heat wave

Triple digits today, maybe.  Water, water, water!  I have a number of volunteer cucurbits of different sizes and varieties.  I may be propagating watery winter Safeway cucumbers; we’ll see!

The lettuce has been slow to bolt, but the arugula has gone to hell.  I’m making a Zolfino bean salad with these lovely striated arugula flowers, celery, and freshly pulled red onions and shallots.

I’ve one artichoke left…will probably leave it because I and the bees like the giant thistleflower it becomes.  Pulled out a number of bolting cilantro, both for the flowers and the roots, which are used in Thai cooking.  And in my Oregon shrimp ceviche, now marinating in the ‘fridge, yum.

Solar power!  My tomatoes are almost supernatural this year.  I used a new organic fertilizer.  Will they crash and burn?  I’m a little afraid of them.  You can just see the galvanized trash can that holds my potatoes in the back of the frame.  Maybe I’ll dig out a few new potatoes?

But it’s already too late for today.  To the airconditioned cave, Batprofessor!

some like it hot: a canning tradition

Seems I always/only have time + excess produce during the one week of summer that the Oregonian deities deem Let’s Scald the Lily White Flesh of Those Fragile Mud Creatures with Scorching Temperatures after a Year of Rain Week.  So let’s just make it a tradition: I can when the temps hit the 90s.   If I lay these plans bestly, maybe they will go awry?

So this time, I managed to snap up some achingly fresh, machete-cut fat asparagus spears and a lug of apricots on special at a glorified farm stand, pickle and chocolate factory, tamale and salsa industrial complex, and tourist mecca in Eastern Washington — Country Mercantile, off I-395. (Their line of preserved foods is impressive — I almost succumbed to the Old World Cabbage pickles and a big jar of preserved mixed fruit, given their rarity, and I tasted about 2 dozen fresh and canned salsas, each excellent.)

That meant I had 5 pounds of perfect asparagus and 20 pounds of perfect apricots to dispatch with…and quickly.

I’m down to 0 pounds of asparagus, thanks to my lightening speed pickling skillz, and 7 pounds of apricots, thanks to the powers of jam and tarte.  Will post more later.  Produce, like all ripe bodies, on the rot.  With miles to go before I sleep.

But before I get back in the saddle, check out this awesome vintage can lifter I bought in an antique store in Helena, Montana.  One-handed lifting, bitches.  I’ll never use one of those clunky two-handed Kerr things again.  If you find one, pick it up.  Highly recommended.

culinaria eugenius in montana: a cool one

We left our heroine in Wallace, Idaho, where she was contemplating buying three milkshakes at once just to see the old Hamilton Beach tri-head mixer do its thing.  Instead, she duded up and rode off into the sunrise to Montana for a long July 4th weekend.

We partook in a bison sirloin steak with a merlot glaze and blue cheese butter (sadly, the photos look disgusting) at a fancy steakhouse in Helena, but the chow was otherwise humble.  We canned some dilly beans, grilled burgers, and made excellent margaritas at my sister’s place.  Then we headed over to Livingston, until recently the home of my brother, whose digital archiving skills were used on a collection of historic photos that now hang in The Mint bar, above, among other places.

Bars and drinking are a theme in Montana, as you might imagine.  It’s usually hot and dry in the summer, and pains are taken to properly hydrate.  One can drink in many ways:

1) Teabagging at the Livingston Parade under a big Coca-Cola ad.

2) Fresh well water pumped by my nephew at a day camp site as we boated through the Gates of the Mountains, so named by Lewis and Clark in 1805 as they journeyed through the limestone cliffs that channelled the Missouri River.

3)  Using plastic water bottles as targets for skeet-shooting practice.  Take that, California!  (Retrogrouch managed to get one pellet from a shotgun in this rara avis as it flew through the air.)

3)  I made mincemeat of this soda can on behalf of all sustainable food practitioners everywhere (also hit the bullseye, please note, bottom right: yeehaw!)

4)  Miller Lite in the back woods after our gun battle in the mountains outside of Helena (re-creation). Montana finally joined the rest of the Union by instituting a no open alcoholic beverage containers law in vehicles a couple of years ago.  Local custom, however, dictates a cold one after a shoot.

