Reasonably Educated Bumpkins

(Photo stolen from these folks)

The frost may tonight be on the pumpkins still perched on my patio furniture; it's time to break out the pumpkin bread recipe.

Every year I make loaves of pumpkin bread for gifts. I make a lot of them. Why pumpkin bread, specifically? Well, not only is it the right season for the vegetable, but I think pumpkin really is the best plant to use for a spicy dessert bread. I'm not a big fan of banana bread, and while I do like zucchini bread, pumpkin bread just blows it out of the water. And the giftees seem to agree with me.

This recipe has a family story behind it. The original recipe we ever used, which Mom has lovingly preserved in her cedar chest, appeared in my brother's Ranger Rick magazine one fall day about 30 years ago. The youngest in the family, my brother Bocci, decided he'd like to try making the recipe, so Mom, a very good cook and a 4-H cooking instructor for several years, helped him through it. While most kids (including Yours Truly) made chocolate chip cookies and ate half of the dough, Bocci took this recipe, and future recipes, seriously, although I have no doubt he licked the batter spoon. Bocci continued to have an interest in baking, and eventually worked his way through much of Martha Stewart's first pie cookbook. To lop off a long story, Bocci is now the executive chef of the restaurant Postrio in the Las Vegas resort The Venetian (where, unfortunately, they do NOT call him Bocci). Oh look, there's my brother Mantel Man!

(Photo stolen from ">these guys)

So. I'm not saying that this recipe will improve your culinary skills -- it won't. It will probably improve your neighbor relations if you bake a few loaves for people on your block, however. And that's just what I've begun doing lately, and why I have 3 1/2 wrapped pumpkin breads in my refrigerator as we speak. I feel no urgency to explain the 1/2.

Here, then, is the recipe, with a couple of twists I've added, such as cutting the salt in half, reducing the oil by 25-33%, and substituting diced prunes for raisins. Prunes are SO much better, and (other than the annoyance of having to dice them) they make me very happy. Plus, I'm doing my small part for local prune farmers.

Laurie’s Pumpkin Bread
(double batch – makes two large or three medium loaves)

Mix together in a large bowl:

3 ½ cups sifted flour
2 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt (up to 1 tsp.)
3 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cinnamon

Stir in:

3/4 cup canola oil (you can go as low as 2/3 cup; I haven't tried lower yet, but I will)
1 cup water

Beat in:

4 large eggs

Add:

2 cups canned packed pumpkin
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1 cup finely chopped dried sweet plums (pitted prunes)

Pour batter into three medium or two large well-greased loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 1 hour (325° if using glass pans) or until a toothpick comes out clean (it usually takes longer, I've found). Cool in pans for 5-10 minutes, then turn loaves out onto racks to cool.

You can put whole walnut meats on top of the batter before baking if you like, for a garnish. Raisins are easier to deal with than prunes, but prunes taste better. Instead of pumpkin, pureed persimmon (skins and all) is really good, too.

(Photo stolen from these guys)

Bocci likes to tease me about my affinity for this recipe. If he were to read this he'd make a face and say, "Why'd you give these people THAT recipe?"

But a couple of years ago he admitted to me that Postrio was that week serving warm pumpkin bread with homemade ice cream (probably some exotic flavor and with a hot caramel rum sauce drizzled over it or something). I had to feel at least on par with my baby brother, so I told him about my preference for prunes in the recipe.

"We use white raisins," he told me.

"Prunes are so much better," I told him with a snooty little note of superiority in my voice.

"Not better than white raisins soaked in (insert name of fancy liqueur whose name escapes me HERE)."

Humph. Never argue with a chef. He always wins, and if he loses he won't cook for you any more.

Posted by Laurie LaGrone at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Orland is famous for one thing.

(Photo by Cheryl McCoy)

No, not this, but good guess.

Um, nope . . . not yet, any way, but thanks fer thinkin' of me.

No, because of the Farm Sanctuary, Orland is famous for one thing these days: Our town is the west coast host of the "Celebration FOR the Turkeys," the weekend before Thanksgiving.

I know.

Banish all thoughts of smoked, roasted, barbecued, deep-fried, or even wokked turkeys. No, at the Farm Sanctuary, the turkey is KING!*

Over the last 20 years real live reporters from major networks have actually come TO ORLAND to file puff pieces about the Farm Sanctuary (one of only two Farm Sanctuary locations; the other is in upstate New York)! I'll let that sink in. Reporters. Orland. Televised news.

