Joy Of [Beach Cabin] Cooking

13 years ago

There's no particular point to this post. I'm just having fun this week.

Every year, we and several friends, plus a horde of children, spend some time together at a beach cabin on a lake in California. Between morning paddles on a glassy clear lake, reading ancient 50 cent paperbacks, serious naps, and evening duck-chasing paddles - even the fastest kayak is no match for ducks who can practically run on the water - we eat. Fortunately, there's some enthusiastic cooks among our group, so we never go hungry.

I always learn something. For example, on Monday I watched A___ make inside-out hamburgers, with the mushrooms, avocado and cheese layered inside the patty. Something I've never seen before, and they were tasty. On Tuesday, T___ served up the most delectable pesto sans garlic or at least virtually sans garlic. Her spouse can't digest raw garlic, so she figured out this variant, and will, I hope, give me the recipe. It would be a good ''first date'' pesto, for those of us still in the dating and mating stage of life. We also had a tomato pesto, or pesto a la trapanese, with succulent heirloom tomatoes from the Tuesday farmers' market, which taught me that some dishes should only be made when the produce is perfect, because I now won't ever want to have this dish with store-bought teflon tomatoes. I'm hoping N____ makes her incredible French tartines this year. They are more beautiful than anything in a Parisian vitrine.

For dinner on Tuesday, my contribution was boeuf borguignon. What is it with internet recipes for this dish? Fine, so I only read 3 of the 15,329 boeuf borguignon recipes online, but those called for just 1 cup of red wine per 2 lbs of meat. Excuse me?! I used a full bottle of rather decent wine, plus some stock, for four pounds of browned shoulder, then strained the liquid and reduced it by half with finally a splash of fresh wine. At the end of dinner, people were using their fingers to get the dregs of cold sauce from the gravy boat, so I suppose they were thirsty.

I had to fly back to Portland for a work meeting this morning, and now I am in the airport headed back down to California for few more days of sun and friends. And I am packing, man. Packing what? Well, after the meeting I went home and grabbed some things that are hard to find or impractical/expensive to buy at the lake. I mixed up marinade and sauces for ginger-garlic stir-fry chicken, for hot and sour soup, for Korean BBQ ribs, and a sweet miso-based sauce for grilled fish. Zip-lock bags of bonito flakes, dried kelp, wasabi powder, toasted nuts, dried shiitakes. Two good knives - SWMBO has been cutting herself with the unspeakably dull knives at the cabin, those nasty ripped cuts you get with dull serrated junk blades. Big and little paellas.

I hope my sauces survive the trip in checked luggage. My big paella is riding in the overhead bin. My one regret is that I couldn't fit Ice Cream Boy in the backpack.

Here's the cool thing about doing a lot of cooking with friends. You don't gain weight. I went back on my diet kick this month, and during this beach cabin foodie-fest, I've actually managed to lose a couple of pounds. That's the secret I've learned during my waistline struggles of the past year. Cook more to weigh less. Weird but true.

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Comments (4)

Islay_Corbel
13 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
It sounds like heaven to me!
moosemac
13 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
The best of times...

We belong to a group of 15 couples who years ago i.e. B.C. (Before Children) each purchased vacation homes in the mountains. It's a great group of friends and we often get together for potluck. The make up of the group is dynamic depending on who is there for the weekend and how many house guests they have but the food is always fantastic.

I've learned so many things about wines, beers, cooking techniques and life from this group. In summer we hit the lake to cruise, play, grill and blend. In the winter, we snowmobile or ski until dusk then gather around a fireplace and dine on comfort food. Fall and spring we work hard on yard clean up so soups, stews and/or chilis with homemade bread are the order of the day.

Now that our kids are grown they no longer want to tag along so it's back to the core group of friends gathering. We're all patiently looking forward to sharing the experience with our grandkids in 5 or 10 years.

