Cliff's rolls

I am not being very faithful to this blog lately, and I apologize to anyone who is checking to see if I can be trusted to post something more than once a week. Thank you for hanging in there with me while I organize myself and arrange interviews with Montana people who are producing our food. And wait for the road to clear so I can actually drive somewhere.

Meanwhile, I'm reporting about a great roll recipe from Cliff who lives, as he explains, somewhere in the western part of the state.

I'll let Cliff describe the process of making rolls in his own words. His writing style cannot be duplicated and you should have the pleasure of enjoying it for yourself.

He is right that these are easy to make -- no kneading, and a fluffy, tasty result. But Cliff is all fancy in his little cabin in the wilderness: as the rolls come out of the oven, he rubs the tops with butter. On my ranch, we eat them without all that extra effort. (Right now there's hay to be fed to the cows and waiting for calves to arrive. Yeah, sure, I'm not actually involved in this, but I am busy running to the window to watch it all happen.)

OK, Cliff's look nicer, and the butter adds some flavor and tenderness, but I reckon they taste about the same, especially if you spread on some butter at mealtime.

Also, you will notice that my pile of rolls is bigger than Cliff's. I did not mean to try to outdo my neighbor. Rather, as I was mixing the butter, sugar, and salt with hot water I thought that was an awful lot of butter. Then I realized I had used a whole rather than half a stick. I was tempted to see how they would turn out just like that, but I decided to go ahead and double the recipe and so I have plenty of rolls to last a while. Cliff doesn't say, but I'm sure they freeze well. (I'll just put them on the back porch; haha!)

I'm having mine today with some homemade carrot soup. Pretty, healthy, and delish.

Using summer's bounty

My goal for this blog is to share what other people are eating and producing in Montana. There will definitely be more about farmers markets as the 2010 season opens, but right now I am frustrated by being stuck at home in snow. I don't venture out much when the roads are icy.

If you can bear with me for another entry on soup, today is a good day for it.

I don't especially like acorn squash, so imagine my surprise when a cucumber start I bought last spring began producing just that. The true cucumber starts fizzled and died right away, but the sturdy squash spread and spread . . . and spread. I got 9 acorn squash and wondered what to do with them. I gave a couple away, but it grieves me to not use food I've grown.

So today when I craved curried butternut squash soup, I substituted acorn squash (those darn butternut squash didn't do any better than the cucumbers this year). Lo and behold, this is a delicious substitute.

My often-used, standard recipe comes from the Silver Palate Cookbook: Curried Butternut Squash Soup. It's full of onions, apples, and squash, creamed together in a soothing puree.

As with all squash you cook yourself, there is the bonus of roasted seeds, which in this case make a nice garnish.

Outside today . . . beautiful, but brrr!

Here's to abundance in the new year!

Happy New Year!

Here is another year to give us all a new beginning.

I am grateful to live in a beautiful state, where despite long cold winters and short hot summers we still manage to get enough for all of us to eat. Well, yes, even if that means trucking in some of it from other states.

I have long thought that eating locally meant eating only foods produced within a reasonable distance from home. But after receiving an unexpected bounty of oranges and lemons from California, I have revised my thinking. These precious citrus gifts were grown locally where my friends picked them and found their way to me with a minimum of effort.

A Los Angeles friend enclosed lemons from the tree by her back door with a Christmas gift, and a Montana friend, who had driven to San Diego to visit relatives, brought back oranges and lemons from the relatives' yard.

So technically, this is not local food, but I eat it with joy and gratitude, thinking of the generous people who share their bounty.

To make the transition to the new year a bit brighter, I also sipped some Grand Marnier I bought to use in making fortune cookies. The cookies were somewhat of a flop, but I learned that they are not difficult to make even if you are doing it late at night in a kitchen with bad lighting and iffy equipment. (Parchment paper is adequate -- it wrinkles when you reuse it, creating wavy cookies -- but a silicone baking mat would be perfect.) And it was fun to search for and even create fortunes to stuff them with. So I will try again.

Here is a toast to a joyous new year filled with all good things . . . whether they look perfect or not!