Allyson

Chris wanted me to share my sauce from last night, so I said heck with it. I liked it enough that I’m going to post it up here now.

To start off, this was my first attempt at making a Bolognese from scratch. I’ve always used jarred sauces and then “spiffed them up” in the past. I was in the mood to try something more challenging, but not too much because I’ve been so sick this week. The consistency was good, the amount of meat to sauce was good, the mouth feel was excellent, and the taste was incredible!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground pork (not flavored, just plain)
• 1 celery stick, finely diced
• 1 medium carrot, finely diced
• 1 onion small, finely diced
• 2-3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 14.5 oz cans of crushed tomatoes or stewed tomatoes 
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 cup whole milk (or oat milk for dairy free)
• salt and pepper to taste
• grated Parmesan cheese for serving

Heat your olive oil in the bottom of a Dutch oven or saucepan, and add the ground pork. Stir regularly until it’s almost cooked through, about ten minutes. While the pork is browning, mince up your vegetables. Add these to the meat, once it’s no longer pink. Continue to cook on medium heat until the onions begin to soften and clarify.

Add in your tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic. Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, continually stirring. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and add in the tomatoes, bay leaf, and dried oregano. Stir it together, and partially cover the pot. Simmer this on your lowest heat setting for 45 to 60 minutes. Stir the sauce every 15 minutes, to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Technically, this can continue to simmer for as long as you like. You want it to be fairly thick, so after an hour you may want to take the lid off, and stay there, stirring, while it thickens. If you’re in a rush, you can remove any excess liquid with a spoon or small ladle.

Turn off the heat, then add in the milk. Stir it together, taste, and then add salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce has a metallic or acid tang, add a half teaspoon of brown sugar to it. While you can skip adding the milk entirely, it really does add a depth to the sauce that makes it velvety. It also helps mellow out the tomato acidity.

Notes:

The original recipe calls for crushed tomatoes, but I didn’t have those. I could have stuck my stewed tomatoes into the blender and whizzed them up, but I chose to use the tomatoes chunky. I’m glad I did. Many of them broke up during the cooking of the sauce, but the pieces of tomato really added a lovely mouth-feel, and a certain “umami” to the final sauce.

This goes perfect over any kind of pasta, but it’s best over one that has a rough texture and lots of gripping surface. Think bowties or rotini, or even radiatori.

Serve this one up with a slice of hearty french bread, or some garlic knots. Don’t bother with salad; it’s much too meaty for that.

I had to give this one a few days. I watched most of the debate, but had to tune out after the umpteenth time the moderators interrupted the debate to say things that are just not true. All in all, it wasn’t so much a debate as a dog-pile on Trump. I thought Trump handled himself fairly well, but I was irritated that he let himself be baited by Harris. It was obvious what she was going to do, and she did it, and the fact that he fed right into it was painful.

The main topics were Jan. 6th, the economy, immigrants, war, unemployment, job rates, trade deficits, gun confiscation, and a few other things.

David Muir asked Trump if there was anything he regretted about January 6th. I thought it was a decently worded question, and open ended enough that Trump should have been able to find something to talk about. I’m sure that Trump has regrets that people turned into a mob (not a riot, no, but yes a mob), that a person lost their life, etc. Instead, he chose to talk about how he had nothing to do with it except to make a speech. While that’s factually true, it left opponents open to making all sorts of commentary and accusations.

Harris, for her part, was just ridiculous. She said, “On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured and some died, and understand the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.” Sure, lots of people were injured, but the ones who died were not due to their injuries sustained at the Capitol (FactCheck.org). Her bullshit about Trump threatening a “bloodbath” is just ridiculous.

The fight over tariffs is beyond my paygrade. There’s a lot of information on it online, and I encourage people to go read it. Both Trump’s and Harris’s various economic plans will cost the country money. The question is how much, and when. Trump’s tariff plans seem to indicate that We The People will see a slight increase in prices initially, because tariffs always do that (increase a price to someone and they pass that along to the consumer), but the general expectation is that American producers will be able to compete, thereby making American goods cheaper to purchase. That takes time, though, so right now it looks bad. And honestly, it IS bad, but only in the short term. I don’t know that many of us can handle a short price hike while things sort themselves out.

