We had an Apple Bake Off at work a week or so ago. I was extremely pleased when the announcement arrived in my inbox, taunting all employees to compete. I had 45 pounds of organic Colorado apples sitting in the old stone house at the ranch, and I wanted nothing more than to have some form of motivation outside of myself to make an unusual and delicious apple concoction.

Well, instead of sharing something delicious (like this apple, onion and bacon galette), I made two things that I normally don’t like anyway, and boy oh boy, they were so not delicious. Maybe one of the two had a chance, but not my apple pie a la mode drink, mixed in the parking lot, floating with clumps of nutmeg. Yuk. The coleslaw was probably really good, but I’m not so fond of such things. And tell me this, my friends: why would anyone bring coleslaw to an apple bake off? Number one, this is a completely raw side dish, never baked for a moment. And number two, no one will eat your raw mixture, reeking with caraway, when it’s sitting next to warm apple pie and calorie doused apple cheesecake. Lost cause.

I hate to say it, but on this very same day I made a third dish. I was too embarrassed to bring three things, so I saved the truly delicious one, the galette, for family and only my immediate co-workers. Yes, this will be made again! The galette dough puffs up after only brief kneading and resting. The sweet and salty mix in flavor brings such satisfaction, erasing all need for seconds.

Yes, I felt really guilty not taking this offering to the competition, but it also felt so good to be able to have this for dinner with Josh and Gramma that very night, apple pie and cheesecake still sitting in my belly. Needless to say, with all the preparations in the early hours of the day, few pictures were taken. Just believe that as that bacon crisped up in those lovely morsel pieces, and the onions caramelized, there was nothing better than the finale of apples being added to the richly colored and flavored food in that skillet.

Apple, Onion, and Bacon Galette

First, the dough:
1/2 cup warm water
2 teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour, or as needed

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water in a medium size bowl.

Add the beaten egg, oil and salt. Stir in the flour slowly, a 1/2 cup at a time. When the dough is stiff and difficult to stir, turn out onto a floured surface (use some of the flour that is still left from the original amount). Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes. Add flour if the dough is sticky.

Set the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a towel, and rise in a warm place until the dough as almost doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

The Savory Filling:
1/4 pound local and naturally raised pork bacon, roughly chopped
4 cups thinly sliced onions
4 cups not too sweet apples (I used a mix of Gala and Jonagolds), peeled, cored and sliced
pinch of salt
A couple sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped
1/4 cup of blue cheese or gruyere, optional

After you’ve chopped the bacon, fry it in a large skillet. After the bacon is just crispy, remove the skillet from the heat, and use a slotted spoon to scoop the bacon pieces onto a plate covered with a paper towel.

Drain bacon grease just until there is 3 tablespoons remaining. Saute the onions along with a pinch or so of salt in the 3 tablespoons of bacon grease until the onions are loosened up and a bit transparent.

Toss in the chopped rosemary with the onions. Add the apples and another tablespoon or so of the bacon fat. Stir until the apples are tender. Add the bacon back into the mixture. Sprinkle salt and sugar into the filling to taste. Set aside this mixture to cool while you roll out the galette dough.

Next!
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is thin and about 14-inches in diameter. There will probably be more dough than you need. Cut away whatever is more than the 14 inches and save for another use. Fold the dough into quarters, then transfer to the back of a cookie sheet or sheet pan. Unfold the dough, allowing it to fall over the edges of the pan.

Once the filling is cool, scoop it into the center of this dough. Leave a border of 2 to 4 inches around the edge. Fold the edges over the filling, loosely pleating and overlapping the dough. The center of the galette will remain open and not covered.

Brush the dough with a beaten egg mixed with some milk or cream, or melted butter. Sprinkle the entire thing with an equal mixture of salt and sugar. Bake at 400 degrees until the crust is browned, about 40 minutes. About 10 minutes before the galette is done, top the filling with gruyere or blue cheese if you feel like it! Let that melt and meld its flavors into the galette. Could be just fabulous, I’m sure!

This steak takes little more than 25 minutes in preparation and cooking combined, yet the flavors rival any past steak we’ve eaten. The steak itself is seared to lock in flavors and juices, then the other cast of characters sneak into play: chopped up garlic, de-sprigged rosemary, and smooth red wine all added into your pan for deglazing. Our steak came from Wags Livestock out of Laramie, Wyoming. Someday it’ll come from Meadow Ranch, Rawlins, WY. But for now, they’re doing a pretty bang up job of raising grassfed cows and we’re buying from them.

This recipe has become a number one promoter of our to-be herb garden (hurry, hurry, faster, faster, plant those herbs!). How can I possibly have to run to the store to find “packaged in plastic” sprigs of organic rosemary? Silly. Down right ridiculous. I would like to transplant our Michigan gardens directly into these rocky mountain grounds we find ourselves on. I can’t wait for the days that we are able to return to plucking and picking thyme, tarragon, sage, and rosemary from our backyard on fanciful cooking whims. Wait. We don’t have a backyard. And wait. Do antelope, elk and deer like herbs? How about rattlesnakes? Oh boy.

