Fathers and Sons

A dad has braggin' rights, right?

A quick heads up.

Son Johnny plays the lead role in St Cloud State University's production of The Big Knife by Clifford Odetts. An astonishing performance from Dad's point of view. Where did this depth and range of emotion come from? Did he learn it within his own family? How am I involved?

It shows at 8 pm Friday and Saturday, and 2 pm Sunday at the Performing Arts Center on campus.

Pretty good theater. I'll write more about it, later.

Not Just Leftovers, Anymore

A couple of things to do w/ leftover spagetti noodles.

Wet the noodles w/ veg oil, add lots of granulated garlic( or fresh), lots of dried whole sweet basil( or fresh chopped), lots of grated parmesan cheese( even the cheap product in a can works), and fresh ground black pepper. Toss. Eat. Chives or green onions, and parsley too, as you wish. The secret is plenty of garlic, basil, and parmesan cheese.

This is the spaghetti salad recipe from the old Headquarters Lodge salad bar. A serendipitious discovery one day when we were short on salads and time. Far and away everyone's favorite.

A recent discovery for leftover spaghetti noodles simply involves stewed tomatoes, garlic, basil and bleu cheese tossed w/ the noodles. A little olive oil too, if you need to make it wetter. Served and eaten cold. I found a great buttermilk bleu at Cub in Brainerd - from raw milk - and made in Wisconsin. Creamy, sweet, not too pungent. Also good on a cracker.

Be Sure of Your Target

Be sure of your target. If you hunt, be sure of your target.

The death of an 8 yr old Belle Plaine boy by a shotgun blast of his dad's makes all of us, especially hunters, pause, ponder, and perhaps reconsider our hunting practises. It rips a hearts out, leaves it bleeding in an empty field. Emptier than it has ever been. Unbelief, heart pounding shock revisited again and again for days and weeks, and each time you awake for a long time that feels like forever. You can't change it. You can't change it.

Be sure of your target. If you hunt, be sure of your target. My prayers are with that Dad and his family. Be with them, Dear Lord, and help them as only You can.

Aw Baloney

It is not true that in Pierz you can eat baloney in a bar every day of the week.

But you can get it on Wednesdays at the Red Rooster( actually in Genola), and on Thursdays at Patricks. It is served from 11AM till 1PM as the lunch special. At the Rooster it is served help yourself buffet style. Which means it is an all you can eat deal. There is baloney, homemade white bread, butter, horseradish and mustard. I think that the horseradish is homemade too.

At Patrick's it is served to you in a basket. The entire ring of baloney I believe -sliced into 5 generous 4 inch hunks -along w/ 4 slices of homemade white bread( the soft variety), butter, and homemade(?) horseradish. It is indeed a "ring of fire" if you use enough horseradish. In Pierz, a bottle of tabasco will last for years, but horseradish is consumed like a cold beer on a hot summer day.

Is it a midwest thing this eating butter on a meat sandwich? Pastrimi on rye at a Deli in New York City? Nope.

Where does all of this baloney come from? Thielen's Meat Market right in town. Thielen's has been written up in the New York Times, rightly so, for their bacon. Try the black pepper variety, or garlic. Also get their jalapeno cheddar summer sausage. Or smoked hams. Or marinated pork chops and chicken breasts, smoked whole chickens, all the usual steaks, and much more. They have a professional and attentive staff, and the place is immaculate.

It is worth it to adjust your trip up North to include a stop in Pierz. Make it a golf date, in fact, at the mature 9 hole golf course, and be sure to do it on baloney day.

$4.95 for all you can eat. That is no baloney. And it sure ain't New York City.

The Accidental Pureeist

I have been drinking green tea daily since about 1990. Tea juice too: add two or 3 bags green tea to a jug of water along w/ a 3rd or 4th of grape juice or any juice or any combination of juices. It is especially great during the summer. Add ice if you like it cold.

Recently, after being the recipient of a large bag of dried mango slices, I have been adding the dried mango slices to the water along w/ the tea bags. The flavor develops throughout the day as the mango slices reconstitute and plump up. I keep the jug refrigerated at work. The mango becomes the consistency of canned peaches.When I get home I put the remaining tea juice water, along w/ the softened mango slices in the food processor, and add yoghurt, and ice and process until smooth. It is a green tea mango smoothie not unlike the one you get at Dunn Bros Coffee in Elk River. Add other fresh fruits or berries if you wish.

Dang it is good, and good for you too. It is a "two-fer" if there ever was one. Great on land and in the boat.

Chicks and Garlic, a Natural

Hummus, pronounced HOOM-uhs, is a Middle Eastern incorporation of garbonzo beans ( chick peas ), olive or sesame oil, garlic, and lemon juice. It is a dip that is traditionally served w/ pita bread.It has a depth and richness of flavor and is really good for you. A satisfying and complete( round) taste. Any rustic bread will work.

I adapted the recipe last night because of a lack of the traditional oil and lemon juice, with veg oil( soybean), and lime juice.

Drain the liquid from a can of beans, add 1/4 cup oil, a teaspoon of garlic( fresh or granulated), a shake or two of sea salt( or other), and a teaspoon of lemon juice( or lime ). Blend or food process till smooth. You can adjust any of the ingredients for consistency and taste. I like a garlic "burn"and not much salt, for example.It was great w/ rye crisp. You could add tabasco if you wish.

Terve' tuloa ( come again).