Harris just seems to be wanting to give people money, which might seem “nice” on the outside but… where’s the money coming from? In a crap economy where the government is bleeding dollars down the drain, where are these grants for new housing and other monies coming from? I gather Harris is just planning on printing more, but we all know how that works out. NPR suggests that the pandemic messed with the economy world wide (NPR) and I believe that to be correct, but only sort of. People were better under Trump in general. NPR suggests that prices under Trump were “depressed” for some reason, without actually giving a reason, so that now that they’re “normal,” it seems like more. NPR also states that prices have risen about 21%, but salaries have risen about 23%, so it’s all about the same as before the pandemic. I don’t think they understand economics.

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Stew is the bedrock of my winter meal plan. Part of my family dislikes soup, but is okay with something thicker. Stew is the way to go! Stew is basically a protein (chicken, beef, lamb, etc), a fat (bacon grease, olive oil, veg oil, etc), vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, etc), and a starch (rice, beans, potatoes, etc). In whatever combination you like, mix together, and you have stew. Of course there’s a bit more to it, but that’s the basic “stew recipe.”

Because stew was usually made with leftovers or scraps, the little bits that weren’t enough for another full meal, we don’t really have written stew recipes.  A good stew is different every time you  make it, because the ingredients will never be exactly the same. That is the right way to do it! So let’s make a nice, hearty chicken stew.

Ingredients

• a cut up chicken, or several thighs, bone in and skin on
• 1 or 2 onions or leeks, rough chopped
• 3 large carrots, coined
• 2 ribs of celery, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, rough chopped
• white wine (optional)
• 1 purple top turnip, diced
• 2 parsnips, coined
• 2 to 3 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 cup barley, well rinsed
• spices (salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, dill, sage, rosemary, etc.)
• oil for searing
• water to fill the pot

In a large soup or stock pot, add a drizzle of oil (olive, safflower, or vegetable) and bring up to a medium heat. Add the chicken and brown it all over, then remove it from the pot (set it aside on a plate). Add the carrots, onions, and celery, and cook until the onions soften and begin to brown very slightly. While they’re cooking, you may need to add more oil. This mixture of carrots, onions, and celery is called a mire poix, and it’s the basis of most good quality soups and stews. You want to scrape any of the browned chicken off the bottom of the pan (that’s the fond and it’s part of what makes for a rich flavor later). Add in the garlic and saute until they are fragrant, usually less than a minute.

Drizzle in some of the wine (or chicken broth if you don’t do wine), and deglaze the pan entirely. Once that’s done, add the rest of the vegetables and allow them to cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, and enough water to cover everything, plus 3 cups (this is to allow for the barley to absorb some of the water – you may want to try a bit more or less, to make it the thickness you prefer). Add in some salt, pepper, and other herbs to taste, and bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for a minimum of an hour.

Check for flavor, then add more spices as necessary. The above are only suggestions, and you’re welcome to try whichever spices you like! Simmer for another hour or more, until the chicken is falling off the bone and shreds easily. You may wish to pick out the skin and bones at this point, or serve it as is. Serve this up with fresh baked bread for a hearty and healthy meal.

Notes:

You can make this recipe with diced chicken breast if you prefer. I like the added flavor and the moistness of the meat when I use bone-in, but not everyone likes bones. I almost always make this recipe with either a full cut up chicken, or with chicken legs with thighs attached. It comes out meaty and delicious!

Recipe by M. Allyson Szabo, author of The Re-Enactor’s Cookbook (available on Amazon).

Are you ready for what happens after the apocalypse? I’m not talking about the zombie apocalypse here, nor am I referring to the next pandemic. The apocalypse I mean is the one that’s currently predicted: Harris winning the election. I know some of you are laughing, but please don’t. I am quite serious about this. What are your plans for if she wins?

There are so many moving parts to planning for a Harris win. We have to consider the possibility (likelihood?) of social unrest. There may be a repeat of January 6th, this time with weapons, even if Harris is a clear winner (which I think is unlikely). More importantly, we need to plan for the economic downfall of the country.

