Two weeks ago, Josh and I headed south to Ft Collins, Colorado for a workshop. We spent the day learning about mobile slaughter units. I know, weird. Place yourself in a big chilly room, full of livestock producers, thinking about a better way to process animals, and see us sitting there wondering how we’ve found ourselves in the scenario. This is all part of our coming to an understanding with what it means to know where our food comes from.

So you can understand how all we really wanted after the workshop was to eat a meat free meal, heart and comforting. We made it to Ft Collins amazing vegetarian restaurant, Tasty Harmony. I don’t eat meat when we go out anyway, so it was a luxury to be able to go somewhere with endless options. We’ve been cutting back on the alcohol in our lives, and this place was ideal with its gazillions of fresh juices and amazing and satisfying non-meat dishes. Just what we needed after a long day spent contemplating the reality of the world we’ve chosen!

We started our meals with ginger juices and soups. Josh ordered this perfectly flavored squash curry soup. It was filling, delicious, and left us wanting to re-enter into our Indian food habits. I called the next day, asking if they would be oh-so kind and share the recipe with me. I spoke with the chef, who had created the soup based on what he had around, without a recipe. He did the best he could to share the ingredients and steps.

We tried the soup out last night and it was just as satisfying at home as it had been at that wonderful restaurant.

Winter Squash Curry Soup

One large squash (we used butternut), roasted with salt. pepper, and olive oil, and cubed
2 tablespoons of coconut oil
1 onion, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
2 grilled red peppers, chopped
Vegetable stock or bouillon (or chicken)
2 tablespoons cumin seeds
Basil, Turmeric and Curry
1-2 cinnamon sticks
Half of a squeezed lime
Some coconut oil
a bit of cinnamon
Toasted almonds and black sesame seeds

First, roast that gi-normous squash. We chose a butternut squash, quartered it, brushed it with olive oil, seasoned it with salt, pepper, and bit of curry, then placed the pieces face down on a baking sheet. We roasted the squash at 325 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Roast the red peppers. We stuck ours in the oven on broil, turning them so that they charred on all sides. After charred, put in a covered container so the peppers sweat. This should release their skins. Ours were stubborn, so I left the skins on. They still worked beautifully.

Sautee the onions, celery, and roasted red peppers with some salt in coconut oil.

While these are cooking, toast your cumin seeds on the stove in a heavy bottomed pan. Once they smoke a bit, remove from the pan, grind the cumin into a rough powder, and toast briefly with the curry and turmeric.

Mix these together and then add all spices including the basil to the sauteeing veggies. At this point it’s probably a good idea to add a bit of liquid to keep the spices from burning. We used homemade chicken stock, but veggie bouillon in water or just water would work as well. Let this cook down a bit, adding liquid as needed.

Take this mixture and puree most of it (and prepare to accept all pureeing equipment to be stained glowing turmeric yellow). Return to your soup pot, and then add your cubed and roasted squash along with a cinnamon stick or two. Add more liquid until you start to have a soup consistency. Cook this and allow the squash to start to breakdown. In the end you’ll want to have the soup thicken quite a bit from the squash, and still have some whole pieces remaining.

Taste the soup and add any needed spices. We added garam masala and some salt at this point. Squeeze in about half of a lime, stir in a little coconut oil, and sprinkle a bit of cinnamon in until the aromatic mixture makes your stomach grumble. Again, test for flavor.

Top with toasted almonds and blackened sesame seeds.
Just plain excellent.

There’s nothing like spontaneously being greeted by a farmers’ market on a beautiful Sunday morning when you least expect it. We were in Denver for the Avett Brothers concert at Red Rocks and to visit some belted galloway cows. The following day, before heading back up to Wyoming, we decided we desperately needed a strong cup of coffee. We drove around the city, passing four Whole Foods in the process, until we found a coffee shop worth stopping in. I couldn’t believe my emotional reaction to seeing Whole Foods! Who knew how much I loved that box of a store… I was just so grateful that we didn’t stop first at our Whole Foods oasis because lo and behold, as we found that lovely store of caffeine, we saw the streets blocked off for a farmers’ market. And not just any farmers’ market, but one with goat cheese, sausages, peaches, kombucha, heirloom tomatoes, cilantro, pears, and locally produced pancetta and salami. Score. Our Labor Day picnic/barbeque looked as though it just might become realistic. Well, not the picnic part. It was only fifty degrees that evening. But definitely the delicious food part. More on those recipes later.

