Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Beachin' AAR

Cannon Beach, OR, was fun for a couple of days.

Hotel report: We stayed at the Wayside Inn, a motel across the road from the Tolovana Beach Wayside, a State park. Arriving a bit early for check in, the gracious innkeeper let us check in earlier, and also upgraded our room to a full 2-bedroom suite, with full kitchen. For $100/night! No, I didn't flash any majik cards or badges to get that. If you're familiar with the popular Oregon beach towns, $100/night is a good deal for a fleabag, and this was a newer motel. Our only room gripe was that the doors still used a key-lock (high-security key though), and there was no interior night-latch. Upon check-out, I DID show my retired LEO badge, and pointed out to her that the SCOTUS long ago decided that key locks and no night-latches were a formula for HUGE damages in case of a break-in. The hotelier assured me that the inn was slated to soon upgrade to pass-card locks.

The weather: rated a +. It was warm, sunny, with no wind when we arrived Tuesday, so we sat out on our deck and bagged some rays, then after our trip companions arrived at their hotel, we met them and had a nice beach walk with them and their pooch. The next day was somewhat rainy, perfect for gift shop wandering, sampling the wares at bakeries, and taking in the prosperity of the place. Cannon Beach has always been an upscale place. The town is VERY pooch-friendly, with about half of the shops providing porches to leave the pooch while you shop. Most of the hotels allow pets also.

The food: First evening, we ate at a tavern a block away from our hotel. Fantastic food, I had a fried oyster sandwich (new to me, never saw one on a menu before). It was outstanding, perfectly served on a fresh roll. The gudwife had a seared ahi (tuna) plate, and they gave her so much of it we both ate parts of three meals off of that dinner. Second day saw breakfast in our friend's suite, then lunch bought uptown and eaten in our suite and dinner at one of the big touristy restaurants, where I ate their Cioppino, or fish stew. I had to struggle to finish the huge tureen of seafoodly goodness. The gudwife had fried razor clams, which, again, she couldn't finish and we brought them back with us and polished them off this ayem. The clams needing more pounding, were a workout for the teeth. Yesterday, we ate breakfast in, finishing most of the leftovers of the two days of food-bingeing so we didn't have to drag them home, because my travel kit included only a small cooler.

A note on dining in Cannon Beach: Tuesday and Wednesday are the days restaurants close, if they aren't 7-day open. You have less options, but Trip Advisor rates 35 'strants for the town, so even operating on half of them, one has plenty of choices. What the town lacks is a proper supermarket. Zero, zip, nada, rien, bupkis. There are a few convenience stores, and one place, Mariner Market, which has most of the necessities, but at robber-baron prices, and way too much of the frou-frou vegan and fad-dieter apple-crapple that you don't need. I spent $48 in there buying a few snacks, most of which ran to 3X the price the same brands could be had for in the Big Citeh. You have to get back on the coast road and drive North to Seaside or Warrenton, 8 or 20 miles depending on which supermarkets you want to shop at, if you want supermarket prices.

Cyber stuff: we had decent T-Mobile reception, I had decent Verizon 3G for my Xoom tablet (but not 4G, hmmmm), but our friends had AT&T and got no high-speed, only basic phone service on their I-Fones. I was able to punt my T-Mobile Galaxy S2 into "hotspot" mode after breakfast at their place so they could check their cyber necessities. My hotel had okay, just okay, wi-fi, not suitable to streaming video, and music only at 32kbps. No Netflix in bed to nod off to. The McBee Cottages had no useable wi-fi.

Summary: A fine little relaxing interlude, and I held to my budget of $400, even having enough left to blow $75 at Josephson's Smokehouse in Astoria, OR, on the way back home. Shoot, it might just be time to go tie into that bag o'goodies and have a snort of decent scotch with that smoked fish. Writing an AAR always makes me thirsty for something good to sip.

How did YOU wake up this ayem?

At about 0550 here, with All Classical playing the popular Aussie anthem. No, not the official anthem, the popular one which most of us know as "Waltzing Matilda", after it's refrain. The actual title of the anthem is "Swagman's Promenade"*. Like their other fine national symbol, the Foster's Oilcan, it has a good start and a better finish.

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* Swagman. We used to call them "bindle stiffs". Yes, I am REALLY old, because while Bindle Stiff as a Depression-era term was fading fast in my youth, it was still used and I learned it.

What's that soup, 'Dog?

