OK, the weekend’s tailgate party at the Griz game is on us. So far I have roasted 30 lbs of beef, made a gallon of giardinera and ordered 200 rolls from Safeway. Tomorrow? 30 more pounds of beef and roasting 18 green peppers on the grill. Friday, slice the beef, slice the buns, get the gas stove together.
Saturday, well, we’ll see if I have the chops.
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I have spent the last several years perfecting my Italian Beef Sandwich recipe – which I will not share. The ideal that I use is the sandwich that’s sold at a beef joint in Elmwood Park, IL. named Johnnie’s . Elmwood Park is an enclave of Italian Americans that is notorious for both great food and an infamous group of “citizens” that facilitate things like gambling and convenient personal loans. It really doesn’t get more Italian here in the states.
Anyhow, I usually make about 10 lbs of beef whenever I cook it. It’s kind of like an Italian version of the French Dip and I’ve never fed one to a beef loving Montanan who didn’t shower praises on it. Recently I fed a friend of mine and, afterwords, he asked me if I might do him the favor of making these for a tailgate party at a Griz game. Not thinking much about it I agreed. Thinking this food might have a commercial application I though it would be nice to see a reaction from people that might express raw opinions not fetter by friendship.
So, here we have it. In early November I’m supposed to feed the party which, I just found out, will be roughly 200 people. That means have have to roast (and slice paper thin) roughly 65 lbs beef, slice 200 rolls, make 5 – 6 gallons of “gravy” and a gallon of giardinera.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
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I am submitting another story today that previously ran in Three Rivers Lifestyle magazine. This is a story I hope resonates with people who have shared family time baking in their homes. I am working on posting some of my mums wonderful recipes as well.
Cheers,
David Baumstark
Christmas Cookies
Baking was serious business in my home when I was growing up. My mum, along with a couple of friends, could turn a case of apples into 40 pies ready for the freezer in one good Saturday’s work. Baked goods always stocked our freezer, so they could be enjoyed all winter long by our family and whenever company unexpectedly stopped by.
There were many occasions throughout the year to gather for a baking bee: weddings, funerals, school events, bake sales and, especially, the holidays. When Christmas neared, I remember days dedicated only to baking and building gingerbread houses. Mom systematically filled our freezer with various pies, toffee tarts, kifli (small Hungarian rolls filled with poppy seed, walnuts or plum jam), shortbread cookies and assorted squares. Our home was filled with the warm and wonderful aroma of all these delights from October through the middle of December, ensuring that no one who visited us during the weeks of Christmas parties left hungry. Unfortunately for Mom, the freezer was next to my room in the basement and many of the goodies, especially the homemade toffee tarts, never made it back upstairs. Friends of mine today ask me when Mom and Dad are coming to visit my family, knowing that some of these specially baked goods will be gracing our table here in Missoula.
Having fresh home baked goods has always been important to my family. My lovely wife, Beth, shares this sentiment. My four daughters and all their friends relish the joy and pleasure that come from eating freshly baked pumpkin muffins, chocolate chip cookies and brownies. I hope my children will think as fondly of the times they have spent helping their mom measure ingredients, mix, stir and bake various treats as I do.
There are few moments in a child’s life that compare with the profound joy of making a mess. It would appear that at our house, making a mess is the norm when it comes to baking. It’s a good thing we have hardwood floors. Playdough, Gak, rice, water, flour and cornstarch are just a few of the substances that have been happily dumped, spilled, tossed, and danced across them. Though at one time I may have thought it an exaggeration to say the mess brought the most satisfaction to my kids, another recent cookie baking experience confirmed my suspicions. By the time the cookies were baked, the kids were showing little interest in eating them. It appears the real fun is in the process, not in the end result.
