Canned Air

Imagethief's mordant post about Beijing's air reminds me of Del's entrepreneurial frenzy at the advent of Seattle's World's Fair in 1962.
One of Seattle's boasts was the clarity and freshness of its air compared to that of LA at the time, say. Seeing Mt. Rainier all year long from downtown was an unremarkable event. Del tied the thought of cosmopolitan visitors marveling at such transparency to the folks he knew who ran fish canning plants. A bit of time in the composition room of the label printer produced a clever label which he then had applied to a short run of a few thousand tins sans fish. The result was Pure Pacific North West Air which sold to fair goers eager for souvenirs of the lighter sort.
Another product he offered called on his friendship with a supplier of biological lab specimens and a dentist. From the first he purchased preying mantises. These were carefully placed in the dental molding centrifuge which replaced all of the insect with molten dental gold. The result -- the seven or eight times out of each ten that it worked successfully -- was a solid gold replica of a praying mantis complete with delicate gold feelers.
--ml

Unconventional Conventional Wisdom

The old quote (slightly racist):

Fool-a-me-once: Shame on you!
Fool-a me twice: Shame on ME!

Then Del rectified:

Fool-a-me-once: Shame on you!
Fool-a me twice: Shame on ME
Fool-a me three- times: NO CAN BE!!!

Now, go see Digby for Fool-a-me-37,858,576,372¹⁸.
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Stockpot, Del Stories

Unintended Consequences

Greenman Tim at Walking the Berkshires has a cogent post about unintended consequences. Boy are we humans full of them! Please read him and follow the links to get a good take on the global warming affray. It's my springboard to:

Del began working as a deck hand on tugs while still in high school just after WWII. Through college he worked his way into the engine room and then up to the wheel house as skipper. He was there when his tug company was bought by Foss. Foss painted thir boats yellow and green. The old company painted the boats blue and red. Foss had the yard paint all the boats the Foss colors. Out they'd go as smart as can be. So soon as they cleared the breakwater the deck hands would open the paint locker. When the tug returned it was a sparkling blue and red. Foss tried reason, bribery, spies, rotating crews, confiscating paint lockers and brushes. After some months of this they gave up. They were spending their profit on paint for well painted boats.

But the story with the unintended consequences happened when Del was chief engineer. He had a layover with not much to do, so he did some routine -- and not so routine -- maintenance. His engineering skills convinced him that the engine would run more efficiently at a couple hundred rpm more than it was used to. When the Skipper -- an old timer -- came aboard Del reported the change. But he didn't explain it. This Captain did not suffer explanations gladly. With a laconic "Very well" (or whatever) he turned back to the boatsun and ordered engines to standby. Del dove for the engine room two decks below and off they went up the sound.
Some hours later they were threading a narrow channel between islands -- possibly Drayton Passage -- When Del took a break on deck. He recognized the trees where they were. He checked the time. It was what he knew it to be. That meant the state of the tide was not able to serve. He dove for the engine room once again and threw the engines in reverse just as the keel slid firmly into the mud at the peak of the channel. The air was already turning blue from the wheel house, outwards and mostly downwards.
They sat there in splendor an hour or two until the flow of the high tide floated them off. They were fully visible to that part of the fleet that happened to pass by on the other side of the island.
How this happened is that the Skipper knew the channel, he knew the tides and he knew the speed of his boat. He planned to take a short cut through a shoal channel which he knew he could pass provided the tide was not too far out. At the regular speed there would be no problem.
Del changed the speed of the boat by increasing the rpms of the prop. So the tug arrived sooner than the Skipper planned.
A more efficient engine and an unintended consequence.
--ml
tags: Del Stories, tug boats, Foss

Real Swedish Pancakes

Every year a local group throws a pancake breakfast to raise money for their good purposes. One in particular, in an area with lots of Scandahoovians and their descendents, features Swedish pancakes. One year we decided to attend to see what these were like. They were very good, worth the wait which was more than the money because lots of people came. You know Swedish pancakes? Light, eggy, served with berry jam and sour cream. They are somewhere in the vicinity of crepes and blini.(If the links disappear search 'Swedish Pancakes' on the Food Network)
I mentioned our jaunt to Del who gave voice:
"Oh, yes. They are quite tasty and the men have so much fun playing chef while the women organize them. But they aren't real Swedish pancakes. They are something you might find in Aunt Agatha's Tea Shoppe in Stockholm, But real Swedes would laugh it back to the kitchen."
Did I mention that Del was half German and half Sicilian? So of course he knew.
He gave me the following recipe which, I cheerfully admit, makes a wonderful pancake -- particularly if you plan to split a cord or three of firewood that day.

Real Swedish Pancakes
Del

Mix 4 cups rolled oats, 1 cup flour, ¹/₄ cup sugar, 2 teaspoons soda, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt.
Add 4 beaten eggs, 4 cups buttermilk, ¹/₂ cup melted butter, 2 teaspoons vanilla.
Stir. Let stand 45 minutes to thicken.

Do NOT add more liquid.

Fry on griddle by spoonfuls.

