Roger's Easy Spaghetti + How Hot Is It Anyway?

Roger's Easy Spaghetti Sauce

This one is great for pot lucks and could be doubled if you want a spaghetti feed.


1 lb ground meat. (I use turkey, you can use beef, goat, your preference, or for you vegetable types, leave it out)

1 small onion

1 can (15oz) diced tomato

1 can (15oz) tomato sauce

1 envelope dry spaghetti sauce mix

1 lb package dry spaghetti or other pasta.  ( I prefer angel hair)


The entire batch of sauce, without the meat is 325 calories.
The 1 lb of ground turkey adds 640 calories
1 lb of angel hair pasta 1680 calories total

In a large saucepan, brown the meat and the onion.  Drain off the liquid.  Add the tomato sauce, sauce mix, diced tomato and your choice of additions.  Simmer for an hour.

In a large pan, (spaghetti cooker) boil the pasta of your choice until done to your taste.  (I like to add a Tbs of olive oil to keep the noodles from sticking together) Combine the cooked pasta and sauce all at once or individual portions.  Sauce also works great over rice, macaroni, green beans, bread, use your imagination.  Some additions to the sauce could be, whole kernel corn, black olives, mushrooms, bell pepper. Use your imagination for whatever else you have on hand.

Let the pasta water cool down and save it for flushing your RV toilet.

Extra sauce and pasta can be stored in the fridge for a few days.  It also freezes well, (yes even the pasta)  Could be up to three meals for two campers.  Freeze some for later if you don't want spaghetti three days in a row.

How Hot Is It Anyway?

It is very important to know the temperature of your oven to get good, consistent results.  Same goes for covered barbecuing and smoking.  Regular oven thermometers that hang or sit on the rack inside, are hard to read and you must open the oven door to see them.  I searched for some time for a remote read oven thermometer, preferably like this one,  (I use in the fridge).  Not many for the oven, and no wireless, but the few I did find had a lot of negative comments about probe life.  I experienced probe problems in several remote read meat thermometers, both wired and wireless.  I am pretty sure most of this is caused by the heat sensor cable being exposed to heat of the oven, especially where it goes out the door.  It is particularly critical on the Traeger Barbecue as there is a gap between the flame tamer under the grate and the door edge.  This area is open to the heat of the firebox.  I think I have cured this problem by wrapping the sensor wire (not the probe end) in aluminum foil as an insulator from the probe/wire connection, to outside of the grill/oven. 

BTW, speaking of fridge thermometers, this one caught my eye: Wireless Fridge Thermometer with two sensors.  You can read the fridge AND the freezer and you can move the readout to the cab while driving and mount in the kitchen when parked. 





I have been using this model with the barbecue with the foil wrap. So far so good. 

Acurite

IGrill

My son got me this one.  It is Bluetooth and can be monitored on my IPhone.  It has two probes for two different meats/dishes.  It has an optional probe for grill temperature to be used in place of one of the food probes.  I ordered the oven temp probe, so now I can monitor the meat and the inside temp at the same time on my IPhone.  The oven temp probe, however only reads up to 400F.  Couldn't be used for grilling but will be useful for monitoring grill temp for low temp smoking and baking.  (tri-tip, ribs, meat loaf)  Still testing this one. Probe wires are metal braid shielded.  Both probe wires wrapped in foil. (not the probe tip)

IGrill

For the inside oven, I found this Bakers Thermometer.  Metal shielded sensor wire and I wrapped it in foil for good measure.  So far it works great and it showed 360F when the oven is set for 350F. 





Readout for remote oven thermometer velcroed to the wall

Temperature probe in oven wrapped in foil

 

I created this post on the oven thermometer and pictures earlier.  Since then, I have used this oven thermometer and discovered some BIG errors. Remember, my motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to"  The first one is that you cannot put the digital readout next to the stove like I did in the first picture.  The heat distorts the readout.  The cord is long enough to move it away to a cooler spot.  If you look closely at the above picture of the probe placement, you can see that it is right over the vent holes in the bottom of the oven.  This exposes the probe to the oven burner which is just inches away.  My inclination is to move the tile over the holes under the probe to see if that protects it better and gives a more accurate temp.  It was reading about 75F high compared to the oven control.   I will try this and report back

 

Be sure you only wrap the lead in foil, NOT the probe!

This is from a British source.  I thought it was interesting reading.  RR&RVR

Scared to eat food past its use-by date? Read on before you chuck it out...

