there should be a total ban on whaling and have contributed to the supports for many years. There has to be a point where someone says, enough! PETA is not for animal welfare, they are forso-called animal rights which they apparently believe should take precedence over human rights. However, their hands are not clean, they have been caught multiple times on camera, euthanizing animals in a shelter that they maintain, including identifiable pets with identity chips turned over to them while the owners were on vacation and these particular two dogs and one cat got out when the pet-sitter left a door ajar. She tried to recover the animals but was told to return on the following Monday with proof of ownership. When the owners went to the shelter three days later they were told the animals were euthanized "because they were in poor health and had been abused." This was disputed by the animals vet and the shelter was sued and settled out of court. Lest you think I am making this up.... PETA's nasty secrets. and about Ingrid Newkirk...

In my opinion PETA has only the best interests of PETA at heart. I asked them for help in shutting down an ongoing auction of dogs, some of which were suspected to be dognapped pets, and I was told that, #1, it was too dangerous for a group of protestors because the people running the auction were "hicks that love guns" and "it won't make enough news for it to be worth our while." When I noted that some of the dogs were auctioned off to people who supplied dogs to laboratories, they said "give us the name of a laboratory and we will work on them, that will make the news." Also, as has been said before, the feeding of these fowl is not all that inhumane. All migratory fowl will gorge in preparation for a long migration even when domesticated for hundreds of generations. Ducks and geese that have a heightened apitude for this have been bred over many, many generations to enhance this trait. If you were to see the ducks running after the person with the feed bucket, you might understand this a little better. Animals are smart enough to stay away from people who abuse them. Swans gorge also, we no longer consider them to be a menu item, however they can produce immense livers all by themselves when they gorge but don't migrate.

For many years I worked with lead crystal, and "German water white" glass panels, free-hand engraving them with all types of animals, birds, etc. In fact, for a while a couple of years ago my avatar was one of my engravings. I always wore a respirator when engraving lead crystal either with handpiece or on a copper-wheel engraving lathe. This is because the superfine glass dust can penetrate far into the lungs and one can be injured not only by the glass dust but by the lead, that is "liberated" by friction and the grinding, and which in that form can be picked up by the blood circulating in the lung tissues. Leaded glass artists are also supposed to be careful not to inhale the fumes from soldering the lead that holds the pieces of glass together. This type of exposure is nearly a thousand times more concentrated than anything one can get from drinking a normally acidic liquid from lead crystal and even so, it takes years of exposure to show up in the hair and tissues. One can get far more lead from eating certain types of fish in a single meal than from drinking wine from lead crystal for several years. Glass is very different from pottery glazes, which are not as cohesive as glass and from which large amounts of lead can leach into acids. The warnings about lead leaching from glazed pottery was the first notice about the danger in certain food containers. This was then carried over to lead crystal without much in the way of testing. When definitive tests were first done and only extremely minute amounts of lead were noted, some "consumer advocates" were not satisfied and demanded tests that were more extreme. Of course these tests then showed higher levels of lead being leached into the liquid, however it was not mentioned that the liquid itself was not consumable and was, in fact, poisonous without the lead. If tests were conducted to determine the amount of cyanide that is found in certain types of granite, one could argue that it shouldn't be used where food comes into contact with it. However, in the stable matrix it is practically impossible to measure the cyanide unless the granite is crushed and treated with leaching chemicals. If you think this is ridiculous, consider that a few years ago a group of "consumer advocates" brought suit against the producer of Crystal Geyser water simply because the water source in the high Sierras percolates through the local granite which - guess what - contains cyanide. However with testing of hundreds of samples of water, the amount of cyanide found was barely measurable, as I recall, less than 2 parts per billion units. The case was dismissed. Crystal Geyser is still in business. I wouldn't hesitate to use lead crystal. I have some Baccarat that is 32% and lead makes it tough. I never liked engraving on plain glass because of the stresses in the glass that can be seen only with a polarizing light. One touch with an engraving tool will cause the glass to explode. Leaded glass has fewer stress points and is safer for engraving.

I can guarantee that a microplane works fairly well on rock-hard brown sugar or on jaggery. However I have an ancient and rather large, coarse wood-shaping rasp with big teeth that I use because it is flat on one side and curved on the other and one stroke produces a heaping tablespoon of grated sugar. If you have room in your freezer, place any grain product in the freezer for 48 to 72 hours, allow to come back to room temp and store in a tightly sealed container (I prefer the Cambro containers) with a couple of bay leaves and you will avoid weevils, moths, etc. I store dried corn and cornmeal, grits, whole wheat, and other grains, seeds and nuts subject to rancidity, in the freezer.