The warning is apt. The temptation to dilute -- while great -- must be resisted. I have kept the batter overnight in the fridge and for as much as a week without apparent ill effect. That's strange considering that the baking powder and soda, once wet, should loose their leavening power in less than a day.
Also this recipe scales nicely. Divide the major quantities by four and the leaven and vanilla by half for a modest breakfast for four or six. At The Kid's^tmrequest I occasionally use a waffle iron instead of a griddle.
Waffles: Better butter and syrup traps.
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Ordinary, Del Stories, breakfast

Cricketism

In an excellent post on why he'd refuse to critique your work John Scalzi writes:

For God's sake, if you're going to hand your work over for critique, finish the damn thing first. Even if it's broke, you can fix it.

Which reminds me of Del's rule about software.

"I would rather fix a program that doesn't work than write a new program to do the same job."

Del felt that the start was the hardest part. What errors in that that prevented the program working could be found and corrected more readily than a new program could be conceived, outlined, and composed.
--ml
tags: Del Stories, Dum Luks Community, writing, John Scalzi

A Note From Del

I've been baking cookies. Among the cards and sheets in the recipe file was this:

Subject: Almost enough time
Dale: Thu, 03 Dec 1998 14:57:32 PST
From: "Del Kahn"

Marty
We just may have enough time for this one.
These have molasses in them instead of honey or brown sugar, and were truly baked in the old-fashioned German way. The dough, which had to sit for 3 weeks in a cool basement, was made early in December so the cookies would be ready by the Christmas holidays. They are still great if you don't have the full 3 weeks. But the flavors really have time to marry this way and they have such a wonderful flavor.

Braune lebkuchen
(Brown Christmas Cookies)

3 lbs (1350 g) flour (bout 6 cups, 1.5 L)
1 lb (450 g) sugar (about 2 cups, 500 ml)
1+1/2 lb (675 g) molasses (about 3 cups, 350 ml)
5 oz 140 g) Butter
5 oz 140 g) Lard or shortening
2 oz (60 g) candied orange peel
1/4 oz (7 g) baking powder
1 cup (250 ml) rose water (or l cup water)
1/2 oz (15 g) Cloves
1/2 oz (15 g) Cinnamon
grated lemon rind
1 cup (250 mL) almonds, blanched and split in halves
It is better to take again as much butter and lard. Cook molasses and sugar for a little. Let cool. Stir everything else in. Then add flour. Leave dough stand for three weeks. Roll out fairly thin, cut into rectangles 1 and a half inches by 3 inches (4 x 8 cm) with a fluted cutting wheel, or just a knife. Brush with beaten egg to make them glossy, decorate each with 1/2 slice of almond, and bake for about 10 minutes. This recipe makes lots of cookies, but they keep well if kept in a tightly covered tin or in the freezer.
Cheers,
Del

They're good. Remember them for next year. Or Start to celebrate Martian Christmas which is maybe two weeks after Ukrainian Christmas. Or call them Chinese New Years cookies. Whatever.
--ml
tags: braune lebkuchen, Del Stories, Feast of Holidays

Thanksgiving Afters

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

Dorothy used the Nonesuch condensed mincemeat by Borden and reconstituted it with a teaspoon from a small flask of Christian Brothers Brandy which appeared to me to last all through my childhood until as a teen I finished the half bottle mixed with various fruit juices. I survived. Not only the drink but also the pies and with an intact liking for mincemeat. Yes, I am aware that this places me in a minority. Again. But I do.
I have tried several recipes for Mincemeat, including ones that do include meat. The one I return to since I first acquired the recipe a quarter century ago is in "Great Britsh Cooking: A Well Kept Secret" by Jane Garmey (Random House 1981) It is readily available still in paperback from the usual suspects. In my experience it has only excellent recipes. Naturally I make changes, many of which are reflected below. I don't peel my apples, she does. I use ginger root instead of powder. She calls for brandy which I replaced with a dark rum which I preferred. That of late has been too hard on my blood sugar so I am trying a single malt Scot's whiskey (which does not bother my glucose). Ordinarily I consider that too good to be wasted by admixtures of any description. But what the hell. If you make it, do make enough to keep for next year. Already good, it will be much improved.

Mincemeat

1 cup beef suet, shredded
1/2 cup fruit mix
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup currants
1 cup Thompson raisins
1 wineglass dark rum
3 medium green apples, diced
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 cup marmalade
1/4 tsp nutmeg, grated
3/4 cup almonds, chopped
1 slice ginger root, smashed
1 cup brown sugar

Mix all in a large bowl.
Cover with a cloth and
leave in a cool place overnight.
Next day Mix thoroughly
pack in sterile jars and
seal in hot water bath
for 5 minutes (sea level)
Make at least 3 weeks
ahead of time.
Keep it for a year for the best flavor.

Pastry is the reaction of flour and fat to heat. Gluten is a valuable ingredient in flour if you are making bread. Well developed gluten encloses gases released by the yeast as bread rises. Without the gluten the dough would pass the gases, so to speak, and collapse. But in pastry well developed gluten makes the crust as tough as shoe leather. Work quickly and lightly when mixing and rolling pastry. Roll the dough in one direction only to give the gluten as small a work out as possible. Use pastry flour or flour that is low in gluten (a soft wheat, not a hard wheat) and free of the most glutenous parts of the wheat grain. Keep making it and before very long you will receive accolades for your pies. Here's my current implementation. It freezes well for other times of the year. The lard does make a difference to the flakiness of the crust, while butter provides flavor. There are many other fats that work as any basic cookbook will show.

