He's Gone... Oh Why?

It finally happened. Bob left me. OK, perhaps I'm being over dramatic - he will only be gone for three weeks, but it comes right on the heels of my solo two-plus week trip to Denver to raft the Yampa River and visit with my girls.  When both trips are combined, this is the longest separation we've had since we met in 1979.  Will we survive?

A lot can happen in three weeks, so I've decided to write about my experiences during my exile. While Bob is taking the trip of a lifetime with a friend to the North Pole, travelling on a nuclear-powered Russian ice breaker, I will get a chance to look at life through the eyes of a sort-of-single person.  I think there will be pros and cons of living alone but I hope I come away with a greater sense of appreciation for Bob -- and hopefully he will feel the same about me when he returns.

Bob left Thursday evening on June 23rd, traveling to Helsinki for a couple of days before flying into Russia, to the port city of Murmansk, where he will board the ship "50 Years of Victory" on Monday, June 27th. This ship is currently the largest icebreaker in the world, or so the Russians claim.  The construction of the ship began in October 1989 at the Baltic Shipyard. Shipbuilding work was halted in 1994 due to funding problems and was resumed in 2003. The icebreaker took almost 18 years to complete but it was finally launched in the beginning of 2007, at which time its name was changed from the NS Ural to its current name, "50 Years of Victory".  How impressive. How Russian! Victory over what, I wonder?

The day of Bob's departure we decided to have an pre-anniversary celebration - our 33rd - by getting up early and heading to Land's End in San Francisco.  The park and trail hug the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean on the western side of the Golden Gate Bridge.  The views of the ocean and the bridge are outstanding, and it was a perfect, clear, warm day for this adventure.  We had planned to walk from the start of the trail to Crissy Field (about 4 miles) and then on to the Ferry Plaza (another 4 miles) but I had huge blisters from trying to break in a new pair of shoes the day before, so I had to hike in flip flops which slowed me down.  We made it to the Palace of Fine Arts and then Ubered the rest of the way in order to make our lunch reservations at the Slanted Door.

The Slanted Door was, as usual, fabulous.  Fresh oysters on the half shell, uni, cellophane noodles with crab, lemongrass chicken, and sauteed eggplant -- all chased with a Royal "Pimm's Cup" (sort of like a gin cooler)  and a glass (or two) of Pinot.  It was a delicious send off, and warranted, just in case the food on the ice breaker consisted of 14 days of pickled herring.

I dropped Bob at the airport, slogged through an hour and 45 minutes of traffic to get home, and started my bachelorettehood by changing into my pajamas, reading a book, and having half of a small jar of smoked, pickled okra for dinner (it was the first thing on the shelf as you walk in the pantry door and I was feeling VERY lazy).  Plus, who needs a big meal after the lunch I'd had earlier in the day?

I went to bed late in blissful peacefulness, for once without the television playing one of Bob's favorite shows, Naked and Afraid.  I fought hard to not have a television in our bedroom, but c'est la vie. It was a losing battle.   Maybe because my mind was not full of images of naked people eating larvae and bickering with each other over who has to collect the firewood that day, or maybe because it was so quiet due to the lack of Bob's sonorous breathing next to my ear, but I slept like a log for the first time in a long while.

I had survived Day 1.

DIY bacon and pancetta

The following narrative is a tutorial for our bacon and pancetta project.  We will discuss all this tomorrow but if you have the time or inclination you can read up in advance of our meeting.

Bacon vs. Pancetta - What's the difference?

In many recipes you can use bacon in place of pancetta, but there are differences between the two.  While both are generally made from pork belly, there are distinctions in both process and flavor.  Bacon is wet or dry brined for up to a week and then is finished by smoking until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees.  It must be cooked before eating.  Pancetta is brined for a couple of days and is then hung to dry in a cool place unrefrigerated for 3 to 4 weeks.  The type of curing salt and process you use will determine whether you can eat it as is once the cure period is over, or whether you must cook it first. Additionally, pancetta can be made in two styles - rolled, which is more traditional, or flat slab, which is the Florentine method. Both methods produce a similar taste.

We will be making Maple-Espresso Applewood Smoked Bacon, and Pancetta Arrotolata, which means "rolled pancetta" using a curing process which requires that the finished pancetta be cooked before consumption.

About our ingredients:  

When selecting the ingredients for our foray, I remembered a sad day I once spent collecting blackberries. After hours of picking, covered in scratches from the thorns, I took my large bucket of berries home and baked my very first pie. I think I was 18 at the time.  Bob had the first slice, and he congratulated me on the effort: "Yum!  It tastes just like store-bought!"  He meant it as a complement. I was crushed.  I can't remember what happened to the rest of that pie. It is possible Bob found it smeared all over his face. If you are going to go to all the trouble to make something from scratch, you hope it will be significantly better than store bought.  I guarantee you this bacon will definitely be better, for several reasons.  First, we will be using significantly higher quality ingredients than your average store-bought bacon.  Our meat is Heritage Duroc pork from the same producer used by the CIA's Greystone Restaurant. The pork is pasture-raised which both improves the health of the pig, resulting in the need for less or no antibiotics, and also improves the flavor due to the grasses and other food sources the animal forages to supplement the feed provided by the farmer.  For more information on heritage pork, I liked this link: http://www.blackberryfarm.com/pdfs/HERITAGE_BOOKLET.pdf.

In addition to the meat, we will be seasoning the bacon with pure Grade A maple syrup, and both the bacon and pancetta will be coated with black tellicherry peppercorns which were coarse ground for me this week - I picked them up from Oaktown Spice Shop (http://oaktownspiceshop.com) in Oakland after grazing through the Lake Merritt Farmer's Market this morning. 

The biggest difference between our product and the store-bought version is the process we are using.  As David Leite, in his blog "Leitesculinaria.com" aptly said, "Homemade bacon is as different from Oscar Mayer as Grace Kelly is from Kim Kardashian".  Bravo David!  Anyone who has eaten thick-slice applewood smoked bacon can easily tell the difference between that and the horribly mushy, slimy, stringy bacon that makes up the bulk of the bacon available in the typical grocery store. Commercial bacon is typically injected with brine using hundreds of tiny needles, causing the texture I just described. We will be using a very thin wet brine which is hand rubbed into the nooks and crannies of the pork.  We will let this seep slowly into the meat over a 7 day period, and then I will smoke it for three to four hours. If all goes well, our bacon will totally knock the socks off even the thick slice applewood smoked grocery store version.