But let’s get to the point. That pancetta. That salty, tender, lovely block of pancetta turned our last night’s dinner into a luxury. The man selling charcutterie recommended making a carbonara with the gourmet treat. He sold us within his first sentence of description. After a little searching around on-line, I settled on a recipe by Tyler Florence and adapted it just a bit for what we had on hand. It was delectable, peppery, flavorful, and eaten under a sky full of stars on a new moon night with the truck bed as our table.

Linguine Alla Carbonara
adapted from Tyler Florence’s Food 911 recipe (click on previous for link)
Ingredients

1 pound dry linguine, spaghetti, or fettucine
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces pancetta or slab bacon, cubed
4-6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 large eggs
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving
Freshly ground black pepper
1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, or 2 tablespoons dried (optional)
1/2 cup reserved pasta water

Prepare the sauce while the pasta is cooking to ensure that the spaghetti will be hot and ready when the sauce is finished; it is very important that the pasta is hot when adding the egg mixture, so that the heat of the pasta cooks the raw eggs in the sauce. The sauce is quite simple, so start that pasta water first. The timing will be easier the second time you make this (and you will make it again.)

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until tender yet firm (although at our elevation it actually was closer to 12-15 minutes.) We didn’t have fresh parsley on hand so added some dried parsley to the pasta water near the end of cooking, and then added a touch of dried parsley on finished dish. Drain the pasta well, reserving 1/2 cup of the starchy cooking water to use in the sauce if you wish- I wish that I had reserved the cooking water when reheating leftovers the next day.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a deep skillet over medium flame. Add the pancetta and saute for about 3 minutes, until the bacon is crisp and the fat is rendered. Toss the garlic into the fat and saute for less than 1 minute to soften.

Add the hot, drained spaghetti to the pan and toss for 2 minutes to coat the strands in the bacon fat. Beat the eggs and Parmesan together in a mixing bowl, stirring well to prevent lumps. Remove the pan from the heat and pour the egg/cheese mixture into the pasta, whisking quickly until the eggs thicken, but do not scramble (this is done off the heat to ensure this does not happen.) Thin out the sauce with a bit of the reserved pasta water, until it reaches desired consistency. Season the carbonara with several turns of freshly ground black pepper and taste for salt. Mound the spaghetti carbonara into warm serving bowls and garnish with chopped parsley. Pass more cheese around the table.

The first piece of mail that we received here at the ranch wasn’t a bill or some sort of junk, it was a thoughtful “housewarming” book from one of my mom’s greatest friends. Jeannie sent me a cookbook of recipes from an accidental country girl called, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Gramma spent some time looking through the book the other day while Josh and I were bouncing around the prairie and she certainly was amused. She says that she’s never seen a cookbook chock full of pictures with kids, cows, and horses.

The cookbook has a lot of recipes that use all fresh ingredients, but it’s not lacking in recipes that use cans of food. I thought for sure that these wouldn’t come in handy to me seeing as I usually have maybe one can of tomatoes on hand, and if we’re lucky perhaps a can of lentil soup. But I’ve learned my lesson; our nearest farmers’ market is an hour and a half away, and the sole grocer in town has little for affordable (or good) fresh food. We end up in Laramie with bags of goods whenever we can get out there, stocking both cabinets and freezers on our return to the ranch. So this cookbook written by a woman who lives on a remote ranch all of a sudden takes on new meaning for my way of cooking.

Rummaging through Gramma’s cupboard yesterday I found a can of olives, and in the fridge some mayo. There was a recipe in the book that actually used these ingredients together. We’ll talk about that later. I’m still trying to accept the fact that I made food to eat from that combo of foods. More importantly, it’s the end of peach season here (it’s supposed to frost tomorrow) and there are cobblers and pies to make. Here’s a great one with a few adjustments I made from Ree Drummond’s book.

Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Maple Cream Sauce
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 tablespoons maple syrup (the real stuff, please)
3 tablespoons honey

Peach Crisp
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Dash of nutmeg (I like to use fresh and grate myself)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 pound (1 stick) cold butter
5 or 6 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches (6-7 peaches)
Grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

First make the cream sauce- it needs to chill before serving. Pour cream into heavy saucepan, then add maple syrup and honey. Cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until sauce is thickened and reduced by a third, about 20 minutes. Chill for at least an hour before serving over warm peach crisp.

Then, preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Did you know you can make your own brown sugar?

Cut the cold butter into pieces. Add the butter to the bowl and use a fork or pastry blender to cut it into the flour mixture. It will resemble a moist, coarse meal.

Place the peaches in a bowl- to peel, quickly blanch in boiling water (about 30-60 seconds), dunk in icy water, and then slip the peels right off with a sharp knife. Add the lemon zest to the peaches, mix in lemon juice and maple syrup, then gently stir to combine. Remember to save some peaches for the cobbler- don’t eat them all. Pour peaches into 9-inch square or 8×12-inch baking dish.

Top with the crumb mixture, evening out the surface with a fork. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake 30 minutes more, or until the topping is crisp and golden brown. If the topping appears underdone, continue baking in 10 minute increments until it’s done. Spoon the warm crisp onto a plate, then drizzle with chilled maple cream sauce. Yes, it really is THAT good!

We used our leftover maple cream sauce on peaches with yogurt the next morning. And then we ate more cobbler. And then we forced ourselves to hunt for something to chase to end our stupor, but in the end laid in the grass under the sun with a lazy hound dog.

It seems that last week the honeymoon period here on the range had a not so smooth crash landing. My spirit broke daily from having to walk into work at a steakhouse, and Josh’s spirit desperately choked from this dusty barn that can’t quite seem to make sense yet as a shop. And these overwhelming feelings of heaviness in the brain continually reminded us that: We Need A Yurt. Stat. Winter looms, the mornings already falling below forty degrees; the frost predicting flowers that have bloomed six weeks before frost for decades and decades last week began showing their yellow blossoms. Lovely.

And then we had the opportunity to attend a conference within the Wyoming state line called Living and Working on the Land. We drove four hours over a remote and beautiful highway, eyes peeled looking for bighorn sheep (to no avail), reaching a delicious evening of acoustic music, local food, and our very own hotel room. The two days that followed were full of amazing speakers, wonderful local farmers and ranchers, and great time spent thinking that perhaps this ranching project of ours might have some validity to it after all. You know, it can be real exhausting to think to yourself hour after hour, day after oppressing day, that you are an anomaly, a being of extraordinary strangeness that will just not ever fit into this wild and rustic west. But we met others who’s eyes shine when you say the words, “diversity!”, “sustainability!”, and “rotational grazing!”. And now the real challenge comes with finding a way to remember that we are not alone, we are not being unreasonable dreamers, and that we just might be able to be successful with ranching while simultaneously bringing greater health to this soil and all who subsist on it.

We met Joel Salatin, leader of all things unconventional and diverse in farming. All ears perched as the audience took in his every authentic word, spoken with the unapologetic intensity of a robed and animated preacher. Who knew in this contemporary day and age it would take a farmer to stand up and speak the truth to the connections of health, food, government, politics, family, and land values. One of our favorite topics addressed by Joel was about how new ideas and growth come from disturbance. He speaks of not only how disturbance of the soil brings new growth (thus the importance of grazing animals on the land), but how allowing our false economy to crumble, thus using human capabilities to exercise and design a higher level of ecology. Innovation will arise. Joel’s Polyface Farm in Virginia works to improve the soil while providing food to a great number of people in his local community, all while teaching and employing a substantial number of well-compensated young people; young people who will take this knowledge and exponentially touch cities and rural lands alike. And as Joel said at the conference, “We are all more similar than we are different. We all eat.”

