snowangel

One of things that stood out in your bio was the fact that you taught cooking and food service to children with disabilities for many years. As co (tri?) author of a course of cooking for a with disabilities on EGullet's Culinary Instite (click here and here and here), would you care to elaborate on this? I know, that this was what must seem like a lifetime ago and perhaps far from your current interests, but it is a subject that is important to many of us on EG.

I have larbed all sorts of things. The only real failures were tofu and hard boiled eggs. Oh, and that venison sausage I mentioned on my blog (too dry). I have not larbed catfish, but have done salmon, shrimp, squid and other fish (I have not, however, larbed sunnies; prefer them fried within minutes of bringing them in). The catch is that you should larb the fish raw, which is what I have always done because of the citrus effect of "cooking" the fish. In fact, when I larb rare steak, I aim to eat it pretty darned fast because the rare disappears when it is stored for very long. As a side note, my cousin Brian stopped by the other day to drop off his chain saw (not to self; add chain saw to Xmas wish list; totally OT) while I was lunching on some smoked pork larb. So, he joined me. Now, this is a guy who was raised on Goehner, NE. Population? Really small. Raised on tuna noodle casserole; orange jello salad with shredded carrots, canned mandarin oranges and canned pineapple; one of those areas where a tin of black pepper lasts years; you get the picture. Before he moved up here, his idea of exotic was canned La Choy chop suey. ANyway, he loved the larb. Enough that I made some more larb and showed him how to do it. Took him to the Asian Market where we set him up. Stopped at his house and gave him a quick curry lesson. And, he had his first bahn mi. He added extra peppers to his. I'm beaming with pride.

Yes, to the edgeless cookie sheet. That's what I have and use. But, why did my pizza stone crack? Need to replace it. The cracked one is round. Should I go square?

There's a place in Cloquet, MN. They cater to those of us driving through on our way up north. In fact, they are only open Memorial through Labor Days. Anyway, since they push this place, in part, as a good place to stop for a quick burger, I'm a bit puzzled by the one stall bathroom. The lines are often unbelievable. And, since the lines are long, the bathroom doesn't get cleaned often enough. BTW, they do serve a decent burger.

Ah, DCMark, you have hit a cord. The first day of fall has fallen, and this families fancy will soon turn to fall stuff. We will return to The Cabin in less than two weeks. I will don my Elmer Fudd jacket (red and black plaid, with a bird pouch in the back) and shot gun, and Paul and I will walk the road, searching for grouse. Given what we've seen this year, we will probably not get any grouse, but part of this is about walking the road, leaves down, being able to see through the woods. We will not duck hunt, locally. They seem to be flying a more western (Dakotas) flyway these days. But, Paul will go deer hunting, and hopefully once again, fill the freezer. Last year, he got a nice one. It had been a good year, food wise, for the deer, and he knows how to field dress, so the meat was wonderful. My problem with the whole thing was where the deer was processed. He ended up striking a deal with his dad where Paul would have a mess of summer sausage (quite good) and steaks and stuff. His dad has the whole thing processed into smoked brats and dogs. The processor was not great on the brats and dogs (not enough fat). I ended up on our deer with a mess of steaks and chops, but no smokable cuts, no big cuts. So, when Paul returns home that first week in November, with another dead deer in the back of a truck, I will rely on you folks to tell me how to take better charge of this beast. Peter (age 7 at the time) wondered why we didn't get the tongue and wondered what one would do with a dead deer tongue.

Geez. Half the fun of an 80+ degree day is firing up the Weber, cracking some cold brews and "working hard" to monitor the butt and do some gardening. I'm no lightweight! Should have had Paul take a photo of me last winter, scraping snow of the top of the Weber, to smoke some meat. Me, cleaning off a lawn chair, donning long johns and fleece pants, a parka, grabbing a cold one to watch my butt. Oven? That's for baking. When we want butt, we want it smoked.

Forgot to take photos, but Diana and I larbed some of my leftover smoked butt today. Good. Very good.

