RobertCollins

A couple weeks ago we were in MO. Our Pecan tree is having an exceptional year. We drove up north near Brunswick and found a belt of Pecan growers. We think that the northern Pecan is much oiler than the Tex-Ok ones or even the Georgia types. The prices at The above linked Shepherds Farms are quite good. We just barely avoided the 50 # over weight charge on the suitcase we brought back full.

I live in Seattle and we have a boat. This boat is kind of big at least if you live away from real water. We have kept this boat loaded to be our hidy hole if an earthquake ever shut down the city. It is loaded with lots of rice , grain, canned veggies etc and a bunch of canned meat. I don't care much for Spam but it is protein when the world doesn't work. If I got one of those Spam cook books, I'd put it on the boat. I will eat it if I have to, but it would be nice to know how to hide it in dish. The bad part is the salt, the Puget Sound is salt water so we really don't need much more.

We do apple butter every couple years and it is fun as well as tastes great! We start with a bunch of apples [our Calderon will hold about 4 bushel] water to cover and a slow fire burned with a good base of coals. I would post a picture here but apparently the images must be on the sight before I can post them. We peel, core and slice the quantity we wish to cook and add with the water to our pot. Then we take turns stirring; about 10 hours to start thickening beyond apple sauce. Then the cinnamon sticks are added, a couple hours later when the butter is thickened the sugar is added while stirring constantly now. At this point the apple butter is for all intents done and so we start decanting and carrying in to be canned. Our recipe is the simple one of the German 1st generation family my wife is from, to around 8-10 gallons of apple slices, about 7-10 lbs of sugar and like 12 or 15 cinnimon sticks, water as needed -to cover when starting. Please note that the time will vary by the type of apples you use. As we live in Washington State we are mostly stuck with the commercial stuff grown here for export, not the wonderful cooking and eating varieties available back east. Now the good part. while the canning is being finished; a huge amount of potatoes are being fried along with pork chops or brats or even both as well as biscuits. The potatoes are served with great big spoonfuls of hot fresh apple butter over the top. That is the reward for having smoke in your eyes all day. Another aside, when we made this in the 70s my wife and I were thinking as the church of what was happening then said in its gospel that sugar was bad. We pulled a gallon out and finished it separately on the stove but with about 1/2 the sugar. We could not tell the difference then at all or hardly anyway. Six months later the low sugar stuff was funny tasting and at a year there was no doubt it was bad. Seems that sugar is important not so much for taste but as a preservative. We tend to have friends over in and out thru out the day to help and come supper, they are all there to share!

I somehow ended up with a Navy Standard glass cup in our cupboard when I got out in 1970 and to this day it is still the cup of choice. I really don't even listen to my wife complain when coffee is served after dinner and the guests get her fancy china, I get my old glass Navy cup. I wonder if sailors today still get those white with kinda green stripe cups?

I had this happen and it is a pain. I think next time I will find one of my Mexican friends and ask them but I think the husk will release and float for skiming. I do emphasize, I have not tried this; only pulled the skins from my teeth.

It can be dried:Cut into coarse strips, Blanch spinach or chard about 5 min, Kale about 20 min, spread on drying trays no more than 1/2" thick. That might be useful to try. It can be canned much like spinach. The chard thread above says to freeze it like spinach. One of my books says that only the tender leaves from the center are to be frozen,I might cook a few of the outer and make up my own mind about toughness . I would just blanch [2-3 minutes, stir to prevent matting], cool and freeze. It as a cabbage does well in Seattle gardens as a winter crop as do beets [chard].

In our Pacific Northwest Marine climate, at least in the coastal lowlands, it will go all winter. Fresh whenever you want it. In Seattle it gets into the mid teens for cold and i still see it growing. Is Austin any colder? Many people plant it as a winter crop about the same time the garlic is planted.

Yeah,what is the difference? Years ago, I used to make a brown off the ground beef, add sweated onion, add tomatoes sauce[ actually, my mom used tomato sauce I used chopped tomatoes],... Then I split the load and froze. The bases are the same, part to either. The other part TO EITHER . Did I use this base for Chili or pasta sauce? How about both. Spice/Herb the thawded portion and you have... Then the parts were some sort of pasta sauce , spiced and herbed this way and other wise spiced and herbed that way. I find it so cool that we find that so many things have the same base.

I think the potato thing is charming, and I think it would work, for the most part. But it's hardly the sort of thing you can expect a Smug Scientific Bastard (SSB) to approve:

At the start of the thread I was going to make a smart ass comment like give them to the food bank and enjoy the tax deduction but; I never cease to be amazed by the folks here and what they can come up with. I am impressed and I will have to make that salad. While realizing that maybe there were uses for weird things like canned green beans I remembered something from my youth. My Grand mother and my mother both were from the coal mining areas of east KY and Tenn.- near Middlesboro [i think that is the spelling]. Their cooking seemed to me, after I had left home and found out that you would not die if the steak was more pink than gray, to cook it 'til it was dead and then add a few minutes for safety. There is one dish that I have tried to recreate and I guess I'd call it long cooked beans. A pot of green beans with a big hunk of ham hock or bacon in it, slow cooked all day. Now my grand mom would finish it with a spoonfull of bacon grease but that is a bit more than I want to do. Would canned beans work for something like this? Would I dare serve it to my friends?