The recipes:
 
We will be following David's recipe for Maple - Espresso Apple-smoked bacon, which can be found here: http://leitesculinaria.com/95593/writings-homemade-bacon-cured-maple-espresso.html.  I selected this recipe from the millions available because I was intrigued by the addition of espresso, which I am hoping will impart a rich layer of flavor. I have had great success adding espresso to short ribs, baked beans, and chili, and I think using it on bacon will equally delicious. 

When we prepare the bacon, we are going to adjust the proportions for the amount of pork belly we have. David's recipe is for 5-6 lbs, while we have closer to 12 lbs.  One change I am making to the recipe is the amount of curing salt (Prague powder #1 or "pink salt") we'll be adding.  Conventional appproaches suggest using 1 tsp to 5 lbs of meat, while David calls for 2 tsps for 5 to 6 lbs of meat.  I will be reducing the pink salt to follow the conventional guidelines.  Otherwise, we'd end up using 4 tsp. of  pink salt for our 12 lbs of meat, and I think this is too much.  The salt contains around 6% nitrites, and too much can be fatal - it acts similarly to carbon monoxide poisoning, binding with the oxygen in your blood and preventing its uptake in your tissues.  It is needed to prevent botulism and it is safe when used properly.  However,  you must understand how to use it and be careful with it.  There are many good resources on the web for learning more about using curing salt, and the differences between various types.  Just remember, with curing salt, more is not necessarily better.  Wikipedia has a basic primer here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_salt

There are a lot of recipes on the web for making bacon.  Two you might like include http://amazingribs.com/recipes/porknography/making_bacon_from_scratch.html , and a youtube video which is really fun and can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEki-wnrVCU

The picture of the bacon on the amazing ribs site is out-of-this-world intoxicating.  I can't wait to see if our bacon looks like that! Regarding the video, the narrator seems like a fun guy - he makes a great point when he compares the dangers associated with curing meat to the dangers inherent in another common product we all consume.

The bacon will take about 7 days in the fridge and part of a day in the smoker, so it will be ready fairly quickly.  The pancetta, on the other hand, will need to hang dry for about 4 weeks. We will be following a recipe posted on ourdailybrine.com. The recipe can be found here: http://ourdailybrine.com/?s=pancetta+arrotolata  I previewed several different recipes which were all very similar. I liked this website (maybe because it promotes sous vide cooking??) and found the recipe easy to follow, so it was the lucky winner for our project.

Other thoughts:
 
In researching how to make pancetta, I learned a few things.  First, it is possible our pancetta will get some mold growing on the outside as it dries.  This seems to be commonly reported by almost everyone who makes it.  Except for some odd red and yellow strains of mold, it is not harmful. If mold develops, according to instructions provided by Michael Ruhlman, king of charcuterie, I should wipe it off with a vinegar solution as I discover it. This will prevent it from working its way into the meat.  Second, the pancetta does not need to be refrigerated while it dries.  This seems a little scary, but that is what the pink salt and the brining period is for.  According to Ruhlman, we should select a location which receives decent air circulation, maintains a constant temperature between 50 and 70 degrees, and has a humidity level of 50-60%.  Lower levels of humidity will cause the pancetta to harden, while higher levels may promote growth of mold.  We have three choices of where to hang the pancetta - in my wine cellar, which is temperature and humidity controlled at 55 degrees and 70% humidity; in my pantry which will generally have temperatures ranging from 65 to 70 degrees but a lower than optimum humidity level, and in my kitchen (which is the common choice for most people) which will have a temperature of 68 to 72 degrees and a reasonable (but unknown) level of humidity. We will discuss the relative merits of each and make a choice when we meet. Finally, if at any point the pancetta starts to smell bad or look funky with lots of odd mold or other discoloration, it needs to be tossed.  This would mean that our cure didn't take properly. Hopefully we won't have to face this situation. 

Once the bacon and pancetta are finished, I'll divide them up between the group and deliver them to you. Both will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks and can be frozen for several months. However, I am fairly certain we will eat them up pretty quickly, before the choice to freeze ever arises.


I'll finish this blog post with pictures and results once we have them!

The Sun Cove Chronicles: Praise for the Olive Woolybugger

I am a cook and my interest in fish is limited to whether they should be pan-seared or prepared sous vide.  But I was told to keep those kind of unpure thoughts to myself, if I wanted to come along on this fishing trip.  So I tried my best to do this, while observing and asking questions to try to improve my knowledge and understanding of this timeless sport.

Some observations:

One of Jack's Lahonton Cutthroats.  I think this would
taste good smoked.  I admit it. I'm only here for the food :)

1. Limits.  Although you are allowed to bring home some fish which you catch, no one ever did.  The reason: If you catch your limit (which ranged from one to five, depending on the lake), you must stop fishing and come in to shore. No one ever wants to stop fishing so it never made sense to keep any that you caught, in case you might catch your limit and have to stop.  Also sometimes the fish you catch aren't the kind that taste good. Lahontons, for example. They are big and impressive but they are not good-tasting.  (Now, Hans, don't go making any crude comments about that).

2. Woolyburgers.  These are not fuzzy hamburgers for fish.  Apparently the correct spelling is woolybugger, and on this trip there was much discussion at dinner about Olive Woolybuggers in particular.  From what I could gather, this type of fly is a good choice for use in generic situations if you don't have any flies that match the current hatch.  As for me, I was more interested in olive martinis, but I kept my mouth closed and pretended to be interested.

Paula prepares her line with a specially selected fly

3. Flies.  Fly-Fishing is not fishing while flying nor is it fishing for flies.  It is an artistic form of flicking your rod and string line back and forth with a fly on the end of the line to attract the fish. And flies are not really flies, they are little tied up knots of colored strings, feathers, and other stuff made to look like insects that might naturally appear on the lake or stream.  You want to MATCH the HATCH (don't I sound so official?) selecting a fly that resembles the insects hatching or living in the lake or stream you are fishing.  Apparently in some killjoy fashion, the regulators have decided real flies and insects would be illegal to use - too easy to catch the fish, and then what's the fun in that? The famous Ed (see my blog on Ode to Ed) gave Jack some pheasant feathers from a bird he hunted to use for fly-tying. Jack informs me that some people will even harvest road kill to get bits of fur and other treasures for their fly tying kits.  I think once I felt Jack tug out one of my longer hairs, although he denied this.  Now I know why he did it, and Jack, I forgive you.