• Salty, sugary, fermented or dried foods last a long time safely
• Hard cheese is fine to eat after sell-by-date if you cut off any mould
• Gone off milk can be used to make pancakes 
• Meat should never be consumed past the use-by date

By Joanna Blythman
PUBLISHED: 15:42 EST, 12 June 2013 | UPDATED: 15:42 EST, 12 June 2013

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To eat or not to eat? It can be safe to consume some foods after their sell-by-date

We've all sniffed food in the fridge that’s just edged past its use-by date, and wondered whether it was safe to eat or use in any way.
Whether it’s cheese that’s become dusty with mould, milk that’s firmly on the side of sour or meat that’s gone a little translucent with age, we’ve all wondered whether to tuck in - or bin.
Of course, you should always be careful about food safety, especially if you’re elderly, pregnant or in poor health. However, I couldn’t help but feel that the Food Standards Agency was over-reacting a tad this week, when they issued a dramatic warning that many of us are gambling with our health through indifference and ignorance over what we eat.
According to the Agency, no fewer than 40 per cent of consumers are prepared to eat food that is past its use-by date, while more than two-thirds of people check the safety of products simply by sniffing them or examining their colour - though both these tests are hopelessly unreliable.
The Agency argues that, partly as a result of this casual approach, Britain is suffering an epidemic of food poisoning, with 1.7 million cases now occurring every year.
While they’re right to draw attention to the need for hygiene in the kitchen and better adherence to use-by dates, it is wrong for them to heap all the blame for the poisoning epidemic on the consumer, since much of the food that we buy from the supermarkets - particularly raw meat - is already dangerously contaminated, thanks to intensive factory farming.
As well as this, though, there can be some flexibility with the dates on our food.
Use-by dates are, of course, an integral part of our modern food distribution, whereby supermarkets like to promote the concept of the ‘weekly shop’. In this culture of ‘stocking up’ for several days ahead, an illusion of freshness is provided by vast, high-tech fridges.

 

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But the reality is that the traditional pattern of consumption was actually far safer, when produce was usually eaten on the same day it was purchased because of lack of refrigeration.
But use-by dates are here to stay. They are an inevitable part of our urbanised, retail society and it is foolish to ignore them. What is crucial to understand, though, is the difference between use-by and best-before labels - something that often seems to confuse consumers.
Use-by means that it can be dangerous to eat the product after the specified date, whereas best-before merely means that the food will be at its peak of tastiness before this date, but will not be unsafe afterwards.
So digestive biscuits or oatcakes might become a little soft after the best-before date, but would still be perfectly harmless, for example.
With so much information and advice around, how can we be certain what is safe to eat? There is certainly a grey area - below is a guide to some of the basic principles that should keep you safe in the kitchen...

SALTY MEANS SAFE

As a general rule, things that are very salty (pickles for example), sugary (honey or jam), fermented (sauerkraut) or dried (biscuits) are very low-risk.

Flipping useful: Sour milk can taste great in pancakes

Why? Well, essentially, there are five ways of killing bacteria to ensure the safety of food.
First, food can be preserved in acidic liquids like vinegar, the process that gives us pickles. You can eat pickles long after the date on the jar.
Second, using large amounts of sugar can be a very effective method of preservation, which is the reason that very sweet products like fruitcake and fudge can be eaten well past their best-before date. Indeed, some 5,000-year-old honey recently found in Egypt has proved to be both edible and perfectly harmless.
Third, the process of fermentation, used in dishes like the German favourite sauerkraut, also preserves food effectively, as do the traditional methods of salting, curing and drying meat and fish.
Properly made Italian salami - not the water-filled, modern commercial type - can last a whole year, just becoming progressively more dry as the months pass, but still remaining good to eat.  
Lastly, and most simply, thoroughly cooking any product will destroy most bacteria, as they cannot survive extreme heat.
For example, where meat has darkened because of exposure to air, it needn’t be binned. Just cook it at a high heat and it should be absolutely fine.
However, a word of warning. Despite what some people think, washing meat under a tap makes no difference to the bacteria contained within. Indeed, it can even be positively counter-productive, by spreading that bacteria to the kitchen sink, surfaces and cloths.

SOUR MILK? LOVELY

Go ahead: Gone off bread is fine to eat if you cut off the mould

Use-by labels should be kept to for most fresh foods, especially where meat is involved, but there are some instances where they can be ignored.
Hard cheese like cheddar is one. Even if it’s turned mouldy on the outside, the exterior can just be cut off and the interior consumed. The same principle applies to bread.
The same, however, is not true of soft cheeses like brie or camembert, which can foster harmful bacteria once they have lost their freshness.
Surprisingly, use-by dates are not too much of a worry with eggs. They can still be used in a sponge cake or hardboiled in a salad long after the benchmark has been passed, though they should not be eaten scrambled, fried or soft-boiled if they have been left for too long.
In the same vein, sour milk makes great pancakes. The act of cooking the milk will kill off any harmful bacteria present. In fact, I had a relative who would deliberately leave her milk to go sour because she loved the way it made her pancakes taste.

