Kaimusailing

The trouble with the pork chops is that they constituted a new form of substance, very good if you want to go on a diet without pork chops. Not so good for me. I don’t know how these things became tempered like steel, the spanish rice with them should have dissolved some of that iron.
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I’m hungry again and the pork chops don’t deter me from having pork shops again, just not those military ones. I had had leftover florentine clam soup. Very nice.
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OK, the brilliant idea is a sitcom. It looks like billionaires are going to be in the news a lot, why not make fun of them? Like, a billionaire family that owns a football team and all the family members get involved, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars for their football players, and the humor starts. Unfortunately trying to sell a sitcom like this wouldn’t work at all, there is already a reality going on right in front of us, the NY Jets. The Johnson family, New Yawk City, actually the humor is escaping me right now. Maybe the Kardashian family should own the Jets. Aaron Rodgers probably owns property next to them in CA.
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Meanwhile I am watching discarded Jets quarterback Sam Darnold, now playing for the Vikings, torching the Packers, where the current Jets quarterback came from. The Jets seem to be the nadir for quarterbacks.
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Now I am confronting a pork chop again. This time it’s going into the small cast iron skillet with some of its rice and sauce and I’m going to cook it for about an hour to try to convince it to be edible.
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My next culinary venture will be stuffed cabbage with a strogonoff style sauce. The stuffing will include meat and cabbage, no rice, and the sauce will include mushrooms, onion, and sour cream.
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The pork chop was much more edible after simmering for about an hour. Afterwards I had to reseason the skillet. I went shopping.
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The store was full of people idling around, aisles were blocked, even the traffic in the parking lot was infuriatingly awkward, backed up. I was shocked that there were no cabbages, there were leaves of cabbages where the cabbages had once been. There were smaller red cabbages so I bought one and decided to get some beets, they would go together, red stuffed cabbage with a strogonoff sauce, the stuffing would include chopped meat and chopped beets.
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So, it is New Year’s Eve and I am making a big mess in the galley, steaming cabbage leaves, chopping beets, mixing the stuffing, rolling up the cabbage leaves with stuffing into the large skillet, adding some cabbage water, then poaching for a half hour. Poaching consists of bringing the skillet up to rapid boil, then shut off the heat and wait about 10 minutes, repeat until done.
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The steamed stuffed cabbages were put into a medium pot, maybe 2 ½ qt pot and the skillet was dried, seasoned with 1/3 stick of Irish butter. Diced onion and a crushed clove of garlic were cooked transluscent, garlic removed, flour dusted over the onions, roux cooked until the taste of raw flour was gone. Sliced mushrooms went in next and allowed to wilt and give up their liquid. Beet juice went in along with a pint of sour cream. All the while the concoction was kept from burning on the bottom of pan by mixing and scraping with a spatula.
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The sauce was then added to the pot of stuffed cabbage rolls and the pot was put on simmer. When it started bubbling I shut off the heat. I had been cooking for about 2 hours and was hungry. I took one of the stuffed cabbages and some sauce and did a taste test. The flavor was very stroganov/borscht and the sauce was very rich. One little cabbage roll and I was done, for a while. Very rich. Later I had another and then packed 4 portions of 3 rolls each and put them in the fridge.
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This concoction improves over time and as good as it was at first, it became much better over the next few days. One cannot live on stuffed cabbage everyday and I was out of a few things, so I went shopping with an eye for something new.
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Walmart had inexpensive picnic pork roasts available, and of a size I could use. I didn’t want to make another huge batch of food and wonder how to dispose of it all. A ½ picnic cost around 9 bucks. I wanted some traditional sauerkraut so bought a large jar of it.
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The picnic fit almost perfectly in a medium sized soup pot. I placed it skin side down and found I didn’t have liquid smoke on hand to create Kahlua pig, but had some Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning, and used that. No liquid was added to the pot. It was simmered on very low for several hours. I began trying the pork to see if it was done and took a portion of the surface that was well cooked and had that with a scoop of the sauerkraut. Yummie. The pork had a long way to go to get the center of the roast falling apart done, so it remained on very low simmer. It was cold enough on deck to just put the pot of pork out there and deal with it the next day.
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The weather pattern has been strange with polar outburst followed by mild weather on about a weekly basis. I am heating the cabin with a small Mr. Buddy propane heater that uses the small 1 lb canisters. I refill the small canisters from a larger tank like you’d use for a gas grill. This results in a great savings over buying new 1 lb canisters, also in effect the steel canisters are being recycled efficiently. All this went well until I got a large tank whose valve would not seal completely. When I removed the small canister the large tank was spewing propane and I had to quickly attach another small canister. I realized I couldn’t remove canisters without having an empty on hand.
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Cap’n Webb Chiles has planned a voyage to Culebra from Hilton Head in the next few days. I did a quick route planning on OpenCPN and found that the straight track between those two points had no obstacles along the way. My usual method of planning a route is to drop a mark at the sea buoy at the starting point and then drop a mark at the destination sea buoy. Then the straight line course, the Rum Line, is tweaked to avoid any islands, etc., that are in the way. In this case there is no need to change the route, even the Gulf Stream crossing is reasonable. Chances are he will be beating into the SE trades along the way, but that is the easiest point of sail to get a sloop to sail itself.
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I ordered roof racks for the little CRV on eBay, less than 50 bucks with free shipping. I will need them to transport light lumber. I plan to build a sailing rig for the dinghy I built last year, and I hope it will also fit the Sumnercraft dinghy that resides aboard SUNSPLASH up in Crisfield, MD.
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I found several resources for the Sumnercraft dinghy on the internet, mostly sale listings, but several had sails and rig displayed, the sail is almost identical to the sail on the D4 dinghy that I made. So, make a mast, a sprit pole, a poly tarp sail, a daggerboard and rudder, and put it all together. By the time I build it it will be warm enough to go out and test sail it.
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Our forecast for the next few days is freezing mornings and mid 50’s afternoons. Oh well, it’s January and in a month or so we will start complaining about the heat.
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The image is from a listing of a Sumnercraft dinghy. The sail rig is a sprit rig.