Debi: Shabbos

Friday nights are lovely, when I can get my act together to make them so!

Our family is Jewish, and while we're not very observant or religious, having a traditional sabbath meal on Friday nights is something that reminds the grownups of our own childhoods, our grandparents and parents, and the warm feeling of family at home for an evening together. We could eat anything for dinner, but it seems wrong somehow to make our Sabbath meal something exotic or experimental. What feels right is comfort food.

Last night, I decided to be a little ambitious, given the fact that the kids were underfoot and David wouldn't be home until dinner was ready. I made seitan cutlets (a faux-meat-like thing made from vital wheat gluten, broth, oil, tehini, and seasonings), which require several elaborate steps to develop the right consistency; homemade mushroom gravy (which, unlike Stori and her perfected pan-gravy methodology, I always struggle to keep lump-free); a nice big bowl of bright peas; homemade rice pudding; and challah.

Challah, a braided egg bread, is absolutely essential for a Shabbos table. After years of using my mother's recipe, several years ago I tried a recipe from my friend Hilary. Hers was far better, and so that is the one I use, with my own addition of eggs (how did she have a challah recipe with no eggs?!?). Here it is -- this recipe makes two loaves, so plan to give one to a friend:

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Challah

2 cups warm (not hot) water
½-3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 envelop or 1 tbsp yeast
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
6 cups flour + 1-2 cups for flouring surface & hands during kneading.

Preparation:
Put water in a large bowl. Dump in sugar, but don’t mix. Add salt. Add yeast, then mix, using only a quick once or twice around with a large spoon.

Dump in oil and add the 6 cups of flour to the same bowl. Add the eggs. Mix with spoon.

Remove from bowl and place on floured surface. Knead 15 minutes, or to the right texture plus 10 minutes more.

Place in lightly oiled bowl (using the 1/3 cup vegetable oil). Roll it around so it’s coated. Cover the bowl with a dishtowel and let rise until doubled (about 75 minutes).

Punch down and knead 3 minutes.

Let rise again 45-60 minutes.

Divide into two lumps, and divide each lump into three strands. Braid the strands to make two braided loaves, and brush each loaf with beaten egg. Sprinkle with coarse salt and bake 40-45 minutes at 350.
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The photo above is of a round challah that we made this fall for the Jewish high-holy days. Last night, our challah was still braided, but we left it long. It's easier to slice that way, anyway. Of all the delicious foods on our table last night, the kids (and secretly, the grownups) like the challah best. It's a soft, slightly sweet bread, chewy and moist and, since it takes so long to make, last night's challah was still warm when we gathered around our lit sabbath candles, put our arms around our children, and blessed it.

Stori ~ easy does it

My phone rang this morning at around 8 with my dad on the other end. Since I have the two little kids with me, my dad is nice enough to feed the horses their morning hay for me so I don't have to dress the kids in their winter gear and go outside. He's calling to tell me that my big draft mix mare has once again, found trouble. Heidi is 1,400 pounds of lap puppy. She has a sweet disposition, never ending calmness, a quick busy mind, and a pension for mischief. She's the type of horse who likes to be busy or entertained. When left to her own boredom, she often gets into messes that requires me to clean up.

We feed our horses in a big wooden rectangular shaped bin. About 3 feet high on the ends, a few inches shorter on one long side (to accommodate the tiny pony we used to have), and about 3 1/2 feet on the high long side. Marc attached two tires side by side on each long side to prevent Heidi from tipping the box. This feed bin is about 6 foot long, just big enough for two horses to feed along side each other without crowding.

My 1,400 lb baby was standing inside the box.

