Dorchester Heights: How a Bookseller Saved Boston

July 4, 1776 is the date we might easily rely on for thinking about the beginning of our War of Independence with Britain, but it was 1775 during the winter to spring months of the Siege of Boston – especially March 17, the Loyalist Evacuation of the city of Boston – that opened the prospect for the Declaration of Independence.  It is hard to imagine the seemingly reversed image of the Siege at Boston, which included some of most memorable battle or skirmish names in the entire war, like Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill – but the siege itself was laid by American patriot militiamen against British troops garrisoned within the city of Boston at a handful of defendable spots.  This was the beginning of the hot war not yet declared.  Here, sides were beginning to be taken.  Would your family stay loyal to King George III, ruler from a land across the Atlantic, or participate in a revolution and risk everything for the notion of freedom and relief from a perceived oppressive government rule?  Henry Knox, a young Boston Bookseller,

had to make this exact decision in those early months of the War: his wife was from a strictly Loyalist family, but his own leanings pulled him away from his city store (stocked with military history and strategy books) to join the Cause,

and eventually become commissioned in a variety of leadership positions throughout the War by George Washington himself.  He impressed Washington in such an immediate way in the winter of 1775 by commanding the logistical feat of what is now called the "Noble Train of Artillery," a 300-mile, 3-month, 60-ton oxen-pulled train march over ice and snow

from fallen Fort Ticonderoga NY to Boston.  Washington had been waiting for a decisive moment in the stalemated Siege, but could not risk aggression against the British without the necessary threat of fire power upon their entrenched fortifications.  The 60 tons of artillery where quietly stationed at the top of Dorchester Heights, a geographic high point in south Boston that overlooked the inner city and Harbor.

These cannons were menacing enough to British troop positions and supply lines that William Howe, the British Commander, realized that he must evacuate the city or suffer a likely devastating defeat.  As favorable winds finally allowed March 17, an armada of some 70 British ships could be seen departing the harbor. Abigail Adams described the vision as something like a forest on water.  This day is still celebrated as Evacuation Day inn Suffolk County.  Knox, the bookseller, would go on to become, in essence, Washington's right hand military tactician throughout the coming years, establishing the first American artillery school, fortifying countless battle sites, establishing West Point and reinvigorating a broken American Navy in the 1780s as Secretary of War.  The old bookseller went on to build one of the grandest mansions of the time at Montpelier and became a significant landholder in Maine and in the new frontier west. His wife, Lucy, was 'loyal' throughout Knox's long and brutal career as a military leader; of thirteen children, one survived into adulthood; at the still young age (by modern standards) of 56 Knox died of an infection caused by a chicken bone lodged in his throat.

There's no better way to bring history alive than to go visit it with a little research behind you.  When we visit the east coast this summer, we hope to walk a few miles of the Knox Trail, finish up at Dorchester Heights, and take a look at the surrounding neighborhoods of Boston in a little different way.

Even Better Kabobs at Cakebread, Napa

The Greek kabobs from Holmen Meat Locker, cooked outside on our green vintage George Stephen, were darn good, but when thinking of kabobs I'll never forget a couple of years ago when head chef Streeter from Cakebread Winery, Napa, told me to take it easy, that my cooking partner and I were on appetizers – mint pesto kabobs, the first stage of the sit-down meal to come – and that these would cook  quickly once we got them on the grill, so wait a minute until the other visiting cooks caught up.  

This was the coolest cookout set-up I'd ever seen. The entire valley surrounding a golden green, blessed as wine country is with that famous wine-producing microclimate that shields and shelters in all the right grape-growing places.

The twenty-odd other women and I (spouse program, vending trip) were partnered off and each duo given one portion of a restaurant menu to make, then serve to ourselves eventually in the Cakebread kitchen dining area.

My partner and I were assigned mint pesto kabobs,

a fairly simple recipe, but the pressure was hot because our appetizer was to signal the predetermined cooking and serving time of the rest of the menu.  We did good.  We ate the appetizers outside, glasses of Cakebread flowing,

the dry hot sun directly above, and I wondered at that moment if Chef Streeter, in his small little Napa kitchen, didn't have have one of the nicest jobs in the world.  Or maybe the grill on the deck at the cabin?

