HoHoKam Here We Come

The white stuff in the sky in the pic above isn't late February snow.  The green stuff on the ground is alive.  We're hoping this Sunday that Mesa AZ, in the middle of the 'Valley of the Sun,' lives up to its geographic name when we go to visit Janet's dad in Scottsdale for his 70th birthday.  The Cubs have been playing their home spring training games

at HoHoKam (ancient SW native American tribe) since 1952.  In a bit of park history, we find out that the original Rendezvous Park at this location was so small that it couldn't accommodate the ball teams' luggage, so would have to be moved and stored outside for the duration of each game and that because of high attendance, 500 wooden bleacher seats were pulled in from Los Angeles "Wrigley Field" to serve as 'boxed seats.'  Cubs' spring training games here have consistently drawn the highest attendance in all of baseball at an average of 10,690 per game...unheard of for games that don't matter statistically.   The Cubs will be hosting our very own Milwaukee Brewers Sunday, who themselves play only a few miles away at Maryvale.

The Brew Crew are 1-4 right now, but Ryan Braun is already red hot (!) after 5 at bats, batting .400 with one home run.  Heckuva season so far. Only 180 some odd games to go until the post season...

Holmen...Beer...Locker


Instead of taking 53 into Holmen Middle School to Carly's gymnastics, Jan, Carly and I took the back route, cty. SN, past Holmen Meat Locker on main street.

We've passed by it seemingly hundreds of times, but never stopped-in.  I must have been caught in the pre-2004 days thinking HML was nothing more than a brick building housing hanging meat.  Walk-in, though, and it is a feast for the 'foodie' eyes: ice cream at the front counter, a dabbler's section of BBQ sauces, muffin mixes, and mustards.  Mixed meat everywhere, but most obviously in the second, back room where the glass case of the good stuff – the butchered meat – sits in see-through refrigeration.  What I didn't anticipate was one of the better beer selections in the area.

Rows upon rows, stacks upon stacks of micros...one or two six packs that I have not yet seen at either Festival or Woodman's, which is saying a lot considering both stores have excellent micro selections.  Moving on from the middle of the store, past the paying counter and entry to the 'meat' room, a wonderful little side room brick cafe and tasting area, furnished with a few round cafe tables and chairs,

the room itself lined with an overhanging brick ledge stocked with red and white wines.  As I looked into the HML blog some, I saw that this cafe is used for all kinds of tastings, the most current for Pearl Street Brewery.  I was eventually reminded that we were there to shop meat.  We might have walked out with thick chops and three chicken breasts, all fine, but I'm walking back in for the cute brew pub.

Don't Fear the Curd

Spring form pans? Curd? Ginger Root and fine mesh sieves?  What have I gotten myself into? I'm a newbie at making cheesecake, so didn't know the language associated until I tried one last weekend from a recipe out of Food Network Mag, "Try Cheesecake in a Whole New Form." I thought a springform pan might resemble a couple of bed springs supporting a metal baking disk.  Once I did an image search it dawned on me that the hinge wrapped along the side of a real – not imaginary – springform tightens the circular upper pan to a bottom platform piece.

The 2-piece contraption first of all sets tightly a perfect mold shape for a cake mixture of a bunch of cream cheese, eggs, sugar, and graham cracker crust that would just flop or crumble without the round.  The reason for the hinge is to prevent water seepage in case the cheesecake recipe calls for a 'water bath.'  Apparently a common way to cook cheesecake is gradually, by way of water in a larger pan.  I read that often, over time, this hinged connection will lose its seal and bakers will wrap a large single piece of foil under and around the bottom to prevent water from getting to the cake.  Once the pan is finally understood, it's time to pour the stuff into it – the yellow stuff that, if done right, ends up being the wonderful thick rich texture impossible to duplicate in any other kind of food that I know of.  The question for this recipe became whether or not potential eaters would go for the lemon-ginger 'curd' – a thin top layer of ultra-zingy cream, sugar, lemons, and grated, de-pulped ginger for its juice.

I smothered half a cake with, and half without, and let the taste buds fall where they may.  Carly tried one thin slice of the non curd. "This is good, but what is that?" she asked pointing at the bowl of sunny whipped curd. "I better try that to see which is best."  Carly thumbs up.  Abby and her two buddies, "that was delish." Jan and two friends have voted that I continue on in the great struggle for cheesecake perfection.    

