I did not know that.

SO, reading this article -- MRE Shelf Life and Stockpiling MREs - AllOutdoor.com, I wound up at this page: USDA -- Food Product Dating.

Where I learned that the "pull dates" on food items have nothing to do with food safety or health. (With one exception, see emphasis added below):

Does Federal Law Require Dating?
Except for infant formula, product dating is not required by Federal regulations.

For meat, poultry, and egg products under the jurisdiction of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), dates may be voluntarily applied provided they are labeled in a manner that is truthful and not misleading and in compliance with FSIS regulations. To comply, a calendar date must express both the month and day of the month. In the case of shelf-stable and frozen products, the year must also be displayed. Additionally, immediately adjacent to the date must be a phrase explaining the meaning of that date such as "Best if Used By."

Are Dates for Food Safety or Quality?
Manufacturers provide dating to help consumers and retailers decide when food is of best quality. Except for infant formula, dates are not an indicator of the product’s safety and are not required by Federal law.

What Date-Labeling Phrases are Used? There are no uniform or universally accepted descriptions used on food labels for open dating in the United States. As a result, there are a wide variety of phrases used on labels to describe quality dates.

Examples of commonly used phrases:

• A "Best if Used By/Before" indicates when a product will be of best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.
• A "Sell-By" date tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management. It is not a safety date.
• A "Use-By" date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except for when used on infant formula as described below.

Although experience says that the bread mix you found in the back of the pantry from 5 years ago may no longer have fully (or any) active leavening...

So the other evening at the emergency communication team meeting we were talking about "Go Bags" and Bug Out Bags. I took my Go Kit -- which is to say, my bag for CERT or ARES/RACES work, not my "Get Out Of Town" bag.

I also took my car kit in, to show a couple of thing in it. Now, my car kit is mostly a cheap packable rain suit, such as you find at a big box store, hat and gloves, reflective vest... It also has a package of Datrex Lifeboat rations. (Might have been another brand.)

And it was pointed out to me that "These are almost expired."

The packaging is intact, these are safe to eat.

"But they're almost expired!"

s*i*g*h

Oh, By The Way...

...Brigid has made Home On The Range public again!

Go, read some of the most profound writing in the Blogosphere, laugh at doggie stories, steal some recipes...

Schloss Drang has been in quite a pickle...

OR: Garden 2014 progress report.
PREVIOUSLY:

• How does your garden grow?
• #RaisedGardenBedAssemblyForce

That's 8 pints of dills using a prepared mix we had, and 4 pints of grape & horseradish dills.

These are going to be sweet dills. Not sure how many pints. The recipe calls for 9 days of rinsing and soaking...

Until we get a proper pickling crock with lid and weight, a mason jar full of water on a plate will do.

4 more pints of pickled golden beets. There are also pickled carrots and radishes in the fridge.

That last pic also has some of the tomatoes I picked today. After taking these, I picked a handful more and a couple of more cucumbers; when Mrs. Drang got home from work, we went back out to inspect the garden and wound up picking some snap peas.

The pole bean vines look okay, producing so-so. The radishes we planted from seeds had almost a 100% germination rate, and may therefore have been too close together...

Peas. Carrots in front. Possibly same deal as radishes.

Cucumbers.  There's a soaker hose that runs along the raised beds below the plant frames; the green hose you see is capped, or attached to a sprinkler as conditions demand.

This photo shows the golden beet plants we planted from starts.  Hope we didn't plant them too close together.

 Roma tomatoes.  Lots of fruit, all green.  Apparently we've been over-watering.  We'll stop if the weather will...

 Grape tomatoes are doing well.  In fact, against all expectation, the hybrid plant we planted last year has started producing, too.

This was supposed to be broccoli.  Now, I'm not a gardener, but I suspect we'll be making sauerkraut... 

Also, the bell peppers are doing OK, so maybe some homemade salsa. (Which is about the only way I can stand bell peppers.)

Not pictured: The squash plants keep pretending to die and then putting out a blossom. Also, the strawberry plants started top die off, then started flourishing again last week, and have a few berries on them. So maybe my next batch of Strawberry Lemonade will have home-grown strawberries in it.