It’s time to stock up on some basic things. From now until the election, prices have eased slightly. Harris is trying to buy votes. I know money is tight, but it’s really time to go and buy up all the canned goods you use in a year. Pick up extras of all your dry goods. If you can, order a half cow and stash it in your freezer. I have a funny feeling that if she wins, the country is going to get very expensive, very fast.

I always say, prep what you eat, and eat what you prep. This isn’t for a long-term emergency, though. This is food that you expect to eat over the next year. So look at what you use on a regular basis. For me, in the canned goods department I use a ton of canned tomatoes (both regular and the type with the chilies in it). I use canned beans (black, red, chili, garbanzo, etc.) as well as dry ones. I use rice, specifically Jasmine or Basmati. My family likes sausage, and I can usually find them on sale, so I will buy extras and toss them into the freezer. Last week, I found turkey breasts on sale for 99 cents a pound, and I bought the limit.

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I admit it, I’m struggling. I don’t understand a lot of this. I know what I thought and said four years ago. I know what I felt during Trump’s first four years. I know that I had a small inkling into the lies of the Left, but not enough to make me change. Now? Now I see so much, and I wonder how I could have been so stupid.

I’m constantly being blasted with headlines like What If Trump Wins? (“The safeguards that kept Trump in check during his first term have collapsed — starting with the MAGA-fication of the Republican Party. “We know from the first administration that Trump was an amateur and lots of people stopped his most radical actions,” says Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works. He underscores that Trump’s darkest ambitions were present from the beginning — from the Muslim ban to the coup attempt of Jan. 6. “The only thing that stopped him from being a full-on dictator was other people,” Stanley says. “We know that that’s not going to happen anymore.”), Pelosi suggests Trump might skip presidential debate against Harris: ‘I know cowardice when I see it’ (“Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested former President Trump could skip the upcoming presidential debate because of ‘cowardice’…”), and Trump warms up for debate by threatening to jail election officials (“Trump warned he will jail election officials he considers cheats; is complaining Pennsylvania’s voting is a fraud; vowed to pardon January 6 rioters; railed against women who accused him of sexual misconduct; and spent hours in recent days on sometimes incoherent rants that raised questions about his state of mind.”).

The so-called news doesn’t seem to match the reality. When I go and research things, it turns out that words are taken out of context, lies are being told, and things are being blown ridiculously out of proportion. I’m especially confused by the comments about “incoherent rants” that I keep hearing about. I tried to listen to Trump back when he first ran, and I found it difficult. His speaking voice was uncomfortable in pitch, and he tended to ramble. He’s gotten MUCH better. I admit I wondered if it was my own bias that made it seem less coherent before, but I went back and listened and a lot of what he said on campaign tended to be difficult to follow. He has either taken lessons in public speaking, or has been practicing. Regardless, his ability to stay on topic is much better. That aside, when you hold up Biden or Harris beside him, the term “incoherent” should not even be considered. Good grief.

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For me, the flavors in a good soup are the taste of autumn. I adore soup weather, and with the nights getting colder, I’m looking up my soup recipes. Last week, I made a small pot of beef barley soup, and I impressed even myself. It’s easy to do, and you can even pop it in the crock pot if you want.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs beef shin bone (with bone and marrow)
• 1/4 cup red wine (for deglazing the pan)
• olive oil (for cooking)
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 ribs celery, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 6 cups beef broth
• 1-1/2 cups pearl barley, rinsed
• 1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
• bay leaf
• spices to taste (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, sage)

In a soup pot, add a bit of the olive oil and bring to a medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add in the beef shin bones. If you have more than one, you may need to do them one at a time. Don’t crowd the bottom of the pot. You want to sear the meat for about 2 minutes per side, then set the meat aside.

Add a bit more olive oil if necessary, then toss in the onion, celery, and carrot (this is called a mirepoix, and it’s the base of many soups and stews), and saute until the vegetables are softened but not yet brown. Use the red wine, a little at a time, to deglaze the pan. Add in a drizzle of wine, and then use a wooden spoon or spatula (it should be wooden, NOT plastic or rubber) to scrape up all the stuff off the bottom of the pot. That “stuff” is called fond, and it’s delicious.