Yes, I should have posted photo of my butt after it was shredded. But, the lure of the butt was so strong that I could not have taken another minute to look for the digi cam. Anyway, we had the leftovers tonight. Gently warmed (added a smidgen -- as in one ice cube's worth -- of smoked pork stock). Warm corn tortillas, salsa made with some really great homegrown tomatoes, glistening onions from the farmer's market, a mess of peppers (mixture of serano, jalapeno and Thai bird) and some cilantro. All veg ingredients from the farmer's market. This was yummy. Way yummy. Lots o mileage can be gotten from a smoked butt. Not just food mileage, but that out on the deck, cold frosty one in hand, tending the trusty Weber on an unbelievable late September day (just realized that yesterday, smoking day, was the first day of falll; the weather belied the coming season).

I was mighty disappointed not to return to the cabin this weekend. But the promise of unseasonably warm weather and that great looking butt I found at the meat market (on sale for $.99/lb.) did a mighty fine job of assuaging that disappointment. Butt goes on After one hour, it looked like this After 2 hours, it looked like this After almost 4 hours, this is my butt I put in the meat thermometer just before I snapped this photo. Serious stall at about 170 degrees (f). I really should have taken a picture of the finished product before I started pulling, but by that time, and that many beers, taking pictures was just about the last thing on my mind. So, for dinner: pulled butt, sliced tomatoes; sweetest of sweet corn; buns; the South Carolina mustard/vinegar sauce from the currently-unavailable RecipeGullet; warm corn tortillas; a pico/salsa made with fresh tomatoes, onions, thai bird chilis, cilantro, some lime juice. And, peaches. More beer. Some wine. Gin and tonics. Smoked butt is really wonderful. I smell like smoke. edited to correct silly typos that happen when one drinks too many beers while smoking meat.

Please do talk about dough for pizza crust! And, thanks for answering my gardening questions. Glad that most of the veg is from the home place, not the supermarket!

Mamster, I will try Pim's recipe as soon as the weather bodes curry (currently, we're in sweet corn season). Yes, I do doctor purchased curry paste. Your post reminds me of how glad I am to live in an area of the country that has one of the highest per cap populations of Hmong. Even at the local big supermarket, I can get cilantro with roots. I have easy access to just about everything. It is wonderful. Kaffir lime leaves? Not a problem if you have a It springs, summers and falls outside, winters indoors. I know I'll never get a fruit, but that's not why I have it. It was a gift from a very thoughtful friend. Massaman. Yum. As much as I hate to see this season of the best bounty (tomatoes, basil, sweet corn to die for), 'tis getting to be time for indoors cooking. Edited to add: that other plant in the pot with my lime tree is a volunteer petunia. It, today, bloomed, shocking pink. The color contrast is quite beautiful. That's my rhubarb behind the plant. Doesn't it look wonderful. It's "heirloom" as in one of the two things I wanted from my grandmother's house when she died. The other was an Xmas cactus. A slip was given to her on her wedding day from her grandmother's plant.

I'm curious about the produce you bought. All of it from the supermarket? Is it local? Is it fresh? What varieties of tomatoes and sweet corn? At another time of year, I probably wouldn't ask these questions, but September here in Minnesota has been beautiful. Nice and warm. It's all about fresh tomatoes from the garden (they are ripening!) and sweet corn, boiled not long after being picked. I often shop at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market, where much of what is for sale was picked early that morning, with the picker wearing a miner's hat/light. Is it like this where you live? Yes, a photo of the cross section of a loaf of bread, please. And, please talk about butter in your area. We have become enchanted here with butter that is churned not far from where we live (I know I included a link to Hope Butter in my blog). Local, cultured, and oh so good.

Either use paperclips or wire trimmings to fill in here and there, or do what I did. Buy a gas stove. Buy some pipe and the other stuff you need and install it (I'm DYI on everything except childbirth and dental).

