Cooking in the West

When Covid hit, we decided to stop offering working cattle ranch vacations, which means my summers have become much less hectic but also less entertaining on a daily basis. One of the best parts about entertaining guests is recounting the funny things that happen.

Sometimes it is quite difficult to keep a straight face when guests say something in all sincerity that strikes my funny bone.

For example, I was in Yellowstone with four guests from New York. One of the teenage girls did not bother to get out of the car to view a black bear, who was munching on some grass while her cubs hovered in the tree above her. Apparently, since she had already seen two sows and two cubs, she needed a snack. She was loudly crunching on her bag of Gardettos in the backseat while the rest of us watched the bear feeding from our vantage point just outside the car. I could barely suppress my hysteria when the father said, "Listen to that--you can hear the bear chewing."

He was hearing his granddaughter chewing in the backseat of the car, but he felt that he had transcended into a state of harmony where he was in tune with nature so much that I just couldn't bring myself to say, "No, that is Gardetto girl chewing in the back seat."

My favorite Yellowstone question comes up amazingly often. It is, "When does a deer turn into an elk?" I guess when you think about it, that question is not all that ridiculous. . . I mean if a caterpillar can turn into a butterfly, why can't a deer grow into an elk?

One time my father-in-law was showing a girl from the East coast a herd of elk. He handed her the binoculars, and after a minute or so, she said, "I thought they would be much larger animals!"

He couldn't think of any tactful way to break it to her, so he said, "You are looking at them through the wrong end of the binocular lenses."

The millers were particularly bad this summer, which reminds me of Bill and Carl from Massachusetts. At dinner the first night, I warned them, "I hope the millers won't bother you tonight." Apparently I did not notice the look they exchanged. The next morning I asked them if they had any trouble with the millers. They said that no one had come by, but they had spent the first hour after dark battling little moths. Carl patrolled the cabin with a fly swatter while Bill sucked up the corpses with the vacuum. They seemed quite relieved to realize that the millers were just moth-like nuisances and not ax murdering neighbors.

Later that week, Carl described a trap he had discovered hanging on the back wall of the outside of the cabin. He was intrigued by one trap where the animal must stick its head down into a cage-like apparatus, and then someone would have to trip the trap with a long handle. We were baffled by what he was describing until we went to look. The mystery trap turned out to be the device we hung on the mop bucket to wring out the mop. We now call the device, which probably has a name other than mop thingy, Carl's mousetrap.

I am notorious for getting my guests completely soaked whether riding, hiking, fishing, or just having a picnic. A few years back, we were having a beautiful picnic beside a mountain lake when the thunder started to roll. There was really no shelter, so we mounted up and started riding for home. Soon it began to pour, and then it began to hail about half inch hailstones. My four guests from Michigan thanked me when it was over--not for seeing them safely through the storm but for exfoliating them for the next month. Perhaps we should add spa treatments to our list of amenities!

My recipes this week are from one of our guests, Louise Lester of Maine. Thanks, Louise! Louise noted, "This first recipe came from my stepmother Bonnie Hartley. Years before she was having dinner at the NY Waldorf Astoria and told the waiter that she would love to have the recipe for the frosting on her piece of cake. It is very good I must say and to me it tastes like real whipped cream but lasts longer on the cake. Sometime after her return to her home in Maine she received a bill from the Waldorf Pastry Chef for $600. Apparently in those days and possibly now if you ask for a recipe you’re buying it! In any case she paid the bill and since has given it to anyone who wants it free of charge. So here it is:

Waldorf Icing:

Heat: 5 tablespoons of flour in 1 cup of milk and cook until thickened and then cool completely to cold (critical) then add to 2 sticks of softened margarine, 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar, and 1 teaspoon of real vanilla. Beat at high speed in a mixer until thick and smooth. This beating takes forever. It will look like curdled milk for quite a while until it suddenly takes off looking like frosting.

Louise noted, "This next ginger cookie recipe came from a friend who lives in New Brunswick, Canada. She gave me some of the cookies when we met at a competitive trail ride to thank me for sending her a saddle for her daughter. The cookies lived in my trailer forgotten for a couple of months and when found they were just as chewy and delicious as they had been at the beginning of the summer."

Ginger Cookies:

Beat:

1 C. butter

1 large egg

1.5 C molasses

2 T. corn syrup

When thoroughly mixed add:

3 C. flour

2 t. baking soda

2 t. ground cinnamon

1 t. ground ginger

1/4 t. ground cloves

1/2 t. salt.

Mix and then roll in your hands to make small balls using table sugar as a coating. Press on a lightly buttered cookie tin and bake for 10-12 minutes at 375°.

"This last recipe was from my mother who used it to occupy me on many rainy afternoons and began to teach me how to bake."

Real Crazy Cake:

Sift together:

1.5 C. flour

3 T. powdered cocoa (I use Hershey’s)

1 C. sugar

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt.

Sift into a greased 8 inch round cake pan and make 3 depressions in the mixture. In the first depression, pour 1 teaspoon of cider vinegar; the second 1 teaspoon of vanilla; and the third 6 tablespoons of salad oil. Over it all pour 1 cup of water and mix until smooth. Bake at 350° for 36 minutes.