The Birthing of Walleye Fingers

OK. Wine batter recipe.

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup cold water
1/2 cup white wine

Start w/ the dry ingredients in a bowl( add a teaspoon of salt if you wish), mix, add wet ingredients and whisk till smooth.A very simple recipe. You could add cajun seasoning to the batter, as well, as you wish.

You will be dredging the fish fingers in plain flour, first, and then dipping them in the batter.A medium high setting on your range for the oil - you don't want the oil to smoke, of course - adjust temp as necessary.As I mentioned yesterday, I prefer flour and batter unseasoned as it produces a clean pure fish flavor that is then enraptured by the dipping( tartar) sauce of your choice.

How did Mn's "original walleye fingers" come about?

In the early days of Headquarters Lodge on Lake Mille Lacs( late 70's, early 80's), we closed and worked in Florida at a dockside fish cafe', where fresh caught fish were bought from the crew of sport fishing charter boats. They( crew) filleted them dockside just off the boat. We portioned them in the kitchen. Remaining portions of fish( grouper, cobia, wahoo) were cut into strips and sold on the menu as the beer battered daily fish fingers. It was a way to not waste good fresh fish that was too small for a broiling portion.

It did not require much intellectual effort to decide to do this with walleye back in Mn at HQ Lodge. It was an immediate thought. At first, customers would make jokes and laugh about walleye having fingers, and so on, but soon they were famous.

Simple math conservatively indicates that we served 1,085,ooo individual walleye fingers over the 19 yrs that we owned HQ.

The wine instead of beer batter idea came via a chef named "Heavy" that used to work at Breezy Point. One of our cooks, Mike Mosimann, had worked with him.It gives a sourdough flavor.

Can you get a good walleye finger on Mille Lacs these days? Don't know. The secret , as with most recipes, is that there is no secret. Use fresh fish and fresh batter, and fresh oil and don't under or over cook them. Serve them cooked to order and hot. Make sure the batter has become golden and crispy. Serve a variety of tartar sauces along w/ the fingers.

Minnesota Walleye Fingers

Minnesota's original Walleye fingers include long finger sized portions of the fish that have been floured and immersed in a wine batter and deep fried in vegetable oil. Golden and crispy on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. A finger food too, that you can dip in your favorite tartar type sauce, which could be traditional style, or a mayonnaise w/ salsa stirred in, or mayo incorporated w/ pesto, or a stringer full of other concomitant ingredients.

A general rule of thumb is 7 minutes per inch of fish to cook till done. Oil should be 350 to 375 degrees. I generally use unseasoned flour and an unseasoned batter. Most, probably all, of the fish seasoning mixes include an excess of salt for taste and health considerations. The batter is 1 part dry white wine to five parts cold water and 1 teaspoon baking powder per quart of batter. Baking powder makes it airy and crisp. Enough flour to make a batter just thin enough to coat the fish.I do the flour am't by touch and feel, but will do a batch tonight and measure the flour so I can pass it along.

I like unseasoned flour and batter becauseI like the contrast of pure fried fish dipped in a seasoned tartar sauce. Also because of differing salt tolerances of the eaters.

Oh Spring

Not yet. Snowed in. What to eat? Luckily I shopped yesterday in anticipation of the storm.

On average we in the US according to statistics spend about 17% of our income on food. Much of the third world spends 50% to 80% of their income on food. We are blessed and we are spoiled.

Food costs are rising even for us partially because of the corn based ethanol industry. Also because of increasing worldwide demand for meat, much of which is grain fed. China and India are involved in this.

Venison is being pulled from foodshelves in Mn and other states because of lead content in the meat. It remains to be discovered whether there is a health risk. Will more of us be arrowing our deer in the future? We could shoot deer in the head, too, to reduce risk, I suppose.

Snowed in and continuing, the world obscured by this chowder of snow, even the small island out front, the big one too, and the peninsula to the south. Delicious.

You can eat all day if you eat the right stuff. I will tell you about it later.

Aaah Spring

Simple early morning pleasures. Cinnamon toast. Tea. Camembert or brie on a light rye is also very good. A special memory for me. Camembert is better; depth and nuance. If brie is like a girlfriend, camembert is like a lover.

Yesterday was the warmest day since November 13th. Five months. Wow. An old fashioned winter.

Fast food, my favorite, will be returning fast in this late spring. Ducks, geese,herons, cranes, eagles, loons, swans, others, and all the small ones that sing. It is a good thing that we do not eat them all . We can appreciate them in different ways. A mourning dove sang yesterday. Something else will sing today.It is nice to have them back. I look forward to pelicans for a day or two, on their journey north.

And fish. I am a sucker for open water fishing. In the spring you can fish from shore or wade.It is simpler and it works for herons, too. I was dock fishing in Florida once on the Gulf coast and had caught some porgies and redfish( I think). I heared a small noise and turned to look and was startled by a heron as tall as I , sneaking up like in a cartoon and three feet away. I yelled and nearly jumped in the water. His/her intention was to steal my fish. Stalking. As w/ a scorned lover, you don't want to turn your back on them.

The Prodigal Food Writer

A month with the flu and I thought I was dying. Almost sixty and all that. Nice to be back.

Mr Rogers' said it many times over the years - " it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood." Even the twitter of the fax machine sounds like a spring bird's song.

Nice to be back, to have an appetite; an interest in food and other things again. I will be telling you about them.

Thanks for the comment, moondog. If I remember any more funny stories I will pass them along.