Hint: it started as a fridge clean-out project (as do most slumgullions).

That's a multi-pork & barley slumgullion. It has a hambone ftom the Easter ham; some leftover BBQ country ribs from a couple days ago; some Portugese linguica sausage I opened fresh for the soup. For veggies: black beans, Rotel spicy diced tomatoes, onions, garlic and a bit of ground cumin. For bulk, pearl barley. I will probably toss in some okra to give it some "slide", and maybe another can of Rotel. It looks like the barley soaked up most of the stock, so I'll toss a quart of Swanson's veggie stock in there to make more base. Pick a meal, breakfast to mid-rats, this soup does it all!

If you had nothing to eat all day but a couple bowls of this soup, you could, in fact, keep going all day on it. This soup would go well with a decent Stout. It will overpower a lager. I wouldn't drink anything lighter than an IPA with it.

No, it's not vegan. It'll probably be a Cold Day in Hell before I either do a vegan recipe or post it here. We're omnivores, and this soup is for omnivores. Your cow or rabbit would not eat it, but might wind up IN it!.

More price gouging...

We just looked at gouging in the pricing of Evil Black Rifles, but have you been to the grocery store lately? Looked at the prices for bacon? Doubled since last year. Yep, we now have $7.00/# bacon, and in my local Safeway, it wasn't their best grade of bacon, either.

I might not be Martha Stewart

...but I do know my way around a cookbook, and this is a handy-dandy little cookbook, it has a big bennie attached: the recipe for "quick mix" which might just be highly similar to Bisquick.

Camp uses, SHTF uses, and I suppose you could use it like the authors intended, to help stretch your food budget if you are dependent on EBT.

You will note that the recipes are very basic, and easy to follow and most are one-stage recipes, i.e. you mix up the ingredients and cook it, and if you don't burn it, you can eat it quickly.

Here's the cookbook:

Download Utah Quick Mix Cookbook

Note the strange page set-up. This is so you can just hit "print" on Adobe Acrobat Reader, and the thing will print right up into a proper page-ordered booklet. Supposedly. I'm not going to do the paper booklet. Someone else let me know how it comes out.

Over the next few days I might just have to try out that oatmeal raisin recipe, although I have no clue how raisins get into anyone's EBT budget, with a small package costing upwards of $5.

H/T to the Country Gal

Whisky Stones, a product review

For Xmas, a family member, knowing that I like to sip straight whiskies, gave me "Whisky Stones". A simple concept, Whisky Stones are nothing more than small cubed-shaped pieces of soapstone. You freeze them in the little cloth poke (looks strangely like a bleached-out Bull Durham tobacco poke) which comes with the kit, and you put them in a glass and pour whisky over them, just like ice, except ice melts and dilutes the whisky. The objective is to cool the whisky some without diluting it.

Do they work? Yes, somewhat. I took a standard 8-oz highball glass, put in three frozen Whisky Stones (my freezer runs at -5), and poured in Teacher's Scotch, a blended whisky, to the top of the stones as per the instructions. As I sipped, I noted that the whisky was cooled slightly below room temperature, and was probably AT what passes for room temperature in Scotland where the whisky originated.

Now, I sip this whisky neat at room temperature about half the time I imbibe it, and I noticed little difference in the pleasure I get from sipping. The whisky was slightly cooler, that's all.

Since I usually allow myself two whiskies of a night when I'm not driving, I made a second one. In this glass, I put six of the frozen Whisky Stones and poured in a double-shot of whisky. Note that the whisky did NOT cover all the stones, as only four of them fit flat in the bottom of the glass. I rocked the glass to get all the stones covered, and sipped away. Now, the whisky was definitely cool-to-cold, probably 25 degrees colder than it had been with only three stones in the glass. This was superior sipping!

For care of this equipment, you just take your emptied glass and Stones, run in tap water to rinse the stones, pour out the water and dump the stones into a clean dish-towel, dry them, put them back in the poke and the poke back into the freezer. Couldn't be simpler.

You can look up the product's maker online. I started to, but Google rejected the search, indicating that there was some sort of script or bad text in the website. If you feel confident in your security set-up, go to terraforma dot com.

I also have an earlier, less glamorous form of this product. It consists of poly capsules filled with antifreeze of some sort. They work, are not as glam.