We also were fortunate enough to have an engaging conversation with rancher and writer Diane Peavey. On an evening trip to Table Mountain Vineyards Winery, we waited in the buffet line for locally produced burgers on a stick (for real) with Diane and heard some of her amazing stories about her sheep ranch in Idaho. She listened to our bit of bitchy banter about the struggles involved when two young people leave a yuppy university town and end up in a western town with the state’s severest reputation, all while not having a very good plan for how soon and very soon a yurt will be built. She thought it was hilarious and hopeful, repeatedly saying that the best marketing any of us at the conference could possibily do is to tell our stories. Tell your stories. And ah, if there’s one thing this Wyoming family has, it’s stories. And if we can only hold on to our wacky sense of humor, oh the stories we can tell of this beginning, slightly ungraceful and definitely uncomfortable, period of learning to walk despite the badger holes at our feet and battering wind at our backs.

Gramma was full of anecdotes the other day. Living with her is somewhere between a hilarious riot, and a time warped past. Your heart ticks anxiously at the items left to be done in the present as she details stories of the past. We’re torn with needing to crawl away and be productive, and wanting to stay and absorb all she can share. She is an amazing storyteller, maintaining her sharp mind with memories from her 80 plus years. She arrived at this ranch at the age of 17, married and learning how to be a wife in a time and place without running water, fulfilling daily chores of chickens and milk cows. Her knowledge of the past and the hardships that came with the ruggedness of life bring all of us to both laughter and tears almost daily around the dinner table. When I can take the time to benefit from her old ways and knowledge, I know I must.

Sunday I asked her if she could show me how she makes her pie crust. I had gone on a peach bender Friday after seeing a stand of produce on the roadside, buying a box of the ripe and aromatic fruit. Deprived of fresh produce, everyday since I have eaten a minimum of three peaches. We used these to make the same amazing peach pie we had last year around this time… link is here.

Here are just a few of the sentences that came from that clever lady’s mouth as she made the dough, followed by her recipe:

“I saw the way Joshua was making his bisquits. That’s fine for his bisquits, I suppose, but that’s not how you make bisquits. You need lard for bisquits. I’ll show you someday.”

“I suspect this rolling pen is about as old as I am because it was here when I got here. I’ll show you how to clean it. I don’t want it washed- if you have to wash it, just use a damp cloth. They say you have to wash these things these days, but I’ve been using this rolling pen for 63 years.”

Her recipe uses lard, something our culture is afraid of in this day and age. And to be quite honest, I’m afraid of buying lard but intrigued by the prospect of having lard from the animals on this land.

Gramma’s Pie Crust:
makes two 9″ crusts

2 c. flour, sifted
1 tsp. salt
Small amount baking powder (maybe 1/2 tsp. is what it looked to me?)
Mix these dry ingredients in a bowl, then dump as a mound onto a wooden bread board (some might just use a clean counter top- Gramma thinks that to be absurd).

In another bowl place 2/3 c. soft lard. You might need to work this a bit with a fork to soften it. Add to the lard 1/3 c. BOILING water. Begin to work this quickly with a fork, and when combined push the flour mixture from the board into the bowl. This will allow some of the flour to stay behind on the board. Mix all together, handling the dough as little as possible.

Turn your pie pan upside down on the bread board and draw a circle on the board in the remaining flour dust. Place your dough in the center of this circle, and roll out the dough using a floured rolling pen. It doesn’t have to be perfect- the beauty of this crust is not only that it flakes nicely, but it repairs easily. Using a very dull knife, gently pull the dough from the board, then fold the dough in half. Lift the dough from the board with the knife, place in pie pan, and make any repairs by pushing the dough with your fingertips. There should be extra dough for any rips in your crust. Then flute the edges with your fingers and cut any ragged edges from the edge of the pan.

After a simple and sweet pre-Christmas celebration in Omaha with my family, my sister needed to hit the road back to Tulsa before the weather turned nasty. She refused sweets, Christmas cookies, tea, and all things edible until I offered her homemade yogurt that we had brought from Michigan. After a brief pause, she agreed. She would take the yogurt to have when back at home. The norm for this sister of mine is to not hold on to anything. Once it’s been given to her, she will re-gift practically anything she has received, so I didn’t hold my breath. The next week my sister called, saddened because there was no more yogurt in the jar for the next weeks breakfast but a teeny teaspoon.