We ate this steak with a quickly sauteed cabbage, butter, dill combo, cooked together with salt and water. We could mop up the braising juices and garlic with the cabbage. It was perfect.

Thanks to Nourished Kitchen for being such an inspiring place to find whole and healthy recipes like this one!

Wine Braised Steak with Rosemary and Garlic

1 16-ounce 100% grass-fed beef steak
unrefined sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter or clarified butter
4 to 6 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 branch fresh rosemary, plus more to garnish
1 cup red wine, any will do

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Generously season the steak with unrefined sea salt and freshly ground black pepper as it suits you.
3. Heat two tablespoons butter or clarified butter in a cast-iron skillet over a very hot flame.
4. Sear the steak in the hot fat about one minute on each side.
5. Remove the skillet from the heat, add garlic and fresh rosemary needles.
6. Deglaze the skillet with red wine.
7. Place the skillet in an oven preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit for about ten minutes, longer if you prefer well-done steaks and less if you prefer a rare steak.
8. serve with pan juices, garnished with additional rosemary.

YIELD: about 4 servings.

TIME: about 10 minutes (preparation), 10 to 20 minutes (cook time)

A few years back, when a friend of ours was living with us, I got pretty hardcore into these smoothies. And all three of us agreed, they were delicious. But after about the second week of me obsessively blending these drinks, Josh and Michelle were done. They’d had enough. So I controlled the obsession, but every autumn since, the craving returns.

This is a recipe from the famed Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks, and this particular book is New Classics. Just because we don’t have many trees in this part of the country doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy autumn in so many other authentic ways. Like organic Colorado pears. In smoothies.

Autumn Smoothie

1 ripe fresh pear, peeled, cored and chopped
1/2 cup unsweetened apple juice or apple cider
1/2 cup milk (I suggest almond, they suggest soy. I have no milk and am substituting fresh and local heavy cream. But in a way lesser quantity…)
1 teaspoon pure maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 drops pure almond extract
pinch of ground cinnamon

Puree the ingredients in a blender or food processor until smooth.

You can not be disappointed!

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.

You have to remind yourself that you are here with a mission for a reason. And you must find ways to re-inspire. And you must make art: as sculpture, pictures, words, dirt drawings, or flashes of beauty as form. Anyway, all that just to say that we did a little exercise tonight in remembering the naivete that we knew we would lose! We were always honest with ourselves about that, and perhaps a little too honest. The fall has been a little less far, but I feel like we are a tad out of gear because of it. But oh well. We are where we are, doing the best we can and it’s not too shabby at that. Our list, that hopefully will take shape into a concise mission that a bank will want to fund (even if it does take us months to try)!!

MISSION (seemingly impossible)

▪ lightly tred, heal the lands scars, and conserve the integrity of the land
▪ protect the work of those that cared for this land in its modern history
▪ don’t live so isolated
▪ see clearer, more openly, with hope in what we can actually do
▪ live a life that we believe in
▪ work as a laborer as humans have done in the past
▪ integrate within the cycles, working together with animals in a synergetic relationship
▪ produce that which we use, survive because of, and eat
▪ build a space to exist that is comforting and spatially aware (not self-centered)
▪ choose to live as healthy a life as possible: food, water use, animal protection, stress reduction, reality of that which is important, emphasis on community and learning and teaching and accepting and countering
▪ use less plastic
▪ share with others a whole foods system based on living with and on the land, outside of a commodity market without losing the integrity of our time, family, and interests (we can’t just give the shit away)
▪ fight with experience and kindness the industrial food system
▪ become a resource
▪ spend our time on that which we love or at least find it to be worth the effort
▪ balance. keep art in the picture. make a system of producing food… Art. The communication of that which is life’s reason, is time spent daily, spelled out letter by letter through art. In whatever form we feel completes our wavy and crazy heads.
▪ this is why we live with gramma. in a pink room with shag carpet.
▪ and the stars are pretty great.
▪ and the 9 bovines out there are pretty darn happy.
▪ i just don’t want to have to kill coyotes. or prairie dogs. or rattlesnakes. but who keeps the balance? learning the balance of the land…. a feat worth pursuing. a reality worth keeping our eyes wide open to, a travesty that we choose to not pretend away.
▪ partnerships with animals is another study worth pursuing
▪ thanking the land on a daily basis for existing. Just as it is.
▪ better knowing our native peoples who lived before the extermination of buffalo.
▪ accepting that which is not understood in nature and trusting that it just might know best.

Before we came to Wyoming, in the midst of saying goodbye to what we had learned to know so well, we came up with this original mission statement (to be edited soon due to a heavy emphasis on one topic):

“To live in a world without acknowledging that which makes us human- food, water, and shelter- is to choose to scar the earth and selfishly live until we die. We live once, and in this living we impact all life, be it bug, plant, micro or macro. Our interaction with food links us to an earth that has embraced our beings, creating us as humans until maternally absorbing us back into the earth once our hearts no longer beat.

