Back to the biscuit state of mind

THE KITCHEN AT OUR little one-month rental is woefully inadequate. There’s hardly room for any supplies and only the most basic cooking equipment is provided. Yet, I’m not complaining. Who can complain about being near the beach in Southern California in February?

There are farmers’ markets every week here — in the winter!– and that makes it easy to keep things simple (which is always my inclination anyway). Fresh vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, chard, turnips, potatoes, lettuce, radishes…) roasted, steamed or in a salad can accompany a rotisserie chicken, pasta or rice. Dessert is often a delectable orange or some sweet-tart mandarins.

When it comes to baking, the tiny kitchen is trickier — and I have cooked and baked in tiny kitchens before (think 16-foot travel trailer) but never one this inefficient and poorly supplied. Bread-baking was out, but I didn’t want to entirely give up on quick breads like scones and biscuits. And anyway, I like the challenge of finding work-arounds for what’s missing, the satisfaction of making do, as generations before me have done!

For biscuits this Sunday morning, I was glad that I’d already stocked some all-purpose flour, baking powder and baking soda, salt and butter. I was missing buttermilk, but I stirred plain yogurt and milk together to make an approximation of buttermilk (one can also use milk with a little lemon juice). I used a coffee cup for my cup measure, and a regular teaspoon to approximately measure the soda, baking powder and salt. I cut the butter into the flour mixture with my fingers, added the yogurt-milk mixture and–because I wanted to make “Everything biscuits,” some of Trader Joe’s “Everything but the bagel” mix (a mixture of sesame, poppy, dried onion, garlic and salt). I rolled out the dough using an empty bottle, cut it into rounds with a small drinking glass.

I lacked the pastry brush to brush a little milk on top so the seeds would stick to the biscuits, so I once again used my fingers.

The oven took a little adjustment, as I had no idea how accurate it was, but miraculously, after 10 minutes of baking, I had the cutest little tasty biscuits to accompany the fruit and yogurt and the Sunday paper.

SO OFTEN PEOPLE THINK they can’t do something unless they have all the right equipment — and so often that’s not true. I came to realize how little one really needed when I was a migrant fruit picker, living in a 16-foot trailer, learning from people who were used to making do. (“Still living with a biscuit state of mind” is an essay I wrote years ago on that very topic.)

Still, even though these biscuits didn’t require so much equipment, making them made me really appreciate all I did need and have: a large bowl, a functioning oven, a baking sheet, and–most essential and amazing–my two working hands.

Biscuits

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons cold butter, cut in four pieces
• 3/4 cup cold buttermilk
• optional: for Everything Biscuits: a tablespoon or so of a mix of sesame and poppy seeds, dehydrated onion and garlic –Trader Joe’s or your own

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and soda together in a bowl and cut or rub in the butter until it’s in little pieces the size of peas. Stir in the buttermilk with a fork until the mixture comes together as a moist, but not sticky dough.

Turn onto a floured board and knead just a couple times (you never want to overwork a baking powder/soda dough). Roll out the dough about 3/4″ thick with a rolling pin (or a wine bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin), cut into biscuit shapes with a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass dipped in flour. You’ll have 10 to 12 biscuits or so depending on the size. Any leftover dough can be just formed by hand into a little patty (or you can make them all this way).

For Everything Biscuits, brush biscuits with milk and sprinkle the seed mixture on top

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for about 10 minutes (check sooner if your biscuits are small), or till they’re golden. Serve hot.

Tip: I like to roll out the dough, then fold it in half and roll again. This makes it so the biscuits break open neatly in the middle when you want to put on some butter, jam, honey, etc.

 

Summer breakfast

ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS about summer is my everyday breakfast. It’s simple: plain yogurt, topped with fresh fruit and granola. But each day I enjoy it with seasonal fruit– raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, apricots, peaches, plums or pears — and I consider it a treat!

Some years ago I wrote here about a granola made with very little oil and some applesauce, to reduce the granola’s usual high calorie count. Well, I have to say, that granola was good, but it was just a little too spartan! (for granola, that is. Muesli, which doesn’t have oil, would be a good alternative if you’re seriously watching weight — and it’s also good with yogurt and fruit.)

These days I just make a more classic granola, using a mixture of oil, maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon to coat the oats, and add a healthy dose of nuts and seeds. It’s not the richest granola you will ever taste (I know someone who makes granola with butter rather than oil, for example) but it’s pretty darned good.

