Camping, Princess Style

[chromedome]

I could handle a day or two in a Sunbelt state, 'round about mid-February, but that would be about my limit. Where I live there are few midsummer days that break into the 30s C (say, low-mid 80s F), and I dread them. The idea of voluntarily spending my time getting roasted 24/7 has little appeal. 

[lindag]

38 minutes ago, chromedome said:

I could handle a day or two in a Sunbelt state, 'round about mid-February, but that would be about my limit. Where I live there are few midsummer days that break into the 30s C (say, low-mid 80s F), and I dread them. The idea of voluntarily spending my time getting roasted 24/7 has little appeal. 

My sentiments exactly!  When it gets that hot here (between 80 and 100F, I stay inside as much as possible.

Edited November 23, 2017 by lindag (log)

[Smithy]

Thanks for the (heh) warm welcome, everyone!  Thanks for the well-wishes, too.

 

You might say my darling and I are a mixed marriage: the hotter it gets, the better he likes it - whereas I am in the please-keep-it-cool camp. A bit of heat is nice, but the mid-80's is about my upper limit before I start to wilt.  Driving / riding for hours with the sun coming through my side of the truck, then getting out into that heat, is especially enervating to me.  That's another reason the ready-made frozen dinners have come in handy. Since we're more or less committed to unusually warm weather for the next few weeks I'll be exploring ways to keep things cool: cooking outside, prepping early in the day, and exploring the hot-weather cuisines. Thanks to the Crazy Good e-Book Bargains topic with its host of enablers, I have a ferocious collection of cookbooks on this tablet, along with some dead-tree cookbooks packed along (and, in one case, recently given to me). Indian, Thai, Mexican and Desert Southwest cookery all may be of use in dealing with the heat.

 

Today's challenge, however, is preparing our Thanksgiving feast.  In past years we've been in cooler parts of the country where a prime rib roast, potatoes, green beans, bread and perhaps dessert have seemed like a good idea. This year for us, as for so many eG'ers in southern climes, it's predicted to get up into the high 80's Fahrenheit.  We splurged last week on a prime grade prime rib; I am determined to do a version of the Hasselback Potato Gratin; we need vegetables and I'm fond of green beans.  The beans can be done atop the camp stove.  My cousins, in coastal California, do a fabulous prime rib on their gas grill.  I could be daring and try to do the beef on our mini-Weber-kettle charcoal grill, but I'm afraid of wrecking it for lack of (grill) size and control. Barring some inspiration in the next few hours (ideas, anyone?) I'll probably be juggling the potatoes and beef in this single-shelf oven and heating the entire trailer.

 

 

I may find myself trying to stick my head into the refrigerator to cool off, or dowsing my clothes with water for the evaporative cooling. There isn't much space in the 'fridge, but when that paper-wrapped prime rib comes out and I transfer the yogurt from its strainer to a smaller container there will be a bit more room.

 

 

Oh, to go back a few commments: I was going to suggest that folks who follow the snow are called "ski bums" but I think "Shelbys" is much better. 

[Smithy]

15 hours ago, suzilightning said:

YEAH!!!!!

Hope you have a wonderful season of travel with the animals and each other.   Can't wait ot her what you are doing.

Course  MY idea is heading to Duluth for the hawk migration in September then down to Corpus Christi.  Unfortunately  Veracruz has kinda been taken off our tour.

 

Any new places?  

Anything you are going to look for?

 

 

I'm sorry your trip was messed up.  I do hope sometime you manage to come hawk watching in September.  You know you'll have a place to stay!

 

As for new places and ideas: we may go to some new places, but haven't decided yet. I'm hoping for more in-depth exploration of the areas we visit, combined with exploring the bodacious cookbook collection I've acquired... and working out ways to adapt recipes to our weather conditions.  The foodstuffs on board are a hodgepodge of items we always stock (canned tuna, Zatarain's boxed rices, cheeses, and so on) and impulse buys that looked interesting and haven't been explored yet.  I could probably cook through the stock, without buying anything other than fresh vegetables and dairy, for most of the trip.  So far that realization has curtailed my impulse buys.  The discipline probably won't last. 