Pie Pastry
Yield: 3 Pies
-ml- Lard to make it flaky,
Butter to make it tasty.

1/2 cup lard
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
2 tbl ice water, approx.
21/2 cups flour

Cut lard and butter into flour and salt
until the texture of coarse meal.
Add just enough ice water to
gather the pastry in a ball. Chill.
Cut in thirds.
Roll one third out for each crust.
Prick all over the bottom
for a crisp pastry.
This makes pastry for
a one crust pumpkin
and a two crust mince.

Dorothy would say "All our pies are pumpkin" in that particular way that people use to signal they are quoting. I remain ignorant of the source to this day. So all my pies are not pumpkin. Neither were Dorothy's.

The special features of this recipe is the flavor given by the molasses and the coarse, slightly lumpy texture of the filling. If you insist you can use pumpkin instead of another squash.
But why would you do that when the sweet flavor of a delacottia is available?
Del once had a pumpkin that was a runner-up for the largest pumpkin category at the county fair. It was on the porch in good time for Halloween with a scary face carved in the street side. But Del couldn't see wasting all that pumpkin. He cut a slab of about a half square foot out of the back and boiled it up for dinner. That squash lasted he and the large family he was sharing the house with for pies and vegetables all winter long. It wasn't until February that blue fuzzies appeared on the pumpkin meat because the temperature warmed up.

Pumpkin Pie Filling

Yield: 6 Servings

1 squash
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbl molasses
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp ginger 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
Cook butternut, acorn, or other squash.
Preheat oven to 400°f.

Place 1½ cups squash, in chunks, in a bowl.
Add remaining ingredients and mix.
Keep texture coarse. Pour into single crust.
Bake 40 minutes

--ml
tags: Feast of Holidays, Thanksgiving, Afters

Thanksgiving II

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

The first Thanksgiving feast I cooked was in college. There were four couples to feed and we each kicked in to buy the food. Sean was living in a house that overlooked a young river valley nature preserve. The November day was grey and blustery with on and off rain, fog early and late. A typical Southwest Ohio late fall day.
I started cooking early, before Sean and his housemates were really stirring. I made noise. I made commotions. I made messes. I cleaned up messes. By late afternoon I was rewarded by the sight of my friends sprawled back from the table forms recumbent in satiety. Not a bad start.

The menu changed but subtly over the years mostly in response to what I learned about cooking and about eating. My reward for all that effort was that no cooking need be done for the next week as the remains were encored again and again. The penalty was that Turkey was off the menu the rest of the year.
I'm still working on that one. Turkey is too good -- and inexpensive -- not to appear periodically, and in other guises, e.g: turkey with mole sauce.
Dorothy always finished by turning the turkey carcass into a soup. It was tasty the first time or two. Regrettably it did not disappear then but lingered for several more meals spaced into December by which time the stock had soured. Dutifully I did the same. My stock, though good, waited its encores even longer and so more of it soured. At last I gave myself permission to not make stock. Throwing out the carcass before making soup may not have been the best conservation practice, but it did save expense compared to making soup and throwing that away.

Once we had Thanksgiving at Phyllis' house. She was a Californian, A student of the Martha Graham school of modern dance, an interior decorator and writer manque, trapped in the Midwest. She was like encountering a cordon bleu restaurant in the middle of a farm town. She added the wild rice ring to Dorothy's menu and subsequently to mine.

In my menu the turnips and rutabagas were out tout de suite. Of recent years the turnips have sometimes crept back. This year my crustless leek quiche will join the parade in my effort to shift the feast away from carbohydrates. A forlorn effort given my love of stuffing and potatoes and rice. Is self mastery the only answer? Gawd help me!

The best turkey was, of course, a unique and unrepeatable experience. We moved into a house set against a hill side we called Tiger's End because it was where the plain (tiger in feng shuey terms) ended.
It was an old house that had grown without much benefit of professional contractors. The owner had removed the kitchen. Over the summer I had replaced the bathroom, and re-plumbed the whole house and built the kitchen cabinets as inspired by the Motion Minded Kitchen.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I installed the new oven-broiler and the cooktop. All that remained was to run the gas line from the meter on one side of the house to the kitchen on the other side.
First I connected and lit the furnace. It was cold. It was very cold and starting to snow. This was a rare phenomenon at maybe fifteen feet above sea level. We were used to wearing many layers: under and over shirts, sweaters and even jackets. Elaine had just arrived from grad school in Oregon. There was a stray cat huddled in the window between the porch and my office. She was pulled inside which was accepted with a haughty bad grace. She did us the favor.
Then the furnace blower started.
Melissa, just two, took off her coat. She began to move about. The frost patterns on the windows faded. Melissa took off the first sweater and then the second and began to dance. Finally it was warm enough that in just her 'ummers' she danced from one end of the house to the other.
I cooked dinner on the propane two burner camp stove as usual and soon we settled for the night in a warm and snug house while the snow blew outside.
In the morning there was almost a foot or snow drifted to a couple of feet in places. It was so pleasant to be in a snug warm house and look out at it. Del arrived to help me lay and connect the last bit of gas pipe. As the coffee descended to bottom of the pot he pointed out that if we were going to eat turkey that day we had best get the turkey in his oven.
At the time he was the live aboard watchman of the former Army Corps of Engineers steam snag snatcher: the USS Preston then moored aground as a museum, next to the old railroad station just a block or two away.
Del and I hefted the bird into the back of Beulah Witch, our black VW squareback, and slid-drove to the boat. The galley featured a rather massive oil fired range which Del soon lit. We slid in the bird and made our way back to lay the pipe.
Which took longer than expected, of course.
At last , crossing all available limbs, I lit the pilots on the oven.