DON'T BE CHICKEN

Under no circumstances should any meats be consumed past their use-by dates. Poultry and pork are by far the biggest sources of food poisoning in Britain, a problem worsened by factory farming methods that spread contamination.
A recent report by the campaign group Compassion In World Farming showed that the chronic stress imposed on intensively reared animals severely reduces the effectiveness of their immune systems, making them more prone to becoming riddled with harmful bacteria.
In contrast, it was found that, with free-range animals, dangerous bacteria tend to remain in the gut rather than penetrating the meat, while their ability to forage outdoors inhibited the growth of the E.coli virus.

Risky: Ready meals and packaged sandwiches can be dangerous regardless of their use-by dates

Similarly, animals living outdoors benefit from sunlight which deactivates many bacteria, especially those that spread swine and avian flu. The UV rays in the sunlight kill the bacteria off.
Personally, I would not eat any factory-farmed meat, even if it was well before its use-by date. Real safety can only be obtained with fresh, free-range produce. Factory-farmed supermarket chicken is a real no-no for me.
Why? Incredibly, two-thirds of all the fresh chicken on sale in Britain is already contaminated with the campylobacter bacteria. At its worst, this can be fatal, especially for the physically frail and the elderly. It is estimated that every year around 100 Britons are killed by campylobacter alone.
So, you can see why I say that carefully controlled use-by dates, rigorous hand-washing and the cleanest kitchen in the world will not combat the consequences of industrialised mass food production. 
Indeed, this is why I believe ready meals and packaged sandwiches can be dangerous, regardless of their use-by dates.
Many sandwiches sold in places like petrol stations are put together in huge factories. They can then sit around for days before being trucked across the country. Moreover, their ingredients, especially cooked chicken or prawns, carry a heavy risk of harmful bacteria.
Furthermore, microwaving convenience meals is nothing like as safe as cooking thoroughly in the oven, because a microwave doesn’t always give an even temperature throughout. If you have to microwave food, give it a longer cooking time than the packet advises, leave it to stand and make sure it’s warm through.
However, I do think supermarkets can also be too generous with their ‘best-before’ timescales. A classic example is nuts, which are full of oil and therefore become rancid, though still harmless, if they are left too long.
I certainly wouldn’t try one after the best-before date. If you’ve ever tasted a rancid walnut, you’ll know what I mean!


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2340571/Scared-eat-food-past-use-date-Read-chuck-.html#ixzz2W8z8PGWK
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Calico Bean Casserole (with Roger's modifications and possibilities) + Easy Cornbread. Roasted Asparagus

Calico Bean Casserole

Calico Bean Casserole With Corn Bread Topping

 

Calico Bean Casserole Recipe

I got this recipe off Allrecipes.com, which by the way, is a great resource.  It looked interesting and is prepared with minimal dish washing and prep.

1 (15 oz) can kidney beans, with juice
1 (16 oz) can pork and beans
1 (15 oz) can butter beans, with juice
1/2 cup Ketchup
2 tsp white vinegar
1 Tbs dry mustard
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 lb lean ground beef OR 93/7 ground turkey
4 oz bacon, chopped
1/2 cup chopped onion
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350F (allow 30 min for preheat in RV oven)

In a large skillet, over medium heat, fry the ground beef/turkey, bacon and onion together until no longer pink.  Drain liquid.

In a disposable 12x9 aluminum baking pan, combine ingredients, mix thoroughly, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Bake in preheated oven 30-40 min.

1/6 serving about 513 calories (with ground turkey)

Rogers Modifications and Possibilities

Now I looked at this recipe and thought, "This cries out for a corn bread topper"

Here is the Albers Cornbread Recipe:

Preheat oven to 400F (allow 30 min for preheat in RV oven)

1 cup Albers yellow or white corn meal
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbs baking powder.  (BTW, when is the last time you looked at the expiration date on your BP?)
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten. (or 1/4 egg substitute)

Combine meal, flour, baking powder, salt in med bowl.  (You could use the wiped out fry pan to minimize dish washing)  Combine milk, oil, and egg, and add to the dry ingredients.  (or, do as I do and mix all together at once).  Pour in to prepared pan.

Bake 20 to 25 min.

Topping Casserole With Cornbread

Spoon the cornbread mixture over the top of the casserole for a topper before baking.  I bake the casserole and cornbread combination at 400F for 30 min then check to see if cornbread starts to brown.  You may have to extend baking time for up to 15 more minutes for the combination.

