Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Try a Summer Dog

We're having the Heat Wave of the Century here in Stumptown, it was 97 at noon, headed for 107 or 108 (108 would be a new all-time high temperature). When lunch hour and the hungrys both arrived, I got ready to make a Hot Dog, but found out that I would have to thaw some Brats first, plus I really wanted a cold lunch. Being the essential lazy chef, I looked through my deli drawer in the RivrFridge to see what might entice my palate.

Some deli ham...naaah, I'm hammed out after last week, when I ate it almost every day. How about a nice cheese sand, could have Cheddar, Velveeta or Provolone? Naaah, I needed MEAT in my sandwich, didn't have meat for brekky.

That's when my groping fingers came up with the Summer Sausage. Hmmm, slice some thin and make a sandwich, maybe with the Provolone. Naaaah, had one of those two days ago, and I was REALLY jonesing for a Hot Dog, but conflicted because I didn't want it hot.

The light bulb went on.

How about a "Summer Dog" instead?

OK, assemble the ingredients:

 

As you can see, I've already made one and consumed it (have to have a tester, doncha know). The "secret" here is to slice the summer sausage LENGTHWISE to better fit the hot dog bun. First I halved it lengthwise, then halved the halves, then halved the quarters.

 

Open up a bun and decorate with your usual condiments, mine, shown above, are sweet relish and deli mustard (I like Gulden's better than Grey Poupon, but that's just because I grew up in DeeCee and ate good deli food there long before the French moutarde fine de Dijon was ever imported. Assemble the wedges onto the decorated bun:

 

Serve with a side of decent deli pickle spears:

 

A light lunch fit for warm weather. Soup was nice too, I had COLD lentil & ham soup (of my own making, of course).

Total time to prepare the meal: about 5 minutes.

Taste note: If you are going to eat sausage cold, it needs to be a sausage that has enough flavor to stand up cold. If you are going to eat it in a flimsy hot dog bun, it needs to be either caseless or if it has a casing, it can't be the kind that takes teeth to break, like on most decent deli dogs. Those have too much strength when cold. The summer sausage is just perfect for this purpose. It's flavor is better cold than warm, and it is made with just the right compression to not fall apart, but not to require a stout casing, either. You can find it on sale for $5-7 for a two-pounder if you wait for the sale, then stock up.

Feel free to copy the idea. This would also make a perfect picnic meal. Just wrap your sausage in an old glossy magazine (makes a perfect picnic table cutting board, you toss it when done) and everything else stays in it's original package until you get to the park. Your folder knife will do a decent job on the summer sausage, just don't lick the blade clean afterwards!.

The "Walkaway Breakfast"

Before there was an "Egg McMuffin" et al, there was the Walkaway Breakfast, prepared by damn near every flightline snack bar on every active US Air Force Base in the world for the past 50 years or so.

I think that these snack bars existed out of necessity: on the flightline, the mission is to launch, recover and repair aircraft, and that work is a highly choreographed dance, much as it is on the heaving flight deck of a Navy carrier, just at a slightly reduced pace and with a little more room to work on the birds.

The problem with humans is that they require regular feeding, and the harder you work them, the more often they have to be fed. Feeding a military troop usually takes place in the Chow Hall (Mess Hall for you Navy types), but flightline people and aircrew usually don't have time to go for a chow hall meal, so they brought the chow to the flightline, in the form of the grease emporiums known as Flightline Snack Bars. Some bases tried Roach Coaches, or mobile canteens, but on a busy base, there was always a flightline Snack Bar, run not by the chow hall people, but by the Base ((Post) Exchange. You had to pay for meals there, you couldn't get them free as a ration. Some of them were fairly advanced, and boasted regular sit-down hot meals. Yakota Air Base in Japan comes to mind (mmmm, Yakisoba Noodles!).

Most of them were tucked away in a corner of a hangar somewhere, and some had window service only, no seating area.

