Two Weeknight Winners: Wednesday



I wonder if there's a more versatile dinner meat than the pork loin?  Already shaped in such a way that, once cooked, the long cylindrical loin slices into perfectly serveable discs, (mini pork steaks?) and because a crust develops so easily on the outer shell of the meat it serves as guard against overcooking. The center tends to stay a rosy, but properly done, pink – tender, juicy and full of flavor.

There's enough inherent flavor in the loin that heavy seasoning isn't a must, yet the sky is the limit as to how to season or marinade the easily adaptable cut.  Festivals own Door County Cherry marinated pork loin, for example, tastes almost a tad artificial, considering that the meat itself is both visually perfect and the interior holds a powerful cherry tinge that is hard to imagine could be more distinct.  We've tried many many loin options over the years, and I think we've found a homemade option that stands out of the crowd: a summer squash (yam) and apple pork loin roast.  We started with an unseasoned loin; added per usual salt and pepper; then concocted a rub of fresh sage,

garlic, and nutmeg, gave it a quick pan-fry to brown then let it sit in the oven to finish off roasting.  Very soon after, the sage aroma begins to twist and turn out of the oven along with the faint smell of the other rub ingredients as the loin itself slowly tenderizes.  Amazing.  Meanwhile, wrapped up in aluminum foil and baked for a good half an hour are cubes of yams and baking apples, spiced with red onion and rosemary if on hand.  Dump the softened yams and apples into the baking dish along with the loin and there are enough fresh summer smells that it's nearly a sensory overload.  All moist and tender. Most critically, edible by all.

Gosling

It's interesting to imagine that our very own La Crosse River Marsh was initially paid attention to by city leaders in the late 19th century not only as a potential residential neighborhood, but as a possible sight for the Interstate fairground!  Over time, we've schemed so many possible 'uses' for the marsh that it's hard to keep track of: it missed becoming a permanent mid-town golf course because, well, there's a lot of water down there. It served for awhile as a trap shoot range and gun club congregation.  We've linked new roads through the marsh so they could all hook up with other main thoroughfares, and the universities have filled up  many acres (8.3 in 1981) in all parts of the lowlands for the sake of athletic complexes.  City soccer fields.  Industrial parks.  Maintenance and construction dumping grounds. Power lines and station.

Sometimes though, we've found, it's neat to just ride your bike through it like it's marsh, all green and wet with a bunch of animals, fish and birds doing their thing as best as they can within the encroachment.  We rode last friday night from Myrick to downtown in order to check out Big Al's eatery, and found ourselves on a not-so-surprisingly wild ride.  The marsh is a veritable hot spot for wildlife.  For any kid bored with 'just looking at trees,' take them to the marsh, and they will see something run, dash, swoop, gulp, hover, squawk, howl or snap, guaranteed. As we started our bike ride, we watched an old wobbly raccoon come up out of the embankment of the marsh lake no doubt to make his evening rounds sniffing out the free stuff laid out by the day's travelers near the garbage can.  Down into the trail, a mallard and two young scooted through the fibrous duckweed; a heron perched on its two steady sticks under a mossy tree nearby.

We took our left turn onto the new paved marsh trail leading west downtown through tall channels of  marsh grass. It was at this point that we thought we had hit the end of this particular road – the trail had flooded in several spots upcoming.  As we rode up to the lip of the first flood zone, we looked over to the widening marsh and could see several dozen nearly hidden black heads bobbing up and down from the thick of the marsh grass – a band of Canadian geese nested and tending to their silent goslings.

We sized up the puddle ahead and decided to go for it slowly. As long as we were willing to live with the possible spray on the backside and submerged tennis shoes, it should be fun.  I led the way slowly as not to spray, and once I got to the high ground again waved Julia and Carly to come on over the deep long puddle.  On the other side, resting along the warm pavement, was a mother duck and her handful of ducklings.

The mother swiveled her neck to ward us off and gave off a hissing sound.  Carly thought one or two ducklings might make for good live pets, but we assured her that they would grow quickly, learn to fly sooner or later, and that our ceilings were only so high in the house.  At about the deepest part of the next puddle, a similarly sized duck train swam across the puddle heading toward the main lake.  Carly had to weave left and right as she was going over water, never quite losing control, thankfully, and plunging in.  Under the Lang Drive overpass, and through the jungle-like forest of the La Crosse River, we battled swarming gnats, wet heat, and many 'phantom' snakes, but we persevered into

what was likely the truest and most complicated danger of the trip....downtown La Crosse!  We dodged road ragers and friday night hooligans, but made it finally into the darkly shaded pizza mecca of Big Al's where we

recaptured our adventures waiting for long service...then remembered, oh yeah, we still have the ride back!

Shem Creek, SC

Sitting out on the wooden chair of the dock at the mouth of Shem Creek, captain Magwood could look out on his old 68-foot trawler the Winds of Fortune, and forget about thinking so much that shrimping had been dying gradually along this stretch of coastal lowlands.  He thought of the simpler parts of the scene instead – that this was the very source of history of South Carolina itself, the very beginning of the colony, and that just now, at sunset, the colors stood much like a painting, orange out onto the horizon, and a rippled slate gray and yellow set of dashes along the immediate surface.  The boat was not so much a place of work from this viewpoint, but a fine work of art, which it was in itself, handmade by craftsman in Mt. Pleasant.  Still holding its color it was, and its trawler lines standing as steady red rods up against the moving seascape.  "No, this is not the time for

thoughts of things gone by," he said to himself, bracing his Cutty Sark in the same weathered fist that held so many shrimping lines that you could not tell a difference between a wrinkle and a scar.

