WHAT ARE YOU EATING TODAY?

[moose eater]

And on topic . . .

My spouse and I went on a date yesterday. She is recovering and I am drifting south with more stenosis . . . but we braved downtown Toronto. We went to the museum and we had dinner in the high ticket part of Toronto around Bay and Bloor.

Chicken tawook @ Amal.

View attachment 19060776

This is a dish that is near and dear to my stomach. I first had it - called shish tawook - in a Lebanese resto in Montreal in the late 80s. It is simple: chicken brochette served with a garlic sauce and pita. Well, it took me 5 years and a lot of attempts to figure out the recipe. I finally nailed it and I have enjoyed it now for 25 years. So, when I saw this on the menu, I thought that I would try this high end version. Well, this was good - 7/10 - but mine is better. I'll make it sometime and share the recipe.

Similar to chicken shawarma?

 

[tobedetermined]

Not really. Shawarma around here is sliced from a big spit - rotated and cooked - you can get lamb, beef and chicken - although I have seen many stretch this without the spit roasting. What I had is technically a shish - but in NA we tend to call it shish kebab. A kebab (kepap) is just ground meat to the Middle East and Turkiye.

 

[GainesvilleGreen]

Country fried steak, mashed potatoes w/brown gravy, Lima beans, sliced tomatoes, fried cornbread, cucumbers in vinegar/salt.
Sweet Tea

 

[moose eater]

Not really. Shawarma around here is sliced from a big spit - rotated and cooked - you can get lamb, beef and chicken - although I have seen many stretch this without the spit roasting. What I had is technically a shish - but in NA we tend to call it shish kebab. A kebab (kepap) is just ground meat to the Middle East and Turkiye.

My last Mediterranean restaurant I got a kabob consisting of ground lamb meat (lamb burger), and was disappointed, as my expectation re. a kabob is that it involves tender (sometimes top sirloin or better) chunks of marinated meat with sometimes veggies alternating on the skewer. That was not this.

Our chicken shawarma involves half or whole boneless-skinless chicken thighs, marinated in a thicker Middle Eastern/Turkish spice combination we whip up in an olive oil solution, placing the mix and the meat in a container or bag for a day, then grilled or fried. Adding sliced tomatoes, sliced onion, lettuce and tzatziki sauce made from Greek yogurt, fresh cucumbers chopped fine, fresh garlic, dill, and lemon juice. Maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting right now, served on/in a pita pocket, or more recently here, a keto tortilla...

Dinner here is grilled ribeye steaks, grilled over a bed of hot charcoal. Probably some garden zucchini steamed with butter and salt/pepper.

 

[right]

Avocado and salt and Yacateca. This stuff is wonderful.

 

[shithawk420]

Fried a tbone in bacon grease.it was ok

Avocado and salt and Yacateca. This stuff is wonderful.
View attachment 19060824

i love that stuff but it is fuking hot.gotta prepare yourself for that.i think its fuking hot anyway

 

[right]

Golden corral should tide me over till dinner.
We eat for 2 hours every time. The servers get pissed.

 

[moose eater]

Modified Canadian marketed airtight wood stove, no longer available in Alaska (or the US?), so I bring them back from a hardware in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada for everyone I know who requests one, from pilots I've known who sometimes carry them as survival gear in the tails of their aircraft, as the things, though double-walled, are very light weight, to others in need. They come in 3 or 4 sizes. This one is either the smallest or next to smallest.

This one has no legs on it, and I placed heavy duty casters under 3/16" plate steel to keep it lower profile and more easily mobile in the smoker. The stack is about 10-12 inches of 6" stove pipe, with expanded 1/2" steel, times 2 square pieces, oriented 90 degrees off from each other with the corners crimped down to retain it to the stack, acting as a spark arrester. Burning down your smokehouse is a true tragedy to be avoided at all costs.

Pile of freshly cut green alder in the background. Best wood for smoking fish that I know of, at least for the more conventional style fillets.

Past years' smoking of white man style filets; different brine, brine time, smoking temperatures, and smoking time than the other day's traditional style Native strips pictured further below from this Fall's efforts...

Racks are stainless steel, and are from recycled abandoned/discarded ovens left at the reuse areas, etc.

The traditional strips don't use the racks, as they're hung by strings, vertically.

Cutting sockeye salmon strips and hanging them the other night... Scooping out scraps of salmon from the ends of the tails of the fillets, to afford tacking them down to hold better with a screw while 'stripping' and to allow them to be hung without them having meat that's held against other meat or the wood, which can prevent them from breathing well, which can cause rot.

Beginning to hang the strips in the walk-in smokehouse, after sundown, thus, HEADLAMPS!!!

Been eating these things for several days now in 'testing'. Don't want them to be too wet or too dry. I think I've probably eaten somewhere near 2-3 whole salmon in the last couple days of testing. My hands glisten now with beautiful, reddish hued, high Omega-3 fish oil, and the dogs seem to like me a lot more, not that they didn't like me before. But now I smell heavily of awesome snacks.

