The Cookbook Haul - breathless excitement ahead

Hey sports fans!

What do we have today?  We have COOKBOOKS DAMMIT.

And I mean a metric shit-ton of cookbooks too, all of them unread.  Witness my shame:

     I cannot wait to crack into that Sunset book!  I owned that way back when I was but a wee Nationette, like a territory, and there's a Vermouth Chicken recipe in there that is absolutely superb.  And get a load of Mr. Oster Super Pan with his cape and everything!  EEE! 

Those ESA gals are out there making casseroles and just abusing the Cambells Soups.  It's atrocious.  

Fixin' Chicken is...adorable; profusely adorned with wacky chickens in pun vignettes.  

The onion cookbook was put together by some farmers' wife and illustrated by that kid in the family that everyone says can draw.  You'll get a peek, don't worry. This is the post where I gloat, so yeah, just put up with me doing that for the time being.

Oh Hell Yes

Hell Yeah I got 'em both!!!!!! JULIA!!!! 

Fifteen bucks replaces the ones I lost in the flood, and these are in better condition!

You might notice I have a thing for Sunset Cookbooks. I use these. They're really good. Sunset put a lot of effort into testing, collecting and presenting original recipes - and their recipes WORK. 

Sunset isn't fucking around. Their cookbook for men contains fear and boldness and booze and fire and wild game.  Possibly leather and kung fu. 

The Modern Household Cookery Book is a corker!  Just wait until you see inside!  And it is, in fact, Fun To Fondue.  As for Hawaii, we shall see. I'm expecting a lot of pineapple.  Of course the Sunset is gonna be good. And oh, the clip art in the New Way of Living!!!

Holy shit Nations more Sunsets? 

 YES MORE SUNSETS.

Mary Meade and Farmers' Journal are going to be a snoozefest, I think.  But the Practical Receipts?  Has recipes for horse liniment, caustic washing soap and explosives. 

   The tomato cookbooks are going to be nothing special, I fear, but the Pampered Chef booklet might be good. 

Pampered Chef is a 'home party' outfit that sells kitchenware - good kitchenware, too.  I've been to three of these parties and bought way too much at each one.  If you ever get invited to a Pampered Chef party, you should go. The chow is amazing.  Your hostess and her assistant cook up a whole feast using Pampered Chef utensils AND recipes created in their test kitchens, which is brilliant strategy IMHO.  

   

America's Test Kitchen:   The most overpriced and overrated cookbooks out there.  I have OPINIONS about this outfit.  (I also subscribe to the magazine and the YouTube series.  The stuffs' good - but read on me hearties; arrrrrrr.)   This thing new is $71.00.  SEVENTY-ONE DOLLARS PEOPLE.  And it's ring bound! Come on!

I bought this cookbook used for $1.00 because it made me feel like I'd got one over on Chris Kimball.

That is absolutely enough kitcheny-ness.  I feel like lighting some WD-40 on fire now.

As you can see, I didn't have any WD40 but I did have a can of de-icer, so I set that on fire instead. You can just barely, barely see it burning blue there by the yellow flame of the incense stick.

NEXT: A look inside!!!!

  

MORE LIMES yes it's more fucking limes and other stuff

Hello!  Here are nine dehydrated limes in their primary dried state:

And here are the same nine after having gone through the Cuisinart to break them down into a grit; next to my statue of Spock as the Buddha of Enlightenment:

 And finally, we have nine dehydrated limes after having been pulverized into dust thanks to this absolute gorilla of a coffee grinder put out by some company.  

Hang on.  

OK put out by the Kitchenaid Company.  It's actually a coffee bean grinder, but we always use it for spices.  You can take the blade and bowl assembly off and wash it, which is the difference between a grinder that you cannot wash (EW) and that gets all seized up with guck in a year, and one that will last you.

And now.......  

   Ta daaaaaa! Nine limes becomes 1/4 cup of cream-colored powder! 

It will keep for years, but I'll use it all before then.      

