Destination # 6 - California

CALIFORNIA! Oh where to begin? Home sweet home to the both of us. I've been avoiding writing this blog for two days because I couldn't figure out how to condense California into a blog entry of reasonable length as opposed to a long-winded gratuitous Novella about my Utopian childhood playing tennis and swimming in the sunshine 365 days a year, my ridiculously awesome friends and our crazy stunts, and the fact that Drake and I fell in love in about 100 different ways across a broad smattering of California cities from border to border. and how was that for a sentence, eh? Phew. Take a breath. See what I mean? This has the potential for disaster! So instead I've decided to say very little and I aim to accomplish this by leaving out most verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs , dangling modifiers and other grammatical stylings and trying to stick with mostly just nouns. So here go my thoughts, all summed up, on California... in no particular order.

sunshine family tennis scooters Chinese Food Swim & Racket Club
neighbors love Redwood trees Lombard Street soccer games 408 Joe Montana camping bike rides barefoot Berkley Colluseum
Golden Gate Bridge fruit Trees H2O polo Height Ashbury Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk convertibles summer Camp walnut trees snails Mom&Dad skateboarding cobblers Venice Beach tadpoles home.

We chose to make a Cobb Salad for our California meal because only true Californians are health-conscious and vain enough to eat salads and call it a meal but smart enough to figure out how to load them up with so much crap that you actually forget that you're eating a salad.

And so we present to you our own version of a California Cobb Salad

Ingredients:
A Combination of Romaine and Butter Lettuce
crumbled Bacon (yes; I capitalized Bacon on purpose because Bacon is kinda like God and if God gets to be capitalized then by God so does Bacon)
Blue Cheese
hard boiled egg sliced
Avocado
grilled chicken - sliced
green onions

For the dressing we made a honey mustard concoction

1/4 cup Mayo
1 T. Dijon mustard
1 T. honey
1/2 T. lemon juice

Whisk together. Toss. Serve and relish the fact that you just ate only a salad for dinner.
The dressing will be a bit thick but soooooooo tasty!

Bon Appetite and may the force always be with you, California!

Destination # 5 - Nevada

It was not quite a full week ago when I first learned what "Basque" was. I had heard the term, of course, but didn't quite understand what it meant and always assumed that it was just some pocket of Spain that naturally produced a specific style of food. My friend, Vicki, had brought over a couple of Basque style cheeses for our Poker night and educated me on the fact that Basque was neither Spanish nor French but something in between; like a half breed of French and Spanish only with its own unique culture and style. I've always been partial to half-breeds so it was no surprise that I whole-heartedly took to this cheese and decided on the spot that I was going to explore the Basque community and cuisine further.

So I asked the Google about Basque style foods and it pointed me directly toward Nevada. Who knew? Apparently Nevada is not all about VEGAS baby and copious amounts of shrimp cocktail and extravagant buffets, after all.

Basque Cuisine

You can explore further at the link provided but the Erin Rae Cliff Notes of it are that during the late 1800's massive numbers of Basque sheepherders migrated to California and Nevada. They came together as a community and thus the Basque inspired cuisine became a popular staple to the desert folks of Nevada.

When I looked up Basque recipes I was literally overwhelmed by the options available, including a... get this... STEAK cooked in between two other thinner cuts of STEAK. WTF? Are the Basque immune to heart attacks? I opted for a chicken dish since my waist line has terribly suffered from our foray into the Southern and Midwestern states over the last couple of weeks. I cooked this entirely by myself and I should have taken a picture of the bomb that clearly went off in the kitchen as a result of my culinary efforts but alas, my hands were tied.

oh and by the way... this turned out AWESOME!!!

Basque Style Chicken - recipe courtesy of My Recipes.

Ingredients

1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast tenders $
2 teaspoons olive oil $
2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic
1/4 cup sliced green olives
2 (10-ounce) cans diced tomatoes and green chiles, undrained $
1/4 cup finely chopped prosciutto
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Preparation

1) Combine paprika and pepper; sprinkle evenly over chicken.
2) Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken to pan; cook 4 minutes. Add garlic to pan; cook 30 seconds. Turn chicken over. Add olives and tomatoes to pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 6 minutes.
3) Remove chicken from pan. Increase heat to medium-high; cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with prosciutto and parsley.
4) Serve with Saffron rice.