The dogs will get some of the scraps I cut from the tails, sauteed in canola oil and put atop their lunch kibble for protein and oil, in place of the raw egg they normally get with lunch.

Otherwise, the dogs more commonly get the still-slightly-fatty/oily skin pieces from what we've eaten, but I tend to cut those into 3" strips for them, as they don't digest as readily as meat, and I don't want to create a clusterfuck in their tummies.

That's what's for dinner/lunch/breakfast, or any time I have to go out to the smokehouse to feed alder and balsam poplar to the wood stove.

We'll be cutting another 20-30 fillets into strips tonight, if we're able.

You know why bears often waddle when they walk? Berries and salmon. That's why.

 

[mike-or-ozzy]

Modified Canadian marketed airtight wood stove, no longer available in Alaska (or the US?), so I bring them back from a hardware in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada for everyone I know who requests one, from pilots I've known who sometimes carry them as survival gear in the tails of their aircraft, as the things, though double-walled, are very light weight, to others in need. They come in 3 or 4 sizes. This one is either the smallest or next to smallest.

This one has no legs on it, and I placed heavy duty casters under 3/16" plate steel to keep it lower profile in the smoker. The stack is about 10-12 inches of 6" stove pipe, with expanded 1/2" steel, times 2 square pieces, oriented 90 degrees off from each other with the corners crimped down to retain it to the stack, acting as a spark arrester. Burning down your smokehouse is a true tragedy to be avoided at all costs.

Pile of freshly cut green alder in the background. Best wood for smoking fish that I know of, at least for the more conventional style fillets.

View attachment 19061272



View attachment 19061273

Past years' smoking of white man style filets; different brine, brine time, smoking temperatures, and smoking time than the other day's traditional style Native strips pictured further below from this Fall's efforts...

Racks are stainless steel, and are from recycled abandoned/discarded ovens left at the reuse areas, etc.

View attachment 19061276

Cutting sockeye salmon strips and hanging them the other night... Scooping out scraps of salmon from the ends of the tails of the fillets, to afford tacking them down to hold better with a screw while 'stripping' and to allow them to be hung without them having meat that's held against other meat or the wood, whicvh can prevent them from breathing well, which can cause rot.

View attachment 19061257



View attachment 19061263

Beginning to hang the strips in the walk-in smokehouse, after sundown, thus, HEADLAMPS!!!


View attachment 19061264



View attachment 19061265

Been eating these things for several days now in 'testing'. Don't want them to be too wet or too dry. I think I've probably eaten somewhere near 2-3 whole salmon in the last couple days of testing. My hands glisten now with beautiful reddish, high Omega-3 fish oil, and the dogs seem to like me a lot more, not that they didn't like me before. But now I smell heavily of awesome snacks.

The dogs will get some of the scraps I cut from the tails, sauteed in canola oil and put atop their lunch kibble for protein and oil, in place of the raw egg they normally get with lunch.

Otherwise, the dogs more commonly get the still-slightly-fatty/oily skin pieces from what we've eaten, but I tend to cut those into 3" strips for them, as they don't digest as readily as meat, and I don't want to create a clusterfuck in their tummies.

That's what's for dinner/lunch/breakfast, or any time I have to go out to the smokehouse to feed alder and balsam poplar to the wood stove.

We'll be cutting another 20-30 fillets into strips tonight, if we're able.

You know why bears often waddle when they walk? Berries and salmon. That's why.

Thanks for the pics and descriptions @moose eater , I get frozen sockeye salmon at the market, damn good stuff, you're very lucky to be at the source. Keep up the good work.

 

[moose eater]

Thanks for the pics and descriptions @moose eater , I get frozen sockeye salmon at the market, damn good stuff, you're very lucky to be at the source. Keep up the good work.

You're welcome.

These are even better with Yukon River king salmon for the traditional style strips, but that resource has been in decline for years now, and there's now current discussion of placing them on the endangered species list. Which will affect access in the villages where it has been a traditional food resource for centuries.

Numerous factors, that one former Cooperative Extension employee I spoke with the other day agreed was the result of 'the perfect storm' of multiple complex and not-so-complex variables, having to do with acidification of the North Pacific, rising ocean water temps, over-harvesting by commercial fisheries, high seas fish piracy and our common foe, the trawler fleet, mostly out of Portland and Seattle, that wastes shit-tons of a wide variety of species that they discard by law as 'by-catch' when they're fishing for pollack to make fish sandwiches for the cheapo supermarket brands and for the fast food restaurants..

 

[mike-or-ozzy]

You're welcome.

These are even better with Yukon River king salmon for the traditional style strips, but that resource has been in decline for years now, and there's now current discussion of placing them on the endangered species list. Which will affect access in the villages where it has been a traditional food resource for centuries.

