Monthly Archives: December 2020

Belated Christmas Dinner

I mentioned in my last post our plan to head over to Wickenburg for a family holiday gathering. Saturday afternoon I put the top up on Midget-San. I usually just raise the top without fastening it, then cover the car while it’s parked at our site. We normally drop the top whenever we drive. Donna wanted the top up for warmth on the 100-mile drive.

I put the top up and fastened it in the afternoon when the sun would likely soften the material. Getting the top fastened in place is always a wrestling match. The top material has to stretch slightly over the frame work and clamps to the windshield frame. Driving the Midget with the top up is a different experience. It’s much noisier inside and getting in and out of the small sports car is a little more difficult. With my back troubles, it wasn’t fun to climb out of the driver’s seat.

We hit a red light at Brown Road, about two miles from our site at Viewpoint, then didn’t stop at all over the next 90 miles. Our route took us on the Loop 202 (Red Mountain Freeway), then Loop 101 to I-17 to AZ74 (Carefree Highway). Midget-San with the Nissan A15 engine and five-speed transmission made the drive at 70mph without strain.

Our destination was my ex-wife’s house that she and her husband Jerry recently moved into. It’s north of Wickenburg about 5 miles in a housing tract called Wickenburg Ranch. It’s new construction in a gated community with a golf course. My middle daughter, Jamie and her man Francisco were there and his son Trey. My oldest daughter, Alana, and her fiance Kevin came down from Arlington, Washington with their kids – Gabi and Lainey, our granddaughters – and Kyle and Nick, Kevin’s sons.

The trip to Arizona was a surprise for the kids – they didn’t know anything about it until they were told to pack on Christmas Day. My youngest daughter, Shauna, couldn’t make it. She and her boyfriend, Gabe, returned from a trip to Bermuda, where Shauna will be working soon. On Saturday, they were at Gabe’s parents’ house in North Carolina.

We arrived at LuAnn and Jerry’s place just before noon. LuAnn was the only one home at first. Kyle and Nick were fishing at a pond with Jerry while Alana and Kevin were on the golf course. I’m not sure where Lainey and Gabi were, but we were all together soon enough and started in on hors d’oeuvres.

Charcuterie tray – just a small sample of the appetizers set out.

We grazed on the appetizers, drank mimosas and talked with football on the TVs. Donna contributed a baba ganoush dish with flatbread and brought the mimosa fixings plus chewy molasses cookies she made.

Meanwhile there was a turkey cooking and Jamie brought a ham. Everything was set out on the kitchen island and it was time to plate up!

Granddaughters Lainey and Gabi plating dinner

LuAnn and Jerry are just starting to settle into their place and it isn’t completely furnished yet. We had a variety of chairs to seat everyone around the tables.

I should mention that everyone in the room except Donna and me and LuAnn and Jerry have had coronavirus. And the four of us who haven’t had it have been taking precautions. So we felt that this particular group setting was fairly low-risk, especially since we kept the doors open the entire time we were there and spent some time outdoors as well.

I didn’t want to make the 100-mile drive back to Viewpoint through the desert at night, so we checked in at the Best Western in town. We had a quiet night and I was surprised to find the complimentary breakfast was a hot meal with scrambled eggs, bacon and biscuit. The trip back was uneventful and we were home before noon on Monday.

I mentioned the knife set Donna got for Christmas in my last post. When Cutlery and More (a retailer and online store of kitchen gear near Chicago) shipped her knife set, I received an e-mail notification. The e-mail also included a $25 gift card for my next purchase. I couldn’t resist. I shopped around and decided I needed a bunka-type knife. A bunka is a versatile Japanese knife that could be considered a kitchen-prep knife suitable for anything from vegetables to trimming beef.

I wanted a knife to trim the cuts of meat I smoke in the Traeger. This could mean trimming anything from babyback ribs to brisket. I found a small bunka – five and a half-inch blade length. Most bunka knives are around seven inches blade length. I felt five and a half inches was adequate for my use and easier to handle in a small kitchen space.

