Camping, Princess Style

[Smithy]

Despite having run oodles of errands 3 days ago, including food shopping, we didn't get everything done. Nothing would do but that we had to go back yesterday to finish. This involved a trip to TWO Walmarts, one of which was jammed with slow-moving people and massive carts blocking the way. (We won't go back to that one.) I was ready to go home RIGHT THEN but my darling insisted we try the other for those few things we hadn't been able to find. We got everything done, including updated vaccinations, but were too pooped to pop when we got home. Too tired even to be hangry! We had very late lunch / snacks and a very light dinner. I think we're both a bit run down today, so we're sticking close to home. I should be able to catch up with a few more posts.

 

Our late-afternoon snack was peanut butter and celery for him; hummus and celery for me. I packed 2 quarts of this hummus and I opened the last one yesterday. For my tastes, Holy Land Deli and Grocery in Minneapolis makes THE best hummus and THE best tahina to be found. They also carry our favorite Egyptian cheese. Unfortunately I never made it to The Cities this summer while we were home. We're down to just a couple of boxes of that cheese, and I haven't found a mail-order source for it. (Holy Land doesn't ship outside of the Twin Cities metro area.)

 

 

At least our local co-op in Duluth carries the hummus. I brought along a couple of quart containers of that. When it's finished, I'll just have to put up with substandard stuff. (Mine never measures up, possibly because I don't have the right tahina, and possibly because I can't be bothered to peel the chickpeas.)

 

He's in a slightly better boat with regard to his preferred beans. We found "barbecued brisket beans" that perfectly suit his tastes last season in Yuma. When we got back home, we found a Duluth grocery store that carries them, or something quite similar. He made sure to buy and pack enough to get us here. I don't like them, but I'm still hoarding Cooper's beans, which are much less sweet than his brisket beans. His beans taste a lot like Boston Baked beans, with added brisket, to me.

 

 

When we finally got around to eating last night, all we wanted was beans and broccoli. It was an easy cleanup.

[Smithy]

So...backing up a bit...we left Llano and made a long drive, then stopped for the night at a wide spot in the road near Kent, Texas. That night we shared a bowl of his chili, that he'd made before we left for these sorts of days. He likes his plain, with crackers; I garnish mine with sour cream. Note that our "table" was the butcher block, set up at the end of the kitchen counter. We didn't even want to unfold the small table we use when traveling.

 

 

The next day was another long drive involving road snacks, sandwiches, and interesting (read: terrifying) traffic. Actually, getting through El Paso wasn't too bad that day. They've narrowed the lanes so that I really could have reached out my window and touched the semi one lane over, but there were no accidents and the traffic load going our way was light. It helps to have a driver who was a pro during his formative years.

 

 

I could more or less relax and just watch for road signs as we sailed along. Unfortunately, we were foiled by an unannounced road diversion (unannounced by our GPS, that is) and missed our usual turn toward New Mexico. The traffic coming the other way was prohibitively packed, so we stayed on the Interstate and went on into New Mexico via a more northerly route than intended. That took two potential night-time stops out of the equation. We drove right through the state to our next wide-spot-in-the-road stopover in Arizona. That's the truck stop across the road from us that night, and the train going by 25 feet away (many, all night, but we slept soundly) on the other side.

 

 

I don't remember what we ate that night. Probably leftovers from Cooper's. Maybe peanut butter sandwiches. The next day it was but a short hop to our next open-out-and-stay-awhile stopping point.

[lindag]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

 

all we wanted was beans and broccoli. 

 

I hope you left the windows open!

[Smithy]

Pinal County, in western Arizona, has a very nice although primitive campground where the stay is inexpensive, the rules are relaxed, and the sites are fairly well spread apart. It's fine for tent-camping or for trailers with adequate battery and/or generator power and adequate water. The only amenities are good picnic tables and shelters, good barbecue grills, a central dumpster for garbage, and an excellent host. We opened out and stayed almost a week. The cycling is excellent there.

