Maestro with a Mop

Being of strong back [and weak brain], I was in a better position to provide some down-farm hospitality this past weekend than GlutenFreeMama, when her brother Tommy and his partner Amy (and their pooch, Milo) journeyed up to visit us on-farm. I did so by assuming the responsibilities of head chef, pot walloper and all around facilitator.

With a few open days left on the calendar, prior to moving onto a new-to-them home, Tommy and Amy had managed to time it perfectly for birthdays. Tommy’s and GF Mama’s are only one day apart, she being the elder the two.

The reason I was swapping my farmer’s hat for that of a chef, is because GFMama’s primary healthcare provider (me), has forbidden her to undertake those pesky domestic annoyances, which will interfere with her ongoing efforts to regain her good health. 

Simply put, her feet were tied.

Not having the power to untie her feet, I did the next best thing and tried to make her forget that fact. Any and all effort I put in, I did because I would do anything for her; cooking and washing dishes seems inconsequential compared to the job she has.

I spent the day before the visit sprucing up the old farm house, simple enough because the old farm house was already in pretty good shape for the shape it’s in. Being the housekeeper that I am, my policy is that an organized house requires minimal time and energy, so I just never allow it to get cluttered.

Straight from the farm

If I leave my water mug, an empty can of peanuts, a gently-used napkin, an apple core, the salt and pepper shakers, a dirty set of silverware and the remote, sitting on a TV tray in the living room of an evening, it takes only seconds the next morning to remedy the oversight.

I am quite adept at remedying oversights in a timely manner, just as I am a maestro with a mop.

Friday morning actually posed the most challenging task of all, a drive into the ‘Ville to get some reinforcements in the grub department. I struggle mightily with driving off of the Bell, not because of the driving part, but because of the other diverse [and extreme] personalities I encounter on the road.

I thought about texting Tom and asking him to “pick up a couple of items,” before hitting him up with an annotated grocery list that would challenge Guy Fieri, but decided against it. I can’t imagine being on the road, and being able to accommodate a half-dozen filled grocery bags, within the confines of your vehicle, especially if you also have a dog.

So I grabbed that bull by the horns and manhandled it, without being gored by any Seattle-to-LA-bound yahoos. Geiger’s provided me with everything I needed, so I checked this off my list, after also checking the box which read, “Prep rancho-styled steak in wee hours, Friday morning.” 

I had diced up a formidable yellow onion, along with eight or ten little sweet peppers and some mushrooms, and got them sautéing on a low-to-medium burner, while I resharpened the big red cutting knife. I then sliced a 40-ounce cut of London broil into inch-long strips, and got it browning on the stove, while I stirred the colorful contents of the big cast iron pan. After the two components were cooked though, I let them cool and put them into separate tuppies and into the fridge, awaiting the next step.

One of the reasons I was going into town was to get fresh tomatoes for this dish, my 156 plants in the ground so far, notwithstanding. I suppose it is a tad unreasonable to expect ripe tomatoes, eleven days after planting. 

I also had at the top of the list heavy whipping cream, to accompany the two squash [pumpkin] pies I was planning to bake in the wee hours, Saturday morning. Though accustomed to enjoying these delicacies sans whipping cream, we were pulling out all the stops for this visit.

The cutting board is 16 inches long. This chicken
weighed in at more than eight pounds.

Prior to embarking for town, I carved up two corpulent HappyDay Farms chickens, obtained the previous day from one of the on-farm freezers. I had defrosted them overnight, and now placed them in a brine. One of these two chickens tipped the scales at more than eight pounds so a brine seemed essential.

Upon my return from shopping, I immediately fired up both barbecues. GF Mama had suggested this course of action, so that I could separate the cuts of meat into two categories, one requiring maybe a third more time on the grill than the other. My plan was to have the chicken prepared on Friday, so that all we had to do on Saturday was heat it up in the oven.

I also put eight pounds of red potatoes on to boil, so that I could peel them for potato salad. I had made sure I had celery, pickles and olives, and I ended up fortifying our egg supply with a couple dozen, needing them for pumpkin pies too.

Here I must confess that GFMama broke protocol and made her way to the kitchen table, where she may as well have chanted incantations, for the magic she worked with that potato salad. Everyone lavished praise on me, and I allowed it to happen, but truth-be-told, in this instance I was nothing more than the sous chef.

Again, with ten people at least for dinner on Saturday, I wanted no spotlight on me. If the chicken and the potato salad were both done, and  a gigantic green salad, and some hors d’oeuvres in place, all I would have to do is stand around and pretend I wasn’t really spinning.

Meanwhile, I now had the necessary tomatoes to put Friday night’s rancho steak dinner together, and it was going on two o’clock. Din-din was slated for six. Onward and upward! Assembling the dish that my father had enjoyed so much was heartening, and I added salt, black pepper, pasilla chili powder, cumin and some smoked paprika, with a flourish.

I had already picked two heads of lettuce from the backyard, of a gorgeous red-leaf, butterhead variety. I washed and tore them into salad-sized pieces, before putting it all into the lettuce dryer and spinning it until the water was sitting at the bottom.

Spinning is as spinning does.

Fine. So this isn't the tomato I
bought from Geiger's. It's a photo
of one of my own home-growns...

I diced a humungous organic tomato that I had just swooped from Geiger’s, grated a carrot, cut up some snow peas that I had picked from the greenhouse, and added them all to the lettuce. The salad was now ready. I cooked up a pot of rice as a bed upon which to place the rancho steak, and I prepped some fresh asparagus, provided for us by Danielle from on-farm.

I was ready for action-ready for danger: I was ready for Friday night’s meal.






Next: I cleaned, cooked and collapsed