[MelissaH]

4 hours ago, IowaDee said:

Maybe "Shelbys".  She's the only person that seems to LOVE the stuff

A friend recently posted a video from the Weather Channel on Facebook, listing the 5 major U.S. cities with the most snow, on average. I realized that once I became an "adult" with the ability to choose where I lived, I've always been within a hundred miles of at least one of the cities on that list. I'm not sure what that says about me, other than I appear to be in good company!

[suzilightning]

4 hours ago, chromedome said:

I could handle a day or two in a Sunbelt state, 'round about mid-February, but that would be about my limit. Where I live there are few midsummer days that break into the 30s C (say, low-mid 80s F), and I dread them. The idea of voluntarily spending my time getting roasted 24/7 has little appeal. 

I identify totally but unfortunately Johnnybird isn't happy unless it is 80F + and humid.  I hide in the basement with both dehumidifiers on.

[suzilightning]

43 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

I'm sorry your trip was messed up.  I do hope sometime you manage to come hawk watching in September.  You know you'll have a place to stay!

 

As for new places and ideas: we may go to some new places, but haven't decided yet. I'm hoping for more in-depth exploration of the areas we visit, combined with exploring the bodacious cookbook collection I've acquired... and working out ways to adapt recipes to our weather conditions.  The foodstuffs on board are a hodgepodge of items we always stock (canned tuna, Zatarain's boxed rices, cheeses, and so on) and impulse buys that looked interesting and haven't been explored yet.  I could probably cook through the stock, without buying anything other than fresh vegetables and dairy, for most of the trip.  So far that realization has curtailed my impulse buys.  The discipline probably won't last. 

Thank you so much, Nancy.  Sorry I missed you a few years ago ......

Have you checked out Stillwater, OK; Ft. Huachuca, AZ; Texarkana, TX/AK; Corpus Christi, TX; Lake Havasu, AZ; Pawhuska, OK................

 

Next year HMANA  opens our headquarters in Detroit ......  anyone in MI send me ideas ....... can't wait to get back to the Midwest area.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2017 by suzilightning (log)

[Kim Shook]

6 hours ago, Shelby said:

I do love it.  It seems very against my inner core to leave snow and go to someplace hotter than the sun lol.

This.  The heat doesn't go above 65 degrees in my house unless we are entertaining babies or old folks.

 

[Shelby]

1 hour ago, Kim Shook said:

This.  The heat doesn't go above 65 degrees in my house unless we are entertaining babies or old folks.

 

Amen, sister.  Mine is set on 60.  And I turn it off at night.  I just got home from my brother and sister-in-law's house.  Love them to death, but their house is always an oven.  I think that I dress cool enough and I never do.  Doesn't help that it was almost 70 degrees here.  Too hot!

 

I do hope someone can chime in on the prime rib, Smithy.  I would be like you and be too afraid to do it on the grill....but man, I bet the flavor would be amazing if you can keep the temp regulated.

 

 

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, suzilightning said:

Have you checked out Stillwater, OK; Ft. Huachuca, AZ; Texarkana, TX/AK; Corpus Christi, TX; Lake Havasu, AZ; Pawhuska, OK................

 

Oklahoma has gotten extremely short shrift from us, except in the Winding Stair area (Ouachita National Forest).  One of the drawbacks to a large trailer is that its size restricts our options for places to stay.  We have yet to find a place within easy driving distance of San Antonio, for instance.  We dislike commercial trailer parks because they're essentially suburbs.  We put up with them for powerful enough purposes (generally family) but otherwise stay out in less-developed areas, which means it can be a bit of a hike to go exploring cultural or food activities but is conducive to cycling, walking, birding and other non-food-related activities that are outside the scope of this forum.  State and National Forest/Park campgrounds are often good, and sometimes close to places to explore for interesting foods.  We've spent no time in Corpus Christi, but there are excellent Texas State Parks elsewhere along the Gulf Coast that we enjoy. 

 

Thanksgiving feast prep is under way, slowly.  We've decided not to start cooking until after dark, when it begins to cool off.  We may fire up the generator and run the air conditioner!

[kayb]

In the immortal words of Jimmy Buffett: 

 

Boat drinks.
Waitress, I need two more boat drinks.
Then I'm headin south 'fore my dream shrinks.
I gotta go where it's warm.