We didn't explode.

By then it was four and getting dark. Grateful to Del for suggesting it, we returned to the Preston and picked up the bird.
Then I put the various side dishes, made the day before, in the oven to warm. In the second oven I put the pies. We could eat in a half hour so it was time to uncork a nice red.
Ten Minutes later a wonderful aroma of done stuffing & pies perfumed the air. Only twenty minutes to go.
Five minutes after that a general suggestion from the assembled company offered that any pie that smelled like that wanted some supervision. So I opened the door to reveal the most gorgeous deep mahogany pies I have ever baked. Two of them. One was a crust covered mince. The other was an open top, spicy pumpkin. Both a rich almost chocolaty brown.
Intervention occurred just in time. The pies were on the dark side of perfect.
In my haste to start baking, I had neglected to place the temperature probe inside the oven. So the gas roared away without moderation driving the temperature to heights where few pies have ventured before.
The rest of the meal was hot. And the turkey ...

The turkey fell apart at a touch into succulent and tender bits of meat. There was no need to make gravy because the pan juices reduced to an excellent thickness a beautiful light brown color and delicious flavor.

Melissa calls this the 'fall-apart-bird' and it has become the standard by which we judge our efforts

-- ml
tag: Thanksgiving

Dum Luk's Sauce

In my back yard are two apple trees. One grows sweet red apples that ripen in early September. The other gives tart green cooking apples in mid July. The picture shows the latter's crop this year, processed, ready to go into the cupboard. (The loaf of bread has nothing to do with this post, but it fills the foreground and lets me show off my Gages Slough sourdough. That's another post.)

George L Herter was an ur-blogger who wrote about a great many things in the guise of cooking and housekeeping. Like a blogger his information is subject to reader approval. The sources are not always clear or independently verifiable. Yet many who tried this or that of his recipes testify to their goodness. The Bull Cook is still available in both hard and soft cover versions, on line or in your favorite used bookstore, for about $10. Here's a sample of his style and a good recipe:

ORIGINAL WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE BY JOHN CRAFTON

This famous sauce was originated in Worcester, England, by John L. Crafton a chemist in 1835 and is an adaptation of early French sauces. He wanted desperately to make his every day food taste better and he certainly succeeded. The sauce was first called Worcester sauce then changed to Worcestershire sauce by commercial companies who tried to vaguely copy the original sauce. The story that the recipe was brought out of India by the third Baron Sandys in 1837 is entírely untrue. Several other chemists at the time brought out similar sauces.

The original recipe is nothíng at all like the present day commercial recipes. Commercial recipes for the most part are a black looking watery mixture of water, soy sauce, pepper and vinegar. They might be alright on chow mein or chop suey but hardly on anyhíng else. Real Worcestershire sauce is a líght reddish brown in color, is not at all watery but quíte a heavy bodied liqud, It contaíns very líttle water, has no soy sauce flavor at all although it does contain a Iimited amount of soy sauce.

Made by the original recipe ít costs only about 75¢ a gallon to make. People really IÍke it and your family will use a lot more of it than catsup. If you have it available for them Make up some for your church suppers also and put it on the table in old peanut butter jars with a spoon in it. lt will create a real sensation whenever you serve it.

Worcestershire sauce is not at all difficult to make.

Take an old gallon vinegar jug or one gallon jar and put in the following:

Take one 15 ounce can of red kidney beans, (costs about 10¢) drain and pass fhrough a food mill. Commercíal makers list tamarinds as a part of their recípe so that housewives will think that they cannot make their own as tamarinds are hard to find. Actually tamarinds are nothing but the pod from a tree in India that is nothing but poor cattle food and if eaten in any quantity is a severe laxatíve. One 6 ounce bottle of soy sauce.

1 level teaspoon of garlic powder, two State of Maine American sardines packed in soy bean oil They come packed six ardines to a can and cost about 10¢ a can. Remove two sardines, put them into a small bowl of vinegar and wash them off. Remove and mash up with a fork and add. Commcrcíal recipes say that they use anchovies to confuse housewives. Anchovies are actually nothing but a salt cured sardine.