You greenies could easily make your own, since making (rolling?) your own is THE Greenie thing. Just hie yourself to your nearest highland stream, wade in and collect some appropriately-sized pebbles of rounded river-rock, take them home, scrub them up, maybe boil them for good measure, dry off and freeze. A zipper bag will serve as the poke to freeze them in or you could drag out your trusty sewing machine and make yourself a muslin (not Muslim) poke.

Or, you could simply place your bottle of Highland Dew in the fridge or freezer and serve it cold.

According to the Rivrdog rating system, this product rates 3 Huzzahs for concept, 3 more for execution, and a half-meh (half of a negative Huzzah) for necessity (since, using the same resouorces, you can pre-cool the whisky instead of using Whisky Stones). Cost effectiveness is not rated since I don't know how much the giftor was charged for them.

I saved the best for last, though.

The name of this product would make a GREAT name for a small band of musicians, wouldn't it?

 

Beverage Order of Battle

We're staying in tonight, so the bar is open. The Order of Battle to bury this worthless Year will be: 1. Whisky, Scots, McCarthy's Clear Creek Distillery, Oregon 2. Beer, Henry Weinhart's Blue Boar Ale (with supper) 3. Sparkling Wine, California, Temecula Valley, Almond-flavored (midnight toast) Amounts of the above weapons in my battle to supress the mostly-ugly memories of 2012 will be as required to achieve the objective. That is all.

"Fiscal Cliff" meat prices

Unbelieveable! Sirloin Petite Steak normally sells for $3-4/per pound. I just paid $7.49/pound for it. Regular gas is steady @ $3.14/gallon, though. A $1,200.00 cheapie stripped AR seems right in step with that meat price....

Whatz for Supper?

Answer: Soup

For soup to BE supper, it has to have some body. This soup has BODY:

If Twiggy had THIS much body, she could have had any role that Sophia Loren played...Life is all about BODY!

The Soup is Pork Necks and Black Beans Rotel.

It has boiled smoked pork necks for the meat, black beans for some of the body, pearl barley for the rest of the body, a bit of tomato sauce for color and Rotel tomatoes for veggie-good and a bit of heat.

It's an all day soup, took 6 hours to make in this Rival Crock-Pot slow cooker, which I've owned and used since the mid-seventies. It cost the princely sum of $25 back then (about $100 in today's funny-money). The old Crock Pots are a survival tool, since they only use 75 watts on Low, they can run off a battery with small inverter. I can bake bread in mine, I have the baking insert (very rare).

Back to the Soup:

Method:

Take your package of Pork necks, unpack them, and, putting them in a large bowl, preheat them in the microwave for about 6 minutes on 50% power. This saves over an hour of cooking time in the slow cooker. While you are doing that, run some hot water at the sink and fill the Crock Pot, preheating that. Saves another 30-45 minutes. Then for your final preheat, fire up a kettle of water on the stove. When the necks have preheated (nuked) to at least toasty warm, dump the preheating water out of the Crock Pot, put in the necks, and cover with the kettle of boiling water. Put the lid on the Crock Pot and turn it to High. Go find something to do for 3 hours. Reloading bench, maybe. If you are using a stock or menudo pot, you will have to attend the operation, with a Crock Pot, you don't.

After the 3 hours is up, the meat should be falling from the neck-bones. If lifting one and shaking it doesn't start the de-boning, they're not done. If you skipped all the preheating steps, you'll be de-boning the soup at the 4.5 hour point. If you ran the Crock Pot on Low, you'll be de-boning at the 8-hour point. Deboning is easy. Take the large bowl (you didn't wash it already, did you?) and scoop out the meat and bones from the Crock Pot into the bowl. Using a tongs, or waiting 20 minutes until they cool, pull all the meat from the bones. Cut any meat of more than spoon-size down to spoon size. Discard the bones. Do NOT feed them to your animals, they will have sharp corners (the butcher cuts necks up with a bandsaw) and you will have a huge vet bill or a grave-digging job to do.

The hot meat broth is now a soup base, properly salted (thanks to boiling the salted, smoked neck bones). It needs little added, but I shovel in some garlic and onion, twice. Yes, twice. You do it once half-way through, then again just at the end of cooking. The first batch cooks down and 95% of the flavor goes away, or rather, goes DEEP into the soup, and it also goes into aroma of cooking, very important for the diners' appetites.

