Adventures of a Latter Day Coosie #5

We bought some sausage, tortillas and jalapenos for breakfast.  We'll get them going on the grill and have a bite before everything gets too wild.  Coffee is sure good.  We brought some New Orleans Blend coffee, with Chicory, from Austin.  Has a really nice flavor and a number of folks appreciated the subtle difference in taste.

I need to call Steve here in a bit and let him know we are thinking about him and his Dad.

We did get the potatoes peeled last night so that little chore is out of the way.  Now to prepare the yeast for the bread and let it work a while before mixing up the flour.  We can get the Peach Cobbler prepared and out of the way.  Skip and I are preparing the crust using the method called Lattice

It really looks "purdy".  Theory is:  The Peaches will be cooked in a pot while the crust is cooking in a Dutch oven, then when the peaches are done we will put them in another Dutch oven and slide the latticed crust over onto the peaches.  The theory is sound but who knows what will happen.  /We are always trying something different to make our entries better.  This is the first time we have tried weaving the dough for the top of the cobbler.  We'll see how it turns out....as you can see, not so well, but we only turn in the center 4 inches.

John is working on the fried potato recipe, using peppers and onions and grinding up some of the meat that gave us. It will look good with the different colored bell peppers and jalapenos.  Bam!! Up it goes a notch.  In addition to the "fried potatoes", we are going to do some mashed potatoes just in case we run out of fried potatoes.  We should have enough but we think we may be a little shy because the frying pan wasn't quite large enough.

Sure are lots of folks milling around the camp.  Many have stopped in for a cup of coffee.  We met a real nice couple form California, Randy and Robin Hoskins, who are about to venture into the chuck wagon cooking.  It was enjoyable for me to spend a little time talking to them about some of the ins and outs of the wagon and cooking utensils.  I think they already have a good grip on the cooking and right now are excited about gathering up all

the things necessary for their wagon.
They know Brian Jones from the Manflo Wagon and are going to get a little experience working with them on one of their outings in the near future  I invited them to join us in Ruidoso as part of our crew.  Hope they do!

Manflo!!!

Let's take stock:  cobbler is started, bread is underway, beans are cooking, meat is marinating, and potatoes are in the skillet.  Next is to iron out the small details like the crust for the cobbler, batter the chicken fried steaks, seasoning for the beans, and mix the flour for the rolls.   The plan is to have everything done by our assigned time slot.

We are still lucky on the weather.  The wind is blowing a bit, but nothing to give us major problems.  We have plenty of wind breaks and side curtains if we need them.  So far we have experienced no moisture.  I guess it is real good thing because the ground around the premises is clay  If it were to rain, I think we would be marooned here in a bog.  Someone said there was a huge snow storm last week in the mountains east of here.  We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Smoke is coming from behind our wind screens.

It becomes a little difficult at times being hospitable to everyone who wanders by the camp when there are so many details to keep up with, but we really try to be nice in spite of the pressure.  Skip has really been good with reminders for me to keep calm.  As the time approaches for turning in the food items I usually get stressed out.  However, for some reason, the atmosphere here lends itself to being naturally calmer and laid back.  We have a good crew and everyone knows what has to happen for everything to come together.

Skip Clark, John (Sully)Sullivan, and me.

That equates to: everything will get done.  What you have to watch out for is the unexpected.  A dropped pan, dead yeast, burned bread, rain, wind, snow, and I guess a multitude of other things that we haven't even mentioned or experienced.  So far Murphy evidently was busy somewhere else this weekend.   Maybe he is adding to his laws.

I always put a little 5x7 card up on the chuckbox to remind me during the course of the competition to check on the various items.  Al the card has written on it is:  1.Meat 2. Bread  3. Beans 4. Potatoes 5. Dessert.  Its purpose is a reminder to check the progress on each one.  It seems to work.  As an example , when you get the bread in the oven and cooking, it is real easy to get busy and forget the turn the lid or forget to check on them.  As in how Sully got busy talking yesterday and burned not one, but TWO pans of biscuits.  It really works.  The other helpful think is the crew is constantly verbally giving reminders such as "check the bread" or "stir the beans" or "check the dessert".  The system seems to work!