Part of the Farm Sanctuary's Adopt-A-Turkey project -- just $20 supports a turkey, and gets you a glossy photo of your bird (plus, one imagines, cards and letters and report cards and maybe even little turkey drawings from your turkey throughout the year) -- the Celebration FOR the Turkeys offers guests a real vegan farm experience. According to their web site, for $30 guests are treated to a catered vegan holiday dinner, a meet-and-greet with turkeys and other rescued animals, and the famous Feeding of the Turkeys ceremony, in which the fowl are given all of the non-flesh Thanksgiving foods that kids usually stuff into their napkins.

Do I sound sarcastic? I don't mean to. Well, maybe a little. I'm really not, though. Ask my dad -- I'm the world's biggest softie, and if I were to raise turkeys or chickens or pigs for meat, not ONE would be killed, and I'd go broke supporting them, even though I think they're incredibly tasty and buy lots at the grocery store. I don't like zoos because I don't like to see animals caged, and I will not own any animal that has to live in a cage, because I think it's unnatural and cruel. I was never in FFA (Future Farmers of America) even though we had the perfect set-up here on the dairy, and the reason I raised only ornamental chickens for 4-H projects was because I couldn't bear to raise an animal that I'd blithely send off to the butcher in May, for a tidy profit. I have no moral objection to someone ELSE killing animals for me to gobble up, however.

I know; I'm a mess.

So here's to the Farm Sanctuary people, and all of the B-list celebrities who lend their names to the cause. You are good, noble people (if a bit loopy). You're probably on the right path, and it's a moral cause (they do so much more for animal cruelty issues than I have mentioned; check out their web site). But I didn't pay $30 for a meatless meal this year, and I probably never will. I wish you a happy Thanksgiving, and a happy Thanksgiving to those brainless birds you shelter, as well.

*not turkey a la king

This, apparently, is Gideon the turkey, from the Orland Farm Sanctuary. I'll bet he's still full from Saturday's gut buster.

(Photo stolen from 4bananafish on Flickr)

Posted by Laurie LaGrone at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

(Photo stolen from this guy)

One of the great joys in life is introducing your children to everybody you've ever known, especially if you are related to them. "This is your first cousin twice removed -- no, wait, THREE TIMES removed. What was I thinking?" Nuggets of information like that have pretty much NO impact on kids, while the phrase "glows in the dark" can set them all adither.

Twice in the last week I have had the pleasure of informing my glow-in-the-dark daughters that they were related to pretty much every person in the room. The first time was at a family baby shower for the newest member of our extended family, baby Caydance, and every person in the room was family. "Really? Everybody?" asked Smedley.

"Yup," I said, then launched into an explanation of related "by marriage," and watched her eyeballs glaze over. "Uh, never mind," I relented, "You're related to everybody in the room."

Saturday marked the second family get-together in a week. My cousin Mike lives two miles away, and he and his wife Chris hosted a pheasant hunt at their ranch this weekend. Once upon a time it all happened at our house, on our ranch, but over the years our indigenous pheasant population thinned out and made the hunt somewhat bleak. With no birds to bag, a pheasant hunt became just an excuse to get a bunch of guys and labradors together, running around, drinking beer and having the time of their lives. Well, I'm not sure that the labradors drank any beer (but I'm not sure they didn't).

Not that these hunters aren't serious, mind you, or that they don't know their way around a gun, because they are, and they do. The men from that half of my family are born with an inclination to bring home the proverbial bacon, to hunt for food the way our ancestors used to. The beer is kind of a side benefit.

The branch of my family from which my genes surely originated would be the Wuss Strain, we of the less virile group -- the Clan of the Grocery Store. Hunting just doesn't happen among my dad's people, other than one long ago, very unfortunate turkey hunt, which shall remain unmentioned. My brothers were both drawn to the romance of the hunt, but it didn't really stick. I'm afraid we are Safeway people, to the core.

That doesn't stop me from enjoying a good pheasant hunt, however. A good pheasant hunt always includes lots of chips and salsa, homemade cookies, barrel-smoked meats, beer and wine. Any birds actually meeting their demise in the spectacle are cleaned and plucked and put on ice, while we all sit down to a dinner of smoked beef. Family members engage in the oral tradition of storytelling (which is pretty much Creative B.S.ing). This can last for hours.

This weekend the weather was picture postcard perfect -- warm and dry, with strong sunshine and no wind. The hunters were not hugely successful, but no one cared. The conversation was good, the mood high . . . great company, tasty vittles -- really, how could anything improve on the day?