The food we eat spiritually grounds us as humans into the cyclical earth rotation. We embrace this concept by choosing to simplify our lives with a focus on food, antithetically opposing the profit-driven and consumption-fueled cultural mindset of conventional factory farming. In the life and death of animals, we choose a project that will consume us as consumers nurturing both art and food, seeing eating as art and knowledge; to be stewards and not excavating capitalists of the land. Changing the definition of profit, we will not be foreign to these cycles. We will know what we put into our bodies, into the bodies of animals in our care, and the food that feeds the earth we borrow. In this, art and food will remind us of what it is to be human.”

I think it might behoove most people to occasionally write a mission statement based on goals. It’s good to be able to see it evolve and then learn to say you’re still okay, even if you are unstable.

One of the things that Raymond taught Gramma her first winter at the ranch is that there’s no time to cry over the dead ones. I guess when Josh told her yesterday that we’d lost one of the steers, her tears rolled freely down her face. And of course with the tears of a more than 80 year old ranching woman, Josh was feeling the weight of his day and crying too.

We lost a steer. Josh went to do the methodical check on the cows where you sit on the four wheeler with a dingo gripping on behind and you count. You count twice. Yep, there’s ten. And you either sit there and pet the bull and talk to the cows for a bit, or you zip off to move a couple of black cows that somehow snuck in through a downed fence. But yesterday he counted. He counted again. And then again. Each time there were only nine. He moved closer in and saw all the cows bowing their heads, not eating, but surrounding the still and bloated body of our only not-horned critter.

We called him cross-steer. We lost our cross-steer, the charolais/angus/highland mix, the animal that was always veering off course when we tried to move the group. “That damn steer!” we would holler as he moved towards brush and bumps and holes- I just knew I would sprain my ankle as I tried to suggest he move back towards our path. He was the rambunctious one, always taking to the hound dog when she got that sparkle in her eye. She loved to be ornery and pick on that guy, and I think he loved to pick on her.

He’s gone now. I love each and every one of those animals and we feel a deep responsibility for their well-being. He was to be the first on the list to slaughter. We brought him from Nebraska with the intention of comparing his nature to straight highlands, and also the quality of his meat. It’s a weird prospect, this animal as meat. I know that. It’s not quite real to me and I know it will evolve in it’s meaning, rolling out like a legendary scroll as it answers so many questions left unknown right now. We all take a journey with death. I see our role as ranchers one that dances with death. Yet I’m pretty uncomfortable with the notion that we all die, and that some of us coordinate the dates of death for our food.

Maybe this sounds like I’m ready to go back to the ways of vegetarianism. I’m not. We can talk about that on an individual basis later, preferably with a coffee in hand, sitting on the high rim above the ranch, watching the sun set behind its wall of daily regrets.

Last night in our heavy sleep, eyes coaxed down ever so quickly by a day full of sadness, we heard the chatter and singing and communication of coyotes. The call of a coyote is always ominous, always intriguing, and always eery. Last night as I tried to pretend their voices were only in a nightmare, I gripped onto Josh’s chest and hoped he wasn’t awake. To know what those coyotes were supping on for their nighttime, moonlit dinner brought back the heaviness of all that we have undertaken. It’s not easy knowing where your food comes from. It’s not easy knowing that life isn’t all heat pumped through your vents, cheese pre-sliced for you, and clothes made to fit around every town corner. I mean, I guess it can be, but I don’t really want it to be. I want every day to be a realization that we do the best we can, we live until we learn what it really all means, and we stick together.

Cross-steer is no longer with the herd, and I think they all know it. I think they saw him die, and they were paying their respect when Josh found them. We’re keeping a very close watch on the rest of the herd- as close as we can. They seem to be walking further than they had before and are right now a couple miles deep into the pasture. Maybe it’s just exploration, maybe it’s some other animal understanding that I can’t even begin to understand.

There are theories as to how he died. We sent a vet out who said the tissues had been dead for too long for her to find any results in tests. She also said the pasture looked great, no killer weeds that she could see. And she said his rumen was full and healthy with good grass. It appeared that he had not paced around, but instead plain old laid down and died. Our hypothesis is lightning. We think we heard the original call of coyotes before dark on Wednesday as the first rain in months came down, the sky darkened with charcoal-like clouds. We’ll continue on, paying homage to the steer who journeyed through this western landscape with us, and perhaps journey through our thoughts on food even quicker than anticipated.

I’m so grateful for Josh. I can’t even imagine what yesterday was like, stumbling upon death, then caring for the rest of the herd and juggling the cut and dryness of a vet’s knife. He had to move that steer from that pasture, and to know the smells that Josh encountered and the stiffness of a body that before was so full of life- ah. Thanks for being willing, Josh. You’re a good one.