Wise words, oh Notorious Stickler. Sadly, my DLC-7 gave up the ghost about a year ago. Just quit. I disassembled, and that was that. (as a side note, sometime after I got mine, I got some notice about some lawsuit and replied and got a 2-quart Cuisinart saucepan with a wood handle and a lid with a wood knob -- my most well used kitchen item!). Somewhere along the line, someone gave me a Cuisinart mini processor -- the one with actual buttons, not a touch pad. So, when my DLC-7 gave it it's all, I did without, except for the mini. I missed the maxi. So, when Kohl's clearanced the Kitchenaides that came with the mini-bowl inserts, I bit. I gave away the mini-processor. I love my new unit. But, then again, I do a lot of the stuff that the Notorious Stickler ( ) said it's best for. Think about whether you would actually use it -- and whether you would use a mini or a maxi or both If you use both, get the kitchenaide. If not, get one or the other.. Mine is used a lot. Hummus and such is a regular (more than once a week) event in our house.

Me, too. Diana never went through that. Heidi on the other hand... She is 10 and only 52.5" tall, weighs about 55 lbs. She's tiny. Still wearing size 7 clothes. Today she ate: 4 scrambled eggs and 2 peaches for breakfast (at home). 3 boxes of cereal for breakfast at school (those little single serving boxes) and two containers of yogurt. FOr lunch, one cheese sandwich, 2 bananas, a huge bunch of grapes. And, she had a snack at school -- pudding cup (provided by school; not something I would send ) and 6 graham crackers. After school snack: 2 cheese rollups with a ton of refried beans, 2 more bananas. For dinner 3 hardboiled eggs, 10 golfball sized new potatoes and a chicken thigh. Add two more peaches. This does not include all of the milk she drinks. (I'm not counting water here, because it is free). How can she eat so much and be so tiny? I know, because of her genetic disorder, she has muscle tone issues, but...

So, I looked at the photos. Scarey bar, yes, but no scarier than Stand Up Frank's in North Minneapolis (especially when accompanied by a yuppie who wants to insult the working guys who frequent the joint). What got me was the "Polar Bear Swim" photo area. In this neck of the woods, the Polar Bear Swim is on January 1. There is usually ice on the lake. What I saw in the photos looked more like "tropical" bear swim.???? And, here, a contest featuring hurling frozen fish would be during the winter would feature the fish one tosses out of the fish house in January for preservation.

As the time of this report will indicate, we are not on our way to the cabin. Diana has a volleyball game at 8:00 pm, and a party afterwards, and the idea of getting into the car at 10:00 pm for a 4-1/2 hour drive at 10:00 pm doesn't work. Especially since we need to leave by 3:30 pm on Sunday (at the latest) to get home in time to get the kids to bed at a reasonal "night before school" time. But, we will return the first week of October, to celebrate Diana and Paul's birthdays (as we have done for many, many years) and to (hopefully) grouse hunt successfully. The grouse hunting has not been great the last few years. We are sort of wondering if one of us is correct that they are on a 7-year cycle, or if the one of us that thinks they are on an 11-year cycle is correct. But, first weekend of October is a given, and I have already made arrangements to take the kids out of school early. To "close up the cabin." Never mind that closing up the cabin involves nothing more than taking the screens off and putting the storm windows up (1/2 hour job, max). The big part of closing up the cabin is kissing it goodbye after the Best Summer Ever (every summer).

I could have just stood at the fridge, door open, and gnawed at that leftover chuck eye steak (rare). But, espying the lime, that kaffir lime tree I have, the lime, the colorful bag of bird chilis, and full well knowing that I have fish sauce, toasted rice powder, etc., the decision was made! Lunch larb Leftover meat makes wonderful larb. While I was at it, I larbed one of the venison brats we have (to the tune of 20+ pounds in the freezer, as someone suggested on my food blod. It was a waste of fish sauce. (I should add that the whole reason these brats are not very good is that there is not nearly enough fat in them. The place Paul took the deer -- never again! -- put enough fat into the summer sausage, but not the brats). I'm smoking a butt tomorrow and will larb some of that, as another test of larbable items. Larb science.

