Time in the Kitchen
I’ve been thinking a lot about the business of feeding people.
1
04.15.12 
jspeer
Day 867 – Jeremy’s Kitchen
The following recipe came to me via the “Tasting Table.” I made a double batch yesterday and it came out perfect (with a couple caveats).
- Like most recipes i find, the timings are too short. Especially when it comes to smoke-roasting the potatoes. My oven temp is near bang-on according to my IR thermometer, but my potatoes had to go for 2 hours before they were truly ready to puree.
- Unless your immersion blender says “Husqvarna” on the side you will need to cube the potatoes before trying to blenderize them. Despite my very good immersion blender (honestly the best kitchen tool i own) even the smaller taters had to be fished from the broth and cubed before they would puree properly. IMPORTANT: Tim’s comment below is very true… do not over-blenderize if using an immersion blender or a food processor. I stopped once the cubes were gone… the soup maintains a fine porridge texture. If you’re going for “velvet” a ricer or some sort of food mill is the way to go. Also experimentation involving peeling first, peeling & cubing first, is in order. I suspect cubing first might limit surface area exposure in the steamer/smoker, but peeling first would sure be easier than peeling after.
The smoke-roasting worked perfectly. I did remove the steamer/smoker from the oven once to stir the wood chips and re-heat them to smoking temp. The kitchen smelled wonderful.
03.18.12 jspeer
Day 839 – Back to Ashland
It was another successful trip. 1,598 miles covered in the lovely Chevy pickup powered by the extra-lovely Duramax diesel. Get this, we averaged just under 20 miles per gallon. Ok it’s not a Prius, (nor even a Subaru), but it is a super-powerful 4 wheel drive beast that powers through shin-deep snow, tank-trap potholes, and mud-bog low areas on the more sketchy dirt roads of Washington without so much as second’s hesitation. Had we done only the highway driving and parked it during the time in Boise, the final MPG would have been around 21.
Day 797 – It’s The Climate
Years ago, or so the story goes, the blue regions of Oregon formed a question mark. The reliably democratic portions of the state began on the coast near Astoria, curved east to Portland and then extended down the i5 corridor to more or less Eugene. Ashland was the dot at the base of the question mark. Today the blue zones are more an exclamation point, but Ashland is still the dot.
I mention this because traveling outside of Ashland can be quite a shock.