Cutlery and More had just the thing and it was on sale for Christmas. I ordered an Enso knife by Yaxell made in Seki City, Japan. With the sale price and my gift card, I was able to get this knife for just $64. The blade on this knife is Damascus – it has a very thin core made of VG10 steel at a hardness of 61-62 HRC. This thin core is hard, sharp and somewhat brittle. To counter the brittleness, the core is laminated with 18 layers of stainless steel on each side, alternating between relatively hard steel and soft steel making the blade much tougher and less likely to break. There are 37 layers of steel altogether. The knife was delivered shortly after we returned home.

I don’t fool myself into thinking a Japanese blacksmith made this by hammering red-hot steel on an anvil. Most likely, this is made from a laminated Damascus sheet supplied by Takefu Steel (maker of VG10 steel), which is ground and heat-treated. The hammer finish is most likely applied by pneumatic or hydraulic hammer machines. No matter, it’s still a high-quality knife with a beautiful finish – and it’s razor sharp. It’s going to be just right for slicing a fat cap down to <1/4″.

I’m doing a little more studying to increase my knowledge of knives. I’m not studying so I can start designing and making my own knives – I just want to gain a deeper understanding and be able to cut through the marketing hype (pun intended). To that end, I ordered a book from Amazon – Knife Engineering by Dr. Larrin Thomas. I was familiar with Larrin’s work from his website – Knife Steel Nerds. He has the rare ability to take complex engineering topics and explain it in a way that a layperson can understand. It’s hard to grasp from his website as the topics range from basic to highly advanced – without a logical progression. His book organizes his writings in a way that takes the reader from basic ideas up to complex applications, each chapter building off of the last.

We had a high temperature of 68 degrees yesterday, but gusty winds made it feel cooler. After dark, a few rain showers came through. We can expect the cool days with temps in the low 60s for the rest of the week – no rain is forecast though. Though my lower back continues to be problematic, I hope I can return to the pickleball courts soon.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

German or Japanese?

I closed my last post on Sunday saying I had a few days left to shop for Donna’s Christmas present. This was a bit of mis-direction – I didn’t want Donna to know I’d already selected and ordered a gift for her. She always comes up with something thoughtful and useful for me. More about Christmas later.

On Monday morning, I played in the 3.5+ pickleball round-robin. I played fairly well and had a good time. Donna and I returned to the pickleball courts on Wednesday morning for open play. We played several games, then it happened again. We were teamed up versus our friends, Ginny and Joe. Joe hit a low, short shot in front of me. I lunged forward and bent down to return the ball. Something in my lower back disagreed with the move. I could barely move without triggering jolts of pain. I was done with pickleball for the day.

A couple of people offered to give me a ride home in their golf carts. I thanked them and declined. I thought sitting in the golf cart might be too painful if we hit any bumps. I figured walking slowly might loosen up my lower back. It was a slow trip home. I took some naproxen and put a heating pad in my chair and have done that every day since then. Next week I’ll start working on some stretching exercises.

In the evening we got into the Christmas spirit by watching a movie on NetFlix called Christmas Chronicles. It was a comedy geared more for children but Kurt Russell gave an outstanding performance as St. Nick. We enjoyed it.

About 18 years ago, I bought a set of kitchen cutlery made by J. A. Henckels of Solingen, Germany. I thought they were pretty nice knives and they are decent quality. They’re in a butcher block knife holder along with a mish-mash of other kitchen knives. A couple of years ago, I bought Donna a Japanese Santoku knife. It’s just over six inches in blade length and only 1.8mm thick. It’s extremely sharp. Donna uses it for special cuts – like fileting chicken breasts into thin slices.

About 10 days ago, while Donna was prepping vegetables for dinner, I had a thought. I should get Donna a new set of knives. I did some homework and decided to get a set of Japanese kitchen cutlery. Most professional kitchens are equipped with either German cutlery or Japanese. Many avid home cooks choose one or the other, but honestly I think the average household is satisfied with whatever Chinese-made knives they found at Walmart or maybe a QVC-special Ginsu set.