After preparing this with the topper, it ends up about 50/50 cornbread to casserole.  If you don't like so much bread topping, you could cut the cornbread recipe in half

This full recipe does add about 315 calories per serving to the Calico Bean Casserole

Roger's Easier Bisquick Cornbread

I looked at this cornbread recipe and thought, "I would bet that you could substitute Bisquick for the flour, baking powder and salt".  I did the Bisquick substitute and added the 1/4 cup sugar and 1 cup corn meal to the rest of the ingredients.  Came out great.

Roasted Asparagus

Since the oven was on and I had this asparagus on hand, I decided to roast it.  Put in a ziplock bag with some raspberry* vinaigrette dressing (or your choice) and marinated for at least an hour.  Bake at 400F for about 20 minutes.  Nicely done and still a little crisp.  Note the rack that fits in the bottom of the pan.

*Word of the day:    Raspberry. 

I did not know there is a "p" in raspberry. 

Roasted Vegetable Medley, Twice! + Propane Supply Pressure

Lifestyle Changes

 

I have never been a big fan of eating vegetables.  Some necessary diet changes have made it necessary to rethink this lifelong aversion.  Sooooooooooo, I have been experimenting with roasting vegetables among other ways to make this change in diet more enjoyable.  What follows is the results of my current experimentation.

 Roger’s Roasted Vegetable Medley

Preheat oven to 400F. 

Ingredients:

12oz package Broccoli Florets or Broccoli and Cauliflower Florets, in bite size pieces

12oz package diced Butternut Squash

1 cup Baby Carrots

Small Onion cut in bite size pieces

Red or Yellow sweet pepper cut in bite size pieces

¼ cup olive oil

1 Tbs Chili Seasoning

1 Tbs Garlic powder

1 Tbs Steak or Prime Rib seasoning

Put olive oil and carrots in 12 X 8 disposable roasting pan and roast for 20 min. (head start)

Remove from oven and toss in the rest of the seasonings and vegetables to roast for additional 40 minutes.  At the halfway point, remove from oven, toss to blend and continue roasting for the remaining 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes.  Serve.

No dishes to wash!

Some possible extra vegetables that I will try in the future are, asparagus, sugar snap peas, sweet potato, and garlic cloves.  The variations of vegetables and spices are pretty much dictated by your personal tastes.  I would consider that carrots, sweet potato, garlic cloves, and the like take longer to roast and should be given a head start of about 20 minutes as indicated above.

This makes at least six servings.  I have to tell you that it turned out so well, I ate half of it in one sitting. Yum!

Roasted!

 

PS:

 

After composing the above, I got to thinking about adding the sweet potato and asparagus, soooooooo, I made another one with the same ingredients and adding these two items.   Came out pretty large (about three pounds!) so I felt it needed a little more olive oil and a little longer to bake.  I put the carrots and sweet potato in with the olive oil and roasted for 20 minutes.  When this head start was finished, I added all of the rest of the ingredients and tossed to coat with the olive oil and spices.  Returned to the oven, roasted for 20 minutes and removed to toss again.  Roasted the last 20 minutes and then I added another 10 minutes because of the size.  This came out GREAT.  All of the vegetables were done just right.  A great way to eat your vegetables.  Later that same day:  I think I would put the asparagus in for the last 20 minutes and not the whole 40 minutes.  It got a little overdone/limp.

 

 

Broccoli, carrots. sweet potato, onion, asparagus, sweet pepper, spices, olive oil

 

 

 PPS:

I tried this on the Traeger.  Came out great.  Cooked a little faster so I would reduce cooking time by maybe 10 minutes.  It is summer weather here in Sacramento, so I appreciated an oven dish without heating up the oven/rig.  BTW, I have tried this with the Peanut Vinaigrette, Great!!
 

 

 



Refrigerator Problems

I full time and most of my base time is in a park with full hook-ups.  Refrigerator runs on AC.  When we went horse camping, it was the first time the refrigerator was on gas for several months.  By the time we got to Napa, (3 hours)  internal fridge temp was about 45F on gas.  On electricity and usually on gas it stays in the mid 30's.  (BTW, this fridge is less than 1 year old)  It was lit as I could see the flame but the coils on the back were barely warm and only the bottom two coils or so.  Temp stayed around 50 during the day and down to 45 at night.  Something was up.  Trip to Camping World on return home, showed no fridge problem but propane pressure was down to 7" of water.  (standard measuring method for gasses)  Regulated pressure should be 11" of water.  This low line pressure caused by a faulty regulator not only affects the fridge, but any other propane appliance, water heater, furnace and stove.  New regulator was installed and fridge is happily percolating with box temp in the upper 30's.  I have a wireless thermometer  installed in the fridge box with a remote readout that I can use, velcroed above the stove or on the dash when I am driving.  Good idea to have gas appliances and gas supply checked  at least every other year.  More often if you use the system a lot.