All the other ingredients go in now: 15-oz can of black beans, drained or not (I drained, had to choose between that juice and removing some broth for room, and the broth stayed), the 10-oz can of Rotel diced spicy tomatoes, the 8-oz can of tomato sauce, 1/2 cup of Pearl Barley (won't you please come home, heh), 2 tbs minced garlic and 3 tbs dried chopped onion. The dried herbs have far more transportable flavor for scratch soups than the fresh bulbs would chopped. Stir, cover and go take a 2-hour nap, unless you opted for the stockpot, in which case tidy up your kitchen, sip a bourbon, and relax, stirring occasionally.

When you get up, or finish that book you were reading, add the second half of the herbs, 2 tbs more dried minced garlic and 3 tbs more dried chopped onion. Let those herbs steep for 10 minutes, stir, then serve the soup. Keep the ladle handy after you dish it up. All hands will want seconds.

This soup will make 10-12 servings.

Health notes. This is not a very fat soup, but there will be some fat on it. You can skim it and get most of that fat off before serving, or you can stir it in and serve it with the fat. Fat equals energy in the winter. The energy from fat calories lasts over twice as long in the body as does the energy from carbs. The soup has both carbs and fat, and plenty of protein from the sweet neck meat. For you fiber fans, both the black beans and the Pearl Barley are excellent fiber sources. This soup is the perfect Winter food for fueling outdoor work!

This soup can be made from the neck of any grazing animal, so if you are butchering a deer or elk, and you don't want to mess with the neck, cut it into crock-pot pieces with the meat saw and make soup with this recipe. Make sure to get all the glands out of the neck! Without the smokiness, you'll have to add other herbs. I would use sage, thyme and rosemary, lots of rosemary. You should have some growing on your property, I do.

Bone appetite!

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Ingredients:

1 package of Smoked Pork Necks, approximately 2-3#. You can also use Ham Hocks, but you will have to deal with the pork leg skin. You deal with it by making cracklings.

1 15-oz can Black Beans, or one cup of dried black beans to re-constitute per your usual routine.

1 10-oz can Rotel diced tomatoes with Green Chilies. Use the Rotel brand, no others will do. Using Rotel saves you from having to mess with other forms of peppers to "heat" up the soup.

1 8-oz can tomato Sauce. I use Del Monte, it's more $$$ but thicker.

1/2 cup Pearlized Barley. It comes in a 1# package that makes up 2 cups, so you will have some left over. You could also do this soup with Lentils, but the herbing would be different.

Water

Dried minced Garlic 2 X 2 tbs

Dried chopped Onion. 2 X 3 tbs

 

Equipment:

Slow cooker, or stock-pot if you want to use the stove. If you have one of those $2000 ranges, do NOT start this on the big burner. Good fitting lid a must on whatever cooking vessel you choose.

8-quart glass or ceramic or stainless steel cook's prep bowl.

Can opener.

Small spoon for un-canning

Big spoon for stirring

Big ladle for serving.

 

Military Note: When KP goes bad, really bad

Here. This one is for all those who either went to Cook and Baker's School in the Army, or at least pulled enough Kitchen Police duty (KP) to have had some work helping the cook fry stuff. Or maybe, like me, you worked the French Fryer in Mickey Dees in your yute.

The scene seems to suggest that this cook is enough of an expert to have been assigned (or maybe he assigned himself) to make an instructional video on cooking some version of potstickers. That would be the fried version, not the steamed version.

There's a simple rule for deep-fat frying, and that rule is to have the right proportion of oil to fryable food so the food has enough cool (heat sink capability) in it that the frying process can be controlled, because the vid shows what happens when the cook ignores that proportion and heats far too much oil. The food flashes into steam below the surface of the oil, causing an explosion which throws hot oil at 400 degrees or so all over the place. That hot oil can get into the fire and create a massive Boiling Liquid Explosive Vapor Explosion (BLEVE), which can approach high-order explosive status. Even if it doesn't blow the kitchen off the map, it will surely injure the personnel. Okay, it's not a true BLEVE because it isn't contained by a vessel (tank), but it's close enough and the results could be the same: huge fireball.

In this vid, the cook remembered one of his emergency procedures: shut off the cooking flame, then he put the big pan on the floor, also a good reaction, but then he forgot to cover the pan. Instead, he tried to save the food! After getting close to several of the explosions of hot oil, he was reduced to a cowering, blubbering idiot who could do nothing but watch more explosions.

Most of the commenters over at the hard-bitten milblog Castle Argghhh! yukked at this, but it is exactly the same problem that probably just burned down at least a dozen houses across the country, when deep-fat turkey-fryers were improperly used.