German knife makers and Japanese knife makers take a different approach in the their knife design and manufacturing. The biggest difference is found in the most important part – the blade. German knife designs tend to be very robust and heavy with thick blade stock. Japanese kitchen knives are thinner, lighter, more elegant and specialized. German knife blades are usually sharpened with a double bevel and the edge angle is 20 degrees per side or more. Japanese knives have various edge grinds but they’re usually a straight grind with an acute angle of 12 to 16 degrees per side. For example, the Henckels eight-inch chef’s knife blade is 3.7mm thick at the thickest part of the spine by the handle. The Japanese chef’s knife – called a gyuto – is typically 2mm or less at the thickest part of the spine.

The Japanese knife makers get away with the thin blades and sharp grinds by using steels that are considerably harder than the typical German knife. A German knife steel is usually heat treated to a hardness of 52-54 on the Rockwell C hardness scale – the abbreviation is HRC, not RCH as you might think. Japanese knife steel is heat treated to hardness ranging from around 58 HRC up to the mid 60s. This is a big difference.

Japanese knives can be made sharper and hold the edge better due to the hardness, but there’s a trade-off. Japanese cutlery tends to be more delicate and prone to chipping or even breakage if abused while German knives are more forgiving and robust. That’s one of the reasons Japanese cutlery is so specialized – they have a different criteria for knife specifications for almost anything you might want to cut in the kitchen.

After researching and shopping around, I thought I found a great fit for Donna. Donna’s hands are on the smaller size, so I looked for lightweight Japanese knives with handles made for smaller hands. I decided on Global brand knives made in Niigata, Japan by Yoshikin. These are unique knives that were considered to be very futuristic when they first hit the market in 1985. They caught on quickly with professional chefs and were also popular in homes with lots of stainless steel appliances.

This was due to the design which uses stainless steel (Cromova steel) exclusively. The knives are made from three pieces of stainless steel – the blade and two sides of the handle. The handle has a hollow portion that’s filled with a precise amount of sand to balance the various blades used – you can’t tell there’s sand inside. The three pieces are welded together, then ground and polished, making the finished product look like it was sculpted from a single chunk of steel. The handles have dimples filled with black paint to make them grippy.

Photos lifted from Cutlery and More webpage

The set L to R – 8.5″ bread knife (pankiri), 8″ chef’s knife (gyuto), 6″ scalloped utility knife,5.5″ vegetable knife (nakiri), 3.5″paring knife (petty)

By the way – stainless steel is a misnomer. There’s no such thing as stainless – it would be better to call it stain-less. It’s less prone to corrosion than low-alloy carbon steel, but any steel can and will corrode.

Donna has used the knives – mostly the nakiri vegetable knife – a couple of times and she reports favorably. She says vegetable prep is much easier and faster with these knives. I watched her mince fresh rosemary, garlic and basil into nearly a powder in a few seconds. These knives are extremely sharp right out of the box. I demonstrated this to Donna by taking a sheet of thin tissue paper the knives were wrapped with and holding it up in my left hand. I sliced through the free hanging paper cleanly without catching or tearing.

Donna bought a goody for dinner on Christmas Eve. She came home from Albertson’s grocery with four lobster tails. She cooked them and served them with Australian style potatoes called crash hot potatoes. She made them by boiling small potatoes, then she placed them on an oiled cookie sheet and pressed them with a potato masher. Then she drizzled with a little olive oil, sprinkled with fresh chopped rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. She baked them at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. I love ’em. We had a dim sum appetizer and ginger carrot soup before the main entree.

Lobster tail, crash hot potatoes and fresh green beans.