Like most bratty toddlers, she's very good at getting herself IN things, but pretty pathetic at getting herself OUT. My mom shows up to tag team the kids, and out the door I go. 45 minutes later in -25 below zero weather and we have one giant horse out of one small box, one frustrated infuriated me, and one dislocated right shoulder. Pretty average score in the game of "Heidi and Me". I had dislocated my shoulder for the first time last May bringing another horse home. I don't know if injuries like that every completely heal, but I know mine never did. Maybe it was the lack of immobilizing I didn't do, or the fact I never slowed down my activities, but now I have to coddle that joint like a newborn. When I felt the sickening slip ~ pop! this morning, I knew my day could only get better from there. Thankfully I was able to slip it back into socket pretty quickly and without too much icky pain. Since I am nursing a limp and traitorous right arm, my family's supper for tonight will be:

Frozen lasagna

store bought garlic bread

They should feel lucky to get that much. It could have been cold cereal and a lot of whining from Momma's chair.

Stori ~ comfort food arctic style

I have had an incredibly busy two weeks. My sister came up to visit from Colorado and it seemed as if everyday another activity would pop up. From birthday parties, to CMSA annual meetings, tattoo appointments, and road trips to Delta Junction to get grain. My little humdrum homebody lifestyle has been turned upside down! Although it's been very fun, I'm exhausted and ready to settle down and re-fluff my nest. Along with the activity comes eating poorly. Besides having some weight gain side effects from a medication my doctor prescribed, my diet has been lousy! These two things have combined to make me feel ....un-good, for lack of better terms. Not really poorly, just yucky.

Today has been set aside to put my life to order again. Cleaning house, finishing laundry, snuggling my babies, taking back my comfortable routine is a must. Part of my routine comes one of my families' favorite meals. Well most of my family anyway. Very balanced, zero preservatives, and all of the dishes coming from our hands and our land, once again we turn to moose steak. Prepared the way we make it, the meal is also surprisingly low in calories and very filling. Alaskan comfort food Thompson style. We start with the moose roast. Sliced into steaks, I put it through my tenderizer, then dredged in a seasoned flour and fried in a tiny bit of olive oil in a cast iron skillet. Several cast iron skillets actually. The second dish is mashed potatoes. Yukon Gold potatoes grown in our garden, dug by hand, cured in the dark at 50* for 7 days, then put in cold storage, our harvest lasts the entire year until the next year's potatoes are ready to dig. Peeled, cubed, washed, and then boiled in salted water. After draining water, adding milk then mashing, it's a happy belly dish. I usually always serve corn with this meal also. With the leftover dredging flour, and the remaining grease in my skillet, this will be the start to my pan gravy. I brown the flour in the grease, adding a little bit of salt and pepper, once flour is nice and toasted, I add the pitcher of milk (from our cow of course). Stirring constantly to break up the lumps, I bring the gravy to a boil and take it off the heat once it's thickened enough. Served with homemade bread and butter and a big glass of milk, it will be the final touch on the chore of returning my life to our version of normalcy.

Debi: It's THAT Kind of Day

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a cold. I had gone to bed suspicious of the tickle in my nose and throat, and woke up with a confirmation of the drippy days to come. Since my string band, The Lopsiders, is playing a long-awaited gig on Thursday night, I wanted very much to nip this cold in the bud.

So, my solution was to hit my system with as much immunity-boosting power as possible. I downed my usual multivitamin, followed by an extra dose of zinc and a dose of astragalus, an herb known for its immune support. Since I'd dozed later than usual, it took all my attention to pack a lunch for my oldest, feed the two of them breakfast, stuff their backpacks, dress them and myself for the weather, and get out the door to school.

On the way from my younger daughter's preschool to my older daughter's elementary school, I started feeling woozy. The world looked a little wavy and too bright, and my stomach began rolling. By the time I got her to the door, I felt downright nauseous. Since she had been playing on Sunday at the house of a friend whose father had the stomach flu, I started to worry that I'd be singing on Thursday night through more than just the sniffles.

I had planned to walk from Ronni's school to the coffeeshop for a serious day of work, but decided to go home and get the car instead. It's a mile to the cafe, but if I really did have the flu, I wouldn't want to walk home. Once I got there, the nausea increased, and though I had just paid for and ordered my coffee, I decided quickly that I could not drink it. I left it there, shouting, "Free soy mocha for anyone who wants it!" as I ran out the door, sweating and breathing in big gulps of the cold air.

