Laundry Day or I'm a Nattering Nabob of Nincompoopery

I have observed over time that there are two kinds of people in the world; those that can fold laundry and those that can't. Those that can are almost always women or those few men around who made a career of the military. In the case of women I'm pretty sure it's one of those XY chromosome things. For those men that make a career in the military I've often wondered what came first; the ability to fold laundry or the career in the military?

You may be asking yourself "why is he writing about folding laundry?" Well the answer is that I'm sitting in the laundromat on this damp Superbowl Sunday. I come to the laundromat two or three times a year when I have items too large for the superduty large capacity Maytag at home. I'm washing a comforter that was barfed on by a cat in the middle of the night - something that happens, oddly enough, two or three times a year.

One thing I have discovered about barfing cats; when they start to barf, all you can do is sit back and let it happen and when it's over clean it up. The worst thing you can do is try to grab them. If you make a move towards a cat in the act they dash under the bed or behind the couch. The net result is more work, because now you have to move a piece of furniture to get to the damn mess. The up side to this is that I probably needed to clean under the bed or behind the couch anyway.

Notice the upper right hand corner of the drawing

Back to folding laundry..... I'm formalizing my observations about the two kinds of people after several years of observation and conversation with folks here at the laundromat. Women and retired military types always fold their laundry before they leave and they seem to do it quickly and effortlessly. The rest of us pile it into our baskets and quietly scurry away to fold our laundry, at home, in shame. When I fold my laundry each lumpy item bares little resemblance to the similar item I've just folded. Quickly hidden away in drawers; it's out of sight and out of mind. The only satisfaction I derive from this operation is that I don't have baskets full of wrinkled and unfolded laundry strewn about the house.

It's Super Bowl Sunday and it feels cold and damp. I'm making soup to ward off the chill.

Super Bowl Chicken Stew

Based on a recipe from the Kitchen Parade Blog

• 1 really large onion, chopped
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 pounds bone in chicken thighs - skin removed
• 3 carrots sliced into 1/8th inch coins
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 3/4 inch cubes
• 1 apple, cored and chopped in 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 cups dry riesling
• 1 can chicken broth
• 1 can stewed tomatoes
• 1/4 teaspoon summer savory or sage
• 1/4 teaspoon basil
• 2 or 3 tablespoons of flour

Brown the chicken thighs in olive oil until they're cooked through and remove to a platter

Briefly saute' the carrots, celery and onions until they're just softening up a bit.

Add everything else but the flour into the pot and bring to a simmer.

Cook until the sweet potatoes are done.

Fish out the thighs, while they cooling do the step below and then remove the bones and shred into bite size pieces.

Mix the flour with a bit of water and then mix in some of the broth from the stew - stirring constantly to avoid lumps - add the mixture to the stew and cook for another five or ten minutes to thicken and cook out the flour taste.

Return the shredded chicken to the pot and serve.

I'm going to drink a 2007 Bethel Heights Gewurztraminer with this, but you could go with a Riesling or the beer of your choice.

The Cocktail of the Day is the Mythic Wood, which I wrote about here 

A note on the Day after Superbowl - I don't know why I didn't pick the Sazerac as the drink of the day yesterday - it would have been appropriate as it is the national drink of New Orleans!

The Map of the Cats Brain Cartoon was Originally published in MS Magazine, Vol III, #1, July/August 1992

Life is the Pits!

It was one of those weeks where Friday couldn't come soon enough. Wednesday morning I went out to head for work and discovered that my car had been broken into. The driver's door window was broken out and shattered glass was all over the interior of the car. Apparently they thought they needed the things in my car more than I did. I've seen enough of the PPB talks on car prowls that I didn't have anything of value in view and very little of value in the car. The value of the items taken was less than $25 - the window was $155 to replace.

Late last summer I ate apricots at a furious pace and managed to collect an ounce of apricot pits to make apricot kernel liqueur. An ounce of apricot kernels is about a 1/3 of a cup. Doesn't sound like much but it represents a lot of damn apricots!

The inspiration for this came from Matthew Rowley's Whiskey Forge Blog

Please Note! Apricot kernels contain cyanide in trace amounts! The minimum lethal dose is about 3-4 ounces of raw apricot pits. In other words you'd have to drink in excess of three 750 bottles of this liqueur to approach this. I think most of us would pass out or throw up before we reached that level and if we didn't we'd probably wish we were dead when we woke up later.

