Prairie Beacon

September Cooking

In the Archipelago, September is the transition between summer and autumn. We will still get a day or two with a high of 89 or 90, but the thermometer is more inclined to explore the low end then the high. The garden is still giving up red plum tomatoes, green zucchinis and big aromatic leaves of oregano, sage, and basil as the nightly lows are comfortable without the air conditioning blasting.

It is a time of transition for my cooking too. Roasting and baking in the oven, and long slow simmering on the open burners for a hardy dinner, gradually replaces grilling in the backyard and serving meals that are more like an antipasti spread.

The turn of the season brings a different creative reference which is reinforced by the fact our 100 year old house has no air conditioning in the kitchen. In a way I like that; it keeps me more in touch with the seasons. Sharing dinner on the front porch as often as we do also keeps me in touch with the changes in the temperature and the weather in general. It is my greatest pleasure to share dinner with my family under the shade of the big ash tree; as the birds sing hidden in it’s leafy beams and the as big puffy summer clouds roll by.

With that in mind I would like to share with you my culinary journey through the first part of September. Every dish is centered on Salmon and for good reason. We have friends who have the fish flown from the fishery to the Archipeligo, all season long.

Day one, Wild Copper River CoHo Salmon baked in foil and flavored with white wine, fresh squeezed lemon and seasoned. The garnish of sweet red pepper was roasted on a small fire I made by the garden, which laced it with the taste of its’ smoke and the glowing embers. The fish was served on a bed of assorted greens, mixed with slices of carrots, red pepper, rutabaga and mushroom.

This was finished with a simple dressing of balsamic vinegar, walnut oil, cracked black pepper and coarse sea salt.

Day two, back in the garden making another fire. This time roasting big red bell peppers under an overcast sky that brought in cool, damp weather. With the mercury struggling to get out of the 60s the oven was back in vogue.

The peppers were cleaned and the insides lined with a thin slices of prosciutto rubbed with olive oil and sprinkled with a little thyme. Then it was filled with a seafood stuffing. Scallops, shrimp and clams were sauteed with chopped thyme and shallots, finished with a few splashes of dry white wine and folded into a pile of fluffy ricotta and a small portion of shredded fresh mozzarella. I put the stem back in place, brushed the outside of the pepper with olive oil and baked it until the flavors developed and came together in the transformative heat of the oven. It was sprinkled with cracked black pepper when served.

The prosciutto always has an interesting way of blending with other flavors when it is cooked and this dish was a great example of that.

Day three, an Italian spin on poached Silver Salmon. With another chill in the air again, polenta was on everyone’s mind. A creamy pile of yellow corn meal polenta perfumed with the pungent flavor of roasted garlic, dry porcini mushrooms and home made chicken stock was the starch of choice on one side. On the other side, the last of the garden tomatoes, basil, and first pickings of the garden’s onions, were quickly cooked up into a fresh, chunky tomato sauce. The salmon was seasoned with salt and pepper and a a few splashes of Orvieto wine when it went into the oven. I wanted the sauce and the side to add the major flavor elements.

Day four – Salomon comfort food that focuses on the rich flavor of the sauce. Fresh heavy cream from, Rolling Lawn Farms in Greenville Illinois, was infused with small diced, garden grown onions, hearty Pommery French Mustard from Meaux, whole grain, and finished with a dry, full bodied Chardonnay. Like the previous dish, the fish, Silver Salmon, was poached in the oven with no flavor additions other then salt and pepper. To keep the flavor profile of the sauce in the center of the plate, the fish and sauce was served with simple mashed potatoes, made with Rolling Lawn Farms whole milk, and butter imported from Italy. Paired with these fluffy mounds of potato was the sweetly earthy flavor of boiled, golden beets. Rich yet delicate flavor notes that harmonized perfectly.

This was a great start to my culinary month. I can’t wait to see where the rest of September leads me.

Happy cooking and thank God for all that you have.