I went home and collapsed on the couch in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I waited and waited for what I thought was the inevitable...but it never came. I nibbled the plain scone I'd bought, and felt a little better. Nibbled more, felt a little better. Suddenly it hit me: the vitamins. No breakfast. Oh boy.

I had an upset stomach from taking too many vitamins with no food.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch, working on my laptop and watching bad tv, until it was time to pick up the kids -- the younger one from her extended day at preschool; the older one from a creative movement class at the local park district. I had little appetite and no interest in cooking, so I called my husband and announced my abdication of the Kitchen Queen throne. His response, stereotypically, was "That's fine. Let's order in."

"Order in" means delivery food from a restaurant. Our default -- the one we chose last night -- is Siam Pasta, a thai restaurant that delivers reasonably priced noodle dishes. Thank heavens. By the time it arrived, my appetite had returned, and we enjoyed:

• Pad Thai with tofu: Thin noodles stir-fried with scrambled egg, bean sprouts, onions & tofu topped with carrots, green onions & peanuts.
• Pad See Eiw: Stir-fried wide noodles in a brown sauce with tofu, scrambled egg, Chinese broccoli & bean sprouts.
• Pad Woon Sen: Stir-fried tiny glass noodles with tofu, scrambled egg, baby corn, mushrooms, carrots & green onions in a mild thin broth.

Thank heavens for Siam Pasta and the abundant leftovers in my fridge!

Stori~ we don't need no stinking electricity!

My Dad called me this morning to tell me he had supper covered tonight. That only meant one thing, chicken fried moose steak cooked on his old wood burning cook stove. He picked up this old stove about 6 years back in Fairbanks. The stove was manufactured probably early 1900's, maybe even late 1800's. It's a beautiful mint green and ivory 6 burner. There are no actual "burners", it's just a flat top with one side being very hot, over the wood box, the other side gradually getting cooler the farther from the hot box it gets. This stove is a miracle worker when it comes to cooking things hot and fast. Grease splatter is never a problem, messy grease actually benefits the cast iron surface of the stove. He has the stove positioned in his arctic entry way, which is a good thing since it can put off enough heat to flat run you out of the house. My Momma always joked around about baking sugar cookies on an old wood burner, she would say "Just hold the cookie sheet in front of the oven door for about 30 seconds, you'll get perfect cookies." In the summer, he sometimes moves the stove out onto the porch itself, since it makes so much heat, it's unnecessary inside the house. The stove has warming ovens above the range, and a hot water tank in the back (which we never use).

These old stoves were a way of life for me growing up. My parents built a cabin outside of Meeker Colorado, off of Strawberry Creek Road when I was about 4 years old. We lived on that farm till I was in 8th grade. Meeker is known for being a boom/bust town. When the last oil shale mine shut down, my Daddy being the head of security, it left him jobless. My Momma waited tables to make ends meet. My Daddy raised milk cows, beef, pigs, chickens, sheep, and of course our horses. We sold the wiener pigs to the local 4-h kids, and whatever was left went to the livestock auctions in Silt. Out of our milk cows, my Momma ran a milk, cream, and egg route in town. Every day of the week, she would go to work early just to deliver the orders for milk, sold in gallon size glass jars. Cream out of glass quart jars, and eggs. We still store our fresh milk from our little cow the same way (and hell hath no fury like if you turn in a dirty jar!!) Our customers were diligent on taking the goods on a certain day of the week, and having the cleaned glass jars and weekly money waiting for Momma when she got there. We heated our entire cabin (until we built the add-on when I was about 9, then we had a secondary wood stove in the other part of the cabin) with an antique Majestic wood burning cook stove (much like the picture here, but this was not our exact stove). I remember as a little girl, being woken in my loft by the "whoofing" of the chimney as Momma got the morning fire going. She would wake up to a frozen cold floor about an hour earlier than us to get that stove going and have the house heated up before she woke us kids. The stove sat at the end of the supper table, our house had few walls, just like my own cabin now, a very open floor plan. The old Majestic sat on a bed of laid lava rock. Natural volcanic lava rock does not retain heat which is perfect for a very hot stove and a wooden house. We would keep our winter hats, scarves, and mittens behind the stove where they staid hot. Our little dog, Smudgie, could usually be found snoozing on top of our winter gear behind that stove. She loved a warm bed. My Momma would have a percolating coffee pot on the far back right corner of the stove, the simmer side, and our morning breakfast in the middle of the range. From pancakes to hot oatmeal, our breakfast was cooked on that 200 year old stove every morning of every winter of my childhood.