Our Christmas dinner was covid compliant – we didn’t go out or join anyone, it was just us. Donna made a shepherd’s pie. The filling included a pound of brisket that I had chopped into small cubes and froze last week. The brisket I made last weekend ended up in several meals. We had the dinner when I first took the brisket out of the Traeger – that’s two servings. Then I had brisket sandwiches twice last week and Donna had two salads with brisket strips – that’s four more meals. The shepherd’s pie is enough for four servings for a total of 10 meals. The $48 I paid for the Prime brisket doesn’t seem like so much now.

I’ve only had shepherd’s pie once before that I can recall. It’s a great dish!

The weather has been great other than some gusty, high winds on Wednesday afternoon and night. It’s 55 degrees outside as I type this morning and we should have a high of around 70 degrees. The skies are blue and cloudless. Tomorrow we’ll drive out west to Wickenburg where we’ll meet up with my daughter, Jamie and Francisco at LuAnn and Jerry’s new house. LuAnn is my ex-wife and Jerry is her husband – Jamie’s step-dad. Google maps says it’s a 100-mile drive each way. We’ll stay overnight at the Best Western in Wickenburg and return on Monday morning.

Good Gravy!

The week since I last posted was mostly routine, nothing too special. At least it was until Thursday. I played pickleball in the morning with the 3.5 group and planned to head to Costco before lunch. I wanted to look for a beef brisket flat. I thought about getting another tri-tip, but Donna thought I should smoke a brisket. She was right, as usual. It’s been a while since I’ve done a brisket in the Traeger.

My last game Thursday morning changed my plan. On the last shot of the final game, my opponent hit a lob to the back right corner of the court. I beat feet from my position on the left side of the court, caught up with ball as it bounced and twisted my body to the left to make the return shot. When I did this, it felt like an electric jolt ran through my spine. I limped home after the game.

A trip to Costco was out. I was afraid if I got into the Midget, I wouldn’t be able to get out. I popped a 500 milligram naproxen tablet that I had left over from a previous injury and sat outside with a heating pad on my lower back. After dinner, I took an Aleve pill and wasn’t good for much.

Friday morning I felt better, and took another naproxen with breakfast. By 11am, I was feeling pretty good and decided to make the Costco run and check out the briskets there. Once again, the Costco foot traffic was fairly light. I didn’t expect this a week before Christmas. I think the lack of snowbirds from Canada is having an effect.

Costco had whole packer briskets in the 16- to 20-pound range and flats cut in the seven- to nine-pound range. This was way more than I wanted to buy – it’s just Donna and me. The brisket was USDA Choice and I think it was $6.79/lb. They had USDA Prime tri-tips, but I passed on them and thought I would go to Chuck’s Fine Meats again and see what he had. I wrote about USDA meat grades in this post and everything you ever wanted to know about brisket here.

At Chuck’s, I found USDA Prime brisket flats. The butcher selected a four and a 1/2-pound hunk of flat (HOF) for me. I don’t recall ever seeing USDA Prime brisket before. It wasn’t cheap at $10/pound. Back at home I found it needed very little trimming – they had already trimmed most of the fat cap to less than a quarter of an inch. I seasoned it with the Kinder’s Blend – salt, pepper and dehydrated garlic granules – wrapped it in cling wrap and put it in the refrigerator. I didn’t do much of anything else Friday. I wanted to rest my back. Meanwhile, Donna played pickleball in the morning and tennis in the afternoon.

Saturday morning, I filled the hopper of the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker grill with CookinPellets Perfect Mix – a blend of hickory, cherry, hard maple and apple wood pellets – and fired up the Traeger. I put the brisket HOF on at 8:30am on the smoke setting. I mixed up a mop sauce to baste the brisket. I used a base of eight ounces of Pepsi cola and added two ounces of apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce. I used Pepsi as a base instead of the usual beer because I wanted to add some sugar for the bark. I spritzed the brisket every hour with the mop sauce from a spray bottle.