Oh– and is it caloric? Yup, I’m sure it is, but if you just use it as a topping, you can justify that little luxury, can’t you?

This recipe will just about fill a quart jar of granola. Or put some in a zip-lock bag and take it with you on a road trip, on the plane or camping. Make a double batch and share with friends. You can easily adjust the nuts, seeds, spices and dried fruit to your taste (for example, I don’t use almonds as Steve is allergic to them; but hazelnuts or walnuts are great alternatives).

With this recipe and some fresh fruit, it just may be summer all year long!

Summer Morning Granola

• 2 1/2 cups oats (preferably organic)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon (more or less to your taste) cinnamon,  or other spice (cardamom, ginger, etc.) or mixture
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup coarsely chopped nuts
•  2 to 4 Tablespoons seeds (sunflower, flax, sesame)
• 1/4 cup oil (I use grapeseed)
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• optional: dried fruit such as raisins, dried cranberries, dried apricots

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees

2. Combine the oats, salt and spice(s) in a large bowl.

3. Stir in nuts and seeds to distribute.

4. In a small pan (or microwave bowl) combine oil and maple syrup and gently heat to warm. Add water and vanilla; whisk together and pour over the oat mixture.

5. Spread out the mixture evenly on a rimmed cookie sheet and bake for about 30 minutes or until a toasty golden brown. (It’s a good idea to check the mixture after 25 minutes.)

6. Let cool in the pan atop a rack, then add raisins or other dried fruit if desired. Store in a quart glass jar or other container.

 

1

Matzo Caffee a la Dad

ON  PASSOVER, WHEN WE’RE FORBIDDEN to eat any of the five grains–wheat, oats spelt, rye, barley — except in the form of matzo,  naturally a number of specific recipes involving matzo developed. I’ve been thinking about all the food traditions I grew up with on this holiday, realizing that I make an effort to keep some of them, fail to keep others and toss some away without regret.

For example, I do make kneidlach (matzo balls) for a chicken or vegetarian soup and matzo brei for a special breakfast, but I don’t make a roasted turkey with my mother’s wonderful matzo-mushroom stuffing. I fail to make an authentic fermented beet borscht as my Baba (my mother’s mother) did — but come to think of it, I don’t remember my mother making this either. Perhaps she made it before I was of an age to remember, and gave it up.  She let Manischewitz handle the borscht-making and served the ruby-colored soup hot or cold, pouring it into bowls in which we’d crumbled matzo pieces and topping it with a dollop of sour cream, great for a Passover lunch.

And despite my fond memories of making sponge cake with my mother for the Seder dinner — besides the matzo meal, nine eggs were required, with silky-beaten yolks and whipped egg whites in the batter, and a frosting of egg whites and honey — I prefer my own custom of making flourless chocolate walnut torte.

One of my favorite Passover matzo traditions  is one that my father introduced,  a simple European treat that he would make nearly every day of the eight-day holiday, starting on the first morning: Matzo Coffee. We knew by its German name, Matzo Kaffee. Or, in a more personal rendition, Matzo Caffee a la Dad.

Passover in Chicago, April 2000. Dad was 89 then.

Dad would break most of a sheet of matzo into his coffee cup, crunching it into small pieces, then adding sugar and milk to the cup.

Finally, he poured hot coffee into the cup, right to the brim.

The result was softened, sweetened matzo floating about in some milky coffee. We made a similar children’s version, Matzo Cocoa, which was simply broken-up matzo pieces covered with hot chocolate. Both Matzo Kaffee and Matzo Cocoa are hybrids of food-and-beverage: you take sips of the coffee or cocoa and spoon out the softened bits of flavored matzo. Mmmmm.

I admit, it’s not for everyone. It has very little nutritional value, and doesn’t hold a candle to a good coffee and buttered toast or a croissant. Most people who didn’t grow up with it look upon it with disdain, as if you had torn up a piece of toast into little pieces and tossed them into a cup of cappuccino.

It’s certainly not an essential food for Passover, but rather a minor tradition, probably born of the monotony of eating dry, unsalted matzo day after day. Whatever others thought, we  loved it and had it (or the cocoa version) often, either for breakfast or for an afternoon snack. Still today, for me the taste and messy consumption of Matzo Caffee ala Dad  carries so many pleasurable associations.