 

That's me. Gotta go where it's warm. I love snow when we get it here, because it's like  the one we had last winter; started about dusk, absolutely gorgeous, big fat fluffy flakes, world totally white by midnight, gorgeous the next morning, and it was all gone by 3 p.m. Perfection.

 

Looking foward to hitch-hiking along on your adventures. If you come through Memphis or the NE Arkansas area, give me a shout!

 

 

[chromedome]

12 hours ago, Smithy said:

Thanks for the (heh) warm welcome, everyone!  Thanks for the well-wishes, too.

 

You might say my darling and I are a mixed marriage: the hotter it gets, the better he likes it - whereas I am in the please-keep-it-cool camp. A bit of heat is nice, but the mid-80's is about my upper limit before I start to wilt. 

My GF and I are in much the same boat. She cheerfully describes herself as a "lizard," who'd be happy to perch under a heat lamp all day (and has been known to light the woodstove in August). Unfortunately for her she's a redhead, and has been sharply limited over the years in terms of how much time she can spend on a beach (ie, 15-20 minutes). If you ever want to know what "rhapsodizing" sounds like in real life, start her on the subject of SPF 100 sunblock. This past summer she was able to spend whole days at the beach with her toddler granddaughter, to our shared pleasure. 

[Smithy]

Thanksgiving dinner was a late but successful affair.  I did the washing, chopping and prepping in the heat of the day, then waited until the sun went down and the air began to cool.  My cousin had helpfully noted that "more beer" helps with the cooling too, and we took his advice. 

 

 

As I'd feared, the potatoes and roast wouldn't fit into the oven at the same time.  I started the Hasselback casserole, then pulled it at about the 45-minute mark and put the roast in.  While the finished roast was resting, the potatoes went back into the oven. Here's the "before" and "after" comparison of the potatoes.  

 

The Corning Ware looks a mess, but wasn't too bad to clean afterward.

 

I went with my tried-and-true method of roasting, rather than trying to grill that beautiful hunk of meat on an undersized charcoal grill.  Sorry, I didn't realize until now how blurry the pictures were - but you can still see the marbling.

 

 

Here it is, coated and browned, waiting for its turn in the oven.  The beans are on the back corner of the stove.  I thought I'd taken a picture of the bacon with those beans, but apparently not.  It's thick-cut, double-smoked bacon ends and pieces from our favorite butcher back home. 

 

 

One might worry about that roast being overcooked, based on the outside:

 

...but this was the interior...

 

...and dinner...

 

 

Who else has tried the Serious Eats Hasselback Potato Gratin recipe? We found it to be rather bland and I didn't get the textural contrast I was expecting.  To be fair, it could easily have been operator error.  I had to take small liberties with it due to oven juggling and lack of some ingredients, so I'll try it again sometime when I can follow it exactly to give it a fair shake.  The rest of the dinner - despite my not having made bread to go with it - was a feast that suited us well.  

 

Now it's a beautiful, quiet morning - far from the madding crowds of the Black Friday shoppers.  I'm thankful all over again!

[Shelby]

That looks wonderful,  Smithy.  I am now craving prime rib.

[Smithy]

Another favorite breakfast is cheese on toast, with avocado. 

 

 

These labneh balls have a light coating of thyme on them and are delicious spread over toast and mashed up with avocado. 

 

I'm just about out of this batch, but picked up a new jar of them - this time with no coating, since the choices were red pepper (tried that before - too hot) or nothing. After breakfast I have some "household" chores, but then it's on to talk about Llano and parts west, when we started slowing our rate of travel.

[kayb]

Very nice!

[Porthos]

@Smithy When I showed Kate the picture of your prime rib she said to tell you that our invitation must have gotten lost in the snail mail. It looks like it was wonderful.