I have dual fuel at home. Mine has a 20000 btu/hr gas broiler in one of the ovens. To me there is no question that electric ovens are better. My next kitchen will not have the ovens in the stove. I hate having to crawl on the floor to lift an 18" Le Cruset off the bottom shelf of an oven. Besides, I like the idea of having an eye level broiler too.

I would look at a couple things right after I took a big bite out of one to confirm my suspicions. I think you would decide after that bite that it would work in the kitchen much like a bell pepper. If so, slice and freeze for use in soups and stews, Maybe dehydrate in the oven, stew them down into a sauce with maybe tomatoes and can them or freeze to I guess. Tasting is the first step, then almost anything you can think of.

I bought some god awful red wine in a perfect brown 500 ml bottle. poured most of the red down the drain and had my oil bottles. I also use the whiskey pour spout. My everyday oil of choice is either 365 brand from whole foods, about $7 per Liter or Costco which I think I last bought for around $8/l. I go thru about a liter every two weeks. Things I don't use up so quickly like grapeseed oil, stay in the tins they come in.

Having read Chad's book thru I am finding that I didn't do too badly over the years but I sure could have made less mistakes if I'd read it 30 years or so ago. Thank Chad for a fine read{and eGulleters too cause this is where I first heard of the book}. Chad when you do the second edition would you add a bit on non kitchen edges. Like what angle is right for my Kabar- used in the woods- or an axe...? I really am interested in the cutting board thing, that being sanitary is pretty important, I think.

As I have understood it, some level of this MELOMINE is acceptable by the various governments. What I don't understand is how it could be introduced to the food stream and why. Yes it apparently causes the readings for protein count or low carb count or some such to read higher but for what reason other than to cheat people of money, why. Then, world wide, we need a method of punishment. May I suggest death? I suggest the same as they offer my children.

As did The Fuzzy, I bought some bamboo rice just Thursday. The sign in the market said that it was white rice [short grained] that had been soaked in bamboo leafs added to water. I haven't yet tried it.

OK,3 /12 hrs in the smoker, but at what temp, please?

Costco here sells these and labels them Sirloin tip roasts. I "tri"d them and I think bland is not a strong enough word. They would be Ok for posole if you really spiced up the posole. No, they would ruin perfectly good hominy. Maybe you could use them in a recipe that called for that textured vegetable protein stuff the health food stores carry.

Tonight, I made a small pot of Butternut Squash Soup. In it I used 4 c of chicken stock and 2 c veal stock to about 3 not quite 4 # of roasted squash. Salt, white pepper, and some thyme. I've done this many times with chicken stock but this was the first using veal. The texture was incredible and the squash taste was so intensely clean. Wow, now I see what he was driving at. I've made MR recipe 2 times and one from Renee' Verdon's "French Cooking For the American Table"(1974) They are similar but different. I don't know which I like better but I do know I like Veal Stock. I've read this whole thing now and the part I've learned is ther are a lot of opinions and that In two weeks when I'm at our farms in Boonville MO, I had better have brought what I want with me.

When as a kid working the summers on my Uncles farm we would castrate a bunch of pigs the testicles would be dipped in flour and fried in bacon grease. Tasted like tender chicken gizzards which I don't like either. I do remember the squeal of the pigs. Funny, it did not change at all as you cut them and stopped instantly when you set them back down. I guess it really must not have hurt them.

Available at nearly any resturant supply is Cambro. For a catalog of products: http://cool.cambro.com/category.aspx?rrn=4 I believe that the round are better than the square in that they are water tight. However, the square work wonderfully for most uses. These two containers are the storage containers in our house.

Perhaps a Chopped Salad. Or for me and those wonderful ingredients, a simple Arugula with shaved Parmesan and olive oil with lemon. Something about the little bit of bitterness seems to fit with what I perceive as the sweet and savory toppings except the Greek one which I don't read as mild at all.

I see all these cookbook numbers and have to wonder; do these numbers reflect any thing to do with what these people are interested in? I posted some time ago and actually counted what I have at home. Mostly I only read what I am looking for at the time, which isn't often important as much as a desire to know. I should get rid of what I never use and keep building what I want to learn more of .[i think that is a dangling participle]. Right now my interest is preserving and smoke although tonight I spent an hour searching in my books for various recipes for "Goulash" as in , maybe Hungarian or maybe something else. This request was from my Greek ancestory neighbor, whose husband asked if she could make a Goulash. For this I like a cook book collection in the broad sense. The truth is I am afraid to admit; I love books. I love having a question asked, a thought meandered, a food stuff begging an equation. I still have about 150 cookbooks although I have bought a couple since I last posted this thread.. As I read this thread more, I love looking up what I have no idea of the answer. It is more satisfying when I can define the question to be looked up. Books can be SO much more satisfying than the net. So I ask, why do we care how many books we own. Perhaps a better question would be have you read any thing lately that lit your fires. I have. edit:spell

have you tried shopping for spices at World Spice Merchants on Western, below the Market? but it is wonderful to walk into the store. ← Actually, I forgot about them. I haven't been in there in years. No reason since I go to Spanish Table for wine every month or so. I will go next time and thank you for reminding me of one of our treasures locally.

I have and use an old carbon Steel 14" that a friend gave me back in '76. He got himself a new one. This has worked well for me all these years. Good price too. He is building himself a new kitchen and plans to have one of those 250,000 BTU/hr commercial units. I wonder if i can sell my wife on a kitchen remodel after only 8 years?