It's Not About Me

Roasted Hatch Chiles

At our house, autumn in the kitchen means huge cauldrons of bubbling tomatoes on their way to salsa. Then, when my wife has recovered, in come the cardboard boxes of apples which go out the end of our Kitchenaid processor as applesauce, headed towards gleaming canning jars. By then the weather should be cooling and on busy intersections of our town you will find pickup trucks with chiles from Hatch, New Mexico. Next to the truck are round, spinning cylinders where propane burners roast the chiles, creating an addicting aroma of smoke and spice. 

The roasted chiles can be used in practically any dish (except maybe Key Lime pie). There is however one absolutely superior way to serve these green delights. Wash off the hard, burnt, outer core. Split the chiles and pull out the seeds. Next coat the chiles in flour. Fry them up in a iron pan with some corn or olive oil. Meanwhile have some shredded cheddar cheese ready to melt on top just as they're finishing up. Serve hot with dollops of sour cream. I didn't use the term "addicting" lightly. My wife used to buy a couple bags - now they smoke up the car as she brings them home by the bushel and into the freezer where, hopefully, we'll have enough chiles to get us to next September. 

Marijuana - Exhibit A*

My history with marijuana is rather limited. Limited in fact to a Clinton-esque episode in our college dorm where I polished off a half-pan of brownies that were not rightly mine. The baker of the goodies shortly informed that these were “magic brownies” and hoped I would enjoy them. Hmmmm, I thought, that explains the slightly burnt flavor.  My encounter was Clinton-esque in that, seriously, like Bill, I didn’t inhale and I didn’t get high. 

After leaving behind the hippie culture of college I didn’t run into the weed much except for the occasional drift of that slightly sweet aroma at concerts. In the last two years, however, Mary Jane has become the last best hope of the Colorado real estate industry as “medical” marijuana dispensaries, now more ubiquitous than Starbucks, invade every decaying strip mall in Colorado. Why the scare quotes? Well, it might be best explained by a study that demonstrated the highest concentration of chronic pain exists in 19-24 year old males in Summit County. Who knows, maybe handing chairs off to skiers all day leads to repetitive motion disease. 

Anyway, even if I tire of seeing the green cross of wellness every quarter mile, I do get a kick out of the creative names that shop keepers use to try and get their particular concern noticed in the latest western “gold” rush. Here are some favorites. 

The Indispensary 

Best Budz 

The Village Green 

Humboldt Wellness Center 

Grateful Meds 

Rocky Mountain High 

Strawberry Fields Alternative Health 

Mile High Holisitics 

Terrapin Care Station 

Rocky Mountain Farmacy 

The Green House 

ACME Smoke 

Alpenglow Botanicals

 

And as a Dylan fan, my favorite, Maggie's Farm.

* Rock trivia kudos if you recognized this line from Jerry Garcia's five-second appearance on the movie "Woodstock". 

Blåbärssoppa (aka Blueberry Soup)

Blueberry soup and I have a long history. It may have begun at Grandma Hammerstrom's dinner table, but I became a real fan with my several trips to Sweden during college. There you can buy it dried in foil packets or by the liter in milk-type containers. Then there was the '70's outing Mike B. and I took to West Virginia's Dolly Sods Wilderness where we cooked up a mixture of just-picked-huckleberries, some red wine, a bit of water and honey for our very own Mountain State blueberry soup.

The "soppa" is standard fare at rest/rehydration stations during Scandinavian cross-country ski races. In 1990 I skied the long-distance "Finlandia-hiihto" in Lahti, Finland where every 10K you would unclip your skis and hand them to the wax attendant who would take a propane torch to the bottom of your skis, scrape off the old wax, then hand them to the next guy who would slop on molten wax from a bubbling pot. Next you shuffled over to the food station where waited warm water, warm Gatorade, or the best of all worlds, warm blueberry soup which would revive you for at least another 2K.

The week after the "Finlandia-hiihto" I was to ski the grandpappy of all long-distance races, the "Vasaloppet", a 90K ski race that attracts some 15,000 skinny-skiers. After training for a couple years and crossing the Atlantic, the race was called off for only the third time since its inception in 1922. The reason - no snow! I read of its cancellation in the Stockholm paper under the headline, "What Do You Do With 20,000 Liters Of Blueberry Soup?"

My most recent encounter with the blue nectar was during our Baltic cruise on the Holland America Line where we were met nightly in the dining room with a choice of chilled soup on the appetizer menu. Each one is extraordinary - worth the trip alone, but of course it was the blåbärssoppa that won the gold medal. I'm sure there are as many recipes as there are Swedish grandmas, but here is our attempt at a dish that will make you smile.