Life is good.
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On the road home, after a great week. On the food front, and especially on the drink front, our group seemed to be a bit ''lite'' this year. Not as Bacchannalian as in some prior years. That was okay, I actually stuck to my diet. How? More in a sec. For dinners, there were a couple of curries, one evening of Zachary's deep dish pizza, and one night out at a Basque restaurant in Nevada. Grill night was some perfectly grilled kabobs (W____). There were various pastas, including a lemon linguine and a spaghetti carbonara (SWMBO). T_____ won the ''simplest tasty'' award with an entire salmon fillet poached in salt, pepper, onion and vermouth. We had chicken thighs stuffed and trussed, different variations: gorgonzola & walnut, brie & apple, roast veg & salami, jalapeno & jack cheese (one of the N____'s). There was chicken in a cream, corn, and capers sauce, and a boeuf bourguignon. We had a risotto, lots of salads and salsa, roast veg, gallons of Peet's coffee, quinoa salad, fried chicken skins, tiramisu, crumbles, ice cream, lots of peaches and plums, cheese, bread, etc. And only 12 bottles of wine for the week, part of a fifth of scotch, two cigars, and some tequila. Weird - normally we go through a couple cases of wine at least. Like I said, everyone was watching their health, at least a little. I guess that's part of getting older. As is long talks about raising teen girls (how do you decide which parties they may go to?) and the aging and passing of our parents. Much of each has been going on in our group this year (my parents are fine, thanks). So, I know the mystery is, how do you stick to a diet on a vacation week centered around friends and food? Partly by cooking a lot, since the more I cook, the less I eat. Also partly by cheating with exercise. I didn't really stick to 1200 cal/day. Instead, if I did X cal of activity that day, I ate 1200 + X. Turns out that if one hikes 4 hours, or kayaks 3 hours, well, that is a significant ''X''. Now, that's exercise I enjoy. Paddling on a glass lake at dawn, walking through a high mountain meadow filled with wildflowers - lots better than a treadmill in a smelly gym. Alas, I don't live in the High Sierra.
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rob333 (zone 7b)
13 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
John,

That reminds me of a very special vacation we once spent in Naghead, NC. Each one took turns cooking and each dish was more indulging than the next. My words won't do them justice (lobster newburg, spicy shrimp boils, etc.), but it was so much fun to taste different, all well-made cuisine, none of which was cooked or prepared by me! The worst was that I had to shuck corn. The sand, hammocks, and great food with great friends, best combo ever.
John Liu
Original Author
13 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Well, we had a good week.

Let's see, what about the eating part . . . we had ginger-garlic stirfry chicken w/ candied walnuts, classic hot and sour soup, abondigas (Mexican meatball) soup, pesto both normal/basil and tomato/trapanese, seared salmon with sweet sauce that I'd call ''semi-sashimi'', broiled beef short ribs w/ hoisin/BBQ sauce, miso soup, slow-cooked beef brisket, tomatoes baked and broiled w/ cheese and mayo, some excellent couscous in a great chicken broth, lots of tangy salads, orange cake, peach cobbler, spicy marinated and grilled steaks which put me in a food coma, two chicken and chorizo paellas which worked out even though we used long-grain rice, and some other stuff that I forget. Poor dishwasher worked overtime.

Even though we dined like, well, oinkers, the total food and wine bill for the whole week was probably the equivalent of a couple of group dinners out. Doing your own cooking just beats restaurants all day long.

Took a five hour kayak trip, mis-timed the wind (lake wind advisories the last couple of days) and paddled our arms off to get home before the whitecaps and waves got too bad. Some mild sunburns. A cigar and scotch night, which basically means me and W_____ being banished to chairs way far downwind, out where the coyotes prowl. Lots of ''stitch and b*tch'' circles, there was quite an obsessive knitting group - which is why we resorted to the cigars in the first place. Fixed some plumbing leaks - it is a very old cabin, and something always has to be mended. Some serious napping.

Got caught up on our friend's lives, mid-life menopauses, growing kids, and how everyone is coping w/ the current economy - lots of ''re-inventing oneself'', ''consulting'' and ''living more simply'' going on, but things are okay. The BP oil spill cleanup looks to be a surprise positive for one guy's research funding, glad someone I know is benefiting from that. 13 y/o R_____ has become quite the jazz pianist. 11 y/o C____ does a mean Michael Jackson dance routine. Found a quirkly old-time gun and blade store that had a particular discontinued Forschner Chinese vegetable cleaver that I've been looking for. Then a 12 hour drive back to Portland, kayaks on the roof killing the fuel economy, and back to work today.

The best thing is that we are all getting together in a month to rebuild a rotten deck at another cabin. And there's an excellent little oyster farm just five miles down the road . . .

Joy Of [Beach Cabin] Cooking

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Islay_Corbel

moosemac

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Joy Of [Beach Cabin] Cooking

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Islay_Corbel

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rob333 (zone 7b)

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