Nature, Meditation, and Cooking

I hope you like my featured photo. I took it on my way home from Nebraska in 2017. We had traveled there to witness the total solar eclipse. Of course it was incredible, and luckily, the sun set that day with a spectacular view in Western Kansas.

I have a list of topics on which to write in my series of blog posts. One thing I thought of was the joy of camping. My Father used to take us camping when we were young. Of the seven children, all of us continue to enjoy nature and all it has to offer us. My best memories of camping with my father and siblings were the nature lessons on edible plants, astronomy, mushroom hunting, and fishing. Cooking what we caught and gathered was the best part, and eating all of the food we prepared was the bonus. My father used to sing to us while he cooked our camp meals. Today, our camp sites are a place for gathering (Pre-Corona Virus times), conversing, and enjoying each detail of the natural world around us.

My Father’s favorite and best meal was, “Sheepherder’s Delight.” Basically, it is a one-pan meal, and was cooked over an open fire. It was a favorite of Dad’s for camping trips since it was a staple meal for sheep herders who lived in the mountains of Colorado with during the summers, as was my Father’s life as a young boy. Today, when my family goes camping, we prepare the meal the way Dad did, but when we make it at home, we change it a bit. Here’s my Father’s recipe for Sheepherder’s Delight prepared in one large cast iron skillet or Dutch oven:

1 pound (0.45 kg) of bacon. Cook until crisp. Remove cooked bacon, and set aside. Cube two to four potatoes, depending on the number people that you will feed. Figure about one small potato per person or two people for a large potato. Place the potatoes in the hot bacon grease, and fry until soft with crisp edges.

Next, open a can of prepared baked beans, pork and beans, or beans in tomato sauce. Pour the beans over the potatoes, and add the cooked bacon. I don’t have a picture of it, but it’s best served after a hard day of hiking, fishing, mushroom hunting, or what ever you do to enjoy nature. We have a slightly different take on Sheepherder’s Delight when we’re at home. We change up the ingredients:

1 pound of ground beef (453.592g) I’m sorry if my metric measurements are not quite right. I look them up on the web for the conversions. Cook the ground beef with some diced onions, salt, and pepper.

Prepare the potatoes for oven baking. I cut mine into strips, and toss them with salt, pepper, some oil, and some malt vinegar. Bake the potatoes in an oven set at ~365 degrees Farenheit (185C). Bake until brown and crispy at the edges.

While the potatoes are baking, finish cooking the ground beef. Drain of any extra fat. Then you’re ready to add the canned baked beans, pork and beans, or with what you’re familiar. It should look like this.

Now, to assemble this wonderful comfort food, bring the potatoes out of the oven. Arrange some of the potatoes on your plate. Then serve the bean-meat mixture over the potatoes. We make this for camping trips. We use one pan by cooking the potatoes first. Set them aside while you cook the meat. Add the beans, and serve over the potatoes. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product until I had but one bit remaining.

Another thing we do to enjoy nature is hike up to my Father’s fire circle. It’s in the same mountains of his childhood and that of his children, grandchildren, and the “Old Ones,” our ancestors. The Fire Circle is a place to drum and sing our songs, and honor our beloved ancestors. The hike to our sacred fire circle is about two miles from the main forest service road. We pass stands of quaking aspen trees, scrub oak, pinon pine, and Ponderosa pine trees. The fire circle overlooks a canyon where my people hid when the U.S. government was removing them from their ancestral lands to reservations in the 1800s. It is a very sad time in American history, that is not taught in the schools today. Here’s a glimpse of those lands. Our grandson enjoys his time there.

Speaking of “Indian Removal,” there is the reality that the people were moved away from their hunting and gathering grounds, so there was no way to raise their food. So the government provided commodities, food surpluses, which included white flour, powdered milk, lard, and a variety of canned meats and vegetables. The food was highly processed, and we can trace obesity and diabetes back to this down turn in our physical health and food sovereignty. Having only white flour, dry milk powder, and lard, fry-bread was born, out of necessity. Though it is a symbol of a bad time for my ancestors, we use it today to symbolize that we are resourceful, and we are still here! Here I am frying bread at my Father’s fire circle. My grand nephew was learning how to roll out the dough. It’s never too early to teach the “younguns” as my brother would say. He was the one hauling the cast iron Dutch oven up to the circle. The elevation is ~8,000-plus feet above sea level. The beauty contributes to the meditative state in which we find ourselves when we visit this place.

