It's October!!!! Dogs and wok..

Can you believe it's October already????? I just don't know where the summer went, but in all honesty, fall or autumn is my favorite time of the year, our rainy season has pretty much ended, there is still some greenery around, but grasses and other plants are starting to get that golden tinge around the edges. Our trees don't really change color, we have mostly pines and oaks, the pines pretty much look the same year round, the oaks keep their green leaves all winter, waiting until spring to turn color, fall off and grow nice green leaves in just a few short weeks.

The nights and mornings are getting cooler now, I have had to start breaking out my cold weather sleeping gear, it's not quite time for the down blanket, that will be next month.

The dogs have fallen into a regular routine, up at daybreak, eat around 8ish, I take them for a walk most days, I try for 2 walks a day, but I don't always get it in. They do very well on their leashes, I finally got a second retractable leash so they both have one now. They sleep most of the rest of the day, then it's dinner tine around 6ish, another walk if I'm going to walk them a second time, then they go to bed whenever we do. The little one sleeps next to me, Mr Pups is too big for getting in our bed, he has a nice soft bed at the head of my bed, all I have to tell his is to get into his bed and he does. They have their own dog door so they can come and go as they wish. At night I close them in so they can only go out if I let them out, that's mainly because of the critters that may be out and about, skunks are the biggest worry, it's no fun to wash a stinky dog in the middle of the night, ask me how I know...

Here's something I'm excited about, I finally got the wok I wanted! Last year (I can't remember exactly when) I bought an el cheapo wok from WalMart, it was $5. I just needed to know if I really wanted to cook on a wok often enough to justify buying one. 

 

Turns out I do like cooking in a wok, that began my journey hunting down a good one. It had to be small enough for me to use, that meant a 13-14 inch wok. The next thing was deciding between a carbon steel (traditional) or a stainless steel. I'm very familiar with cooking and frying in stainless, it doesn't stick if you do it right, which means heating up the pan first, pouring in some oil, wait to see the oil shimmer-almost smoking, then add the food, it generally cooks/fries without sticking. You can also get woks in non-stick and in cast iron, neither appeal to me, I don't like non-stick coatings that flakes off and smokes at high temps. The cast iron would just be too heavy to be practical.

I really couldn't decide between carbon steel and stainless steel. The carbon steel has to be treated much like cast iron, it needs to be properly seasoned and washed & dried properly. I really love my stainless steel cookware too. I had several of each kind in my Amazon cart, it turned out to be price that was the determining factor.

One of the stainless steel woks dropped in price, very significantly, it had been around $80 and dropped to $24.99, that's all I needed to see! I hit the buy it button and waited for it to arrive. It's still that price as of now.

I got it a few days ago, even though we had already eaten dinner, I really wanted to try it, so I made popcorn in it. The following day I got out my stir fry goodies and made a proper dinner. I quickly realized that my little RV stove just doesn't have enough horsepower to really get the wok up to stir fry temps. So a couple of days later, PB put together a separate high horsepower burner just for the wok. I can also use it for boiling large pots of water and other things.

That is what has been going on this week, hope your week is going fantastically!  Let me know what you are doing to get ready for winter.

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