Last night we played for a lovely tango house party in Hailey, a town three hours north of Boise nestled in the Central Rockies of Idaho. It was another night of playing music, having fun dancing, and enjoying good food and company!
Empanadas! (one batch filled with spinach and one batch with creamed corn!)
Heirloom tomato bruschetta
A stop by the Silver Creek Preserve on our way out, a spring fed stream system that provides some of the best trout fishing in Idaho. Wild rainbow, brown and brook trout have a population density up to 5,000 fish per mile in this stream! (so my dad tells me from his research in the area)
Andy and I took a three night mind clearing trip to Canada’s Lake Superior Provincial Park, located two hours north of Sault Ste. Marie, MI.
Day 1: When we arrived the lake was like absolute glass! Barely any movement at the shoreline. Sunny. 70 degrees during the day…50 at night.
Day 2: The guy at the camping store told us this trail was “brutal”. He was right. Today we hiked 9 miles along the Lake Superior shoreline from the mouth of the Baldhead River to Ryolite Cove. We are thankful for another sunny, warm, and very dry day for walking miles over rock, roots, and unstable boulders.
Day 3: Today we walked 9 miles back to the Baldhead River. Andy is already thinking about when we will return again…I am thinking that while it is insanely beautiful, two times is enough to walk this stretch of extreme up and down rock and cliff hiking, not to mention that it is so rare to have three completely dry days to walk along the lake shore.
Our last night we made a fantastic backpacking dinner: quick cook brown rice with wild mushroom and freeze dried peas!
A day’s drive through Gary, Chicago, and Milwaukee needs a good sandwich!! Why not make one yourself? In the car!
Here is our improvisation made en route to Madison on the second part of the Great Lakes tour.
The 80/90 Sandwich
Serves 4-6
We woke up in Monacle Lake Campground in the Hiawatha National Forest today. We ate some oatmeal with strawberries and then headed off to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. On the way we stopped at a local’s house inside the Bay Mills Reservation and bought some home smoked trout. We had a tip off at the previous night’s concert that this fish guy was one of the only few people left in the area offering smoked fish and that his fish was great. We knew we were at the right place because of the hand painted sign of a herring smoking a big stogy. We ended up buying a beautiful huge trout the size of my femur for only $10!
After that, the best moment of day happened when Kenny Burrell’s Monterey Suite came up on the CMU radio station out of Sault Ste Marie. Driving to our next gig in the U.P., music on, sunshine, the windows down, smoked trout in the bag—this moment explains why we continue to tour.
I read something in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this 4th of July weekend that floored me! It was a blurb in the book about how we put almost as much fuel into our refrigerators as we do our cars.
She said, “If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we could reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels.”
The book continues with the story of Kingsolver’s family who moved from Tuscon, AZ to a rural farm in Appalachia and documented a year eating only food they grew themselves. Her book has inspired me to look closer at what we buy to eat.
Our 4th of July weekend invovled a gourment cooking spree by yours truly…let’s see how oily we are…
July 3: Potato gnocchi with melted Port-Salut cheese and a fava bean, green onion, serrano ham sauce. Served with Sangiovese.
July 4: Saffron noodle lasagna with ricotta, chard, mascarpone stuffing and a homemade garlic herb bechamel. Served with homemade Marechal Foch.
July 5: Golden beet risotto! Served with homemade Cayuga white.
July 6: Local Michigan white bean soup with herbed fennel broth and homemade cocoa noodles.
Well, looks like the cheese, meat, and wine are the most difficult components to incorporate local food for us…we did buy all of it at our favorite local store two blocks from our house–Martha’s Vineyard.
I think in the end we should get at least a B+ for using all local produce!!
We’ll keep working on the local cheese…