It was a good day to be alive and a good day to honor our ancestors while celebrating the children.

Thank you for reading.

Dense Foods and Other Interests

No matter where you are on this planet, we share similar circumstances of staying at home because of a pandemic. I am quite fortunate to have my job as an educator at the university. We are working at home! I sit, perched, on a tall stool in my kitchen participating in virtual meetings and virtual teaching. My favorite place in the house continues to be the kitchen. This is my creative spot. I get great vibes in my kitchen environment. Before the pandemic, people gathered in my kitchen, though it’s quite small for someone who loves to cook. We have lived in this house only since the previous May. My former house had three ovens for my baking, and it had more room, but a similar kitchen space. I have but one oven and cooking range in this house. I am not deterred, however. I manage to cook at least once a day, but usually two times. We will sample a few of my dishes of late but first, a digression.

Another great thing about this house is that it has magnificent windows! I have placed bird feeders and bird baths in my back yard with great views of the birds, and my yard list is growing quickly. My featured photo, though blurry, is a Carolina Wren that frequents the feeders and bath. I heard a barred owl last night. That’s a new one for me, now that I live on the east side of the 100th meridian. Now, for the food.

Yesterday morning for breakfast, we had avocado toast topped with Brisling, a.k.a. bristling, sardines, packed in two layers. We came upon this idea from the chef and food scientist, Alton Brown. I’m not crazy about his method, so I changed it up a bit.

One ripe avocado serves two open faced toasts. I use dense, seed bread, toasted.

Mash one ripe avocado. Add salt and pepper, to taste, and mix with fresh lime juice.

Mix two tablespoons (225g) of Sherry Vinegar (I prefer that from Spain. Not sure if it comes from any other place!) in with the sardines, being careful not to break up the tiny, delicate, nutrient-packed, North Atlantic fishes!

After you toast the bread, assemble your food. Spread the avocado mixture on the toasted bread. Then lay the sardines side-by-side (head to tail, though there is no head!) on the bread. It is a nutrient-dense breakfast, and you will be set for a full morning! We had a nice cup of coffee with our toasts! Here’s the picture.

Speaking of dense foods, here’s a cake with a dense crumb! First, I must tell you a back story. Back in the 1970s, when slow cookers first arrived on the kitchen scene, one of the manufacturers produced a cake pan for the slow cooker. It makes these wonderful, little dense cakes, which work best for chocolate cakes. I don’t think white cakes do too well, unless you’re wanting a pound cake!

I was in the right place at the right time when I received the cake pan. At an estate sale auction, a man had given the winning bid for a kitchen and housewares lot. He looked at the cake pan with a puzzled expression on his face. I asked him if he knew the identity of the thing in his hand. He said, “No!” I told him that it was a cake pan. He said, “Here, take it!” The rest is history.

There is a recipe for a chocolate cake which uses mayonnaise. That makes the perfect, dense, chocolate cake. Usually, I cut the cake in two so that I have a two-layered cake. In baking/cooking this cake you are “flying blindly,” because you cannot look at it. Your sense of smell will tell you when it’s done, which is usually about 2.5 to three hours with the slow cooker set on “high.” You could likely do the same cooking process with a tin coffee can, assuming you won’t find this cake pan.

This is the cake pan and how it fits into the slow cooker:

Here’s the recipe:

Butter and dust with flour one cake insert for slow cooker (or that tin coffee can), and set aside.

For the Cake:

2 cups (250g) of all-purpose wheat flour

1.5 cups (300g) white sugar

6 TBS (36g) cocoa powder

1 teaspoon (5.69g) baking soda

1 teaspoon (5.69g) salt

Mix all the dry ingredients to blend. Then add blended wet ingredients.