Thank You George Stephen for my Greek Kabobs



Last saturday, as a brief but welcome stretch of blue sky filled in the jagged spaces under the pine limbs at the cabin, I looked down to the five sticks of Greek Kabobs sizzling over the center of the coal-heated Weber rack

and had a good feeling that they would cook well and turn out. When properly filled and placed, the coal bins – lit on this model automatically by a propane flame...no need for the liquid starter thankfully – let off a nice even steady heat, to somewhere between 350 and 400.  Because the kabobs are already cut meat, the extra surface area, plus the heat of the sticks themselves through the middle, allows for a quicker cook, just watch for signs of juice to rise up to the surface where the seasoning has been laid on generously

for only a few minutes per side, plate it, then let the kids sample quick before the heat is lost.  We know we have a good batch of meat when Julia, the tallest leanest 6th grade carnivore in town, first eyes it up, maybe wrinkles up a lower lip, but then tastes it and gradually scoots up to the edge of her seat, as though performing surgery, and doesn't let go of the utensils until the last morsel is on its way down the hatch.  These were no doubt nice cuts of meat from the Holmen Meat Locker, but it dawned on me what the right grill can do for you, too.  Our Weber, a sort of modern retro-green model, still resembles the concept of the original

hemispheres that George Stephen, welder for the Weber Brothers Metal Works outside of Chicago, invented back in 1951.  He had gotten tired of cooking meat in the old open top ancient 'brazier' style grill because ash kept flying in the food and there was too much lost heat in the process.  His company fabricated metal sphered buoys for the Coast Guard, so George decided to cut out two spheres, put them together, and before you knew it he had a product in high demand, and Weber eventually became its own business for Stephens and his family (all 12 of his children manage Weber!), and is now the premium gas and charcoal grill manufacturer in America.  Julia thanks George Stephen for my Greek Kabobs.

Disney Chronicles


Spring in Wisconsin, Memorial Day... ahh, the expectations high but the May skies very very uncooperative for all of us folks who don't mind getting out of the house here and there for a dose of sunshine.  When you can't get it today, sometimes you have to go back in time and find a sunny day or two lodged in the fresh memory banks, like April in Disney.

I see a sketch of the sun anyway back behind Jan's head in this pic – I think in Magic Kingdom – just outside of the Be Our Guest Restaurant where we sat in the castle chamber next to the Prince's glass-enclosed rose. Or here,

along the walk from Asia's Kali Rapids raft ride

to Africa at Animal Kingdom on our way to go and see the giraffes (we could just about touch this one from our Jeep seats)

and hopefully, (as we did) the statuesque broad side of a lion standing over his very life-like Serengeti Lair.

The sun was so bright at Hollywood Studio's Sci-Fi Theater Restaurant I'm surprised that Abby – unlike the other two – was able to stand letting her eyes go unprotected.

What was nice though, really, was the ease with which we could find those vast green (lower hemisphere) landscapes flush with sunshine right outside our Kadani Village resort windows (not so bright in this pic, but it was warm!).

And Minnie's Mini-Me Carly (or the other way around?) walking along main street Magic Kingdom all sun shades and bright purple ears.

What Theeee?...Olive Loaf, Pepper Rings and Tuna Fish All Over Again



Another culinary wish blog post...but what the heck, we CAN make our own rules when it comes to these posts for the simple reason that there might not be an audience for them in the waiting.  Real writers, mass audiences, means you had better produce something that is readable and sells.  What I wish is that I could do genetic taste bud tests, or maybe another way to put it, figure out a family taste bud tree.  I want to know what my ancestors loved to eat during the Civil War Period.  I want to know if Aunt Janey, when she lived in New York for that brief moment in time, before she got hauled off onto the pioneer trail and into the sandier pastures of North Dakota, found a brief hankering for ritzy food.  Maybe more specifically than all that theoretical taste bud geneology, I want to know where my Janet found her love for Olive Loaf?

We can all handle the black finger olives at T-day, no problem, understandable – a little adolescent plaything that also happens to taste pretty good.  But I want to know much much more about the appeal of bulbous pink fake meat stockpiled with halved Manzanitas (sp.? I'm not spellchecking a blog post!).  Yesterday I jogged in the rain past Holmen Meat Locker after I dropped Carly and Addie Lee off at gymnastics, saw that the store was still open, so returned after I finished my run.  I ordered some normal meat – Greek Kabobs and Country Ribs – when I saw the 'loaf' sitting in the case staring out at me

with its thirty-eight eyes.  Bye Crackey, that's right, Jan likes this stuff.  Because it was a minute from closing time, the butcher told me the meat slicer was already cleaned and he couldn't use it.  I told him I'd take the whole hunk of loaf.  What kind of a soggy, rain-drenched, desperate man would do such a thing, really?  A slice or two, ok.  But a three pound block?  I brought it home and sure enough, there was slight glee in Jan's eyes, "Ohh, I love this stuff!"  The girls, looking at the same thing: "what theee.  What is this? Does it move?  Bark?  Play fetch?"  The truth be told, the 'corn-oil' browned meat strikes a nice contrast up to those salty olives...........whatever.

Pepper Rings and Tuna Fish taste bud geneology to come...  