I left it on the smoke setting for two hours, but I wasn’t getting much heat. The pit temperature was only about 150 degrees, so I increased the temperature to 180 for the next hour. Then I stepped it up to 225 and continued to spritz the meat every hour. At 1:30pm, I checked the brisket with an instant read thermometer in the thickest part and found the internal temperature to be 150 degrees. I checked it again at 2:30pm and found it was stalled at 169 degrees. I pulled the brisket off the smoker and double wrapped it in foil, basted it heavily and put it back inside.

I didn’t open the smoker again until 4pm when I carefully peeled back an opening in the foil and checked it again with the instant read thermometer – I was close, it read 191 degrees. I closed it up and waited another 25 minutes. When I checked it at 4:25pm, it read 201 degrees. Perfect!

Next I bundled the foil-wrapped brisket in a heavy towel and packed it away in the microwave/convection oven. I didn’t turn the oven on, I just wanted to pack the insulated brisket in a confined space so it would hold its temperature for a long while. It would re-absorb some of the moisture in the foil while it slowly cooled. Meanwhile, Donna cooked red potatoes and made southern fried cabbage with bacon. After resting for an hour and a half, I pulled the brisket out of the oven and opened the foil. It was still steaming hot and the bottom of the foil held about a cup and a half of au jus from the rendered fats and collagen.

Brisket HOF with au jus in the background

Donna calls the au jus “gravy.” That works for me. I sliced the thin part of the flat off – I’ll cube it for use in other dishes later – then I confirmed the grain direction so I could slice across the grain. This was the most tender hunk of brisket I’ve ever encountered.

Sliced brisket served with smashed red potatoes and southern fried cabbage with bacon

The brisket displayed a beautiful pink, or magenta, smoke ring penetrating a quarter-inch or more into the meat. It was absolutely delicious and tender – there was no need for steak knives. We cut it on the plate with regular table knives. Donna had a glass of California merlot while I paired my dinner with Four Peaks Kilt Lifter Scottish ale. I have about a cup of au jus leftover and plenty of brisket for sandwiches and whatever else Donna comes up with. I guess the premium price for USDA Prime at Chuck’s Fine Meats is worth it.

The weather has been on the cool side. We’ve had daily highs in the low to mid 60s with overnight lows down to the upper 30s the last couple of nights. A warming trend should begin today and we’ll see mid 70s again if the forecast holds true. I’ll take it easy again today and hit the pickleball 3.5+ round-robin tomorrow.

Have a safe and merry Christmas. That reminds me – Christmas presents. Sometimes I’m at a loss to think of a good present for Donna. I still have a few days!

Pickleball Santa

We’ve been playing pickleball most mornings here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. With the Covid-19 restrictions in place, the round-robin play has been a little different. Round-robin games this year are timed events – we play for 13 minutes, then rotate players. First team to 11 wins, but play continues until time expires. If there’s a tie with less than 11 points scored, the team that reached the tying score first wins.

This is done to prevent everyone from huddling together inbetween games to get the next court assignment and record scores. The real downside to this is the lack of records of wins and points scored. We usually record this info to help establish what level you should be competing in. For example, if your average score with a variety of pickleball partners in round-robin play is five or six, you are probably dragging your partner down and should move down a level. On the other hand, if you average eight or nine points per game, you’re fine at that level.

We’ve been playing at the 3.5+ round-robin on Monday mornings and hold up at that level. Last week, Donna signed up for 3.0 play on Friday. They didn’t have enough people signed up so I told the organizer, Dennis, that I would fill in. I had an unfair advantage – I won all six of my games fairly easily. Yesterday they were short a player again, so I sand bagged again. It was fun. Donna played in a Santa Claus outfit.

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to Basha’s for some pork – specifically a Boston butt, also called pork butt, for pulled pork. I wrote about Boston butt in this post – Boston butt is a name for the upper shoulder portion of pork.

I went to Basha’s, but they were out of pork butt. I remembered a new butcher shop that opened last year on McKellips at Power Road, it’s called Chuck’s Fine Meats. I stopped there and found a super selection of meats. All of their beef is USDA Prime. They had one pork butt left, but it was a nine pound cut. That would be way more pulled pork than I wanted for Donna and me. The butcher said “No problem, what size would you like?” He proceeded to cut the shoulder in half for me.

