Cast Iron Guy – Page 89 – new content on the regular

2021-01-182021-02-12

Gaige’s Famous Inside-Out Grilled Cheese

Some day I’ll dig into my second-favourite cooking topic after cast iron, and write some posts about sourdough bread.

In the meantime, know that my classic sandwich loaf sourdough serves as the base for a mouthwatering recipe that blurs my passion for cast iron cooking with fresh bread and delicious lunch foods.

A grilled cheese sandwich on a cast iron gridle.

It’s a simple hack for your grilled cheese, but add a bit of grated cheddar to the buttered outsides of a classic grilled cheese sandwhich (bread, butter, cheese and heat.)

2 slices of sourdough bread 1 tablespoon of butter or margarine ¹/₂ cup of grated cheddar cheese

Grill as normal. (My normal is on a hot-hot cast iron griddle.)

If you’ve got a soft spot for fried cheese, the crisp exterior of your sandwhich will warm your heart (and probably clog your arteries … did I mention that this is a sometimes food?)

2021-01-172021-02-09

Recalling Quarantine Ultra

I hadn’t forgotten about it. At the time it was just a goofy online race. But I was there.

This morning I was flipping through the digital pages of the December 2020 issue of Outdoor magazine. A sentence on an article titled “Unprecedented” caught my eye.

Something something backyard quarantine ultra something something.

Sunday Runday, and I was reminded of a chilly Saturday morning in early April 2020. I logged into a zoom meeting on my iPad. I laced up my shoes, pulled on my mitts and running toque, and swiped through screen after screen after screen of thumbnail video feeds from around the world.

The Quarantine Backyard Ultra was the idea of someone in Calgary, a few hundred kilometers south of where I live. It was this Alberta thing, we’d invited the world, and a bunch of my running crew signed up. Along with about 2,400 other runners.

Sure. I’d thought. A nice way to do something, anything, now that we were a couple weeks into a fresh pandemic lockdown.

We’d figured we were quarantine veterans then. Little did we know that nine months later I’d be sitting here, pondering yet another solo run on a Sunday morning, and thinking nostalgically back on the early days of social isolation.

I quit after a mere two laps. About fourteen kilometers of running. Not because I couldn’t have done a third, but because the Kid had made pancakes for me and they were steaming hot and ready to eat when I’d finished my second lap. Had I known how big this thing would be, I would have pushed for three or four laps I think.

Days later — yes, really days — a small subset of runners were still clocking laps. One lap every hour on the hour. I would log into the feed to watch for a bit, but livesteaming a stranger racing on a treadmill is only actually interesting in the abstract sense. The winner logged 63 laps and four hundred and some kilometers.

Nine months later I’m reading about this race in a magazine. I’ve heard it’s been written about all over the place. It was a thing.

The Quarantine Backyard Ultra sparked imaginations because of many things; the notion of it, the lengths some people went to push themselves, and the sheer goofiness of running a race around your own neighbourhood with a video conference as a finish line. But it also gave people a bit of hope. That’s what I got out of it, at least.

2021-01-162021-02-09

Comics: Backpacking with Kids

When my daughter was younger I wrote, illustrated and shared an online web comic about fatherhood. It documented some of the quirky things we did and used some of the funny things she said as the heartbeat of the jokes.

The comics are mostly still (mostly) online at www.piday.ca but to save readers from trotting over there to hunt through the relevant ones, here is a short triple-strip series I made shortly after one of our backpacking trips.

Of course there is a much longer story behind this brief comic trilogy.

It involves a kid who was a little worried about being eaten by a bear on top of a mountain and parents who (were just following the rules and) added to that fear by locking our food in a hard, steel bear locker while we slept a hundred meters away in a soft-fabric tent.

As it turned out, on one of our short day hikes we chanced upon not just the ranger station but the ranger himself who (being a great example of being an above & beyond public servant) gave us a tour of the ranger shack, told the kid about how they tracked bear movement for safety, and handed her a BC Parks pin for her jacket.

And she left pretty certain that if the ranger would be out there watching her back for bears, though informed me that if the ranger fell through that Dad would be on the hook to wrestle the bear.

Thankfully, it was a bear-free trip and my honour was spared for another day.

2021-01-152021-02-09

Backpacking: Stumped for Entertain-ment

We usually pack light for any long backpacking adventure, but bringing along a book or a pack of cards is worth the small additional weight, even if it turns out there is no table to play on at the top.

For whatever one photo is worth:

In 2018 we did a multi-day backpacking trip up over the pass at Skoki Mountain near Lake Louise, Alberta. Three of us, two adults and a pre-teen, lugged our full kit up about eighteen kilometers of service road, trail accent, lakeside hike, summit climb, and winding approach.

The bugs were brutal and aggressive, as was the murky smoke from a far off forest fire. So, when we were not working through the never-ending routine of chores to cook, clean and keep camp, we spent the better part of our time wrapped up in mosquito hoods or hiding in our tents.

Luckily we brought along some cards.

Backpacking is all about weight. Every gram is yet another gram one needs to squish into the bag and lug with every step up a steep, dangerous climb. Too little weight means you may be unprepared. Too much and you could end up injured atop a mountain.

There is necessary weight for things that you will likely suffer or need to bail without, such as food, cooking gear, clean water tools, your tent, sleeping equipment, first aid, and at least one pair of dry socks.

There is also important weight accounting for the really nice to have gear that will provide comfort and success, like full changes of clothes, toilet paper, tooth brushes and soap, groundsheets, clotheslines, a phone (or other GPS & communications device) and a little bit of bug spray.

Then there is the luxury weight itemizing the stuff (sparingly) brought along because there is more to life than mere survival. My list often includes cameras, a paperback book, a (very lightweight) folding chair (which I will write about soon!) and of course a pack of cards.

So between cooking and cleaning and hiking and sleeping we hid from the bugs, read our books, and played some card games … even though we neglected to bring a table and were left balancing it all on a small stump.