Once the pan is deglazed, put the meat back in (still on the bone), along with the broth, bay leaf, and tomato paste. Stir to combine the ingredients. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and allow the soup to simmer for about an hour. Taste the broth, and then adjust for flavor by adding the spices of your choice.

Rinse your barley well, and pick out any stones you may find. Add the barley to your soup, and raise the temperature enough to keep the liquid at a steady strong simmer. Check on your soup every 15 minutes or so, to ensure nothing is burning. Add more beef broth if necessary. Continue to simmer until the barley is completely cooked and is chewy.

Lower the heat to its lowest setting, and remove the meat from the soup. Carefully trim the meat from the bone and put it back into the soup. Get rid of any gristle or fat, but make sure that the marrow from the shin bone goes back into the soup. The marrow makes your broth rich and tasty. Taste and adjust the spices as necessary, and then serve.

I like to serve this soup with fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven. If you’re not a baker, pick up a nice ciabatta at the grocery store, drizzle olive oil over it and toss on some salt and pepper, then heat in the oven at 350F for five to ten minutes.

This soup freezes very well. If you have a pressure canner, you may can it, as well. I find I never have enough left over to can up, though! A note on the tomato paste: I find it adds a nice zing to the broth, but it isn’t necessary. Some people like to put crushed tomato or stewed tomato into their beef barley soup, but I’m a purist.

BOOM! It happens. The meteor hits, or the fungus zombies arise, or civil unrest causes a loss of infrastructure. Whatever the emergency, the S sure has HTF. It’s time to break out the bug out bag or the get home bag, or check on your emergency stash of stuff. Yep, all there.

My question is, do you know what to do with that stash?

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who “prep for the end of the world” but have absolutely no knowledge on how to use the items they put away. A prime example of this was from a few years ago, when we were making regular trips down to the LDS Cannery (back when it *was* a cannery… stupid FDA) to pick things up. The LDS, while not my idea of a religion, has some great ideas about preparing for the worst. They make it easy for their members to put up food for the end of the world. They have convenient kits, each designed for a specific number of people (usually two parents and two kids) for a specific length of time (a month, generally speaking). Each kit includes things like powdered milk and eggs, wheat berries, oats, canned proteins, beans, etc. Each LDS family dutifully purchases two years worth of these supplies over time. And then those supplies just sit there.

The last trip there, we watched a new couple picking up their first box of goods. We struck up conversation, because we were all standing around waiting for things and that’s what you do. Nice couple, working on having kids. Devout. Polite. Not uneducated. But in the process of chatting, I discovered that they didn’t have a wheat mill. They didn’t know how to cook dry beans. They had no idea what to do with dried eggs. They had no real understanding of what to do with the items in their emergency box.

My family stores ground wheat in “small amounts” (for me a “small amount” is a 25lb bag, separated into smaller bags that are sealed, frozen for 72 hours, then put away in a cool, dry, dark place) and wheat berries in larger amounts (though also separated into bags or cans and frozen for 72 hours… it kills off any bugs). I go through a 25lb bag of wheat in a short enough time that it doesn’t go off, because I bake weekly, and sometimes more often than that. The wheat berries are a long-term storage solution, because they don’t go off. They’re shelf stable for 20+ years. We have a hand powered mill (that can be hooked up to a bicycle or generator if we really want to make it easier, though we never do), and we use it to grind wheat berries, barley, and other grains to make wheat for baking. Mostly I do that for historic demos, but sometimes just for fun. We only grind what we plan to use, because “ground at home” wheat will not last as long as the store-bought stuff, as it still has all its oils and the germ in place.

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I was running behind the gun this week due to the long weekend. I’m tired after three days at the Fort, and all the packing and all the work while there. So I’m going to just toss some news spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks.

