Columns
Today In the Kitchen: Road to Maine full of lessons, surprises
Greetings from the Midwest. We’ve been on the road for several days and figure we’re about halfway to Maine. There are so many tidbits to share, I’m just going to try stream of consciousness. Hope you enjoy...
The first stretch of the journey took us to Deming, N.M. I remembered to watch the sunset in the rear view mirror, as a Green Valley friend advised. It confounds the brain, somehow. Stella found a stray kitten in a stand of bamboo. Last time she found a stray puppy it cost me $50 to give it to the animal shelter. This dog is going to have to get a job to support her habit. Anyway, I’ve noticed a phenomenon. Why are there so many stray cats around motels?
Next day we went through White Sands National Monument and stopped to see some petroglyphs. I love that word. Picked up a little book on indigenous foods - Indian and Mexican recipes. I find the native foods wildly attractive: wild rice, grass seeds, sunflower seeds, mesquite beans, pinon nuts, juniper berries, cactus fruit, mushrooms. Not so wild about things like badgers, gophers, prairie dogs, squirrels, grasshoppers(!), and raccoons (although I have eaten raccoon, which I skinned myself, and it was rather like turkey, but tough). Once the Spaniards arrived, they brought wheat, oats, barley, onions, peas, melons, stone fruit and apples. That changed things a lot.
Then we went into the glorious mountains — cottonwoods, pines, what looked like California Live Oaks, wild sweet peas, buttercups. We stopped by a stream so Stella could get dirty. We saw horses and goats - a Nubian. Goats have personalities like cats - they’re smart, independent and eccentric. One time, in my homesteading days, I got home to the cabin and saw that the door was open. That was strange. When I went inside, the first thing I noticed was that all the fringe was gone from my poncho! The goat had opened the door, gone inside, and eaten whatever she could find.
On to Texas. Texas is a special place. We got lost due to the omission of a Texas map in the AAA triptik I ordered well in advance of the trip. Well, it’s partly my fault because I decided to take a short cut. We spent 2-3 hours wandering around in 100-degree heat taking directions from locals who looked at us like we belonged in Roswell. Anyway, many cultural oddities in Texas: the town of Earth; the largest cross in the West; a giant roadrunner sculpture made out of metal scraps; beef fudge! (can you believe this? It’s for real, with ground beef, chocolate, and the usual fudge ingredient suspects). But to me, the essence of Texas cuisine is in this little story from the ’70s:
I was in a roadside diner. The waitress went up to the couple in the next booth and asked the man what kind of salad dressing he would like. He said “ray-ed” (“red,” for those of you who aren’t familiar with the accent), by which he meant, probably, Thousand Island. I doubt that anything as unpatriotic as French dressing would have been served there. I still chuckle when I see red salad dressing.
Next was Oklahoma and the Cheyenne Nation. We stopped at a cemetery. I’m always looking for safe places to let Stella off leash, and the lawn of a cemetery is an added feature. While she wandered, I looked at gravestones. Two poignant ones stood out: Peachlyn, who lived for 4 years, and her brother Gabreon, who lived for only 4 months.
We drove off and watched the landscape morph into farmland. I was listening to an audio book about the status of the animal food industry, and this quotation stood out: “Ignorance is a choice... a survival mechanism... based on repressed panic.” Something for the brain to chew on.
Audio books really made the trip possible for me. I get so bored otherwise. Anyway, David Sedaris contributes a small culinary tidbit (this is a food-oriented column, after all). He makes sandwiches out of leftover chow mein, and calls them “chowiches”.
The final food find for this segment is none other than billboards for Bunny Bread, claiming that it gives one energy! On that note, I suspend this segment of fiction, and promise to write again from the Central and Lakes States. We hope everyone in Green Valley is keeping cool, and hope you all are having a fun Fourth of July weekend.
Samaya Jones is a Holistic Nutritional Consultant and Natural Foods Personal Chef, who cooks for you and your guests in your home. She writes for health websites, newspapers, and teaches wine education classes. She can be reached at ncsamayaj@gmail.com.
