World sports clerk and Tiny Strings blogger Brent Stecker obeyed my command and sent in some photos of his family cats dressed up for the holidays.  Though Maynard definitely seems a bit distressed at this whole process, Mykonos seems pretty okay with it. For now. Here’s what Brent had to say:

“The large orange fellow is Maynard, a gigantic Maine coon who isn’t usually cooperative for shenanigans — kind of like a real-life Garfield. The gray kitten is Mykonos, who is little and starved for attention, so she is a lot easier to position for such photos. In the Stecker family, watching cats is the No. 1 form of entertainment, so when my sister’s train home was delayed all day on Christmas, we had to find alternative ways to make them entertain us. Thus, we took Christmas photos with them. As you can see, Maynard was not down with playing Santa, and I had difficulty wrestling with his 15+ lbs. frame to get him in position for the shot. Mykonos’ picture went off without a hitch, but we forgot to take off the green collar with bells on it and found her 10 minutes later in the kitchen rubbing up against a post desperately trying to get it off. Oops.”

Thanks, Brent, for agreeing to share your kitties’ humiliation with us all! And don’t forget to send in your pet pics to pruitt@wenatcheeworld.com with “Pet” in the subject line. I’ll be waiting for more photos.

Next up: We start profiling World staff pets, from the small and furry to the large and hoof-y!

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Brisket with Portobello Mushrooms and Cranberries

Today is red meat, red wine weather. I was going to post this last week but, understandably for me, forgot to do it. This is a recipe which calls for long, slow cooking. Some of it can even be done the day ahead. It will make a hearty New Years Day dinner, as it’s a little late for tonight. I found the original recipe in an old issue of Gourmet magazine. We like the sauce with wild and white rice or mashed potatoes.

1 cup dry red wine
1 cup beef or chicken broth
1/2 cup frozen cranberry juice cocktail concentrate, thawed
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 large onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 4-pound trimmed flat-cut brisket 12 ounces medium portobello mushrooms, dark gills scraped away, caps thinly sliced
1 cup dried cranberries (about 4 ounces)

Preheat oven to 300′. In a medium bowl, whisk wine, broth, cranberry concentrate and flour to blend; pour into 15×10x2 inch roasting pan. Mix in onion, garlic and rosemary. Sprinkle brisket on all sides with salt and pepper and place, fat side up, in roasting pan. Spoon some of wine mixture over. Cover pan tightly with heavy-duty foil. 

Bake brisket until very tender, basting with pan juices every hour, about 3 1/2 hours. Transfer brisket to plate; cool 1 hour at room temperature. Thinly slice brisket across grain. Arrange slices in pan with sauce, overlapping slices slightly. (Brisket can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place mushrooms and cranberries in sauce around brisket. Cover pan with foil. Bake until mushrooms are tender and brisket is heated through, about 30 minutes (40 minutes if brisket has been refrigerated).

Transfer sliced brisket and sauce to platter and serve.

Wine suggestions:  Wedge Mtn. Winery: Red Mtn. Cab; Ryan Patrick Winery: Reserve Cab;  Faire le Pont Winery: Elerding Cab; Tildio Winery: Robusto; or a good sturdy style Pinot Noir, probably from Oregon or California.  I also like a good Syrah/Shiraz with this dish.

You might check out the Grocery Outlet to see if they have any new reds, or were you lucky enough to get in on their big sale a few weeks ago? They had some big-name wines at astonishingly low prices, but they sold out quickly. They get in new wine regularly, however….and beer, for those who prefer it.

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About a month ago friend and coworker Kathryn Stevens called me with an emergency. She was in the salt aisle at the grocery store and didn’t know which to buy. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear my cell phone ring and missed her. She ended up buying table salt. “That’s OK,” I said. Still frustrated by her lack of salt knowledge, she begged me to tell her more about salt. Then she told me I needed to blog about it. I’ve finally acquiesced.

Salt is a fantastic thing. It’s a flavor enhancer and a food preserver. What would Prosciutto be without salt? Cookies without salt would be bland. And steak without salt, no matter the cut, isn’t worth eating.

The salts

Iodized and plain table salt

I grew up on regular iodized table salt. I still use it for baking. Some chefs and professional cooks say iodized salt shouldn’t be used because it imparts an iodine flavor on food. Well, I’ve never noticed that, but if you’re worried, use regular table salt in baking and eat seafood so you don’t get IDD (Iodine Deficiency Disorder). IDD prevention was my high school Key Club’s pet project. We provided iodized table salt to Afghanistan, I think. I’m still a fan of the iodine.

Kosher salt

Kosher salt is my favorite cooking and seasoning salt. In general, it’s not very expensive and it’s quite versatile. I like to leave a little dish of salt on the counter for seasoning. One of the reasons I love to season meats with kosher salt is that you can easily see and feel how much you’re using. Kosher salt is perfect for crusting roasts. However, I seriously advise you not to bake with it. The salt granules are too large to get an accurate measure for your baked goods.