My father — in a play on the word Seder, which means order — insisted there was a also a certain order to be observed when making Matzo Kaffee. On the last Passover of his life, when he was 93, he wrote the instructions for each of us four children in his inimitable handwriting.

I love the “WOW!! What a TREAT!!” which captures my Dad’s vitality and almost childlike enthusiasm, while the instruction “Do NOT change order to do it o.k.”  reminds me of the authoritarian side of his character.

Twelve years after he wrote it, this little card is one of my most treasured documents from my father. And, yes, of course, I’m still enjoying that special Passover treat, Matzo Caffee a la Dad.

The best food gift

The aluminum pan makes it easy to give a generous amount of homemade cinnamon rolls. No returns necessary.

OF COURSE THE BEST FOOD GIFT is (usually) something homemade. A lot of cookies and candy are exchanged this time of year, and I’ve enjoyed some marvelous biscotti, truffles and shortbread, but in years past I’ve also received homemade applesauce, spaghetti sauce, flavored vinegar and herbal salt, among other edible delights.

This week I made a couple pans of cinnamon rolls for my neighbors, and another for a special breakfast at home. They have some wheat and spelt flour along with all-purpose flour, no frosting and very little fat — so while I wouldn’t say they were “healthy,” they are not too destructive. And they have plenty of cinnamon and raisins, with a few walnuts on the top. My basic recipe is here.

Cinnamon rolls are more flexible than you might think. You could add other spices (cardamom), leave out the raisins or the nuts or add in some different things (dried cranberries and pistachios?) You can make the dough and shape the rolls the night before you want to bake them, and they will rise in the refrigerator. Once baked, they can be frozen or reheated.

Toby’s Feed Barn (what a great name) is a terrific general store in Point Reyes Station, California

CINNAMON ROLLS will make your house smell wonderful.  And, best of all — if your neighbors are anything like mine — are the big smiles you’ll get when you appear at your neighbor’s door with a pan of the rolls, still warm from the oven.

Good morning, granola

In case you haven’t heard yet, homemade granola is sooooo much better than most of what you’ll find in stores (that is, unless you want to pay a small fortune).

I’ve been making granola for years now, but until recently I just kept fiddling with the recipe and it never seemed quite right. The really delicious granola was too full of fat and sugar and calories to qualify as a breakfast food. When I tried to keep it somewhat healthful and modest in calories, it was little more than toasted oats and not too enticing.

Eventually, I adopted some guidelines for tasty and pretty-good-for-you granola:

• Use applesauce and a little water for moisture and sweetness
• Stay in control of the nuts — they’re delicious and healthy but highly caloric!
• Don’t turn the granola for the first half hour if you want some clumps in the mixture
• Skip the dried fruit (if you do use it, put it in after the granola is done baking); fresh fruit is lower in calories and delicious

Probably most important, if you don’t want  your breakfast granola to make you fat, use it as a topping rather than serving yourself a big bowl of it! I love having it atop yogurt and fresh fruit — just a few tablespoons adds crunch and interest.

Plus, using it only as a topping means your precious jar of granola will last longer.

Usually I have fruit and yogurt and granola all summer long, and switch to steel cut oats when the weather turns cooler. But this fall, I just haven’t been able to give up my granola! The fruit is not as varied as above, but I defrost some of the berries I froze during the summer, and sometimes add some apple or pear.

So, here’s the recipe below — and I know some of you will want to add dried coconut so go ahead — if you must!! (I don’t like it).  Variations are limited only by one’s taste and imagination!

Good Morning Granola

• 3 cups rolled oats, regular or thick (not instant)
• 1/3 cups nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pecans — whatever you like), coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon flax seeds (and sometimes I add another tablespoon of sesame seeds)
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon oil (olive, canola, sunflower, etc.)
• 2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 -2 teaspoons spices or to taste (your choice: cinnamon and/or ginger are good; I sometimes like garam masala)
• 1 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Warm up the applesauce, water, oil, honey, brown sugar, vanilla, spices and salt and stir the mixture together in a big bowl.
3. Add the oats, nuts and seeds to the liquid mixture and stir until the oats are well coated.
4. Spread the oat mixture out on a cookie sheet and bake on an upper rack for 30 minutes.
5. Open the oven and gently (so as not to break up the clumps) turn the granola, moving the darker pieces along the edges to the middle.
6. Bake another 8 to 10 minutes, then check to see if it is dark enough. It should be a dark golden color. If it needs to bake more, check it every few minutes so it doesn’t burn. The granola will get crisper as it cools.
7. Take out the cookie sheet and put it on a baking rack to cool completely before you put it in a jar.