Having these stoves, we never have had to worry about heat or food with a power outage. No electricity needed. A good stock of split firewood and some cast iron cookware was all my family needed to stay safe, warm, and well fed. Always with a pot of hot coffee. Always with a warm place to sit by and warm your hands. It was the heartbeat of our home growing up.

Debi: Shhh! Don't tell anyone!

Stori is right; I have the much-appreciated blessing of plentiful sources for fresh produce. In fact, the only things I buy in the can are beans, and that's just because I am too lazy to soak dried beans. I buy frozen peas, I suppose, but I don't know many people with kids who DON'T buy frozen peas. What else do you serve with macaroni & cheese?!

My favorite place to shop for fresh produce is The MarketPlace on Oakton, only about 4 miles from my house. My husband and I jokingly refer to it as "The Mafia Market," because the produce there is so cheap and of such high quality that we can only assume that it is a front for some other type of more nefarious business. (Note to police and any other interested parties: I have absolutely no evidence of this!) We shop here for produce in the winter months, when nothing much can grow locally. It is a miracle of a store, catering to many ethnic restaurants and shoppers, and so the selection can be exotic and exciting. Gigantic, frozen durians hang in bags above enormous, overflowing displays of oranges and apples and peaches and melons and pineapples and cherries; avocados are often 75 cents and rest in mounds next to crates of mangoes, just across the aisle from hundreds of pounds of every variety of potato, onion, and squash you can imagine. I can fill three enormous grocery sacks for less than $25.

I love to take my daughters to this market, where we can imagine any number of delicious meals and try new things. The last time we were there, Ronni had been clamoring for sweet potatoes, so in they went, along with leeks, broccoli, green beans, apples, pears, peaches, canteloup, pineapple, mangoes, grapes, garlic, dates, russet potatoes, and portobello mushrooms. Since the store also sells dry goods from all over the world, we browsed further and came home with canned green olives from Israel, clover honey from Wisconsin, soup noodles from China, pastry dough from Greece, and a big block of tofu from lord-knows-where, since it wasn't labeled.

But. Back to the sweet potatoes.

We are a big soup family here, and I'll put just about anything into a soup to see how it tastes. Though I'd never had sweet potato soup, one night last week, I took a look at the sweet potatoes and figured it couldn't be that hard to make a soup with them. I baked the potatoes before leaving the house for our after-school activities, figuring it would get me a step ahead for the dinner that would have to be quickly prepared when we got home. I found a recipe on the internet that looked like I could adapt it to my non-dairy, vegetarian needs, and voila! Between that and a pan of cornbread, hastily mixed and tossed into the oven 30 minutes before dinner, we had a great start. Here's my version of the recipe:

Sweet Potato Soup

2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons salted margarine
3 cup water, mixed with 3 tsp vegetable broth powder
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
3 cups cooked, smashed sweet potatoes
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups vanilla soymilk

Make a roux-like mixture in your soup pot with the flour, margarine, and broth. Add the brown sugar and heat to a boil. Add the potatoes and spices and cook for 5 more minutes, then turn off the heat. Using an immersion blender, puree the potato mixture, then add the soymilk and heat again. Serve with CORNBREAD!

What to eat with this? Soup and cornbread is a nice start, but we need more than just this. A frantic bout of trimming green beans, and then a rapid-fire steam in the microwave, followed by liberal dousing of them with salted margarine and a tiny sprinkle of dried dill, was just what we needed. An overflowing bowl of chopped mango rounded it out nicely.

