Community

Emily had an epiphany two weekends ago.  The "DIY lifestyle" is really about community.  Friends and acquaintances with similar, but different, interests inspire each other to try new ventures.  For example, I toyed with the idea of home brewing for a long time before I bit the bullet, but I vividly remember the moment I knew I better get the proper gear.  I was sitting in the basement TV room of my good friend Paul, watching horn porn.  He offered me a selection of his homebrew, and when he said he had a cider, I jumped on the opportunity to try it.  Cider had always intrigued me.  Brewing beer meant getting malt extract or grains, neither of which can reasonably be produced on your typical city lot.  Cider was interesting because 95% of the raw material could be grown in your backyard or gathered from the hedge rows.  How cool is that?  You can create a high quality alcoholic beverage from stuff that is really pretty easy to gather in your neighborhood.  After that first sip of Paul's cider, I knew I had a new hobby.  It was dry and crisp and ice cold, and it tasted wonderful on that warm summer evening.

The ironic thing about that cider was that I wouldn't describe Paul as a serious cider brewer - a brewer of fine ales, sure, but I think cider is a bit of a sideshow for him.  But I loved it... and learning that homemade could be so much more exciting than store-bought... it was time to do it myself, and I had been inspired through one member of my community.

Emily's epiphany came after a weekend of visiting Paul, his bride, Lisa, and their boy, Wyatt.  We spent a weekend engaging in all sorts of fun with these good friends.  We played with our baby boys, went thrift shopping (the girls did, anyway), made pierogies, ice-fished for trout and burbot, stuffed sausages, and cultured yogurt.  Needless to say, it was a classic HHMM vacation... you need an extra day off as soon as you get back in order to recover in time to go back to work.

So what did we learn from this community?  Let's start with the pierogies.... Apparently you can buy the frozen variety at the store, but why not join the world-wide tradition of fine dumpling making in a more hands-on fashion?  I won't lie... making pierogies is hard work.  Prepping filling, mixing dough, rolling and cutting dough, suffing, boiling, frying.  Paul and I worked on these little babies for two or three hours.  My back and neck were stiff, my feet were sore from standing up all day, but the rewards...  You know how people always say food tastes better when you are camping?  I think it is all perception.    When you work for something, you are going to appreciate it a hell of a lot more.  Setting up a camp kitchen is harder than throwing a frozen burrito in the microwave and pushing +30sec. half a dozen times.  Not only did we make, cook, and enjoy these happy little Polish packages, but we vacuum-sealed and froze 80 percent of them.  Now we can throw a hand-made pierogi in in the fry pan for a quick meal, rather than a machine-made burrito in the microwave.

Let's take this community concept to a generational level.  Did we just make Paul's grandma's pierogi recipe?  If not, Paul was certainly relying on her roadmap to an authentic Polish dumpling.  Paul's grandmother may not have been Polish, but she sure did cook for somebody who was!  Paul made a very tasty and very tangible connection to his heritage.

No, we didn't put Triscuits in the pierogies.

Now let's talk dessert.  If you are going to deliver homemade ice cream to a friend... you are safest to do so while ice fishing.  Our friends John and Cris know that I love banana ice cream.  I would carry on about the stuff on a near-nightly basis in the days when we all lived in Missoula and we would cook almost every dinner of the week together, engorge ourselves, then walk down the alley to the Big Dipper for ice cream.  The Big Dipper would occasionally put forward a banana flavored ice cream, and when they did... I was in heaven.  Paul and I met John on the ice of Canyon Ferry Reservoir on the Saturday of President's Day weekend.  John handed me a plastic grocery sack with a gallon Zip-Lock freezer bag holding a nondescript cylinder of stuff that was the color of a whole-wheat tortilla.  "Is this a burrito?" I asked.  "No, dude, check out the label."  The label said "Matt Scream."  No bells were ringing.  I smelled it... bananas... "is it banana bread dough?" I inquired.  "No, dude, it's homemade banana ice cream!  Nice.  The next evening Paul, Lisa, Emily, and I gladly consumed the treat as the dessert following our meal of braised antelope shanks and homemade pierogies.

So, in one meal, we tapped into Paul's family tradition, we savored the sweet rewards of a successful hunting season, and we gladly accepted the gifts of great memories and greater friends.

Life really is better when you do it (at least some of it) yourself.

P.s.I think we will be making our own yogurt soon.  Lisa's homemade stuff is wonderful.  Lisa learned from Andy... we learned from Lisa.... The community is thriving!

Chicks!

Sweet.  The next stage in the genesis of the urban homesteading HHMM has arrived...  We have looked forward to the day when we would add animal husbandry to our list of responsibilities for a long time. For me, this is a big new shift.  Normally, I have been in the business of bringing critters to a sudden and untimely end, so that they will end up in our freezers and on our plates.  Now I need to help Em raise and nurture these little guys.  Of course my hungry belly is involved - I can't wait for delicious fresh eggs.  And we'll see... I sure like the idea of homegrown poultry too... but for now, I sure think these little buggers are a heck of a lot of fun, and it is going to be really cool to watch them grow!

