Slawff – Page 91 – Cast Iron Guy

2021-01-072021-11-02 episode 7

Book: Campfire Cuisine

For Thursdays I was thinking about starting a regular feature called Tuck & Tech that would let me muse about gear, books, recipes, and other kit. I’m neither sponsored nor provided any of these things. I just find them interesting or useful.

A curious recipe book showed up in my stocking this past Christmas: Campfire Cuisine by Robin Donovan seems to be a hearty collection of tasty dishes that meet a couple basic criteria around food transportation and storage as well as ease of preparation over a hot campfire.

A lot could be said about the fact that the wife and I have already conversed about trying some of the collection of marinades, breakfasts, sandwiches, and main courses at home first. There is nothing necessitating a campout cook style for many of the dishes … which, I guess, means that the collection is a solid book of hearty dishes that also happens to be amenable to cooking and eating in the great outdoors.

It’s the middle of deep winter as I write this, and I did have a short campfire in the chilly backyard for New Year’s Eve, but we used it to symbolically torch the 2020 calendar and I wasn’t comfortable cooking on those flames afterwards. Our simple go-to would likely have been pulling out the marshmallows to make s’mores, after a round of grilled hot dogs.

Yet this book definitely seems to be more than one-dish meals or meats-on-sticks.

I re-read the introduction this morning again and it lit a feeling of kinship between myself and the author. There was a symmetry of philosophy in those words, even as I set off (it’s still my first week) to write a daily blog checking boxes that Donovan checked long before me, and in print to boot.

Living to eat well.

Travelling to taste and experience.

Savouring experiences.

I’ve yet to try any of the recipes, and definitely not over a firepit, but for that synergy alone I’ll be pouring over the hundred-ish recipes in the book now (and as warmer tent camping weather approaches) to construct the menu for our next outbound excursion.

2021-01-062021-11-02 episode 6

boundary

I am not a poet, but a friend has inspired me to read more of it and think more critically about its place in the constellation of my creative pursuits. Occasionally, I’d like to post a poem here when inspiration strikes.

boundary
demarcated by strict panels of hewn lumber
set against remnant forest
clinging to a river edge
and
traced between the trees
a path
serpentine cut through snow-covered scrub
bracing a tizzy of birdsong
against a distant whir of highway traffic
muffled by branches reaching for sunlight
bare in the january chill
and
traced between the trees
footprints
packing a temporary record into the snow
recalling a moment or a hundred like it
inspired to ignore one more
boundary
-bardo

2021-01-052021-10-15 episode 5

When This is Over I’m Getting on a Plane

Travel Tuesday, and I’m sitting here (just like a good chunk of the world) locked down in my basement during a global pandemic.

We (fortunately) banked partial refunds and credit for two sets of flights from twenty-twenty COVID cancellations.

This means that last year we didn’t get to go any further than we could drive in an afternoon.

It also means that sometime in the future I’ll need to book not just a trip, but a TRIP.

The Trip.

The Trip to Celebrate the End of the Pandemic Trip. ^TM

The first time of anything after a long stretch without can be nothing… or it can be everything.

For example, I sometimes give up coffee for a couple months (system purging) and my first cup after a break is always a personally special event. I treat myself to a great big Americano from a local café, and take a sit-down break to savour it. It is a moment of reward for an eon of patience and abstaining.

I’ve not been on a plane for well over a year, though I had multiple flights booked in my last calendar. It seems like it might be at least another before we can reasonably think of casual personal travel. That first flight after this unplanned break feels like it should be a treat, a great big amazing trip to savour.

A moment of reward for an eon of patience and abstaining.

Where would you go?

2021-01-042021-10-15 episode 4

Why I Cook on Cast Iron (Part One)

Do you remember the first time you got the perfect sear?

I do.

We had come into a couple thousand dollars as a small inheritance. The decision had been made years prior that any windfalls like that would be rolled back into our house. It was simple: money from a family legacy transformed into value to our home.

Our choice then was to extend the gas line to our kitchen and replace the electric stove with a gas range.

We had been living the post-university student lifestyle for years at that point, but had been watching too much Food Network. The cheap aluminum frying pans were not cutting it anymore. They needed to be replaced, and I couldn’t help but notice that serious chefs didn’t cook gourmet meals over a glowing red coil burner.

Gas range installed and burning, life went on. We upgraded some of our cookware to stainless steel and expanded our repertoire of recipes. We cooked better, ate well, and thought the world of amazing food was our oyster.

At one point I had been curious about cast iron (for just a few months back when we still had the electric range) and I had fished a cheap pan from a discount rack at one of those surplus merch stores. On the electric range it was unimpressive. Couple with that the fact I had no clue about seasoning cast iron, and the whole thing was a succession of crusty messes. The pan got shoved to the back of a cupboard…

…until one particular experimental recipe we’d found specifically asked for a cast iron skillet on our new gas range.

The breaded chicken seared with a crisp, beautiful, crunch that I would have paid real money for at a nice restaurant. I had cooked it in my kitchen, with my limited skills, and I was hooked.

My cast iron mission had begun.

to be continued…