Canned peaches? Depends on the time of year. Come January, when what's in the market is mealy and tasteless, and will probably freeze between the exit door of the market and the car, yes, canned. 30-minute meals? I remember them well from my days as a full-time working mom. They can be made with inexpensive ingredients, fresh food. Let's add to the list of important pieces of equipment -- the crock pot! Wonder what he'd say about that item.

If memory serves me correctly, Torakris has very little freezer space...

Oh, summer. How do I love you? Let me count thy ways. Would it be that first trip to the farmer’s market? Those sweet peas? That spinach, those greens, tender as a newborn’s skin? Or would it be putting in that first tomato plant, hopefully a Brandywine? Or would it be that first ear of sweet corn? Those bi-colored kernels, bursting with sweet-corny goodness, requiring nothing but field to pot of boiling water ASAP? Or, perhaps, the first firing up of the Weber Kettle for burgers, brats, steaks, whatever, as soon as the frost has gone and the kids are almost done with the school year? Or, that first green bean, tender and slim, from that packet of pole beans that one so haphazardly scattered early in the season, espied, and eaten right off the vine? Oh, let’s not forget those peppers, red as a ruby, nor those slender zucchini, roasted on the Weber. Nor the hard-necked garlic, the tender glistening onions. Then there were the new potatoes, be they marble or golf-ball sized. Don’t roast them; the fall and winter’s chill will welcome heating the house with the oven. Rather, steam and dress with mayo or EVOO and vinegar. Add whatever. Or nothing (except perhaps butter, coarse sea salt and pepper). They can stand on their own. Or, perhaps a lug of those Colorado peaches. Juicy and ripe when arriving. Bite into, but biter beware. The juice will run down your arms, your mouth filled with luscious juicy sweetness. Oh, how could I forget those blueberries, loving picked on a granite outcropping way up north? Or, those oh-so-seedy raspberries that paved the way to the blueberries? And, those late summer sunnies. Cane poles, simple hooks and leeches? Scaled by kids, gutted by those same kids under the tutelage of those us who have been doing it for decades. Rashers of bacon, mounds of waffles, for breakfast, to steel all for a day in the lake. But, most of all we drank. Drank that cup of coffee before bounding outside to see what new was coming up; what was ripening. Drank another cup of coffee at the end of the dock at The Cabin. Drank of up those northern lights late night laying in the lake. Drank up late night sunsets. Drank up those memories of all we ate, all we grew, all we enjoyed, all that warmth that our skin absorbed, drank up what we sweat in those hot, sultry days, drank up the memories of Another Summer. Every summer is better than the last.

Lately, bahn mi, larb, sweet corn or peaches. (perhaps in reverse order, at least at this time of year.) Oh, throw in fresh, MN grow tomatoes.

Katie, one of the things I hated about being pregnant (other than barfing all of the time) was being so public. People seem to assume that you are there for them to fondle, ask about, whatever. A friend and I, both pregnant, both had people ask about our bowel habits. In an elevator, no less. Both askers were strangers. YIKES! Don't get me wrong. I loved having babies. It was just what other people said during the gestational period that pissed me off.

As the mother of Heidi, I have spent countless hours with children with disabilities -- in schools in "tough" neighborhoods, in parenting of children with disabilities groups. Most of them that I have encountered have been disabled not by food, but by genetics (some luck of the draw, as with Heidi, some because of heredity). For many prengant women, it is not about what is good to eat, but about what they can stomach. Said from a woman who was so sick the entire time she struggled to gain the 6 lbs. she did. I've been pregnant 3 times. Every time, in public, everything I consumed was viewed and commented on. It was horrible. I felt as if I were on display. Don't get me wrong. There are lots of FAS and crack babies out there. But, there are far more that are they way they are because of what happened one night, without anything but organic food and lots of love.