Archive for September, 2009
Me and my shadow — a self portrait
September 29, 2009Instant and nutritious soft-serve ice cream
September 29, 2009
Here’s a recipe for a quick, easy and healthful sugar-free ice cream. In fact, it’s as much a delivery system for vitamins, phytonutrients and minerals as it is a dessert. A small food processor works great for this. Just drop in 1 frozen and chopped banana*, 1 heaping teaspoon cocoa powder, and 2-4 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream. As an option, I like to add a tablespoon or two of whey protein concentrate for the glutathione-building cysteine. Blend until smooth and creamy. You may have to stop the machine once or twice to scrape down sides and make sure all the banana chunks get blended in. You can also make a fruit version with frozen strawberries or even fresh peaches. Just adjust the amount of cream to make it work. This recipe is for one serving. You can make a bigger batch in a Cuisinart or larger machine.
* Choose small bananas that are still slightly green as they contain less starch. When you find some like this in the store, buy a bunch. Peel and freeze ahead of time.
The weather is here, the food is too
September 25, 2009
It is now the third day of fall and the fifth day of winter. Thursday while en route to buy hay at the Schneider Ranch south of Westcliffe I was distracted by my camera’s viewfinder and came home with this photo. There was only a small window of opportunity, and by the time the hay was loaded and I was headed for the barn, the snow had melted off the lower reaches of the mountains, and the storm clouds were again building.
Changing subjects, I have had the good luck to have enjoyed some very memorable meals over the years. Some at high-end restaurants. Some prepared by family and friends. Some even prepared by myself, a fairly competent home cook/hash-slinger.
However there are three meals that stand out in my mind more so than others. A Beef Wellington prepared in a wood-fired oven at Bear Basin Ranch. A leg of lamb with vegetables cooked on an open fire at hunting camp in the Sangres. An then there was an Orange Roughy Provencial I ate last night. What these three dishes have in common is that they all were cooked by Paris-trained Chef Stephane over the many years I have known him. The fish dish I ate as the guest of Elodia Bojorquez and Jeff Gillingham at the Westcliffe Feed Store restaurant. There were also appetizers of artichoke dip and escargot, a pot roast that many people at the table ordered and of which I had a taste, and desserts. It was all really damn good.
The intellectual discussion with the chef and the rest of our party at the bar afterward was also mighty fine, and I suppose I went home feeling as if I had just been to someone’s home for dinner.
Stephane is a true artist, and the ambience at the Feed Store is a fitting atmosphere for his fine food. If you are within driving or even flying distance, I suggest you check out his restaurant, and tell him I sent you. The restaurant is closed for a private Art for the Sangres party this evening, but regular hours will resume Saturday. And if you find yourself seated at the bar, see if you can find the mule in the intricate carving of horses that graces the back wall. It’s perhaps visible only over a sparkling glass of French Champagne.
First day of fall, third day of winter
September 23, 2009
It must be the weather but it seems plenty of folks are interested in my book recommendations, especially Thomas McGuane. For those who are not acquainted with McGuane, New Yorker has archived his short fiction piece, “Cowboy,” which also appears in the collection “Gallatin Canyon.” Like “Keep the Change” character Joe Starling, I am “startled at how well” McGuane can write “bad English.” His readers will know what I mean.
Some of my top-shelf books
September 22, 2009On a gloomy day recently I straightened up my bookcase and the task led to some reflection on the great books — along with some of the great notions contained in them — that I have relegated to the top shelf over the years. For instance I was reminded in Thomas McGuane’s fine collection of essays called “Some Horses” that it is “not the duty of the horse to be a biofeedback mechanism for yearning humans.”
I suppose with some literary license that could be extended to burros/donkeys and dogs. But I digress . . .