Amaretto is considered to be an Almond Flavored Liqueur, but in fact it can be made with apricot kernels or almonds or both.

Housemade Apricot Kernel Liqueur

Ingredients:
16 oz 100 proof vodka plus a bit more
1 oz shelled apricot kernels - you can buy them by the pound on Amazon or eBay
12 oz agave Syrup
12 oz water

Method:

Put the apricot kernels and vodka in an air tight glass jar and stash away in a cool dark place for several months.

Strain the resulting extract through a coffee filter and add additional vodka to bring the total back to 16 ounces.

Add the 16 ounces of filtered extract to the water and agave syrup and mix thoroughly. Pour it into bottles and seal tightly - store it in a cool dark place.

Godfather

1 oz Blended Scotch
1 oz Housemade Apricot Kernel Liqueur

Mix in an old fashioned class filled with ice cubes

There are more drinks and links Here

Yin and Yang

Yesterday was such a beautiful day. It was pretty nice outside too.

I went down to Salem to make sausage with my friend Daryl. Daryl earns his keep as a caterer (he and his wife Leslie own Loustic Catering in Salem), but we started making sausage together before he got back to cooking professionally. He's catering a big Superbowl party and we used the sausage making as an excuse to get together.

We made four kinds of sausage yesterday, two with pork and one each with lamb and chicken. We've developed a couple of our own recipes over the years but all four of these were from Polcyn and Ruhlman's book "Charcuterie".

There are several things I enjoy about sausage making; first and foremost is getting together with a friend, but beyond that is the ability to control the ingredients and tweak the flavors to our own tastes.

The breakfast sausage recipe needed a bunch of tweaking after tasting a bit - we added more sage, a bit of nutmeg and a bunch of red pepper flakes. I had some this morning for breakfast and the seasoning was all good except for too much garlic! I'm not a garlic fan first thing in the morning. We've got our own recipe for breakfast sausage that I much prefer. The one thing I did get from this recipe is how much fresh ginger you can put in and not have it dominate the flavor. I'm going to add more ginger to our breakfast sausage recipe the next time I make it.

The other pork sausage we made was the Sweet Italian Sausage. I've been told that traditional Sweet Italian Sausage has no garlic in it. This has plenty! It makes a very flavorful sausage that is great grilled or used in spaghetti sauce or in a lasagna.

We made a lamb and rosemary sausage the was chock full of rosemary. I'm really looking forward to throwing some of these on the grill when it warms up. I think this sausage would really pair well with a Zinfandel, Southern Rhone wine or a jammy Las Rochas Garnacha.

The final sausage we made was a chicken sausage with roasted garlic and oregano. I have to say I'm not usually a fan of chicken sausage, but this one turned out pretty well. The original recipe called for duck and substituting chicken was just the first of many deviations we made from the recipe as written. The final result bore little resemblance to th e original. We had some left over and were throwing some ideas around about how to use it and we came up with using stuffing a chicken breast with it, wrapping it in prosciutto and baking it or using it as a stuffing for mushroom caps. You could serve the stuffed mushroom caps with a lighter Pinot Noir or a Sauvignon Blanc and it would be pretty tasty.

I'm not much of a beer drinker, but I thought an earthy Belgian Ale would be good with these chicken sausages. I need to see if I can get a couple of more bottles of Gilgamesh Cranberry Saison - the tart cranberry component and lack of hops makes this beer easier for me to match with food (their Hopscotch Scottish Ale is also very good). It's a seasonal product and they don't yet have wide distribution, but if you live in the Salem or Portland area you may be able to arrange for a delivery by contacting the folks on the website.

Daryl threw together a wonderful bright squash soup for lunch. He served it up with a tossed salad with a miso vinaigrette (I need to get the recipe!) and a really good bottle of 2007 Bethel Height's Gewurztraminer. I have to say that it is the best American made Gewurtz I've ever had - I might have mistaken it for an Alsatian version if I hadn't seen the label.

I brought home some of the left over soup and had it for dinner last night. It was so good I decided to make it again today. It's equally good on a warm, bright day (Yang) or a cold dark day (Yin). Daryl used Sweet Meat Squash and the soup was canary yellow. I used a couple of small Kobucha squash and the soup has a much oranger hue. I think you could probably make this with carrots or sweet potatoes and it would be pretty darn good.

Daryl's Yin Yang Winter Squash Soup - I'm drinking cheap TJ's dry sherry with this as I type!