I served this with an amazing "Nine Hats" Red Table Wine... only because I didn't have any Basque wine on hand. Do the Basque make wine???

Our Culinary Road Trip continues to educate, entertain and inspire us.

Destination # 4 - Indiana

Indiana! What does one say, exactly, about Indiana? Have I ever been there? No. Could I locate it on a map? Most certainly not. Do I know even one single thing about Indiana? Umm... that would be a negative. This quandary, however, hits exactly at the heart of what this project is all about. Learn some Geography, learn about the cultures and customs of someplace beyond the West Coast and endeavor to become overall more well-rounded, more intelligent, more charming and of course, better looking... er... somehow. I was so stumped by Indiana that I couldn't figure out where to start my research so I decided to take a different approach all together. I went straight to the source, or a source, I should say and conducted a "celebrity" interview of a real live, too-legit-don't-quit, Indiana Hoosier, born and bred. My good friend Sara Fear was kind enough to allow me to interview her on the finer points of Indiana living. Our Q:A is outlined for your reading pleasure here.

E-Rae: So, you hail from Bloomington Indiana, do ya? Can you confirm or deny this? Would call yourself a Veteran of said state?

Sara: That is a patent falsehood, a vicious rumor, and I’ll deny it to my dying day! Seriously, though, I went to college in Bloomington, which is in southern Indiana, but I grew up in West Lafayette in the northern part of the state and I consider that my home town. My parents and grandmother still live there. I am a Hoosier (see below), born and bred. I like the idea of having Veteran status, as in, I survived growing up in Indiana.

E-Rae: Indiana – do they have animals? I mean like… livestock or critters or something? What animals would you say claim Indiana as their home?

Sara: There are lots of large, commercial pig farms, which is probably why so many of my Hoosier friends recommended you include pork tenderloin in your Indiana meal. For the record, I never ate pork tenderloin growing up but I did eat a lot of sweet corn, something that is only good on the eastern side of the Rockies. Sweet corn out here in WA is, in a word, crap. Deer hunting is a big deal, I gather. Also, squirrels: there are a lot of them and people hunt them.

E-Rae: Can you think of one celebrity from Indiana, alive or dead?

Sara: Michael Jackson, Axel Rose, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, David Letterman, Kurt Vonnegut, Gene Stratton Porter, James Dean, Amelia Earhart (born in West Lafayette—woot!)

E-Rae: Are drugs and alcohol popular in Indiana? If so, which varieties?

Sara: I grew up in a typical Midwestern college town and then moved to another typical Midwestern college town, so my exposure to drugs was mostly limited to bad beer and ditch weed. Like many parts of the US where there are a lot of small towns and depressed economies, meth is a major health and safety issue. Of possible interest to your readers, alcohol (including beer and wine) can not be purchased in the state of Indiana on Sundays, unless purchased and consumed in a bar. I’ve never lived in CA, so I think that the booze laws in WA are awesome!

E-Rae: Does Indiana have a state fish?

Sara: Apparently it’s the large mouth bass. I totally Googled that. Sean thought it was the blue gill. I don’t even know what that is, but he was born in Kentucky and grew up in Southern Indiana, so he should know more about these things than I do. Unfortunately, he does not.

E-Rae: Do you know which part of the pig pork tenderloin comes from?

Sara: Uh, the tenderloin?

E-Rae: If Indiana were a color, what color would it be?

Sara: Red. Although the state did go for Obama in 2008. I was shocked into silence for at least 2 hours.

E-Rae: Does Indiana have a song?

Sara: Back Home Again in Indiana, which I grew up singing.

E-Rae: If I were to be a tourist there, what would you recommend I see?

Sara: Chicago. Sean says you should go to Tommy Bartlett’s Robot World, which is in Wisconsin. If you MUST see something in Indiana, I would recommend going to southern Indiana in the Fall, when the colors are changing and the trees are on fire. The rolling hills and little towns are great! James Dean is buried in Fairmount and if you’re lucky, you’ll be there one of the weeks that his gravestone hasn’t been stolen.

