Leftovers

KD doesn't have a microwave.  She did, sort of, when I got her.  There was a cheap little microwave oven in her when I bought her, and I hauled it all the way home with a bunch of other crap I had no intention of keeping in the trailer.  Microwaves take power to run, and there's no power out here unless you bring it. Someday I might, might, want to have a generator, but for the time being I don't have much use for one.

I've borrowed Biela's 85-watt solar panel and her Xantrex charge controller again so that KD's two 6-volt deep cycle batteries, wired in series, can be charged up each day by the sun.  Sun is something we have a lot of out here and solar panels are a necessity in Slab City.  I don't even want to speculate on what kind of solar farm it would take to run a microwave oven.  I guess theoretically you could do it, but as a practical matter, if you want to 'wave your dinner you need a genny.  I can get along just fine with the stove top and KD's little oven.

I also brought my 10 quart pressure cooker, which is way bigger than needed here but my smaller ones are packed away and hard to get to, so I just brought the one I had handy.  A pressure cooker is a great thing to have out here.  In some cases it is faster than a microwave and it uses a minimum of fuel and cooks things beautifully, once you get the hang of it.   You can reheat things with the superheated steam, but sometimes it's simpler to just do what we all did in the old days:  heat leftovers up in in the oven.

Before Biela and Luo left, I did a flurry of cooking.  We started out with a monstrous lasagne that took us days to finish.

 I made some kind of concoction that I'm going to call Shepherd's Pie.

 I made my famous Mountain Kimmie's Can't Fail Chicken N' Dumplings (in the pressure cooker of course), and I made meatloaf.  The meatloaf was a KD first.  A totally old-fashioned, American Mom thing to make.  I had to mix up the ingredients the old fashioned way, by getting my hands right in there and mushing them around in the bowl.  I couldn't take a picture of that because my hands were, you know, meaty.  But here it is ready to go in the oven.

Just like at home!  It doesn't look substantially different once cooked, but I had to do a shot of it just to mark the occasion.

Yum!

Of course this meant we had leftovers, and despite my best efforts to foist, uh, gift, some of the many leftovers off on neighbors, the result is a fridge jammed to the gills.  In true Mountain Kimmie fashion.

With Biela and Luo gone, there's no danger of me starving.  And yes, that's a new fridge!  Well, a used fridge, but new to KD.  It came out of some derelict RV.  Something very bad had happened in it.  It was provided with a brand new cooling unit, but the evil mildew explosion inside made me shudder.  The guys told me they'd clean it up for me, but they cleaned like you'd expect guys to clean.  Meaning it was still pretty disgusting when I got here.  I spent a few hours scrubbing that bad boy before firing it up, and it is much better now.  It still needs attention around the frame where some rust happened, and when I get home I'm taking the door off so I can attack the gasket with bleach.  At least the crummy icebox from last year is gone.  There has been a great deal of progress with KD, and a working fridge is a big part of that.  I still can't get over the sense of wonder and awe I feel that the thing gets cold without a smidgen of electricity.  It runs on propane.  It can also run on household current if I ever go where there is a place to plug in, or even on 12-volt, although that's not recommended due to the high power demand that makes 12-volt operation impractical in most cases.  They never even hooked up the 12-volt part at the shop and that's fine by me.  I'll mostly be running it on propane.  And like I said, IT'S LIKE SOME KIND OF MIRACLE!

I had leftover meatloaf last night.  I thought I'd warm up some leftover chicken n' dumplings tonight.  Put it in a little pot and straight into a 350 degree oven for a few minutes.  I'm smelling it now.  I think it's time for dinner.

Now that it's just me, I'm using paper plates and trying to keep the dishes to a minimum.  Kenny would be proud.