Dutch Apple Slaw

Dutch Apple Slaw

I have no idea why its Dutch.
It is a slaw, so everything should be cut up fairly fine.
The quantities are variable, to taste. Like red onions? Go for it. Allergic to sunflower seeds? Leave 'em out.
Curly endive is a sturdy green, so the salad lasts on a buffet. Its there in the lettuce section, you just may not be used to seeing it.

apples, finely diced *  3 medium
red onion, finely diced 1 small (or less)
curly endive, chiffonade ** 6 cups
vinaigrette 1/3 cup
grainy mustard 1 teaspoon
raisins 1/2 cup
sunflower seeds 1/2 cup
salt & pepper to taste

Mix everything together.

* How to finely dice apples: Stand the apple on its South Pole. Slice three slices of equal thickness off one side, toward the core. Turn the apple around and slice three slices off the other side. Then repeat on the remaining two sides, which will be smaller. Now you can easily dice each stack of slices into cute little raisin-sized squares. Leave the peel on, it adds nutrition and color to the salad. The core will have a little bit of apple left near the stem and blossom ends for you to nibble off. These are known as "cook snacks."

** Chiffonade means ribbons. Presumably you've washed and dried the lettuce. Put several leaves in a stack all the same direction and slice them across the leaves as thinly as you can. Voila, ribbons.

Use apple cider vinegar to make your own vinaigrette for a little flavor layering. Mix in the grainy or seeded mustard. Or you can use a store bought vinaigrette of your choice.

Accident aftermath.

All's well that ends well, except for my checkbook and except that there are still a few more things to take care of. The Tracker ABS is on the fritz (understandable) and the front wheels need wheel covers to shield the whatchamacallit center of the wheels from road debris. 

Upon my arrival at Roger's Half Acre at the BLM lands at Quartzsite, concerned Lazy Dazers streamed over to commiserate and see what happened. Everyone was so kind and supportive. And my cautionary tale is causing several other LD owners to reconsider their safety features.

The big RV show is in full swing at Quartzsite, known as Q for short, for obvious reasons. The RV show is in the "Big Tent" and its pretty big. There are plenty more RV related vendors outside the tent too, even if some of them are pretty tenuously related to RVing. My goal at the big tent was to research and purchase safety related items that my very scary experience pointed out to me that I needed. 

First was fire extinguishers, which I had been wanting anyway. I purchased three Fire Fight Products Class A and B extinguishers from Mac the Fire Guy. One for the kitchen, one in the RV driver's side door pocket, and one for the Tracker. I try not to have nightmares, realizing how extremely lucky I was that my vehicles didn't catch fire on the side of the road. 

Second purchase was a TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor System). If I had had a TPMS it would have alerted me to a loss of tire pressure, and an increase in tire temperature long before the passing motorist was able to get my attention. I would have had much more time to react, had more options of where to pull over, had much less risk of fire, and much less damage to the Tracker. Even though the horse had already left, I decided to close this particular barn door, and purchase the system. My experience has more than a few of my fellow Lazy Dazers running over to the vendors at the tent and getting their own systems.

Third purchase was a Progressive Industries Power Surge Guard, hard wired into my rig. The portable ones are less expensive, but they are prone to getting stolen, or forgotten by careless owners. Campgrounds, particularly older ones which are the kind I like, commonly have power supply problems, low voltage or power surges primarily, which can damage all of the electronics in one's motorhome. These days, most of the RV systems have some circuit board somewhere in their innards. This is a problem I do not wish to encounter, but when I do, the surge guard will shut off power to the rig rather than let bad power get through. 

Speaking of which, my fourth purchase was a new ignition control board for the water heater. Yes, my water heater wouldn't light, even after a thorough cleaning (thanks, John), and it was clearly an electrical problem. Time for a new circuit board, and now its working fine. 