HAMMERSTROM'S BLUEBERRY SOUP

4 cups blueberries
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons sugar

Blend all ingredients together. Chill well and serve cold. Varsågod!

 

It's For The Kids

The other day I was out driving the local strip and went past "3 Margaritas Family Restaurant". For the life of me, I can't figure out why a Mexican food joint gets a free pass on the family alcohol thing and nobody else does. Can you imagine a Polish "2 Shots And A Beer Family Restaurant" or a UK themed, "Single Malt Scotch Family Restaurant". You could even go Asian and have the "Full Bottle of Sake Family Restaurant".  

No Whining

Last week my dear wife asked me to stop by the grocery store to pick up some eggs on the way home from work. I found myself muttering as I hiked across the great expanse of this big box marketplace, "I can't believe I have to walk all the way to the far corner of this place just to find a box of freakin' eggs."  Almost as quickly I wondered how it was I could complain that just a few hundred yards from my office was a mind-boggling cornucopia of food so large it took me minutes just to get through part of it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people who ever walked the planet would just stand there with their mouths gaping if they ever saw such a sight!

Then today I was treated to a firehose of a podcast sermon by Ben Merkle from Christ Church in Moscow, "The Poison Of The Sidelong Glance" . You will be well rewarded if you click on the title. (The finest riches are towards the end.) Here's the quote pertient to the grumbly meanderings between my ears.

"All these little discontentment work their way in and tell us that we have been robbed, tell us that we have been treated unjustly. We do this all the time when we are feeling fussy about our lot in life, but it is purely just subjective fussing. It is the sidelong glance."

"It is not only that, it is preferring the most negative possible comparison imaginable; bec ause when I do the sidelong glance I somehow miss all of the people who have none of the blessings I have.  All those people are completely off the screen. I look to the left, I look to the right. I manage to only single out only those people who have more than me. And those are the people I compare myself to.  I completely miss the thousands and thousands of people who don’t have what I have. And after I have deleted out 99.9% of the world’s population I take that last 0.1% and say, “It’s not fair…”

Barley Challenged

My wife was talking to a friend at church yesterday who also has a husband on a gluten-free diet. She commented, "I'm tired of shopping for "special needs" beer."

A Tale Of Two Crusts

It was the best of times. It was the dumbest of times. Early on courtin' the fair and lovely maiden who is now my bride, I made a true, but foolish statement.  It was in response to a pie that she had made especially for me. When queried as to its quality, I responded that the filling was quite excellent, but the crust was not as good as my mother's. Her reaction was was filled with more grace than the situation deserved, but more surprising than that, she leaved her old crust recipe behind and cleaved to our family recipe (even before she did to me). It is now rare that she will serve a pie to a new guest and not get a comment on the supreme excellency of her dessert, not to mention winning a couple of pie contests.

 
The only real tragic tension in this story is that I have been gluten free for three years now -  making it 36+ months since I have enjoyed said recipe. Enter "Gluten Free Girl", a culinary oasis for those of us not benefiting from the ubiquitous wheat kernel. This crust, although a bit more of a hassle to create, tastes fantastic with its subtle, almond overtones and flakes just a good as my mom's. So dry your tears for me and get your hands into the bowl. Choose the recipe depending on your circumstances.

 

MY MOM"S CLASSIC PIE CRUST

2 c + 2 T of flour
1/4 t salt
1/3 c Mazola corn oil
2 T cold water

Mix each ingredient in turn. Roll out between wax paper and then be challenged to get it into the pie plate. Makes one single crust. Don't more than double the recipe!

MORE THAN GOOD GLUTEN-FREE PIE CRUST                  

1 1/4c almond flour
2/3 c tapioca flour
2/3 c gluten-free oat flour (Good luck finding this, I substituted Pamela's gluten-free flour mix.) 
1/2 c teff flour (Gives beautiful color and texture to crust.)
1/2 c potato starch
1/4 c sweet rice flour
2 t xanthan gum
1/4 t guar gum
1/2 t salt
9 T stick butter, kept in freezer for 20 minutes
1 large egg
8 T ice-cold water

Mixing the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, mix the almond flour, oat flour (or Pamela's), tapioca 
flour, teff flour, and potato starch. I use a whisk here, and slow down as I mix them, repeatedly, until they have become one flour. Add the xanthan and guar gums and the salt. Mix well.


Adding the fats. Add small pieces of the ice-cold butter to the flour mixture, not much bigger than a pea. Freeze your butter beforehand, then grate the frozen butter into the flours. Move quickly!