E-Rae: Do people in Indiana have an accent? Please elaborate.

Sara: Yes, but the accent varies depending on where you are in the state. Sean says, “Northern Indiana people sound like radio DJ’s. Southern Indiana people sound like rednecks.” I could not have said it better myself. The one major exception to this is people from the Northwestern part of the state, up around Chicago, who tend to have that stereotypical accent.

E-Rae: If I asked you to write a haiku about Indiana, which I will now, what would it say?

Sara: Haiku for the Hoosier State, by griff

Small, fly-over state
Place where I was born and bred
Please don’t ever change.

E-Rae: Just what exactly is a Hoosier?

Sara: Good question. I was expecting this one so I’ve spent some time thinking about my response. The history of the term “Hoosier” is muddled. For many years, it was a derogatory term meaning hick or, my favorite, hilljack. It’s since been adopted as the general term for someone who is from Indiana. Not everyone from Indiana would adopt the moniker, though, especially people who are big Purdue University fans. They may not want to be called Hoosiers because that‘s the mascot for their arch rival, Indiana University.

E-Rae: If I were to read a History book about Indiana, what do you think Chapter 1 would be about?

Sara: If we’re talking about the 4th grade state history book, probably something about “The Road to Statehood (1816)” or “Chief Tecumseh and his wack-a-doo brother The Prophet” or “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!” Sean says that these ideas are grossly skewed towards northern Indiana History. He doesn’t know what happened in southern Indiana.

E-Rae: What slang words are commonly used in Indiana?

Sara: This has totally stumped me. On a related note, poor grammar and mispronunciation of words is rampant but that certainly isn’t unique to Indiana. I grew up with a girl who said “warshcloth.” That would kill me every time.

E-Rae: Can you recommend a good movie set in Indiana?

Sara: Hoosiers is good if you are into sports and Gene Hackman. Rudy takes place at Notre Dame in South Bend but I’ve never seen it and wouldn’t recommend it anyway. Breaking Away is good; it’s about the annual bike race that is held at Indiana University, my alma mater. What these movies teach you about Indiana is that people there like to watch sports, but they don’t want to have to play them. That would be too much like getting exercise.

E-Rae: What do folks from Indiana do in their spare time? Is there a state sport or hobby?

Sara: Quarrying, which involves going to a quarry and swimming. Creeking, which involves walking around in creeks. Cow tipping, which involves going up to sleeping cows and tipping them over. I’ve never done that last one and didn’t know what it was until I saw the movie Heathers.

Sara generously and without prompting surveyed her Hoosier friends on Facebook for food tip ideas for our blog. The response was overwhelmingly in favor of Breaded Pork Tenderloin. Corn casserole was also a popular favorite including one statement instructing me to eat this meal with a bottle of Miller Lite. I couldn't bring myself to do that, however, despite my dedication to the cultural integrity of this project. A girl has to have standards, after-all. Instead I had a nice crisp Northwest IPA Micro-brew and pretended (almost) that it was Miller Lite.

Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sanwiches

Note*** I found this recipe on Allrecipes (original recipe linked).

4 (4 ounce) slices of pork tenderloin, cut across the grain
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
1/2 cup peanut oil for frying
Kaiser rolls or other buns

Directions
1.Place each slice of pork tenderloin between two pieces of sturdy plastic or parchment paper (such as a cut-up large plastic freezer bag), and flatten the cutlet until it's about 1/4 inch thick, and about 3 1/2 by 5 inches in size.
2.Beat the eggs and milk together in a shallow bowl, and whisk in the garlic powder, onion powder, seasoned salt, marjoram, oregano, salt, and pepper until the spices are well blended into the mixture. Place the bread crumbs in a shallow bowl.
3.Dip each flattened cutlet into the seasoned milk-egg mixture and then into the bread crumbs, thoroughly coating the cutlets with crumbs. Set the breaded cutlets aside on a piece of parchment or waxed paper; do not stack.
4.Heat the oil in a large skillet until the oil is shimmering. Gently lower the cutlets, one at a time, into the hot oil, and fry until golden brown on each side, about 8 minutes per cutlet. *** I don't believe it took this long. Drain the cutlets on paper towels.