Those Poor Old Guinness Travellers



Some folks end up in the coolest food and beverage jobs you can imagine.  Mario Batali, the great American Italian cuisine chef, owns upwards of 20 restaurants worldwide and travels to cook and keep tabs on his far-flung kitchens.  Or Andrew Knowlton, the BA Foodist, is sent out into the culinary world to scout out what's hot and yummy on the food scene and write about it all over the pages of bon appetite magazine (his most recent article conveys some sadness that the school his kid goes to doesn't allow for pb&j sandwiches due to the possibility of peanut allergies.  Their solution: a retro pb&j night every month at the Knowlton household...) My favorite job though comes from Reading Guinness: The 250-year Quest for the Perfect Pint, by Bill Yenne.

The book tracks the history of the Guinness family dynasty and those evolving brewing techniques that created what has become the longest continuing brewing operation in the world, which now creates the most recognizable and popular single brand (draught in the can, porter in the bottle) of beer known.  By the turn of the 18th to 19th century, Arthur Guinness, Son & Company, Limited "eclipsed all others to become the largest brewing company in the world.  Annual output increased to 1.58 million barrels in 1888 and to 2.08 million in 1899.  By 1909, the volume was up to 2.77 million, and in 1914, on the eve of WWI, it stood at 3.54." Only approx. half of all of this production stayed in Ireland; the rest was shipped from St. James Gate in Dublin

around the world, including to such heavy import areas as Australia, the U.S. (Boston became an early favorite) and a bunch in Africa (Nigerians love their Guinness).  The niche jobs that came from all of these exports was the need for "travelers, men who would literally travel to places where the product was being sold to check on the quality."  In other words, a handful of beer savvy guys (J.C. Haines, an original traveler, was a brewer himself), travelled around the world sipping beers in cool pubs. Haines observed on one of his trips that "Nearly all the good class bars, cafes, epicures (grocers), and hotels keep Guinness.  I examined about 40 samples at Cairo, 25 Alexandria, 10 each Tantah and Zagazig, and 15 in Port Said, and although a few may have been a year or more in bottle...in no case did I find beer which I would think required withdrawing from the market."  

To make the job sound like it was more than sipping and traveling, they would report back with studious remarks like Arthur T. Shand's report of his 1904 travels to South Africa who said his role was "To obtain information as to the general conditions of trade; to gain knowledge of the most important of our bottlers doing business there; condition of stout after undergoing the severe climatic test, inseparable to sending the articles so far; ....as to whether we have competition; as to whether there was any trace of fraud or imitation of our trademark or label, and the prospects of our trade in the future."

The travel was no doubt rigorous to places like the south of France and the effects of those long ocean voyages through hot and cold weather took its toll, but in the case of tracking The "Black Liquid," the job must go on.

Blue-Green Mold Steak, Yum



Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, starts off her blog post describing one of her top recipes of all-time, "Grilled Ribeye Steak with Onion-Blue Cheese sauce," like this:

  Good grief.

  Help me.

  Help me now.

  This was delicious.

 

For us here, off the ranch and into the burbs, normally anything that includes blue cheese isn't going to happen.  I've read about the making of blue cheese before and this next description does enough to make us all wonder how folks decided, way back, that they really wanted to eat milky spores.  Blue cheeses are those "that have had cultures of the mold Penicillium added so that the final product is spotted or veined throughout with blue, blue-gray or blue-green mold, and carries a distinct smell, either from that or various specially cultivated bacteria. Some blue cheeses are injected with spores before the curds form and others have spores mixed in with the curds after they form."  Hmmm hmmmm, yummmmmy stuff.  Yet I've also seen blue cheese sauces offered on countless menus to cover steak, sandwiches, or use as a dip.  It has to be good to some part of the taste buds.

The recipe is simple and calls for butter-sauteed onions to start, then a cup of heavy cream and a fourth cup, finally, of the crumbled blue cheese, to be melted then poured under the rare-medium steak.

Taken each as individual components, the yellow onions, the cream, or the cheese don't really offer necessarily a 'delicious' factor, but together the sweetness of the sauteed onions and the heavy cream tame down the odd zinginess of the blue cheese and just leave an unmistakable earthy taste that is so  good over a well-browned rib-eye that you might find yourself sipping a spoonful or two of it after the steak is gone.

Grilled Ribeye Steak with Onion Blue Cheese Sauce

Prep Time:

 5 Minutes

 

Cook Time:

 15 Minutes

 

Difficulty:

 Easy

 

Servings:

 2

Print Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 whole Ribeye Steaks
• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• Salt
• Pepper
• 4 Tablespoons Butter
• 1 whole Very Large Yellow Onion, Sliced
• 1 cup Heavy Cream
• 1/2 cup Crumbled Blue Cheese

Preparation Instructions

Salt and pepper both sides of the steaks. Grill in 2 tablespoons butter until medium rare.

Saute onions in 4 tablespoons butter over high heat. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until dark and caramelized. Reduce heat to simmer and pour in cream. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, or until reduced by half. Stir in blue cheese until melted. Serve steaks on generous portion of sauce.

Faint.