 

We drove to the nearest town (Stanfield) to check out their beer and bread selections. Struck out on bread, but enjoyed perusing this little Mexican grocery. Someday, maybe we'll stay long enough at the right time for me to feel like trying out their meat department. Not this time!

 

 

It seems fairly common for Mexican markets around here to carry a lot of gewgaws that you wouldn't find otherwise.

 

 

The nearby convenience store / gas station had only one person ahead of me, who was busily chatting with the checkout clerks. They were obvious friends. I held my beer and wine selections and waited...and waited...and then was mildly indignant when some young fella cut in front of me. Hmm. He went to the self checkout!

 

 

I'd never seen something like this. I don't see how it could work with a lot of items, but for one or two things it was quite easy. I used it after he'd finished, and was pleased I hadn't taken him to task. I learned something. The way it works is, you put your items separated on that scanner platform, confirm on the touch screen that the items are properly listed, then tap your credit card on the scanner. Easy peasy. The lollygaggers were still at it with the checkout clerks, and I was glad not to have to wait.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

That's the truck stop across the road from us that night, and the train going by 25 feet away (many, all night, but we slept soundly) on the other side.

 

 

 

 

I swear that I have booked us into every motel that sits 25 yards from the mainline!

[Smithy]

A commercial, full-service campground up the road from ours has propane, and we drove up there one day to refill a tank. The office has "Butt Nuggets", aka emu eggs, for sale. I've admired them before but never worked out what I would do with such a large egg, if I could even get it open. Last year when I discovered them, I asked at the campground and was told that each one is about the size of 8 chicken eggs and tastes much the same. I was curious, but not $25 curious then. I still wasn't when we passed through, but I'm still fascinated.  These things are the size and color of a very large Haas avocado! I can see why they'd be good for decorative use. You can see some of the carving done on some of them.

 

 

This time, we got to see the emus as well. Well, these were the babies: born in March, and already taller than I. Quite curious about us, and friendly-seeming though I didn't try to pet one.

 

I'll just have to keep wondering about emu eggs, and enjoy handling the eggs when I have the chance.

[heidih]

I think we discussed emu eggs before. I've seen cooks poke holes on either end and blow out. Thus getting you the egg innards and preserving the shell for decorative purposes.

I've lived near train lines and the sound can be almost soothing like a creek BUT the crossing whistle blowing can jar you awake.

[Smithy]

We had beautiful sunrises and clear skies while camped at Pinal. 

 

 

Most of our dinners must have been fairly run-of-the-mill for us, since I didn't bother photographing many of them. At a guess I'd say there was hash at least one night, dogs and potato salad at least one night. Superburgers, probably. Leftovers from Cooper's, probably.

 

The biggest success was when I opened a package of country-style pork ribs. This cut of meat used to be my darling's favorite. He'd cram them -- I mean, absolutely jam them -- into a Crock-Pot (TM), smother them and fill the interstices with barbecue sauce, and go to work. 8 hours later he'd come home to a fully cooked meat dinner, just as he liked it.

 

Well. We had identical Crock-Pots (same size, same color scheme, same vintage) when we got married. They were first-generation devices with the heating coils built right into the ceramic. You couldn't immerse them in water, and you couldn't remove the liner. He used his much more than I used mine. When we got together, we gave one away. We received a larger Crock-Pot as a wedding gift. This one had a removable liner. Much easier to clean! And yes, we've used it a lot over the years -- but it apparently gets too hot. The ribs always come out overcooked. By the time we decided the crock was to blame, we'd given the smaller one away to his daughter -- and she'd given it away to someone else.

 

Since then, cooking country-style ribs satisfactorily both has been quite an exercise. We've tried different crocks. We've tried all of my Instant Pots. We've tried high heat and low. High heat (atop a grill) has shown some promise, but I decided to try the good old low and slow braise instead.