1 large egg

1 cup mayonnaise

1 cup (236.59 mL) hot water (not boiling). This activates the baking soda, salt, and egg as the leavening agents.

Add vanilla to taste. Pour the batter into your cake pan or coffee can.

Bake, covered, in your slow cooker on high for 2-3 hours. I usually check after 2.5 hours.

Once you take it out of the cooker, invert it on a wire rack to cool. Slice through at the equator of the cake for a two-layer cake, and frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting. It’s yummy!

Finally, I have to tell you about a virtual cocktail party that I had, recently, with two of my co-workers. We had made it a practice to meet up after work on Fridays to share a drink and a snack previously. In this new format of social distancing, we decided to have a virtual cocktail party. I will only give their initials. “T” was having jelly beans and a glass of Bourbon. “M” enjoyed a shot of vodka and some fresh tamales, made by a friend. I “went all out” and enjoyed Icelandic caviar atop a corn biscuit and sour cream. Usually, I would have baked small corn muffins for this, but I found these wonderful little corn biscuits on sale. I chased it with a small shot of vodka in a chilled glass. We talked about work for a while, but mostly the conversations centered on the future of our lives with family, work, and other social and familial worries. The important thing is to stay connected one way or another with out meeting face-to-face with those you esteem and love. Cheers to you!

I think we will emerge strong from this pandemic. Remember to distance from others, wash your hands, and don’t touch your face! Thank you for reading.

Experimenting with Recipes

I read in bed every night. Often, I read books. One of my favorite authors is Chaim Potok, who wrote wonderfully worded, semi-autobiographies, about growing up in Brookly, New York. Some times, I read science fiction by Catherine Asaro. Often, I read non-fiction centering on histories of Indigenous Peoples of, what is now the United States (my ancestry), history of music of the world, and many other topics of my varied interests. That’s not what this blog is about today, however!

I must admit that one of my all time favorite reads at night, or any other time, is recipes! Yes. I’ve written, often, about food. Cooking or baking is a creative art. I like to be creative, and I get recipes from magazines, food stories on Netflix, as previously mentioned, and cookbooks. I like very old cookbooks, because the ingredients are interesting, like boiling a cow’s hoof for gelatin and other such wonders.

My favorite books are those that list the ingredients but do not list measurements. Instead, they tell a story of the origins of the foods. I think I’ve mentioned Sean Shermans’, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen and Pino Luongo’s There’s a Tuscan in the Kitchen. Both of the books were gifts from very thoughtful friends, Carole and Lynn. Some of my best meals have come from those books.

Lately, I’ve been reading hand-me-down cooking magazines. In addition, my dear friend, Mary, gifts me with a cooking magazine as a holiday gift these past few years. So, that means that I’ve been reading cooking magazines. My friend, Paula, posts recipes on her social media page, and I do web searches on other recipe concepts.

My feature photo comes from this past weekend and a short time with our granddaughter. When she comes to visit, I ask about a special meal. She regularly requests, beef steak. Being doting grandparents, we oblige. She loves asparagus and fried potatoes. We grilled her rib-eye, and I made our portions into Steak Au Poivre with red wine pan sauce. I found this recipe in a Food & Wine magazine from April 2018. The taste was quite delicious, but I did not have shallots, so a few onions was a bit too powerful. Here are the ingredients:

One beef rib-eye steak. (It suggest that it’s tied with butcher’s string)

Salt and Pepper the steak pushing the seasonings into the flesh of the steak (set aside)

Brown the steak in a hot skillet to which a 1 TBS (14.2g) and a little neutral oil (I used sunflower oil)

Sear the steak on both sides (about two minutes each), and sear the sides to render the fat. Thusly:

Once the steak (I used two steaks for our meal) are browned, drain a bit of the fat and leave the fond (the brown bits from cooking the steak) behind for the sauce. Now melt another tablespoon of butter (14.2g) in the fond, and sweat 1/4 cup (60g) shallots about two minutes. Now, deglaze the pan of cooking shallots with 1/2 cup red wine (take a little swig for yourself!). Simmer until reduced by half. Then add 1 cup (236.6 mL) of beef broth. I made beef broth from trimming from a previous beef steak meal. Cook until thick. Finally, add 1 more tablespoon (14.2g) butter. The sauce should be thick.

