Camping, Princess Style

[lemniscate]

Wrap the tortillas in a towel/cloth/foil immediately after whatever heating technique, otherwise they dry out quickly and crack when trying to wrap.  They need humidity to relax a moment before being able to bend for wrapping.

[heidih]

2 minutes ago, lemniscate said:

Wrap the tortillas in a towel/cloth/foil immediately after whatever heating technique, otherwise they dry out quickly and crack when trying to wrap.  They need humidity to relax a moment before being able to bend for wrapping.

Not so much if fresh to start. Never had a "crack-er" They are pliant creatures unless you want them to crisp. Like rice paper - gonna use it right away.

[Smithy]

I'm having a grilled cheese and salami sandwich on my favorite sourdough bread. Actually, each of us is having half a sandwich, but as you see these are big slices. I'll tell the story of how I got that bread in another post.

 

 

I cooked these at the same time. Conscience dictated that I show one of each side, to show that I didn't guite have the heat right when I started.  They were still good. Gloriously melty cheese, and crisply grilled bread. They're a far cry from the salad I should be eating. Away w' ye, guilt!

 

Yesterday we awoke to a glorious sunrise, the type that tells us it's going to be windy.  

 

 

It was a good day to just hang out. I made another batch of granola, this time following the New York Times' Olive Oil Granola with Dried Apricots and Pistachios to which @heidih linked much earlier. Well, I followed it almost exactly. I used raisins and dried cranberries instead of the apricots, and cut down on the sweeteners. Today's breakfast was the trial.

 

 

The verdict: pretty good. I think the sweetening still isn't right, but I'm not sure whether it needs less maple syrup only, or some brown sugar (which I omitted entirely) to substitute. My darling thinks it's perfect as is. I'm counting on him not to be as fussy about the flavors as I am!

 

Breakfast yesterday was really brunch, for me, and another bit of self-indulgence using the selfsame loaf of sourdough bread. 

 

Neither of us had slept well the night before, so we were in a self-indulgent mood. We were also in a celebratory mood: the rotten sleep had been due to arm pain from our first Covid vacccinations! Yay! There were no worse side effects.

 

In other news: the ocotillos are starting to put on a good show, and one little guy is apparently trying for the Youth Achievement award. It's nice to be able to find those blossoms at eye level. Another mature ocotillo seems to be trying for the craggly award. Maybe that's the ocotillo's equivalent of being a Grumpy Old Man. Or maybe it just doesn't know which way is up.

 

 

The fairy dusters are also beginning to bloom. This particular bush gave us every possible stage: new buds, open flowers, last year's seed pods. Those bushes will all be showing off soon.

 

[Smithy]

9 minutes ago, heidih said:

Not so much if fresh to start. Never had a "crack-er" They are pliant creatures unless you want them to crisp. Like rice paper - gonna use it right away.

 

The truth is that none of them was truly fresh. We'd bought the flower tortillas on Thursday, 3 nights before cooking. The corn tortillas had been hanging out even longer. My bad.

[lemniscate]

BTW, I just found out last year that the Ocotillo blooms are edible. 

[Smithy]

8 minutes ago, lemniscate said:

BTW, I just found out last year that the Ocotillo blooms are edible. 

 

Please tell more about this!

[lemniscate]

2 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

Please tell more about this!

Here is a good writeup.   I grabbed one off the plant and chewed it raw on the stem end.  It reminded me of chewing sweetgrass or alfalfa in the fields of our farm.  

[curls]

The foods, plants, flowers are all great. Great that you both got your first vaccine dose!!! Thank you for sharing your adventures with us every year. But what really caught my eye this time is that sunrise, glorious!

[Smithy]

We took a trip across the sand dunes last week, to make up for (so far) not going to the Salton Sea. I've shown you the Imperial Dunes complex where Interstate 8 crosses it. At the settlement of Glamis, which styles itself something like the "Sand Toy Capitol of the World" the dunes are larger. (Note: I don't remember the exact title that Glamis has adopted, but I do remember that their sign uses the wrong word "capitol". Don't blame me for the misspelling!) It was the windup to Presidents' Day weekend, so the traffic was already building with people towing trailers and their sand toys. I hope the bottom half of the photo below conveys some of the immensity of the area.

 

 

There were a bunch of campers already in place. Doesn't that look like fun? (I know it's exactly that for a lot of people. It just does't look like our speed.)

 

 

Once over the dunes, the vegetation develops again, and then suddenly you cross a canal...

 

 

...and you're into the cultivated area.

 

The little town of Calipatria was our destination. The grocery store there has what we consider to be a destination-worthy butcher counter. Is it of Stater Bros or H.E.B. quality or extent? No, but they have some of the best pork roasts we've ever had, and they cater to a lower-income population so the prices are good. They also carry boneless "chicken leg meat" - basically, boned chicken hindquarters - at a good price. If I'd wanted to get a 10-pound bag of chicken hindquarters for $10, I could have done that too. I didn't. 

 

 

They also have - glory hallelujah! - San Luis Sourdough bread, which you can just see at the lower right corner of the bread photo. 

 

 

We asked the butcher to cut one of the pork butt roasts into two pieces. He did a pretty good job of confining the bone to one cut, and he wrapped the halves separately.

 

Here's the haul we came home with. This was the source of the flour tortillas I mentioned a couple of meals ago. They were considerably more flexible on Thursday, when we made the trip, than on the day we actually began using them. 

 

 

We had hoped to find thickly-cut pork steaks, to no avail. We instead decided to try a couple of pork chops, which were cut to more nearly the thickness we prefer for pork steaks (about 3/4" thick). I'd intended beef tacos for that night, but should have realized that pork would be inevitable. We breaded and baked the pork chops the same way we'd have done pork steaks. Green beans, and some of my beloved San Luis Sourdough, rounded out the dinner.