The first stretch of the journey took us to Deming, N.M. I remembered to watch the sunset in the rear view mirror, as a Green Valley friend advised. It confounds the brain, somehow. Stella found a stray kitten in a stand of bamboo. Last time she found a stray puppy it cost me $50 to give it to the animal shelter. This dog is going to have to get a job to support her habit. Anyway, I’ve noticed a phenomenon. Why are there so many stray cats around motels?
Next day we went through White Sands National Monument and stopped to see some petroglyphs. I love that word. Picked up a little book on indigenous foods - Indian and Mexican recipes. I find the native foods wildly attractive: wild rice, grass seeds, sunflower seeds, mesquite beans, pinon nuts, juniper berries, cactus fruit, mushrooms. Not so wild about things like badgers, gophers, prairie dogs, squirrels, grasshoppers(!), and raccoons (although I have eaten raccoon, which I skinned myself, and it was rather like turkey, but tough). Once the Spaniards arrived, they brought wheat, oats, barley, onions, peas, melons, stone fruit and apples. That changed things a lot.
Then we went into the glorious mountains — cottonwoods, pines, what looked like California Live Oaks, wild sweet peas, buttercups. We stopped by a stream so Stella could get dirty. We saw horses and goats - a Nubian. Goats have personalities like cats - they’re smart, independent and eccentric. One time, in my homesteading days, I got home to the cabin and saw that the door was open. That was strange. When I went inside, the first thing I noticed was that all the fringe was gone from my poncho! The goat had opened the door, gone inside, and eaten whatever she could find.
On to Texas. Texas is a special place. We got lost due to the omission of a Texas map in the AAA triptik I ordered well in advance of the trip. Well, it’s partly my fault because I decided to take a short cut. We spent 2-3 hours wandering around in 100-degree heat taking directions from locals who looked at us like we belonged in Roswell. Anyway, many cultural oddities in Texas: the town of Earth; the largest cross in the West; a giant roadrunner sculpture made out of metal scraps; beef fudge! (can you believe this? It’s for real, with ground beef, chocolate, and the usual fudge ingredient suspects). But to me, the essence of Texas cuisine is in this little story from the ’70s:
I was in a roadside diner. The waitress went up to the couple in the next booth and asked the man what kind of salad dressing he would like. He said “ray-ed” (“red,” for those of you who aren’t familiar with the accent), by which he meant, probably, Thousand Island. I doubt that anything as unpatriotic as French dressing would have been served there. I still chuckle when I see red salad dressing.
Next was Oklahoma and the Cheyenne Nation. We stopped at a cemetery. I’m always looking for safe places to let Stella off leash, and the lawn of a cemetery is an added feature. While she wandered, I looked at gravestones. Two poignant ones stood out: Peachlyn, who lived for 4 years, and her brother Gabreon, who lived for only 4 months.
We drove off and watched the landscape morph into farmland. I was listening to an audio book about the status of the animal food industry, and this quotation stood out: “Ignorance is a choice... a survival mechanism... based on repressed panic.” Something for the brain to chew on.
Audio books really made the trip possible for me. I get so bored otherwise. Anyway, David Sedaris contributes a small culinary tidbit (this is a food-oriented column, after all). He makes sandwiches out of leftover chow mein, and calls them “chowiches”.
The final food find for this segment is none other than billboards for Bunny Bread, claiming that it gives one energy! On that note, I suspend this segment of fiction, and promise to write again from the Central and Lakes States. We hope everyone in Green Valley is keeping cool, and hope you all are having a fun Fourth of July weekend.
Samaya Jones is a Holistic Nutritional Consultant and Natural Foods Personal Chef, who cooks for you and your guests in your home. She writes for health websites, newspapers, and teaches wine education classes. She can be reached at ncsamayaj@gmail.com.
Copyright © 2009 - Green Valley News and Sun