Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

What's for Dinner, Captain?

At Elochoman Slough Marina in Cathlamet, WA, life is good. I got here several days in advance of the horde of yachts (100 expected from Portland alone, and the Wooden Boat Festival will bring in even more), and have scoped out the town. There never were more than 3 places to eat here at any given time, but there is a new addition, a Mexican joint with fair pricing, so I may have to try that.

I'm by myself, as the First Mate had to stay home to console a lifelong friend who has had a bad family tragedy, and I tend to eat lightly when I have to do the cooking. The coffeepot is always on aboard Lofoten Girl, and there are usually some chips and salsa, but I don't fill a 100-quart cooler with all the food to prepare  3 hots a day like the  Frau does. In fact, I didn't even provision for this voyage, since the yacht figures in my plans for SHTF, and has stored goods available to support two people for well over a month (and I'm currently bumping that up to 3 months).

Yachties are nothing if not generous about food, and being a Class-B batchelor, I've had several offers from other yachts to dine aboard their floating palaces for just about every meal since I've been here. I've eaten aboard my good friends' Charles and Linda's yacht, so I thought I would reciprocate last night.

First, I cleaned up the main cabin, putting the inevitable boating clutter back into all its' appropriate nooks and crannies (and inventing new homes for new clutter, an un-ending process aboard boats). I hied myself off to the market and got fresh salad greens and bread, and chilled the wine, then started to prepare this (REALLY) simple meal:

Bill of Fare aboard M/V Lofoten Girl, Thursday, July 17, 2008

Side salad of Romaine Lettuce, green onions and tomatoes, with Zesty Italian dressing
Garlic Bread
Main course: Linguini with Clams and Mussels

This meal takes less than a half-hour to prepare, if you have the cook's touch of being able to do at least three things at once.

Start the pasta pot heating (the longest item is the pasta, from cold water to finished is about 25 minutes)

First, I prepared the salad greens (5 minutes)

Next, I sliced the garlic bread then put it back into it's aluminum-foil bag and into a slow oven (2 minutes)

Then, I set the table with a runner and coordinating table wear (5 minutes)

Then I prepared the sauce: 1 1/2 sticks of butter melting in a 4-qt saucepan, to which I added herbs: Oregano, Basil, Rosemary, Thyme and Garlic. Then, open 2 cans of Chopped clams, reserving the clam juice (if I wasn't in a hurry, I would have stopped at this point and made myself a Clam Shot), then open a can of Smoked Baby Mussels, then add all to the now-melted butter, cover the pot and turn the fire down to low simmer. Just before serving, add a second round of herbs to the sauce (old chef's trick, the first round is infused into the sauce's ingredients, and the second round stands out for taste when serving).

The guests arrive, seat them. Discover that instead of three I have two, and adjust the table setting.

Serve the Pasta from the pot with a fork (draining cools it off) Pass the plates of pasta around, while encouraging the guests to toss and serve themselves salad.

Serve the Garlic Bread.

Open the wine, a 2004 Gewürztraminer from Chateau Ste. Michelle.

Seat myself and enjoy the meal, the company and the good life.

See how easy it is to enjoy yourself?

Gluttony?

Some Commissar of Health back East, I seem to remember in New Yawk but could be wrong on that, recently blasted US restaurants for serving too much food, contributing to the growing percentage of overweight Americans.

We didn't invent gluttony, and by the looks of this Power Point presentation about two restaurants, one in Hofheim, Germany, and the other somewhere in Canada (Central Canada probably, because the house beer is Labatt's), we don't deserve the reputation.

Download Schanitzel2.pps

If you don't have Microsoft Office Suite, you can download a free PowerPoint Viewer here.

Superbowl blahs, and a recipe

The superbowl sucked, but the Colts sucked less, so they won. end of story. They shouldn't have given an MVP award, no one deserved it (and the Cadillac they gave away is one of the ugliest cars ever designed).

The commercials were NOT inspiring.

I didn't make the Super Bowl party, either. It was scheduled as a next-day affair after my yacht club's Commodore's Ball, which was a delightful bash.

My wife got sick after the Ball, probably due to allergies from something in the hotel's HVAC system (because it hit me too, just not as hard), so we went home and watched the game.

At the pre-party for the Commodore's ball, I served North West Spiced Shrimp. It's very easy to make:

Buy a 4# bag of frozen RAW Gulf "ez-peel" shrimp in the 21-30 size. Don't fall for the Viet shrimp sold all over the West Coast now by Pacific Seafoods, they aren't as good as Gulf shrimp (and they're commie, even if they are 30% cheaper, don't buy them). Especially don't buy "freshwater" farmed shrimp, they have almost no taste.

Take out your biggest boiling pot (at least 16-quart size) and fire it up, on your big-BTU outdoor cooker if you have one. Put in 3 gallons of tap water (if you have heavily-treated tap water, use bottled water). Into the tap water put in  2 cups of sea salt. Yep, you're making seawater, so if you have it handy and it isn't too polluted, use that.