Source of raised bed kits, frames for pole beans and peas, and cucumber frames: Gardener's Supply Company. They also carry pickling crocks with lids and weights.

Who's (in) Yer cabinet?

Altrnate Title: Bobbi and Bill, we found your grandma's kitchen cabinet!

Hoosier cabinet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Hoosier cabinet (also known as a "Hoosier") is a type of cupboard popular in the first decades of the 20th century. Named after the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana, they were also made by several other companies, most also located in Indiana.

The typical Hoosier cabinet consists of three parts. The base section usually has one large compartment with a slide-out shelf, and several drawers to one side. Generally it sat on small casters. The top portion is shallower and has several smaller compartments with doors, with one of the larger lower compartments having a roll-top or tambour. The top and the bottom are joined by a pair of metal channels which serve as the guide for a sliding countertop, which usually has a pair of shallow drawers affixed to its underside. The whole assembly, with the counter retracted, is fairly shallow, about 2 feet deep; the width and height are generally about 4 feet and 6 feet respectively.

Not what one expects to find in a pottery shop in Eastsound, Orcas Island, Washington.

A Hoosier Cabinet.  Sounds like it may have been a fairly typical one.

Flour and sugar dispensers.

Cabinets on top.

In case you forgot what you kept here...

Multi-tasking!

Helpful stuff...

Flour bin.  Kinda small, but the drawer on the other side is another one.

what a mess

A tasty, tasty, mess.

While on vacation, Mrs. Drang asked my mother for a couple of her recipes.  I was so busy enjoying the scenery I failed to chime in with a request for one for my favorites: Mom's Corn Fritters. They were actually corn pancakes, since she cooked them on the griddle instead of deep frying them, but with a side of bacon and covered in maple syrup they were heaven on a plate.

And I woke up on my day off with a hankering.

If only there were some vast, interconnected network, a web if you will, of information...

Oh, wait!

So, after wading through two or three pages of search results, all making pancakes instead of corn muffins or corn bread, I found some that had actual corn in the pancakes, which is what made Mom's so special.

OK, the easy way is a box corn muffin mix, with a can of creamed corn added.

Yummy!  Eventually.  No pics.  To tasty to run get camera.

Mistakes: 

• If adding creamed corn, reduce milk.  I wound up with a far too soupy batter, and adding Bisquik to thicken.  I suppose you could use whole kernel corn, drained if canned, and not have that problem.
• Like someone whose kitchen experience is strictly watching Mom cook, I had the griddle turned up to high, and then turning it down when it was hot enough to cook pancakes.  And then not waiting until it had cooled off enough to cook safely.  Threw half the results out.
• Didn't have all my stuff ready before getting started. The "mess" mostly involved tossing stuff in the sink to deal with later, and in at least one case grabbing the wrong tool.  (Yeah, I know there's a fancy cook's term for this, whatever.)
• Posting to the blog before telling Mrs. Drang -- that sound you just heard is her reading this and wondering what state I left her kitchen in.

Possibly because my participation has been minimal...

...Mrs. Drang's vegetable garden is doing well.

(I helped fill the containers, watered, and made holes for plants to fill.)

Somehow, I see a lot of salads in the near future...

And strawberries, eventually.

Somebody contact Guinness, I think we have a new record for spinach...

Still haven't gotten the nerve...

...but here's Howard Taylor's Chupaqueso recipe.   Mmmm, cheese. 

Bacon optional. 

Or, not.

A Mere Trifle

Strawberry Lemonade Trifle
8 oz jar of lemon curd
Container frozen non-dairy topping
 Strawberries
Pound cake (We substituted a lemon pudding ring cake)
Slice the strawberries, cube the cake, mix the curd into the topping, and layer all in a trifle dish. Except we couldn't find the trifle dish. Oh, well.

Berries, check.

Cake, cubed.  Could have gone smaller.

Whipped topping + lemon curd.

First layer.  Like I said, the cake maybe should have been cubed smaller

First dab of lemon crud cUrd topping.  Maybe used too much per layer.