A lot of guys like to keep about a quarter-inch of the fat cap on one side of the shoulder. The theory is the fat will render and keep the meat moist. I don’t subscribe to that theory. I think leaving a fat cap means one side of the pork is unseasoned and can also dilute the seasoning on the rest of it as it drips off. Plus, there is more than enough intramuscular fat on pork shoulder to keep the meat moist. I prepped the pork by trimming it and seasoning Tuesday afternoon. I wrapped it and put it in the refrigerator.

The next day, I put it on the Traeger around 11am, thinking it would take five or six hours to cook. I had the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill set at 225 degrees to cook the pork low and slow. There’s always an unpredictable point in the cook where it stalls. When the internal temperature of the meat hits 160-170 degrees, enough of the fats and moisture content begin to evaporate and provide evaporative cooling and the temperature quits rising. Pork shoulder should be cooked until it reaches an internal temperature of 195 to 205 degrees – just like brisket.

Some cooks will increase the pit temperature to break through the stall or wrap the meat in foil at that point to reduce evaporative cooling. I don’t like to do this, because raising the temperature too much can toughen the exterior of the meat. Conversely, foiling the meat can leave the surface a bit mushy and ruin the bark formation. I waited the stall out. I ended up cooking the pork for more than seven hours! We ate late, but it was worth the wait.

When I took the meat out of the Traeger, my instant read thermometer registered 195 degrees in the center, away from the bone. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a new utensil from Amazon called Bear Paws. These take a little bit of practice, but they’re great for shredding pulled pork.

Moist, tasty pulled pork – the bone in the upper left pulled away cleanly

The result was tender and tasty! Lat night, Donna made a favorite comfort dish again – piggy mac. This is mac and cheese laced with lots of pulled pork. Delicious!

In my last post,I hinted at something we were working on. After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to purchase a park model home here at Viewpoint. This will become our winter residence. We made an offer on a unit with one bedroom and a large Arizona room. It’s about 800 square feet and it’s on the golf course on the east side of the fairway for hole 6 of the nine-hole course. We have a golf course for our back yard! There’s a new deck in back and a large patio deck by the entry. We’ll sign on the dotted line this afternoon, but we won’t take possession until March. Moving forward, we intend to still travel in our motorhome in the summertime and stay here in the fall and winter months.

The weather forecast held true. We had rain on Thursday as a cold front moved through. The thermometer only reached 64 degrees on Thursday and Friday. The forecast calls for clear skies, but the daily highs are predicted to be in the mid-60s for the remainder of the month.

USDA Prime

It’s been a week since I last posted. Nothing real exciting to report. We’ve settled into a bit of routine here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort – pickleball in the morning, lunch, then run an errand or two. I usually spend a couple of hours enjoying a cigar and playing with ham radio.

We’re also working on something new, but we’re not at a point to open up for discussion just yet. So, this post will be mostly about the food we eat – we’re not camping out. Full-time RVing is a lifestyle and it can include good home-cooked nutrition.

Last week, I made a Costco run on Thursday. In some states like California and Arizona, Costco sells liquor. Around here, they have the best prices and I needed to restock. I was pleasantly surprised to see that entering Costco was a fairly normal affair, other than everyone wearing a mask. There wasn’t a line to get in. I just showed my card and walked in. In fact, the aisles weren’t even crowded.

While I was there, I spied packages of tri-tip beef (I posted about Santa Maria tri tip here). The packages I saw held two tri-tips with a USDA Choice shield. I thought a tri-tip would be a good idea, but I didn’t want to buy two. Then, in another cooler, I saw single tri-tips with USDA Prime grading shields. Bingo!