 

 

We've noticed a funny thing about pork steaks: where we live in northern Minnesota, a fairly thick cut is common. It isn't at all common down here. We might have been able to ask the butcher to cut us a couple, but my darling demurred. Maybe he thought we were already buying too much? At any rate, the chops were about the preferred thickness. I thought they weren't as marbled and came out a bit drier than I'd have liked, although they were good. My darling thought them perfect, but agreed that next time we substitute them for pork steaks we'll cook for just a little less time.

 

And now you know whence the beef clod and tortillas of a couple nights ago, and the lovely sourdough bread that's been appearing in grilled cheese sandwiches and other delights. It really is a favorite bread of mine. When I was making my own sourdough loaves I never managed that level of tang although my breads were reasonably good.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

How is a pork chop different from a pork steak?

 

[Smithy]

10 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

How is a pork chop different from a pork steak?

 

 

Narrower (less surface area) and, I believe, usually cut from a different part of the animal. At any rate the chop rarely seems as marbled as the steak that is cut from a butt roast. I have the idea that chops are cut across a single muscle rather than a group, but someone will probably come along now and prove me wrong. 

[FauxPas]

43 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

How is a pork chop different from a pork steak?

 

Here, I think pork chops are usually identified as loin, while pork steaks are usually shoulder. But I'm certainly not a butcher! 

[Anna N]

35 minutes ago, Smithy said:

but someone will probably come along now and prove me wrong

I definitely will not  prove you  wrong because I do not know myself. I do know that I consider a pork steak the cut that many others would call a pork shoulder chop. 

[Anna N]

1 minute ago, FauxPas said:

Here, I think pork chops are usually identified as loin, while pork steaks are usually shoulder. But I'm certainly not a butcher! 

We collided in the Ethernet!

[FauxPas]

Just now, Anna N said:

We collided in the Ethernet!

But at least we were pretty much in agreement! 😃

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I don't think I'd ever heard of pork steak before.  Anyhow dinner here tonight is probably a pork chop.

 

[Anna N]

Just now, FauxPas said:

But at least we were pretty much in agreement! 😃

I was very tempted to say that like the difference between art and obscenity I know it when I see it!  

[rotuts]

Steaks are cut.

 

Chops are chop'd

 

i.e. ct through a bone

 

the days , a commercial band saw

 

there are of course 

 

Porterhouse steaks. 

 

band-saw'd Id hope

 

are their Beef Chops ?

 

mayve

 

but probably not

 

Beef : band saw

 

pork ?

 

small enough to chop.

 

just the back bone, after you cu just to their

 

yet , in MegalMart :

 

band saw'd.

Edited February 15, 2021 by rotuts (log)

[rotuts]

remember :

 

not that long a go

 

the Local Butcher 

 

had a cleaver 

 

not a band saw

 

P.s.:  they did of course have hand saws :

 

Hack saw:

 

 

Im guessing this type os saw was used for the PorterHouse group

 

of steaks.

Edited February 16, 2021 by rotuts (log)

[FauxPas]

35 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I don't think I'd ever heard of pork steak before.  Anyhow dinner here tonight is probably a pork chop.

 

 

They are labeled that way here, but I cook them quite differently. A thin chop gets a quick pan fry, a thick one is SV, followed by a quick sear. But I look for a pork shoulder steak whenever I make Filipino adobo, a fave of ours. It's usually braised for quite a while. I think that maybe pork shoulder is more often sold as a roast in some regions?

[chromedome]

45 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I don't think I'd ever heard of pork steak before.  Anyhow dinner here tonight is probably a pork chop.

 

Probably just a vagary of regional nomenclature.

Where I live a pork "steak" is cut from the shoulder or the leg, while anything else is a "chop." Though shoulder is also sometimes packaged as a chop, so it's not entirely consistent.

[kayb]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I don't think I'd ever heard of pork steak before.  Anyhow dinner here tonight is probably a pork chop.

 

 

I dearly love a good pork steak, which, like the shoulder it's cut from, is best braised low and slow. I've also done well cooking them SV for 8-10 hours and then finishing in the smoker for an hour. 

 

The Berkshire chops I have in the freezer are loin cuts. Much leaner, less marbling, really easy to overcook and dry out. I usually SV mine two or three hours at 125 for tenderness, then sear in a hot skillet.

[heidih]

My experience here is as been noted. The really thin chops quickly in a hot pan. They are lean (other white meat stuff).The "steaks" more low slow. Nice flavor. The big fat loin chops are not my personal like but I used too do them for someone stuffed. He thought it a big treat. Have at it hon.

[CantCookStillTry]

Just want to apologise for the post like spam. I might stop, but it dosen't mean I don't like. 

When I first joined EG I just read and read and read all the old blogs. Now I'm active but I still like to read - this is a brilliant blog that I really enjoy. So I save it up, and read it like a book all at once every season, rather than post by post. Keeps me occupied. Just didn't want you to think I was being annoying 😁. Your adventures captivate me. 

[Smithy]

On 2/16/2021 at 3:44 AM, CantCookStillTry said:

Just want to apologise for the post like spam. I might stop, but it dosen't mean I don't like. 

When I first joined EG I just read and read and read all the old blogs. Now I'm active but I still like to read - this is a brilliant blog that I really enjoy. So I save it up, and read it like a book all at once every season, rather than post by post. Keeps me occupied. Just didn't want you to think I was being annoying 😁. Your adventures captivate me. 

 

I'm still not sure, after puzzling a couple of days, how you might have thought your posts were like spam...but at any rate, thanks for the compliments!