German Brown.  Jack caught this one, which pleased me because
I was cooking an Octoberfest dinner that night and the stories went
nicely with my dinner theme.

4.  All trout are not the same.  On this trip, the team caught brook trout (the prettiest, in my opinion), rainbow trout, German brown trout, and the aforementioned Lahonton.  There might have been others too but those are the few that came with actual proof in the form of pictures.

Brook Trout

5.  Waders can be creepy.  The residents of Room 4 confessed that they were scared out of their wits one night when they exited their room to see these dead men hanging from the rafters outside Jack and Dad's rooms.

I swear Officer! He just leaped out of the brush at me!

6.  Fishing is action packed.  Really!  So much so that they even have a whole channel on TV devoted to it, if you buy the right kind of cable package.

Honest. He's not asleep! He's trolling!

Check out the whitewater as Paula knabs one!

 7.  Fishing is scenic.  This is very true, especially in the area of Washington where we were.  I have been sworn to secrecy not to mention the names of the lakes, where Hans purportedly caught 30 fish one day, and Jack snagged another 18 on a different day.

8. Fishing is competitive.  You never heard anyone at the dinner table say "I caught the least number of fish today!".  But we always knew who caught the most!  But that's the thing about fishing.  You could be in last place one day, and first place the next.  And everyone was always ready to offer advice on how to select better flies next time, or hold your line differently, or select a deeper pool or one closer to shore next time. 

She looks so beautiful, but all the while the wheels are turning....
"I am going to be #1 today! Even if I have to pop those float tubes!"

Hurry up and take the @#%*! picture so I can get back to it! Since Hans caught 30 fish yesterday, I think he is tied up to a tree somewhere today, explaining his absence from this picture.

9.  Fishing makes you hungry at the end of a long day.  Especially for wine.  14 bottles, to be exact. Plus a bottle of schnapps but who's counting?  

Bavarian soft pretzels and apple torte

Cioppino

Lemon Ricotta Cake and two types of
Foccacia Bread (but alas, no salami!)

So in closing, my advice to you is:  If  you want to relax, enjoy great company, bask in the beauty of the Great Outdoors, and come away with some great fish stories and pictures, then study up and when you're smarter than the average fish, befriend my brother Jack and beg your way onto the next Sun Cove trip! 

The Sun Cove Chronicles: Ode to Ed

Where's Ed to help carry the float tubes?

Ten years. That's how long Ed Jones has been taking trips to Sun Cove Resort with Jack and my Dad, and in later years, with Larysa, Paula, and Hans.  Ed is both an outdoorsman and a great cook, so he usually had the job of Camp Chef, a role I assumed this year when Ed could not make the trip.  But even in his absence Ed was present. 

What? No salami?

On the first night, I'd prepared appetizers of home-smoked trout, oysters, cheese, crackers, and sliced onions.  "Where's the salami?  Ed usually brings salami, we usually have that every night." Oops. My bad. The next day I checked the tiny Sun Cove Resort market, but no luck. Not even a Slim Jim.  I made a point to drive to Oroville to get some salami, in memory of Ed.  "Ed always has a steak night," I'm told as I serve a lamb dish, the only red meat meal I've planned. One day at lunch, sandwiches consisted of bread and lunch meat, and that's it. Jack forgot to set out the avocado, onions, tomatoes and lettuce.  Someone quips, "Ed would never have made that mistake. No way."  Where's Ed when you need him? 

And then there's the table conversation.  "The nice thing about having Ed here," Jack says, "is that he's the only non-Castro, so he always has something interesting to talk about that doesn't involve family gossip, our jobs, or those same old family stories that get drug out year after year." Someone jokes in a disgusting way about diarrhea in their waders.  "Too much information!! That's what Ed would say!", Paula comments.  And if Hans had popped his float tube again this year, Ed would be all over it, "That Hans is a piece of work!" So Ed, you were missed.  If a Sun Cove trip is in the cards for next year, I hope you don't let them down again.  

I can only imagine what Ed would say about this atrocity!

The Sun Cove Chronicles: From Unhinged to Unplugged

A week ago I was sitting in my office in front of my dual screen monitor working on an SEC compliance project while simultaneously monitoring the email action from one client on a laptop that was connected to their internal network, and using a second laptop to link into another client's servers to gather info for the compliance audit.  I had my iPad propped up to Skype chat with Bob on and off during the day, and my phone was also close by to easily check my company email and frequent IMs  from friends and family.  

I am a very social person and I love the internet, so as I prepared for my first trip to Sun Cove Resort in Eastern Washington State, just below the Canadian border, I was apprehensive about being out of contact for five days.  No cell phone coverage, I was told.  Wireless internet available only at the resort store, if you could get the owners to give you the password.  Jack had obtained the password years before and his phone had stored and used it, but he was unable to determine what the actual password was to give to me, so I had to ask.  The owners, Brian and Gail, told me that yes, they did now have wireless Internet, got it just this year. It was a hard decision to offer it, they said, because Sun Cove is the kind of old fashioned place where kids should spend their time jumping from the boat dock, swimming in the lake, and playing checkers on the patio, not huddled over their cell phones playing the latest shooter game.  I kind of liked that approach, except when it comes to me.  I was special (yeah - special ed my kids would always say). I wanted internet in my room so I could spend lazy days working, surfing, and chatting.  Not only did this place not offer that, there were not even any televisions or telephones that I could see.

Brian and Gail are the kind of friendly down home people you expect to see at a place like this.  But they do have their idiosynchrosies.  Like our room assignments.  There is a three bedroom cabin that Paula, Hans and I wanted to rent, from Monday to Monday.  "Sorry, we only rent from Saturday to Saturday."  No matter that the family has been coming here for twenty years and at least for the last ten, no one has ever been renting the house before. No amount of pleading or bribing could get them to change their minds. Rules are rules, and at Sun Cove, they are apparently not meant to be broken.  As a result, our party purveyed four rooms in the ten room main building.  Paula and Hans, Dad and Larysa, and Jack had rooms 1, 2, and 3.  I had room 9.  When I checked in, Brian said rooms are allocated based upon when you call and reserve.  It didn't matter that all the rooms were identical or that the other guests were arriving after I checked in - my name was written in the blotter next to #9 so that was the room I was slated for.  To change the system would just invite trouble.

