Let Me Be Your Ullr

The Flapjacket beginner's hill conveyor belt at Lutsen Mountain couldn't hold back

 the ski gods or goddesses (Carly) for long last week.  With a good ski plan in place, we started

her off on the bunniest of bunny hills right at the foot of the training hill on Ullr Mountain (named after the ancient Norse "ski" god),

and a two-hour ski lesson that prepared her for taking the ski lift up to the top of a real peak of a real mountain!

Skis firmly set to snowplow position, in a day's time Big Bunny looked like little Thumper.

Time for Ullr, the blue sign level instead of the green.  The hill starts slow but midway shoots down at a steep pitch which then lands at the bottom where a fairly quick stop near a built in safety fence waits.

Even though there were moments of "too fast," Carly dug her snowplow in, kept her balance all the way, and curved to the left at the bottom before the line of skiers at the chair lift, ready for more…."maybe tomorrow."

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The Return of Ta Henket 

A few years back we watched what looked like a very promising show on Discovery Channel called "Brewmasters." The first episode we saw followed the expedition of Dogfish Head Brewery (located in Milton Delaware) founder and president Sam Calagione (picture above) and Dr. Patrick E. Mcgovern,

called the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages," to Egypt.  Their mission was to

harvest an ancient yeast so to include it later back at home brew base for a new Ancient Ale – a series of intricately crafted obscure beers   The brewmaster, along for the ride in Egypt, set out a petri dish in an open field at the outskirts of Cairo in order to pick up free floating ancient yeast!  The yeast strain they caught to make the Ta Henket ale with was extracted from hieroglyphs, so the description goes, which was added to "an ancient form of wheat and loaves of hearth-baked bread and added chamomile, doum palm fruit and Middle Eastern herbs."  The microbrew revolution was now not only about perfecting the traditional craft, but about the experimentation itself and the mysterious possibilities of hop and additive combinations taken to another level. Beer lovers across America now recognize Dogfish Head as an ongoing pioneer. Beer drinkers world wide anxiously await bizarre new concoctions from this small brewery that puts "off-centered"

tastes and textures ahead of mass production and distribution.  The problem though with such limited editions and such fanfare, is that demand for Dogfish had way overcome supply.  Wisconsin lost its shipments for three years…until…this past month.  Calagione ramped-up production just enough for little four-packs to now line the Cheese State's beer cooler shelves. Folks can now sip tricky brews like Burton Baton,

an India Pale named after Burton England, the origin of the first India Pale, with cowboy art on the label created by an artist who is a member of a new age punk band.  In other words, the brewers are thinking about ways to make sipping, instead of guzzling, fun. For this particular style, two threads or batches of beer are combined: an English-style old ale and Imperial Ale.  "After fermenting the beers separately in our stainless tanks, they're transferred and blended together in one of our large tanks. Burton sits on the wood for about a month." It's kind of fun to think that the brew you are sipping was aged on oak (like wine) for a month, or might have once wafted through the same air as Pharaohs.

Churchill's Brother For an Hour

You learn a lot about Winston Churchill when you're sitting two feet away from him for a few hours.  A few things you learn are that Churchill, although obviously best known as a Prime Minister during WWII, was first and foremost a military man from a young age, following the British battle lines across the globe from India to Africa, – there, once escaping from a prison in Pretoria only to return by train to lead a charge to save other fellow prisoners.

Throughout his life he made money chiefly as a writer, not as a public servant, writing many articles as a war correspondent and political commentator.  Eventually, for his masterpiece volumes on WWII and the Invasion of Britain by Caesar, he won a Nobel Prize in Literature.  His father was a British dignitary (related to the royal Spencer family), and his mother, the vivacious Jennie Jerome,

was a New York socialite and notorious 'traveler' of many kinds.  Although Churchill hardly knew either parent, he was raised by his beloved nanny, a woman he affectionately called 'Old Woom,' and did have a brother who would be very close to Winston

up until middle-age heart disease took him.  It was at this last character, the brother John Strange Spencer-Churchill, that our Churchill impersonator, the extremely talented Randy Otto,

began his anecdote about the fateful months before the great stock market collapse of 1929, when Winston was himself traveling in America, had found a lucrative writing contract with famous publisher Randolph Hearst, and invested it in the stock market that fell only days later.  His brother, a professional financier, thankfully Otto said, as he walked directly over to me seated in a chair only feet away, grabbed both of my hands, looked in my eyes with sad thankful eyes (as if talking to his brother) and spoke with his smoky stiff lip that John was able to turn these family misfortunes around.  After the loss of his brother, Churchill would go on to uncountable different political positions, accepted by some, shunned by many others, until his career was nearly finished, only to quickly rise at the outset of WWII as an unlikely Prime Minister

whose refusal to surrender gained him rankings, generations later, as the greatest Brit that ever lived. I was later able to thank Otto for having me as his brother and that I would never forget it.