Fort stuff – I went on Friday, and stayed until Monday afternoon. While there, I lit up the bake oven once, on Saturday, and turned out two *perfect* loaves of bread. I didn’t rush myself for patrons, for a change, and the result was that there was no burn on the bread at all, and the crumb was divine. By Monday morning, all that was left of those two loaves were some crumbs at the bottom of the bowl I’d had it sitting in. I decided to make egg noodles on Saturday, as well, and that turned out very well. I made a second batch on Sunday, because I wanted to try and get the dough a bit thinner. I succeeded, and the end result was a very consistent, 1/8″ thick dough that turned into quite lovely flat noodles similar to a pappardelle. They’re still a bit too thick for my taste, but these cooked up quite nicely.

We had a decent turn out at the Fort over the long weekend. We had a slow but steady stream of patrons come through, all with fantastic questions. I wasn’t rushed for time, so I spent a lot of my “free” time going from place to place and giving tours. I definitely got my steps in, and ended up walking about 17 miles over the course of the weekend! After hours, I had two nice dinners with the volunteers (Saturday night and Sunday night), which included great conversation, friendship, and a bottle of wine to share. It was definitely a fantastic weekend.

Harris stuff – I’m having a really hard time watching what Harris is putting out on media. Some of it I know is actual lies, because I have been paying attention. Some of it is just bizarre. Her documentary (because that was NOT an interview) was ridiculous, full of contradictory stuff. The fact that she’s repeating the same EXACT speech in city after city is getting a bit old, and the odd fake accents are incredibly grating. Her inability to give a straight answer is painful.

That said, there are people putting false stuff out about her, and I dislike that, too. There’s plenty of fodder that’s real; we don’t need to make anything up. So no, she was not involved in a hit and run accident in 2011. Yes, Harris was born in America (in California, which explains a lot, but is still a US state). No, Harris did not make a campaign ad that disses herself (for heavens’ sake, why would she? she’s stupid, but she’s not dumb). And no, the Eagles did not endorse Harris. At this point, there’s so much misinformation out there that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t. There’s a big question as to whether someone on the far Right is doing some of this, or if Leftists are messing with it in order to get caught and blame the Right. It’s crazy.

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I’ll write more about my experience at the Fort later, but I leave you with a video of some bread making I did, put together by my friend Garrett. He’s filmed me at ren faires before, but I made a specific invite for him to come this weekend and see me doing something new. He and his mother came, and they had a great time!

Some of you may have guessed that I like to collect cookbooks, in addition to writing them. I have, for a very long time, been interested in historical cookbooks. In particular, I like original recipes, even if the physical book I have is a reprint. One of the cookbooks I treasure most in my collection is The Original White House Cookbook. The first edition came out in 1887, but there have been several editions since then. You can buy many of the new volumes, but it’s hard to find originals (ie printed in 1887) of that first one. I have a reprint of the original edition, printed in the early 1900s, and I love it.

I’m preparing myself for going to the Fort again this weekend. I’m hosting a “show and tell” event over the Labor Day weekend, and I want to have some yummy recipes. As I was cooking breakfast this morning, I was thinking about what I’d like to make. My eyes strayed over to the cookbook shelf (actually a whole bookcase, but whatever), and I noticed that the White House one was on its side and out of its usual place. Likely one of the kids had it out and didn’t put it back right. When I had a moment, I went to straighten it, and then stopped, because an incredibly profound thought hit me.

That cookbook, that original one from 1887, was written for the American people. We were, at that time, barely a hundred years old as a country. We were essentially a toddler, in the grand scheme of things. And here we were, offering our entire people the opportunity to cook like the leaders of that country.

Our people were (and are) eating the same food, prepared in much the same way, as our leaders.

Do you get how very insane that sounds? To have a populace who eats what the elite are eating? In 1887, Queen Victoria was munching on oranges, locally sourced salmon, and an early version of the turducken (12 Tomatoes). Kaiser Wilhelm II was eating ice cream and “Fresh goose-liver medallions that have been seared and cooled before being coated with chaud-froid sauce, garnishes, and then sealed in a layer of Port jelly. (Royal Menus)” Napoleon wasn’t eating a lot of rich foods, but only because he suffered from gastritis and insisted on plain and even bland foods. The rich of Europe were eating well, and the poor and middle class citizenry were eating simple foods, and sometimes not much of them.

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