Beth, to her credit, has an open door policy when it comes to messy days at our house. Several of our friends who refuse to allow Playdough in their own nicely carpeted homes, have been happy in the past to buy Playdough and bring it to our house. It should come as no surprise then that baking cookies with our niece Alicia and her two sons, Harry and Will, occurred at our house – on our kitchen table. Alicia wondered aloud just how all the flour being tracked around our floor would look on her blue carpet. Gretta, our three-year old, had just opened the flour bin and was carrying handfuls of the powdery substance to the table. Since carrying a handful of flour is as difficult as carrying a handful of water, twice as much flour filtered down to the floor as reached the table. You could see the trail of footprints left by her tiny feet to and from the flour pail. Eventually, Gretta stepped up to the table and artfully began piling the flour high on top of her dough.
Our older daughter, six-year-old Emma, was much more serious about getting the perfect Christmas tree cut from her dough. She was patiently rolling it flat while dusting it gently with flour to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin. She carefully placed the cookie cutter on top, gently pushed and transformed the plain old cookie dough into a marvelous tree, her bright blue eyes shining with delight in her creation.
Will, at 5 years old, was watching Emma work diligently on her Christmas tree when he decided that a Christmas star would be more to his liking. Of course he would need some of that white dust for his cookies and soon he was pushing and piling flour on the table like everyone else. He did manage to create one of the nicest stars I have ever seen, then turned his attention to making magnificent gingerbread boys.
Watching 3 year old Harry, hard at work getting his cookies ready, reminded me of how every young child discovers the joy of coloring. With a death grip on a crayon, children will draw circle after circle and line after line until the page is delightfully covered with color. After creating his own perfect tree, Harry didn’t stop to remove the cookie, instead he grabbed the star shape and pressed hard, next he picked the gingerbread boy cutter and pressed again. Over and over he pushed the various shapes into his increasingly diced up dough, taking pleasure in all the lines forming in front of him. It didn’t matter if a cookie came out of it, because the pleasure for him was in the cookie cutting.
The cookie cutting was mingled with trips to the kitchen for drinks and snacks, and watching with delight as the first batch of cookies was carefully placed into the oven. Each trip to the kitchen showed Beth and Alicia patiently guiding their little helpers and, I am quite certain, thinking of the wonderful memories of holiday baking they were creating for these four kids—either that or they were stunned by the growing mess and their smiles were holding back their tears.
Just like that it was over and the cookies, now baking in the oven, were completely forgotten. The flour trail left the kitchen, crossed the porch and led to the trampoline in our backyard where the kids were happily bouncing. Beth and Alicia were deep in conversation, trying to decide if any of the leftover dough could be salvaged, wondering how the cookies would taste after hours of rolling, shaping and cutting by little hands. Somehow this was not exactly how my own memories of Christmas baking ended. For one thing we didn’t have a trampoline when I was growing up, so I remember going outside to play street hockey with my friends—while Mom cleaned up.
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Courtesy of Sarpy Sam:
Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat. Fran Lebowitz
How true. It reminds me somewhat of Steven Wright’s quote about being a vegetarian:
I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals. I’m a vegetarian because I hate vegetables.
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When I was a youngster I had much more interest in eating than I did cooking. The good news was that my mother had, as a child of the depression, learned how to make good food out of very modest ingredients. I recall when the I Hate To Cook Book was published and shuffled in a new era of “cheating” with prepared foods and instant sauces from the Campbell’s Soup Company. My mother was delighted by these shortcuts and began using them more frequently than not. Of course today many in the baby boom generation and younger consider those “back of the can” recipes to be “home cooking” – which compared to today’s ready to eat dinners is, in fact, a much closer deal and deserves respect. Read the rest of this entry »
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Since I’m more interested in eating than thinking, I thought I should segregate my posts about food into a separate blog. Just like davebudge.com, I’m sure I will stray from the food theme from time to time but I hope to fill these pages with restaurant reviews, recipes, thoughts on cooking equipment and the entire ethos of cooking and eating with friends and family.
Who knows, it may die on the vine or, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a few other Montana foodies to help me out. In any case, let me know if there is anything food related you would like to know. I’m sure I can’t tell you much, but I’ll be glad to look it up.
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