More often than not when travelling we ate at truck stops. Call it a rivalry of sorts but truck stops went to great lengths to entice drivers to stop at their establishments and one of the ways they did that was by having great food. A parallel today would be the food buffets at casinos. Regardless of the business, good food at a reasonable price will get folks in the door, which the truck stops hoped would result in additional sales of fuel and tires. In the case of casinos  their expectation is the customer will gamble as well.

Having just spent two months on the road I can tell you there are very few truck stops left that have sit down restuarants anymore. Anyway...the days when truck stops and country diners were good places to eat out have pretty much gone the same way as the manual typewriter.

In my life eating out changed gears when I went off to college, drove long haul trucks for an uncle and started travelling more for summer jobs. I didn't realize it at the time but I was broadening my culinary horizons by being able to sample cooking from different geographic regions of the country. However, it was some years later I learned the proper term was cuisine!

In addition to tasting regional cuisine, travelling around the country allowed me to try ethnic foods that weren't part of the culinary scene in SE Idaho.

A permanent job and having my own home  resulted in two things related to "eating out." One, I did much less travelling and secondly I did a lot more cooking. Call it a function of the way I was raised but I still found myself eating out more for special occasions than as an alternative to staying home and cooking. I do admit though I may have eaten out more over the years except for the cost!  But...as the years went by and long before I wrote my first cook book I found I preferred home cookin' best.

Perhaps it's because Pen and I eat out so infrequently that when we do it's a much more memorable experience. For myself as a cook book author and her as the publisher we savor our eating out not only as a dining experience but also as an opportunity to relish some one else's cooking and to educate ourselves in our search for new ideas to try in our Dutch ovens!

So...don't get me wrong! Eating out is GOOD!

What are your thoughts on "Eating Out"?

Cee Dub

Anyway...

Pen and I recently moved from Vanderpool, Texas, to Eagle, Idaho. Eagle is a suburb of Boise. So... essentially we moved from a town that consisted of a one person Post Office and the volunteer fire department to the largest population center in our state. Before living in Texas we lived along the banks of the South Fork of Clearwater River eighteen miles from the small town of Grangeville, Idaho. At the time we lived in Grangeville there was a couple of restaurants, a sandwich shop, a pizza joint, and couple of other small eateries for small town of approx 3500 plus folks from outlying areas.

One of the first things we noticed after moving here was the incredible number of eating establishments! Added to that number is the convenience stores/gas stations that sell chicken strips and jo jo's along with the deli's in every grocery store!

Though I took Economics 202 in the previous century I do have a working knowledge of 'supply and demand'.

It's my hypothesis the demand that keeps so many places who serve food in business indicates a decrease in the number of folks who cook on a daily/regular basis.

But...let me clarify what I mean by cooking!

Cooking for me means using ingredients rather than pre-packaged foods that are brought to serving temperature by using a micro-wave oven or even a conventional oven. What a lot of folks call cooking, I call "heating"!

Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy eating out on occasion and have bought my share of chicken strips and jo jo's out of both convenience and necessity, but like most things in life it can be carried to far!

So begins a series of blogs on "The Good, The Bad, and
The Cost" of eating out.

We welcome your comments!

Cee Dub

Going along with our theme of cooking with home made ingredients when at all possible we use home made egg noodles for any recipe requiring pasta. Egg noodles are easy to make. Ingredients include eggs, egg yolks, salt, a little water, and flour. But...it's easy to make flavored egg noodles that bump up the nutrition and eye appeal. To further enhance the nutrition of our noodles we use free range eggs for the three Rhode Island Red hens foraging out in our backyard!

Yesterday I made beet egg noodles. To my recipe for egg noodles in our book, Gather Round the Table with Cee Dub, I simply pureed two medium sized beets from the garden and added the puree to my eggs/egg yolks. We'll serve these as a pasta side dish with just a pat of butter along with salt and pepper.

Also this fall we've made tomato/pesto noodles and spinach/mustard green noodles. Not only do they tastegreat, they add great color to any casserole or pasta dish!

My next batch of noodles will be jalapeno flavored to add some kick!

Anyway...here goes my second attempt. Pen and I along with some other folks want a changeof pace from the traditional Roast Turkey dinner for the holidays. Our vote to replace a stuffed roast turkey is Dutch Oven Prime Rib. Our Dutch oven of choice is a Camp Chef DO-14. The deeper lid on this particular oven allows one to do a 7 lb bone in prime rib. Though the one pictured is boneless the extra depth of the Camp Chef oven is handy if you are doing a bone in prime rib. [http://www.ceedubs.com/dutch-ovens-cast-irons/cast-iron-dutch-ovens/deluxe-12-qt-14-dutch-oven-grand-canyon.html] This oven has an apeture one can inset a meat thermometer or probe into the meat without removing the lid.

We put a rub on our prime rib a couple of days before and keep it in the fridge. The day we're cooking I take it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature before we start cooking it.

When we're ready to cook we place the prime rib in the Dutch oven on a bed of sliced or diced yellow onions.

We start with high heat for 30-40 minutes and then remove all but 3-4 briquets on top and 3-4 underneath. I replace these briquets hourly. I try to hold the internal temperature of the meat around 115 degrees. One hour before serving I jack the heat up by adding 14-16 briquets on top and about 10 underneath. When my internal temperature reaches 125-130 I take the prime rib out of the Dutch and let it rest for 14-20 minutes before slicing.

Please post a comment and/or any questions.

Planning and preparing a holiday dinner such as Thanksgiving Day dinner present the home cook with the dilema of too many things to cook in to short of time with just the home oven. It takes lots of juggling to get the job done but it's not without some weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The primary problem is a roasting turkey pretty well ties up the oven for the duration. Everything else must be cooked ahead of time and warmed up prior to serving.

But...the easy way to eliminate the hassle is to utilize one's Dutch ovens and camp kitchen to cook desserts, rolls, pies, etc so that everything is done at the same time and on time!

For our 2011 Thanksgiving Day dinner we utilized our Camp Chef 24" Smoke Vault as an outdoor oven. We started by starting a 14 lb. brined turkey in with some mesquite chips at a temp of 275 degrees. For the first hour the bird was n the Smoke Vault we prepared traditional bread crumb dressing and a batch of cornbread dressing. When the dressing went in we cranked the heat up to 325 degrees. After 45 minutes we added some home grown sweet potatoes rubbed with olive oil. All this time the oven in the house was turning out a pecan pie, a cranberry/apple pie, and a punkin' pie.

When the sweet potatoes had been in for about twenty minutes Penny put the home made dinner rolls in the oven in the house while I put our Corn & Oyster Casserole in the Smoke Vault.

Fifteen minutes later I took the turkey out to rest. The rolls in the home oven and the Corn & Oyster Casserole finished just as I started slicing the turkey. Our entire Thanksgiving Day Dinner was done at the same time and on time with no scheduling conflicts for oven time and space!

The moral of the story is to be creative and use your camp kitchen to make cooking in your home kitchen even easier!