I have found that some things last much longer than as listed on this site. And I agree with divalasvegas about the staying power of honey. I have re-liquified honey that has crystalized and was probably at least 10 years old, (the bee people who produced it retired and sold their property that long ago) and it was perfectly good. I have an unopened (sealed) half-gallon jar of sorghum molasses that was shipped to me from home several years ago. I finished the last of the other container during my pre-holiday baking last November. Sugar, once refined, does not "go bad" - brown sugar, with its higher liquid molasses content may harden, but it can be grated and used, even when very old, and will be perfectly fine. Before we had granulated sugar, sugar "loaves" or "cones" were shipped around the world on sailing vesses that might spend two or three years at sea and the sugar may have been stored for many more years before being used. In fact, sugar actually prolongs the life of some foods. Some preserves have lasted for many years, as long as they remained well-sealed in a glass container and maintained in proper storage. Mustard itself has proven to also be a preservative and if properly prepared, canned and maintained, can last for years with no difficulty. I have a 60-year-old Balsamic vinegar that is exquisite and there are 100-year-old Balsamics available if one wants to pay the price. (Some people age better than others also.)

On that note, this joke just came in via email. It sounds pretty close to the truth to me: A man bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying: "Free to good home. You want it, you take it." For three days the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it. He eventually decided that people were too un-trusting of this deal. It looked too good to be true, so he changed the sign to read: "Fridge for sale $50." The next day someone stole it. ←

Bread salad with a rustic bread, torn into chunks, fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, chopped red onions, sweet butter lettuce, salt & pepper and a drizzle of fresh walnut oil and a spritz of one of the very old, very sweet balsamic vinegars. I also am a big fan of the Cobb salad. The very first one I had was at the place it originated, the Brown Derby in Hollywood, in October 1958. It was the best!

Here is another tip. If you can find powdered alum (or lump alum which you have to crush) soak the peel in cold water into which you have mixed a teaspoon of alum per quart, for at least 3 hours. Then rinse repeatedly in cold water before you begin your par-boiling. The alum will remove some of the bitterness and will keep the structure of the peel from getting too soft. This is generally used for citron, which is pretty bitter anyway, and it seems to work well with particularly bitter grapefruit. I've used it for candying limes, which turn gray if not treated with alum (sometimes they turn gray anyway but that is just a quirk of those particular limes). My aunt adds a pinch of "bicarb" (baking soda) to the first batch of par-boiling water, but I have never tried this myself and have no direct evidence that it works.

Sizzler does have an extensive salad bar and seems to be adding items fairly often. As Fat Guy said above, many of the "buffet" places offer salad bars. I always liked the "smorgasborg" places - there used to be a place called Taste of Scandinavia on Ventura Blvd in Woodland Hills that was wonderful. These are the places that seem to have become extinct. There are a few specialty buffet places around that are exceptional. Whenever we go to Fairplex (L.A. County Fairgrounds) for an event, we try to get over to Grand Buffet on Euclid st, just off the San Bernardino freeway (I-10). I think it is in Upland. The Claim Jumper restaurants have a pretty good salad bar.

Back in the '70s a friend I met here, before she returned to Australia, (Mt. Dandenong, Victoria) introduced me to ty-nee-tips tea and sent me a supply from Oz every few months for years afterwards. It stopped after a couple of postal strikes that caused the package to be delayed so long (and apparently kept in poor conditions) that the stuff wasn't worth brewing when I finally received it. And also a store had opened locally that carried. And before anyone tries to correct me, there are no caps in the name. I still have one of the bright blue boxes in my collection of tea artifacts. I can't recall a time that I didn't drink tea. I was given milky tea as a very young child at meals and any time I wasn't feeling well, my great-grandmother's usual advice was first a cup of tea before any other remedies were tried. I had toy tea sets when I was little but was given my first "real" teapot (which I still have) when I was 9. As far as brewing tea is concerned, I have tried almost every method known to man. I have a couple of automatic tea makers made in England - I have had one converted to US electrical current. I have a TeaMate that was available for only a couple of years here in the states, and I have yet to figure out why they stopped importing it. I think it is a terrific appliance. I tried the Mrs. Tea once and was not impressed. I gave one of the new Sunbeam Teamakers to my daughter for her birthday and she loves it.

I par-boil the peel until it has lost the bitterness. Some take longer than others. Only then do I add the peel to the syrup and begin the candying process. Sometimes it takes 8 par-boiling sessions. With very thick rinds, I do trim the white pith down a bit, however I usually keep it about 1/4 inch thick. With Pomelos, that have extremely thick pith, you have to cut off a lot. Some grapefruit varieties do work better than others. One particular "white" variety which is sometimes available here in southern California is the rather seedy Duncan. It has a much better flavor and the skin is a bit milder in flavor than the hybrid varieties such as Marsh. There is a new hybrid called Mellogold that is exceptionally sweet. Of the "pink" varieties, I like the Red Blush best. The OroBlanco, which is a grapefruit/pomelo cross is very good for candied peel.

I just thought of "Swiss" steak... That is something that hasn't come over my horizon for a good number of years. Fondue made a comeback last year and suddenly there were fondue pots all over the place when just a few months earlier the only place you could be sure of finding them was on ebay. And how about that old standby of the "Ladies-Lunch" circuit, Chicken A La King?