 

First, I rubbed them with an Espresso and Ancho rub my sister gave me a couple of years ago for Christmas. This is something I'll sorely miss when I've used it all up, unless I can get more. Then I loaded them all, closely packed, into my enameled cast iron baking dish. Then I put a bit of water in: enough to come a quarter to a half inch up the sides of the ribs. Covered it all with its tight-fitting lid, and put it in the oven at the slowest temperature I could manage. In this oven, that works out to somewhere around 275F on the middle rack.

 

 

My darling looked rather pained when he realized I didn't intend to slather it all with barbecue sauce. How we could have been married so long without his cluing in our different tastes is a bit of a mystery, but there it is. I promised to baste half the ribs with his preferred sauce as the cooking went along. I kept monitoring the doneness of the meat, occasionally poking it with a fork. At some point I turned the oven off and let it all coast, then later turned the oven back on. At that point I added the sauce.

 

 

Success! You can tell which plate is whose by the sauce coating. Mine has Cooper's, but of course it doesn't show up as his syrupy stuff does. We were both delighted with the texture and flavor. The rice dish was the gift that kept on giving (I just finished it off today).

 

If it wasn't blind luck, I think I've figured out how to cook these country-style ribs without overcooking them. Hooray!

[Smithy]

4 minutes ago, heidih said:

I think we discussed emu eggs before. I've seen cooks poke holes on either end and blow out. Thus getting you the egg innards and preserving the shell for decorative purposes.

I've lived near train lines and the sound can be almost soothing like a creek BUT the crossing whistle blowing can jar you awake.

 

I'm with you on the train sound! I grew up a mile or two away from a railroad line and found the whistle blowing quite soothing. It's different when you're close to a crossing, as we were at the Texas overnight stop.

 

And yes - I remember now your describing the emu egg treatment. Have you ever eaten any?

[rotuts]

do not understand why anyone would pay $ 25 

 

for 8 chicken like eggs,

[heidih]

2 minutes ago, Smithy said:

And yes - I remember now your describing the emu egg treatment. Have you ever eaten any?

No not exactly a singleton item.  I did buy a young rhea once thinking I'd get huge eggs - white though. But Ethel turned out to be an Ed...

[heidih]

Just now, rotuts said:

do not understand why anyone would pay $ 25 

 

for 8 chicken like eggs,

The novelty, the color. 

[rotuts]

nope.

[Shelby]

I would do it just for fun...I'd love to see how big the yolk is.  But I'd have to lie to Ronnie about the price......

[Margaret Pilgrim]

30 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

I'm with you on the train sound! I grew up a mile or two away from a railroad line and found the whistle blowing quite soothing. It's different when you're close to a crossing, as we were at the Texas overnight stop.

 

 

We live a half dozen blocks from a major fire station.    Between fire and EMS, our days and nights are  soundful.    One grandchild in particular would become quite agitated during sleepovers.  We finally turned these intrusions into positives by discussing how good it was that someone was getting help.

[lindag]

@Smithy  Speaking of crockpots....this (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)is the one I have and been using for two years.  It is probably my favorite appliance.  Incredibly versatile, easy to use and clean with a lightweight insert that's durable.

If it died tonight there'd be a new one on the truck for tomorrow.  I try to use it for everything!

[FauxPas]

4 hours ago, Smithy said:

He likes his plain, with crackers

 

No toast? 😮  😆

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

We had beautiful sunrises and clear skies while camped at Pinal. 

 

 

Most of our dinners must have been fairly run-of-the-mill for us, since I didn't bother photographing many of them. At a guess I'd say there was hash at least one night, dogs and potato salad at least one night. Superburgers, probably. Leftovers from Cooper's, probably.

 

The biggest success was when I opened a package of country-style pork ribs. This cut of meat used to be my darling's favorite. He'd cram them -- I mean, absolutely jam them -- into a Crock-Pot (TM), smother them and fill the interstices with barbecue sauce, and go to work. 8 hours later he'd come home to a fully cooked meat dinner, just as he liked it.