Autumn Reading List

In the Archipelago, summer can change to Autumn in a matter of days. On September 9th, that happened again. The temperature did not make it out of the 60’s all day as I worked away in my office under gray, drizzling skies. Just days ago the daytime high was in the low 80’s. Little more then a week earlier they were in the low 90’s.

Twenty seven years living on this island and the dramatic swings in the weather still amaze me.

This change in the weather brought to mind Autumn and all the things that make it a magical season: fires in the backyard while drinking a fine single malt, colored leaves tumbling in the wind, buying a pumpkin at the orchard, cozy sweaters, and reading a good book.

The last one is my favorite and for the start of book reading season, I have put together a list of my perennial favorites.

A simple process was used in putting this list together. First, any book that I was to consider, had to stick in my mind. If I found myself thinking about about a book, months and years after finishing it, the book was under consideration for the list. Secondly, if I found myself reading that same book for the second or third time, then it made the list.

Admittedly, many of these books are idiosyncratic in nature or narrow in their appeal. But each book has the power to transform the reader’s thinking on a subject or on the craft of writing itself. They did for me.

So, here are some of the classics in my world of reading.

Shellfish, Anton Mosimann & Holgar Hofmann. Every image is lavishly photographed with the power to make you hungry for shellfish and a glass of dry white wine. It taught me an important lesson early on in my cooking career, that people eat with their eyes as well as their mouths.

Seeing In The Dark, Timothy Ferris. Ferris’s writing is deceptively simple. It’s streamlined, economic quality easily transfers a wealth of information, beautiful imagery, and strong emotions. It is more than a book on astronomers.

Moby Dick, Herman Melville. This is my second choice for the great American novel. It is really five books fused together and disguised as a sea adventure – the history of whaling in old North America, an environmental protest, an old time moral tale, and a story of obsession. I read this for the first time when I was in my late 40’s. It was a good thing I waited that long. I had the maturity of mind necessary to follow Melville’s writing style and appreciate it.

The Roman Economy, This is really a non fiction detective novel about a civilization transformed by power and wealth. The only investigative tools this scholar as detective uses is economics and archeology. Even though it is a scholarly work and can be dry at times, it is a great read for anyone who has an interest in how government policy and money effects the common citizen.

Grendal, John Gardener – A no holds barred, tour de force of the writing craft. Gardener is a guitar god in author form. The licks he plays can be stark and brutal as a battle scene, deep and soulful as the blues, and perceptive as an old Greek philosopher holding forth in the forum. It is quite a ride.

The Persian Expedition, Xenophon. The most unbelievable human adventure of the ancient world, written with the voice of a 20th century adventure novel. A page turner that is twenty five hundred years old.

The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald. A very astute critique of the wealthy class. It is my first pick for the great American novel, of its day or any day. Fitzgerald’s writing is the epitome of elegant efficency, but it fully and deeply illustrates the characters and the society they inhabit.

Invisible Cities, Italio Calvino. Reads like a poetic reflection, a fantastic mythology, a travel guide written by a clairvoyant and a psychoanalysis of cities. The premise of the plot sounds like a legend you thought was true. The organization of the chapters are the work of a genius or an unbalanced prankster. The odd thing with this book is that Calvino convinces you that every city, no matter how fantastic or absurd it appears to be, existed somewhere in the world. All this makes it a rare and unique work that can be read again and again and still remain fresh, inspired, and captivating.

Flesh and Blood, C.K. Williams. A slim volume filled with small, intimate portraits of people living their simple lives against the big, complex and busy background of urban New York.

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. This is a strong moral brew with deep, dark flavor notes of original sin and a sparse sprinkling of sweet compassion in every sip. I first encountered it in high school and was left with the impression that Conrad wanted to use words to paint an expansive mural; an illustration that examines the nature of good and evil in humanity and how our social structures shape the ways we project that good and evil into the world.

Andrew Wyeth A Secret Life, Richard Merryman. This is a dissertation on the complex relationship between an artist, his art, and his world. Andrew Wyeth paintings are among my favorite works of art and I picked this book up with the idea of learning a few things about the man and his process. But I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the author’s prose are almost as monumental as his subject’s work. Merryman makes his own sophisticated, beautiful and emblamatic art out his subject’s musing on making sophisticated, beautiful and emblamatic art.

