Cooking in the West

We have entertained a lot of international guests at our ranch over the years, and I am always amazed at how much they know about the United States--especially in comparison to what I know about their countries. We recently had guests from Toronto that found 47 of the 50 states’ license plates during their visit to Yellowstone Park. I still don’t know how that car from Hawaii ended up in the Old Faithful parking lot, but I saw it with my own eyes. What was an even more impressive feat was that those Canadians took a piece of notebook paper and listed all fifty states without even using Google once!

A few years back, I had to downsize my County Superintendent office, and one of the helpers in this downsize was one of our German ranch vacation guests named Tim. As Tim relocated items, he learned a lot about America. After stowing away the fifth box of pamphlets about staying drug free, he observed, “There must be a big drug problem in your schools!” I laughed thinking about my four little rural schools with their total enrollment of 35 sweet and relatively naive kids. Fortunately, educating them about meth is sort of the equivalent of talking to a preschool student about nuclear physics. Nevertheless, we covered all the drugs and pertinent guidance topics covered in those and the other 15 boxes of dusty pamphlets, so it was indeed necessary to move them.

Tim decided to read one pamphlet and take the fill-in-the-blank quiz. He announced, “I’ve got this one. Too much BLANK can cause vomiting, loss of consciousness, and even death. Let’s see. . . the answer has to be homework.” We assured him that although homework was a good answer, it was not the correct answer, which would be “alcohol.” Coming from Germany, where the legal drinking age is 16, he remained skeptical that we were correct. After his outing on the town on Friday night, however, he declared that he now believed alcohol was the correct answer after all.

Tim also skimmed a lot of teaching materials as he unpacked them in his quest to understand more about America and Americans. He asked, “What was the War of 1812?”

Since I am deficient in history, I pretended I didn’t hear him, so Remi had to come up with an answer. “Well, it was a short war in 1812.”

“What started it?” Tim asked.

“Some really bad stuff that happened in 1811,” Remi replied.

“Who fought in it?” Tim persisted.

“Mostly soldiers, but there were probably some civilians involved also. There wasn’t a lot to do back then with no television or internet, so when a good war broke out it provided an outlet for excitement for a lot of folks. Besides that, there was no CNN coverage back then so the folks at home just had to hear about it long after it was over instead of watching it live in their living rooms every night.”

Unfortunately my internet was not yet hooked up in the new office, so I could not come to Remi’s rescue by quickly Googling the War of 1812. I was about to try to divert attention from the War of 1812 by suggesting that we try to fill in the blanks on a few more of those drug pamphlets when Tim let us off the hook. He said, “Don’t feel bad about not knowing everything about your country’s history. Most Germans can’t pass the German citizenship test either!”

It has been such a long, hot, dry summer that we are all grateful for autumn, which brought some relief from our blistering drought. Here are some of my favorite fall recipes.

Nutty Noodle Casserole:

2 lbs. ground beef

1 onion, chopped

8 oz. egg noodles

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 lg. can evaporated milk

30 sliced stuffed olives

1/2 lb. Cheddar cheese, grated

salt and pepper

one can Chow Mein noodles

1 C. mixed nuts, chopped

Brown ground beef and onion. Drain. Cook noodles according to package directions. Slice olives. Layer the ingredients in a large casserole as follows: half the noodles, half the beef and onions, half the milk and soup mixed together, half the olives, and half the cheese. Repeat layers. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Add Chow Mein noodles and chopped nuts. (Add another can of soup over top before adding Chow Mein noodles and nuts if the casserole seems too dry.) Bake for 30 minutes more.

Pumpkin Marshmallow Dessert:

Crust:

1 1/2 C. graham cracker crumbs

3 T. sugar

1/3 C. butter, melted

Combine ingredients and press into a 9 X 13 pan.

Filling:

2 C. pumpkin

1/2 t. ginger

1/2 t. salt

large pkg. marshmallows

1 t. cinnamon

2 C. whipping cream

1/2 C. milk

Melt marshmallows in milk in a double boiler. Remove from heat and add all ingredients except whipping cream. Cool for at least one hour. Whip the cream and fold it into the cooled mixture. Pour over the crust. Refrigerate before serving.

Chocolate Fondue:

16 oz. pkg. Hershey’s chocolate chips or candy bar

1/2 pt. cream

2 t. rum

1 t. vanilla

Put all of the ingredients in a fondue pot or crock pot. Stir occasionally. When melted, turn the temperature to low. (If you are in a hurry, microwave all the ingredients until melted. Stir until smooth, and put in the fondue pot.) Dip berries, marshmallows, mandarin oranges, angel food cake, or pretzels!