With a "real" trifle bowl, the sides are straight, so the layers more even, and are easier to see.

I suppose I should have gotten pictures of it dished up, but we had to eat it quickly to keep cats out of the topping...

I think I read somewhere the "trifle" started out as a way to get rid of cake that was old and dried out. ISTR someone making a trifle for a Christmas gathering that had booze in it, but that was a long time ago...

In today's Instant Messenger traffic...

Mrs. Drang's office uses AOL Instant Messenger instead of an intercom.  So we've used it to stay in touch since I was last in Korea.  (This may be why we transitioned to text messaging so easily, come to think of it.)

Anyway.  Today's traffic included, in addition to the usual "What's the weather like there?" and "Get some tofu out to thaw" (I kid), this:

So, if I made a sarcastic remark about how Top Food's sale on beef tripe ends today, would you feel I was challenging you to make menudo?  Because, if you would, I won't...  :-P 

Overheard in the kitchen

Mrs Drang was explaining that she keeps turning on the stove to the wrong setting.   The new stove is one of those glass-top jobs.  The right front "burner" has three concentric rings; on the knob, the middle or "medium" setting is from 12 o'clock to 4, the outer or "high" setting is from 4 to 8 o'clock, and the inner or "low" setting is from 8 to 12.
Over on the left, the rear burner has two sets of controls; on the left it controls "just" that burner, but on the right of the dial it turns on the "bridge" burner between front and back, so you can use the long griddle and have your pancakes turn out right no matter which section they are one.
And I said

You shouldn't need Driver's Ed for your stove.

Which seemed clever at the time, but in retrospect makes me sound like some kind of Luddite...

Added to "holds" at the library

After reading Julia Child’s Life as a Spy, the review from the Noo Yawk Slimes' "Dining and Wine"* pages: A Covert Affair, by Jennet Conant. "A group portrait of idealists, including Julia and Paul Child, who served in the O.S.S. during World War II."

*NOTE:  I received the review in the NYT Dining and Wine RSS Feed; at the end of the review was a statement that the book review was from the April 3 NYT Review of Books;  since I spend even less time with that than I do with the standard edition of the NYT, I have no idea whether  it will appear in the (increasingly irrelevant) dead tree edition of the Times...

New Year's Day brunch

Cinnamon bread French Toast and Aidell's Maple & Smoked Bacon sausage.
Since we're still unpacking we used the electric griddle--not sure where iron griddle is.
Cinnamon bread french toast with apple cinnamon curd for the win!

Mmmmm, Bacon...

A few months ago I got pointed at Breda's Pig Candy post.  I told Mrs. Drang.  She shocked me by printing the post out.  Then she mentioned that her family reunion was coming up, and we were hosting...


Just got back.  She is still at "the other house*", where the party is/was, but I have to get up early to go to work, so I bailed.  


Anyway.  1 pound British-style bacon, unsmoked, and 1 pound American-style bacon, smoked.  Both think-sliced, from the local Proper British Bacon and Meats.  


("What's British-style Bacon, Drang?"  Back meat, not belly like American.  Think Canadian bacon, but cured differently.  Based on the clean-up, it may actually have more fat than American style, but it's not streaky.  Which, by the way, I am told is what they call American-style bacon in Blighty, "streaky bacon.")


Like Breda, I didn't measure my brown sugar or my powdered ginger.  Unlike Breda, I had no cayenne to add, alas.  Mix the sugar and the powdered ginger, dredge to coat both sides, lay out on grid in baking pan, sprinkle a little more sugar mix on top, and bake.  The first two batches I did at 350 for 20 minutes, then let go a little longer; the third batch was at 400 for 25 minutes.  I think that batch turned out better, not sure whether it was the (brand new) stove, or the thicker slicing. 


I texted Mrs. Drang that if there was no pig candy, she would know that I had either screwed it up utterly, or that it was so great that...  Well, you know. 