 

Well. We had identical Crock-Pots (same size, same color scheme, same vintage) when we got married. They were first-generation devices with the heating coils built right into the ceramic. You couldn't immerse them in water, and you couldn't remove the liner. He used his much more than I used mine. When we got together, we gave one away. We received a larger Crock-Pot as a wedding gift. This one had a removable liner. Much easier to clean! And yes, we've used it a lot over the years -- but it apparently gets too hot. The ribs always come out overcooked. By the time we decided the crock was to blame, we'd given the smaller one away to his daughter -- and she'd given it away to someone else.

 

Since then, cooking country-style ribs satisfactorily both has been quite an exercise. We've tried different crocks. We've tried all of my Instant Pots. We've tried high heat and low. High heat (atop a grill) has shown some promise, but I decided to try the good old low and slow braise instead.

 

First, I rubbed them with an Espresso and Ancho rub my sister gave me a couple of years ago for Christmas. This is something I'll sorely miss when I've used it all up, unless I can get more. Then I loaded them all, closely packed, into my enameled cast iron baking dish. Then I put a bit of water in: enough to come a quarter to a half inch up the sides of the ribs. Covered it all with its tight-fitting lid, and put it in the oven at the slowest temperature I could manage. In this oven, that works out to somewhere around 275F on the middle rack.

 

 

My darling looked rather pained when he realized I didn't intend to slather it all with barbecue sauce. How we could have been married so long without his cluing in our different tastes is a bit of a mystery, but there it is. I promised to baste half the ribs with his preferred sauce as the cooking went along. I kept monitoring the doneness of the meat, occasionally poking it with a fork. At some point I turned the oven off and let it all coast, then later turned the oven back on. At that point I added the sauce.

 

 

Success! You can tell which plate is whose by the sauce coating. Mine has Cooper's, but of course it doesn't show up as his syrupy stuff does. We were both delighted with the texture and flavor. The rice dish was the gift that kept on giving (I just finished it off today).

 

If it wasn't blind luck, I think I've figured out how to cook these country-style ribs without overcooking them. Hooray!

I'll get you this if you can't find it again - Lane's Ancho Expresso Rub. I use it on a bark I make with dark chocolate and it's a hit!

[Shelby]

I just googled and the going price for emu eggs is $30 so you'd be getting a bargain.

[Shelby]

26 minutes ago, Shelby said:

I just googled and the going price for emu eggs is $30 so you'd be getting a bargain.

Sorry--one emu egg.

[liuzhou]

I can buy Australian Emu eggs here in China. The equivalent of $28 USD. I never have, but I have bought ostrich eggs which are at least half as big as emu eggs again (equal to around 24 chicken eggs), and cheaper at $19. I have cooked one as a party joke. Biggest omelette ever. Just for fun, but tasty.

 

Image from the local emu egg vendor's advertising.

 

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by liuzhou (log)

[Smithy]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I can buy Australian Emu eggs here in China. The equivalent of $28 USD. I never have, but I have bought ostrich eggs which are at least half as big as emu eggs again (equal to around 24 chicken eggs), and cheaper at $19. I have cooked one as a party joke. Biggest omelette ever. Just for fun, but tasty.

 

Image from the local emu egg vendor's advertising.

 

 

 

I very much want to know how you set up the party joke, and what the reaction was! I used to have camping friends who used my place as a base camp /launch point for expeditions. We'd have had a hoot with such an egg and omelette!

[liuzhou]

46 minutes ago, Smithy said:

I very much want to know how you set up the party joke, and what the reaction was!

 

It was about 20 years ago. A friend was leaving China for the USA to study, so a farewell party. The event was held in a restaurant owned by a mutual friend who kindly gave me access to the kitchen. The omelette (plain) was made in one of their huge woks. Woks are not really suited to omelette making as the egg naturally pools in the bottom, so I had to keep swirling it until the egg set around the edges of the pan – back-breaking work. The hardest part was then folding it. I remember I took three of us to flip it over on itself.

