Gummy Bear Stew

George is a legitimate Oregon outdoorsman.

He fishes. He crabs. He hikes. He hunts.

And he is the inventor of Gummy Bear Stew, which like all good ideas, was born from a mix of necessity and ingenuity.

Last summer, George took his son Jack and his nephew Hayden on a weekend camping trip. They unpacked the tent, the clothes, the sleeping bags and the camp stove. Then they unpacked the beer and the gummy bears and rested.

They are male, after all.

When George went back to unpack the food for dinner, he realized that somehow his keys had gotten locked in his truck.

He could have called his wife Angie, but it was getting dark.

So first, he built a fire. Then he drank some more beer. Then he cut the tops off the cans and turned them upside down.

He melted the gummy bears in the bottoms of the cans, stuck a spoon it in and called it dinner.

If you’re thinking Ewwwwww, I’m with you.

But the children must be fed.

We camped with George and Angie this weekend, and you better know Gummy Bear Stew was on the menu. Any kind of candy is fair game. Our stew had Gummy Bears, Sour Patch Kids, Rolos and marshmallows.

This is not haute cuisine. And it tastes about how you imagine—like a melted Halloween candy bowl. If you don’t eat it fast enough, it hardens into a Gummy Bear Stew lollipop. One taste and my teeth almost fell out.

But camping moms know that the food rules are a wee bit different in the woods. And not 20 minutes earlier I was the mom who yelled “Don’t give me that natural bug spray crap! The baby needs DEET!!! NOW!!!”

The kids ate that stuff up. And then bounced off into the woods with flashlights to search for windigos and stump trolls, too amped up on liquid sugar to be scared.

Fishsticks and Champagne

The story goes like this:

In August of 1969, my aunt and uncle were celebrating their 5^th wedding anniversary on August 15 and my mom and dad were celebrating their 1^st anniversary on August 17. They all lived in San Francisco, my parents having recently graduated from the University of San Francisco and my uncle finishing up law school in the city.

My mom and dad on their honeymoon, August 1968

So Lesley doesn't know when this picture was taken, but I am guessing late 70s. — My aunt and uncle, late 70s.

My parents lived in a small walk-up near the university. This means is that they had a second story apartment in an already hilly city. Think stairs, indoors and outdoors. Everywhere.

This will be important later in the story.

They had no money. My mom and dad were 23, my aunt and uncle not much older. But they decided to celebrate the anniversaries together. So my mom cooked up a bunch of frozen fishsticks and someone—probably my uncle—found deeply discounted (because their labels had fallen off) bottles of champagne.

I know exactly what this party looked like, even though I was only a prayer two years in the future. I have seen the four of them like this many, many times in my life—joyful, loud, carefree. Full of laughter.

But not always making top-notch decisions. Because, fishsticks. And champagne. A combo that has trouble written all over it, like prosciutto and margaritas, or brie and beer.

Sure enough, by the end of the night, they were sideways. My dad was getting reacquainted with his fishsticks. My aunt couldn’t manage the stairs down the hill to the street in an upright position. She slid down them on her bum, howling with laughter all the way. Of course.

Then some poor fool had the audacity to cut my uncle off at a stop sign. The way he tells it, he just barely got hold of the back of her pants to stop her tumbling out the window after she rolled it down to give the guy a piece of her mind.

This night is legend in our family, part of the fabric that holds us all together. Not just how silly and funny it was, but how my uncle’s eyes still twinkle when he tells the part about my aunt. Or the lesson we absorbed about the importance of celebrating wedding anniversaries, even with fishsticks. How my mom tilts her chin defiantly and says “That’s all we had, so that’s what we did!”

This August, they will celebrate their 51^st and 47^th anniversaries.

Last week, we were in Canada with my cousin and her family for their 11^th anniversary. It was the last day of a visit that had ten of us staying in one house—six kids under the age of 10. A big night out was not in the cards.

But there was champagne in the fridge.

We contemplated fishsticks. We really did. For a good half second. And then we got our feet under us and ordered sushi. Luckily, we are twenty years older than our parents were on that fishstick night and more financially secure. We crammed everyone around the dining room table, poured the champagne into half-pints because we couldn’t find any Solo cups, and went at it.

Alas, we only had one bottle of champagne, so the night was tame. No sliding down the stairs required.

Yes, a tiara is normal Friday night attire for Lesley. It’s one of the reasons I love her so much!

Gabriel’s S’More Truffles

This is my sweet boy, Gabriel. He just turned 9.

I call him Pie, short for Pumpkin Pie Guy which is what I called him when he was a wee bit. But the nickname proved prophetic.

This child of mine likes to cook.

He has his own sharp knife, given to him by Sue. He learned to make her sauce before I did.

He can light our grill and cook some steak. He likes to season the meat, but after a foray into “secret ingredients”–cinnamon in the hamburgers–he has to clear his recipes with me.

But this one, something he cooked up on the stove over Easter break, is a winner.

He calls them S’more Truffles.

Ingredients:

12 oz chocolate chips

½ cup half and half

Mini marshmallows

Graham crackers

Directions:

In a double boiler over medium heat, melt the chocolate chips and half and half.

Spread parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Using a spoon, drop the melted chocolate into circles about two inches wide. Top with marshmallows and crushed graham crackers. Freeze for at least three hours.

Gabriel wants me to say that if you have one of those fancy blowtorches, you could brown the marshmallows before serving. But he’s not allowed to use one yet, so he’s only guessing that would be good.