As he sat down on his wooden chair to pick at the ends of his pile of net, it was easy for him to

remember the days before the machinery of pulleys and winches helped shrimpers haul in the day's catch.  The nets then, when he was 14 and still an apprentice, were pulled in by hand, and so heavy with water and jelly fish that he could only muster 2-3 net pulls a day, even then straining muscles to the point that he would have to take days off at a time, and his mother asking questions about lost wages.  Looking down at the palms of his hands now, he could just about feel the shrimp acid of those days pass down into the quicks of his fingers which had festered up raw and red as strawberries nightly.  Those were the difficult days, he thought, as he snapped an end to a piece of netting, but also the very days of romance, the very days that taught me these waters, the flows of the lowlands, and the fortunes, or lack thereof, of the almighty shrimp catch.  Much like mining for gold he thought.  The sea fragrance of the cold damp nets reminded him that he would head home soon – maybe one more Cutty – to whip up his grandmother's secret batch of shrimp and grits, and could taste the sharp inflection of vine ripened tomatoes and the thick cut bacon chips over the white warm grits.

8 June

We made it to the Blufftrails up at the end of Cty. FA around 1:30 in the afternoon.  It is now lush and green in and around all the trails to the point where many narrow patches are overgrown by blowing prairie grass and even, thankfully, only small bunches of thistle.  We assembled the front wheels of our bikes, tested the brakes, and headed up to the end of the gravel turnaround, past two guarding boulders and off into the thick foliage.  Julia had never been on a mountain bike trail before, so she learned quickly that what most of the time seems like fairly free and easy riding on sidewalks or roadsides, now has to be paid close attention to.  We came up to the rim of the quarry, a golden green crater now, full of native trees, but as they are grown up in and around or against the back drop of rock, it has more of a look of a mountain than the soft rolling bluff lands many are used to.  The field trail winds around the rim, past an out cropping of limestone here and there, then lowering at a mild angle down into the flat land of the quarry.

The trail finally merges with an old well worn mining gravel road so that the riding becomes second nature again, the only thing to concern yourself is an occasional patch of overly loose gravel.  This trail leads along a plateau for a considerable distance, opening here and there to old loose rock platforms – vestiges of mining residue in one form or another.  Small, ramshackle buildings with tattered roofs and tilted dead equipment inside are scattered as if part of the outskirts of a western ghost town.  The trail turns from split gravel to concrete, which widens oddly as to an extended parking lot.  We reach an old set of gates surrounded by a rusted wire fence.  This is the point where the trail begins to lead downhill, about as a narrow as a truck lane, and onto Cty. B.  As you reach the end and consider the distance of the road and the variety of old structures along the way, it dawns on you just how significant this quarry had been, how many people must have run it at any given time, how well hidden it is, but at the same time conveniently located off highway 16.  Signs now claim 'preserved forever.'

On our way back we passed only two or three groups of people walking along the wide trail.  At one point, we biked past a young woman who I recognized as an ex-student of mine who I had, ironically, helped to get a summer job some years back with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy.  Her first task that summer was to walk and plot markers for an eventual map of the quarry trails here up at the top of the bluff.  She must have liked the place.

Fish Tacos

The time spent along Campbell Road La Crosse for any UW-L grad (let alone townie) is bound to be plentiful.  It was along this campus street that the starting point of the student body social hours really began since it was, on one side, the location of the main school cafeteria – which extended out onto a nice little wrought iron fence-enclosed outdoor deck – and on the other side of the street, the location of a smattering of bars and restaurants, including the famed sports bar Eagles Nest, an easy to get-to watering hole at a college that certainly knows and loves its watering holes.  Kates on State

eventually came (should have stayed), and went, along with many others.  To the south of Campbell, college houses and neighborhood; back north, our old high school football homefield at the Eagles Stadium; to the west Old Town La Crosse; and to the east the best porch in the city, the limestone bluffs lined along the horizon like planted vistas.  For some time, in our twenties, Janet and I used to come to this spot to swim in the most easy-going public pool we knew of; later, Julia would play b-ball here in the gymnasium for Li'l Eagles Camp.

As I came down Bliss Road off the bluff a couple of weeks back, I stopped by Iguanas Mexican Cantina, a small authentic Mexican joint off Campbell

that I found out served up the best fish tacos I've ever had, by far.  The inside of this little surf shack is as small as

UWL campus buildings across the street

a very small living room with a handful of tables along the wall, a couple in the center, a serving bar, and an opening through which you can see into the kitchen.  I walked in and only needed to briefly glimpse at the handwritten chalkboard above.  Whenever I see fish tacos, I order them.  We have been making fish tacos for years here at home, based on the cutest family cookbook we own from Williams-Sonoma, familymeals.

I will never forget when we first came across this recipe, we had never heard of such a thing back then, and chopped up three heads of both purple and green cabbage, added some sugar to the bowl, squeezed lime over it, and stuffed soft shells with it along with halibut or some other available fresh white fish.  Top these with whatever you like, avocado, cheese, tartar sauce, and you end up with a healthier, in many ways tastier, version of our standardly considered red meat tacos.  When I eventually got my order of two small freshly-cut fish tacos, I only wished I knew some of the back kitchen secrets to this batch.  The fish was hot and sweet; the coleslaw fresh and crisp...two side cups of guacamole and sour cream. Many cafes along Campbell here today, gone tomorrow.  The history of La Crosse hopes this one stays.