….is our dinner menu. We make ’em all.
I must have been a Sushi-chef in my previous life if not a ‘Merican steak-guy. And, of course, I can do English altho with the exception of fish and chips, oatmeal and fried eggs with bacon, there seems little point. Finan Haddie? Bubble and Squeak? Yuck. No one really likes boiled everything with Haggis or worse, a spotted Dick! English cuisine is a misnomer, really. Prison rations is a better description. Think Dickens.
Sal pretty much handles the rest of our ‘eclectic’ menu but I am a bit of a sous chef for her and an outspoken food critic. I also usually ‘pick’ the meal. It’s 50/50.
Just last night, for instance, we had tuna California roll and Yakisoba. We were thinking of adding a few Gyoza but who are we trying to impress? Absolutely fabulous dinner altho I passed on the sake and sake is a big part of it for me!
“But, Dave, you live remote. NO restaurants. How does that happen?”
Told ya….first sentence. “We make ’em all.” From scratch. Wasabi, Yakisoba sauce from scratch. Frozen tuna loins. Sometimes prawns. The whole Enchilada, if you will (yes, we make enchiladas, too, but they fall under the Mexican category).
Sal does a mean Chinese beef and greens with deep fried spring rolls and her German smothered pork chops with Spaetzle is unmatched outside of Bavaria. Stuffed peppers and enchiladas, huevos rancheros and the occasional taco are also part of her repertoire. I forgot the Greek and Italian – Dolmades, lamb, lemon potatoes and Greek salad. Macaroni, Ravioli. We have even done falafels.
I confess our curries (Thai and Indian) are a bit weak. Can’t seem to ‘capture’ that elusive ‘just-right’ taste but what we do produce is pretty good and we are working in it.
I could go on and on…..well, I will add this: damn, I make great cabbage rolls. Really. Honest! Fabulous, if not magnificent.
“But why write about all that, you doofus!”
Food is an OTG topic. C’mon……and living OTG/remote/rural/feral means that one has to adjust their menu somewhat. Make adjustments (NOT compromises!). I did not even claim to be using garden-fresh veggies or just-caught-from-the-sea. This is really modesty talkin’ here! This may SOUND like bragging and self centred back-patting (it is) but it is also an OTG aspect of life. And I am sticking to that!
OK, admittedly, I am stretching the eclectic envelope a bit with this topic but OTG-man does not live by construction, repairs and first aid alone. Even feral needs food. And not only do I now dislike frequenting restaurants we can no longer afford, we can now make the same dishes at home and make them better. (like I said, we are not yet up to a good Indian or Thai kitchen but we are getting there.)
This will blow your mind: we make a better pizza than you can buy. Truth! And I do not mean ‘buy a better frozen pizza and cook it’, I mean we make it all from scratch. And it is BETTER!! Well, maybe the occasional bit of ‘pizza craving’ is colouring my opinion.
Sally already has a reputation for desserts. OMG! People crawl naked over barbed wire for her Chocolate cheesecake (that is the only way I will share it with them). And she just added Rum Babas to the selection the other day! Sal owns desserts. But our main dishes are also getting better in heaps and mounds. It is hard NOT to pork up (we have a source for organic, non-factory pork). So…….I do not try. I just ‘go’ with it….ya know?
Hey! One of you said eclectic was okay!
Our Off the Grid Home 
Come on…really…just when I am about to have dinner!!
It”s friday evening, so no fancy cooking on a friday evening, we are both dead tired from a hard weeks work
So we go for the easy solution, we will put a bought meal in the microwave
I do like to cook, but not on a friday evening
But you made my mouth water, AND you just added anothr very good reason to viit you (some independent jury must evaluate your cooking, no)?
Are you able to find all th ingredients in the local supermarket, and do they deliver frozen food with the watertaxi?
And making Spaetzle off grid in Canada…respect again!
It’s not the BBQ season, so you must have omitted a fabulous steak I presume?
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Oh, no. I do steak about once a month, maybe twice. Steak and chips. Big favourite here. No, the supermarket is a bit lacking. Produce and dairy mostly. When we go to see our grandchildren, we go to some specialty stores and get spices and such. Asian stuff. There is a tuna fisherman who takes home for his freezers and we stop there, too. The local abattoir serves the Mennonites and they raise all sorts of animals virtually organically. A lot of our diet is from within 100 miles or so. But, unfortunately not fruit and some veggies. Glad you liked the blog – a bit odd that one.
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We are used to the odd blog now and then, that’s why we like you and your blogs so much!
As I was writing this, I wonder about something: are all days equal to you?
Like for us on grid and boiling in the hot water, there is a huge difference between working das and weekends.
Just wondering what happens to this when you live off grid as long as you do
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I suppose one could say that all the days are the same…but each is different….not like workdays vs weekends but rather more that we simply do what we want. Sal just popped out with the dogs to fetch a wild log floating by. We need a few. Yesterday we cleaned up the workshop. I also replenished the fuel supply. Snow is coming again so well do some preps for that. In the winter we collect wood in from the outside for the fire, make meals, drink wine and clean things but other than those old standbys, each day is open to whatever needs doing. Put another way: I never know what day of the week it is.
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English Cuisine is an oxymoron! Right up there with Military Intelligence!
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Yeah. And military intelligence is like military planning (all based on the past when all threats are new and different). D’ya think any of the Defense geniuses saw disinformation by way of the internet as a major threat to national security? To be fair, it never crossed my mind, either.
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future warfare will be unlikely anything we have seen so far. We are now seeing the last generation of manned fighter jets and tanks. So future wars will be fought on some distant battleground with all the operators sitting thousands of miles away and going home every evening to wife and kids. Throw in desinformation, hacking, shutting down vital parts of the economy or whole power grids.
All those SF movies from 20 years ago now seem to become reality
I even read that the San Francisco or LAPD would like to test the first Robocop
Next will be robots taking over and in comes Terminator
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Yikes! And I thought it was only me who saw the dark side. Don’t forget the Zombies! I suspect that future wars will be limited to viruses and drones and precision-targeted strikes at Kremlins and White Houses. Why bother with infrastructure? When you take over you’d just have to rebuild. Much cheaper to just go to the top and they now have that ability – almost. The SFPD tried floating a concept that was NOT Robocop but rather a bot capable of withstanding small arms fire and then getting close enough to talk. If talks failed, it would blow up. Saner minds prevailed and the concept was withdrawn but it will come back. When? When some weirded out techie whack-job makes one and uses it to rob people or kill them. The criminal will build it first.
The tactics and strategies of self destruction are irrelevant. The world is coming apart in so many ways that the threats are mounting everywhere. How about that climate change, eh? Them viruses? Mindless cult behaviours and drugs? Arms proliferation? Migration invasion? Politically-based wars are not even at the top of that list. We are behaving like Cancer – killing the host.
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Only English breakfast is half decent, and the scones at high tea
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Ah from lovely meals to the end of the world. I thought that only happened over a beer at a pub. Being retired every day is the same except for rare meetings. We (Judy and I) have virtually given up on restaurants. Not only the cost but the food has become rather ordinary. We celebrated our 45 anniversary at home me cooking a beautiful rib eye steak with Greek salad and some wild rice. What more do you need. Can’t wait to have a meal with you.
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