Take about six or seven quarts of apples, either green or ripe. Peel them and slice them up and place them in about a six or eight quart cookíng pot. Cover them just to the top with brown vinegar. Add one onion sliced up about three ínches in diameter. Add the following to the sliced apples: three level tablespoons of ground cloves, two level tablespoons of ground tumeric, two level tablespoons of ground nutmeg, three level tablespoons of ground allspíce, three level tablespoons of powdered coffee or three cups of boiled down black coffee. Bring to a boil and slowly boil for two hours. As the water in the vínegar evaporates add half water and half vinegar to replace it. Stír frequently as apples burn easily, and also tend to stick to the bottom of the pan. Remove and run through a food mill and add eight cups of the puree to the jug or jar.

Now add: two level teaspoons of red ground pepper, four level tablespoons of corn syrup, six level tablespoons of salt, three level tablespoons of mustard, one level tablespoon of sugar.

Now fill the balance of the jug or jar up with vinegar. Shake up well and leave stand for 24 hours and it then is ready to use.

Worcestershire sauce is used for seasoning fish, meat, fowl, vegetables and vegetable juíces Here are jut a few of the many ways that it can be used:

1. Poured dírectly over mashed boiled potatoes and mashed in. This is a popular Irish custom and very good Be sure to try it.

2. Add three tablespoons to a glass of tomato juice.

3. In cooking pork chops sprinkle generously over the pork chops as you cook them, Gives them a clean, fresh flavor

4. Beef stew Add three tablespoons for about every quart of the stew.

5. Blend in two tablespoons into about each cup of brown gravy.

6. Sprinkle generously over turkey, chicken, duck, or goose dressing just as you serve them. It does wonders for dressings.

7. Sprinkle generously over beef hash just before serving.

8. Add one level tablespoon to each bowl of tomato soup just before servíng.

9. Sprinkle generously on hamburger buns before puttíng in the ham.

The Bull Cook, by George L. Herter, Page 155-157

The Original Worcestershire Sauce above is the now distant springboard for Dum Luk's Sauce. Herter's sauce is mostly vinegar with spices to detonate your taste buds and apples to thicken the result. Lots of people like it. When Del ran a restaurant he couldn't make it often enough for the diners. I find Herter's sauce too unbalanced -- too acidic. So this is milder and, I like to think, more subtle, more balanced, more Chinese. Oh, all right, nuanced. There I said it.

Dum Luk's Sauce

Wash and quarter about five pounds of tart apples: Bransons, Granny Smiths, Braeburns, etc. Simmer until soft. Pass through a food mill to remove seeds and such.

For each quart add: 1 cup -- or to taste -- sugar, teaspoon powdered anise, 1 teaspoon cloves, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, teaspoon cayenne, teaspoon celery seed, 1 teaspoon Coleman's Mustard, I tablespoon minced garlic, 2 tablespoons Mae Ploy, or other brand, Sweet Chilli Sauce, and 1 cup oyster sauce, 2 well rinsed sardines and 15 ounces drained canned kidney beans. The last adds fibre to thicken the sauce. Liquefy the above in a blender. Return puree to clean pot and simmer.

Meanwhile chop a medium yellow onion and cook just under a simmer with half an Anaheim Pepper and 8 black pepper corns in 1 cup of strong coffee for about 20 minutes. Liquefy and add to apple mixture. Add 1 cup Apple cider vinegar. Simmer for two to three hours. Let rest overnight. Return to a simmer and bottle.

-- by Martin Langeland

As an historical footnote of a more or less spurious sort remember that tomatoes are native to the western hemisphere. Before the 1500's nobody made tomato based sauces in Europe. England, in particular, had a lot of apples. My bet is that some of the apple sauce was made as uppity as the local herb and spice supply permitted as a sauce for goose and gander.

The cat on the label? That is the before picture. After a nip, he'll be sleek and fat!


-- ml


Technorati Tags: Worcestershire Sauce, Dum Luk's Sauce, George L. Herter, The Bull Cook

The Ice Cream Post

Earle enters the back porch bearing a large carton with Craftsman printed on it-- a sure sign he went to Sears.
Inside it is a wood bucket with a shiny stainless steel drum inside that connects at the top to a hand crank.
"What's that" I ask.
"An ice cream freezer" Earle said.
He washes the parts in the great green enameled sink where we do all the dishes and where Dorothy connects the Easy Washer to do the laundry.
"Ready?" Calls Dorothy from the kitchen.
"Yes," Says Earle as he sets the bottom of the drum on its socket.
She steps down to the porch with a large sauce pan containing the mixture -- chocolate custard -- she made the day before and chilled overnight in the GE Monitor top refrigerator. It fills the drum about two-thirds full. Earle lowers the dasher, a paddle like thing, inside; then settles the lid on top and fits the yoke and crank. He fills the space between drum and bucket with cracked ice pausing now and again to add rock salt to make the ice colder. When the drum disappears beneath the ice crystals he turns to us and says with a grin: "Who wants the first turn?"
The four of us look at each other. Henry steps forward. Earle shows him how to turn the crank: "Nice and slow at the start. Later, when it gets stiff you can go faster." Henry goes for several minutes before he surrenders the crank to Ann. She hums at first and then says "Gosh, Leonard, maybe you won't get a turn." That's all that's needed for Leonard to demand fair dues. With a show of reluctance Ann yields the crank. Soon a grim, determined, look suffuses Leonard's face in place of his usual wide grin. "Don't you want a turn?" he asks me. "Sure," I pipe. The crank in my hand -- stops. I put both hands on it and lean into it. It turns a quarter turn to stop at bottom dead center.
More interested in ice cream then the frustration building within me, Henry resumes the position and sets himself to the long pace. Earle spells him when Henry begins to pale. Ann and Leonard watch from a good position in back of Earle.
"There," Earle announces at last. And stops cranking. He changes the ice for a saltier mix to finish hardening. Earle wipes the sweat from his brow and goes out to the front porch to lay down on the glider to read until dinner is ready.
The ice cream is wonderful.
The next day Earle packs the freezer back into its box and puts it in the Chevy to take into town. He returns with a different ice cream freezer. This one has an electric motor.