Now.  Is all this washing and drying and mincing and dehydration and grinding twice and so forth really fiddly? 

No. No it is not. 

Only the part where you use the Kitchenaide coffee grinder is fiddly because your material builds up a static charge inside the metal bowl as it whizzes around, and you have to coax it out into the container that you plan to use with a small paint brush and a funnel.  THAT will make you scream and throw things.  I am a large knives and cast iron pans kinda cook, not a paintbrush and a funnel racecar driver.  Geeze.

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Before and after dehydration shot. It is pretty awesome. 

So are those shoes.

  In a little pile there on the red silicone mat you see what seven wands of celery, nine green onions and four tomatoes look like after having been minced and dehydrated. That little pile weighs three grams. No shit.  

 I didn't do this just for fun - I'm making a batch of our House Spice!!!!  

Now you know that celery, green onions and tomatoes go into the house spice, but that's all you know so ha.  

But you wish you had some.  

This is the mighty dehydrator that I own, so....yeah, there it is.

 As you can see I am culturing yogurt in there.  Hello yogurt! 

93f and all is well.

   Oh hell yes. I make my own yogurt and sour cream and bread and sourdough starter and poolish and all that happy culinary microbial crap, and I can do that because this dehydrator makes a perfect warming chamber.  I have a digital thermometer that tells me low = 90f on this thing, which is just the exact temperature you want for making bacteria happy.  Or encouraging the growth of something unspeakable; so I clean with bleach. A lot.  Bleach and a bamboo skewer, in fact.

   

   This dehydrator was made by hippies working out of a metal building, in about 1973? 1977? or so.* It's a sturdy, melamine-covered wood box with a heating fan which is operated by a simple rheostat ^^^.  

The lines inside are ledges for racks to rest on, and there's ten of those.  It couldn't be simpler or more effective and it was built for the ages. I bought it used.  I've had it for fifteen years or more. It's been dropped, it's fallen, it's been left on for nine days straight, it's suffered is what I'm trying to say here, and the only casualty has been a broken rack.   

HOLY SHIT WOW I NEED A DEHYDRATOR NOW fuckin' A Nations you sold me.  I must have a food dehydrator for my very own. I WANT IT NOW.

    OK a few things here. 

1. No you probably do not.  I mean it. They take up a lot of room. I had to buy this thing it's own little cabinet to sit on because it won't fit in my apartment kitchen, being an 18x18x18 cube. It's a useful size, though, and meant to be used by a family of four (although don't ask me how they came up with that number.)  Us three, and later two, people do just fine. 

2. You have to cook A Lot and be a curious cook who is willing to experiment to justify what is these days a pretty significant expense.  This exact design, made with updated technology and materials, costs $500.00 straight from the factory.  Now I will insert a a link that probably won't work for most of you.  That is the one I would suggest you buy. 

3. Get an idea of how you might use it beforehand. My mom and my grandmother used to dehydrate stuff every year. I grew up with the practice, so I had an idea going in of what kind of food you want to spend time on. There's A Lot of prep and planning involved.

 4. If you do not particularly like to work in the kitchen AND you do not need to be thrifty, don't get a dehydrator.  

 I see dehydrators - usually shitty ones too small for the job, almost always the plastic ones heated by light bulbs - at literally nine out of ten garage sales I attend. The reason given for getting rid of them is some variation on 'I just don't have the time to spend on dried strawberries' (or what have you.) So yes: food dehydration is like a cult.  I know what I mean. 

5. The flavor of dehydrated food is not for everybody. It can taste overcooked, or too strong, or just...weird.  There is a learning curve, and you will spoil things in the beginning. Dehydrated foods are meant to be used as ingredients in other things, once RE-hydrated. Not as the main player in a recipe.  Now somebody is going to pop up with 'Oh yeah well what about Lagoon of Devils Antelope in a Broken Toaster?' and we will have to agree to disagree. 

