Camping, Princess Style

[Smithy]

6 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

So, no liquids?  Just the roast rubbed with the dry soup mix?

 

That is correct. It makes its own juice, and those juices soak luxuriantly into the potatoes.

 

The side-buffer potatoes don't cook as quickly because they get less juice, so if we want to be fussy we par-cook the potatoes in the microwave before packing them in. We've gotten pretty lazy about that step, though.

[heidih]

18 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

So, no liquids?  Just the roast rubbed with the dry soup mix?

 

My mom did it with beef roast. Just the meat. Covered and then uncovered. Not such a low heat. My first meal for first hub was turkey legs sprinkled with the mix, covered and slow roast. Started it before work. Walked home at lunch to make sure apartment not on fire. All good. He was impressed and this was a fine dining guy! Mom always added a bit of water then foil oh top of the water, then meat - made the pain in the rear enamel pan easy to clean and added a big of steam. 

Edited February 6, 2020 by heidih (log)

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

It's dead easy and delicious. If I remember, I'll document it more carefully next time we cook it.

Memories of Peg Bracken (I Hate to Cook)!  If I remember correctly it was a beef roast and it was placed in the centre of a very large piece of foil with the onion soup sprinkled over it. The package was sealed and placed into a baking dish in case it leaked. It could be opened about an hour before you expected it to be done and carrots and potatoes added. I remember it being quite tasty.

[blue_dolphin]

Sounds similar to a beef chuck roast that was a regular when I was growing up.  Plopped into a dutch oven with one packet of Lipton's onion soup and one can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup dumped on top.  On occasion, the potato situation that @Smithy described was employed, along with carrots and onions but sometimes it was served with mashed taters instead along with the delicious gravy that resulted.

I remember that this stuff smelled absolutely amazing while it was cooking that I always happily ate some which was not the case with many meat items. 

 

[Smithy]

Now that I think of it, my mother did something much like what y'all have been describing with her pot roasts. I don't remember at what point she switched from simply salt on the roast to the onion soup mix. I had totally forgotten it. My darling learned this trick from watching his sister make grilled potatoes in foil: wrap 'em up with the soup mix and a lot of butter, and grill with whatever the main course is until done. So what was old became new again, at least for me. And if my Sister-in-Law never bothered reading Peg Bracken, she certainly shared that attitude. She hates to cook. She turns out good meals, but they're always easy.

 

Hmm, now I remember one of my early responsibilities for cooking such a roast for the family so it would be done when Mom got home. I remembered everything (by then it was the onion soup mix) except to turn the oven on. 

 

 

[Smithy]

30 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

Sounds similar to a beef chuck roast that was a regular when I was growing up.  Plopped into a dutch oven with one packet of Lipton's onion soup and one can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup dumped on top.  On occasion, the potato situation that @Smithy described was employed, along with carrots and onions but sometimes it was served with mashed taters instead along with the delicious gravy that resulted.

I remember that this stuff smelled absolutely amazing while it was cooking that I always happily ate some which was not the case with many meat items. 

 

 

We never tried it with cream of mushroom soup. That sounds like a Minnesota trick.  I've had venison roasts made that way.

 

Did you not like meat when you were growing up? Are you still a meat-disliker, and I've been oblivious all this time?

[ElsieD]

This is really interesting.  My sister mixes Lipton's onion soup in her rice before cooking it.  Maybe we need to start a new topic along the lines of "Cooking with Lipton's onion soup".

[Anna N]

5 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

This is really interesting.  My sister mixes Lipton's onion soup in her rice before cooking it.  Maybe we need to start a new topic along the lines of "Cooking with Lipton's onion soup".

I think Lipton’s beat us to it. 

[Smithy]

No harm in starting a topic about uses for Lipton's Onion Soup mix here, though! If one of you doesn't start it, I will next time I use it.

 

Yesterday was the great refrigerator / freezer defrosting exercise.  The freezer had frost an inch deep in places, and some of the cooling vanes in the refrigerator were frozen together. Thanks to a functioning generator and hair dryer the actual defrosting process took far less time than emptying the freezer and the top shelf of the refrigerator, where the cooling vanes are.  To keep things cold while the defrosting operation took place I filled a large cooler, a smaller cooler, and one of the sinks. There was still stuff left over, so it went into plastic bags and sat atop the couch, wrapped in a towel.

 

 

I found, among other things, a piece of beef I'd bought last fall for a Thai-style recipe from @JAZ's Instant Pot for Two cookbook and been distracted from trying. That piece wasn't well wrapped, and may be too freezer-burned to use at this stage. I also found a package of chicken thighs, better wrapped, labeled 6/19/19! Those were kept out and will be tonight's dinner.  Here's the freezer after defrosting and repacking:

 

 

He's right: we have too much food. Must stay away from the meat section of the grocery store until we work our way down through most of this. That includes the little town of Calipatria!