***

There are two styles of ice cream freezer. One has a short, squatty can and the other has a tall narrow can. The latter does a superior job of freezing, not just in my opinion, but in that of many experts. Mine is a White Mountain, now part of Rival. Its can holds a bit more than four quarts. So I fill it with two quarts of mix. When I started making ice cream myself I tried the Philadelphia Ice Cream recipe in Fannie Farmer. It has the virtues of being both simple and good.

Mix each quart of cream with 3/4 cup sugar and a few grains of salt. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Chill. Add 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Vanilla or 1 teaspoon of grated vanilla bean. Freeze in a crank freezer to make 3 pints.

It is so good that I rarely make any other recipe. I have varied it by replacing a cup of cream with a cup of very strong coffee. That's good if you like coffee ice cream. A lot. Then I replaced the Vanilla with Root Beer concentrate which was also good. But not to the end of the gallon. It might be different if I had a big freezer and could keep the rest of the batch in reserve. Then I could vary the flavor without waste. With no more freezer space than comes at the top of my refrigerator one batch takes too much room. So, for ease of eating all the way to the bottom of the can, I mostly make Whistle Stop #6, as follows:

Pour half a gallon of cream into the can. Add a cup of sugar, three tablespoons of vanilla, and a half-teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, Set the dasher and lid and place all in the churn. Fill the bucket about a third full of ice around the drum and plug the motor in. Scatter a cup of rock salt over the ice. Add more ice to near the top of the drum. Spread two-thirds of a cup of rock salt. Cover the can in ice. Sprinkle a third of a cup of salt. Add more ice as needed. I get two bags and generally have about a third of a bag left over. Do not add more salt. The White Mountain will run without lugging down. After about fifteen minutes stop it and move the ice cream into a container that goes in the freezer -- or serve it out to the party. When disassembling the mixer be careful to keep the salty ice out of the can. The lid can come loose easily. With another mixer it will probably lug down when done.

* * *

Where did the name come from? Once we lived across the field from an old railway station. My daughter and I frequently walked past it on our way to wherever. Then Tommy Thompson began to build a very narrow gauge railway in that area. Melissa and I, among many others, helped him lay track. Tommy was not sure what his final route would be. I suggested he make it a circuit of the field. Then he could make our house whistle stop #6.

* * *

Del, who told me of the boy who wouldn't eat his cereal until it got warm, Pointed out that I should get my ice the day before and put it in my freezer.
Bill queried my doing so.
"To make the ice cold," said I.
Bill snorted with delight. Until I repeated Del's explanation. Store freezers are kept near 30˚ -- just cold enough to stay frozen -- to save energy. My home freezer is at 0˚. Overnight the ice becomes colder.

* * *

British Columbia Folk-Jazz singer Diane Campbell once asked Diana to go with her to get an ice cream cone when we all worked at the Folklife Festival in Spokane.
"But I just had lunch!" said Diana.
Diane exclaimed, "You don't have to be hungry to eat ice cream!"


Technorati Tags: ice cream, narrow gauge trains, Diane Campbell. Folklife Festival

A Good Egg

How piercful grows
The hazy yon
How myrtle turtle thou
For Spring hath sprung
The cyclotron
How high browse thou
Brown cow?
-- Walt Kelly

What better symbol for a new (year, season, beginning) then an egg? Fecund Spring demands it. Nu, it's an aphrodisiac. Or, as a nurse once informed me: "It's a cheap source of protein."

Of late this wonder food that provides so much has been veiled with suspicion. Bureaucrats warn us of nasty bacteria. Manufacturers offer us substitutes that are "just as good only better" without half the stuff.

With a death rate of no more than five people per year, you take a greater risk driving to the store to purchase those eggs.

-- "The incredible, inedible egg"
The Chicago Tribune, June 15, 2001
(Pay for view)

The culprit in the egg affair is carelessness. Eggs are one of nature's most nearly perfect designs. Delicate yet sturdy. Moisture tight. Able to store its contents for a good long time provided:

• The shell remains intact
• It is not heated above shade temperature
• It is not exposed to strong sun

Eggs a merchant set in the window, or next to a motor, grew salmonella. That is nasty stuff. But a little attention prevents its ingestion. It smells. It looks weird. A bad egg is obvious. Literally, if not always figuratively.

This time of year Del observed that soon the fish boats will head to Alaska for the summer fishery. Every one of them will have a crate of eggs stowed on deck under a ladder not too far from the galley. The ladder will shade the crate and the air will keep it cool enough to feed the crew all summer long.