1960's kitchen - with lemon cake and fresh foccaccia bread

The resort was a throwback to the early sixties, with the only major improvements appearing to be new wood-like floors and mattresses.  The coordinated turquoise Hotpoint refrigerator and electric range went well with the four person dinette set and classic ceramic dishware complete with coordinated, thick and heavy 4 oz coffee mugs, white with turquoise diamond patterns. The walls had a log cabin-style wood paneling in warm tones and the light switches were heavy and made an old fashioned loud click when you turned them on and off.  The closet emitted a slightly musty smell that reminded me of my Grandma Emma's house. The room was charming without being cheesy, old but welcoming.  It had a door on either end, and the back entrance had a screen door which opened to a covered walkway connecting all the rooms.  The screen door invited company to walk past and stop in for a chat.  This is how I met Carol, Barbara, Ted and Mike, who sat in their lawn chairs in the walkway each afternoon, sipping margaritas and watching the sun set over Lake Wannacutt.  

After a couple of days I stopped carrying around my cellphone as I walked about in futile attempts to find a signal. The phone's once urgent purpose was replaced by its mere use as a camera to record deer and sunsets.  Every time I set out from Room 9 for the for the store to use the internet, walking down the corridor past all the other rooms with their open screen doors and back porch benches, I'd meet someone and start talking and forget that I had to make a Facebook post or check some email.  After a shared glass of wine and conversations ranging from college to kitchen remodels, nothing else seemed all that important.  And somehow, my assignment to Room 9 made sense. 

Birthday party luncheon @ the Ross McDonald Company

To celebrate Garen McDonald's birthday, I brought a Mexican lunch over to the Ross McDonald Company.  I chose Mexican food because Garen always calls me Jeanner the Beaner and because I wanted to try a new method for making taco shells, since I will need to make 40 - 60 tacos for an upcoming event.  Since my husband is a sort of vegan/Pescaterian, I made a mix of vegan and seafood dishes which I thought he and his coworkers would enjoy.  I made the mini chocolate bundt cakes the night before, and made the mistake of using an egg replacement product in the cake.   The cake did not hold together; when I took it out of the pans it fell apart.  I sort of moved the pieces back together and sprinkled powdered sugar over the whole mess and we just ate it like that.  It was a fail, but it tasted good and no one complained.  I cooked the remaining dishes the next day working for about four hours from 7 AM to 11 AM while listening to some great music by Norah Jones and enjoying my very relaxing staycation.

Menu:

Crab and shrimp tacos with avocado, shredded cabbage and guajillo chile cream sauce

Enchiladas de verduras with tomatillo sauce and toasted nut topping

Quacamole dip

Simmered Heirloom Rancho Gordo Ayocote Morado beans

Mexican rice

Chocolate cake with Dulce de Leche ice cream (used regular cake mix and store bought ice cream). 

Heirloom beans

Makes 8-10 side dish servings

Cook time is 2 - 2 1/2 hours so start this dish early.

1 c (8 oz.) of Rancho Gordo Ayocote Morado beans which I bought at a specialty shop in the SF Ferry Building, but they are sold at some farmers markets and also can be ordered online.  

1/2 onion, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

Bay leaf

2 tbsp dried oregano

1  1/2 tsp salt or to taste 

4 - 6 cups water

I used a clay bean pot but you can use any saucepan that will hold 4- 6 cups water and the beans.  Add all the ingredients to the pot and cover with 4 cups of the water.  Bring to a rolling boil for ten minutes, then reduce heat to medium and continue to simmer the beans at a light boil. Check and stir every half hour and ensure the beans are always covered by at least an inch of water.  After 2 to 2 1/2 hours, test beans for doneness, add salt if needed, and continue to simmer and add water until the beans are uniformly soft and ready to eat. Remove from heat and set aside until ready to serve.  

Mexican Rice.

Makes 6 cups (8 -10 servings)

Takes about 40 minutes to prep and cook

2 cups long grain white or jasmine rice

3 tbsp olive or vegetable oil

4 cups water

4 tbsp caldo de pollo tomato broth powder

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp ground cumin

Two tender center of celery stalks with leaves attached, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 white or yellow onion, minced

Heat a large skillet and add the oil.  When hot, add the rice and stir to coat with the oil. Turn the heat down to medium or medium high and continue to stir the rice for 7 to 12 minutes until it is evenly browned.  This step is very important because it gives a nutty flavor to the rice and prevents it from sticking together.  Be patient to get a nice light brown color on all your rice. While the rice is browning, mix the tomato buillion with the water and heat in the microwave for 4 minutes to blend.  Stir and set aside.   Add the garlic, chopped onions, and celery and continue to stir for 2 to 3 more minutes.  And the broth, tomato paste and cumin to the rice.  Stir and bring to a boil then reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.  Check for doneness and either remove from heat or continue to cook a bit longer until all the water is absorbed and the rice is dry and beginning to split open. Be sure to check the bottom of the pan to ensure the rice is not sticking and scorching.  

Quacamole

Makes 8-10 servings 

3 ripe avocados

1/2 tsp salt,  or to taste

1 Jalapeno pepper, minced

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Juice of one half of a medium lime

Mash the avocados into a coase paste and stir in the remaining ingredients.  Cover with plastic wrap by pressing the wrap onto the top of the dip to eliminate the air, until ready to serve.

Tacos:

Makes 24

1 lb  21-25 ct frozen uncooked shrimp, deveined, tails on

1 lb premium crab meat (I used chicken of the sea brand sold at Trader Joe's)*

4 large cloves garlic

1/2 cup cilantro

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup butter (or Earth Balance)

2 tablespoons salt

24 small fresh corn tortillas

2 cups grape seed oil for frying

 4 oz jar guajillo cooking sauce (found at Safeway where they sell salsas)

1/4 cup vegenaise or mayonnaise

1 1/2 c shredded cabbage

2 avocados, of the correct ripeness for slicing, sliced into 12 pieces each

2-3 medium limes, cut into wedges for garnish

Prepare the tortillas.