By now my checkbook is bleeding heavily, and my credit cards are melting. But, there is one more thing that I "need" that is only available at Q. It is a grill or burner windscreen for outdoor cooking. My previous attempts at outdoor cooking have been hampered by wind, and when is it not windy at campsites? I have a propane grill, and a butane single burner which both need shielding. I'd been cursorily looking in the Bay Area, but was not able to find anything suitable for camping. So I sprung for a GrillGuard. This thing is beautiful. The man who invented and markets it used to do assembly for Boeing, and it shows. The alminum sheets are heavy duty, the fastening system is elegant, there are no sharp edges, and the craftsmanship is impeccable. I've avoid sauteing in the confined space of my rig kitchen, but now I'll be able to rock my heat sources outside, where they belong.

The first purchases will do their jobs quietly, and I hope I don't need them. But, woohoo, now I can cook outside! Good eats to follow, and yes this might turn into a food blog, you never know!

Mechanical difficulties: too good (bad) to not blog about

So here I am today, driving north on I-10 about noon, cruising along at 55 mph toward Phoenix, heavy traffic flying by me at 75 mph, when a motorist honks to get my attention and gestures at me to pull off to the side of the road. (Thank you, thank you, whoever you are.)  I know this is not a good sign. I pay immediate attention, and manage to pull to a stop in the inverted V between the highway and an on-ramp that just happened to be directly in front of me.  Shaking, yes I was, flicked the emergency flashers on. As I pull to a stop, the tread of my right front tire mockingly rolls ahead of me and into the fortunately isolated on-ramp at Mile 211, near Casa Grande. 

Sooo not good. I wait for a break in the traffic to get out of the driver's side door to assess the damage and damage it is. Both Tracker toad front tires are completely shredded and resting on the rims. Heart sank to the soles of my shoes, yes it did. Both front wheel rims are scorched around the bolts. I realize I am extremely lucky that nothing caught on fire, and I thank the unknown motorist again. 

Its difficult to think straight in a situation like this. I force myself to  slow down, think, and make a plan, all the while every truck whizzing by at 75 mph gives the motorhome a violent buffet. Okay, first thing, call Coachnet roadside assistance. The rep on the phone was very sweet, and said a tow truck would be there in 30 minutes. Okay, that gives me time to cancel my appointment in Phoenix,  pull out my hazard warning triangles, and attempt to get them to stand up. They wouldn't, as they are also buffetted by the 75 mph traffic, just a few feet away. I gather up other tire debris attempting to weight them down. There is a lot of debris by the side of an interstate highway! Every time I got one triangle to stand up, another one would fall down, whap!  It was almost slapstick, although I was glad there was nobody around to laugh at me. 

I call Lisa, she who used to race trucks in Baja, Mexico and has the tools to prove it. She's sympathetic, and proceeds to help me make a plan. By the way, the canceled appointment in Phoenix was to replace the hanger holding up the generator exhaust pipe traversing the coach. The rubber strap portion of the hanger was rotted away, holding up the exhaust pipe by a mere thread. Lisa had suggested we do a crawl-around underneath my coach for the purpose of tightening any bolts we could find to tighten. (There were more than a few bolts that took several turns of the wrench.) Having spotted this problem, Lisa proceeded with a "weekend mechanic" fix of a couple of strands of wire to hold up the exhaust pipe, until I could get to having it properly replaced. Maybe Wednesday.

Meanwhile I realize that I'll need to unhitch the Tracker, and I'm in the middle of this process when the tow truck arrives. He pulls the Tracker onto the flatbed tow truck PDQ, terrorizing me slightly with tales of hit-and-run incidents when he's been out on similar towing jobs. We arrive at the closest tire store, a funky little place. They were very nice, but upon removing the left front rim, they discover that the brake line is completely broken, and they don't do this kind of work. 

Am tempted to cry at this point, but another call to Lisa, I take heart, and we have a further plan. A quick visit to Yelp, and I settle on Rich's Auto Repair in Casa Grande.  Another tow truck required, recommended by Rich. I ws glad to see it show up as I was getting a little tired of listening to the tire guy's understanding of the world domination conspiracies that are apparently afoot, unbeknownst to me, while Fox TV is blaring in the background.