There they are, the big ten. Hope you get lost in one or two and be transformed by the end of your journey.

Happy reading !

Post Cards from the Archipelago

Smart phones are truly amazing. They put the world in your hand, something that was not even dreamed of when I was a kid growing up in the city of Yonkers. Back then transistor radios, stereos with high fidelity sound and console television sets with colored tubes were the consumer wonders of the day.

But despite all the cutting edge communication tech, libraries, endless venues for entertainment and retail opportunities too numerous to fathom, I enjoy the camera the most.

I have a visual pencil and sketch book where ever I go and a gallery in every country of the world to show the images.

The first four images are from around the house, the next one from down the end of my street during a rain shower and the last three are reflections in windows I had seen while out on my bicycle.

I hope you enjoy these small moments and find them as interesting as I did when I saw them.

(Click onto an images and scroll through them.)

Fund Raising – Part 2

My daughter Rebecca loves to create and painting is her primary means of expressing that. Lately, she had been selling some of her work – but not just to pay off a parking ticket! Her latest ‘commission’ was for her friend Hannah.

Hanna wanted a painting to hang up in her dorm room. She texted Rebecca an image of a poster she saw on line and asked if she would paint something similar. It was an image of wild flowers which reminded her of the flowers she knew from Wisconsin. Hanna was born there, has family there and visits often. Now she is going to school there.

Rebecca liked the image of the flowers. She suggested painting a picture that identified the common wild flowers of Wisconsin. Since she had been painting small portraits in water color, now refereed to as the parking ticket series, she continued with that same technique.

When Native Flowers of Wisconsin was finish Hanna and Rebecca were both pleased with the final product. I thought it was neat that she did this for her best friend. It is a symbol of their friendship as well as a beautiful water color painting.

If we could have a little of this relationship mixed into everything we do for others, no matter how simple or difficult the task, the world would be a much different place.

Stamp Of The Week

A few weeks ago, I acquired a banker’s box worth of older United States Post Office issued year books; each with a packet of that year’s commemorative stamps. The years of these books run from the mid seventies to the early nineties. They are all in post office fresh condition, never opened, which made this an extra special procurement.

I have to say, they are really neat offerings celebrating a given year’s commemorative issues.

The early issues of these books, from the nineteen seventies, consisted of just a glossy folder to mount the stamps in. The folder included a paragraph or two of information on the subject of each stamp.

By the nineteen nineties, the post office developed them into bound, hard cover books. They are smartly designed and the graphics are lavish. The quality of the printing, weight and finish of the pages, and the album’s cover, are of impressive quality. The background story of each stamp’s subject was expanded to several pages. Photos of the stamps’ designers are included in the table of contents.

Over time their price tags have increased substantialy too; from around eight dollars to a current price of sixty four dollars.

Here are a few pics of the 1995 album.

After looking at a few of these albums I am definitely including them in my collection. The shelves of stock books and vinyl binders full of sheets in my office need a little verity.

Post Cards from the Archipelago

The Summer Retreat

Door Country Wisconsin is a popular vacation spot for the inhabitants of the Archipelago. A visit to this narrow peninsula that juts out into the big waters of Lake Michigan is like stepping into a summer scene painted by Andrew Wyeth. The pace of life there is slow and relaxed. It is a place where you can ramble down a narrow country road and get lost in a landscape of woods and rolling fields, old farm houses and rustic barns.

It is not well known outside of the Midwest. I never heard of it when I lived in New York, but it does remind me of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, and some stretches of southern coastal Maine. (Well, when our family vacationed there in the 60s and 70s. It may have gotten built up since then.)

Here are a few scenes from our visit in July.

This one I found while biking down a country lane.

Hiking along the lake had countless little scenes to stop and enjoy for a moment.

