Howdy, Howdy, Howdy!
Hot dog! It’s Festival time again! Seems like it was only a month or
two ago that I was writing this same sentence.
As we get older, the days get longer and the years grow shorter.
If you’re in the age group under 40, I know you have a hard time
understanding just exactly the true meaning of that statement. But
believe me, when you zip past 40 and get into your 50’s and 60’s you
will understand it immensely!
I always like to remind you folks to check out the gear that you plan
on bringing to the festival with you, especially if you once use it
once or twice a year.
Fire up your camp stove and lanterns; unroll the sleeping bags to make
sure it wasn’t some mouse’s winter home; and blow up the air mattress
that you’ve only had for 10 years. Don't you just love it when you wake
up on a flat, cold, hard air mattress in the middle of the night?
That’s not the best part of the story though.
When you go to town to purchase another one, and you walk up the
checkout counter with that stiff, "I slept on a flat mattress all
night" gait, the person behind the counter looks at the new air
mattress, checks the price, and then looks at you with a half
sneer-half smile, and says "Your old one go flat last night?" Makes
you wish you still had your Buck Rogers ray gun you had when you were
ten years old so you could vaporize him right there!
Then to add insult to injury, the mattress that you paid 15 bucks for
ten years ago is now $49.95 plus tax! So you go out to the tuck and
borrow 20 bucks from your wife or girlfriend, who’s not speaking to
you very much at the present, go back inside where you’ve got one
counter backed up with 15 people, pay the all knowing, sneering
checker, and as you turn to finally leave, he says; "by the way,
we sell patch kits for those mattresses for 5 bucks in Sporting
Goods!" That parting remark sticks in your back like an arrow,
all the way back to the Festival grounds!
You finally get the new mattress aired up, fix the bed in your tent,
only to discover that one seam in the tent wall not resembles another
door, so its back to K-Mart again to get some needles and thread for
the tent. You get into the line farthest from the sneering checker that you dealt with an hour ago, pay for your tent repair items, and head back to the festival grounds where you spend three hours sticking your fingers full of needles while trying to sew up a canvas tent that’s old and rotten.
Finally about dark after wasting a whole day without pickin’ one note
in all the hot jam sessions going on around you, the new mattress is
in place, the tent is repaired and you are as hungry as a mama wolf
with ten pups! You don’t dare ask, "What’s for supper?" because right
now the lady love of your life is giving you that "you are taking me
to dinner" look, "and it ain’t gonna be no Burger King, pal!" So you
get in a quick, cold shower, throw on yer cleanest shirt and head back
to town where you max out your credit card at the nicest place you
can find.
You finally get back to the festival around 11:30 p.m.; kiss your
lady
good night (remember, she didn’t sleep well last night!) Grab your
axe and go find a good jam! Only to find that the tent repair has
seriously curtailed your ability to use your needle-punctured fingers
on your left hand!
So you dejectedly head back to your camp where you get yourself a
cold one from the cooler, sit down in your lawn chair that you’ve
only had for 12 festival seasons, take a long pull on that nice cold
beer, and that’s when the plastic webbing of the chair breaks! As you
disentangle yourself from that octopus of plastic and aluminum, you
hear muffled laughter from inside your tent.
Later, as you lay in bed totaling up the day’s cost in your mind, you
vow that next year "I’m checking everything out a month before I
leave!" You hear a telepathic "I hope so!" from your lady love as you
drift off to sleep, with the stars twinkling through your patch job.
Believe me folks; I’ve had this and more happen to me, even though I
try to keep everything in good shape. Make maintenance on your
festival gear a habit and you won’t regret it. That also includes your
vehicles and trailers too! I’m always reminded of the time a friend of
mine was about two miles from his house, heading to Grass Valley when
a tire and wheel passed him. Looking in his side mirror, all he saw
was a shower of sparks. The left wheel had come off of his trailer
and the axle was right on the pavement! Needless to say, he didn’t
make it to the festival that year.
As you all know, good music and good food go hand in hand. Seems like
you can’t have one without the other. Besides who would want to? After
all that "chin music" about your festival gear, I’m getting an
appetite. So pull up a chair by the ol’ cook fire, grab yourself a
cup of Cowboy Coffee and we’ll share some vittle fixin’ stories.
The first recipe this month has become a favorite of the entire
Board of Directors of our association.