Most astounding was a count of 18 books by Jim Harrison, and I suppose it is true that I am a fan. These books include, novels, collections of novellas, non-fiction essays, a memoir and two volumes of poetry. Harrison rose to prominence with his classic “Legends of the Fall,” which is the best story ever told in under 100 pages. Other Harrison favorites include the novella collections, “The Beast God Forgot to Invent,” “Julip,” “The Woman Lit by Fireflies,” and “The Summer He Didn’t Die,” each of which contains a Brown Dog story. And then there are the more recent “Returning to Earth” and “The English Major,” which I really enjoyed. His “The Raw and the Cooked” is as fine a collection of essays on food as has ever been published. Most of Harrison’s books have the trademark Russell Chatham painting on the cover.
Also on the top shelf are some books by Cormac McCarthy. I started reading McCarthy with his breakthrough “All the Pretty Horses,” and I found the other two books in his border trilogy, “The Crossing” and “Cities of the Plain” just as dense and compelling. More recently his more straight-forward “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road” have placed McCarthy among the best authors of our time. However, I don’t care for anything he wrote prior to the border trilogy. The film version of “The Road” is due in movie theaters in October.
Other top-shelf books: “Querencia” by Stephen Bodio; Animal Dreams” and “High Tide in Tucson” by Barbara Kingsolver, “Blood and Thunder” by Hampton Sides; “Keep the Change” by Thomas McGuane; “Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs” by Wallace Stegner; “The Rites of Autumn” by Dan O’Brien; “The VIllage Horse Doctor” by Ben K. Green; “This House of Sky” by Ivan Doig; “Essays of E.B. White”; “Make Prayers to the Raven” by Richard K. Nelson.
I keep these books on my top shelf because I find them worth re-reading from time to time. I’m writing about them because I think they are worth sharing.
Goodbye to summer and two horses
September 15, 2009Late summer has its many faces here in the Wet Mountains, from the blustery days when you first notice the edges of the aspens turning, to the clear blue days that seem to never end as summer becomes fall. But they will. Eventually the leaves will fall and usually some whopper of a snowstorm will bring it all to an end sometime around Halloween.
Last Thursday was one of those blustery days. I hauled two horses from the ranch I caretake out to Mission Wolf, where they will fulfill their final missions in the circle of life. Star was chronically lame from an old injury (shattered coffin bone) and painfully blind in one eye. Ciao, was elderly and his body was bumpy with tumors from head to tail; recent winters have been very tough on this kind old soul. It was particularly painful for me to load Ciao for this journey, but Star caused me more emotional turmoil by not loading easily.
It’s an 80-mile round trip, much of it on bad road, from here to the wolf sanctuary. The landscape of the western flanks of the southern Wet Mountains has a much different feel, with rolling tan hills of grass and clumps of aspens. It’s backdropped by a spectacular view of the southern Sangre de Cristos, from Tijeras Peak to Mount Lindsey. With these jagged peaks shredding the dark gray clouds the scene was fittingly melancholy.
The folks at the wolf sanctuary were very gracious and helpful in unloading. As much as I favor the idea of these animals not going to waste, it was still one of the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken. But dead is dead, and the wolves need to eat too. Before I drove away I was caught off-guard when handed a receipt made out to the ranch for a sizable charitable donation.
It was perhaps a mistake to glance back from the ridge overlooking the wolf sanctuary as I drove up the washboarded Ophir Creek Road. I could see the small figures of Star and Ciao grazing peacefully with two other horses awaiting their fates, and the scene cast a pall over the next couple days especially with the weather turning gloomy.
Saturday morning, some levity. I had received a call the previous evening from Dave over at Bear Basin Ranch, the local dude outfit. Three of their cattle have been mixed in with ours for some time. Dave had a Cowboy Weekend group coming in and needed to retrieve his three beasts for their team sorting activities.
I went over with one of my saddle donkeys, Ace, and found all the cattle — our nine head and their three — in some thick brush and timber. It wasn’t much work to get the herd moving, and Ace kept them pinned against a fence and trailed them all the way across the school section pasture to the corral.
I heard some voices off in the trees, and soon Justin, one of the Bear Basin wranglers, showed up on his horse. Pretty quickly the two of us had the three white-faced Bear Basin cattle sorted and penned in a corral. Meanwhile, the rest of the cattle meandered on up the hill.