My eggs live on top of the refrigerator, which is out of the sun. I have done this for over a decade and encountered one egg that was bad, no question about it. There were two others I threw away through being a nervous nelly, because I couldn't remember if I put that crack there just now, or I had missed seeing it at the store. The reward for this practice is how the eggs work in baked goods: light, high, delicate, because the mixing begins with room temperature eggs. (Legal counsel advises I remind you to read the caveats in the upper right hand corner.)

This holiday season presents the cook with the challenge of getting the eggs boiled correctly. Directions by noted authorities disagree. Some times violently. Some old world cultures simmer the eggs for hours and hours and flourish forth a perfectly cooked egg. I suspect this is possible only if your Gran trained you. New tech types attack the problem with thermometers, hygrometers, micrometers and chronometers. With a blast of the Ipod Voluntary (by Corelli) the result rolls out.

Either way its a crap shoot.

First of all, oh best beloveds, one does not boil an egg. We have no interest in boiled eggs. They are tough and rubbery with a slime green hue around the yolks. Instead we cook eggs. Here's how.

Place the eggs in a single layer in a heavy saucepan and cover with cold water by at least one inch. Add a teaspoon of salt. (If the shell cracks, this helps coagulate the escaping white more quickly.) Leaving the pot uncovered, turn the heat to high. As soon as the water comes to a boil, turn off the heat and cover. After 10 minutes, remove the cover and run cold water over the eggs for one minute. (For firmer yolks, leave the eggs to cool in the water for up to two hours.) Refrigerate up to one week.
To peel, gently tap each egg against the counter, turning to make a crackle pattern. Start peeling at the broad end, where there is an air pocket. For the best flavor, eggs, once peeled, should be used within a few hours.

--How to Boil an Egg: So Simple, but Not Easy
Julia Moskin, NYT, April 9, 2003
(Behind the wall)

As we approach the egg-laying-bun-rab season there are several strategies available to the dye averse.

• Cook with natural colorants: onion skins, beets, and so forth
  
• Crackle your egg shells and steep in tea.
• Pickle them

I prefer the later and use my variant of a recipe a friend's Gran Brought From Russia.^tm

Square Egg Maker

Cook the eggs as above. (Then I turn them into cubets. See pix) Mix, in a sauce pan, a pint of white vinegar, a half pint of water, three to six tablespoons of brown sugar, a tablespoon of pickling spices and whatever other whole spice you think tasty, as: star anise, cinnamon, clove-, mustard, or crushed red pepper. Add a sliced sweet onion and two or three beets, sliced or julienned. Heat to boiling and simmer until the vegetables are al dente. Add a dozen shelled eggs and simmer another three minutes. Put in a jar and cool. Wait a week.

I never make it a full twelve hours.

Fortunately, as you eat the good stuff, you can add new good stuff to the pickle juice and the next day its pickles!

Del once had property in Grand Forks, British Columbia. His neighbors included several Dukhabors. Del recalls sitting at their kitchen tables with large bowls full of dozens of exquisitely patterned and colored eggs at their centers. The men sitting at the tables would casually reach into the bowls and -- whack! -- smash those beautiful things to pieces with no more notice then I might use to break a cracker in two.

But the best part comes after the holiday. Per Jurgen Gothe of Disc Drive:

Tempora Inconstans

Del spent a spring break at a college chum's home. This was a dairy farm. It was the weekend of the change to Daylight Savings Time. The Farmer was moderately annoyed by it.

"The cows don't like it. The hour delay in milking is painful for them."

So he spread the change over four days, a quarter hour each day.

Del approved. He also noted that the problem didn't occur in the fall since then the cows were milked an hour early, but only once.

-- ml

Driveway Management Seminars

My neighbor Bill shakes his head when he is told that the local store of a large company controls its thermostat in Atlanta.
We agree that this is typical of the wrong headedness of current managerial practice which holds that numbers on a computer screen are more valid than what happens in the field (or on the shop floor).

It reminds me of two Del stories.

At one time, about 1951, Del was in charge of building and operating the largest civilian computer west of the Mississippi River. At that time computers were huge but sensitive beasts, very finicky about temperature. So the company built a new building to house this computer and the rest of the head office in the U District of Seattle.
Soon the beast was in operation but not happy. Tubes -- vacuum tubes -- were blowing too frequently. So Del put up a sign telling all the employees not to change the thermostat.
Still it was way too warm when Del arrives for his night shift. The day workers raised the temp. So Del calls in a workman to fix the problem. The thermostat is left unchanged. The sensor is left in the old position. The control wire to the heating system is rerouted to a new thermostat hidden in a locked closet. So now the actual control is out of reach of all but Del. The staff are deliriously happy twisting what they think is the control up and down. Vacuum tube consumption returns to normal.

Del was an engineer. He liked things to be just so. He liked to do things in a certain way. This tended to piss some people off. My observation is that Del was different from most of the species only in his readiness to admit that he wanted it done thus-and-so. Too many of the rest of us try to be too diplomatic and end in a muddle.
As an example of Del's gans-organizertness he told a story on himself.