I love these because they are a light and delicious mouthful. Not too heavy, not too much. Just perfect for summer twilight dessert time!

Easy Homemade Pasta Sauce from an Expert

This is Sue:

Sue has been in my life since high school. Her son Ryan and my brother Joe were best friends and teammates. She and my mom and dad got close sitting together at football games. Then, since most of Sue’s family lives in Nor Cal, she started coming to holiday meals. Then Family night. Then twenty years ago on Christmas we officially adopted her into the family. Now she is Annie’s godmother.

Sue is Italian on her mom’s side and let me tell you, this woman can cook. And she cooks the old school stuff, off of handwritten recipes from her mom and grandmother. These recipes come two ways: no measurements or measurements enough to feed 40. The cookie recipes she makes at Christmas have things like “2 lbs of butter” and “4 lbs of flour”.

Then there’s this sauce recipe. When I asked her how she made her veggie sauce, this is what she sent me:

zucchini and/or yellow

squash

fresh carrots

yellow onions, shallots and/ or green onions

all fresh tomatoes and/ or canned

artichoke hearts

eggplant

couple of celery ribs

garlic

Itailian black olives

olive oil

oregano, bay leaf, parsley (fresh is best)

salt and pepper or pepper flakes if you like it spicy,

sometimes I put jalapenos in too

toss it all together, roast at 375 until everything is soft and yummy, remove bay leaves/leaf

Transfer to a large sauce pan in which you have already sautéed a few more onions and some anchovies (you will never taste them in the finished sauce) in olive oil, stir in canned tomato sauce (I use San Marzano ) let it combine, then get the boat motor out and puree until you have the consistency you like.

If you let the whole “an Italian lady who is renowned for her cooking and baking sent me this recipe” go to your head, you’d never try it, right? Because Good Lord, how can we ever compete with someone who knows cooking so well that there are no measurements?

But let me give you another way to see it. This is the most powerful lesson I have learned cooking at Sue’s side: Alton Brown be darned, you don’t have to be constrained by measurements. It’s ok to experiment. It’s ok to make it taste the way you like. And recipes like this are very forgiving.

I don’t use everything on her list. I use what I have. I wait until the bag of little red, yellow and orange peppers are on sale, then I make sure I have some roma tomatoes and onions. This time I didn’t have carrots or celery, but I had asparagus and artichoke hearts, onions and garlic and nice juicy tomatoes.

So to review: make sure you have at least peppers, tomatoes, onion and garlic. Any other veggie is also welcome. Chop them up, sprinkle some olive oil, salt and pepper and roast it all at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes, depending on how much you have.

In a large sauce pot, combine a bit of olive oil, some more onions, garlic and—if you must—anchovies, then add the tomato sauce. Add the seasoning, then the roasted veggies and let it cook for a while to incorporate. Then you can blend it—a food processor works just fine, but Sue got me a $20 Hamilton Beach hand mixer that goes right into the pot. Then I always let it simmer a bit longer. Salt and pepper to taste.

That’s it. Fresh food and a nice heavy pot.

My Thumb is Chartreuse

The awesome news is that we have garden beds:

The less awesome news is that for four straight nights, and after a robust imitation of Spring that caused all the trees to bud, we’ve had frost.

Good thing I didn’t transplant my sprouts.

Here they are, these precious babies that I planted six weeks ago:

Don’t ask me what they are, though. When I first planted the seeds in little pots, I labeled them with cute signs. Then I repotted and my Annie wanted to “help oo” and I lost track of what plants went with what signs. So if you recognize any of my sprouts, feel free to comment. The choices are: cucumbers, tomatoes, lavender and snap peas. Good luck.

I have never started a garden from seeds before. In So Cal, we just went to Lowe’s the first weekend in April that was sunny and hot and bought six inch plants. But we’re in Oregon now and everyone else was buying tiny peat pots and planning out a planting calendar and it made me feel behind.

I asked my cool neighbor Julie, who grew up on property, for pointers. She suggested a grow lite or a grow pad or something. Or possibly both, because she grows her seeds in the garage. I didn’t listen closely to that part because I thought “I’m only growing four things and they can live on the dining room table”.

What I did not foresee was that in the roughly twelve weeks before planting, the seeds would outgrow the tiny little peat pots and need bigger ones. So I went from 36 two inch peat pots which took up minimal space, to 36 four inch peat pots.

Which take up more space.

I also did not reckon on—that’s right, reckon on—the fact that Lizzie the Hound would be uncontrollably attracted to the potting soil.

Which led to the demise of four pots and some ugliness in the dog run for about a week.

At first it was too cold for the plants to be outside at all. Every afternoon I just moved them into the sun spots in the dining room. Then we had a stretch of warm, sunny weather. So every morning I carried them out to the patio and every evening I had to remember to carry them back in.

Which I didn’t, not every time. Some awfully cold nights, I forgot about them.

On Sunday, my English mother-in-law, she of the genetically gifted forest green thumb, asked with a sly smile how my plants were coming on.

By the time I was done describing the last six weeks, she was chortling gleefully into her white wine. Then she slammed her hand down on the table, looked at me from under her raised eyebrows and said—you can only do this justice in your head if you hear an English accent mellowed by 36 years living on Maui—“Why on earth did ya start with SEEDS??? Just go ta Home Depot and BUY THE SIX. INCH. PLANTS!”

Yes, mum. Right away. Mahalo.

I’m not giving up on my seeds, though. We’re going to plant them in one of the beds and see what happens next.

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