 The only things actually improved in flavor by (partial) dehydration are fruit jams and tomato sauce.  And this is very specific - you are reducing the amount of water and thereby concentrating the flavors and the aromas - But Not By Boiling.  Boiling is the thief of flavor.  But to dehydrate by even as much as 1/4 of the volume, just one shallow pan of must in the machine for six hours at about 160f- 190f, does AMAZING things for Blackberry Jam, Fruit Pie Filling, and particularly tomato sauce.

Oh Holy Shit you need to try putting up a tomato sauce using this method. I worked it out over 12 years, down to the variety of tomato to grow!  and it was SO EFFIN' DELICIOUS.

Well crap. If you guys would like that recipe just let me know. I can even tell you how to make it without a food dehydrator and it will turn out the same!

    a. First Haiku

Omg you cute

platy-folks deserve 

secret recipes

b. Second Haiku

gorilla doggie

gorilla doggie, doggie

gorilla doggie

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*Those hippies found religion and had a bunch of kids, and then either sold out to, or became, the Excalibur brand, which is in operation to this day, and to whom I would trust my LIFE. With. Of.

The punch line?  In the old Whole Earth Magazine archives there are several plans for do it yourself food dehydrators.  Guess where the  hippies got their plans from?  Yup that's right. Shit, I think Jethro Kloss had designs for one - maybe Euell Gibbons and Adele Davis; I forget. I mean come on it was 1968 the last time I read Adele Davis cut me a break ALREADY.

Secrets Revealed!

 OK this is just between you and me. I am going to show you a few of pictures of Our Hangout. It's super crusty and old. 

Tourists fear it.  

That's important. 

This is the view from Our Table.

Many tasty beverages on hand. Yes I see the kiddie shit too; just ignore it and look instead to the Famous Grouse. Can you spot it?

 

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Grunge Is Alive And Well corner:

View the quaint native costume of the Bellinghamster!  (Some of you will have difficulty doing this.)

Backstory:  for the first time this year we had a sunny, pleasant Saturday, and so the Biker and I went forth to explore the pop-ups, food trucks and brewpubs because that is what one does here. Mainly the brewpubs because BEER. Everywhere we went, everybody of every flavor was wearing this uniform:

To wit:  Tore the fuck up t-shirts, ugly footwear, shorts (yeah I see the two guys in longhandles, sue me) and a cap of some kind.  Sprinkled throughout were variations on this person:

And this person is wearing a hoodie with a hat that has little animal ears.  This person is also wearing an animal tail tied to their beltloop. 

All of us are sitting in the lobby of what was formerly a Chinese restaurant and is now a pop-up burger joint.  They put out a really, really delicious burger, too.  Prime Bellinghamster-spotting location, as you can see.  Sadly I did not bring my phone or I could show you more pictures just like this one! Aw bummer! but The Biker was kind enough to sneak these for me. 

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Have you ever wanted to see what nine dehydrated limes look like?  Here ya go:

Chubby hand for scale.  Lime is something we use quite a bit of in Thai and Mexican recipes. The difference between the correct lime for those recipes and the one we have available here is of intensity, acidity and aroma - and Ta Daaaaa! my 1973 dehydrator comes to the rescue and saves me mucho cashola on kaffir or Key limes.  The secret:  use those small 'cocktail' limes, and let them get a little dried out first.  This does two things - decreases the acidity and eradicates the white pithy stuff almost entirely. Contact me for more Lime Secrets.

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  Does anyone out there remember the name of the little diaper mousie ^^^ that used to hang around with Jerry?  I could go online and look it up, I guess, but I wanted to see if you were pregnant.

We Are All Coyotes In The Future

I have been reviewing cookbooks, is where I've been. Thank you for asking. I have also been out and about taking pictures of

FLUFFY FLUFFY BABY BUMBLEBEES!!!!   

 

This is the fluffiest of all the fluffy fluffy baby bumblebees. Here he is all 'First!' and that is zackly where he belongs. This guy is extra super fluffy - he even has a fluffy NOSE. Yes that is his nose there on the right! 

