Camping, Princess Style

[ElsieD]

14 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

 

 

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. 

 

We had this again last night.  There are just the two of us, and we eat the whole thing.  I like the idea of adding some lemon juice, I'll do that next time.  I also like the broccoli idea, I may try that as well.

[lindag]

33 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

We had this again last night.  There are just the two of us, and we eat the whole thing.  I like the idea of adding some lemon juice, I'll do that next time.  I also like the broccoli idea, I may try that as well.

 

Thanks, @blue_dolphin, for this recipe.  I'll be making it tomorrow, after I get the ingredients from the store today.

[blue_dolphin]

3 hours ago, lindag said:

 

Thanks, @blue_dolphin, for this recipe.  I'll be making it tomorrow, after I get the ingredients from the store today.

 

I believe we all owe @Anna N our thanks for introducing that recipe and for her brilliant suggestion to use an immersion circulator to gently re-heat the leftovers.  She shared that over here in the sous vide topic.  Almost any other method would likely turn those lovely butter poached shrimp into little erasers but that method worked perfectly. 

[Anna N]

Wow. Nothing makes me happier than to see something I suggest take on a life of its own. I may need to make it myself again soon. Certainly I will be turning to a vegetable other than spinach which is hard for me to source and keep until I’m ready to use it. Sugar snaps and broccoli seem to have a longer lifespan in the crisper. Thanks for all the ideas. 

[lindag]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

Wow. Nothing makes me happier than to see something I suggest take on a life of its own. I may need to make it myself again soon. Certainly I will be turning to a vegetable other than spinach which is hard for me to source and keep until I’m ready to use it. Sugar snaps and broccoli seem to have a longer lifespan in the crisper. Thanks for all the ideas. 

I’m thinking asparagus would go well also.

[Smithy]

With all this lovely and inspiring shrimp talk going on, we still had a date with the pork roast and Lipton's Onion Soup mix. It rained much of yesterday -- a much-needed blessing -- and the weather was cool. I managed to get the oven to maintain 250F, something it isn't always willing to do. The pot went into the oven while it was preheating, and we went on about our business.

 

 

2 hours and 20 minutes later, we realized I hadn't set a temperature alarm for 150F internal pork temperature. My darling had wanted to try that, knowing the temperature would coast upward and not wanting to overcook the roast. The interior was at 171F. We turned off the heat and pulled the pot out of the oven. Then we watched, keeping the cover on to prevent any evaporation, and watched as the temperature climbed to 184F before it started back down. 

 

We don't think it did any harm, and in fact we're thinking that 150F (coasting up to 160F) might not have gotten the result we wanted. This meat was not dry despite the suggestion of the pot juices that clearly came from the meat. I can't show it in a still photo, but there's a sort of gelatinous jiggle that comes when a brisket is perfectly cooked. This was like that.

 

 

We were happy. We also think that pork shoulder may be a very forgiving cut of meat. 

 

Note on the potatoes: he nuked them before loading them into the pot to give them a head start on cooking. We thought that step paid off. The potatoes were softer and more mashable on the plate, and they had absorbed more of the juice and the onion soup flavor. I noted earlier that he doesn't always bother with that microwaving step. After last night, we think he will.

 

 

[ElsieD]

I think pork shoulder or butt are my favorite pork cuts.

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, ElsieD said:

I think pork shoulder or butt are my favorite pork cuts.

 

That may be true of us also, although we've been known to enjoy ribs and, of course, bacon.  

 

Breakfast this morning was the last of the earlier piece of this pork butt, which had been used to make a delicious, but far too hot, green chile stew. We've tried adding potatoes, rice, more tomatoes, cumin -- almost everything suggested in this topic. The last effort, adding rice, only diluted the dish so that the pork chunks were hard to find and the overall flavor was still too hot!  A couple of days ago my darling sneaked a bunch of chunks of pork out of the leftovers, and ate them. They were delicious. Today, I finished the job. 

 

 

Pork chunks, avocado, sour cream breakfast burrito. Tasty. Nice spice. Not too hot. Incidentally, I hadn't thought of trying avocado as a garnish in the stew, but it seems to be a perfect taste and heat balance. Something else to remember if I ever overdo the spice-heat again.

 

Too bad about the rice, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers left behind, but at least we rescued the pork. If I weren't headed out of town for a few days I might try to do something with the rice mix, but I think they'll go into the garbage instead. (I'd compost them if we were home, but here we don't want to feed anything wilder than hummingbirds.) As was suggested elsewhere, sometimes it's best to just cut one's losses.