4 cups Winter Squash - peeled and cut in to large chunks
4 cups chicken broth - homemade if you've got it
4 large cloves of minced garlic
4 T minced ginger
1 cup cream, half and half or milk - of course it will be richer if you've got cream, but you suit yourself.

Throw the squash, broth, ginger and garlic in a pot and cook until the squash is tender

Blend it with a stick blender or in batches in a blender.

Add the dairy and warm it up if necessary.

Add salt to taste if necessary.

A follow up to a cocktail recipe I posted a couple of weeks ago

Modified Lion's Tail

• 2 ½ oz. Bourbon Whiskey
• ½ oz. Allspice Dram
• ¾ oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, fill with ice and serve.

I find this is more to my liking than the original and very tasty original recipe posted below. I like the match of the lemon with the vanilla notes of the bourbon and with the lower acidity of the lemon, the additional simple syrup isn't needed.

Lion's Tail

• 2 oz. Bourbon Whiskey
• ½ oz. to ¾ oz. Allspice Dram
• ½ oz. Fresh Lime Juice
• ½ spoonful of Simple Syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Happy New Year!

It's Friday. It's the weekend. It's time to clean house!

It would have been nice to start the New Year with a clean house.....but let's face it Pig Pen is my idol. The kid made a career out of being a mess; if only I could do the same.

I've been washing dishes; all by hand, no dishwasher but me in this house. Washing and folding laundry. Cleaning out the refrigerator and finding a few buried treasures including some that are usable and the inevitable science experiments.

All of this would be easier if I'd stayed home last night and gone to bed at a reasonable time. But no, I went out, had a wonderful time and finally made it to bed at 0330. Fortunately I passed up on most of the wonderful selection of alcohol and partook modestly of the extravagant bounty of food available last night. So while I'm moving slowly today, I'm not in pain.

It was a wonderful time last night. Ringing in the New Year with a small group of friends. The people and the conversation were eclectic. Solving the worlds problems, a bit of reminiscing and a lot of laughing.

The treasure in the refrigerator were a couple of bags of cranberries. I'd bought them the day before Thanksgiving when I thought I was responsible for making the cranberry relish. They've been hiding in the back of the produce drawer ever since. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade - when life hands you cranberries, make Cranberry Liqueur!

Cranberry Liqueur - Gunther Anderson's recipe with minor variations

Ingredients:

• 2 - 12 oz bags Oregon cranberries
• 2 Satsuma Mandarins - peel and all
  
• 2 1/4 cups vodka - I used 80 proof
  
• 2 1/4 cups sugar (use good organic evaporated cane sugar)
• 1 1/4 cups filtered water
• 4 cloves
• 8 allspice berries
• 1 cinnamon stick
• peel of one small lemon

Method;

1. Process cranberries and mandarins in a food processor until finely chopped - do it in two batches
2. Put all ingredients into a half gallon jar
3. Store in a dark corner of the kitchen for four weeks and give a shake or two daily
4. Line a colander with cheese cloth and strain.
   
5. Squeeze the cheese cloth to extract as much liquid as possible
6. Let it settle for a few days and then pour off the clear liquid and strain through a coffee filter.

According to the recipe this is based on it should make about 6 cups. For more information on making Liqueurs visit Gunther Anderson's liqueur pages

Here's a cocktail that looks like it would be good - I'll report back later!

Gundalow

2 1/2 oz Vodka or Gin
1 oz Cranberry Liqueur
2/3 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
1 lime slice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and stir. Double strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with lime slice


Happy New Year!

"Sing to me, oh Muse..."

It isn't that I haven't been writing, it's just that I've been writing crap. At best I've usually only posted about one in three or four of the items I write. So, if you roll your eyes at what's posted, just think of the suffering I've saved you!

I've developed an appreciation of people who crank out something on a regular basis; be it a daily column, once or twice a week or even monthly. I'm sure having your paycheck based on your output is a great motivator. I write mostly as an outlet. I have no aspirations of writing the "Great American" novel. I'm not sure I have anything that profound to say.

One of good and bad things about the blog format is that it's totally free form. Some of the stream of consciousness posts out there are a little "too out there" to suit me, but essentially a blog is for the person writing it. If it make the writer happy that's a wonderful thing. If it makes other people happy that's even better and a blog that generates income might be a real bonus. But I digress.

I started out today to write a Father's Day Post. I've been thinking a lot about my Father lately. Actually I've been thing about both my parents lately because their age is showing.

