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.