Good things in March

Oatmeal scones with currants — and lemon marmalade

If not for St. Patrick’s Day coming up (a celebration in my family, which I wrote about here), mid-March would be kind of bleak, noted for the Ides of March (the occasion of Julius Caesar’s assassination). It’s an in-between season, neither winter or spring.

It is still rainy and blustery here, still a time to enjoy pots of soup accompanied by crusty bread.  But there are those times when you run out of bread and wish for some nice heart-warming baked goods you could whip up and take out of the oven in just about half an hour from the time you thought of it.  I’m here to tell you it can be done!

A recipe I came up with recently, oatmeal scones, is quick, easy and satisfying. You can make it plain or add currants, lemon zest or caraway seeds for a very respectable substitute for Irish soda bread (which Americans seem to remember only once a year — and then it turns out the authentic version is not what we had in mind anyway.)

This afternoon the idea of oatmeal scones materialized into a plateful of them so quickly that Steve could hardly believe it. Set the oven to 425 degrees now, and you can be eating them soon.

If you’re in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit, serve them with something green –perhaps Anna Thomas’ green soup,  a skillet full of sauteed chard or kale with some garlic and lemon, or maybe a chopped kale-lemon-walnut salad like the one I made today.

Kale-lemon-walnut salad, inspired by a Portland friend

For the salad, finely chop a bunch of lacinato kale and one medium organic (or unwaxed) lemon, skin and all. Add a quarter cup of chopped toasted walnuts. (Some chopped apple would be good in this too. Or some dried cranberries.) Sprinkle with salt and drizzle in as much olive oil as you like, perhaps adding more lemon juice (stir in half a teaspoon of honey if it’s too sour for you). Very healthy!

Now would you like that scone recipe? I’ve kept the recipe small-ish (6 scones) because these really are best fresh. But if you’d like to make a dozen, it’s no problem at all to double the recipe.

Oatmeal scones (makes 6)

• 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or substitute all-purpose flour)
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup oats (not quick-cooking)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons cold butter, cut in small pieces
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup nonfat yogurt
• 2 tablespoons currants (optional)
• zest of one lemon; 1 teaspoon caraway seeds (both optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

2. In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flours, oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, brown sugar)

3. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the butter is the size of small peas

4. In a separate bowl or large measuring cup, mix the egg and yogurt together, then add to the dry ingredients, mixing only until it comes together into a soft dough.

5. Sprinkle a generous portion of oats on a counter or wooden board. Form the dough into a thick circle about 6 inches in diameter and lightly press the dough into the oats on each side, so the disc is coated with oats on both sides. Then cut the dough into six wedges, like this:

6. Put the wedges on a baking sheet and bake for about 12 minutes, till golden. Serve them warm.

On any day of the year, these scones will go well with both savories and sweets, from breakfast to coffee or tea time to dinner.

I must say these scones were delicious with lemon marmalade, accompanied by a  strong cup of Irish Breakfast tea. They lifted my spirits,  chased away the March blues, and almost made me forget the tea was decaf!

November pumpkins, apples and pears

It turned into November here around mid-October, before I even had time to celebrate that wonderful month in this blog (but I have been celebrating the birth of my grandson, Levi, in mid-October!).

Still, even in November, there are the sights and smells and tastes of autumn.

Bread box with squash, Anjou Bakery, Cashmere, Washington

Cool rainy weather inspired me to go back to the old staples. The minestrone soup, the leek-potato soup, the roasted vegetables and baked squash, the mushroom risotto, the slow-rise bread and any-night pizza.

Slow-rise bread with rye, wheat and various seeds

I often keep pizza dough in the fridge so I can make this in a jiffy. Roasted red pepper spread often stands in for pizza sauce.

It’s also still a wonderful time for apples and pears.  At the farmers’ market in Port Townsend, I was thrilled to find Cox’s Orange Pippin apples, a wonderfully flavorful apple that is rarely grown in the U.S.

Cox’s Orange Pippin, apple of choice in the UK

We visited friends in Cashmere, and Maggie and Scott gave us Bosc pears and King David apples (a variety I’d never tasted before — and it is a fantastic apple: crisp and juicy with a delicious tart-sweet flavor).