Rich inspires confidence. In short order, he examines the situation, orders new brakes, calipers, brake lines, and a couple of other things that I've forgotten now. The rims are okay, he thinks. I run across to the tire place conveniently located across the street and order two new front tires. All will be installed tomorrow, and then we'll see if there's anything else wrong that wasn't apparent at today's first pass. We are not quite out of the woods just yet, but I am hopeful. Rich thinks that the most likely cause is that my auxiliary braking system was "on" just enough to drag the wheels a little bit, causing the tires to fail 50 miles later. I've been pleased with my braking system so far in this journey, but upon my first damage assessment I did notice an anomaly in the way the brake cable looked. However, I may not have had 100% of my wits about me at the time. I am going to add this particular brake cable configuration check to my pre-departure walk-around from now on. I'm eagerly awaiting the assessment of the Lazy Daze hive mind at Q in a few days. Also will stock up on fire extinguishers at Q.

And another thing, to add insult to injury, I go to wash my hands in the rig and the water pump won't run, deader than a doornail, no light on the Lazy Daze display panel. I check the fuse, its fine, even swapped the old one out. I call Lazy Daze and talked to Vince. In my skimpy arsenal of tools, I do have the small Radio Shack multimeter that Andy talked about on Eureka. Vince walks me through a continuity check, but the results are inconclusive, basically I don't know what I'm doing. I check with a couple of the local RV repair places, but they're booked solid for a week, it being the high snowbird season. I have lots of bottled water to drink, so this particular problem pales into insignificance for now. 

I am now cooling my heels at a local RV park, enjoying a well-deserved glass of wine as I write. However, gremlins are still haunting me. There are full hookups here, and my water pump isn't working anyway, so I hook up to city water. Great, got water. But while flushing the toilet I hear something that sounds suspiciously like the water pump is operating in addition to the flowing city water. This isn't right, both systems aren't supposed to be active at the same time!  The panel now shows the green pump light, huh?? Something is sticking. I turn the pump off, and think I'd better document this cluster of messes quick before I forget the details. 

So, my friends, that's been my day today, a severe blow to my confidence, not to mention my checkbook. Oh, and remind me to tell you about the leaking water filter I had the other day, wet carpet and everything. I have accumulated enough mechanical disaster stories in the last few day to last for quite awhile around the campfire. Why is it that disasters make for the best stories? 

So, I think I'll close this lengthy post, have another glass of wine instead, get a good night's sleep, and hope that tomorrow is a better, more boring day.        

What happened to December???

Blog entries have taken a back seat during my blitz trip to the Bay Area this past month of December. Soli Deo Gloria's "A Jazzy Little Christmas" concert had me intrigued, and I missed my choir friends, so  after a lovely Thanksgiving with my niece's family, the trusty little house on wheels took a rest in Phoenix, while I drove from Phoenix to Alameda in two days. Made it back in time for the dress rehearsal, then attended both wonderful concerts.

A fellow choir singer kindly offered me a room in their lovely home in Alameda , so I had one place to stay for the duration of my visit. Not to mention that they wined, dined, and concerted me most graciously and made me feel right at home. Thanks R & B so very much!

For choristers, Advent and Christmas are peak singing season. St. Mark's choir, no exception, was in full swing. I loved joining right back in for rehearsals and services, without missing too many beats.

The month was a blur of activity, beyond and outside of the usual Christmas business. Dinner parties, breakfast, lunch, and dinner dates, coffee dates, even a fun sleepover. I loved every minute of it, finding much joy in reconnecting with friends in a new way.

It was, however, time to return to my rolling blue home, and make the two day drive back. At my overnight stop in LA (yes, the traffic was terrible) I had the unexpected and incredible pleasure of reconnecting in person with my high school friend S. We had been carrying on a fast and furious email correspondence during my wanderings. It so happened that my route very nearly intersected with her daughter's house, whom she was visiting, so the meeting just fell into place. We closed the bar at the Holiday Inn. Well, they did close at 8:30 but its fun to be able to say every now and then that you closed the bar.

Back in Phoenix, rig safe and sound at my very generous friend's house, I've now resupplied, restocked, cleaned house, and decamped to the hills west of Phoenix for a solemn and heartfelt farewell to a difficult 2013, and a hopeful welcome to 2014.

And that's what happened to December.

Happy New Year, everybody!