They all had the Walkaway Breakfast, a tasty (hard to screw up a Walkaway) and power-packed (greasy, before the military got all nutrition-conscious) way to keep going at hard manual labor under high-stress conditions for a few more hours.

Since the Gudwife is laid up, and can't cook my meals, I have reverted to what I know, "Zoom-Bag (Flightsuit) Cuisine". For breakfast, that means the Walkaway.

Let's build one.

Get out a medium skillet, eggs, some breakfast meat (sausage patties or ham), some processed cheese slices, and either English Muffins or LARGE biscuits (I like Pillsbury Grands). If you use biscuits, and insist on making your own, they HAVE to have some staying power, and not be the flaky, crumbly type.

Let's get started by frying up the breakfast meat. This is "Country Bacon", in 1/4" thick slices, put out by my local butcher, White's Country Meats. It is really side-sliced Boston Butt or picnic ham. Into the pan with it, and you can fry it medium-high heat. It will season the pan with just enough lard to fry up the egg in.

 

That's ONE slice of "Country Bacon" torn into biscuit-sized pieces.

While that's frying, beat up one egg in a bowl:

 

A fork beats a single egg as well as a whisk, so stuff your "haute cuisine", OK?

Slice up the biscuit and get out the Velveeta. I like the REAL thing in process cheese, so I pay more:

 

Notice the size and texture of that sliced biscuit. I Nuke it for 10 seconds to warm it slightly from cold (the better way to go, right out of the oven they are too flaky). Peel the wrap from two Velveeta slices and put them on the biscuit halves (I think they only put one slice on the flightline ones):

Now fry up the beaten egg. You will still have the medium-high flame going unless you are one of those "haute cuisine" wusses who has to constantly bend down and observe the flame under your skillet: here the egg has already cooked most of the way (in about a minute) and I have folded and flipped it:

 

OK, all the cooking is done. Let's assemble this bad boy (and it IS bad, has probably 60 grams of fat at least!): pile the ham on the lower unit of the sliced, cheesed biscuit:

 

Then the egg:

 

You notice I used half the egg. Using the whole thing would have made the sandwich too tall and too eggy. You might nuke it a bit here to melt the cheese, but if you do, the biscuit will probably lose it's structural integrity and crumble in your hands when you pick it up. If you used an English Muffin, nuke away, about 20-30 seconds.

The final result:

 

You have just pleased the YUM gods. You will smile, you will fart properly for a few hours, and you WILL be properly energized for serious work. This goes well with milk (more farting for me!) or juice, or even coffee of the military variety (don't you dare drink a latte with this breakfast). When your line chief brought the Third Wipers in for a meal break, you could get this down your gullet by the time you got back to that big greasy bird you were working on out on the ramp. If you noted aircrew coming out to the bird for preflight, and they had a brown bag that looked as if it was carrying oily wiping rags, THEY were going flying powered by the same Walkaway Breakfast.

The Air Force is one big happy family!

Bar-be-que Sauce

Over at Say Uncle.

I haven't tried this sauce, but looking at the list of ingredients, it should do nicely.

This may very well have been a BBQ cook-off winner at some point in the past, or could be in the future.

Keep checking back on that post, because I have a feeling that the comments could become quite vital in describing improvements to the recipe.

I have an inquiry going in TX to a BBQ grand master as to how good he thinks this sauce will be, and I'll post THAT answer here when I get it back.

Damn, I need to find me some smokin' wood besides maple. It's good for pork, but gets lost on beef, and the other NW standby, Alder, isn't good for much except fish. I might have to drag my butt over to N. Central OR to chop up some desert wood. We're not civilized enough to have a drive-up supplier of smokin' wood here, like they have in Foat Wuth, TX.

Booze pricing alert

Here, at Phil's place.

If I didn't know better, I'd say this has the same fingerprints on it as the ammo situation: first, jump the hell out of the prices (claiming whatever, in this case, budget blues), then hint that it might be harder to get in the future (that's coming, I'm sure), then watch as the end result is a horribly over-priced product that is hard to get as people try to get ahead of the situation by stocking up.