I call my parents frequently. My dad loves to have a little chat; only rarely does it go longer than ten or fifteen minutes. My mother on the other hand is not one given to talking on the phone, at least not to me.

My call to my mother on Mother's Day went something like this.

Me: Hello mom, Happy Mother's Day!

Mom: Oh hi, thanks for the call, would you like to talk to your dad?

I guess she had other fish to fry.

My upbringing was pretty Ozzy and Harriet. My father worked outside the home and my mother was a housewife. In my childhood hometown in the late fifties and through the sixties this was the norm. I only knew a couple of kids my age, that had mothers that worked outside the home.

One of the things we did a lot of was camping. We had an old tent trailer that we drug around behind various vehicles. Later we had an Aloha Trailer and then we went upscale with an aluminum skinned Avion.

We put a lot of miles on those trailers. On weekends often went out just for a night or two at a nearby state park or just someplace off in the woods in the nearby Wallowa Whitman National Forest. In the summer we always took a couple of weeks for a family vacation. We'd alternate years; one year traveling to someplace out of state and the next year heading for the coast.

Dad was a Boy Scout and therefore so was I. He was involved in Scouting in one way or another for nearly seventy years. We spent a lot of good times together on Scouting activities and though I didn't appreciate in as much then as I do now he kept me on track and I got my Eagle Award.

My father was also involved in the community. He served on the vestry at church and was always hauling me over to the church to make a repair of a faucet washer or some other little item. Perhaps the most thrilling thing I remember about church chores was him taking a pellet gun into the basement of the church and shooting a rat.

He also had a four year long stint in politics as a City Commissioner. I think we were all glad that he did it and were even happier when he was done.

My mother was and inveterate planner and our itinerary was well laid out. We'd have reservations in campgrounds with power, water and sewer connections, so we never really had to rough it too much.

My mother always sewed a lot and still does. She used to make clothes for the whole family, but the prized products were quilts. Originally, they were frugally made of scraps from the clothing. Later on she started buying fabric specifically for quilts and makes them in patterns she sees in the quilting books.

The other thing my mother did was cook. We always had home cooked meals. Going out for dinner was a rare treat. Much of what we ate was supplemented with home canned pickles and fruits. We didn't live high on the hog, but we never lacked for the essentials.

Another memory from my childhood is perhaps a different awareness of the seasons. We would plan a trip to the coast for clam tides - my father was a very efficient stalker of razor clams. At work he'd schedule projects around the seasons too. He always seemed to be in Walla Walla when the farmers were bringing in the sweet onions. Magically he'd be in the Blue Mountains when the mushrooms were out. He wasn't a big game hunter or a fisherman, but we did go after pheasant, chukars and the occassional quail. I remember that he and the other guys on his survey crew always seemed to have they're shotguns in the truck when they were going to be over around Pendleton in the fall.

Summer was canning time. Cherries from orchards near Cove. Peaches, pears, plums and apricots too, although I don't remember where they came from. Hard to keep a house cool when you've got a canner and pans full of syrup boiling on the stove.

I have a much greater appreciation for the home processed and wild harvest goods as an adult, than I ever did as a child. We were part of the slow food, locavore movement when it was life, not a lifestyle.

Here's a cocktail that I make that makes use of a couple of my homemade ingredients

Mystic Wood - from Mix Magazine - From Reach for the rye, by Liz Colie Gadberry, Jan/Feb 09

This is the original recipe

2 ounces rye whiskey (Sazerac 6-year-old)

½ ounce cherry liqueur (Heering)

½ ounce apricot brandy (Rothman & Winter)

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a small chilled cocktail glass or champagne coupe.

- From Kelley Swenson, bar manager at Ten-01

The first few times I made this cocktail I made it with some homemade apricot liqueur (recipe later in this post) and Cherry Heering and it was pretty dang good. I was having a hankering for it the other day and I ran out to Pearl Specialty and bought a $25 bottle of the highly touted Rothman & Winter apricot brandy that the recipe calls for, frankly I thing the homemade version is as good and with a few tweaks might be better.

The Home version

Mythic Wood

2 ounces rye whiskey (Wild Turkey 101 of course)

½ ounce cherry liqueur (liquid from homemade Maraschino Cherries - any version)

½ ounce apricot brandy (Housemade - Recipe Below)

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a small chilled cocktail glass or champagne coupe.