Numerous factors, that one former Cooperative Extension employee I spoke with the other day agreed was the result of 'the perfect storm' of multiple complex and not-so-complex variables, having to do with acidification of the North Pacific, rising ocean water temps, over-harvesting by commercial fisheries, high seas fish piracy and our common foe, the trawler fleet, mostly out of Portland and Seattle, that wastes shit-tons of a wide variety of species that they discard by law as 'by-catch' when they're fishing for pollack to make fish sandwiches for the cheapo supermarket brands and for the fast food restaurants..

I recently saw a documentary about trawler fishing and the by-catch, shameful how it is wasted and then the piracy fishers with their radar shut off. There's a lot more of that going on now than ever.
It's too bad for the salmon now that many dams are being demolished so they can get back home but now the waters are too warm so they're going further north? Crazy stuff.
I pay $14 / pound for sockeye, usually they are 1.5 lb. fillet.

edit; sometimes they have coho, how is that compared to the sockeye?

 

[shithawk420]

Yeah buddy! Just got back from famous daves.had a 10 dollar coupon so 40 bucks was 30 bucks.its not mind blowing but the brisket is good as fuk.brisket on the left,burnt ends on the right.got the itis.they messed up my order and gave corn instead of potatoes.im stuffed

.

 

[moose eater]

I recently saw a documentary about trawler fishing and the by-catch, shameful how it is wasted and then the piracy fishers with their radar shut off. There's a lot more of that going on now than ever.
It's too bad for the salmon now that many dams are being demolished so they can get back home but now the waters are too warm so they're going further north? Crazy stuff.
I pay $14 / pound for sockeye, usually they are 1.5 lb. fillet.

We can invest a fair bit of money in efforts to harvest by dip-net (Alaska residents only), where the formula for 'personal use' (a specific legal category of harvest) is 25 salmon per head of house, and 10 additional salmon for each additional family/household member. One king per household, per river permit, assuming king salmon on the respective river/permit are open.

When we had 5 of us here, we could dip-net 65 salmon (with up to one of them being a king) from the Copper River at Chitina, and another 65 salmon on another permit for the Kenai River (with one of those being a king).

I haven't done both rivers in years, and only do the Copper River in Chitina now, which has fish with far greater oil content in them than the Kenai or Kasilof Rivers (another discussion altogether, as to why that is).

Subsistence fishing (a slightly different use category by legal/technical definition), whether with a fish wheel, gill-net or dip-net, above the bridge on the Copper River, just immediately north of the personal use fishery, which is the subsistence area on that River, allows for a lot more fish to be taken by a household/permit, and more kings, too, if still currently the law. But they can get shut down for kings, as well. And constructing and tending a fish wheel or tending a gillnet can be a bit more work than a hit and run mission with dip-nets.

As far as trawler by-catch is concerned. if I get caught wasting one fish or a bit of moose, let alone a king salmon, I can be ticketed, forfeit my gear and potentially lose my future hunting or fishing rights, as well as the fish and game I have in possession at that time in an extreme violation case. Plus, the fine(s). All for wanton waste.

The trawlers waste their drag-netted by-catch as a matter of law, they are in a federal fishery, and their lobby is well organized and funded. Literally millions of lbs. of edible fish are tossed overboard in their wakes, floating, bobbing up and down in the water trailing them. So that they can make the big bucks and Mickey D's can serve up shitty fish sandwiches.

But the whole world needs food, many prefer or like fish, and most/many don't live near the water. So, as the invasive species we truly are, we're doing what predatory invasive species do best; destroy, over-utilize, and overwhelm stuff.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Country fried steak, mashed potatoes w/brown gravy, Lima beans, sliced tomatoes, fried cornbread, cucumbers in vinegar/salt.
Sweet Tea

I've had that _exact_ same meal, sans tomatoes and cucumbers of _course_ , more times than anyone on this forum, other than you, me, and @armedoldhippy could ever imagine. i

Unlike most down here, my tea is _not_ so sweet that it locks up your fucking jaws.

 

[shithawk420]

i cant believe i ate it all.i spoiled the dog with those bones.today was a good day.freaking pricey but worth it.chinese is my next escapade.

 

[armedoldhippy]

and the dogs seem to like me a lot more

 

[right]

Left over beans .
Healthy and tastes great.

1 can black beans
1can refried beans fat free
1 can pinto beans
1 can tomato with green chili's
1can green chili's
Sea salt + garlic
1 or 2 avocados
We added ground beef and half a brick of extra sharp cheddar .
You can exclude the beef and cheese if you are worried about cholesterol. The avocados have plenty of protein and healthy fats.

 

[PadawanWarrior]

I'm smoking my first brisket today. I put it on at 1:00 am so it's been cooking for about 9 hours so far. It was on sale for $3.99 lb so I couldn't resist. I think I'm going to get another one for the freezer.

 

[armedoldhippy]

had country ham, scrambled eggs, and toasted Hawaiian bread for breakfast. breakfast is my favorite meal...sometimes i have it for lunch and supper too!

 

[mean mr.mustard]

Country fried steak and eggs with biscuits