Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you!

Last weekend, Jesse and I went camping at Hat Creek by the Subway Caves. We went fishing, went to the caves, spent one of the nights at the 'Mayor of Shingletown' (Jesse's dad)'s house, and best of all, I cooked with my dutch oven over the campfire! There's nothing better than a well-prepared meal cooked over a campfire in the cooling evening air as the sun slowly sets behind the trees and mountains!

I bought a cooler the day before the trip so that we could bring meat for the chili. At the Co-Op, we pickled out Humboldt Grassfed beef (I know I'm going to make a vLog about how wonderful grassfed beef is and how y'all should be eating sustainable meat!!), fat strips of bacon, and buffalo tri-tip (no pictures because that was cooked by Jesse's pa at his house).

For my birthday (Friday after next!), we probably will go camping in the Trinity Alps. I've got to bring my dutch oven again, no doubt, and I've already thought up dinner heh. This time, if I let Jesse keep some trout that we will catch (I got six last weekend!), then I definitely want to grill the trout whole after gutting and filling the cavities with orange slices, and score the flesh, which will allow the saffron-orange butter to distribute throughout the meat. mmmm yum, right? That'd be one crazy campfire meal!!

Humboldt grassfed beef browning up nicely in the oven. This isn't what I did first, though. I added chopped bacon to the oven for its wonderful, delicious, and salty drippings (pork fat rocks!!) and then sauéed chopped onions in the dripping. A few minutes of stirring until the onions started to become soft and sweat its juices, and then I removed the onions and bacon before adding big, cubed hunks of Humboldt grassfed beef to the oven.

When the beef browned up nicely and pink could no longer be seen, back in went the bacon and onions. Also, at this point, a can of beer was set slightly off the fire to warm up. In went crushed tomatoes (huge can), organic kidney/pinto/black beans, and the warmed beer.

I brought seasoning that I pre-mixed myself. Of course, I cannot remember everything that went in it, but you can see a bay leaf, I know I used cumin because the finished chili had the most wonderful note of cumin, and also because I use cumin all the time. There's some tumeric in that, chili powder, probably a hint of cloves. Also, cumin's wonderful pal- coriander seed, crushed red pepper flakes, and gosh I don't know, all wonderful spices went into that chili!! Note- I forgot to add the corn until after I added seasoning. I would've put corn in first, but doesn't matter!



We left the dutch oven alone while we fished some more in the last bits of sunlight. The water was black, yet the trout were still feeding on buzzing pests bouncing on the surface. We were getting nothing more than bites..darkness quickly crept up on us. Beer and longing thoughts of dinner fueled us with giddy energy as we ran through thorny bushes and jumped over volcanic rocks. By the time we got to our camp, the chili thickened up perfectly and we quickly spooned ourselves bowlfuls, never minding the heat on our tongues. Only a mere bowl was left of our smoke-infused, tender, meat-filled chili!





*****


The next morning, we fished first thing when we woke up. After an hour or so, our stomachs finally started to wake up! The fire was rebuilt and the dutch oven was warmed up earlier, so I tossed in the remaning slices of bacon to crisp up nicely.





In the great bacon fat, I fried some potatoes and quickly made scrambled eggs. Nothing technical or fancy about this meal, but it sure made a wonderful breakfast mash that went well with cold beer!

A man who is stingy with saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother.

Gosh it sure took me a while to figure out how to do the peakaboo hack (think, lj-cut)! Check it out. You can expand and hide my posts! Click on the Read More... links at the bottom of posts to do so.

Jesse and I had one of our favorites- Indian food! For dinner, I did saffron rice with corn with mustard seeds and punjab choley. Well, I did not actually cook the punjab choley! Trader Joes has a brand, Indian Fares, which is curries that comes in heatable packages. Pretty cool! There isn't a TJ's around here, though.. Mom mails them to me in her packages full of treats!

For the saffron rice, I cooked long-grain white rice (my basmati looked dusty!) in buttered water with a good pinch of saffron threads until the water was absorbed, fluffed it up in a bowl and added sweet peas that was lightly seasoned with sea salt, black pepper, and a slight dash of hot madras curry powder for a slight kick.

I either didn't cook enough rice, or sampled a bit too much! It most likely was the latter..like always! I wasn't about to wait some more for another batch of rice to cook up, so I used couscous which is also lovely with curry and so much faster to make! Did pretty much the same thing I did with the rice..I wanted to keep the flavors constant!

For the corn with mustard seeds, heat sunflower oil in a wok (or large heavy skillet) over med-high heat and add a couple pinches of brown mustard seeds. Cover and wait for the popping to stop. Add one or two serrano chiles, thinly sliced, and stir for 30 seconds. Stir in a few dashes of tumeric, add about a cup of sweet corn kernels (slice 'em off ears of corn or thaw some frozen ones) and reduce the heat to low. Cook until corn is tender, about five minutes (frozen, one minute). Remove from heat and stir in minced fresh cilantro.

small bowl- saffron rice large bowl- couscous


clockwise from top left- corn with mustard seeds, saffron rice, corn with mustard seed, couscous and then punjab choley in the middle

Pictures I meant to post ages ago! (first post)

This is my first post and it's about time! I've been collecting pictures from a 'sample' of things I've cooked in the last couple months. In this blog, I hope to post recipes with pictures accompanying them. But gosh, I've got a horrible memory so it's a surprise I can remember what went in most of these things I cooked up!

Along with pictures and recipes, I'm playing with the idea of making ASL vLogs that, of course, are about cooking! Buuut I don't have a webcam or a real videocamera. I'm using the same thing I use to take these pictures-my Canon Powershot Pro 1. I doubt I can do anything longer than a minute thirty seconds!

We'll see!

banana bread from Crust and Crumb Master Formulas for Master Bakers . This one rocked!! It had the perfect amount of moisture from the bananas, an awesome walnut crunch, and a light interior that was not horribly dense!

One night at the Co-Op, Jesse and I saw elk steak and got it for dinner! I marinated it for a bit in a blend of herbs, garlic, and oil before grilling it and serving it with one of my favorite sides for steak: buttery garlic and rosemary fingerling potatoes roasted in the oven. The elk was topped with shiitake mushrooms sautéed in umm... gosh I don't know! hehe oooohh yes, I made chive butter with freshly cut chives from my yard to go with the steak!

beef fajitas with onions, tomatoes, corn and whatnot.

bacon cheeseburger with what's most likely to be cumin rice and a simple (haha) garden salad

margarita!