In a high sided skillet, pour in the oil and heat to 375 degrees.  Place a tortilla in the oil and fry lightly for 10-15 seconds.  Using tongs, flip the tortilla over and repeat.  After 15 seconds, flip again and fold in half, holding open with the tongs. Cook until the side of the tortilla in the oil begins to brown, 5-10 seconds.  Flip and cook the other side until browned.  Lift from the oil, let excess oil drain off, the rest upside down on paper towels. Sprinkle lightly with garlic salt.  Repeat until all the tortillas are cooked.  Place tortillas upside down  on a baking tray and hold in a warm oven until ready to use.  

Prepare the sauce.

Mix the mayo or vegenaise and guajillo sauce together with a fork until well blended. Put into a squeeze bottle or Ziploc bag (from which you can trim the corner off to drizzle the sauce over the tacos  later). Hold in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Cook the filling.

Fill a pot large enough to hold the frozen shrimp with water, add the salt, and bring to a boil.  Pour in the shrimp and cook until they change color from gray to pink and are cooked through.  While the shrimp are boiling, finely chop the garlic and cilantro. Drain the shrimp and pat off the excess water.  Heat a skillet and add the olive oil and butter, stirring until the butter melts and begins to froth.  Reduce the heat and add the garlic, sautéing until it softens and gives up its flavor to the butter.  Stir in the crabmeat and add the shrimp, tossing to coat and sautéing for 3 to 5 minutes.  Add salt to taste. Remove from heat and sprinkle with cilantro. Keep warm until ready to fill the tacos and serve.

Assemble the tacos.

When ready to serve, assemble the tacos by placing one shrimp and a heaping tablespoon of crab meat in each taco shell. Sprinkle with cabbage and top with the piece of avocado. Place all the tacos on a platter and drizzle with the sauce. Serve immediately.

Enchiladas

Makes 1 dozen

Filling:

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 poblano pepper, finely chopped

Olive oil or vegetable oil for sautéing 

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and finely chopped

1 cup brussels sprouts, finely chopped

1 chipotle pepper, chopped, and 1 tbsp of the sauce that comes with it

8 oz honey goat cheese, or for vegans, 8 oz "Follow your Heart" vegan gourmet shreds fiesta blend cheese alternative

12 large corn tortillas

Sauce:

3 cups tomatillos, about 3 lbs

1 medium yellow or white onion, sliced

1-2 jalapeños,depending on heat tolerance, chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp vegetable Better then Buillion

Topping:

1/4 c. Toasted pumpkin seed kernels

1/4 c. Toasted salted sunflower seed kernels

1/4 c. Toasted chopped walnuts

Toast the seeds and nuts and set aside.  

Prepare the sauce.

Soak the tomatillos in water for a few minutes to loosen their husks.  Remove and toss the husks.  Place the tomatillos, onion, garlic, jalapeño and Better than Buillion paste in a saucepan and barely cover all with water.  Simmer on medium high heat until the tomatillos split their skins.  Process in a blender or use an immersion blender to purée the mixture. Return to the sauce pan and continue to simmer until sauce is reduced by one quarter. Remove from heat and set aside.

Prepare the filling.

Pour 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil in your sauté pan and add the onions, garlic, poblano and chipotle pepper.  Sauté until the onion is softened and translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the chopped Brussels sprouts and butternut squash and continue to cook until softened,  about 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in half of the goat cheese or vegan cheese. 

Assemble the enchiladas.

Warm the tortillas one or two at a time on a hot griddle or cast-iron skillet. Individually dip each tortilla in the sauce and lay in your baking tray. Place 1 to 2 tablespoons of the filling down the center of the tortilla, and roll off like a cigar.  Repeat until all the tortillas are used. Crumble and sprinkle the remaining goat cheese or vegan shreds on top of the enchiladas.  Drizzle some of the extra sauce on top as well. Sprinkle with the toasted nuts.  

Note: the method described for warming  the tortillas often results in very crumbly enchiladas when serving.  If you want to ensure your enchiladas stay whole when serving, you will have to add calories by frying the tortillas until just before they start to crisp, then dip them in the sauce, instead of warming and softening them on the griddle or cast iron skillet.

Preheat an oven to 375°, and bake the enchiladas for 20 minutes just before serving to melt the cheese and blend the flavors. 

The Game Whose Name Must Not Be Mentioned

I am writing this blog while relaxing in a pale pink rose petal scented bubble bath trying to wash away the let down of the Game Whose Name Must Not Be Mentioned (at least if you care WTF the NFL says).  My Farmer's Market shopping spree yesterday fueled a cooking fiesta today.  I think I logged more yards than Peyton Manning washing, prepping, plating, and serving the bounty.  Our menu was simple because everyone is on a diet, has eating restrictions, or is saving their calories for alcohol consumption.  

The first play, a safety in favor of the Seahawks, was ushered in with soft, warm, garlic naan topped with an Indian-spiced tomato-ey eggplant chutney and cilantro sauce, some crudités, hummus, and Dubliner aged white cheddar with "everything" crackers.

The dismal first and second quarters were washed away with a couple of growlers of Altamont Shelter IPA and Altamony Mahogany Red.  I was starting to think perhaps the Broncos had chugged a few growlers of their own,  judging by their lackluster performance. If they hadn't, I bet they were wishing that had.  So much for the grand hopes of a major booty spanking that all of us Niners fans were hoping for.  As the 2nd quarter ended, we were ready to pull out the tequila with a Fireball chaser until we realized Bob won $100 in the office pool.  Some consolation, at least.

 

Finally, time for the Great National Half Time Chowdown.  Forsaking the traditional American artery clogging entrees like molten Velveeta nachos or sour cream and mayonnaise dip with onion scented chemical powder addititives, our visit to the Ferry Plaza market on Saturday inspired this menu:  soft tacos made with handmade blue and white corn tortillas, organic heirloom beans, smoked sliced portobellos and poblanos, homemade vibrant pink pickled red onion curtido juxtaposed with fresh ripe lime green avocado slices dusted in smoked sea salt, crema, and a really spicy hot green chile salsa (thanks Judy!).   We also had some coriander and oregano-brined slow smoked chicken legs for the meat eaters, and a dessert of tiny Bosc pears poached in maple-pomegranate molasses with a moist, dense whole wheat pumpkin gingerberbread crumble top cake on the side. 