5.Preheat oven broiler, and set the oven rack about 6 inches from the heat source.
6.Spread the Kaiser rolls or other rolls if you wish to make a sandwich open with the cut sides up, and broil until the rolls are toasted and hot, about 1 minute. Top each roll with a fried cutlet (hopefully the sides of the meat will hang out of the roll by at least an inch on each side); top each cutlet with choice of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, lettuce, tomato, onion, and a pickle slice, if desired.

Nutritional Information
Amount Per Serving Calories: 475 | Total Fat: 14.5g | Cholesterol: 104mg

Corn Casserole - recipe shared by Sara Fear

1 box Jiffy Cornbread Muffin mix
1 stick of butter (room temp or softened)
1 8oz tub of sourcream (I used low fat)
1 can regular kernel corn
1 can creamed corn
Note** this also called for 1 egg which I forgot to put in.

1. Cream the butter with an electric mixer until soft
2. Mix together all remaining ingrediants.
3. Bake in a 8X8 casserole dish, uncovered for 1 hour at 350 degrees
Note*** you can double the recipe for a larger casserole (9X13).

Both of these recipes turned out *awesome*, especially the Corn Casserole. I very much enjoyed our little foray into Indiana and certainly learned a whole bunch! Many thanks to Sara and her Manager/Husband/interview consult, Sean. Next time, we'll remember to invite you over for dinner, I swear...

Destination # 3 - Oklahoma

Oklahoma is where my people hail from. My "kinfolk" as they might say in Okie-speak. My maternal Grandmother, "Big Grandma," birthed about 636 babies (give or take) and raised all but one of them in Oklahoma. My own mother was the baby of the bounty and she experienced what I could only imagine was a very different upbringing in California. We used to visit Oklahoma most summers right around the time when the heat and humidity were so oppressive that steam would ooze from my ears and sweat would flood my little body in the short sprint from the air conditioned houses to the cars in the driveway. I remember wild and somewhat terrifying lightning storms and chasing fireflies after sundown. There were nights of dizzying blackness; a darkness so complete only the country could offer and the tiny buzzing glow of the fireflies that always left me both stunned and delighted. Parts of Oklahoma have nothing but Indian red clay roads as far and as flat as your eyes could see and little mini-marts every few miles that were called "the # 9" or "the # 3", 7 and so on. For some reason this charmed the pants off of me and was such a complete culture shock from the 7-11 laced California suburb that I called home. Lastly, before I move on to the food, and by far my fondest memory was the ho-downs (for lack of a better word) we used to have out by the lake. I'm proud to claim that I have a couple of musical prodigies in the family (a cousin that contended and I believe tied with Allison Krauss in a fiddling competition and an Uncle and cousins that produced a few albums in a Bluegrass band for several years. Those guys would whip out their fiddles and banjos and we'd all sing along and dance to blue-grass music and picnic by the lake, jumping in frequently to beat the heat. Throughout my childhood, my friends would constantly make vicious fun of me because I always sang with a country accent but hey... that's what I associated with stellar singing so there ya go. I'm over the country accent now, AND I can't sing worth a lick. Coincidence? I don't think so.

When I think of Okie food I think fried okra, monkey bread and all things buttermilk. I used to drink buttermilk by the gallon every Tuesday when I visited with Big Grandma while my mother would make faces and gagging gestures at me in the background. I'm also over the buttermilk obsession but I don't think it's affected my ability (or lack thereof) to sing. My mom told me the other day that Big Grandma used to make her "Chicken and Dumplings" every Sunday for supper and that it tasted like nasty slop with boiled chicken and blobs of raw dough dropped in. BINGO! I had my Okie culinary challenge. We are attempting to make a Chicken and Dumplings dish that will get the Mommy stamp of approval and turn her around on Chicken and Dumplings for good. I'm typing this as Drake is in the kitchen fixin' dinner now (I'm sick so I'm free of any cooking duties on this one) and there are a few alarming exclamations coming out of that kitchen, I must confess. Truthfully, we're both pretty out of our domain here. To quote Drake directly, "it's so interesting to cook a food that you've never eaten, never seen anybody eat, or even imagined eating." I don't even know what dumplings are, much less what they are supposed to look or feel like.