Slice your steak and arrange on two plates. Cover your sliced steak with the wine sauce. This went quite well with a Cabernet Sauvignon. I like Carnivor from California.

My main mistake was timing with the asparagus and potatoes. They finished while my sauce was still cooking, so it was not thick enough when I put everything on the table. Alas, granddaughter loved her grilled steak, and we loved our steak au poivre.

In an effort to provide interesting food while we had our little visitor, I fixed extra fluffy pancakes the next morning. I think this recipe came from a Japanese cook posting on YouTube. I modified the recipe only slightly.

Begin by cutting 8 molds from copy paper. We wrapped the two inch high paper strips around a wine bottle. We taped them into round molds for the pancakes.

Separate three eggs. Set the whites aside for a few minutes.

In the bowl that contains the yolks, add vanilla (to taste) and 1/4 cup (59.15 mL) milk (I use buttermilk). To this mixture, add 1/2 cup (113g) wheat flour and a dash salt.

Mix the yolk mixture (set aside)

Whip egg whites to soft peak, and add 2 tablespoons (25.00g) sugar, little by little. Then add 2 teaspoons (9.58g) of baking powder. Whip until stiff peak.

In the mean time, heat a griddle until the butter on it sizzles slightly. Place the paper molds on the griddle.

Incorporate yolk/flour mixture with the egg while mixture to the batter. Fold gently so that the whipped egg white mixture holds it shape.

Spoon the batter into the molds. Cook on one side until brown. Flip the mold with its batter gently. When the cakes are finished, transfer them to a plate. Peel off the mold.

Heat pure maple syrup with butter. Pour syrup over the pancakes. Serve with a breakfast meat and a warm cup of coffee or tea. Yum!

It’s always fun to share a meal with those you love. Thank you for reading!

Our Granddaughter, a Wonderfully, Gifted Soul!

When one thinks of an 11 year old female, one, often, does not think, “old soul.” I find myself thinking that often, especially when she requested a weekend with “Grandma and Grandpa.” “Can we have a, sort of, special Thanksgiving dinner with just the three of us?” Of course I answered, “yes.” It was the following that surprised me. I suppose I was thinking a traditional U. S. American Thanksgiving meal with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie! So, I asked “Sammy” about her preferred menu. “Let’s have grilled beef steak, fried potatoes and asparagus. Also, I want root beer floats for dessert!” That’s easy!

We just had one full Saturday with her, so we wanted to make it special. We began the day with her requested breakfast of Honey Combs breakfast cereal. I checked the ingredients. Because of the name of the cereal, the consumer is led to believe that it has honey. The product lists its ingredients as: corn flour, sugar, whole grain oat flour, modified cornstarch, corn syrup, honey, salt, turmeric (color), wheat starch. We were feeling indulgent, so we allowed her to have this allegedly healthy breakfast food.

After breakfast, we made our way to thrift stores (her old soul showing) and the mall (her pre-teen soul showing). We followed that with lunch at an Asian themed fast food place having to do with a panda. We knew we’d have a healthful dinner, so we moved forward. Here she is by a colorful mural on a wall downtown. Getting both her face and that of the mural’s subject meant that I had to sacrifice a close-up.

She actually tired of the activity, so we went home for a relatively quiet afternoon to prepare for our feast.

Menu:

Grilled Rib-eye Steaks

Fried potatoes (we mixed bintje and red gold potatoes, thinly sliced)

Buttered asparagus

Sparkling apple juice (instead of wine since the guest of honor is 11 years old)

Root Beer Floats

Grandpas purchased the steaks at a specialty meat shop. He patted them dry and applied salt and pepper before landing them on the grill.

