The food thread

Today was red beans and rice. Simmer a soup bone with dried red beans overnight. (Some may add a bit of salt.) Remove the bone, add the dried rice and simmer till rice is soft about 20 minutes. Then add 1/4 of a ghost pepper.

I think technically it is a stew.
My usual red beans and rice recipe involves simmering 2 or 3 smoked pork hocks with lots of water and diced onion, celery, and red and green peppers until the meat is falling off the bone. Strain and degrease the stock, cut up the meat and add it and the vegetables back to the stock with red beans (kidney beans or pinto beans (my fave) or small red beans) and simmer until the beans are cooked. Serve over hot white rice (no I don't cook the rice in the stock).
 
The tray that holds the charcoal in my BBQ corroded and burned out in pretty short order. I got a local welder to bang up a replacement. It weighs more than the rest of the BBQ.
The Weber gas grill uses disposable aluminum trays to catch the grease -- about once a week during the summer the woodchuck (Mr. Monax) comes and empties it for me.
 
I like to make my own soda pop and I've been seeing the Sodastream ads on TV whereby you add a syrup like concentrate to your glass of seltzer. I have always just made it in the keg but clean up is a lot of work. I really like ginger beer. I did a little experiment. It came out really well for something so simple.

500 gr. ginger root
1 litre water
1.5 cups sugar or sugar substitute to taste
3/4 cup lemon or lime juice to taste
1 tsp salt or salt substitute

Blender the water and ginger for about 5 minutes. It needs quite a bit of blending
Pour through a fine mesh flour sieve
Squeeze the pulp in your fist so the juice runs through the sieve
Discard the pulp
Add all ingredients to a 1.89 litre (2 quart) juice jug, shake well

Add about 50-100 ml (2-4 oz.) of mix to 350 ml (12 oz) water to taste
 
I think you mean the foil is a cover for the tray, easier to clean?

Alternate way to ginger sherbet is to shred it, by hand or blender, and simmer for some time, gentle heat, add sugar and salt, rock salt in a small quantity enhances the flavor.
Let it cool till at least lukewarm before adding lemon juice.
The citric acid in the lemon, and your cold climate, will keep this fresh for about two two three weeks.
Add to soda, or plain water, enjoy.

We get masala soda concentrate here, and there are cumin, mint and other flavored drinks too.
Try pani puri and kala khatta flavors from an Indian shop, the pouch or pack is dissolved in about 1.5 to 2 liters of sweetened water. The result is a syrup to be added to plain or soda water. Very popular here.

Pani puri is mint and tamarind flavor, and kala khatta is a slightly sweet - sour version, based on kokum.
The pouches here are about 60 US cents.
 
I think you mean the foil is a cover for the tray, easier to clean?
<snip>
The citric acid in the lemon, and your cold climate
Yes.
The cold climate is primarily the refrigerator although at certain times it's cold enough to use the outdoors as a chiller. Our coldest month is January with average lows of 3º and highs of 7º. I keep the fridge at 3º year round.
 
Of all the things I ferment, ginger was one I didn't appreciate so much. I really like the bite of the fresh ginger and yes, the salt is important.
A friend of mine used to make some nice panty-remover, I mean mead, which was made with a few pounds of honey (like 8 pounds or so as I recall), a little bit of hops, and some fresh ginger. It was very tasty. The ginger and hint of hops cut through the assertive blandness of mead, but it was very smooth and tasted like more. The girls simply couldn't believe it had much alcohol in it.