Cooking in the West

We live on a beary creek under a big beary hill, so we often see black bears wandering through the yard. The other night we decided to have bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches for dinner. Of course I overcooked--well, technically burned--the bacon, so I threw the sliding glass door in the kitchen wide open. A few minutes later as we sat down to eat our slightly smoky crunchy sandwiches in our smoke hazed kitchen, one of our resident black bears wandered past our porch.. The smell of bacon is notoriously irresistible to bears.

We recognized this particular bear from his middle of the night visits to our porch refrigerator and porch garbage can two nights in a row a couple weeks earlier, so we are starting to know his schedule and menu preferences. He definitely prefers Pioneer Meats meat sticks over spinach salad when he breaks into the porch fridge, and he doesn't particularly appreciate shotgun blasts leveled into the hill behind him at 2:30 in the morning. Although we had guests in our cabin just across the lilac hedge, they apparently didn't hear the shotgun blast, and we decided not to mention our nightly visitor to them unless he became more adventurous. Fortunately, they went back to Pennsylvania never knowing they had slept through two bear visits.

When I was growing up on a guest ranch near Augusta, Montana, a book and a movie entitled "Night of the Grizzlies" struck fear in the hearts of nearly all of our guests one summer. It was about grizzly maulings in Glacier Park, and it was gruesome for the 70's. Sometimes our cabin guests want our fearless border collies to sleep in their cabin at night to guard them from bears. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, our border collies are not very good bear dogs as we discovered one summer years back when we were being plagued by a bear. Mitzi's tale of uncommon valour would more appropriately be entitled "Nights of Yogi."

One June after spending several nights sleeping in a tent in the Scapegoat Wilderness and cooking for K Lazy Three Outfitters, I came home looking forward to a peaceful night in my own bed without any thoughts of bear visits dancing in my head. However, while I had been gone, a young black bear had begun frequenting our porch. Reportedly, he was a blonde yearling who was cute and acrobatic. He used the porch rails for a jungle gym, and it was entertaining to watch him try to open the barbecue while sitting on top of it. He would come scavenge for leftover cat food and then go play in the ditch out back.

The night I returned home, Yogi stepped it up a notch. About dark, he showed up as usual. First, he sniffed and licked the cute little bear holding a "Welcome" sign on the porch, so I made a note to myself that bear porch ornaments--especially with an open invitation-- are a bad idea in bear country. When he had scoured the porch for cat food pellets, he hopped up into my favorite gravity defying reclining lawn chair and began abusing it badly. Apparently he could read "Welcome," but he couldn't comprehend the instructions for locking the chair into position for safety.

Then, Yogi crossed the line. He hopped off the chair, tipped over everything on the porch, and began to stand up and peek into every window and the sliding glass door along the porch. He left muddy footprints in a bear high streak all around the porch. This was a travesty, because it would mean that my annual window washing schedule would be completely thrown off. We decided he had to be scared off the porch. Remi said to our border collie, who had been growling fiercely throughout Yogi's rampage, "Get him, Mitzi!" Promptly, she ran and hid behind the couch. Finally, we encouraged him to leave the porch so we could go to bed.

At 1:36 A.M., I awoke to screams. Brooke's boxer was barking loudly as he bolted out the open slider door in pursuit of Yogi, who had slid the slider door open and scored a whole bag of cat food that was sitting inside the house. Yogi left the door wide open when he retreated with his bounty. Now that Yogi was a house guest, we knew we were in trouble, so we called Justin Paugh, our FWP biologist, to come to our rescue. He brought us rubber bullets and a pepper spray barrel. He assured us that even grizzly bears vacate the premises after a spray from the barrel.

That night, we confidently barricaded ourselves and the dogs and cats in the house and went to bed. Stuffed on cat food, Yogi slept in that night, because it was 2:26 A.M. when we heard him woof his displeasure at his first experience with pepper spray. He ran down to the ditch, took a quick bath, shook himself off, and decided to try entering the house through an alternative route. He jumped up and chinned himself from Brooke's bedroom windowsill as he tried to climb through her bedroom window. We slammed his paws in the window, and then Bret gave him a nice rubber bullet send-off after that. Since we were so inhospitable, Yogi finally decided to move on. . . which was good since Mitzi, the guard dog, couldn't stay behind the couch forever!

I have no recipes for cooking bear to share, primarily because the only way I have found to make bear meat palatable is to wash it down with adult beverages. Therefore, I must caution you to eat bear meat responsibly-don't eat bear and drive! How about some recipes from the Big Timber Lutheran Church's "Celebrating 90 Years of Food and Friendship" cookbook instead?

Nora Hanson's Easy Lefse

1 1/2 qt. warm mashed or ground potatoes

1/4 lb. butter or margarine

Mix and chill several hours or overnight.

Add:

2 C. flour or less (try 1 3/4 C.)

1 1/2 T. sugar

2 T. cream

Be sure to cook potatoes with lots of salt. If not, add 1/2 t. salt. Mix all ingredients well by hand or with mixer. Make patties like pie crust and roll out on a floured board. Using a lefse stick or large spatula, take each patty off your rolling board or table and brown on both sides on a hot lefse grill or flat stove surface. Make any size you wish, but they bake better if you use a lefse rolling pin. Lefse is easy to do--just spread with softened butter and sprinkle with sugar and enjoy. Great with coffee. Nora noted: Can be made out of leftover mashed potatoes from dinner. I use a tea towel folded in flour to roll on my table, taped well with masking tape.

Arlene Birkeland Pile's Rubber Noodles

4 C. flour

1 t. salt

8 or 9 eggs

Broth (flavor of your choice)

Stir flour and salt into a large bowl. Add eggs, one at a time and stir with a fork until each egg is absorbed into the flour. Use enough eggs to make dough easy to handle. Roll dough out and slice in 1/4 inch thick by 2 inch wide slices. Boil rapidly in boiling broth flavor of your choice. Test a noodle to determine doneness. Enjoy!

Carol Beley's Fingerlings

3 lbs. hamburger

2 C. bread crumbs or instant rice

2 cans chicken and rice soup

1 C. chopped onion

4 eggs

1 t. salt and pepper

1/4 t. poultry seasoning

crushed Corn Flakes

2 cans mushroom soup

2 cans consomme or 1 soup can water

Mix all ingredients, except Corn Flakes, mushroom soup, and consomme. Shape into small logs and roll in Corn Flakes. Place in a 9 X 13 pan. Pour mushroom soup and consomme (or water) over top. Bake one hour at 350 degrees.