The Ayocote Amarillo heirloom dried beans were really good, much different from a standard pinto bean.  Cooked with onion, oregano, and garlic, they form a dark, rich, meaty tasting broth which intensifies in flavor when cooked up in our La Chamba black clay bean pot.  The pot absorbs the flavors of the spices each time it's used, and these aromatic scents seep back into the broth, adding a depth of flavor that is lacking when a steel kettle is used.  

I made the poached pears sous vide - simple and predictable. The tart pomegranate molasses was offset by the maple syrup, and using a temperature of 175 degrees for two hours resulted in a pear that had just barely softened but still had a memory of its crunch.  I loved that we could find these little tiny sized pears at the Farmer's Market - you'd never see them in this size at the grocery store.

Alas, my bath water has sufficiently poached my feet and all the pink bubbles have lost their effervescence, so I guess I had better sign off.  Go Niners,  see you in next year's Sup3rb0w1!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I love going to the Farmer’s market but today was especially fun for several reasons.  For one thing, the weather was beautiful and sunny.  Also - Bob was with me – a big treat because usually I have to shop alone.  But best of all, I was not at just any Farmer’s Market, I was at the CUESA San Francisco Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building, my favorite market of all.  The shops at the Ferry Building are really fun to explore, with all my favorite vendors (think: Sur la Table, Acme Bread, Cowgirl Creamery, and stores devoted only to mushrooms, olive oil or “tasty salted pig parts” as their sign proclaims).  And the people watching is great too - this market is full of diverse vendors and lots of interesting people, especially chef-people, from big name restaurants that even if you could get a reservation, you’d have to take a 2^nd mortgage on your house to pay for the meal. 

And that leads me to the topic of cardoons.  Before today, I had no clue what a cardoon was. The name sounds like some kind of ancient Asian sailing ship or a district in Hong Kong.  When we first arrived at the market, I saw a man carrying an armload of long-stemmed greens with silvery foliage.   Later in the day, I saw another guy buying a big cart load of them.  He had boxes of other assorted produce on his cart too, so I figured he was from one of the local restaurants.  I pointed to the foliage and asked him what they were.  “Cardoons,” he stated matter of factly.  “Oh,” I replied, “What do they taste like, and how do you cook them?”  “They taste like a mild artichoke. We like to blanch them first, then sauté them in garlic, butter, and olive oil.”  Yummmm!  I love artichokes. And of course anything in garlic and butter is going to taste good.  How odd that leaves would taste like artichokes, but now that I looked closer at them, the leaves did sort of look like the leaves of artichoke plants. Being the nosy, I mean curious, person that I am, I had to ask, “So what restaurant are you buying for?  I’d like to go there and try them – they sound delicious!”  The guy looked taken aback for a minute and then he said – “Saison”.  Saison!  Saison is only one of the hottest high end restaurants in the City, on par with Napa’s French Laundry, IMHO.  I made some lame joke about not being able to ever get a reservation, and then as soon as he left I immediately bought a bundle of cardoons.  You may be saying “Monkey see, Monkey do!”  but I figured If they are good enough for Saison, then they are good enough for me.

The leafy bundle with celery-like stems are the cardoons

When I got home, I opened my iPad and immediately googled cardoons.  That’s when I learned you eat the stems, not the leaves.  Hmm.  I wish I had known that before – the stems on my bundle were really anemic looking, skinny and limp.  I followed a link and learned that the stems are covered in spines and you should wear gloves while peeling them.  Gloves?  Yikes, this was starting to remind me of my unfortunate experience trying to juice prickly pear fruits, in which I ended up with thousands of miniscule spines in my hands, forearms and stomach (don’t ask). 

I found a pair of kitchen gloves and then set off peeling the stems as described in the article. The web author’s pictures looked lovely, with nicely pared, bright green, firm celery-like stems.  Mine looked like a piece of limp, dried out celery you’d find in the back of your crisper drawer, which you have decided to clean out because it was exuding a foul smell.  Worst of all, my $4.00 armload of cardoons was reduced to about ½ cup of laboriously peeled and chopped stems.  So far, this experiment was not going well.

 

Trying to keep a good attitude, I blanched the stems in salted, boiling water, and then removed them to an ice bath as soon as they were tender.  I tasted one small piece at this point, and I have to say, it was pretty good. They had a very mild, subtle artichoke taste, with a texture like the bottom of the heart, where it meets the stem.  Next, I took a little piece of black truffle butter that I just happened to have on hand (that story is for another blog), and a bit of olive oil, and sautéed the pieces. They cooked down to about 1/3 cup but they did taste really good.  Sorry Bob, I didn’t save you any.  But you wouldn’t have wanted them anyway, given that you don’t like the flavor of truffle and you don’t eat butter.  Final Score: 6/10 – mostly because they were a lot of work for so little reward.  But – I will definitely try them again, this time I'll look for a bundle with some stems that are a little meatier and fresher.  I encourage you to do the same – if you like artichokes, you will certainly like these, and it’s always nice to have another tasty vegetable dish to add your repertoire.

In Celebration of Marriage

That diamond ring is a precious thing,
and we never want to lose it.
It's like the words to a song that we love to sing,
every time we hear the music.
It's like a rainy night in candlelight,
And oh it's so romantic!
We got the whole thing working out so right,
And it's just the way we planned it.

We're in this love together. We got the kind that lasts forever.
And like berries on the vine, it gets sweeter all the time!

--Al Jareau, "We're in This Love Together"

This has been a monumental week for marriage, especially my marriage, which turns 30 years old on July 2, 2013. The song quoted above was played for our first dance, and aside from actually losing my diamond ring (and then finding it a few months later and then losing it again, possibly permanently now :( , we have been blessed to have that kind of marriage and then some.

We met when I was eighteen, and within a few months, I had decided Bob was the one for me. I think it took him a bit longer to come around (he had been engaged previously, and was still reeling from The Breakup). but from my point of view, he was cute and kind, his family was nice, and we had a lot of fun together.  That is one of the great benefits of marrying young --- you don't over think all those things like money, careers, children, what does this mean for our taxes, etc. You just decide you're going to make it work and you assume it's possible to do that. Bob never officially proposed but when I was 20, during my sophomore year in college, we were shopping for china for one of his cousin's weddings and he saw a pattern he liked - Noritake's "Limerick". It was on sale and he suggested we buy 12 place settings on credit and take turns making the monthly payments. Hmmmm. Sounded like a partnership and a commitment to me! I agreed immediately! We bought the china and ended up getting married two years later, about three weeks after we'd made the last payment. I still have every piece, and we use it as often as I can make an excuse to pull it out off the cabinet.