The chicken fried steak cooking is fairly laborious.  You can't get too far ahead on breading the meat because the meat will stick together.  We have found that adding the spices to the flour and to the meat gives the best effect.  Both have different requirements, for instance we want the crust to have a little bite and we want the meat flavor to come out as a judge gets past the crust.  We also want the crust to be crusty and not soft, therefore we use some corn starch in the flour for the batter.  We change up the batter for dipping quite often, sometime.s

Speaking of cards, I have all my recipes on cards and use them when we are cooking.  The quantities are easy to get mixed up and, anyway, I don't cook frequently enough to remember quantities from one time to the next.  The recipes are some I have developed myself, and others are ones from Jerry Baird, Jerry Slaton, Carl Hawkins, Glenn Benson, Grady Spears, Kent Rollins, James Stewart, Linda Calk and some form my mother Libbie Calk.  Referring to recipes, for me,  is a must.  It is too easy to forget one little ingredient.

The time slot we drew was 12:00 noon. We are ready to turn in the entries.  It is still about 20 minutes till our time and the Biscuit Flats wagon, which is next to us.  We are going to select our entries carefully and certainly hand in the best we have.  We selected two real nice pieces of steak that came out of the hot oil in the first batch.  The first batch usually is best because as time goes on the oil gets becomes burned and produces less than satisfactory steaks...especially at the end of 50-60 steaks.  The potatoes are in pretty good shape and look to be

just about right.  The beans are cooked to pieces.  The taste is good, but they are way over cooked.  The judges will definitely not like them The  bread is really good but just a little bit overdone on the bottom....but certainly not burned.  They are a good entry.  The Peach cobbler looks sensational the way we latticed the crust for the top.  The cobbler itself didn't have any cinnamon and i liked it because it had the nice red color of a Cling Free Peach even though the peaches were just from an air tight.
This is a really good entry.

I think this would be a good place to tell you about trust and

dependability.  There was a young lady in the camp on Friday telling us about how she had cooked for hunting camps all over the country.  She specifically told us of a hunting camp she had cooked for in /Canada.  He went on and on about how she didn't take any #%&*@ from any of the hunters.  She was on this particular job for two or three months so her story went.  Anyway she elaborated about how she cooked the way she wanted to cook and not necessarily the way they expected her to cook, but that the important thing was to hae the food prepared on time and in didn't  matter what the

mweather was like.  We were taken in by her cooking experiences and she asked really nicely if she could come out tomorrow and help us with the meal.  We thought that would be a great idea.  I even gave her one of my TEXAS cooking aprons.  as a token to bind this "contract".  She even managed to talk us out of one of the Festival Of The West aprons as well.  Well, if you haven't guessed it yet.  she shops up about 12 noon and wants to know if she can help serve.  I didn't tell her exactly what I thought....let's just say the answer was no.

Pic from gradyslinecamp.com

 After all she promised to help and then didn't even show up...to me that was a bond with no extenuating circumstances.  From her attitude, she thought nothing of the commitment she made to us.  I'm sorry for carrying on about this,  but damn, she got off with two of my good aprons.

We have some hungry folks waiting to get served so we have set the ovens on the Serape covered serving tables and assembled the serving line.  Ring the dinner bell and holler "Come and Get it 'fore We Throw

it Out"!!!

A little time has passed and the line has gone down and we are just standing around waiting on folks to show up.  We can still serve more people 'cause we still have plenty of food.  We sign al to Silky that we can handle six more and she immediately sends six more people to us who are patiently waiting in line to get a meal ticket.  This method of feeding the public went on until we were out of food.  I think we must have served around 58 people, not counting ourselves.  We would cut a steak into little pieces and graze on it while waiting for people to show up with their tickets.

The people at the right are some of the folks whose recipes or teachings I have used over the years while cooking.  There are others that I don't have pictures for.  The "Adventures..." section looks as thought it will come to a close AFTER next weeks posting as I am about to run out of dialog on the competition.  Stay tuned for #6 coming up next week.