As the weather became colder he liked to add a blanket for warmth. The system was that in the summer he slept with just a sheet. When October arrived he added a blanket. November brought another. December yielded a third and January reached the summit of four blankets. Under them all Del was quite snug. With February the process went into reverse with a blanket coming off each month until only the summer sheet remained. A settled habit which he was sure met the case with precision and economy.

Then his parents gave him an electric blanket.

Naturally this revealed, instantly, how unpleasant that great winter weight of blankets was. With glee he spread the blanket on his bed in October. In November he turned it on to 'low'. In December it went to 'medium' and Del defied the arctic outflows to do their worst. January brought 'high' and all was toasty warm as the flurries snaeed without. February returned to 'medium' as the Great NW Rain(tm) continued.
It was in April that he did his spring cleaning. On his hands and knees he swept the mop under the bed. "What's that dangling there?" he queried. He pulled the bed away from the wall to get at it only to discover: a plug. The plug that connected his electric blanket to Grand Coulee Dam.
Del had passed the winter comfortably under a mere single blanket.

-- ml

Precision Language

Another Del tale:

A child sat, idly, at the familial board before a piping hot bowl of porridge.
"Why aren't you eating?" asks Papa.
"I'm waiting for my cereal to get warm," is the reply.
"But it's hot. Eat!"

Precision language.
-- ml

Seattle Brown Out Turkey

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

A week from tonight here's what you do for a pretty good turkey.

Once upon a forty or so years ago there was less power grid here in the Great Northwest than there were various and sundry folk wanting to plug in. Picture the poor sap running the grid on Thanksgiving: 7:00 am all those hard working Moms and other chefs-with-the-duty jump out of bed and rush into the kitchen in their flimsies to shove a humongous turkey into the oven at 350⁰ The grid feels like Cassius Clay KOed it instead of rhyming it to death.

The lights of the city grow dim. phut. They go out. The turkey is maybe 82⁰ and goin' nowhere. Dinner is about 11:30. Almost Friday.

Del's solution, which I urge you to adopt in these precarious times was more or less what I do now.
Preheat the oven to about 350⁰

Wrasstle that bird out of its bionic packaging and sluice its frame in water. Reach your hand inside and yard out the sweetmeats packed by the abbattoir. Set them aside. (Where ever you like)((Where ever the cats like))

Do not pack this cavity with anything you intend to eat or allow your family to eat.
Shove sone herbs in it. Some onion or scallions. Some fresh sage and rosemary and thyme. Hell throw some gnger root and lemon in there if you think you like it that way. Any aromatic is jes' fine. Rub the skin with butter and salt and pepper or as you like it.

Put it in the life boat and cover it in aluminum foil. Place it reverently in the oven about bedtime the night before you eat it. Immediatey reduce the temp to 250⁰. Give it about an hour a pound. Check on it when you wake. That will be early because the aroma of roasting bird will have you pacing the floor by about 6:00 am. With luck you won't have to worry about carving the bird -- it will fall apart at a sharp look.

Now you have the rest of the morning to make the rest of the foo-fer-rar, and to prorperly baste the cook in a good Bordeau, and to simmer the juices into gravy.
The stuffing, made next morning, will be jes' fine with some of the pan juice or a can of chicken stock. Hell a cup or two of tawny port is even better.

Stretching out the process de-frazzles the cook.That allows time for the burgundy to turn the cook into a human.

Just be nice enough to set the table if asked.

Happy Turkey Day!

--ml

Del Bao

Del discovered Hom Bao in Seattle's International District when he attended U. W. in the late forties. He found them no harder to eat than a bear finds honey difficult to swallow. He was almost as avid.

Once he visited San Francisco's China town. In a side street he discovered a shop of modest size. It was fitted out like a bakery with glass fronted display cases down the middle of the long room. Each case had many shelves. On each shelf were several full sheet trays. Each tray was covered in what Del saw as "Hom Bao!" When the proprietress emerged from the work room behind, Del said: "I want some Hom Bao."

"No Hom Bao." She replied.

Del looked at her. Then he looked at the serried ranks of trays filled with beautiful white pillows of steamed or baked bread. Then he looked back at her as if she had three heads and commanded: "Give me Hom Bao!"

"No Hom Bao." She insisted.

Fortunately for San Francisco's finest, a fracas was prevented by the arrival of a well dressed Chinese woman.

Del turned to her to ask: "Do you speak English?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Do you speak Chinese?" He querried.

This gave the woman pause. "Yes," she said.

"Then would you please explain to her that I want to buy some of her Hom Bao?"

The woman made a brief querry in Chinese.

The proprietoress made a voluable reply in a full panoply of gestures.

The woman made many vocables that appeared to indicate comprehension. Then she turned to Del and explained: "She asks me to tell you that she has many kinds of buns. There are beef buns, barbequed pork buns, vegetarian buns, chicken buns, sweet bean paste buns, curry buns and many others. But at the moment she is out of plain pork, or Hom, buns. So there are many kinds of Bao before you, but no Hom Bao."

Del thanked the woman for her translation, and apologized to the proprieteress for his gruffness and ordered a half dozen of each of her Bao.

His culinary world, already vast, became yet larger, while his Chinese vocabulary shrank, but only slightly.

--ml