Yes I know all worker bees are females. I simply do not care.

OMG look at this super fluffy little ginger bee!  He is the size of my pinkie fingernail and is all rusty red and SO STINKIN' FLUFFY!

This little guy is the most laid-back of the bumblebees. You can touch him -gently, please - and the most he'll do is lift a tiny foot in mild protest, like  'Whoa, dude.'

Here is a bumble butt, which is to say, The End of our bee gallery.

These are all 'first brood' Spring worker bees, the tiniest of the year, and each one is as perfect and jewel-like as a little Faberge egg. They are so eager that they spend as much time giving away the entrance to their nests as they do scurrying around trying to obliterate all traces of same, scuffling up the bark mulch and dust with their feet and then just as quickly messing it all up again as they come bombing in en masse from a nectar run. I did not get any pix of that because I may be weird bu -no, I am weird; but I am not stupid. That's what I mean to say.  

Bumblebees drop that surfer dude persona the closer they are to their Magnificent Queen (haay.)

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In today's busy fast-paced world you may find yourself in need of laundry detergent. And in today's busy fast-paced world you would then hop on down to your local Fred Meyers grocery store and ask one of the clerks to unlock the case for you. 

They have to keep the laundry detergent locked up. Yes they do. Behind inch thick security glass and bar steel.  

Shoplifting gangs were running in doing blitz raids on the detergent aisle and then selling their ill-gotten soap online, which says something about the price of Xtra I guess. Now Fred Meyers assume you're a shoplifter -

...unless you are very very tall indeed. 

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I like to read books way, way after the hoopla is done. I proved the rightness of this stance during the Anne Rice hullabaloo, when it was all about Lestat and Ramses the Damned and tragic castrati and so  forth.  'Interview' was a fun read, but I mean come on people.  In fact don't even get me started about Anne RiceANYWAY. Anyway.

Anyway.

Rudolfo Anaya wrote 'Bless me Ultima' back in 1972, and eeeeeeeeverybody was reading that thing. It was promptly banned, so of course in liberal-as-fuck Oregon it was proudly on the shelves of our school library, where I ignored it, and Jane Austen, despite six years of urging from various teachers. 

It's a meaning of life story set in the Southwest painted with a big, bold, red brush. It's very violent, and pretty frank about race and class, but it was the bold pagan stance it took that earned it a banning, I'm certain - Mr. Anaya is not a big fan of Catholicism. At all. 

'Bless Me, Ultima' came back strong in the 1980's for some reason, and by then I had me a damn life so I gave it yet another miss. 

Last week I picked up a copy at the Humane Society Thrift Shop and...you know what, it's not bad at all. Quite a bit better than anything Ms. Rice might have pulled out of her yallup, although it's just as fraught.  

Why do I endorse it? 1. Frequent  mention of chili peppers   2. There's no romantic content at all, which pleases me. Further, this isn't one of those Southwestern themed 'fiction with recipes' crap. There is a lot of deep meaning going on. Like, you know, symbolism and shit like that. A lot of sandstorms and bloodshed and big emotions. And owls. 

See, this is the problem I have with writing reviews. I don't want to give away the story, but I don't want to sound like a goon, like I did when I reviewed The Pentateuch on a certain library site. Therefore I have given up trying to be all Miss Perfect Book Review Lady for good.  I have been reading since 1964. I read because I love to read, period - and I trust my own taste.

You should too.

If I say something is worth reading, then get right skippy on that shit. Dear old FirstNations would not lead you wrong. Bless Me Ultima is absolutely worth a read. You can read it for enjoyment and not miss a damn thing and be entertained.  You can read it for meaning and find all kinds of fucking meaning and shades and tones and themes and references - not all of which I got - but which were presented so well that it made me want to know more. 

Now go read this book dammit. 

                                                           And quit calling me Heddy.

The Shit Ditch Post

 Behold: This right here is where the saying 'The other side of the tracks' comes from. 

dammit dammit dammit dammit OK here is a link:  N/E Sh*t Ditch! - YouTube try that. 

