KIND OF LIKE COMFORT FOOD, BUT STRONGER.
In Culinary school we were given an assignment in our Gastronomy class. To write about ” Transformational foods” kind of like comfort food, but stronger, as if you were back in time. This is my somewhat romantic essay.
” There is a time once a year when my family gathers for celebration. We eat and drink, we get rowdy and obnoxious. We tell tall tales which seem to grow longer and longer, we play cards and laugh. The food abounds, heavy rich and nutritious. We spare no expense for such feasts, we are happy to share all that we have with whoever shows up.
The feast begins two weeks in advance, you can feel the excitement welling up each and every day. i begin to think, create recipes, dishes, and menus in my mind, just wheels turning spitting out ideas. These ideas are never written down, just stored in the back of my mind for future reference. The anticipation grows but neither myself or anyone else shows their excitement, a glimpse perhaps, but not their true joy. Everyone knows that a few days ahead are the best the year has to offer, so after 12 long months the feast is near, and electricity runs through our veins.
Only one week left and soon 4 days, time has become unbearable. I have called everyone, and formulated a list of guests. Everyone is busy preparing the same as I, with such little time I will prepare an apple pie, perhaps a giant batch of the world’s greatest chili. Yet while time runs slow, it seems to always go to fast and most often I accomplish nothing. The day is here its the thirteenth, but most often the fourteenth, because there is always work or something which interferes. Sometimes we just need another day to get ready. Nevertheless, just like clock work we leave by the fourteenth, headed for our spiritual homeland. We have many hours of travel a head, and is made longer by our inevitable stop at the grocery store. Five people barrel out of the car like pirates looking for booty. We travel our separate ways, ripping every delicacy and vice off the shelves and into the cart.
This feast is known as Deer camp, it takes place every Nov. 15 at our cabin in the woods of Northern Michigan. The land was left to us by my great-grandfather, born a lumberjack, man among men, master woodsman, surrounded by the freedom of the seemingly endless woods. Deer camp is not really about deer hunting, its a time for freedom from daily life, its an escape, an ideal, a feast celebrating life.
Our cabin is basically a shack, without any modern conveniences, no electricity or plumbing. We cook on an antique gas stove, water is brought in large jugs. All of the heat is provided by a wood stove, which doubles as another cooking source. This all effects the way we cook. Our menu is almost always the same, hot coffee, eggs, bacon and pork sausages. French toasts and hot 3/4 inch thick Buckwheat cakes, offered with honey straight from the honeycomb on the table, maple syrup, and sweet cream butter. They are most often smothered with all of the above. I cannot leave out country toast, which is made by placing bread directly on an open burner, partially blacken it, turn and repeat, then smother with butter, there is nothing better. Breakfast is served in the tradition set by my great grandfather. So at 4:00 in the morning when you hear the old woodstove rattling, you know that “day lights at the door” and you best get up.
Before noon time you always have worked up another appetite. Lunch consists of tons of lunch meats and cheeses, served with beans or chili which has been slow cooking all day long, these often last until dinner time. Dinner is always fat, juicy steak, if were lucky wild game. There is bread baking in the dutch oven, covered in hot coals. Stew is always the most unique dish, for we are always out of seasonings and going to the store is out of the question. It becomes a catch all for whatever is on hand, but some how the best food is always improvised.
Whenever I run into these foods I am transported back to this place. The foods change flavor, and I can smell the aroma of the food mingling with wood smoke, as if I were back in the confines of our small cabin. A kind of homesickness sets in. These foods bring about nostalgia, Lumberjacks, Woodsmen alone in the wilderness. No matter how I try, a stack of buckwheat pancakes or any of these foods for that matter, rips out my soul for a time, leaving me longing for next year.”