Well, I suppose the pheasants could have glowed in the dark . . .

Posted by Laurie LaGrone at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(photo stolen from these guys)

I pay too much for my internet connection. "Why would you do THAT, you dipstick?!" you ask. (Why all the hostility, I ask you back?)

BECAUSE, I say, ready to launch into a long and boring justification speech, BECAUSE I can't get broadband out here in the sticks (unless I have something like a million dollars for satellite internet, which I don't).

BECAUSE I've had that same e-mail address since 1996 and it's older than my children, and just as familiar. It's like a limb.

BECAUSE I don't like change. This is why I've kept my maiden name all these years -- PURE LAZINESS! (It's been convenient for keeping my immediate family anonymous when I say something stoopid on my blogs, however, which is frequent.)

But -- and I'm sure you saw the BUT coming -- all this is probably going to change. It looks like -- dum da-da-dum! -- we can finally get broadband out on the Pushing Water Ranch! My friend Gubby, as usual, did all of the research for me, and he's trying to drag me, kicking and screaming, into the Technological Age. Here I go.

So, if Clearwire's services will reach all the way out to the Pushing Water Ranch, and early indications are that they will, I should join the ranks of the somewhat speedy very soon. I will be able to use the phone -- GASP! -- while conducting important business on-line*.

I'm still not happy about giving up my limb, however. And I still don't like change, dadgummit.

*playing on the internet

Posted by Laurie LaGrone at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Living out on the flat alluvial plains of the north valley -- farm country -- we get our share of wildlife. Opossums, skunks, rabbits and squirrels represent the Cute 'n' Fuzzies; hawks, owls, and the occasional golden eagle represent the birds of prey; egrets, great blue herons, ducks, pheasants, quail, doves, wild turkeys, and even a tired Canada goose or two, make up the Meals On Wings contingent. Foxes and coyotes keep the Cute 'n' Fuzzy population in check, and buzzards are there to clean up after everybody.

Animals we don't see very often, surprisingly, are deer. We live pretty close to a creek, and there are lots of deer there, but they usually stay near the water and close to thickets where they're safe. Half a mile is just too far to go for big risk and small gain.

Until recently. Four times this week I have seen a doe and two half-grown fawns -- never on our property, but in one of the adjacent fields. Twice they have run out in front of my car in the twilight. Deer are lovely, but not known for their superior intellect.

I'm seriously thinking about knocking on doors on my street to warn the neighbors of this new incursion, because the deer look like they're here to stay for a while, and nobody needs a head-on collision with a deer. Leastwise, the deer. I'm willing to risk being the neighborhood busybody for the sake of the deer, and because I, too, am not known for my superior intellect.

That will bring us back to DOE.

Posted by Laurie LaGrone at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been missing for about two weeks now, due to my family being sick, one by one, and then succumbing to the crud myself. I still sound like James Earl Jones imitating a donkey, but I'm vastly improved.

While I've been recuperating I have missed the best time of the year around here. I suppose fall is the best time of the year anywhere, but it's especially sweet, after the punishing summers we get in the north valley, to have 80 degree days in November. The wasps take advantage of the Indian Summer to swarm around the south sides of buildings in the still warm air; since both of our outside doors are south-facing, it's hard to get in and out of the house without letting at least one wasp inside.

(Photo stolen from this guy)

The orange trees in our front yard are suddenly obstructions we can't see past, as the branches sag lower under the fruit loads they bear. The young oranges are heavier and heavier with juice, pale yellow among the shiny green leaves. Weren't the oranges green just yesterday? I guess I haven't been paying attention.

Today Chas took the loppers to the fig tree in the back yard. I used to have a go at it once or twice a year, trying to keep it in line. I gave up. Fig trees will one day co-rule the earth with cockroaches.

Through the open windows tonight I can hear the bawling of cows separated from calves, other cows, and familiar territory. Mom and Dad moved some cows around today, from one pasture to another, and on a warm night following such a big cattle move it can be cacophonous around the ranch. Lucky for me I sleep like the dead.

Finally, people who know far more than me have told me to expect a cold winter this year. They offer as evidence the surprising number of early acorns already fallen from oak trees -- Farmer's Almanac stuff. I could have saved them the trouble; it's going to be a cold winter when oil prices are nearly $100 a barrel and climbing -- Murphy's Law stuff.

Posted by Laurie LaGrone at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)