Yankee Doodle

Until the moment I read that American soldiers played "Yankee Doodle" at the surrender of nearly 6,000 Redcoats under British General Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, I thought, like I think many people, that 'doodles' were supposed to be something cute and curly like pasta macaroni.  I wasn't sure why people were sticking macaroni (feathers) in their caps, but hey, sing it and go with it – it's a cute Patriotic tune.  The levels of irony in this, though, are pretty interesting when considering the entire context of the Revolutionary War, and that "Yankee Doodle" was an original score by a Brit in America who was essentially mocking the peasant nature of the average rag-tag American citizen and soldier.

In the early years of the War, The Continental Army was thought of as a military joke to the well-trained, experienced, well-clothed

and 'controlled' British Army.  The Continentals, on the other hand, were a disparate crew, untrained, regional in their self-interests, often marching without any semblance of uniformity in look or strategic understanding, much of the time literally sock and shoe-less.  Redcoats scoffed at them. They could hardly believe that they were forced to engage an army that acted as though they were more in tune with the native culture than the model of a professional soldier – rifleman, for example, ducking and weaving behind trees or laying down in the dirt to take their fire then retreating back into the home-field advantage of the forest.  A 'Doodle,' then, in actuality was a mocking term used to describe certain country types that might aspire to be stylish by that era's terms.  Macaroni was slang for 'dandyish' (trying to be British).  


More broadly, the context of the American Revolutionary War effectively lasted the range of years 1775-1783, from the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord to the full-on Siege of Boston at Bunker Hill up until George Washington eventually returned to New York to a hero's welcome

after the Battle of Yorktown, which forced Britain's acknowledgement of the American claim of independence.  What happened to the 'Yankee Doodles' in between these years might very well be the most interesting historical secret generally kept from American students.  After Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware and following victories at Princeton

and Trenton, then the effective forage war during the winter of 1777, not only did the momentum of the war shift from a forgone conclusion that the Patriots were no match for those well-dressed British Regulars, but Washington and his generals began to understand that dictating momentum was absolutely critical.  This attitude, along with more experience and organization, paved the way for a turning point in the War at the Battle of Saratoga, NYwhere 6,000 Redcoats had to surrender – a gigantic number by the battle standards of the time.  Although only days later would another British force rally and take Philadelphia, the playing of "Yankee Doodle" would have been the bitterest of pills to swallow for the British Army and Crown.

Landing Devil's Lake 

11.62 miles northwest of Merrimac, Kit had made an impromptu cut north to Devil's Lake

so to circle a few times and check out what this ancient glacial jewel looked like from 1500 feet at 120 mph.  While she circled around the edge of the beach, she really wished she had floats on her Cessna and was

tempted, on first pass, to try her first landing on the open road peeking out of the woods just above the beachside chalet at the end of the lake.  She pulled up on the column for one more pass and remembered some famous landing stories she was told by her grandpa – the very first airplane flyer in Sauk County, George Schlieckau,

who soloed with old Cecil Hess in Reedsburg back in 1928.  The story goes that old George once dropped off his parents at the nearest Sauk Co. train station so they could travel to a wedding in Kansas. What he didn't tell them is that he too planned on going, but by plane, just no compass or brakes. Not many hours afterward, he found himself landing in a Kansas wheat field which he thought, from high above, was six inches in height, but was in fact closer to three feet high.  Five days later, after the wedding festivities, it took the cousins and a handful of neighbors to heave the plane onto a lift-off position.

"It was always the gliding at the approach to landing that was difficult," he recalled, talking about the first time "I tried to come in to land on my first flight, I hit the ground before the landing field…I bounced so hard that I went up 12 feet and cleared the trees and fence to get to the landing field.  My instructor was in the field waving for me to go up again and circle around before landing.  I forgot for a minute why he was there and waved back at him!"  Kat wasn't sure if these stories instilled confidence or fear in her as she flew over the easy sightings of balanced rock, which she always

thought, when a girl, was somehow glued together, and devil's doorway,

another one of those bizarrely windswept formations so noticeable in this part of Sauk County.  She took a deep breath and decided to take the advice from one of her favorite Jimmy Buffet songs "Breath in, Breath Out, Move On," and placed herself on a parallel path just to the left of the long straight road below...