Now, I "Googled" (or "Binged", I don't remember) "candied bacon", just to see if anyone else did this, and there are, indeed, numerous other recipes out there.   They all seem to get to the same place by a different route.  Some have you par-cook the bacon before coating with the sugar mix.  Some use white sugar, some use maple syrup. I think the keys are :  

• Bacon.  Check!  
• Sweet stuff.  Check!  
• Heat.  Check!
• Enjoy! 
• I said, Enjoy!  (Mmmf, mmmf, mmf.  More bacon candy, please!)

***

*"The Other House"=her dad's house, which we are gradually renovating and updating, and expect to move into... uh, soon.  End of the year, anyway.  We were originally hoping to move in and then go on vacation, but that didn't pan out...  

Who Bogarted My Cheese?

(With apologies to Spencer Johnson.)

I love cheese. Just about any kind of cheese*. My favorite pizza is "cheese", and when I have an omelet it usually just has cheese in there with the eggs. (And, yes, I'd dispense with the eggs if I could.) While our favorite restaurant in Seattle is Palisades, The Melting Pot is a very close second. It is only by an act of supreme willpower and self-denial that I have resisted the urge to make one of Howard Taylor's Chupaquesos...

So, when Mrs. Drang texted me yesterday about her commute-from-hell, I went ahead and fixed my dinner, bangers and mash. To try and liven up the mashed potatos, I grated in some Tillamook** White Cheddar, some Mizithra, and some Ermentaller into them.

And was up all night. On reflection, I believe that the Ermentaller was a bit, um, old, even for a hard cheese that had been stored in the fridge. So today I slept late, and so far have dined on a cup of yogurt, and two slices of toast with margarine. My stomach is still achey, my throat is raw--Sparrowbane looks at me funny, I'm a bit old to have my voice breaking!--and I am having doubts about being able to make either the Tea Party protest in Olympia or Amateur Radio Field Day tomorrow.

Blech.


* Although I may as well eat a big bowl of All Bran in prune juice as put some Maytag Blue on a salad...
**I laugh at those California-versus-Wisconsin Who-has-the-best-cheese? ads. Oregon, you dolts.

Dinner...

So the other day Mrs. Drang was looking in the freezer for diner, and uncovered a roast. A Prime Rib Roast. A year or more old. Color us embarrassed.

It was well wrapped, and we could see no signs of freezer burn or anything, but still... So, after it thawed out, we cooked it in the Big Green Egg.

The Egg is a barbecue/smoker made of the same material they make space shuttle tiles out of, about two inches thick. Retains heat very well, thank you. Marvelous cooking tool. Yuo can go "low and slow", or, if you build your fire right and manage the air flow correctly, well, I got it up to about 800 degrees Fahrenheit the other day; I say "about" because the thermometer "only" goes up to 750... (That was a fluke. I usually barely manage 300. Mrs. Drang is much better at running the thing than I am.)

She made a rub with some seasoned salt we had...
Label says "Sea salt, garlic, rosemary", and not much else.

Ears of corn were 3 for a dollar at the Kent Farmer's Market. (Been one for a dollar at the local grocery stores, thank you very much, Mr. Gore...)
And green beans, and some cucumber sliced thin in red wine vinegar, and some tomatoes...

And a very nice Fess Parker 2004 Santa Barbara County Syrah. (Yes, "the" Fess Parker. Little coon skin cap on the label, and on the cork. Opened a winery when he stopped acting. Very good wine. In fact, while my parents took us to our first two or three wine tastings, and tasting rooms, Fess' Vigonier--pronounced "Vee-ohn-Yay"--actually launched us into our interest in oenology.)(By the by, that wine is still listed on the web site...)(The Frontier red, by the way, is an excellant red table wine, with a picture of Fess as Dan'l Boone on th elabel. When we visited the winery back in '04, we bought a little souvenier coon skin cap that fits on the bottle cap...)

Either the salt, or the cooking/smoking process (we used mesquite chunk/lump charcoal) had th effect of turning the 'rind" of the roast red.

Still. What a magnificent meal.
The Big Green Egg is heartily recommended for anyone interested in backyard cookery. While we do not recommend aging a roast in the freezer for a year or more, it does not seem to have come to harm. (I had my doubts about smoking it, but figured after a year or more in the freezer, what the hell?)