    Now as far as I can tell this should play for you. This is the first video I have ever made! What is it a video of?

It is a video of a shit ditch.  

This was taken in the very very very small pioneer town of Everson/Nooksack, and the reason I shot it was because it's the unspoken half of the spirit and intent of the original town coming through to the present. 'The landscape still telling tales' kinda thing. 

When I was a kid the old people would talk about stuff like this (when they didn't think kids were listening.)  We had a couple of shit ditches you could still make out in the town where I grew up, just long holes dug in the ground where everyone would throw their trash and dump their slops, cut so the surrounding land drained into them.  It was kind of a colloquialism, to call a ravine or a creek 'the shit-ditch' and it's one of those phrases that you don't hear at all anymore. Not something that would have been recorded, either. 

BUT I HAVE. 

Here it is. Microhistory. 

You are welcome.

 In the past, where I'm standing had been a huge timber stage, with multiple tracks and a siding, all that stuff. The old railbed is now a paved street, behind me, and in front of me is the shit ditch which ran alongside of that railroad track, now overgrown with vine maple and indian plum and marshy trees like that.  

That ditch, as with most, was the old boundary between the 'respectable' part of town and the 'less than respectable' part of this little town. Lady or whore, red or white, man or child,  you all came and threw your slops and garbage into this shit ditch.  Thing is, the area I'm facing in this video, which extends from the far side of the ditch all the way to the foot of the Cascades, was a marsh back then. In the winter, the 'less than respectable' part of town became a quagmire full of sewage and cholera and dead kids and stuff.  And that was fine with everyone.

 The thing that gets me about Old West sites like this is how small it all was. How few people, how close together things were, and how absolutely rigid and deliberate and stark the social divisions were.  Things like this ditch were deliberate. It was planned from the beginning. Everyone got it. Everyone knew where they had to live and why. To this day there are people who live to the north of this ditch who won't have anything to do with certain families from the south of it, and the only reason why is because of the side of the damn ditch they live on. 

This is why you should pick up and move every five years or so if you can possibly help it. Spread that genetic material far and wide. See the world. Travel broadens the mind. Don't be the latest in a line of hundreds of rural lumps just squatting in one place with your grade school education disliking people because of what side of a ditch they live on.  Got it?   

OK now here are the better aspects of this same little pioneer town:

The building is from the 1920s. The little colored panes in the windows are from the original timber church that was built here by the pioneers back in the 1800's. The building would wash out, or burn down, or fall down, and they'd collect the colorful glass and rebuild. There's something very poignant about that.

Now note this - it is the only building dating back from those days that is actually built way up on a stone foundation. That's a good four to five feet above grade there. Also note that this town is less than five miles away from the Cascade Mountains - which are notably made of rocks. All kinds of rocks. Free rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. 

This is the parsonage right across the street. I think it's a private residence now. It dates back to the 1800s, and it too has burned down, fallen down and been flooded out just like the church - and just like the church, rebuilt in the same stupid-ass low-lying spot generation after generation. You can see it sitting flat on the ground there. C'mon, people.

OK, so much for wealth. Now let's look at a couple of old, old homestead cabins in the same town: 

This is a cabin that's being updated presently. I wasn't given permission to take a picture by the person who was working there. That's why I drifted down about 3/4 of a mile away and used my zoom.  

The Nooksack River is behind those trees to the right. And distances are deceptive in this shot - this is on a vast flat prairie covered in huge puddles and flood backwaters.

The prairie and the river are why people settled in this spot. When this area isn't flooded, or engulfed in flames, its choice farmland, with the river nearby teeming with fish and the mountains nearby teeming with game, even to this day. The bitch I pick with it all is why in the fuck didn't anyone think to raise their foundations?  Huh? Why?  And it's the same to this day! 

I will spare you that rant. 