Bosc pears and King David apples

Four of the pears ripened at once. We ate two of them for dessert last night; then this morning, I peeled and sliced the other two and sauteed them with a touch of sugar and cinnamon, then laid them in a skillet and poured over an egg-y batter to make a Dutch Baby.

Yes, you read that right. It’s a type of pancake that’s cooked in a skillet inside the oven, where it puffs up into a golden wonder, like a giant popover. (The name derived from the German-American immigrants known as Pennsylvania Dutch, “Dutch” being a corruption of the word “Deutsch.” The “baby” part is said to have been coined by a Seattle restaurant in the 40s.)

Dutch Baby with pears

My dad used to make this for a Sunday breakfast or light supper (we always just called it “oven pancake” or “German pancake”).  Not only is it easy to make, but it’s so impressive when it comes out of the oven. Any way you make it –with fruit on the bottom (apples are more traditional) or atop or not at all– it’s a keeper.

Here’s Marion Cunningham’s recipe for Dutch Babies, from The Breakfast Book

• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• Confectioners’ (powdered) sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Butter one 12-inch skillet or four 6-inch small skillets (with ovenproof handles) or pans (you can use small pie pans or cake pans).
2. Break the eggs into a small mixing bowl and beat until thoroughly mixed. Add the milk and blend well.
3. Sift the flour and salt onto a square of waxed paper. Lift the waxed paper up by two corners and let the flour slowly drift into the egg and milk, whisking steadily. Or slowly sift the flour and salt directly into the egg mixture, while whisking to blend and smooth. Add the melted butter and mix briskly so the batter is smooth.
4. Pour the batter into the pan or pans and bake for 15 minutes at 450 degrees. If you are baking small pancakes, they will be done after 15 minutes. If you are baking just one big pancake, reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake another 10 minutes.
5. Sprinkle lemon juice over the pancake (or pancakes) and dust the top(s) with confectioners’ sugar. Serve at once.
   

   It was a little messy and so delicious

Breakfast Blue Plate special

Loads of blueberries are the basis for a fruity clafouti

It’s almost end-of-summer blues, but there’s still time to celebrate the blues — blueberries, that is.

Of course, I’ve already made blueberry jam and blueberry pancakes, but there were some terrific blueberry desserts I wanted to try.

Then again, I didn’t want to eat too many desserts. Well, I solved that problem by simply calling these treats breakfast. Sunday breakfast, that is.

A sprinkling of powdered sugar and the clafoutis is ready to eat

Clafoutis –the end of the word rhymes with “fruity” — is a French recipe which is basically a baked pancake, with a lot of fruit. Julia Child gives a perfectly fine recipe for it, which I changed only very slightly:

Blueberry Clafoutis adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

• 3 cups fresh blueberries
• 1 ¼ cups milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• finely grated zest of a medium lemon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350F.

1. Whisk or blend everything except for the blueberries.
2. Pour ¼ inch of the mixture into a 9-inch pie plate.
3. Place in the oven for 5 or so minutes, or until the bottom has set slightly.
4. Remove from the oven, spread the blueberries across the dish, and pour over the rest of the batter. Smooth over the top.
5. Place in the middle of the preheated oven and bake for about 50 to 60 minutes or until set. It will puff and brown, and a knife inserted into the middle will come out clean.
6. Let cool slightly and sprinkle the top with powdered sugar before serving. May be served warm or room temperature.
   

I thought I would stop with the clafoutis (last Sunday’s breakfast) but this Sunday I realized I couldn’t let the whole blueberry season go by without making at least one Blueberry Boy Bait. The name alone makes me want to bake this!

Blueberry Boy Bait, fresh out of the oven

I wrote about this wonderful cake (and how it got its name) last year in this blog, so you can find the story and recipe here.

With some fruit and eggs, you could justify having cake for breakfast

Somehow, if you call it coffee cake –and if it’s a Sunday — it seems fine to serve it for breakfast, along with The New York Times!

A fresh summer jam session

I’m in love with fruit, and summer is a great celebration of it.

The other day I went to a you-pick farm “out in the county” and picked eight pounds of strawberries in hardly any time at all, while Steve took a nap in the car.  We ate a lot of fresh strawberries over the next few days, and gave some to friends and put them in our yogurt and granola and in our salads too.