Sausage + Fest = Charcuterie

We have piled up the protein bounties of the canyons, waterways, forests, prairies, and mountains in our freezers over the last several years.  Packages of neck roast, duck breast, and shank meat have been knocked aside in our search for that last package of backstrap during grilling season, literally falling through the cracks and drifting towards the bottom of a disorganized heap of wild nutrients.  If each of these packages of meat had a consciousness, they would wonder what they had done wrong such that they wouldn't fulfill their preconceived notion of a destiny - pot roast, kabobs, osso buco.  Little do they know they are destined for perhaps the most exotic and refined of all meat preparations... SAUSAGE FEST!!!!

Perhaps it isn't surprising to other people that the sex ratio of sausage festivities tends to be skewed towards males, but I ask... why is this?  Is it hour after hour of up-to-your-elbows stirring of ground meat and fat?  Is it the over consumption of heavily salted and seasoned meats, to "make sure the recipe is right?"  The guzzling of craft beer resulting in belching and flatulence to go with bad breath caused by the extra garlic in the test kielbasa?  I know there are women who enjoy this kind of shenanigan (I have created charcuterie with the fairer sex before), but the double entendre of sausage party is right at home here.

The Dude Squad is hard at work

At sausage parties, there is always some dude who knows everything about how to make sausage, and any deviation from the proper way to stuff a bratwurst or spice a big Italian is cause for debate.  Really, everybody at the party has a little bit of that dude in him.  Everybody wants to put up a good product.  It is a high risk, high reward situation.  Spices, pork, pork fat, casings, and those precious (but oft-neglected) packages of meat are valuable commodities.  Don't over-do that salt!  The coriander seeds are supposed to be toasted not burnt!  It makes for some pretty lively banter; you get the picture.

BJB getting the spice mixture just right

For me, SausageFest 2013 went down at my boss' house (his wife is most gracious), with several of my colleagues in attendance.  We figure, as a group, we ground, mixed, spiced, and stuffed about 150 pounds of sausage.  I think my buddies were a little concerned at first about the mix in my meat.  You know it... coot, goldeneye, bufflehead, antelope, mule deer, whitetail deer, elk (maybe even some mystery meat)... they all went into the grinder together.  If a good mix of apple varieties makes for a great apple cider, the same logic should apply to sausage... right?  I make it sound lots more exotic than it really was... mostly it was mule deer, and I mixed it with a fair portion of pork butt roast to bring up the fat content to a level acceptable of a sausage.  I bet coot breast made up less than 1% of the meat, by volume.  Still, there is a little bite of a lot of adventures in each link.

Can you count how many tasty animals are in this sausage meat?

I made each of my recipes - sweet Italian, kielbasa, and ginger-sage breakfast sausage - using Michael Ruhlman's and Brian Polcyn's fantastic book Charcuterie: the craft of salting, smoking, and curing (W.W. Norton & Company, New York).  The guys I know back in Helena that are into this kind of thing call Charcuterie "The Bible."  This book is a blast, and I have enjoyed several of the recipies in the sausage section and especially in the chapter on pâtés and terrines.  I have never been afraid to substitute wild game for the major portion of pork in their recipies, and I have never been disappointed.  That said, my fellow sausage designers made wonderful recipes this weekend from tattered old books, pages printed from the internet, etc, proving you don't necessarily need "The Bible" to create a great sausage.

Sausage Fest is an important event in the year.  It continues an important tradition of using every last scrap of an animal harvested for food.  It brings people (granted, usually men) together for the sharing of stories, good beer, and enthusiasm for a satisfying job well done.  Most importantly, it gives us an opportunity to do something truly creative, to create culinary art.  Sausages may often be a lowly peasant food, but there is certainly some magic when salt, spice, fat, and meat come together in that neat little cylindrical package.

For now, the fresh sausage is wonderful.  The freezer will nuke many of the good spices and flavors over time, but even the lowliest of sausages... the one that also found its way to the bottom of the freezer... will find a home in a hearty wintertime chili or soup somewhere down the road.  The destiny of the diminutive package of shank will finally be fulfilled.

Seeds and Starts

It hit the low fifties today in Lewiston.  I saw a meadowlark.  I went for a hike in the sunshine.  Sounds like spring, doesn't it?  Well, it is February 3rd, and while it is one of those beautiful midwinter breaks in the weather, it isn't spring yet... except it is time for seeds and starts.  The big orders of seeds arrived in various shipments over the last week.  Heirloom tomatoes, beets, shallots, beans, sunflowers, peppers, melons, squashes.  We ordered some hybrids too, but once you start into the kaleidoscope of colors in a catolog associated with heirloom veggies... it is easy to get hooked.  Check out a Seed Saver's Exchange catalog sometime, and you won't be disappointed.

Em is the Lady of the Garden around here and I am her adviser.  She lays out the plans, purchases the right starting media, determines the correct companion plants, and establishes our organic matter needs.  I cut sod, turn soil, pull weeds, and build fence.  It is a good partnership.  She will provide brains, I will provide the brawn.