Under the siding here is an original squared timber cabin. It was built out of cedar, so that when all the other places in the same area got washed away by floods or destroyed by time, this one remained. Old growth cedar is almost indestructible. 

When this area flooded, the waters would move the cabin around a little bit. It was a big wooden box with one room, all fitted together like cabinetry, and it floated. As long as it stayed within the property lines, they'd just wait until the water went down, and then they'd jack up one side or another, level it out, hammer some timbers underneath and call it good until the next flood.

I can see that. It's a clever stopgap adaptation to prevailing conditions, and you put up with it to save money until you proved up your claim. Thing is, once people proved up, they said 'Time to take a break for the next hundred or so years. Pass me the bong, Jeremiah.' 

Which is how you get an Everson/Nooksack.

I hope you have learned things. Now go see if those sassy lads out in the stables have readied your carriage.

This is just a moody picture of the Sumas River.  I like it. 

Many And Profound Were The Feet Of Telepathy

 A special treat for you special people:  CRATE DIGGING WITH FIRSTNATIONS!

-Culled from five different secondhand stores!

-Strange and odd!  And generally filthy and covered in cat hair for some reason.

This is true of all good secondhand records:  the best ones are full of cat hair. This has always been the case for me.  Of course most old records are covered in cat hair for some reason - I mean yes, duh, the presence of cats; but still, it's odd when you consider all the things that get donated to these places, and it's only the records that are 99% likely to contain the stuff.  

I don't know how interesting this is but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Here's the one I bought. One record, and I've been looking for months. I am stoked, too. The vinyl is pristine. 

And what follows is a fraction - nay, a smidgen! - of the records I had to dig through to find that album - spanning two counties and five different stores over three months. 

I am a little nutty when it comes to vinyl.

The last person who owned this evidently liked their ketchup because dried ketchup was smeared all over the cover, the dust jacket and everything. Owned a cat, too, by all the evidence. 

Hell, maybe he got sick of the cat shedding and took kitty to visit Mr. Deep Fryer. Just, you know, add ketchup. 

To the fried cat. 

That you ate. 

Well, that this guy ate. In my imagination.

Yes, we started at The Madame's Piano and ended up with Deep Fried Ketchup Cat.

We did.

...And Other Fun Songs For The Family!  

"Hey honey, after dinner let's get the kids together and sing along to 'Lady Of The Evening!' "

This was found in the collection of a former DJ. Imagine the club smokers this thing has seen. 

Bruce Springsteen meets Precious Moments in the Bellingham WA Humane Society Thrift Store GAAAH MORPHODITES

I personally would not want to stick around too close to anybody named Uncle Lumpy, let alone let him interact with my children. But that's me.

There's six of them. They're fat. I don't know if they're from Holland, Germany or Czechoslovakia. 

I am starting to really like this old album cover art. 

Even this vintage cover has a certain...LSD-ish appeal.  

Oh come ON. 

This is just a bizarre combination of instruments - her on the Swiss bells and the Vibraharp, along with piano, organ, marimbas, and a b-flat tenor sax...?  Not sure what kind of a sound they were looking for, but Ms. Matar seems happy with life.

Know what, I'm just going to put this here.

FINE SHE'S THE FIRST LADY OF THE ORGAN and she has galloping fingers.

This is actually worth a few bucks.

Another old album cover I like. And I love the downmarket salon color scheme too - Pepto pink, carbon black and apple green. 

This is the kind of music you listen to when you feel like a Cuba Libre and a Marlboro, man.

Or even a Cuba Libre and a Marlboro Man.

Is it true that this dude was a huge star in the UK?  Because the first time I ever heard him was on the soundtrack of the movie 'Mars Attacks!' in 1996. That's when most Americans heard of him, too. He wasn't big here at all. This is not the sound of the American Cowboy, folks. I guarantee you that no cowboys were out on the range hooty-hooting like this.  It would have spooked the cattle. 

Bonus stegasaurus playing the trumpet French horn!

Dolls which are not haunted

And a plate which is haunted.