Housemade Apricot Brandy

1/2 pound of dried apricots
1 cup of boiling water
2-3 cups of brandy or vodka
1 cup of simple syrup - two parts sugar to one part water
5 apricot kernels (the seed inside the pit) or five raw almonds or a couple of drops of almond extract.

Pour the boiling water over the apricots to plump them.

After 10 or 15 minutes drain off the excess water into a measuring cup and add liquor to bring the total to 3 cups.

Put the apricots, liquor/water mix and the kernels or extract in a jar and let it set in a cool dark place for a minimum of two weeks.

Strain the liquid from the apricots and add the simple syrup.

Bonus Factoid: Apricots are related to Almonds. Apricot pits have trace amounts of cyanogenic glycosides which release cyanide when digested - now, before you think I'm trying to kill you or myself, it should be noted that bitter almonds contain a much higher amount of this compound and the lethal dose of them is considered to be in the neighborhood of 50 to 70 kernels

One Man's Trash

Clear Creek Distillery, one of the original of micro-distilleries in the United States, is located here in Portland Oregon. Steve McCarthy, the owner, is a genuinely nice guy and a man with vision. Of course it's taken 25 years for most of the world to appreciate his vision of eau de vie and other products made from locally grown fruit.

I first met Steve in about 1990 when I was making wine commercially in a rented garage in Newburg Oregon. Steve was making grappa from muscat and gewurtztraminer pomace left over from local wine production. Those of us that were willing to set aside the pomace from our production would receive a few rationed bottles of grappa from his minuscule annual production.

For those unfamiliar with the production of wine or it's terminology; pomace is what's left after you squeeze all of the juice out of the grapes. Having someone haul it away for me was a bonus. It meant I didn't have to hall it away and dispose of it or worse yet pay someone to haul it away. Getting some grappa or another one of Steve's brandies for my trash was a screaming deal in my book.

Over the years Steve added to his repertoire of eau de vies and brandies. While his pear brandy is a pure expression of the fruit from his family orchard and a wonderful product, it was never my favorite. I tended to like the aged apple brandy or the fragrant grappas made from muscat and gewurtzraminer. Occasionally when I'd stop by the distillery for a bottle I'd get to sample some of the other products he was working on like a peaty whiskey or a green hued eau de vie made from grape brandy and the tips of the new spring growth on Coastal Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii).

The first time I tried the evergreen scented brandy he pulled from a barrel, it was to say the least, off putting. It had an evergreen aroma, but it more closely resembled Pinesol than something I'd want sit and sip. A few years later after much experimentation he finally had a product that he was comfortable releasing for sale. The evergreen scented brandy he finally released had been tempered with a bit of pear brandy and the fruit complimented and rounded out the evergreen aromas. We sampled it and I found intriguing enough to get a bottle to take home.

Later, at home, I opened the bottle and found it to be a bit much by itself and set the bottle aside to contemplate later. Later didn't come for several years. I hadn't thought much about that bottle in a long time; it was out of sight and out of mind.

On Friday, Steve had his second Proof Blog entry published in the NY Times. One of the products he highlighted was the Douglas Fir infused spirit. I thought perhaps it was time to revisit that long forgotten bottle. I went looking for it and finally discovered it in the back of a file cabinet in my basement office.

I pulled the cork and took a sniff - it wasn't as powerful in the nose as I remembered. I don't know if it had mellowed as it sat in the file cabinet or if my tastes had changed. This stuff was really interesting. There were hints of the evergreen and pear and even more. It's herbal complexity reminded me a bit of Absinthe but with a bit of mint and citrus instead of anise.

I had one of those "Ahah" moments and decided to make a Sazerac with Douglas Fir spirit substituted for the Absinthe. The Douglas Fir isn't as potent as Absinthe and it takes a bit more of it to make the cocktail reflect the character of the spirit. Several years after the fact I was finally able to appreciate Steve's vision for this bottle.

Pseudotsugarac

2 oz Rye
2 barspoons of Douglas Fir Spirit
1/2 teaspoon agave syrup or 1 sugar cube
2 generous dashes of Peychaud Bitters.

Stir all of the ingredients together in a Boston Shaker without the ice. When the agave is dissolved in the rest of the ingredients add ice and stir until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass.

I didn't garnish this with the lemon twist called for in a traditional Sazerac. The Douglas Fir Spirit has a slight citrus quality. I suppose I should have gone out in the yard and picked a sprig off the fir tree for a garnish.