33 West: Pubschweiger


It was Sunday night at the end of Julia's one-day, three-game b-ball tournament in Beaver Dam. We thought it might take us twenty minutes to renavigate back onto our 3-hour route home via the farm road 33 west to Portage, then on to 1-90. But all it took, miraculously, was one quick right turn at the corner of the middle school and we looked up to see that we were on 33 and would be driving past the Glacier Hills Wind Park in no time.  Once we got our bearings, it turned out the five of us had been in this area of town the night before as well, at the Char House Pub and Grill, the restaurant that rose to the top of the Ipad search for Best Eats Beaver Dam.

Char House is one of those classic old-school downtown supper clubs which, by the look of the 2-3 deep rows of patrons at the bar, was clearly the distinct choice of the local folks.  Once we got in and sat, what truly sold Jan and I on the place was the fact that our waitress brought out a dollop of braunschweiger for an appetizer!  I have no idea how washed-out-brown goop, generally made-up of about 40% pork liver, 30% scalded pork jowl, 20% lean pork trimmings and 10% bacon ends is good, but I know I grew up on it, liked it then, and found out that I still do (in small doses anyway.)  I used to look forward to the morning ritual of cutting those inch thick disks of Braunschweiger

from the yellow plastic tube and smashing them down on toast – what a great combination.  It would fill you up...for hours...for reasons we probably didn't want to know back then.  Julia, too, was jubilant over her first chance to test pubschweiger

Jan besides herself

Carly in post schweiger heaven

Abby dreaming of her next encounter.

33 East: First Leg

I have to say we didn't expect to see 90 mammoth wind turbines twirling slowly in open farm fields outside of Portage on the way to Beaver Dam this past saturday.

For all of us who have travelled the state, we might come to get used to passing the rustic serenity of the typical Wisconsin farm field, bluff region, or any number of small towns, but to look up into the blue horizon and see one of these turbines – which then quickly comes to multiply and range over the contours of the entire valley (altogether a 17,000 acre wind farm) – the feeling is a strange mix of experiencing at once the oldest and newest of technologies known to us on earth.  One of the farmers who has allowed his acreage to host turbines says, "It's rather majestic, isn't it? Isn't it kind of a marvel about how they can get that much power out of the wind?" The 90 turbines can generate 162 megawatts of power, some 45,000 homes – an ironically 'small' part of the Wisconsin Renewable Portfolio Standard, which mandates Wisconsin Utilities to generate 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2015. WI now gets around 3 percent from renewables, so the $350 million investment by WE Energies is just the tip of the...retreating iceberg.  Locations for wind farms tend to be studied by prospective energy companies for at least a year in advance in order to determine whether the area can produce a consistent wind source that is also not too forceful.  Turbines must receive at least 9 mph of wind to generate, but are also built with a brake component so to slow at a speed of 56 mph.

The nacelle, or body, portion of these turbines are 71 tons each; the weight of the tower 138 tons; the blade length 148 feet; and up to the tip of the tower 410 feet.  When we returned home the following night along 33 west, the turbines that had looked like sharp white scissors cutting through the crisp winter sky, now looked a bit more gentle slowly gliding in the dark.    

Maccaroni Discovered

This is in no way a staged response by the macaroni cook. He had been walking around the kitchen aimlessly, stumbled across what looked like a phone, but alas, it was a camera, decided to take a quick snapshot to see if this old model still worked, and lo and behold Carly happened to still be gobbling down her fave, home made mac and cheese, and spontaneously broke out in a thumbs up. Wow, what timing!  She says, "Yay to Tyler Florence's recipe, because he puts bacon on the top too. Not too sure about the peas though."  