Larry Kuhn’s lovely wife Bobbie has brought this wonderful casserole
to several board meetings, and there’s barely crumbs left in the dish
when we get through with our "feeding frenzy!" I’m not kidding folks;
you gotta get there early to get some of this! Bobbie graciously
agreed to share her recipe here for all of you folks. She calls this:
A Fiddlers Feast
1 lb. Ground beef
1 packet taco seasoning plus 1/2-cup water
1 16-oz can, whole kernel corn, drained
1 16-oz can, creamed corn
2 eggs, beaten
1 cube butter, melted
8 oz. Sour cream
1 package, Jiffy Corn Muffin mix
1 cup Cheddar cheese, grated
1 4-0oz can chopped Ortega chilies
1 4-oz. can green chili salsa
Brown the beef; add taco seasoning and water. Cook down. Spread beef
mixture in a greased 9" X 13" pan. Mix everything else together, pour
over beef and bake 35 minutes at 400º F.
If you bring or cook up some of this at the festival, you would be
wise not to let any of the directors know it, (except me, of course)
because that would be like throwing a side of beef among a pack of
wolves. This stuff is wonderful!
Thank you Bobbie for sharing this with the folks, and hopefully I’ll
get to compare the efforts of several different batches of this dish
at the festival.
Anyone who has read this column for a while knows that one of my
favorite types of food is good Mexican cuisine. Mexican food, when
properly prepared, is some of the finest food in the world. One of
my favorite Mexican dishes is Tamale Pie. Here some 10 or 12 years
ago I picked up one of those "Chuck Cookbooks" at the thrift store
for a buck. This cookbook has all vegetarian recipes in it. The book
is at least 50 years old and the front and rear covers are missing,
but it has some really great recipes that I like to try occasionally
and the recipe for Tamale Pie tastes great, even though it is
meatless.
Meatless Tamale Pie
2 TBSP olive oil
1 cup sweet onion, diced
1/3-cup celery, diced
1/3 cup green pepper, diced
2 1/4 cups canned tomatoes
1 1/4 cup whole kernel corn, drained
1-cup cornmeal
1 cup chopped nutmeats
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup sliced olives
2 tsp. Vegetable salt
1 tsp. Paprika
1-cup water
Sauté onions in olive oil until tender. Add celery, pepper, tomatoes,
corn, seasoning and water. Bring to a boil; stir in cornmeal
gradually. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in
eggs, olives and nuts. Turn into a greased casserole. Bake at 350º
for 45 minutes. Serves 6-8 normal folks or 1 1/2 banjo pickers.
You’ll be surprised how good this tastes. I like to heat up leftovers
and throw a couple of poached eggs and some salsa on top of it for
breakfast. Wowsers! Good ol’ country breakfast "fer sure!"
Speaking of country breakfasts, when I think of a real country
breakfast the first thing that pops into my mind is a big pan of hot,
perfectly browned, fluffy biscuits!
That, along with a big bowl of hot creamy gravy, and this ol’ country
boy is good to go! There are biscuit recipes and there are BISCUIT
RECIPES! Folks, this next recipe makes the very lightest, most
delicate and best tasting biscuits I’ve had in many a morn.
A friend of mine gave me this recipe a long time ago, and I just got
around to trying it three or four weeks ago. His family was from
Eufala, Oklahoma and he said his mother always called these "Eufala
Angel Biscuits", and after trying them one time, I can certainly see
why. They’re as light as an Angel’s kiss and I’ll swear each one of
them has a halo over it.
Eufala Angel Biscuits
5 cups flour
3/4 cup shortening
1 TBSP salt
1 TBSP soda
3 TBSP sugar
3 TBSP baking powder
2 cups buttermilk
1 pkg. Yeast, dissolved in 1/2 cup of warm water
Sift dry ingredients together; cut in shortening. Add buttermilk and
yeast mixture; mix well. Roll out desired amount of dough 1/2" thick.
Cut biscuits, place on lightly greased skillet or pan. Bake 10 minutes
at 400º. Keep excess dough in the refrigerator for up to a week.
These are a "must do" folks! My cowboy pardner Pat Russell gave these
a "10", and if its one thing that Charles Patrick Russell knows more
about than horses, its biscuits!
Well folks, get out there and check out all yer festival gear. Throw
some vittles and ice in the coolers, gather up your young’uns and head
up the mountain to Grass Valley. Drive safe and SOBER. I want to see
you all there.
Don’t forget to include all of our wonderful servicemen and women in
your prayers. I’ll see you in Grass Valley!
May God grant you all peace and health.
Yer friend,
J.D. Rhynes
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