SLB

Oh, man, does that look good.

Thanks, y'all. Beebs, I do my baked beans in the oven all night at 180 degreesF. Your seasoning mixture sounds wonderful; that said, in my home there will always be a fattyporky service meat involved. There is a Jamaican style recipe from Craig Claiborne years back that involves adding rum along with brown sugar for the sweetness component. I recommend it.

Wow! NUTHIN'!!! This confirms my sense that dried beans don't infest commonly. Those lentils were from a store that has big vats of all kinds of grains nearby, so I'm going to assume t that the situation entailed a granary weevil checking out the lentil bin, and laying some eggs just 'cause. Carry on. I made the RG garbanzos this weekend, which I was not expecting to be particularly different from all the other ones since, well, old-world 'n all; but they were astonishingly delicious. Like, the taste was something else. Not that there is any rice or anything, since it all got tossed. But, still. A nice end to a difficult, costly-ass overhaul.

People, Help! I discovered an infestation in my lentil stores. I have never seen beans infest before, and I'm pretty sure given the density in a certain bag that the weevil (or whatever it is -- it's a black multi-legged but that is on the large side for a weevil). Anyway They bags were confined inside of a big rubbermaid bin, so I'm hoping nothing got out into the other bins. Not only have I never had a bean infest, I've never even heard of it! I did see the same black bug in a different cabinet in a bag of walnuts following a sweep of the area; I've never had nuts infest either. Have any of you had vermin infest your dry beans??? Meanwhile -- I have lots of beans in different bins in that original cabinet, and even though there is no evidence that the bugs got into those bags, it seems prudent to freeze everything for a few days. [the thought of tossing what must be a hundred bucks of RG beans . . .] But I'm afraid of condensation; should I air-dry the beans after they come out of the freezer, and then re-bag them? (I have had been get moldy-smelling, which I assume indicates that there was some moisture.) Any counsel??

Smithy, I assume that by "cereal" you mean dried quickie cereal like corn flakes. I myself can't eat a cold breakfast -- even as a child my cold-cereal came with bacon, my peeps believed in MEAT in the morning -- anyway, I have found that a quick bkfast food that hits the cereal-spot more effectively is leftover beans. I don't know if beans counts as a whole-grain, but WARMED other whole-grains have worked well for me at breakfast: polenta made from whole cornmeal; leftover other-grains warmed and tossed with something useful like a cheese . . . . I guess none of this is as easy as cereal, but I thought I'd mention it as a reminder. Anyway. Wishing you a wonderful jaunt, looking forward to the reports!

Yeah, what Shelby said.

I admit, I'm missing Smithy's reports from camp. What prompted it was a recent [relatively famous] blogger's post about peanut-butter brownies with chocolate ganache as frosting; and then me thinking how totally entirely perfect those would be for hiking; then me organizing to make them before I go trekking in New Hampshire next weekend where I will otherwise dealing with freeze-dried drek; and then me remembering Smithy *burnin"* in the camper . . . sigh. Smithy, where are y'all heading next season?

The pictures are extremely alluring. I need more recipes, please. Also, I like that street-vendor's wok setup, with the flower-like strainer thingy. Nice!

cdh, thanks so much for the re-fizz instruction. This is great!

G-Rice, YES!!! It was like Christmas! And JoNorvelleWalker -- I think you raised those kids of yours with some excellent values!

Lookie what arrived today!

People. I just discovered these in a beach house rental. OMG!!! I immediately ordered several off of Amazon. They were extraordinary! I'm nervous that I'm going to end up getting all of them (I kind of have a lid purchase of new cookbooks, which you can see sometimes gets blown off . . .). But I can't wait!

For no reason actually worthy of this thread, I am extremely excited to have some RG Royal Corona's soaking. I've never had them, and have convinced myself that they are gonna taste as dramatic as they look as they're puckering up . . . Happy summer, y'all.

I don't love cold couscous, although I find it satisfying enough if it's allowed to get to room temperature (I assume we're talking about leftovers, here). That's true with other pasta salads, too. With grains like quinoa or barley or, my very favorite grain for salads, farro, I actually like to warm everything up a little bit before I eat it. The grains dry out more quickly than the pastas, and I find dried-out grains really unpleasant. Honestly, I like all my pasta- or grain-based salads a little warm. I won't go near a cold rice salad (again, I'm talking about leftovers -- I can totally deal with cooled rice that was just-cooked). In fact, rice-based salads is the one thing that I can't handle as a leftover at all. I have to fry it.