 

Last night's dinner wasn't those chicken thighs because (a) they were still frozen and (b) we tried to tame the heat in the previous night's delicious green chile stew. We spent much of the day discussing what to do with it. He wanted to add pasta. I wanted to add potatoes. We settled on rice as a mutually acceptable test for part of it. Then I pointed out that there are already boiled potatoes in the refrigerator, because I'd started to do Crash Hot Potatoes for dinner and then those plans had been derailed. What the heck. We tried dicing those potatoes and heating them up in the stew. I also added more water and tomato paste as the stew was warming.

 

 

It helped, but not enough. Corn tortilla chips helped, but not enough. Sour cream of course cools it down but neither of us really wanted that last night.

 

What do you do to tame runaway spice-heat? 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Smithy
Added Amazon link; added sentence about Calipatria (log)

[ElsieD]

4 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

What do you do to tame runaway spice-heat?

 

Give it to John who has a high tolerance for heat.😁

[Smithy]

I mentioned earlier that I'm getting mighty tired of yogurt for breakfast. Today it was a quesadilla of sorts, with Egyptian feta cheese and chopped avocado. Chopped Campari tomatoes, and old tired mandarin oranges, both from the grocery store, on the side.

 

 

It was messy, but good.

 

[Smithy]

22 hours ago, ElsieD said:

This is really interesting.  My sister mixes Lipton's onion soup in her rice before cooking it.  Maybe we need to start a new topic along the lines of "Cooking with Lipton's onion soup".

 

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

No harm in starting a topic about uses for Lipton's Onion Soup mix here, though! If one of you doesn't start it, I will next time I use it.

 

Actually, there's already a topic. Time to revive it! Confessions of an Onion Soup Mix User

[Smithy]

Yesterday's great refrigerator-defrosting exercise reminded me not only of chicken thighs that have been frozen since last summer but also of half a red onion, chopped and waiting to be used, a red bell pepper starting to go south, and some green beans I bought last week. Guess what we had for dinner?

 

 

(Sorry the pictures are blurry.) I also took a first crack at jalapeno poppers or, as @chileheadmike mentioned last week, ABT's. "What are you doing??!" exclaimed my darling as he came into the kitchen. "I thought you were going to do something easy for dinner!" Well, I wanted to give these a try and bake them in the oven with the chicken. These would have benefited from being cooked on a rack or grilled, so they'd get more crisp. Putting them on the baking sheet with the chicken was my idea of simplicity. I still have 3 peppers, so the next batch will probably be more along the lines of what @ElsieD and @blue_dolphin have done.

 

His comment about these poppers? "Any time you want to make a dinner of these, it's okay with me! You'll need to make more, though."

Edited February 8, 2020 by Smithy
spelling (log)

[heidih]

Re a rack for the poppers - I avoid extra dishes.  For a similar effect I roughly crumple foil so the item is elevated. Works surprisingly well.

[Smithy]

I have finally finished the bottle of Marston's salad dressing I bought last December.

 

 

 

It's a nice salad dressing, with a citrus sweetness and tang, but I've also had a bottle of buttermilk lurking in the refrigerator for making Buttermilk Ranch dressing from the cookbook Buttermilk & Bourbon. It's a good thing buttermilk seems to hold well past its "best-by" date! I made the dressing yesterday. I had to take a couple of liberties with the recipe: fresh parsley I had, but fresh chives and dill I did not. It's still pretty good. Today, I had it over salad involving spinach that needs to be rescued from the refrigerator.

 

 

I bought that spinach for the Butter-Poached Shrimp and Orzo recipe that @Anna N and @ElsieD wrote about. I still haven't tried it, but there's rebellion in the other half of the trailer: cooked spinach? No way! No how! If I try that butter-poaching approach, it will be with no greens or with greens in my half only.

[Shelby]

I can't seem to get enough salad lately.  I'm ready for garden time I guess.  Yours looks delicious!  I'm almost out of lettuce sigh.  

 

I have a semi-yucky periodontist appt Tuesday.  Hoping I feel well enough to go to the store after.

 

Are the tomatoes that you can buy half-way decent? Or are they mealy and tasteless like we get around here?  The campari ones are the only ones that have any taste at all around here--which is NOT much.

[Smithy]

1 minute ago, Shelby said:

Are the tomatoes that you can buy half-way decent? Or are they mealy and tasteless like we get around here?  The campari ones are the only ones that have any taste at all around here--which is NOT much.

 

I think the Camparis we get here are pretty good. They're usually my preference. My darling, who unfailingly values convenience over flavor, chooses cherry tomatoes whether they're good or not, and then we watch them shrivel unless I work out a clever way to use them in cookery. (I used some in last night's green bean dish.) I also buy Cherubs from time to time and think they're pretty good. Keep in mind, though, that all these tomatoes we're buying are coming from Mexico. They probably don't hold a candle to the realio, trulio home-grown tomatoes that you're used to.