[Smithy]

We finally stopped for more than one day when we reached Llano, Texas.  I admit that, while I love the snow and regret that we aren't home for it, I also enjoy seeing color at a time of year that we would have little at home:

 

 

I made the pilgrimage to a favorite hardware store that has a great selection of kitchen items.  They had rearranged the store entirely, and it took a while to decide that if anything they'd expanded the stock.  Except...where were the Charles Viancin lids?  I wanted a small one, and knew that they carried them.  The gentlemen at the counter wandered around and looked too, and finally concluded that they had gotten rid of the stock. I wandered the store, disappointed (and finding nothing else to buy) and then went to check out the Clearance table...where everything was 75% off!  Holy smokes, I cleaned up.  Didn't get the size I needed, but for $17 (including tax) I got all these:

 

I don't know why they were being cleared out, but I wasn't about to argue.

 

I went around the corner to an antiques/junk mall, and for once didn't come away with a cookbook.  I did, however, come away with a new (to me) kind of pecan sheller. 

 

 

If it doesn't work, then I'm going to look for the piston style that @rotuts has recommended in the past.  I haven't tried it yet.

 

I'd be lying if I claimed to cook any dinners while I was there; Cooper's Old Time Pit Barbecue is 3 blocks from where we camped, and we pigged out on 'cue: brisket one night, sausage another, ribs a third.  I don't seem to have any photos of it (probably because I've shown you the 'cue here so often) except of some leftover sausage that became dinner farther down the road, probably in Red Beans and Rice.

 

 

It was a very nice sausage with chunks of jalapeño: just enough bite to make things interesting.

 

Although there was no in-trailer cookery of dinner, I did take advantage of electricity and time to sous-vide a chicken breast I'd sealed up with some basil, then frozen, before leaving home. 

 

 

 

I love the way chicken breast becomes cooked perfectly for chicken salad. In turn, that became sandwiches.

 

 

The stuff in the upper left of the plate is an Achar mixed vegetable pickle that I bought at least a year ago and have been carting around in the trailer. I really must stop buying things without trying them!  I opened this and tried it.

 

 

Entirely too salty and too oily for either of us.  Perhaps I could have worked out a way to use it in small doses, to liven up other meals.  I binned it instead.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Smithy
Corrected name of Cooper's; added link (log)

[FauxPas]

4 hours ago, Smithy said:

Who else has tried the Serious Eats Hasselback Potato Gratin recipe? We found it to be rather bland and I didn't get the textural contrast I was expecting.  To be fair, it could easily have been operator error.  I had to take small liberties with it due to oven juggling and lack of some ingredients, so I'll try it again sometime when I can follow it exactly to give it a fair shake.  The rest of the dinner - despite my not having made bread to go with it - was a feast that suited us well.  

 

Oh, that Prime Rib looks SO GOOD! 

 

I did the Hasselback potato gratin for T-Day for a gathering at a neighbour's house. I made two batches - one, just russet potatoes and the other, mixed russet and sweet potatoes. I upped the amount of garlic (doubled it, I think) and also increased the cheese by a couple of ounces. I reduced the amount of cream as it seemed like a lot and I didn't want the potatoes swimming in liquid. Their instructions were to fill with liquid up to the half-way mark and I doubt if mine was much past the quarter mark. I was pretty generous with the salt and pepper.

 

I think they turned out OK, pretty good really, but probably not spectacular. The top did get a little crunchy and they were a bit more browned than yours, probably because they could stay put in the oven longer than yours with your required oven juggling. 

 

People really seemed to like the mixed ones, the alternating slices of russet and sweet potato looked nice and not too many sweet-potato-haters there, I guess. Ha. 

 

 

 

[Smithy]

@FauxPas, it sounds like you took a good aproach to that gratin.  I doubled the garlic but was not generous with the salt and pepper, and we both thought it needed more.  That's good information about the cream, too.  I'm not normally a fan of sweet potatoes, but that may have added some textural interest as well as flavor contrast. Maybe I'll try it that way!

[Smithy]

So much for "far from the madding crowd".  Right after I posted that comment about avoiding the Black Friday crush and enjoying a quiet morning, the ATV's started cruising by.  Fortunately, most of them are considerate and pass slowly and at a distance.  This dust cloud didn't reach us.

 

We traveled fairly quickly after Llano, intent on getting far enough west to avoid the capricious Texas "Northers" that can drop the temperature a good 40F in less than an hour.  The Texas hill country is lovely: hills and woods, 

 

fine picnic areas where one can stop for a night or three (we stayed only one night),

 

 

and - for better or worse, freeways when one wishes to use them.  With apologies to anyone from the area who might be reading, this is my sole impression of El Paso: a spaghetti tangle of freeways to be got through as expeditiously as possible.  This doesn't show the traffic snarls we encountered.