Into the sea water put in 2 cups of McCormick sweet pickling spices. You don't make them up, they come mixed and ready in a jar. That's the shrimp boil. Boil the spices in the water for at least 20 minutes to steep the herbs into the water. If you simply MUST have some heat in your shrimp, put in 2 tsp cayenne pepper with the boil, but try these "not-hot", you'll like them. Put a pound of the shrimp into a metal collander, china-hat or fry basket and suspend it in the boiling water for 3 minutes if the shrimp are thawed, 4 minutes if they aren't. Take out shrimp, DO NOT RINSE. Cool down in your reefer on a pie tin (use more pie tins if you're making more than a pound. Repeat as necessary for the rest of the shrimp. The reason you don't dump the whole bag in there is that it will cool the boil down and the shrimp won't boil, so it's impossible to tell how much to cook them. Shrimp are very easy to overcook (they get tough and rubbery if overcooked), but you don't want to undercook them either.

4# will serve a party of 40 as the main hors d'oeuvre. Peel the shrimp (very laborious) if you are really hoity-toity and want to put on airs, but most people, even drunks, can fumble the hide off of an "ez-peel" shrimp. Offer seafood sauce with the shrimp, but most will like them undipped.

You can freeze these after you cook them, just drain off all the water and freeze a pound at a time in a quart ziplock bag. Thaw naturally (do not microwave-thaw) to serve.

No, I've never considered frying shimp, the basic shrimp is just too good a morsel without all the breading and grease on it.

Shrimp are dietetic, good for diabetics, and are ALL protein with almost NO fat (1-2%). A modest serving of them DOES NOT inflame my gout, either.

Yum. BTW, these shrimp passed inspection by a gal fresh out of N'awlins who has eaten shrimp cooked by some very famous chefs! The FIRST question she asked me was if they were Gulf shrimp. She almost kissed me when I told her I wouldn't use anything else unless I fished it up out of local waters, but those are prawns, a slightly different critter which should be cooked a different way. (They are too large for a straight boil, so you steam and then sautee them.)

In case you're wondering, I do, in fact, use this same boil for cooking crab which I occasionally fish from the local waters. If you like the boil for shrimp, you will like Dungeness crab cooked in it even better.

A little help?

My butt-doc said I need to hog down more fiber. Sounds like I need to eat some beaver (to get the imprinted fiber-eating DNA, you lechers!).

Actually, I was thinking of high-fiber cookies.

Anyone have any recipes?

Yum, it's dinner time!

...over at Paratus, where Food Editor Aaron Neal has tested another yummy reconstitutable meal from Mountain House.

BTW, we're not on their payroll.

"Long-Range" Chicken

Over in Paratus, the Preparation for Conflict Blog, I've just put up the first in a series on storing poultry products.

I call it, "Long-Range" chicken, in total mockery of the yuppie yen for "free-range" chicken (and  other meat and fish). Free-range, of course, means the chickens that will be first infected by the avian flu, because they "live free" on the range (or chicken-yard), and wild fowl will mix with them and infect them before the large indoor producers, who will be able to keep such infections under control (it is hoped).

Regardless, it's coming. Not a question of if but when. Best guess is that this bird migration season will bring the infection to this continent. The first chicken flocks could be infected within several months, and then prices will soar, even if the supply is adequate at first (remember national gas prices after Hurricane Katrina?).

The prudent head of household will prepare for this, both to keep the economic consequences low, and to continue the family's supply of poultry.

Go, then, and learn.

New Paratus Post

Go over to Paratus, the Preparation for Conflict blog, and take in the latest from the Food Editor, Aaron Neal. He's written a very comprehensive article on Mountain House freeze-dried food, possibly the best available.

Note that as the bird flu gets closer, and various radicals consider taking up arms against the mainstream culture, the S.H.T.F. scenarios creep ever closer to reality. Most of us think a lot about our defensive arms for these scenarios, but we think little about the overall consequences, one of the most dire being food shortages.

The Paratus food series is meant to give you an idea of what it might be like to exist on unrefrigerated food. We take a lot of things for granted in our lives, one of which is basic: refrigeration of food to keep it fresh. Stop for just a moment in front of your fridge, open the door and look at all the food therein. Now imagine yourself doing without almost ALL of it.

That's part of life "on the hoof". Your existence and that of your family might depend on your readiness and preparation for maintaining life without refrigerative food preservation.

At Paratus, we'll help you over that hurdle.

New Paratus Correspondent

I've been neglecting my other blog, Paratus, which, for the new reader, is all about preparation for the worst of times.

I've accepted the fine offer of Aaron Neal, who now has his own blog, Dad's Garage, to write a series on buying, storing and preparing non-perishable foods.

The first installment, a presentation of an old standby, boxed macaroni and cheese, is presented here.

Go and read it, and offer your kind suggestions on his column either here or there in the comments, which are ALWAYS open on my blogs.

The Muddy Chef

Allow me to introduce a personna from my shady past: The Muddy Chef. The MC came about at my old workplace, about 15 years ago, when I wrote recipes out of my cooking experiences for the workplace newsletter. It was more of a communications tool than a cooking tutorial in those days, but now it will be more of a tutorial.

Two weeks ago, Denita at Who Tends the Fires blog posted a bean recipe here. The two of us got to chatting via email about various beany things, and I told her that I had a favorite bean recipe of my own.

The recipe is a good one to practice making, as it will be a very good staple recipe in case of self or imposed quarantine due to a flu pandemic. The ingredients used can all be stored dry in the pantry (if you use canned ham instead of pork hocks and neck bones, as well as dried onions).

Here it is, illustrated below the fold.

Tripped on their Richard

Did PETA.

Tip of the cap to SondraK.