I sliced the potatoes (with skins) thinly and allowed them to sit in very hot water for 10 minutes. I patted the tubers dry before adding them to hot sunflower oil. Salt and pepper were applied along with a lid in order for the potatoes to steam for five to eight minutes. I removed the lid after eight minutes to allow the potatoes to brown. Once the potatoes began to brown, I added two pats of butter, which aided further in the even browning. By the way, I fried the potatoes in a carbon steel wok, which aids in easy stirring.

The asparagus were simply steamed with added butter and salt toward the end of cooking time.

Here we are:

Here’s the happy menu planner, ready to tear into her special meal.

Now, the root beer float has been a topic of discussion and debate. Do you add the ice cream first or the root beer? When you put the ice cream in the glass first, adding the root beer causes a great foaming! Grandpa insisted that we pour the root beer in the tall glasses, first! Then we added the ice cream. It worked! No foaming! Let me know your thoughts on this. No matter, they were wonderfully creamy and delicious with the soda’s hint of allspice, ginger, sarsaparilla, dandelion root, and vanilla bean. It foamed, but the foam never ran over the sides of the glass. A great treat!

By the way, the lovely dandelion, the featured image, was taken by Sammy while playing on her uncle’s farm. She has a great eye for taking pictures.

Thank you for reading.

A Beautiful Young Lady

On September 27, 1981, a lovely little girl came into this world in last hour of the day. We called her Riki Lee. She was extraordinary in so many ways. A natural leader, Riki was often called, “bossy”, because the world isn’t used to girls who lead naturally. She went through school as a popular girl who gathered her peers at the house, or where ever young people gathered.

Riki tried everything, once. She played bass guitar in a band and tried her hand at skating boarding. She competed on the swim team, and did well. She played basketball, and was the high score-maker that year. What ever she tried, she did well. Riki worked as a waitress during high school, and came to love food and cooking.

At the age of 22, Riki married her childhood sweetheart, Jonathan. They had been best friends since the age of 12! In their 14 years of marriage, they had three lovely children. Riki worked as the director of nutrition for a school where she and her family live. Riki made friends quickly, and she was known as “Mama Bear” to her large group of friends she lovingly called, “The Village”. The Village gathered every Wednesday for Riki’s famous “taco bar”. She was known as a bread-maker and a cook of extraordinary talent. She was known for her homemade noodles, too. Her sons said they’d never find someone who cooks better that “Mom”.

It would take pages and pages to talk about Riki’s extraordinary life, and it was cut too short. On December 18, 2015 at 10:05 p.m., our son-in-law called to tell us Riki had a heart attack (She was 34), we jumped in the car and drove 9 hours through the night to get to her. She was on life supports. When we arrived at the hospital the next morning, The Village was in the waiting room of the intensive/critical care unit of the hospital. There were about 8 couples waiting. The men were openly weeping, and the women had the most frightened looks on their faces. “What was happening to their beloved ‘Mamma Bear’? I could feel such great love for our daughter in that room.

Riki had been on heart medication for the past 11 years. Because of a switch in insurance, she had to change cardiologists. The new doctor said, “You’re on strong medicine. Let’s take you off of it and see how you do.” Needless to say, that was a reckless call on the doc’s part.

Riki took her last breath New Year’s morning. So many things run through one’s mind as one witnesses the last breath of a child in a similar setting as the first breath is taken…in a hospital. The next dreadful step was to tell the children, ages 7, 11, and 12, that their mother was gone. Watching their little hearts break was excruciating!

Riki loved life, and she loved people. She was a wonderful mother, and a loving daughter to her parents and to her brother, Stevie. When we think of her, we think of this smile:

And this ornery streak:

When my sister passed at the age of 60, I read the words of Lebanese-American poet, Khalil Gibran, “On Children” to give my mother some comfort. Now, I read the words and find some comfort in them, too. If you ever get the chance, listen to the poem as brought to music by a Capella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock. They bring an exquisite meaning to the words.

On Children by Khalil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

We keep the memory of Riki in our hearts. We can hear her voice. We can hear her laughter. May she watch over her children, and may she rest in peace. Here is love to your, our beautiful daughter.

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