Great Pumpkin Carly Brown

Some cookie doughs you can dip one tasting finger in and be done, wait it out until they become…cookies.  Other doughs hold within them some kind of magical elixir and tantalize in another finger, which might lead to a spoon, which could lead to a spatula until finally the slow moving transfer of impulses from eyes, mouth, and brain reach the resting ground of the stomach and it finally responds to say something like "wait, this is filling, plus we haven't started baking yet!" The best elixir (I mean dough) we've made yet was a batch of wickedly tempting white chocolate pumpkin cookies on saturday.

The keys to this batch were the perfect combination of taste and texture – taste built by Libby's canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, two sugars and butter; the texture built not only by the addition of white chocolate chips

but what I found out to be the result of being overly patient with beating the dough until it
was whipped so thick that we'd dip a finger and a cookie's worth would grab and we did have to test it, for impurities…plus (we thought at the time) pumpkin is fruit, and nutritious with a lot of vitamins and minerals in it.  Here are the four cookies we got from the batch.

Cheeseburgers in Paradise

On the now annual pilgrimage to hoops mecca Beaver Dam, WI, it's a good idea to take a side trip down to the imaginary Caribbean

where you have to figure the sky is blue, the sun is yellow, the sand is white, and somewhere flying over it all looking for a good cove to land his sea plane is Jimmy Buffet, just waiting to sing "Cheeseburger in Paradise" for you.

Of only a couple of hands full of Cheeseburger in Paradise burger shacks nationwide, who would of thought that the Middleton shopping center at Greenway Station would have one?  But there it is, a cute oasis of palm tree and thatched vine also boasting the Badger game...

...which also happens to serve one of the best guacamole and bacon burgers on the entire west Madison beach.  Each burger on the menu can be ordered with Kobi beef, a premier Japanese cut that, when done well, holds the deep smoky burger taste we all hope for when we grill them ourselves.

We knew we were somewhere temporarily lost in Margaritaville when we realized we were sitting next to three glass garage doors -- better suited for open summer air than early November.

Merle's Secret Spice Rub

It seemed every rural diner and dive bar this side of the Baraboo Bluffline (worth its salt?) had its secret pork or beef roast spice rub,

which was prized by cooks like Merle at the Piccadilly like gold dust. Merle was an itinerant chef,

starting out as a military cook in Virginia, moving onwards, upwards, and backaroundwards as close to the eastern seaboard as he could stay, eventually settling down for six years at the Sweet Shack

not far off the airstrip at Captiva Island, Fl. His claim to fame, and what brought him oddly enough

to Lone Rock in Spring Green, WI of all places, was a summer stint as Jimmy Buffet's personal chef on Jimmy's famous Hemisphere Dancer, a vintage Grumman Albatross.

As Merle would tell all the pilots coming in and out of the diner, a lot of those 'tales' of Margaritaville were true, like the song "Jamaica Mistaica" was actually based on an encounter in Jamaica with Bono from U2, when the Dancer was mistaken for a drug smuggler plane and shot at by the local police.  It was on one of these trips, down to Brazil with Jimmy and the Coral Reefers, where Merle learned how to brighten his roast meat cuts with a citrusy, south American / Cuban spice concoction that kept the regulars at the Piccadilly flying in on wednesdays to the point of filling the lot, wing to wing, with Cessnas.

Merle set out ten "Boston Butts" – delivered from Shel's late afternoon the day before – in the morning, patted them down dry on the aluminum cooking surface and mixed together his secret rub with fingers as measuring cups and spoons.  His gold dust consisted of mostly equal parts cumin, onion powder (sometimes homemade if he had the time), cayenne, chili powder, and a dash of garlic.  This was a fairly standard rub at this point, but what brightened his was two extra steps.  On mondays Merle would  take the zest from lemons, limes and oranges and bake them until dry, then pulverize them down to

powder, adding both a citrus edge and a touch of color.  He smothered the meat every square inch and if he was making pulled pork he would add not only his citrus infused bbq sauce, but would spread a gentle glaze of honey first over the rub, then cook in a 300 degree oven 4-5 hours, or until the internal

 temp came to 190.  With two large prong forks, he would then split apart the roasts into as large of pieces as he could get, mound it on a home made sourdough hamburger bun, drizzle the top of each with three lines of more sauce and top with homemade coleslaw.

If the sandwich was served immediately, the coleslaw held its form well and the pork was hot. The sandwich was a hot / cold, sweet / spicy masterpiece that had taken the Sauk County BBQ Diners Award two of the last three years running.