All in all, the prep time was perfect for a busy evening where dinner had to come together in less than 40 minutes. I won't lie; there are nights like this where we all eat cereal or yogurt for dinner, but having a fridge full of beautiful, bright fresh produce does inspire me to dig just a bit deeper for the creativity it takes to make a meal more than just fuel. Thank you, Market Place on Oakton!

Stori~ poor planning is the true mother of invention

Since we raise, butcher, and process our own meat, I am required to take out and plan for supper several days in advance. I fully admit, I am not good at this. I rarely know what I'll be in the mood to fix or eat till the day of. Within a year's time, we have usually butchered at least one if not two full sized sow pig, one moose, and maybe a beef cow. That much meat takes up a ton of freezer space, so my mom and dad keep the moose over in their freezer, I have claim to the pork and beef. Because my dad is an expert planner, we are never without moose thawed out. I really wish I had inherited that gene. Now, I say all that, just to say this.

Yesterday I woke up with a plan in my hand and hankering for spaghetti for supper. I make my meat sauce out of pretty much any burger (beef, moose, pork, caribou). About 3 days ago I took out some pork to thaw for the week, thinking I was grabbing a roast and a package of burger. My spaghetti supper ingredients (so I thought) were taken care. So there I go to the fridge to grab my burger out around 3 in the afternoon only to find no burger package. Pork chops. What? Pork chops? But I didn't wanna make pork chops! I didn't have enough potatoes over at my house for mashed. They were still in cold storage over at Papa's. Besides the fact I really wanted pasta! There I was, time to get supper going, nothing thawed out, my pasta plans dashed. So I go to my pantry and do like any good cook does, I stare at the shelves and cuss at myself. To be honest, I felt a little iron cheffy at that point. The clock is ticking, 6 hungry people to feed, no meat thawed out, one craving for pasta....GO! I notice a can of artichoke hearts..hmmm, oooh then fire roasted diced tomatoes, ok, oh! penne pasta~ Colt's favorite! Things are starting to come together. What about the protein for my carnivorous family? Canned chicken breast! Yes! So, by guessing, and tinkering, tasting, and guessing, I accidentally came up with a dish that Marc has requested to be put in the supper rotation!

Unlike Debi, I do not have at my disposal several fresh and raw food markets to choose from. Alaska winters are not friendly to fresh produce, and a "quick" trip to the grocery store would take about 2 hours. If you could look into my pantry you would find row after row, shelf after shelf of canned goods. These may not be as tasty as fresh, but they work great for my family. Besides canning our own home grown, I always keep a fully stocked pantry filled with canned food. And, they don't go bad! So out of the basic staples I have on hand at all times, I was able to come up with a very heart warming, belly filling, taste pleasing meal.

Penne pasta bake with artichokes and red sauce
(feeds family of 7 with leftovers!)

3 large cans white chicken breast, drained and broken up
1/2 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
3 cans tomato sauce (not spaghetti sauce, just plain tomato sauce)
1 can v-8 juice
2 1lb. boxes penne pasta
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
kosher salt, pepper, sage, oregano, thyme

In a large heavy pan, saute onions and garlic in about 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add drained chicken and brown, stirring constantly. Add undrained tomatoes and chopped artichokes. Brown just a tiny bit more. Season with a couple pinches of kosher salt, some pepper, about a tsp. ground sage, and 1/2 tsp both oregano and thyme (pre-made italian seasoning would work too). Pour in tomato sauces and v-8 juice. Stir, turn to low, cover and let simmer. Can slowly simmer for several hours if you like. Cook pasta in salted boiling water, but only for about 7 minutes. You don't want it all the way done. Drain cooked pasta and mix with the sauce. Transfer mixture to a big casserole dish, I used a 9x13 stoneware and that wasn't quite big enough. Top with mozzarella cheese and bake at *350 for around 30 minutes.

Note to Debi ~ this sauce would be great meatless too!