What are these USDA shields? The US Department of Agriculture grades commercially sold beef. There are actually eight grades, but consumers generally will only find three grades offered at retail. These grades are Prime, Choice and Select and can be identified by a USDA Shield emblem with the grade on it.

These grades are established by inspectors. They use visual, subjective criteria as well as scientific measurement with instruments to establish the grade. Prime is the juiciest and most tender – it has intramuscular fat (marbling) that makes it so desirable – it also comes from younger cattle. Less than 5% of the beef meets this grade and most of it goes to high-end hotels, resorts and restaurants.

Choice is the next grade down the ladder. It has less marbling than Prime, but it’s also a very good cut of beef. It’s the most common grade found at most retail stores. Select is leaner, less tender and may come from older animals. I avoid Select cuts.

I bought a Prime tri-tip. I also bought a jar of Kinder’s seasoning. This is the perfect blend for Santa Maria style tri-tip – it’s just salt, pepper and dehydrated garlic granules. I seasoned the tri-tip, wrapped it in cling wrap and left it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Friday afternoon, I warmed up the Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker grill to a temperature of 225 degrees. I put the seasoned tri-tip in and left it for two hours. I then transferred the tri-tip to the Weber Q which I had preheated to 400 degrees and seared both sides of the tri-tip for about two and half minutes per side.

I wish I had taken it out of the Traeger maybe 10 minutes earlier, but it was juicy, tender and tasty nonetheless. I cut it into strips across the grain and Donna plated it with baked potato and asparagus.

The Kinder’s seasoning was the ticket – it resulted in a perfectly seasoned tri-tip. The leftovers make excellent sandwiches too.

Donna manned the grill on Saturday and grilled her famous honey-sriracha chicken thighs. These are a favorite of ours. She served it with jasmine rice with scallions and broccoli on the side. Another nutritious, delicious meal.

Last night she added seafood to the mix. Donna grilled a wild-caught sockeye salmon filet. This time she made a side dish called breaded cauliflower with sriracha dipping sauce and fresh green beans.

Salmon with breaded cauliflower and green beans

Today I’m going to Basha’s to look for a pork shoulder cut – Boston butt. This will make an excellent pulled pork after smoking it in the Traeger. That will complete our circle of meats – beef, poultry, fish and pork. As I said, just because we’re in an RV, there’s no reason not to enjoy a variety of good home-cooked meals.

The weather has been pleasant – a little on the cool side for Arizona, but not bad. We had a couple of windy days, but it wasn’t extreme. The highs were in the mid 60s for most of the last week. Sunday we hit 75 degrees and had high 70s yesterday. This will continue until Thursday when a cold front is forecast – it may bring rain as well.

Turkey and Ham

Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone and we’re into December and nearing the end of 2020. The good news is the economy appears to be holding up, although it’s a little hard to understand it with all that’s going on.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving feast – it was just Donna and me. I put a turkey breast in the Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker grill and gave it a little over an hour at 350-375. In the final 10 or 15 minutes, I upped the temperature to 450 to crisp the skin. It came out beautiful and tasty. Meanwhile, Donna prepared Brussel sprouts with a horseradish cream sauce and corn with sun dried tomatoes and parsley. And of course, mashed potatoes and gravy!

Neither of us are big dessert eaters – we rarely eat sweets – so we passed on the dessert. If our microwave/convection oven had been operational, Donna might have made a pumpkin pie – in fact, I’m sure she would have.

I spent some time in the ham shack playing on the radio Friday and made contact with Haru (JA1CG) in Japan again. I also had conversations with Dale in Texas – he’s frequently on the 20-meter band and a guy named Grant in Carlsbad, California. I’m really enjoying the ham radio hobby.

My ham shack is unconventional – as you can imagine, it’s difficult to have an actual shack with our nomadic lifestyle. I set up under the canopy Donna bought for my birthday and put the power supply and transceivers on a table. I leave my antennas mounted in tripods, but I pack up the things on the table when I’m finished for the day. It wouldn’t be good to leave my expensive radio gear out on the table!