We spent the afternoon working out some of the details of the garden and digging through the scrap wood pile looking for salvageable fencing.  Tonight, maybe we will sit around with the boob tube on, planting seeds in little starter pellets while the drama of Downton Abbey unfolds before us.  Yeah, now that is domestic.

A nomadic lifestyle and an agrarian one don't mix so well.  Two summers have lapsed between our last verdant garden and now.  We have moved downhill and up three Plant Hardiness Zones.  I wonder what we have forgotten about gardening and I wonder what we will have to learn about this new clime.  Later this week we are hoping to drop the Mini-HHMM with a babysitter and attend a gardening class for Lewiston growers.  Maybe we will get answers to some of our questions.  Right now, everything is fantasy.  Buckets of beets and beans.  Baskets of peppers and eggplants.  Eight foot tall sunflowers with the sun shining through bug-eaten holes in the leaves.

Fish Fare for the Common Man

Want to get into sport fishing?  Do you have an extra fifty thousand sitting around for a jet boat?  No, me neither.  Do you have $600 for a medium grade fly fishing outfit?  Once in a long while a splurge like that is okay for me, but I need to be saving for college for the mini-HHMM, don't I?  Want a sport that gets you outside during the darker days of winter, puts delicious fish on the table, and is financially obtainable for almost anybody with a paycheck?  Start ice fishing.

Pop Pop is getting his ice fish on.

Mini-HHMM demonstrating that it is never too early to start ice fishing.

First question: where to go?  If you live near a lake or pond that gets at least 3 inches of hard, clear ice in the winter, look for the the dark shapes of overdressed humans kneeling over a hole, slouching on a bucket, or towing a black sled full of stuff across the ice.  That is a popular ice fishing spot, and you should be out there too.  Ask the fisherman on the ice for advice.  Ice fishing is a social sport.  Folks are usually friendly and fairly forthcoming with fishing secrets.  Check local fishing regulations for any new spot... fishing is way more fun if you don't get cited for a fishing violation.

Second question: what to bring, and how much does it cost?  You can do some legitimate ice fishing, putting dozens of tasty fish, such as perch, on the ice with as little as a hatchet, a bucket, and that snoopy rod your kid won at a outdoor education event.  Better yet, get your kid on the ice with a Snoopy rod, and go to the tackle shop and pay less than $20 for a complete ice fishing rod set for yourself.  You are really in business if you have found a lake with perch... they require the least specialized gear.  Ask the gear guy at the tackle shop for a $5 set of glow hooks or perch jigs, a $2 pack of pinch on barrel weights, and a $1 can of live maggots.  As a little jab at my Pop, I am going to suggest that you spend $10 on a spool of decent monofilament ice fishing line to put on your new rod and on your kid's Snoopy rod (Pop loves to fish with ancient, kinked fishing line that is way too heavy for practical use).  If you want an ice auger (they are nice), expect $50, but for perch, get a small one (4 or 5 inch diameter).  Get an ice chisel for less... or use your hatchet to chop open old holes.  For $100 you could have the full setup... auger, new rods, tackle, and you might have enough left over to get a plastic sled (the kids' kind works great) to haul all your gear across the ice.

Third question: How to catch the fish?  Like I said, perch are probably the best introduction to the novice ice fisher.  Rig up the glow jig to the end of your line with the barrel weight pinched on about 3 inches above the jig.  Put a maggot or two on the hook, and drop your line in the hole.  Open the bail on your fishing real and let the line pull off the reel until it hits the bottom.  You will know it is all the way down when line stops pulling off the reel.  Now reel in the slack in the line and use your rod tip to pull the jig a few inches to a foot off the bottom.  Give a couple of gentle twitches and wait.  Feel a tap tap on your rod?  That is a fish.  When you feel a second or two of steady pressure, set the hook hard and reel, reel, reel.  Throw the fish on the ice, replace your bait, if needed, and repeat.

Notice some of the fish are missing eyes?  Perch eyes make outstanding perch bait.  Sure, a little macabre, but it puts more fish on the ice.

Fourth question: I have caught the fish... now what?  Need a step by step guide to cleaning perch... here it is (this works for any and all sport fish caught in temperate waters)...


How To Guide: Fillet a Perch

1.  With a fillet knife, make a cut down to the spine just behind the gill and front paired fins.

2.  Now turn the blade to be parallel to the spine and slice through the ribs and through the abdomen.

Yes, there are some ooey-gooey guts involved here, but they rinse right off the meat later.

3.  Continue with the blade along the spine and cut the fillet all the way through the tail.

4.  Stab the tail end of the fillet with a fork to hold it in place and run the blade of the knife just under the rib cage, leaving as much meat behind as you can.

5.  Now run the blade of the knife under the meat and as close to the skin as you can.  This is easy, as long as your knife is sharp.

6.  When you are done, you should be left with a nice slab o'fish... perfect for bite size fried fish fillets, chowder fodder, or fish taco filling.

7.  Prepare, serve, and enjoy.