 

I hope you feel better, and up to shopping, soon!

 

One of today's chores, in addition to salvaging spinach and shallots (more on that later), was to oil our Boos Block cutting board. The desert isn't just tough on skin. I have to treat this board fairly often, lest it delaminate.

 

[Anna N]

15 hours ago, Smithy said:

If I try that butter-poaching approach, it will be with no greens or with greens in my half only.

No worries. It will still be good. I had no spinach. 

[Smithy]

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had purchased spinach for the butter-poached shrimp and orzo recipe and gotten a reaction of revulsion to the idea from My Other Half. I still had to do something with it, and using it in salads wouldn't go quickly enough. I also had scallions just about past their best-by date.

 

Before rinsing, sorting and trimming comes this picture o' shame:

 

 

but here's what happened after:

 

 

Makes a difference, doesn't it? Then I had to use them.

 

I love spanikopita. I have never made it until yesterday. There was a box of filo / phyllo in the freezer and there are still boxes of Egyptian feta in the refrigerator. 

 

 

Is spanikopita considered a clean-out-the-fridge dish? Probably not, but it served that purpose yesterday and was a good exercise for me. He wouldn't have to eat it.

 

 

"What's that?" he wanted to know. "Spanikopita!" I said. He tried a piece. He liked it! I don't think he knew or cared what was in it, but he did like the flakiness of the pastry.

 

In other news, we tried rice with the too-hot green chile stew. The cognitive dissonance between green chile stew adulterated by rice is bad enough. The needle pegged with spanikopita added to the plate. Nonetheless, we both wanted it...

 

 

...and discovered that the spanikopita IN the stew added a nice crunch to the mix! 

[suzilightning]

@Smithy, that spanakopita looks to die for!!

[Shelby]

Yeah, I WANT that!

[ElsieD]

17 hours ago, Smithy said:

I have finally finished the bottle of Marston's salad dressing I bought last December.

 

 

 

It's a nice salad dressing, with a citrus sweetness and tang, but I've also had a bottle of buttermilk lurking in the refrigerator for making Buttermilk Ranch dressing from the cookbook Buttermilk & Bourbon. It's a good thing buttermilk seems to hold well past its "best-by" date! I made the dressing yesterday. I had to take a couple of liberties with the recipe: fresh parsley I had, but fresh chives and dill I did not. It's still pretty good. Today, I had it over salad involving spinach that needs to be rescued from the refrigerator.

 

 

I bought that spinach for the Butter-Poached Shrimp and Orzo recipe that @Anna N and @ElsieD wrote about. I still haven't tried it, but there's rebellion in the other half of the trailer: cooked spinach? No way! No how! If I try that butter-poaching approach, it will be with no greens or with greens in my half only.

 

I made a Korean chicken recipe for dinner last night that called for spinach.  Half of it is left so I am making the shrimp dish again.  It's delicious.  You will love it with or without the spinach.

[Smithy]

Today the spanikopita still tastes good, but it is not as crisp as it was last night. Is there a way to crisp that phyllo again once it's gone soft from storage? Should I not have covered it in the fridge?

[blue_dolphin]

On 2/8/2020 at 3:10 PM, Smithy said:

...I bought that spinach for the Butter-Poached Shrimp and Orzo recipe that @Anna N and @ElsieD wrote about. I still haven't tried it, but there's rebellion in the other half of the trailer: cooked spinach? No way! No how! If I try that butter-poaching approach, it will be with no greens or with greens in my half only.

 

10 hours ago, Anna N said:

No worries. It will still be good. I had no spinach. 

 

8 hours ago, ElsieD said:

I made a Korean chicken recipe for dinner last night that called for spinach.  Half of it is left so I am making the shrimp dish again.  It's delicious.  You will love it with or without the spinach.

 

I'll add a third vote for trying that dish.  I just made it this evening and it was delicious.  It's nice to have a vegetable in there but it doesn't have to be spinach, lightly steamed broccoli or sugar snap peas would be great alternatives. You could just as easily serve the vegetables on the side.  I cut the recipe in half to make 2 servings and ended up dipping into the supposed leftovers.  Next time, I'll dial back on the butter a bit,  up the orzo & broth and, like I did today, add lots of lemon juice. 

[Smithy]

The clouds are gathering and there's rain in the forecast today and tonightt. It will be lovely if it happens, and we're planning a cool-weather inside dinner, probably pork roast. Yesterday, however, it was pleasant weather for walking and continuing our search for flowers. A nearby velvet-mallow has opened its first blossom. The velvet-mallows grow nearly to my height and can be pretty showy, for the desert, in a good year.

 

 

Last night we sat out by the campfire and admired the moon, while he cooked hash. It's his kind of cooking: simple ingredients, simple methods, tasty and filling.

 

 

 

Edited February 10, 2020 by Smithy
Corrected info about mallows (log)