I was a little lost planning the wedding, since my mom had died a couple years before, I was still in college, and my sisters lived far away and were busy with their own lives.  Juggling final exams and wedding invitations, making catering and facilities arrangements, and planning the wedding ceremony all by myself was really hectic. Our wedding date was only two weeks after my graduation, and I needed to also move out of my college apartment, find a new place to live, and move our stuff into that place, all between the date of graduation and the wedding.  Oh and one other thing, neither of us had a job!  That is the benefit of being madly in love-- you just don't stress over little things like that.  Our parents, on the other hand, stressed ALOT.  My dad, brother, and sister tried to convince me to wait, while Bob's dad had a friendly chat with us, which started out with, "Well kids, you know you can't live on love alone."  Really? We seemed to somehow find a way to do just that, scraping by with our little savings account and living off all the thousands of bags of rice our friends had poured into every nook and cranny of our new apartment while we were on our honeymoon. I found remnants of that rice for years!. And boy did that rice look nice served up in our beautiful new china!

Even today I remember each line of our wedding vows, and I am so deeply honored to have married my best friend and a man who takes those words as seriously as I do, promising each other 

To have and to hold
For better or for worse
In good times and bad
In sickness and in health
For richer and for poorer
To love and to cherish
Forsaking all others
Until death do we part.

Love you Bob and sorry it's taken over a year to finish writing this post!

Response from my sister Claire:

On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:11 PM, "minimunchkyn@comcast.net" <minimunchkyn@comcast.net> wrote:

Really liked your marriage post. I celebrate marriage too...even though at times....never mind!

You really are a glutton (gluten!) for punishment planning the wedding so close to your graduation, etc. but I knew you would pull it off.

I think back to your wedding and the Crow Canyon reception once in a while: Rick trying to keep Briana happy during the wedding where the whole wedding party could see him struggling in the cry room, your wedding party laughing at jokes during the wedding, me forgetting my camera in my car at the church and realizing it when we arrived at the reception, Briana sleeping soundly on a blanket in the corner during the reception with a vibrating floor and music off the charts, Jack getting drunk on Gimlets, Aunt Amelia (and Aunt Ann I think) watching Briana while Rick and I danced. And also I remember the get together at Aunt Jackie's house. Oh and also Rick, Briana and I flying up with Dad in his plane. Rick looking white as a ghost whispering to me during a dip during turbulence when the plane dropped..."Is is supposed to do that???"

Fun times!

Claire

The haves and the have nots

I just spent a weekend in Mariposa and couldn't help noticing the differences between the haves and the have nots up here. Mariposa is a small town with only about 2000 residents, and even though the county was originally the largest of California counties in terms of geographic size, population, and income (when it was the center of California's gold mining activity) it is now one of the most sparsely populated and poorest counties of all.

Bob and I are lucky to be one of the "haves", as the PG&E inspector noted when he came up to our property to assess our request for underground power lines."You folks aren't from around here, are you?" he twanged. "You know how I can tell? You have all your teeth." And so it started - I began noticing the haves and the have nots all over town. Tom, the owner of the electrical and well supply store, was definitely a have not - all his lower teeth were gone, until he took a trip one summer to Latvia and got a whole new set for a fraction of the cost of 1-800-DENTIST. The Burger King employees are haves. They know how to read between the lines of the employment solicitation posted on the drive-through window. It reads, "Are You Good Enough To Wear the Crown?" Dental crown, that is. It's not explicitly stated, but they all know what it means. The sign on the front door might as well say "No Shoes, No Teeth, No Service."

I was walking down the main street yesterday after finishing dinner at the local pub when a group of Japanese tourists disembarked a bus returning from Yosemite. Suddenly I noticed a woman unabashedly taking a picture of me. What? Ok, sure, I was covered in red dirt, but that's because I was digging in my garden and I don't have a house to clean up in. And yes, I was wearing boots and hoisting myself into a 2 ton pickup truck, but I needed the boots to make sure I didn't get bit by a snake when walking through the tall grass on our property, and I had to drive Bob's truck because I needed to shuttle him and his friends on their rafting trip down the Tuolomne. Ok, fine. I guess it's conceivable in some stretch of the imagination, that an unschooled foreigner might have mistaken me for a closet redneck. Obviously she didn't notice that I had all my teeth, and they were straight too, and Crest-white-strip enhanced. What is she, blind??? Enduring the humiliation, I quickly opened the car door and jumped in, after picking up the half empty bottle of Bloody Mary mix which rolled off the car seat and into the street. Don't look at me like that! It was left over from a morning break while sea kayaking the day before on Tomales Bay. I didn't have time to clean out the car because after kayaking we went to the beer festival, got home late, and then came straight up to Mariposa at 6 the next morning. And NO! That chew on the dashboard doesn't belong to me! It's Garen's! Whatever. Take your stupid picture. I have better things to do than worry about what some tourist thinks. Like purifying the well. Or cleaning up the mess left on my road by Glen's cows. Or siphoning the septic tank. Or something.

Don't be Afraid of the Dark

It's been a long time since I've posted on this blog, mostly because I've had a hard time feeling inspired about something interesting to write about.  I am up in Mariposa, alone, while Bob and friends are making a spring run down the nearby Tuolomne River.  The river is a class IV and always fun but challenging. As I sit here alone with my dogs, next to my campfire, I am second guessing my decision not to join the trip. I've done the river many times, and this was a good water level (2500 cfs - enough to cover many of  the wrap rocks but not so scary that you'd need an extra dose of blood pressure pills and a vallium for good measure).   But then I think about Clavey Falls and that rock on the left side of the chute that always dislodges your oar right when you need it most, or the salad toss at the end of Ram's Head where Lisa nearly broke her arm, or bridging on Sterns or Bette's swim through Hell's Kitchen, and my little lonely campfire doesn't seem so bad anymore.