I’ve mentioned using various frequency bands and the differences before, but I’ll try to explain it again. The three main frequency categories for amateur radio are High Frequency (HF) which is 3 Mega Hertz (MHz) to 30 MHz. Then there’s Very High Frequency (VHF) which is 30 MHz to 300 MHz and then Ultra High Frequency which is 300 MHz to 3000 MHz.

High Frequency transmissions can typically cover very long distances. The VHF and UHF frequencies are limited to line of sight under most conditions – actually, they can travel just beyond the visible horizon. For this reason, there are repeater stations for VHF and UHF. These repeaters receive the transmission from a ham radio within range, then almost simultaneously re-transmit it at a higher power level, usually from a tower mounted at higher elevation. This allows the signal to be “repeated” over a larger area.

Many repeaters are also linked via various programs to other distant repeaters through the Internet, thus providing worldwide coverage. To use a repeater, a few parameters must programmed into the transmitter. For one thing, the repeater will receive the signal on one frequency and re-transmit the signal on a different frequency. This is called offset and is necessary because it can’t receive and transmit on one frequency at the same time.

When we use HF, we are communicating through a direct (simplex) connection antenna-to-antenna.

Radio tuned to 20-meter HF band – 14.250 MHz

In the photo above, it’s pretty straight forward. I’m receiving a signal from someone transmitting on 14.250 MHz. Once he finishes talking, I’ll press the push-to-talk button on my microphone and transmit on 14.250 MHz back to him. This is good old fashioned simplex operation.

In the next photo, I’m using a lot of technology. In the upper left of the screen, the WIRES-X icon is activated. This means I’m connected to the Yaesu WIRES-X Voice Over Internet Protocol system. The 440.375 is the UHF frequency I’m receiving. Below that it shows 445.375 MHz – this is the UHF frequency I’m transmitting to the repeater on. Since I’m in a digital mode, more information is displayed. It shows I’m on the East Valley Repeater Group (EVRG) repeater that’s registered in Gilbert, Arizona. The actual equipment is on South Mountain in Phoenix. Below that, it shows America-Ragchew, that’s the “chat room” I’ve selected. Whew! Enough radio talk.

I ordered a replacement microwave/convection oven and received it shortly after we arrived here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I had an appointment with Sean – he operates Valley RV Service, a mobile RV repair service. Sean stayed in contact via text messaging and showed up here yesterday as promised. He muscled the old oven out of the cabinetry in short order.

Old broken Sharp Carousel microwave/convection oven

As you can see in the photo, the old oven was showing its age. The button to release the oven door came off and the linkage behind it was irreparably broken.

The replacement oven, being nearly 20 years newer, is slightly different. Although Sharp lists it as the replacement model, it has slightly different dimensions and more programmable functions. It’s also heavier than the old one, which was plenty hefty. Sean had a few issues to overcome getting the new one mounted. I helped him hold it in place while we fiddled with the bolts securing it to the mounting bracket. It took several attempts to get it in place, but we got it done!

Replacement Sharp Carousel microwave/convection oven

I didn’t mind lending Sean a hand, although I was paying for his service. His rates are fair and there’s no way I could have handled it myself. The reflections on the surface of the new unit made it hard to photograph, but I used the photo anyway.

On Monday morning, we had the first round-robin pickleball event. Unfortunately, it was very windy with unpredictable gusts. This made every game a matter of luck more than skill. My game relies on shot selection and placement – it doesn’t work very well in those conditions. Today, I’ll run my first coaching session of the season at noon and wouldn’t you know it – gusty wind again!

The temperatures have reached the low-to-mid 70s each day. Today the forecast calls for a high of just 64 degrees with clear skies. The mid 60s are forecast for the next few days before we warm back up to the 70s over the weekend. I can stand that!

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Monthly Archives: December 2020

Belated Christmas Dinner

German or Japanese?

Good Gravy!

Pickleball Santa

USDA Prime

Turkey and Ham

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: