Thermal cooker and camping, mmm mmm good!

So, the test run of the thermal cooker went very well. I've blogged about my beloved thermal cooker before, and am very pleased to have finally been able to test it in the wild, so to speak.

We packed on Friday morning, and I got beef stew ready to go in the inner cooking pot. Bring to boil, continue heating for 10 more minutes to heat all the way through. I didn't measure the water this time, just filled the pot 2/3 full. That would prove to be a minor error.

After 10 minutes (OK, 12 actually), the inner pot goes into the outer thermal sleeve. I was done with that by lunchtime.

We packed the car, and headed south to our campsite. We were providing dinner for ourselves and another family, so the beef stew cooking away in the car as we drove was working nicely. We got stuck in some bad traffic, and arrived at dinner time, instead of an hour early so we could set up camp as I had hoped.
Fortunately, the thermal pot allowed us to pull it out of the car, set it on the table, and notify our friends that "dinner is ready" pretty much as soon as we had parked. Not needing electricity for the bulk of the cooking time was a great advantage! The beef stew came out a bit soupy, but it tasted great--we all had seconds!

After washing out the pot, I used it again the next day to make jambalaya (Zatarain's boxed) for the group potluck. It kept the food nice and warm, and I only had to babysit it for 15 minutes. Crockpot cooking unplugged. How conveeeenient!

What the haybox?

After the rave reviews of my chicken soup (Teddy asked where I got the great recipe from), I was searching online for more thermal cooker recipes. Yes, I have slow cooker cookbooks, but I wanted to see what else was out there.

I found this cool site today, and got immersed in various methods of fuel efficient and fuel-free cooking. I've read about solar cookers before, and ever since hearing the phrase, "Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk", I've been fascinated by the idea of cooking with the sun. My only venture in this area has been making sun tea using a big clear glass jar on days when the temp goes over 100 F. My sister-in-law introduced me to that practice--and it's wonderful on a hot summer day.

But honest to gosh cooking of real food--using NO energy at all? Way cool concept! I found these pages today that I am itching to try some weekend when we are not running around like maniacs with chores and kid activities (my calendar says this should occur on the next blue moon when Venus enters the house of whatever...)

• What is a solar cooker?
• Make a solar cooker with the mylar windshield reflector from the car
• Cool kids project cooking a hot dog in a Pringles can (OK, don't bug me about the junk food nature of this project--I think my kids would be into it)
  

There are tons of other kids solar cooker projects on Google, check 'em out!

Back at that first site, I'd never heard of a haybox before, but now I have! DH was wondering what was really the difference between our new fancy-schmancy thermal cooker, and putting one of our regular pots inside one of our ice coolers. My first thought was, well, would styrofoam melt from the heat? After reading about hayboxes, and how they were used during WWII to conserve cooking oil, I think DH's initial instinct was right. We could use our cooler the same way, if we had enough insulating material to fill up all the air, and some mylar to keep the hot pot from melting it. We may keep an eye open at the summer yard sales to find something to experiment with. Of course, an old cooler stuffed with styrofoam pellets is not as nice to bring to a pot-luck as our thermal cooker, but it would be fun to test out.

In order to put a rational spin on my obsession with fuel-free or low fuel cooking, I have 3 good reasons, allowing me to deny my OC tendencies...

1. We live in California, and someday a big earthquake may cut off our access to fuel for a few days, so cooking with the sun would be a handy skill
2. We like to go camping in the summer, and this could save from using up so many of those little fuel cans. Plus frees people from babysitting the food cooking on open flame, so we can just play in the river instead
3. It's better for the environment--less fuel burned, less pollution, less drilling needed, etc.

Now, still looking for the perfect dessert recipe...

Chicken soup for the soul

Well, that worked out all right.

We got supermarket rotisserie chicken (aren't these the best invention ever?!) for dinner, and I picked up an extra to make soup. I am a major soup fan, and the only soup my husband likes is chicken noodle.

I pretty much grew up on Campbell's, and even my favorite soup buffet restaurant chain has only so-so chicken noodle soup. In fact, it actually reminds me a lot of my mother's homemade chicken soup, heh. Let's just say, mild? Does that sound less deprecating than bland? Add enough salt, and you'll sense some flavor there.

Anyway, I've been looking forward to trying chicken broth in the new thermal cooker. I have a friend who simmers her meat bones all night on low to get great soup stock. I got her one of these pots as a housewarming gift, to help her not burn her house down while she is sleeping! And I know I could probably have done this with our crockpot, but was just not motivated enough.

In the interest of putting the thermal pot through its paces, I figured I would try making chicken soup. We removed most of the meat from the second chicken, reserving that for the actual soup on day 2. At 10:00pm last night, I put the 2 chicken carcasses into the inner pot of the thermal cooker; bones, skins, drippings and all. Add in the sacrificial diced onion, carrot, celery and parsley. A little salt and pepper, bring the whole thing to a boil for 10 minutes, and into the outer pot it goes. Both inner and outer lid down, and time for bed.

In the morning, the smell of the broth was HEAVENLY. It was still very warm, but knowing I was stuck on conference calls for the next 4 hours, I took the inner pot and heated it back to a boil for another 10 minutes, and popped it back into the casing. At lunchtime, I strained the whole thing and refrigerated the broth to aid in fat removal. Next time I will skip the drippings and skin to reduce the fat content.

Nearing suppertime, I reheated the broth, adding water to increase liquid volume, added the meat reserved from last night, new sliced carrots, celery and onion. Brought it all to a boil, and finally added the noodles. YUMMMM!

We will definitely be trying this again! My husband and older son kept making mmmmm sounds with every sip. Barley, of course, hating wet food, had his chicken and noodles dry, thank you.

Artichoke weekend

I was fortunate to score some artichokes from a friend's family, and pondered what to do with them. I am new to artichokes, as they were not served in my home growing up, and so I am on a quest to learn how to prepare and eat them.

I already knew what to do with the baby ones. The same friend's mother had taught me how to make a divine fried artichoke heart, which includes onion, garlic, egg, flour, etc. Delicious. I boiled a couple of the larger ones, and dipped the leaves in melted butter before scraping them in my teeth. That still left me some more, so I went looking for an artichoke soup recipe. I LOVE soup.

One friend laughed at the truth of this statement, as I started digging into my FOURTH bowl of soup at Sweet Tomatoes. For those of you not familiar with the chain, Sweet Tomatoes is a soup and salad bar restaurant, much like Fresh Choice, where everything is all you can eat. They always have 6 different soups ready, and I usually try more than half of them. Yum! Good luck finding any meat, though. Most of us fish big chunks of chicken out of the ever-present chicken-noodle soup if we are concerned about that.

Anyway, I had an unexpected day at home, since my youngest was homebound with a fever. Dosed with kiddie ibuprofen, he was happy watching TV or playing videos, and not much in the mood to do anything else. So, soup, why not?

Found a workable looking recipe. The main steps included:

1. Steam artichokes in chicken broth with sliced onions for 45 minutes
2. Take artichokes out and remove leaves, set aside
   
3. Remove and ditch choke, cut heart into pieces
4. Scrape pulp from artichoke leaves (OK, this part turned out to be REALLY tedious and time-consuming!)
   
5. Blend pulp, broth, and onions in food processor in small batches until smooth
6. Return all ingredients plus milk, salt, pepper, parsely, chives to pot & reheat

So, new recipe, and my first chance to use the immersion blender I got at Christmas. Oh, and the thermal cooker would come out again for the first 45 minutes of cooking time. Play with TWO new kitchen gadgets on the same new recipe? Score!!

So, that took up most of my day.

The soup turned out good, but I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had been sitting in a restaurant on my butt, and it was brought to me on a platter with a white linen napkin. Totally not worth it now that I have a big pot of soup that no one in my house will eat except me. Guess we will see how well it freezes and defrosts!

The fried artichoke hearts came out well, and those I ate until I started to feel sick. Of course Barley's limited palate prevents him from even trying one, and DH is not interested as it is a healthy vegetable. C'mon, I even deep fried it for you, honey, and coated it with salt!

I had hopes that Teddy would join me, but he heard "artichoke heart", and since he did not know what that was, he thought I meant "armadillo heart" and got grossed out. Even though he could SEE the vegetable matter as I prepared it for frying, he couldn't bring himself to eat more than one. He said it tasted fine otherwise. Instead, he ate the carrots I threw in to use up the batter and oil. Good thing he knows what carrots are!

I want to marry my thermal cooker

We have been testing a new kitchen device. A thermal cooker has joined the family, and a most welcome addition it is! My friend VI has been singing its praises for a while, so I finally took the plunge and got one for myself. These things are not cheap (and from what I read on the Amazon reviews, the cheap ones may not be that good).

What IS a thermal cooker, anyway, you ask? It is a cross between an Asian style rice cooker (the big fat round ones), and, I dunno, a thermos? Here's a link that decribes it well. I bought the 6-liter Tiger for myself, and the 4.77 for a single friend.

Ever since it arrived, we've been brainstorming ideas on how to use it, and we have already tried 2:

Corn on the cob: Boiled for 2 minutes, popped into the thermal cooker for 4 hours, and served nice and hot. Came out a bit on the mushy side, and I was actually surprised that the Betty Crocker instructions (yes, my cooking is that basic, that I have to look up how to boil corn!) actually say boil for 2 minutes, and let sit in hot water for 8-10 minutes more. So, maybe not the ideal recipe.

Beef Stew: Used my regular crockpot beef stew recipe, and added an additional cup of water as I was paranoid it might not be enough for the initial boiling. Boiled in the inner pot for 10 minutes, turned off heat, and popped the whole thing with lid into the Tiger for, hmmm, 9 hours. Meat was tender, fully cooked, and everything was soft. The carrots were a little firmer than they are coming out of the crockpot.

Now, part of the reason we are so excited about this, is that we love to go camping in the summer, but hot dogs and hamburgers gets a little old. We are always looking for ways to prep food ahead and cook something more interesting. We love our crockpot, but umm, no electricity while camping? And who wants to be stuck at the campsite babysitting beef stew for 5 hours? Besides, that would take a lot of fuel!

With this new thermal cooker, you have to cook for 15-20 minutes to get the thing going first (that is one downfall vs. crockpots--no babysitting at the start, just dump it in and forget about it). However, after the initial babysitting, you are done. The outer thermal casing retains the initial heat, and keeps it cooking while you go off and play. Nice. And not having to time the hot food perfectly is convenient too.

Other recipes soon to be tested: Pork & Sauerkraut, Zatarains jambalaya, and Korean Beef & Beansprout stew. Looking forward to it--YUM!

Letter from Barley to Rose

Barley has to write a letter as part of his homework every week. This Monday, he chose to write a letter to my gardening friend, Rose, who hosted a potluck at her house this past weekend.

We found this in his homework packet on Tuesday:

Dear Rose

Thanks for having us at the party. It was really fun! I can't imagine having as much plants as you guys have. Also, the (dog) got very lonely and barked when we weren't there watching him, having fun, and running around in the backyard with the other people.

From, Barley


I think he summed it up nicely (and he has better manners than me, since I forgot to write a Thank you note at all!).

I will add some details though, to more fully capture the event. We were celebrating a visit from a friend who had moved out of the area--she looked great, and we were all happy to see her. I got to eye my friend V.I.' s thermal pot, in which she brought an awesome soup. All the food was delicious, but I am a particular fan of soups, so hers gets a mention. A thermal pot is top of my wish list for Mother's Day.

Rose's garden is STUNNING, and the kids all ran circles around the house. There was kumquat pelting, and then kumquat pickup. My boys claimed not to have any ill intentions with all the fruit the were picking up, but then Barley gleefully crowed, "Look how much ammo I got!"

All the kids delighted in the stone paths cutting through the rose garden, and explored the raised vegetable beds. What a wonderful layout for games of imagination--lots of steps and secret places to explore, and excellent for hide and seek. The porch swing was a huge attraction, with a fun game I'll call "how many kids can pile on before it breaks?"

As for the adults, we hung out, chatted, knitted, ate, and chugged down a LOT of wonderful Meyer lemonade. We kept our hosts squeezing fruit the whole party. Thank you so much, Rose and T for a wonderful time!