Dave and the rest of the group showed up shortly and we devised a plan to get the three white-faced beeves on their way back to Bear Basin. All these cowboys had to do was block about 100 feet of an opening to the corral so the cattle would move out the gate and onto the road.
But it didn’t work that way.
I watched as Justin let the cattle out of the pen. Two of them started to go the way we planned, but the third decided to break away and go with the herd, resulting in a rodeo. The last thing I saw Dave and Justin were chasing the three renegades up the hill and trying to haze them back toward the corral.
As rode off on Ace I joked with one of the dudes about how one guy on a donkey could round up the whole herd, but it took eight guys on horseback to let three of them get away.
Here in the high country life does, indeed, go on.
Net-worth vs. self-worth
September 11, 2009My column in Colorado Central magazine this month has generated some good feedback, so I’ve decided to share it with Hardscrabble Times readers. It’s about emotions stirred up by the visit of a dear friend, my high school buddy, whom I had not seen in 23 years, and whose life is quite different from mine. To read a slightly different version of the full column, click here.
Another reason to avoid NSAIDs
September 3, 2009It’s been known that ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs may delay healing and come with other side effects. Now a study of runners at the Western States 100 indicates taking ibuprofen during the event significantly increased inflammation, adversely affected the immune system, impaired kidney function and caused bacteria to leak from the colon into the bloodstream.
Nice, huh? Seventy percent of entrants used ibuprofen during the race.
This only adds to the list of reasons I very rarely use NSAIDs of any type. Instead I consume a variety of anti-inflammatory foods that include EPA fish oil, ginger, turmeric, raw sesame seeds and oil, citrus peel, onions and garlic.
In addition, I limit or avoid foods that cause inflammation. These include vegetable oils, refined carbohydrate foods like bread and pasta and foods that contain sugar, and hydrogenated oils (trans fats).
Other lifestyle factors that contribute to inflammation include overexercising and too much anaerobic activity such as weight-lifting, and exposure to certain environmental toxins.
Inflammation is no joke and can do much more harm than just messing up your run. Chronic inflammation has been linked to many diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. For more information about the dangers of inflammation and how to control it, check out Dr. Phil Maffetone’s book, “In Fitness and In Health.”
Do you have orthorexia nervosa?
September 1, 2009Does an obsession with healthy eating mean you have an eating disorder? Researchers in Britain say cases of orthorexia nervosa are on the rise.
I’ve been aware of orthorexia for many years, having written about it in the Maffetone Report when I edited that newsletter. It’s basically an aversion to certain foods, often foods that are healthful, because of some often misguided fear that these foods are actually unhealthful. We see this with vegetarians who don’t eat meat despite millions of years of evolution that have uniquely equipped human beings for the consumption of animal foods. These foods contain many nutrients absolutely necessary for good health including all essential amino acids, iron, zinc and vitamins B12 and A.
Likewise, many people avoid eggs in the belief they alone raise cholesterol levels, though the largest medical study ever conducted (The Framingham Study) has shown this to be untrue.
Now this might stir up emotions among my vegetarian friends, and perhaps it should. But how would you view someone who doesn’t eat vegetables and fruit for health reasons?
In contrast, humans have only eaten grain products for the last few thousand years. Only in recent times have large amounts of refined grain products (foods made from flour) become the staple. Medical science shows that eating these grain products raises insulin levels in many people, thus causing fat storage. The result of so many people making this food a staple is an overweight, disease-ridden society.
Of course I avoid meat produced at “factory” or feedlot operations, opting instead for local pasture-raised animal products or wild game. And I limit intake of refined grain products, sugar and hydrogenated oils (trans fats). I don’t think I have orthorexia but some may disagree.
I suppose it all depends on whether a desire to be healthy is backed by science, and whether it’s negatively impacting your health — or disrupting your life in general. Otherwise a diet based in real, whole foods, along with a healthy dose of moderation seems like a good plan.