Thanks. I've been using a diffuser on those burnt-bottom episodes; I may just have the flame too high. Meanwhile, I've since made a beef tagine using the last short ribs that had been in my freezer all winter. There was so much fat in the pan that nothing stuck at all! So maybe I need to use more fat all around. I still haven't used the tagra, but I don't like to cook fish with a lot of fat and am worried that it's going to be a pain. Also, the tagines.com tagras are just so small! I finally received the largest one they have, and it's just . . . sigh. I don't get going to the effort to put a dish together only to end up with two bites of food. I like to have leftovers! But we'll see, maybe I can pack more in this pan than I think.

Most of the bottom is not burnt black, but I can't scrape it off to eat, either. It requires abrading off. Possibly my "low" setting is just not low enough. One thing, the iron flame tamers hold a LOT more heat than the flimsy aluminum one that you get at the hardware store. So maybe that's the issue.

Once again, I burnt the heck out of the bottom onion layer, and am anticipating an upper-body workout in getting it clean.

Souss take on Rif style chicken and prunes and almonds. With an SLB-style riff: sour cherries were substituted for prunes, and slivered almonds were substituted for whole. I have more dried fruit than I know what to do with, but I didn't happen to have any prunes, so . . .

Smithy, I for one am gonna be seriously sorry to see this adventure end. I TOTALLY want an RV now. Also, I had no idea that I could use my corningware over a flame like that.

On the original post -- I regularly pressure cook beef short ribs and beef oxtail. I totally would pressure-cook lamb shanks, although I have not done so. I do the beef braise cuts for about 45 minutes; my machine is an ancient luddite Presto. I love it; for most of my adult life, it was my sole "gadget", and I came to view it as indispensable for me -- a person with a full-time non-cooking job, and a need for full meals at both lunch and dinner. I use a comparatively small amount of liquid, and obvs any sauce is finished at the end. I cautiously agree on the small amount of liquid, but having had the experience of too small an amount of liquid, and a near-explosion (oxtails, I don't really know what happened, but I was afraid, very afraid; it smelled like . . . burning, or something; and then the pressure release valve blew.) Sigh. We all survived, and went vegetarian that night. On the tenderloin -- wow. I like the stretchy-texture too, and didn't think it came from pressure cooking. Interesting.

Alright. The Souss is in. I soaked it last night, oiled-n-baked it this morning, and cooked a deliberately bland-ish potato dish in it tonight; the idea was to isolate the "earthy" flavor that is distinctive about unglazed Moroccan clay. Re the Rifi, tagines.com notes: "think mushrooms." Me, I really like mushrooms, so . . . . I didn't taste mushrooms, but I did experience a not-exactly-pleasant metallic taste. I could not think what else could be producing this taste other than the clay, but it's true that my potatoes were as old as the hills, as were the shallots. Stay tuned. Also, OMG was the unglazed-clay a bear to clean. I did kind of burn up the bottom layer. But it wasn't *that* burned . . . man! It is beautiful, though, no complaints there. The tagra was also beautiful, and so satisfyingly heavy; but was just too small for anything realistic. I'm hoping that tagines.com lets me exchange it for the largest oval one. I'm doing a meat tagine next, I hope the metallic taste fades away.

Oh, how I loved Tabla.

That's how I felt about the sweet limes. They weren't horrible, but there was no need for them. I ended up using them in cocktails, and even then I kinda really wanted a straight lime.

Smithy, your food looks so, so good. How did you end up liking the sweet lemons? They look like something I once found in NYC grocery store called "sweet limes." They were supposed to have the same amount of acid as a regular lime, but a slightly sweeter taste. I tried to substitute them for both lemon and lime, and found that it didn't work due to some unidentifiable additional taste. Also, this is kind of weird, but -- they did not age well at all. I mean, once they were cut, I had to use it within a day or the taste worsened.

Hassouni, that is a helpful report. I thought I read somewhere that Paula has her lamb tagines, and kept her Rifi for chicken, etc. My guess was that this is the tradition, which is interesting even if technically unnecessary. I honestly don't remember where I read this, I could easily be conflating different reports (has Mourad weighed in on this??? I don't remember). Anyway, it's not exactly a worry -- there is SO no room in my situation for multiple tagines, and the one I've recently ordered will make two in a household of, presently, one person [reliably]. If I'm willing to accept an occasional lead exposure, then I suppose I can continue to use the other one . . . . I did order a fish tagra along with the new tagine, which I admit was pure style, but the intention was to use it for a range of fish preparations -- for some reason I find those clay dishes really very beautiful, and since I was already paying for shipping and, uh, had broken the seal . . . . However -- I don't want all my fish dishes to taste Moroccan, or even to ping charmoula when that wasn't the design; so we'll have to see how well the baking soda works with unglazed clay. <Obvs, I'm hungry for my new tagine, shoot.>