Discovering Maccaroni



It is said of Thomas Jefferson that since he had been young, between outdoor play and his love of reading, he never sat down idle.  He became the pen of the Declaration, but we also know he was all sorts of other things – botanist, farmer, architect, cook and connoisseur of fine wines, (he would allow himself up to three glasses a day) among who knows how many other hobbies, interests, and crafts.  When visiting Europe in the early 1790's, he encountered "The best maccaroni in Italy...made with a particular sort of flour called Semola, in Naples." Leave it Jefferson, then, to order a 'maccaroni maker'

to be sent to him in Paris, and eventually Philadelphia, only to be disappointed with its performance, made a sketch of one to understand its workings better, and offered up his own best recipe for mac and cheese.  TJ was so enamored with what he perceived as 'new food,' that he served dinner guests at the White House a take on mac and cheese pie.  With a bit of a twist of cook's humor, one guest, William Parker Cutler, wasn't a fan: "Dined at the President's - ...Dinner not as elegant as when we dined before. [Among other dishes] a pie called macaroni, which appeared to be a rich crust filled with the strillions of onions, or shallots, which I took it to be, tasted very strong, and not agreeable."  Over the years, 'maccaroni' lost its exclusive appeal, and by 1934 had become the mass produced boxed and powdered version by Kraft we know a lot better today – one way of feeding a bunch of people cheaply during the Depression.  My own Carly might not have made it past age five, due to lack of sustenance, without little microwavable tubs of Velveeta mac and cheese.

I might lay down plates of soy and maple salmon, but what do I get: "mac and cheese please." Steak and potatoes... "mac and cheese please."  G'Marge's Lasagna, "mac and cheese please." This past week, she had the nerve to order a tub to be prepared for her the following morning for breakfast. "Mac and cheese please." If someday I find a little sketch of a macaroni maker up in her room along with first grade scrawl describing how to 'extrude' (mixing ingredients and pushing it through a machine or dye to shape) pasta, along with her Monster High Dolls, broach collection, art supplies, Cheetah books, stuffies, etc., etc., I don't think I'll be shocked.  Tonight, I will make a homemade version and see what the response.

Salmon of the Year Award

Like most every other home cook, I've tried so many salmon recipes and salmon cooking styles that it's hard to keep track. We learned to love the process of salmon back in Seattle, where it didn't take but twenty minutes for Jan and I to hop in the Ford Probe, get on highway 5 into downtown Pikes Place Market

maybe grab a Hefeweizen at Pikes Pub – tucked underground the floor level shown above, like a subway station – then order a slab of fresh cut Pacific salmon.  I'll never forget the first time we ever watched the famous Pike's Market fish 'toss and catch' routine.  An old man was sitting in a chair in front of the display just rocking back and forth doing nothing, so it seemed...until you began to examine the crab a little closer.  From underneath his chair he'd pull a little rope and suddenly a set of ugly jaws from a monk fish snapped out at you.  He'd chuckle a little – then wait for the next Seattle sightseer. Ha, ha. I'd eventually set the salmon down on the hot gas grill of our apartment complex as if it were a jewel or prize.  The air in Seattle smelled a little differently – our apartment overlooked Lake Washington, the Cascades and Rainier were both visible, on clear days, at either end of the landscape.  You thought you were part of the water and mountains and salmon was the ultimate symbol of all.  For years, I would try to cook this same sort of mammoth piece on aluminum foil for at least two-beers time (45 minutes), while waiting for the heat to snake its way up through the tough skin and gradually into the dense layers of meat until the pink turned orange and began to flake away.  Pan fry, grill, broil, put on a cedar rack – top with lemon, garlic, rosemary, dill cream, honey, panko, chopped pistachio, who knows what.  Last night, though, here in the center of a sea-less and stark winter kitchen, I tried a fairly simple recipe for Soy-Maple Salmon and it was at least the best textured salmon I've ever had.  The first key is to cut your salmon into three - four inch steaks.  I've come to realize by cutting the salmon down, it cooks easier and more evenly, allowing the heat to move up through the piece on all sides.  You soak the steaks in a mixture of maple syrup, soy, crushed garlic, a dash of oj and water and let it cool in the refrigerator for 20 minutes, salt and pepper.  That's about it for prep.  You bake your steaks on a well oiled baking sheet for 8-10 minutes, until it reaches a golden color, and these are done.

The softness of well done salmon is its own class of texture, and you know it when you got it.  The maple sweetens the outside, but not too much as the soy tempers it.  A little cauliflower on the side, boiled in chicken stock, and you have the pic above in no time.