Only in this case, the solution is as close as your nearest buddy who travels and has space for a few jugs of CA or AZ hooch in his/her vehicle trunk.

Screw these rapacious blue-noses. Break out the rum-runner flag!

On a related note, the blue-noses in the OR Legislature want to raise the beer tax by about 1,500%, from pennies per bottle to $1.50/bottle.

Screw them, I can make better beer than most breweries myself, and it costs me a buck a liter to make it. I had quit making beer because I couldn't finish a liter of my good brew without getting hosed, as it runs about 8-9% usually, and I like to swill beer when I drink it. Also the little matter of gout gets in the way, as brewer's yeast is the absolute worst thing there is for setting off a gout attack.

But, I could always make it for my friends...who could reciprocate in other ways...say with ammo reloads...hmmm, I give myself such good ideas sometimes.

Coca-Cola loses big in Q4

Story here. You don't s'pose it has anything to do with the sweet pap being sold for almost $7 a rack now, do you? That whopping price increase is about 70% over the prices of a year ago, and DOES NOT reflect the price of corn, which fell off the table when the Ethanol fever died down some. Add to that the foolishness of introducing new flavors during a rapid contraction in the economy, and it seems that the executives in Atlanta are hell-bent on putting themselves back into view as dummies, just as the mistakes of the New Coke fiasco were beginning to fade from memory.

Two necessary round things

The first would be TP, of course, and now there is a second thing: canned bacon!

H/T to Say Uncle, who got it from the ARf-commers. Of course he did. Why the HELL else would it be called "Tactical Bacon"

ARf-com, you missed a beat here. I don't see the primary use of it listed as an anti-Islam device. The Brits used salt pork for that about 130 years ago, so let's get with the program, ARf-com!

BTW, if you want to give yourself a headache, download this flowchart about bacon. It's also linked in the above ARf.com site. It's funny, but not with a sinus cold like I have now.

I don't have anything against bacon. I pig out on it with distressing regularity. As readers of the blog might have observed, I don't subscribe to the Tommy Tactical movement, so calling ANYTHING tactical except subdued battle dress and similarly-camo'd field equipment is as far as I go with "tactical". Putting pounds of equipment forward of the center of gravity on a weapon just gives one a poorer and slower-handling weapon, the way I see it.

Bully for the canned bacon. Boo and hiss for calling it "tactical", even if it's in jest. BTW, as good as bacon is, taking those cans along in your kit makes you over-kitted, for sure. Take beef jerky, it is about 95% as tasty as bacon, has more protein, weighs less, and can just sit in your pocket until needed.

Take that, tofu nation, and that, and that.....

...we're into the mega-calories in this place, but I've just put it on top of my list for my Spring Arizona trip.

French fries cooked in LARD! Now THAT'S retro!

BTW, how about those waitresses, bro?

Hey Og, I'll meet you there!

Chris, don't tell me YOU didn't know about this. You could practically walk there from your pad.

H/T to Suds, who DOES live within 5 miles and didn't know about it before.

Crock-Pot cooking

Revised. Digital Edition.

Of course, this geezer was actually an adult when the first Rival Crock-Pot made it's appearance. The idea was that you could stuff a bunch of ingredients in there, turn it on, and 7 to 14 hours later, enjoy a fine meal of some sort of stew.

At French cooking schools, Crock-Pot is a word that will get you expelled. The French version of a stew has you braising the meat first, not just tossing it in the stew-pot. Then you work the stew up with great amounts of loving labor. that's the French Way.

The real secret of Crock-Pot cooking (you could call it the Southern Way) is that it's tasty no matter how much or how little work you put into it. I usually put SOME work in, because I'm part French.

Here's my Ham and Navy Bean Soup recipe:

Obtain 3 or 4 high-quality, country smoked Ham Hocks. Yep, you guessed it, this is a high-fat, power-you-all-day recipe.

