Cooking in the West

I just cannot resist helpful hints (now known as hacks) or tips on how to remove every stain known to man or cure anything from warts to arthritis with a home remedy. Sometimes though, I have to question the effectiveness and efficiency of the remedies and helpful hints. I have actually had less than miraculous results with many of those tips.

A tomato juice bath is supposed to be the cure-all for skunk spray. Do you know how much a tomato juice bath for a small boy costs? It was $92.00 cheaper and much less stressful just to let the child eventually wear the stink off. Either it wore off or our olfactory senses dulled, but we saved the $92.00 regardless.

Vinegar is another miraculous cure-all. Supposedly if you put bowls of vinegar around your house, it will absorb odor. Aside from the house smelling like a pickle, another side effect of this method is that if someone who never confesses spills one of those odor absorbing bowls on your grandmother's antique hutch, it creates a nasty white blotch that only professional refinishing can cure.

Now, I am a huge fan of WD-40 and duct tape, but WD-40 is actually touted as a great stain remover. If you get a Kool-aid stain on a white t-shirt, which by the way is a really poor consumer choice for Kool-aid drinkers, you simply spray it with WD-40 on both sides, blot it with paper towels, rub in Dawn dishwashing detergent, blot it some more, and wash it in bleach. There might be a hole in the shirt from the chemical reaction of WD-40 to Dawn to bleach, but the stain will be gone! Then, you can go to the fabric store, buy a cute applique, iron it over the hole, and spend $37.00 on quilting supplies in an effort to salvage a ten dollar t-shirt.

There are some great hints floating around out there which just have tiny inherent flaws in their practicality. In a children's cookbook, it recommended using a meat baster to help children make perfect pancakes. I am relatively certain that this hint was not tested with an actual child. Do you know how much pancake batter ends up on the outside of the baster, the child, the dog, the counter, and the couch when this helpful hint is practically applied? Do you know how quickly the meat baster melts to the surface of your best griddle when the child is standing on a chair squeezing the batter onto the griddle to form perfect pancakes? Do you have any idea how you would clean pancake batter out of a turkey baster to reuse it for Thanksgiving? Well, neither did whoever thought up that hint!

When my kids were little, we tried all of the painless splinter removing tips. Put a piece of Scotch tape over the splinter, pull it off, and Poof, the sliver was still there. Put Elmer's glue over the splinter, let it dry, pull it off, and Poof, the sliver was still there. I think the only splinters those highly touted methods would remove must be town splinters, because ranch splinters, which are usually off of something nasty like a manure encrusted railroad tie, just scoff at removal methods that don't require wrestling, a sharp knife, a lot of screaming, a small amount of blood, a bottle of peroxide, a Ninja Turtles band-aid, and a trip to town for a milkshake to soothe the pain and suffering--mostly of the sliver remover not the removee.

I have tried all of the hints about dog hair. Wipe your pet off with a sheet of Bounce. Put fabric softener in water and spritz it on your dog. Personally, I think that although your dog might smell as rain shower fresh as something that rolls in afterbirth possibly can after using these methods, the only way to get rid of dog hair is to get rid of the dog or enforce the outside dog rule that gets waived at our house any time a cloud passes overhead.

Speaking of Bounce, if you tie a Bounce sheet through your belt loop it is supposed to ward off mosquitoes. However, it will not ward off everyone you meet from asking, "Why do you have a fabric softener sheet tied on your belt loop?" I have a tip for the Bounce tip makers--perhaps before using this method in public, they should advise consumers to pass out fliers with this tip and other helpful fabric softener tips and a coupon for 25 cents off their next purchase of Bounce. Have you ever wondered how they (who is they?) know for certain that it is your "next purchase"? Perhaps the store cashier should ask, "Are you sure that this is your next purchase of this product?" before they allow you to redeem your coupon? (Perhaps I have worked for the government for too long now--16 years!)

Two Alka-Seltzer tablets dropped in the toilet bowl and allowed to sit twenty minutes are supposed to clean your toilet bowl. Obviously, this tip was not tested where we live, the IRON Mountain drainage of the Beartooth Absaroka Mountain Range! This trial resulted in some fizzy rust colored water, but the iron stains were still there after flushing. Supposedly drinking Alka-Seltzer with every meal works better than the patch to curb cravings for smokers, but although I am skeptical, I don't think I will start smoking just to debunk that hint.

Obviously, I could go on and on, but here's a hint that never fails! If you are so cynical that you don't try every hint you read, you are probably well on your way to becoming a cranky old realist!

My featured cook this week is Carolyn Fraser who lives near Grass Range, Montana. Carolyn shared a couple beef recipes from her late mother, Katie Fraser, who was a beloved Big Timber, Montana area resident and iconic cattle woman. Carolyn wrote, "Mom liked to serve this casserole when we were out riding all day in the cold. She usually served it with cornbread."

Cowboy Casserole:

(Katie's note: If you are both cook and cowboy, this one's for you. Make it early, put it in the oven, and set your timer for 10:00 a.m. at 350 degrees.)

Place in layers in 2 quart casserole:

2 or 3 potatoes, peeled and sliced and/or 1/2 cup uncooked rice

12 oz. can whole kernel corn

1/2 of an 8 oz. can tomato sauce

1½ to 2 lbs. ground beef

salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste

4 oz. can mushrooms (fresh if available)

onion salt or diced onions and/or sliced green peppers

remaining tomato sauce

Top with 4 bacon slices.

Bake covered for 1½ hours at 350 degrees, uncover for 30 minutes or put under broiler long enough to crisp bacon.

Mom's Easy Beef Pie:

Brown 1 lb. stew meat in 1 Tbl. of oil

Remove meat and add:

1 chopped green pepper

1 small onion

3-4 chopped carrots

Saute til tender and add:

meat

1 can whole kernel corn (or frozen)

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 Tbl. chili powder

1 tsp. sugar

1 can stewed tomatoes, cut up

1-2 chopped jalapeño peppers.

Simmer until tender and place in the casserole. Top with cornmeal crust below.

Cornmeal Crust:

1 C. flour

1/2 C. cornmeal

1/2 t.. salt

1/2 C. butter

1/4 C. grated cheese

Cut in all ingredients to flour, until crumbly. Add 1/4 C. water, 1 T. at a time til a ball forms with your hands. Roll out and fit on top of the casserole. Cut slit for steam. Bake at 425 for about 20 mins or until brown.