Chicken and Dumplings
4 slices of bacon
3 large potatoes, peeled and diced
1 onion, diced
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - diced
3 cups chicken broth
1 t. poultry seasoning
1 1/2 cups half and half (original recipe called for 3 cups)
1 1/2 cups 2% milk (original recipe called for 1 cup whole milk)
1 can Pilsbury Biscuit Dough

1. Cook bacon over med heat until evenly brown. Drain and crumple; set aside.
2. Add potatoes, onion and chicken to bacon drippings and cook 15 mins, stirring occasionally. Pour in chicken broth; season with poultry season, salt and pepper. Simmer for 15 mins.
3. Pour in half and half and milk; add crumbled bacon.
4. Cut each of the four biscuits into eighths and roll gently into balls.
5. Drop biscuit balls into boiling mixture; reduce heat and simmer 10 mins, uncovered, then another 10 minutes covered. Do not stir. Serve hot.

Fried Okra
10 pods okra, sliced in 1/4 inch pieces
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. black pepper
1/2 cup vegetable oil

1. Soak okra in milk for 15 minutes.
2. Combine cornmeal, flour, salt and pepper in seperate bowl.
3. Heat oil in skillet over med-high heat. Dredge okra in the cornmeal mixture, coating evenly.
4. Place okra in oil, stir continuously. Reduce heat to med when okra first starts to brown and cook until golden.
5. Drain on paper towels and server hot.


Post Meal Notes:





Okay. Hmmm... that was, well, interesting! Drake surprised me with fried okra which was about as awesome as I remember it the last time I tried some in 1982. LOVE IT! Drake on the other hand, did not. Sure, okra has a bit of a slime factor to it but it's the clash of textures when you fry it that makes it so fun and good. The chicken and dumplings turned out okay. Drake would describe it as a bland potato soup while I would describe it as a bowl of yellow things, none of which had a whole ton of flavor but I feel that the recipe probably turned out okay. She did make a few of modifications to cut back on the caloric level a bit (do southern people really cook with 3 cups of half and half)??? YIKES!

Overall take-a-way: Mom - you're off the hook but I am super excited that I got to sample some okra again and now I know that chicken and dumplings are really just not for me.

Time to wrap this up but if you have any Okie or Southern heritage and wish to try this, I'd be real curious what your thoughts are. Authentic? Yes? No?

And as they always say in Oklahoma, "Ya'll come back now, ya' hear?"

Detour: Oak Table Cafe, Kingston, WA.

I've been told once or twice by especially mean and unreasonable people that "it's not always about me" which frankly I find just shameful but regardless, I've decided to employ that philosophy here in this blog by taking the occasional detour from our "Road Trip" and give a shout out to some food that we did not actually cook ourselves. Note that this will NOT count as part of our 50 states as the rules for that project are strictly to make the food ourselves but we are surrounded by so many incredible chefs and restaurants here in the Pac NW that it'd be just a crying damn shame to NOT feature some of these gems from time to time.

and so I present you with "The Oak Table Cafe", locations in both Sequim, WA. and Kingston, WA. on the Kitsap Peninsula. I've yet to have lunch or dinner there but the breakfast is THE BOMB! 100% Diner style with quirky Beatles and The Sound of Music art adorning the walls and the friendliest wait staff you'll find this side of the moon. Think FRESH and LOCAL. They are somewhat famous for this "Apple Pancake" which they serve souffle style (see pic) but their ridiculously fluffy French Baked Omelettes and Biscuits and Gravy (I believe she said that the gravy was made with both sausage AND bacon when Drake asked if the B&G came with a side of meat; and yes, she really DID ask that) are also must tries, especially if you are looking to increase your clogged artery to healthy artery ratio. Oh hell; live a little!

If you ever find yourself out in this neck of the woods, I highly recommend a stop here at this joint. You will not leave disappointed.

and now: the food porn!