Sea salt

Big salt, small salt, pink salt, grey salt. Sea salts come in many sizes and colors and come from many places. Some are quite expensive. Some are less expensive. One sea salt may be very different from the next. In general, these fun salts are best highlighted as a garnish or accompaniment to a food, not in a food. For example, I’ve used a larger-grained sea salt to top homemade caramels (just like these!). It’s best not to use sea salt for baking for the same reason kosher salt shouldn’t be used for baking, the granules aren’t consistently the right size.

Canning salt

Canning salt is just plain small grain salt. It doesn’t contain iodine because that could make your canned food look funny. Its best use is for canning and pickling. In a pinch, it can be used in baked goods and cooking.

Rock salt

Rock salt is most commonly used when making ice cream and deicing sidewalks. One of my favorite uses is to quickly cool drinks sitting in an ice bath. Say you have a cooler full of pop cans or bottles sitting on ice and they’re not very cold or aren’t cooling quickly. Add a couple handfulls of rock salt to the cooler full of ice and mix. The rock salt melts the ice into super-cold water which then surrounds the cans. Instead of air pockets between ice cubes (which were insulating the cans) you have cold water cooling the cans. I don’t remember where I learned this, but it works.
It kind of goes without saying, but don’t bake or cook with rock salt, it just won’t work.

Want more information on salt? See this The Cook’s Thesaurus page (with pretty pictures) all about salt.

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I have a nice bottle of Spanish cava sparkling wine, but doubt it will get popped at midnight tonight. Maybe long before, or more likely sometime this weekend. I’m one of two reporters who have to work New Year’s Day so I’ll be rising at 5 a.m. to get to work by 6:30 and go over the reports of police arrests, fires, accidents and other New Year’s Eve calamity and mayhem.

Too bad, because I love staying up late with friends and making homemade pizzas, as has been a New Year’s Eve tradition ever since I can remember. Actually, there were a couple of dishes my Grandma Micucci would make throughout the night. Several different kinds of pizzas were served, but also fried sausage and green pepper sandwiches. Along with huge plates of appetizers, these were great things to eat through the night to balance the red wine drinking and keep the party lively.

My former wife, Toby, came with her own German New Year’s Eve traditions. Her father was a German Jew who narrowly escaped Hitler’s atrocities. He took New Year’s in a new country very seriously. The family always had onion pie and creamed herring to ring in the New Year. They were always delicious and went well with champagne.

The  pizza, sausages, onion pie and herring, however, were a strange combination for friends who would join us. But it always opened the door for great conversations about our cultural diversity and the foods and holidays that were so important.

Another New Year’s Eve tradition that will be put off until this weekend is a midnight ski. Oh well, it will still be the new year Friday or Saturday, won’t it?.

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Reporter Michelle McNeil and I went to two sledding hills last Saturday to do a story about the state of sledding in the Wenatchee area. On the way to Sterling Middle School, the busiest hill around, I noticed more people than usual at Eastmont Junior High, taking advantage of a very steep slope on the southwest corner of the school property. People have used the hill before but only a few at a time that I could recall.

So while at Sterling, Michelle asked some people about the Junior High hill and was told that it was a pretty dangerous spot. One person said she saw someone crash, chest first, into one of the rocks located at the bottom of the hill in one of the corners.

We headed there next and I photographed people headed down the hill much faster than I saw at Sterling.

Notice the man in the background holding his head after his tube exploded, deflating on a piece of plastic from a broken sled.

I hung around a while longer, waiting for Maggie Carrasco to take another run down the hill on her tube and noticed she was moving along the top of the hill in a path that would take her near the rocks. She jumped on the tube and was down the hill before she could be warned. People watched at the bottom as she popped off her tube – her face glancing off a large, snow-covered rock.

We were relieved to see her get up but her first words explained that she had chipped a tooth in the experience.

The day after the story and pictures were published, the school district closed the hill.

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Tiny Strings’ Top Ten Songs of 2008

10. The Raconteurs — Consoler of the Lonely
To open up its sophomore album, Nashville’s finest hard rock band served up a slice of straight-ahead riff rock. The chorus is unique but hooky, the outro solo is sizzling, and the dichotomy between Brendan Benson’s nonchalant vocals and Jack White’s rushed delivery is refreshing.

9. The Black Keys — I Got Mine
Even though Attack and Release saw the Black Keys expanding on their repertoire, “I Got Mine” was everything you’d expect from the Keys of old: just hard-hitting, jammy blues. It’s the modern-day woodshedding guitarist’s delight.

8. Shim — The Highway
Remember the glory days of bands like Deep Purple, Foghat, and Golden Earring? Well, I don’t, but thankfully Shim is around to keep good-timin’, car-drivin’ rock-and-roll alive. “Highway” is definitely the best song of the year to get pulled over for speeding to.

7. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks — Hopscotch Willie
A classic example of Stephen Malkmus’ genius. Mixing a comically straight-forward vocal line with jam-o-riffic guitar breaks that call to mind both Dinosaur Jr. and the Allmans, “Hopscotch Willie” is THE indie rock song of ‘08.

6. My Morning Jacket — Touch Me I’m Going To Scream (Part II)
I don’t know what the best part about this song is. Is it the sweet guitar jam at the end? The dance-ready bass line? Those crazy bleepity-bloopity sounds coming from some digital autoharp-like device? Honestly, who cares? This song rules.

(more…)

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Usually I stick to writing about wine and food, but a story I wrote last week about a near disaster when Lake Wenatchee resident Bill Cottrell used a blowtorch to thaw his frozen pipes brought a great e-mail from Trudy Kain-Talbott that deserves wider reading:

Back on December 29, 1978, my late father, Archie J. Kain, decided to thaw out the pipes of our house in Entiat.

I was in my room with my then 2 year old son, Jim, and heard a loud “POP”, then the power went out, my mom came running up from the basement and screamed at me to get Jim and get out of the house, as it was on fire.  She really didn’t need to tell me that, the smoke was a HUGE clue by that point.

I got Jim into his snowsuit and outside to the car which I moved wayyyy away from the house.  The all volunteer fire-department arrived promptly, but the kitchen, utility room and dining room was a total loss.

As it turned out, my dad, in his infinite wisdom, decided to thaw the pipes in our basement with a blow torch.  Being as it was an old house, there was a certain amount of dust and cobwebs surrounding said pipes.  Those caught on fire, and quickly spread to the wireing that led to our fuse box in the kitchen.  THAT exploded.  No one was there to see it, but I’m sure there were lots of sparks involved.

I was trying to get some stuff out of the living room, since it wasn’t burning, and found two very weak looking firemen trying to move my upright grand piano out of the house. There were many other things they could be moving, but THAT was what they chose to move. I told them to leave it, and they did, right in the middle of the room.  I ended up selling it before the remodel was complete.  It took four men to move it, as I recall.

We lived in the burnt out house for three months while it was being repaired.  As the first month held record low temps, it was a LONG time indeed for us all.  We had one extension cord that we could use from our well pump.  That could run either the coffee pot and electric skillet, OR one lamp and an electric blanket.  We were dirty, smelly, and sometimes grouchy, but we survived to laugh about it later on.

For many years after, if anyone asked how the fire started, my son would pipe up with “Grandpa Did It!”.  Somehow, my Dad managed to restrain himself from muzzling Jim.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Trudy Kain-Talbott
Canyon Country, CA (where it never seems to snow)

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 Working for change involves more than just being upset with past action. Many of us are disgusted with the Bush administration, but disgust alone will not change what George W has done during the past eight years. We must begin to think of how we can work together to make positive changes. 

We are interested in promoting alternative energy: specifically, a community solar project. We all should have an interest in sustainable living for Chelan County.  

We need to work effectively with as many people as possible to encourage the desired change. The partnership does not need to involve only like-minded people concerning various projects or improvement.  We all need to share a conviction for change.  

I suggest that the major area of agreement should be in terms of our determination to make changes to the various elected positions that will be on the ballot in two years.   

The following elected positions are critical to Sustainable issues in Chelan County.

1.      Two Washington State Representatives

2.      Two Chelan County PUD Commissioner

3.      One Chelan County Commissioner

4.      One Chelan County Port Commissioner

5.      City Council positions? 

I didn’t list our U.S. House of Representatives individual, since removing Doc. Hasting may take an act of God, based on past elections. 

I’m not suggesting that the existing elected individuals in these positions are against change and sustainable living, but at this point none of them has displayed any initiative for real change. At this point I would suggest that we need new individuals to run for all of these positions—individuals who are really serious about the issues of alternative energy and sustainability.  

We should de-emphasize political party affiliation and work to elect the best individuals no matter what their party affiliation.  The Republican Party in Chelan County still has the power.  We need to locate people with the conviction of change and then dedicate our time and money to elect those people independent of party. This year, even good Republican candidates didn’t have a chance if they were opposed by the Chelan County Republican Party organization. None of the local candidates identified as Democrat made the cut.  

Now is the time to begin the process of seeking out and encouraging potential candidates. We can’t wait until January 1, 2010, but must start now to work toward making a positive change.

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Above: Entry doors welcome spectators at Wenatchee’s new arena. At right:  One of Twisp sculptor Bernard Hosey’s metal spheres now sits in Wenatchee’s Riverfront Park.