Actually, my campfire is pretty nice, as you can see from the picture below.  When making it, I considered all those things they teach the boy scouts - get some tinder, make a little teepee of sticks and stoke the tinder until it ignites the sticks. When it's nice and hot, add additional kindling and some small logs, eventually building up to some nice size logs which will really make a bonfire you can be proud of. But then, I decided that the girl scouts are much more pragmatic, and having been a loyal, cookie-pushing scout for several years, I grabbed a small bag of charcoal and a big bottle of lighter fluid, piled a bunch of logs in the pit and doused the whole thing with liquid dynamite. Voila!  Instant bonfire!  It's a relatively warm night, but the fire serves the purpose of driving away the mosquitos and gnats, especially if you don't mind acting like a piece of trout in a smoker and sitting downwind. 

The dogs are enjoying themselves tonight.  Someone's cow is taunting them from the other side of the fence, and they are responding by growling and barking, but are too lazy to go running after it. (I know how they feel).  Besides, they're having too much fun harassing frogs and lizards which seem to be everywhere this evening (one was even on the toilet seat - good thing I saw it in time.  Would hate to think of the alterntive outcome there).  I even saw a snake today on the road.  I really wanted to run it over once or twice or even three times, but I knew Bob would be disappointed in me so I held back. As it is, he is going to ask me all kinds of questions about what kind of snake it was, which I won't be able to answer, since I didn't crush it to death and then get out of the car to check it out.  Now I'll dream about it making its way up my hill and slithering under the door tonight.  I'm sure with its evil snakish sixth sense, it knows I really wanted to kill it.  I might have to sleep with the shovel tonight, just in case.

Speaking of night time, the sun has just set. It was another gorgeous orange-pink-red sunset which I didn't photograph in time because my ipad was out of batteries and was still charging.  I caught the tail end of it, but the picture doesn't do it justice.  There will be a waning moon tonight, about 3/4 full so star gazing won't get good until the middle of the night. Hopefully I will be sound asleep by then, not huddling under my covers, terrified, (did I mention I was alone?) wishing I really did have a shovel, and Jeff's .45 along with a few large clips of soon-to-be-outlawed ammo, and also for good measure, Blake's bear repellent.  Of course, if someone did try to break in, I can just imagine the chaos. I probably would end up stepping on the shovel, with its handle springing up to hit me in the head, then accidentally shooting the dog, and finishing off by tripping on the now disabled dog and landing on the pepper spray nozzle, taking a full blast to the face. Only to find out it was just the wind blowing over a chair on the porch.  Ok, I think I'll retreat to the little love shack for the night. This sitting around by the blazing fire, very alone, in the dark, with lots of little glowing eyes watching me, is so over. 

End of the sunset, start of a night of terror........

OK, I am psyching myself out here.  I need to stop this talk of intruders and go back outside to shut the garden gate, or else there may be nothing left after those predator-deer attack en masse tonight.  Where are my shoes?  and flashlight?  And scarf (there are a lot of bats and all those urban legends about the bats getting entangled in your hair are running through my head)?  And butcher knife (just in case, you never know when it might come in handy)? And cell phone? Where is my phone?  Should I pre-program 911 in, so I only have to hit one button? I wonder how long it would take the police to get here?!  To find my phone, I'd have to turn on the light in the little chalet I'm hunkered down in.  That would certainly give away my position to the stalkers outside.  Oh what to do, what to do?  OK, here goes -- if I never write another word, hopefully someone will read this post and know what my last minutes were like. 

Phew!  Made it. Didn't even need to brandish the knife. Good thing, because the blade is pretty dull.  What can you expect when you buy knives from Rite Aid?  Shoot!  I just remembered that I forgot to take my antibiotics.  They are out in the car. It's parked soooo far away, almost 30 feet from the door.  Where did I set down that knife?  and the phone?  Another lonely sojourn into the bat-infested blackness.  I hope I don't step on a frog outside the door and slip and land on the knife.  Maybe I should make a pre-call to 911 to let them know where I am, saving time in case I have to actually make an emergency call later on?  Do you suppose they can store that type of information?

OK, made it, but it was close!! Those bats were in attack mode - I am sure of it.  But I watched "Attack of the Giant Hare" last week and learned that furiously waving your knife in the air disrupts the bats' sense of echo location (and also scares away 50 foot leporids).  That is some mighty useful information, after all.  You never know what you can learn from late night TV, Dr. Ruth aside.

If any of you read this tonight, and wish to call me to say what might turn out to be your final goodbye, feel free!  I will have my cell phone fully charged and waiting at my bedside, next to the shovel and knife.  Goodnight, and its been great knowing you!

Come Dine With Me

In the evenings in Scotland, we would relax and watch the tellie. We indulged in two funny local television shows --- “Border Patrol” and “Come Dine with Me”. Both are reality shows; one chronicles the exploits of the Border Police as they apprehend dimwitted perpetrators at the airport customs check. “Come Dine with Me”was my favorite – it plays two or three times a night so we got to enjoy it multiple times. This show pairs up four very incompatible people, who take turns putting on a dinner party for each other over four consecutive nights. Each participant then ranks the others’ event in rude and uncomplimentary terms, and the highest scorer wins a thousand pounds, after having to endure humiliating and awkward dinner conversation with people they don’t particularly like.  

 

On our second day in Moffat, we took a really nice hike up the Mare’s Tail Falls. 

 

Goats on the trail ahead of us

At the lake at the top of the falls

Once we reached the top of the falls and took our share of pictures, Sharon and I hiked back and traveled down the road for a spot of tea and some scones, while Bob and Gordon continued the hike around the Loch and met us when we returned to town. As we sipped our tea at the little roadside stop across from a beautiful lake, we met Annie, a woman a little older than us who had cycled about 10 kilometers down the hill from her village and had also stopped for tea to take the chill off.  Annie explained that she originally came from the part of Scotland above Glasgow that is a peninsula “shaped like a penis”.  I had to laugh. 

Sharon and I returned to town and did a little shopping at Lothlorian – a really cool antique shop full of lots of old china and tea sets.  We each bought a set of “fish knives” which are silver plated knives a little wider than butter knives, with beautiful scrollwork etched into the blade, and a set of matching forks. I also bought some silver teaspoons and later in Ireland, I found a beautiful spode tea cup/saucer to complete my collection.