On Washington Island, we visited a replica of an old time Norwegian church. Unfortunately, it was closed but still worth the trip out to see it.

Of course there was relaxed family fun, which is easy to accomplish in a place like that.

Making a rock pile on School House Beach.

We ended most of our days with glorious sunsets. I saw so many I stopped taking photos of them!

Fund Raising

Last week the City of Chicago issued my daughter a parking situation in the amount of $50.

That hurts when you are working a summer job to help pay for university.

As mad as my daughter was about it, she saw it as an opportunity to use her creativity. She was going to pay the parking ticket, but not with money she already saved. She decided to do extra work to finance her vehicular misfortune.

Being artistically inclined she posted the following on her face book page – Have a fun water color portrait done of yourself for just $5!

Evidently, she found a willing market. In a few days she received over 12 request for portraits.

She let me take a photo of her works in progress.

Rebecca also does ‘serious’ paintings and has sold a few of them as well. This talent for painting, and marketing her work, was passed down from her maternal grandfather Frank Gerardo. He was an excellent artist too. Below is one of his portraits.

The Sun Flower Islands

Stretching through central Illinois’ Island Archipelago is a second chain of islands. Compared to the five main island cities, they are very small in size. They can only be found from late spring to early autumn. Their prominent feature is the fields of tall sunflowers that cover them. Each island is home to thousands of these flowers soaking up the hot summer sun and the cool rains of passing thunder storms.

These islands appear in different places every summer. When the right person finds one, the social media lights up with texts, tweets and post spreading its’ location to those who visit them each year.

Every day people travel out to visit these island, until the flowers have lost their big, sunny yellow blooms and the birds feast on their dried seeds. I met a car load of girls that drove from a little town twenty miles away to visit the one near Peoria.

Finding an island in a different location each season summer gives it a special quality and you cannot help but feel that enchantment when you wander among the rows. If you visit at sunrise, and the mist is still laying low over the field and into the dark woods at it’s edges, it is like sleep walking through a dream or a fairly tale.

I tried to capture something of that magic from the island we visited. These photos were taken an hour or so before sunset.

Back From Fishing

Being an avid angler, I find it ironic that I spent time at the fifth largest fresh water lake in the world and did not go fishing once!

I swam in it, paddled a kayak across it, rode a ferry over it, and eat fish someone else caught in it. I probably drank the water too.

It was excited to fish Lake Michigan, as I did the last time we visited. But life, with its’ mysterious way, had a different plan for me. It took me on a fishing trip across the water that I would never have imagined. It showed me the lake of the past that now lay buried beneath the rolling farm fields and quint tourist towns.

One morning I went for a walk and came upon a quarry. In the middle of it was a multitude of birds flying over a pool of water that had collected at the bottom of this vast hole in the ground. I walked into the quarry to see what type of birds there were. The piles of rocks beside the road caught my attention too. On closer inspection I realized these piles were full of fossilized remains of the lake’s aquatic life. It seemed like every other stone had the impression of something that lived in those waters millions of years ago.

At first I was disappointed that these relics had been turned into gravel and used to make countless driveways. Each fossil was like a page in a family photo albums of the lake’s past. These were old memories too, mounted in that album before people were even around. In that hole, I saw the present carelessly feeding off the sacred heritage of the past.

Then I wondered how big this field of fossils was? The hole was as large as two football fields place end to end. It was twice as deep as my three story house. When I looked at the rolling landscape, beyond the rim of the quarry, I realized that these layers of the past could extend out in all directions for miles.

I also thought about all those gravel driveways with happy little kids pedaling their bike’s up and down the white stones or running through the sprinkler on a hot summer day. My disappointment faded away and I happily gathered up as many fossils as I could hold.

Here are a few I found that morning. Pretty amazing for a twenty minute morning ramble!

I made a desk sculpture out of one by mounting it on an a paving stone of contrasting color.

I would have enjoyed fishing for small mouth bass, but my unintended change of plans was just as enjoyable. There are awesome experiences to be had wherever we go and whatever we do.

Happy Vacationing!