 

On the other hand, the bilingual signage can be entertaining.  I was especially amused by this Chick-Fil-A sign:

 

It's unfortunately blurry, but it continues the motif of cows encouraging people to "Eat Mor Chikun".  In this case, the cows' plea is in wildly misspelled Spanish.

 

Columbus, New Mexico was a good place to stop, reprovision, take advantage of a few days' worth of paid electricity.  They also have stunning skies.

 

Breakfasts were typically more of what I've already shown you: in this case the labneh balls on crackers, with avocado:

 

I made more yogurt in the Instant Pot.

 

 

I fired up the Joule to sous-vide some chicken thighs I'd packed with Hatch hot chiles. 

 

 

Those, combined with leftover pinto beans from Cooper's in Llano, became the basis of burritos one night. That sous vide experiment had a happy outcome: the chicken juices, combined with the chile bits, cooked down in the skillet into a very nice sauce. I'll be doing that again. We also used a container of lovely green chile sauce from a cooking class I'd taken in Duluth last October.  Another container gone!

 

 

We didn't eat out as much as we usually do there, but I dropped in on The Borderland Cafe to see how they were doing, and to bring home some burgers one night.  The place looks clean and they say business is hopping.  I caught them just before closing, and I hope that's the reason it was empty except for me.  I suspect most of the town rolls up between 6 and 7 p.m. The burgers and fries were good, but suffered a bit from being taken home to the park instead of being eaten there.

 

 

It took me two morning visits to get a couple of their burritos for road food; those sell out quickly as quick portable lunches.  The Borderland Cafe folks really know how to wrap a burrito tightly so that it doesn't slop all over.  I haven't figured the trick out yet; I suspect it involves much less stuffing than I usually do, and drier stuffing at that.

 

 

Columbus is a nice place for walks, and I was somewhat sorry that we didn't stay longer, but we were On A Mission to get farther west. We left behind some souvenirs found along the path, and hit the road again.

 

 

Edited November 25, 2017 by Smithy
Removed extra photo (log)

[chromedome]

2 hours ago, Smithy said:

So much for "far from the madding crowd".  Right after I posted that comment about avoiding the Black Friday crush and enjoying a quiet morning, the ATV's started cruising by.  Fortunately, most of them are considerate and pass slowly and at a distance.  This dust cloud didn't reach us.

 

We traveled fairly quickly after Llano, intent on getting far enough west to avoid the capricious Texas "Northers" that can drop the temperature a good 40F in less than an hour.  The Texas hill country is lovely: hills and woods, 

 

fine picnic areas where one can stop for a night or three (we stayed only one night),

On the other hand, the bilingual signage can be entertaining.  I was especially amused by this Chick-Fil-A sign:

 

It's unfortunately blurry, but it continues the motif of cows encouraging people to "Eat Mor Chikun".  In this case, the cows' plea is in wildly misspelled Spanish.

 

 

Several years ago the Earl's restaurant chain in Western Canada took a similar tack. A series of commercials had an animated pig, bull and rooster bickering, each calling your attention away from its own species and toward the other two. The pig sounded very much like Alfred Hitchcock and had similar features, which I found amusing. 

[rotuts]

I enjoyed this link

 

https://doyouremember.com/50170/campers-interior-remains-untouched-since-1953-awesome?utm_source=AOL&utm_medium=link

 

and thought of this thread.

[lindag]

On 11/24/2017 at 11:19 AM, Shelby said:

That looks wonderful,  Smithy.  I am now craving prime rib.

I'm ALLWAYS craving prime rib!

[Smithy]

4 minutes ago, rotuts said:

I enjoyed this link

 

https://doyouremember.com/50170/campers-interior-remains-untouched-since-1953-awesome?utm_source=AOL&utm_medium=link

 

and thought of this thread.

 

That certainly is an impressive interior!  I'm not sure how they fit all that in, but I think I'd much prefer their refrigerator to ours.  :-)