Making the sandy dough. Use your hands to scoop up the flours and mix in the fats. Go slowly. Rub your hands together. Feel the fats work into the flours with your fingers. I like to lift and rub, scoop and let them all fall through my fingers. You'll know when you are done. You'll feel done. The flours will look sandy now.

Finishing the dough. Combine the egg with 3 tablespoons of the water and whisk them together. Here's where you can go two ways. If you want to do everything by hand, then do so. Add the eggy water to the dough. Work the dough together with your hands, or a rubber spatula, or whatever feels right. When the dough feels coherent, stop.

Or, you can do what I have reluctantly realized makes gluten-free pie dough even better than making it by hand: finish it in the food processor. Move the sandy dough to the food processor and turn it on. As the dough is running around and around, drizzle in the eggy water. Stop to feel the dough. If it still feels dry and not quite there, then drizzle in a bit more water. If you go too far, and the dough begins to feel sticky or wet, sprinkle in a bit of potato starch to dry it out. Again, after you make pies for awhile, you'll know this by feel alone.

Making the crust. Wrap the pie dough in plastic wrap (or in a bowl) and let it rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or so. Take it out and roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper. This means you won't work any extra flour into the dough. Roll it out as thin as you can. Thinner. Thinner. Come on, you can do it — thinner still. Carefully, lift the top piece of parchment paper and turn the dough upside down on the top of a pie plate. Rearrange until it is flat.

If the dough breaks, don't despair. Simply lift pieces of the dough off the counter and meld it with the rest of the dough. Remember, there's no gluten, so you can't overwork the dough. Play with it, like you're a kid again. Place the pie dough in the pie plate and crimp. When you have a pie dough fully built, you are ready to make pie.

Put the pie pan in the refrigerator while you preheat the oven to 325° and make the filling.

(This second recipe is lifted directly from the Gluten Free Girl website with a couple of tweaks on my part.)

Ben Franklin - Hops & Caffeine

When we head back to NE Oregon the best destination for fellowship, Christian and otherwise is Terminal Gravity Brewing, home of the planet's finest IPA. Hanging near the register just above the photo of some cowboy hippies is a small sign - reportedly a quote from Benjamin Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy". Today I saw a T-shirt with this play on the sage of Philadelphia's wisdom: "Caffeine is proof God loves us and wants us to pay attention."

Cider Field Rules

It's that cider time of year:

 

   No finger parts in the cider boys!

 

 Easy to squeeze?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Many hands make light work...

 

 

 

 

 

 

    The point of it all.

 

 

  Leftovers - apple poop. 

Buy A Hair

An Oregon friend was telling the story of a recent visit to Spokane where she picked up her son late one night at Geiger Field. It was a four-hour drive back home so they checked in to a city hotel.  As the son slid down between the sheets he discovered someone else’s socks at his toes. Obviously housekeeping had made the bed, but not bothered to change the sheets!  Sometimes you get more than you paid for.

So it was last week as we enjoyed a lovely evening on the porch at Park City’s Windy Ridge Café.  We were not eating off china or linen, but it was no McDonalds either.  My wife had made it about three-quarters of the way through her usual Caesar when out popped a juicy hair.  She mentioned this to the waitress who apologized and brought over the maître d' who likewise offered his regrets. When the penitential free desert was offered, Jo chose the Key Lime pie that the wait staff had been bragging on. The pie was as good as they said, but lo and behold there in the crust lay another hair. We just burst out laughing and let it go.  No further mention was made to our hosts, as I thought we might get tossed on the street as grifters, mooching our way through the Wasatch. It wasn’t easy though to keep a straight face as the waitress gave us our check and reassured us that this unusual event would not happen again.

Now my dear wife is no stranger to little extras in her food.  There was the second evening of our honeymoon at an Indian bistro in Edinburgh when the crunch in a Bengali curry proved be a thick fingernail clipping.  Neither will she forget the time her molars found a one-inch bolt in (of course) a Caesar at the Banff Hard Rock Café.

I’m sure everyone has plenty of foreign body stories, but how many others have two-fers like my wife in Park City? Well it wasn’t her first. I don’t remember if it was a birthday or anniversary, but we were celebrating at Primitivo, a delightful but now defunct up-scale eatery in downtown Colorado Springs.  She started with a by-the-glass chardonnay in which proudly floated over an inch of broken cork. She, being the conflict-avoidant woman that she is, apologetically brought this to the waiter’s attention. He too was embarrassed and called the wine steward who immediately offered a replacement serving of another variety of wine. It was all good, but to our amazement the substitute sported not one, but three pieces of submerged cork. We smiled and enjoyed an excellent entrée.