But I still had plenty left over to make a small batch of fresh summer jam.

Anybody who’s made jam knows that it takes an appalling amount of sugar. Even the low-sugar jams require a significant amount, needed to preserve them.

But if you plan to eat it right up, you can make a nice loose summer jam — between a sauce and a jam — with just a little bit of sugar. I was inspired by Nigel Slater’s marvelous book, Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard.

So, I crushed about a pound-and-a-half of strawberries in a good size pot, added a quarter-cup of sugar (you can add more to your taste — Slater uses 1/2 cup) and a couple squeezes of fresh lemon juice.  I cooked it over medium heat for 15 or 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and skimming off the pink foamy stuff. When it thickened up (it doesn’t really set like regular jam) it was ready.  It kept well in the fridge for a few days, but I liked bringing it to room temperature or even warming it up to serve.

I swirled this crimson strawberry jam into vanilla yogurt for dessert (it would be lovely with whipped cream or ice cream as well) and served it on buttered toasted baguette to our friends.  I put a little jar of it in the freezer to see if I could thaw out a taste of summer sometime in November.

Now there was just enough jam left for breakfast this morning.

That jam seemed to call on me to make a batch of biscuits.

A Sunday morning in summer, with biscuits and fresh strawberry jam. Yum.

Picnics (and more) on the road

Picnic in Wilbur, Washington

We recently returned from yet another great road trip to Montana. We’re not big meat eaters, so dining out is always a challenge in the interior West. As an alternative (and an economical one too), we ate a lot of picnics on the road.

A windy picnic along Highway 12, between Miles City and Baker, Montana

Here’s what we were eating (along with some dust):

The multi-grain bread, from a bakery in Miles City, Montana, was terrific

Our picnics were pretty basic: bread and cheese, sometimes some green onions, cucumber or carrots, and fresh fruit. But they were good and relatively healthy. The challenge was to find good bread and fruit. In light of that, I came up with a couple of rules for the road:

1. Never pass up a good bakery (you may need to search for one)

Le Petit Outre bakery, Missoula, Montana

Focaccia from Missoula made a great accompaniment to salad in our motel room in Davenport, Wash. on the return trip.

2. Never pass up a fruit stand or farmers’ market.

A great fruit stand in orchard country, Orondo, Washington

Missoula has a wonderful farmers' market on Saturdays. My friend Kathy also recommends the Livingston farmers' market on Wednesday afternoons.

I did a lot less cooking than last year’s motel cooking extravaganza, but I still brought along the important supplies: electric tea kettle, cutting board, knife, can opener, lemon reamer, bulgur, olive oil and salt, which resulted in some nice salad dressings (my basic lemon, olive oil and salt dressing is good on nearly everything) and a couple of bulgur-vegetable salads.

Bulgur salad with plenty of vegetables (along with bread from Anjou Bakery in Cashmere, Wash.) was a good change from the bread & cheese combo.

Our picnics often took place outside a motel room.

Beer before dinner at the Stardust Motel in Wallace, Idaho

I put together this meal of bulgur salad and tuna in the "rustic" Highlander Motel in White Sulfur Springs (W.S.S.), Montana.

We tried eating outside the motel room, until the mosquitoes emerged.

As for eating out, a couple times we indulged in a milk shake as a meal replacement.

Chocolate-espresso shake at Butterfly Herb, Missoula

Steve particularly likes going out to breakfast, but after some disappointing breakfasts at promising-looking cafes, I came up with a guideline for telling when a place might be most likely to fulfill that promise: If a cafe offers hash browns or home fries made from scratch, rather than slabs of processed frozen spuds, there’s a better chance of a good breakfast.

(Apparently the phrase “home cooking” these days includes a lot of processed foods, so it’s not a good indicator.)

The Dizzy Diner in Terry, Montana, used frozen hash browns, but Steve liked his breakfast anyway. I only had a cup of coffee here.

The Corner Cafe in Creston, Washington, makes their hash browns from scratch. I complimented the cook.

In regard to breakfast, another aspect that helped me out was bringing along a good stash of homemade granola.

On the way home, we stopped again at that fruit stand in Orondo, Wash.

We bought cherries and apricots. And honey.

Breakfast at home the next day was mighty good too!

 

p.s. Some places it’s easier to find good picnic food — I really like this post about picnics in Europe.