[ElsieD]

3 hours ago, Smithy said:

That may be true of us also, although we've been known to enjoy ribs and, of course, bacon.  

 

Egads!  I forgot about the ribs (backs only please) and the bacon!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

9 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

 

Pork chunks, avocado, sour cream breakfast burrito. Tasty. Nice spice. Not too hot. Incidentally, I hadn't thought of trying avocado as a garnish in the stew, but it seems to be a perfect taste and heat balance. Something else to remember if I ever overdo the spice-heat again.

 

Thank you for reminding me I have* some avocadoes somewhere in the bedroom.

 

 

*or had.

 

[Smithy]

Happy Leap Day!

 

I've been away doing things unrelated to food, although eating well. I don't know how interesting my salads would have been, or the mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham made from leftovers of our latest ham. Certainly the tube steaks cooked over the campfire, or the hash done on the camp stove, have been seen before. I'll show 'em again in due time. Maybe. Don't want to bore you.

 

I posted about this in the Yard Sale topic, but I'll note it here too: at a recent yard sale to raise money for a bunch of musicians, I bought a wok pan / everyday pan in excellent condition. It cost me all of $2!

 

 

It's the shape I've wanted for a long time, although now that I have it I'm challenged to find a place for it in the Princessmobile. There is no more wall space from which to hang anything, and it doesn't fit in the cupboards. For now it's living in my half of the closet (along with surplus dates, surplus olives, and presents awaiting my sister)(and, of course, clothes). It's too heavy to ride there for travel, though; the closet floor is too flimsy. I'll probably stow it in the underbed storage, or possibly the belly box, when we hit the road again. I have to weigh both items to be sure, but I think this pan outweighs the mandolin I also bought at that sale. Maybe the pan will simply ride atop the bed, with the musical instruments, when we move.

 

@rotuts recommended a silicone whisk for the pan. Ironically, I had a nylon whisk that I'd bought for my darling to use when he scrambled eggs in his precious nonstick pan. I got rid of it because he didn't like the shape and he never scrambles eggs. I now have a silicone whisk, of the type recommended by rotuts, on order. Red.

 

Last night I used the pan for the first time, and finally got around to trying the Butter-Poached Shrimp and Orzo recipe from Tasty.com that @Anna N put us all onto. I used asparagus from the farmer's market, instead of spinach. It was outstanding.

 

 

A keeper of a recipe! And we have leftovers! Many thanks, Anna!

 

Spring is springing here. So far the heat hasn't been brutal, but when the afternoon temperature pushes 80F outside the Princessmobile gets unbearably hot. I want to lie around and do nothing. Yesterday we went out for a stroll and found that a light breeze, and shade, made things better for both of us. It also gave us a chance to admire the flowers, which are coming out more by the day. One has to look carefully, though: many of them are tiny, and require careful attention to where one steps.

 

 

There are exceptions, of course. The prickly pears are conspicuous. One still needs to not step on them.

 

[rotuts]

@Smithy 

 

thank you for not getting a Green Wisk

 

it reminds me of GBP'

 

and Red is always Best

 

hope you enjoy it

 

wash by hand id think

[Smithy]

1 minute ago, rotuts said:

@Smithy 

 

thank you for not getting a Green Wisk

 

it reminds me of GBP'

 

and Red is always Best

 

hope you enjoy it

 

wash by hand id think

 

I thought you'd appreciate the "red" idea.  Do you mean the whisk needs to be washed by hand, or are you referring to the pan? Not that it matters in the Princessmobile, since our dishwasher(s) are strictly manual. I have seen travel trailers with dishwashers, but those tend to be the super-luxury models that aren't intended to be moved much. In our case such a dishwasher would likely be used as a storage cabinet.

[rotuts]

well

 

I wash by hand for every thnig

 

as I dont have that much to do each day

 

heat in a DS might not prolong silicne

 

im guessing here

 

PS  I use my own Bit DS  for storage

 

of many old pyrex pans  and lid

Edited February 29, 2020 by rotuts (log)

[Smithy]

Lunch today.

 

 

I really don't need this much. The salad is typically enough. But my darling just cleaned up the leftovers from last night's shrimp dish, so I DESERVE the remaining ham and spuds!

[Smithy]

The Pan did wonderful service again last night. I bought 3 pounds' worth of New York Style Calabrese sausage at the Stater Bros in Twentynine Palms when we went through in January. My darling thought it excessive at the time. Now he agrees with me that we should have gotten more. It has a delightful complexity of flavor that's most noticeable in a side by side comparison with other hot(tish) sausages, but that same complexity works well in a pasta dish like this.