With your kitchen shears, cut the hide on the hocks lengthwise at four points, so that it will fall off when cooked.

Toss the hocks into the Crock-Pot, and add 6 cloves of garlic, peeled but not chopped. Add a quartered high-velocity onion. It's high-velocity if when quartering it, you tear up your eyes enough to wipe them. Add a teaspoon of whole cloves if that flavor turns you on (I don't use it). You will NOT need any salt as the hocks have plenty. Add water to within one inch of the top. Put the lid on.

Take one pound of Small White Beans and soak them in a pot under 4" of water. Use half that amount if you want a thinner soup. Set aside.

Run the Crock-Pot on high if you can attend it, on low if you have to toodle off to work all day.

On high, it will take 5 to 7 hours to cook the hocks so the meat falls off the bones when you grab a bone with your tongs and give it a little shake. On low, this will take 8-10 hours. When this point is reached, turn the Crock-Pot down to low and ladle out the hock meat, fat and bones into a large glass bowl.

Let  the contents of the bowl cool to where you can work it with naked fingers without burning yourself. Then get out those kitchen shears and cut the meat from the hocks  into small, bite-size pieces. There will be globs of fat. If your digestive system can handle it, leave it in, that fat is the fuel which will power you outdoors for a whole day. If you're gonna be sitting on your ass after eating this soup, toss out the globs of fat. You're left with the cooked pork rind. Toss it out also if you're going to sit around, but I usually leave a little in because it adds color and flavor to the few bites of soup that contain the rind.

Optional step: cool the bowl of de-fatted meat and some stock in the fridge. When it's cold, remove the layer of fat on top and toss it out. Now, you have a mostly fat-free soup. You doctor will love you, your yuppie friends will praise your healthy eating habits, and you will have tossed some of the flavor out with the fat, of course. This is why you use GOOD hocks, not the Armour ones. They're OK, but they won't have the flavor that country-smoked ones do, and if you totally de-fat a soup made with them, left behind is a strange false-smoke flavor that doesn't taste like it's real, because it's NOT, the big companies don't smoke their hocks, they chemically cure them.

Now we assemble the soup. Drain the beans, and put into the Crock-Pot. Put the meat, fat, rind, whatever you decided on, back into the Crock-Pot. Peel another 4 cloves of garlic and toss into the pot. Add any last-minute herbs that the memory of your soup-making grandmother won't let you leave out (but I don't use them, because HAM flavor is supposed to be what you get with this soup, not some herb-garden bouquet that will leave everyone guessing).

Fill the Crock-Pot back up with stock. If there's any left over, SAVE IT! It's good for lots of things, and you can't buy ham stock in the store.

Turn the Crock-Pot up to High and cook until the beans are tender, but not falling apart yet. NO CRUNCHY BEANS IN BEAN SOUP, PLEASE! If you have to leave, cook on Low for no more than 5 hours (use a "night watchman" type timer to plug the Crock-Pot in to).

This will serve a dozen meals, and one bowl of this soup is a MEAL! Especially if you left the fat in.

Now, here are some URL's (and here, maybe the same thing in a different format) for Crock-Pot cookbooks. I only use my Crock-Pot to make stews and soups, but it can also be used to make puddings, etc, and there is even an insert so you can bake a 1-pound loaf of bread in the original Rival (I have one, they are VERY rare).

BTW, a Crock-Pot is a survival tool, since on Low, they will use only 75 watts (the original one will, anyway), which means that you can run it with a small inverter off of one Group 28 storage battery. You could run a whole table full of Crock-Pots, making enough food to feed several Rifle Squads, off of one Honda EU1000i genset. A full meal would probably use less than a quart of gasoline. The Field Kitchen equipment necessary to make chow for that many troops would use a lot more than a quart of fuel.

 

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?

Sign of things to come?

Depression Recipes? That's ECONOMIC depression, you Prozac freaks.

H/T to KurtP at Trainwreck in Maxwell.