5) Or, if you prefer wine: Merlot on the rocks at the Livingston Rodeo.  N.b., they also serve a mean G-n-T.

6)  Yep, there are plenty of ways to get your beverages.  If you want whiskey, check out one of the many saloons in the two-block town of Livingston depicted immediately above and in the first shot of this post, that is, if you can get past the guy protesting our socialist government by handing out free fake money to children on the Tea Party float.

Don’t worry, I got the situation covered.

7)  Even American film director Sam Peckinpah drank up in Livingston, when he lived in the town for a decade in the 1970s and 80s.  You can still see the bullet holes he shot into the ceiling of his suite in the 1904 grand Murray hotel while on a bender.

8)  Luckily, all is not Tea Party and drunken shooting in Montana, however.  This lady looks like a transplant from Eugene, reminding us all to recycle our beverage cans.  Even if they’re shot full of holes!  This means you, furface:

Don’t drink and drive!  With that rig, he obviously hasn’t been following changes in the law.  Nevertheless, as you can see, a great time was had by all. Thanks, Montana, and thanks, family!

culinaria eugenius in wallace, idaho

On our road trip to Montana, which has proven uninteresting foodwise but otherwise full of family fun, we stopped for dinner in the small mining town of Wallace, Idaho.  I knew I’d like the place when I saw a big banner advertising their annual huckleberry festival in August, but there’s so much more to like, including the downtown.

We were seduced off the freeway by the Smoke House, a barbecue joint downtown that advertised on one of those signs that usually tout fast food places.  But when we moseyed down the main drag, we were overjoyed to see not only the perfectly preserved facades of a late-nineteenth-century small town, but the squatting black smoke-belching monster.  The Smoke House smokes its own barbecue pork and beef on the sidewalk in a big ol’ smoker:

The “French Dip” was brilliantly improved by smoked brisket and house-made BBQ sauce added immediately prior to dippin’.  A fresh but lackluster coleslaw and oddly mushy beans didn’t make me jump for joy, but the meat was good enough to ignore the sides.

And the huckleberry margarita tasted like neither huckleberry nor a margarita, but I knew they were out of season and the waiter warned me, so I forgave them.

Plus, a pint of margarita is always a good idea.  My fellow traveler’s mac-n-cheese was pretty darn good, and he enjoyed his ribs.  Plus, it was a lovely evening, the American flags and bunting were out, and there weren’t too many people out and about on the street, so we were pretty satisfied.  We were to find out later that Wallace’s downtown buildings are all on the National Register of Historic Places — yes, every single one of them.  It was a move made by the town to force the Feds to reroute I-90 (the alternative would have been to destroy the town, mofos).  The town has a history of taking on the big guns — there were plenty of skirmishes between the miners and the mine bosses in the old days, and they somehow managed to turn the old railroad tracks into miles of gorgeous hiking paths.

Even though the Smoke House on the main drag is good, the real dining pleasure is just off the highway, a place at which we decided to stop when we saw a sign advertising espresso next to a Sputnik-inspired satellite and a googie sign for the Stardust Motel.

Both the satellite and the sign belong to the Red Light Garage, a restaurant, curio shop and café that boasts fresh huckleberry ice cream.  Better yet, they have *stuff* — all kinds of memorabilia and thrift store finds, carefully cultivated and fixed up and arranged all over the old, renovated garage.  The owner, a genial man who came out and asked me about the photos I was taking of my stuffed hippo traveling companion (don’t ask), is pictured below, sitting on what used to be the car jack in the garage.

He’s a mechanical whiz; I was astounded by all the old, renovated chandeliers in the shop, his vintage three-head shake machine (“I make 150 shakes a day in the high season with it!”) and the coin-operated pianola that was allegedly rescued from a brothel in Wisconsin.

Sadly, I missed the brothel museum and the town’s antique stores, both of which were closed by the time we got there in the evening.  But gosh, who knew a town with a population of 1000 in the middle of nowhere, Idaho, could be such fun?  We’ll be back.