 

It was then served on a huge banquet platter, presented intact, then cut into slices with a machete! Someone did take pictures but it was before the Instagram age whereby people photograph every piece of trivia they come across, so I don’t have a copy. Also most of the attendees are long gone from China (two long gone from the world, alas), but I can ask around and see if anyone has one. The friend settled in Seattle after her study and is still there. She doesn’t have a copy, either.

 

Everyone did find it hilarious but assumed it was just made with lots of separate chicken or duck eggs, but I had kept the now empty shell as evidence.

 

Both emu and ostrich egg shells are sold here pre-blown (no, you don't get the contents) as curios or ornaments, usually intricately and beautifully painted or carved. Here are a couple of images from Taobao, Chinese largest online shopping site.

 

Painted Emu Egg

 

Painted and Carved Ostrich Eggs.

 

 

[Smithy]

@liuzhou, those are gorgeous. Thanks for the photos, and for the omelette story!

[Smithy]

I mentioned yesterday that we were both slightly under the weather, probably as reactions to the vaccines we'd received the day before. One or both of them walloped him hard last night, and he went to bed very early. Without dinner. Wasn't hungry. (He's better today.) It's just as well. My cooking project turned out to need some tweaking, and it's a dish he's never had before: larb. I had what passes for the dish at a wedding buffet catered by a beloved restaurant, the Duluth Grill. They give out their recipes freely, and I came away with recipes for their larb (which they call pork burger) as well as pickled onions, pickled chilies, kimchi, a soy aioli, a curry sauce, and a Korean BBQ. You can expect to see some or all of them turn up on this trip.

 

The first challenge is cutting their recipe down to size. I didn't want to make 20 pounds of the stuff! But proportioning "1/3 cup sesame oil" appropriately was a bit of guesswork. I did my best.

 

The next challenge was whizzing all the stuff up. They use a Vita-mix, of course, and the Princessmobile doesn't have such a sophisticated or expensive device. We did have a wonderful battery-powered KitchenAid wand blender, with lots of attachments, and I used it happily until the power supply died. That sad tale is told here. I still haven't found a way to rebuild the battery pack. My darling's son says he may be able to do it.

 

I bought another battery-powered wand blender at Bed, Bath and Beyond a few years ago, but it's underpowered and only has 1 speed, and thanks to some road abuse it's beginning to fall apart. It's riding in an overhead cabinet, and I have to decide whether to keep it or donate it to a garage sale.

 

 

Late last fall I spotted a lightning deal on Amazon, and bought this (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) for $30:

 

 

Time to give it a road trial! I used its food processor bowl rather than dig out the existing food processor. I love having multiple speeds. It handled things pretty well. Its only drawback is that I had to have the generator running to use it. That would also have been true of the food processor. It wouldn't have been true of the battery-powered wand blender, but that doesn't power a chopper. (I realize: the other alternative is to chop and mix all that stuff by hand, or maybe try one of my hand-powered gizmos. I didn't wanna. We were at the evening's usual generator running time anyway.)

 

I didn't take any pictures of the mixing and cooking process. In fact, I cooked one small burger of the stuff for myself and set all the rest aside in the refrigerator to firm up. Here are the original ingredients (Yker and Thell are the local farmers who supply the pork and beef) and the patties this morning:

 

 

It's just as well my darling wasn't awake to try it. I thought it rather needed some tarting up, and gave it extra cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice. This morning I realized I'd forgotten the ginger! I can remix it all and add more of the souring ingredients.

 

Now, as I look back at the larb laap larp topic, I can see that the ingredients as provided by the Duluth Grill are quite different from those discussed in our topic. There's no rice flour or toasted ground rice. @KennethT has commented that he's never seen ginger in a larb recipe, althouugh @C. sapidus noted that he had used it as a substitute for galangal. Lime is frequently used. I thought it was needed here, but the recipe as given doesn't call for it. So I'll be messing with this, and adjusting it to our tastes.

 

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Smithy
Added missing "was" to sentence (log)