Indian Summer has arrived — it was 17 degrees on Saturday morning and 75 by afternoon. Our first hard frost which, surprisingly, everything left in the garden survived quite well. There’s chard out there still, and a lot of endives and chicories, and even a few random lettuces that sprouted from seed I dropped. Oh, and arugula. I cut the arugula way back in August, after it bolted during the record-setting heat we had in July, and it’s grown back quite nicely. I spent the weekend planting the last of the bulbs. My friend Nina called while I was in…
-
-
The MH called yesterday afternoon to see if I wanted to come over and hang out while he butchered for me, my job was to wrap meat. It was fun, we hung out in the garage as he dismembered my antelope and separated it into steaks, loin, stew meat and then everything else went into the burger pile. The cuts don’t really resemble steaks you’d buy in the store — essentially the MH dissembled the antelope muscle by muscle, and carefully removed the silverskin for me. The other nice thing about being there while it was butchered was that he…
-
So, the MH took me out antelope hunting this morning. I’d sort of hoped he’d kill the antelope for me, but for one thing that’s illegal, and for another thing, he wasn’t letting me off the hook that easily. He told me he’d help me, and that if I wanted to eat antelope, I should learn to kill one. He’s right, of course, but I was really nervous that I wouldn’t be able to do it. We got out there and had a good sight line and he helped me set up the shot, and believe it or not, I…
-
The NY Times health blog ran a little piece the other day that’s getting a lot of press in the foodie blog-o-sphere: Five Easy Ways to Go Organic. As one concerned mama points out over at the Cleaner Plate Club, this post has them talking and talking and talking … there were nearly 300 comments last time I checked, who knows what’s happened since then? Over at Serious Eats, they were only up to 12 comments last I looked, but all in all, the conversations in all these places quickly gets so contentious and complicated that it undermines the point…
-
Hello to any of you who came in via yesterday’s piece in the Livingston Enterprise — and please know, it’s not a “pig stomach” I cured in my basement, but a regular-old pork belly. I might be odd, but I’m not that odd!
-
Out here in Montana we don’t have the deciduous tree display like they do back east — we do have surprising splashes of gold aspens on mountainsides dark with conifers — last week I took the dogs up to Pine Creek for a hike and as we were driving into the trailhead there were two yellow aspens, halfway up the mountain, illuminated by the sunlight streaking down the canyon — just two, glowing like candles. One of the many reasons to live here. Anyhow, we don’t have the gorgeous red and gold and orange displays of the east, but what…
-
Last night my friend Bill Campbell’s documentary, Wolves In Paradise: Ranchers and Wolves in the New West had its premiere at the Bozeman Bioneers conference. It’s a terrific production — keep an eye out for it on your local PBS stations (or better yet, call and ask for it). Bill followed two different ranches who are dealing with the burden of ranching in wolf country. The margins for any of our small farmers or ranchers are so small that the losses caused by wolves killing or harrassing one’s cattle are substantial. Ranchers live or die by the amount of weight…
-
I realized the other day while making paté that my KitchenAid mixer turned 35 this year — thirty five years this yellow baby has been churning out egg whites and cookie dough and cake batter. The last couple of years it’s repetoire has expanded to include pasta dough and grinding meat — it’s a very talented machine. The KitchenAid belonged to my mother. She ordered it, with every attachment, the afternoon my father walked out. The story she tells is that she’d been wanting it, but he thought it was too expensive — so when he finally decided that he…
-
Look what I made this morning — ricotta cheese! On toast, with a little parsley/basil oil I put up this summer, some salt, some pepper — yum. My milk delivery is on Tuesdays, so it looks like Wednesdays are becoming Cheese Day. I like to let the gallon jar sit in the fridge overnight so the cream will separate out, but the gallon jar takes up too much room. So Wednesday mornings I skim off the cream (this week I mixed last week’s leftover cream with the leftover Créme Fraiche I made a couple of weeks ago and set it…
-
Ever since I bought Pork and Sons last spring, I’ve been wanting to make the Terrine Jacquy — whenever I’ve been in France I’ve been fascinated by the sheer variety of potted terrines — they’re everywhere in a million variations. The last couple of years I’ve been doing food baskets for Christmas presents — trying to share the fruits of my garden and wildcrafted finds like dried morels — so I saw the Terrine Jacquy and thought how cool — those would be great in Christmas baskets — The original recipe is pretty simple — 5.5 pounds of pork belly,…