 

 

More gratuitous flower shots.

 

[Smithy]

The pasta dish above would have benefited from some crunch. My darling thinks that croutons are the all-purpose crunch answer to everything, but the idea was off-putting to me. It wanted nuts. Specificallly, it wanted pine nuts.

 

That made me realize that I haven't purchased or used pine nuts / pignolas for several years, and to wonder why. Was it because I was disappointed in them when they came from China? Was it because the pine nuts in the shell given to me as a gift went off before I managed to shell enough to use them? (@Darienne raised the question of unshelled pine nuts some years back, and got excellent advice about how to shell them, in the topic Nevada Pine Nuts. I'm still working on the pecans I purchased unshelled in 2015. I do not need unshelled pine nuts!)

 

Does anyone know a good source of local pine nuts, preferably shelled, especially in the desert Southwest? I'm looking at @FauxPas and @lemniscate in particular, but anyone who has a favorite source should feel free to answer. I've posted this question also in the Pine Nut Source topic, looking for an update because @andiesenji's mail-order source is dead. Failing the local source, a reliable mail-order source or even grocery store source would work.

[kayb]

In the interim, or if you don't find a good source of pine nuts, I find toasted, chopped walnuts work fairly well.

 

[lemniscate]

4 hours ago, Smithy said:

Does anyone know a good source of local pine nuts, preferably shelled, especially in the desert Southwest? I'm looking at @FauxPas and @lemniscate in particular, but anyone who has a favorite source should feel free to answer. I've posted this question also in the Pine Nut Source topic, looking for an update because @andiesenji's mail-order source is dead. Failing the local source, a reliable mail-order source or even grocery store source would work.

 

When I get them, which is very rare, they are from side of the road people with old pickup trucks and a handwritten sign.   I think this is a bit out of season for them, I've haven't looked or noticed them lately.

 

Buffetts Candies in Albuquerque sells them online shelled at a price.  

[Smithy]

6 hours ago, lemniscate said:

 

When I get them, which is very rare, they are from side of the road people with old pickup trucks and a handwritten sign.   I think this is a bit out of season for them, I've haven't looked or noticed them lately.

 

Buffetts Candies in Albuquerque sells them online shelled at a price.  

 

Thanks for that info. It's interesting, and a bit discouraging, that they didn't get a (pine) nut crop at all last fall.  I've signed up for their emails, and will keep an eye on their web site.

[Smithy]

Seen at the farmer's market: a sign advertising Bacon Avocados. Of course I had to investigate. I liked the information that these came from a California town, rather than Mexico. After another customer or two had finished swooning over the find and making their purchases, I asked about the flavor and quality. Very buttery, very creamy. Delicious! I was told. 

"Wait, but no bacon flavor? Then why are they called Bacon Avocados?" I asked.

The salesman laughed, and said "I really wish the guy who developed them had been named Jones, or Smith, or anything other than Bacon. It would save me a lot of explanations!"

 

I bought some. Here's yesterday's.

 

 

Good flavor. Not as rich as the Haas, but quite acceptable...as long as you know you'll have to add your own bacon!

[Anna N]

7 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Good flavor. Not as rich as the Haas, but quite acceptable...as long as you know you'll have to add your own bacon!

Damn. I might have become a fan of avocados. 

[blue_dolphin]

@Smithy, I think the season for these may have passed, but if you should see the Stewart avocado or the Mexicola avocado, do try them.  

They have a very thin, dark skin which is edible so no need to peel unless you want to and they are very rich, maybe more so than the Haas.  Due to the thin skins, I don't imagine they would be good for shipping but they are excellent for eating!

[FauxPas]

On 3/2/2020 at 8:28 AM, Smithy said:

Does anyone know a good source of local pine nuts, preferably shelled, especially in the desert Southwest? I'm looking at @FauxPas and @lemniscate in particular, but anyone who has a favorite source should feel free to answer.

 

I see that Edible Phoenix magazine had an article on SW pine nuts. It was published a few years ago, but the links they provided for purchasing American pine nuts still seem good. They include:

 

pinenut.com

 

wholesalepinenuts.com

 

801pinenut.com

 

 

 

 

[catdaddy]

On 3/2/2020 at 10:28 AM, Smithy said:

Does anyone know a good source of local pine nuts, preferably shelled,

Costco sells organic shelled pine nuts under their Kirkland label.