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No question … the top pop stories of 2008 will shape our fun and pleasures in 2009.  There’ll be more celebs, more big biz, and more Hispanic influence. In fact, this last year’s big events — good or bad — could affect our cultural scene for years to come. The top five stories:

1 //  Town Toyota Center — The 900-pound gorilla in the room is Wenatchee’s huge and snazzy $53 million arena. Its honchos promise concerts, sporting events, conventions and community involvement. OK, so the inaugural act was a quilt show. But they turned up the heat with a Disney on Ice extravaganza and an upcoming appearance by country star Leann Rimes. Nagging question: how many low-level pro sports teams can Wenatchee support?

2 // Less Static on Local Airwaves — In 2007, when an outside media company plucked up some of our top radio stations, loyal listeners freaked out. They wrote letters, made phone calls, and cursed the invading radio devils in coffee klatches across five counties. Thankfully, the dust has settled and complaints have quieted. Yep, a few old-school radio voices have been exiled, and the Hispanic broadcast market is overcrowded. But generally, our radio world survived. Nagging question: must we suffer the stumblebum personalities on KPQ?

3 // You Want Fries with That? — Two national chains, Sonic and Jack in the Box, shook up the local fast-food scene by opening flashy new outlets. About time, too. Our familiar fast-food joints had edged towards stultifying complacency. Stores were untidy, service lousy, employee morale non-existent, and even the sandwiches — never a gourmet’s delight — seemed like by-products of corporate tinkering. Let’s hope competition sparks creativity. Nagging question: Can our local mom & pop hamburger joints compete?

4 // ¡Mucho, Mucho Gusto! —Fiestas Mexicanas, one of the region’s largest Hispanic festivals, continues to grow in popularity and relevance. Crowd estimates for 2008’s gathering varied from 6,000 to 15,000, but the numbers don’t really matter. The one-day celebration packed Wenatchee’s Lincoln Park with an overflow of families and fun-seekers, again indicating the size and power of our Hispanic population. Nagging question: how soon will this growing community, already an economic force, gain political punch?

5 // And the Runners-Up Are … Seattle author Sherman Alexie, fresh off his National Book Award win, speaks to a packed Wenatchee ballroom … East Wenatchee’s Columbia Cinema installs digital projection, welcomes 3-D movies … bestselling author Elizabeth George is keynote speaker at Wenatchee’s Write on the River writers’ conference … installation of an 8-1/2-foot sphere by internationally-known sculptor Bernard Hosey kicks off a new Art on the Avenues sculpture garden in Wenatchee’s Riverfront Park.

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As the year comes to a close, it’s time for reflection and a revisit of my favorite posts from the year (well, since April, when this adventure started). While many people like “Top ten” lists, I go for a “Top 5″ to pay homage my favorite movie/book,”High Fidelity.”

I hope you enjoy devouring these posts as much as I enjoyed writing them and eating the creations inspired by them.

Top 5 creations of the year

1. Savory Grilled Mushrooms: A portobello burger that’s tastier than most meat burgers.

2. Not quite tabbouleh: Flavorful, healthy and fantastic bulgur salad.

3. Sausage and mushroom risotto: Not necessarily healthy, but hearty, savory and comforting.

4. Crack cookies: Possibly the best cookies on earth.

5. Roasted tomato and garlic sauce: My favorite go-to sauce for veggies and pasta.

Top 5 takes on a classic dish, a restaurant dish or something my grandma or one of my friends originally created

1. Kat’s Greek Burgers: Friend, coworker and world photographer Kathryn Stevens is a fantastic cook.

2. Homemade pesto: Thanks Shana for teaching me how to make great pesto.

3. Elote Mexicano: Thanks Mexico. I can’t thank you enough for your contribution of divine food.

4. Hummus: Really good hummus is easy to find (OK, make) even though the Lebanese restaurant is long gone.

5. Yucatecan Kibis: Again, thanks Mexico. But thanks, too, to Jose and Anita. You two know great food.

Top 5 food culture posts

1. Maple Bars: Turns out they’re foreign to many Americans

2. Bacon: Bacon Salt, what more needs to be said?

3. Family: Sometimes I don’t know myself. Jello salad with American cheese, Rochelle? Really?

4. Bacon: Chocolate + Bacon = Minnesota State Fair

5. Mint m&ms: They won’t be available again for 10 months. Moment of silence please.

Top 5 veggie posts

1. Huitlacoche: Fun with corn smut.

2. Tomato sandwiches: I heart tomatoes.

3. Beets: They’re A-OK (and sweet and delicious).

4. Shallots: Gorgeous cheap shallots.

5. Produce is funny: Man with funky tomato

Bonus: two yummy pretty picture posts

In the photo at top: Grilled pizza, Try it, you’ll love it. Maybe, though, you should wait until the grill isn’t covered in snow.

Photo on the right, Pain au Chocolat: Ahhh, sunny days, lazy days, chocolate, Seattle.

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