“Do not fear!”, I said. “It is oh so simple to make!” I was overjoyed when she decided she actually wanted to learn how to make the yogurt at home. Pleased as a pup in my bed- not that my pup is in my bed, cuddling warm like a heating pad next to my thigh… never. There really aren’t too many things I can talk endlessly about, but yogurt is one of them and if Rebekah is converted to homemade yogurt, I am a happy sister.

Here it is folks, my re-entry to blogging about this passion we call food… or eating… or subsistence… Yogurt.

We have access to a gallon of local raw milk a week, and with this gallon we typically make yogurt, paneer, and use the cream for our coffee. We easily go through a half gallon of yogurt a week and never dread making the next batch. It’s just about the easiest domestic feat any half-hearted kitchen procrastinator can broach, and on that note, it’s pretty much fool-proof… not to make you feel nervous or anything. I swear, you can do this.

Start with a half gallon of your favorite, preferably local, milk. We applaud the wholeness of milk so haven’t tried anything with less fat- let us know how it works if you try something low fat. But consider yourself heartily encouraged to embrace the breadth of whole milk. Take that milk and heat it to 180 degrees. A simple candy thermometer helps in this instance, but you basically want to heat the milk to JUST ABOUT boiling without actually letting it boil.

Take the milk off of the heat, then let it cool to 110 degrees, to where you could just keep your finger tip in the milk without it being intolerable. To this, add 1 tablespoon of yogurt (living culture) to the milk and stir it all around. You don’t want too much culture, so restrain rather than heap. With too much culture, the bacteria strains will fight to all grow and gain strength, but will have to work too hard to fight each other, thus not gaining a whole lot of thick yogurt making ground. Nothing excessive here.

The next and final step is to maintain a consistently warm temperature for your yogurt to become yogurt. The ideal temperature will be to maintain 110 degrees. We’ve tried multiple ways, including leaving the oven light on, using a dehydrator, and using an insulated cooler filled with warm water. The cooler is by far the most consistent. We use the hottest tap water we can, then fill the cooler until our container with milk is immersed. The yogurt then sits unjostled for at least six hours (but we’ve left ours for much longer) to work its magical creamy goodness.

Once you start making yogurt, you can keep your culture going indefinitely. We’ve had to start over a few times due to travel or helpful family members throwing out that last bit of hanging around yogurt. We typically start over with Stonyfield Organic Yogurt, or Brown Cow Cream Top yogurt. Both are delicious. As yogurt ages it also starts to be a bit tangier. The tangier your culture, the tangier the yogurt. We consider aged culture a bit of an art. Be sure that when you choose your first starter yogurt culture you are choosing one with the essential bacterial strains, basically as many listed probiotics as you can find. Stonyfield lists these as their exclusive blend of six cultures: S. THERMOPHILUS, L. BULGARICUS, L. ACIDOPHILUS, BIFIDUS, L. CASEI, AND L. RHAMNOSUS.

Good luck! You’ll never turn back.

ADDENDUM! ATTENTION ALL! MAKING YOGURT WITH RAW MILK AND KEEPING IT RAW IS ACTUALLY NOT PROBLEMATIC IN THE LEAST! While I hope raw milk will be not only readily available but also not used in propaganda measures by our government, I know that currently it is a fair sized feat to obtain unpasteurized milk. If for some reason you have though, by all means make yogurt and make it raw! Heating it only to 110 degrees keeps the raw enzymes alive and bustling. And all of our guts that we expose to these modernized food elements can use some good living enzymes. Really make no changes other than only heating the milk to 110 degrees, not all the way up to 180, and you will have a super, sour, perfectly creamy yogurt with all the goods those mama cows intended. If your milk isn’t raw, you’ll get more consistent results with heating to 180, plus remove most harmful pathogens that exist in the pasteurized milk.  Yum! It’s delicious.