Cooking with DELICIOUS #foodie Sahale Snacks!

As a member of Crowdtap, I was recently given the opportunity to try a number of yummy products made by Sahale Snacks, and although I have enjoyed pretty much every sampling I've ever done, this was by far the best!
My husband is a chef at our historic Inn, the Elkhorn Inn, and thus I am his Official Foodie (LOL), and Sahale Snacks are delicious and unique enough that we were delighted to learn about and try them, so we could start buying them and incorporating them into Dan's dishes at the Inn!
In addition to "classics" like Herb-Stuffed Roast Cornish Game Hen, we love "exotic" and international dishes, and have many of them on our Inn's menu, including entrees from Vietnam, Israel, Chile, and the Caribbean. And the Sahale Snacks Nut Blends are really excellent for adding some gourmet "foodie" excitement to your dishes, as well as for simply snacking on!

  The products we were got to try were their Honey Almond Glazed Mix and Pomegranate Vanilla Flavored Cashews Glazed Mix, and the Almond Vanilla Latte and Salted Caramel Apple Pecan Layered Nut Bars- and hubs started snacking on the bars before I could even get a photo!

I (fortunately! LOL) do not have a "sweet tooth", and I don't like overly sweet snack bars, and usually avoid buying them, and so I was VERY pleasantly surprised at how delicious the Layered Nut Bars were- and the unique flavors each one had. Each one has a variety of flavors and textures which make them Very tasty, and they're truly yummy with a cup of coffee or an ice-cold glass of milk!
But my favorite products, so far, are the Nut Blends, as they are great for tons of different recipes, as well as for topping salads, yogurt, or just snacking!

The first place I went to for recipe inspiration was the Sahale Snacks Recipe Page on their blog:   http://sahalesnacks.com/blog/category/recipes/
The first recipe I chose to try- with a few little changes, of course!- was Roasted Butternut Squash with Maple Pecans Glazed Mix and Crispy Sage.
First I pan-friend the sage leaves in olive oil and set the oil aside, as the menu calls for. We used Acorn Squash, which we cut into large pieces, covered with the sage oil and chopped garlic, dusted with cinnamon and cayenne pepper, and roasted in the oven at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes until it was tender. Then we sprinkled it with a bit of Kosher salt, and topped it with Sahale Honey Almonds Glazed Mix  and the fried sage leaves- and it was DELICIOUS! We served it with roast chicken and it was a wonderful side dish! The cinnamon and cayenne was a really delicious combination that enhanced the sweetness of the squash, and the almonds and dried fruit (this mix has almonds, cranberries, toasted sesame seeds, sea salt and honey) added both crunchy and chewy textures, as well as taste, making it really special! Next time I will use even MORE sage! :-) 
Other spices that we'd like to try for this dish are nutmeg and ginger, Harissa and Ras El Hanout, Moroccan spice mixes, and Garam Masala, an Indian spice mix, which Chef Dan uses in many of his dishes. Squash and pumpkin can be made in a variety of ways, including Vietnamese and Korean ones...

Roasted Acorn Squash with Sahale Honey Almonds & Sage

The next recipe we used the Honey Almonds Glazed Mix for was to top Pasta with Ramp Pesto, and the honey-glazed almonds were a delicious, textured counterpoint to the garlic-y goodness of the pesto! (And yes, those are meatballs, because my hubs has to have meat balls with his pasta, even with pesto. LOL)

Chef Dan is planning to use the Pomegranate Vanilla Flavored Cashews Glazed Mix to top a salad and a shrimp dish he is thinking of, so that will be our next foodie experiment with Sahale Snacks!





I Love authentic Asian food, and I REALLY want to try the Thai Cashews Glazed Mix  which has soy-glazed cashews, peanuts, pineapple, sesame seeds, and is lightly glazed with sake, rice wine vinegar, and dried lemongrass- that sounds AMAZING to top shrimp, noodles, stir-fried veggies, and other dishes with!
The other Sahale Snacks I'm aching to try are the  Maple Pecans Glazed Mix,  Balsamic Almonds Glazed Mix, and Pomegranate Flavored Pistachios Glazed Mix - I LOVE pistachios! 
The "Crunchers", such as the Sahale Crunchers Almonds with Parmesan Cheese + Herbs  and Mango Tango Almond Mix (which has almonds, peanuts, lime-infused mango pieces, and chipotle chili, and makes my mouth water just thinking about it!) sound EXCELLENT for topping entrees, as well as different kinds of salads, which we always do for Dinners at the Elkhorn Inn! 

More recipe inspiration- for when we have fresh figs!

The only problem we have here is that the Walmart, Kroeger, and Food City in our part of southern West Virginia don't carry them- so we have to order them online- and fortunately you can do that on the Sahale website!









So YES- a big "two thumbs up" for Sahale Snacks from Foodie Elisse and Chef Dan- if you haven't yet tried them you absolutely have to! (And check out Crowdtap, too- it's an excellent site for anyone interested in new products and marketing- and you can win gift cards, too!)

Chef Dan becomes a Campbell's Gourmet!

Through a #Crowdtap #sponsored program, we recently got to #DiscoverCampbells and try an assortment of Campbell's new products (which include Swanson, Prego, and V-8), and we liked several of them SO much that Chef Dan has bought them again and again, and is using them in his signature recipes at the Elkhorn Inn! We had such a blast "taste-testing", that I even made a fun YouTube music video about it: http://youtu.be/EvkOMLXhcwg
 

The products we got to try included Swanson Cream Starter, the Chicken Parmigiana Skillet Sauce, Prego Alfredo Sauce, V-8 Fusion, Campbell's Savory Portobello Mushroom Soup for Easy Cooking, Campbell's Creamy Poblano & Queso Soup, Campbell's Chunky Beer 'n Cheese Soup, Slow Cooked Chicken Noodle Soup, & Spaghetti Os!

Ingredients for a great dinner!

The clear winners, so far, are the Swanson Cream Starter,  Campbell's Chicken Parmigiana Skillet Sauce, Prego Alfredo Sauce, and V-8 Fusion!

Chicken with Cream Sauce and Spinach Pesto!

As you can see, you can turn out some truly fine meals- really quickly!- using Campbell's products! Dan and I had a lot of foodie fun taste-testing, as you can see! There are several other prodcuts we are intrigued to try now, including the V-8 Spicy Mango (which we haven't been able to find here in southern WV/western VA),  and the Korean & Thai cooking sauces! Check 'em out next time you go shopping!

Chef Dan, sauteing the chicken...

Chef Dan with his Campbell's Creation!

Chicken Parmigiana with Fresh Parsley, over Pasta!

Chef Dan, starting the Alfredo-Dill Sauce with Prego...

Chef Dan's Herb-Poached Salmon with Alfredo-Dill Sauce, over Pasta!

V-8 Fusion, Rum, & Fresh Rosemary! YUM!

Cheers!!!

Antigua: Cooking with Chef Nicole!

On our recent CruCon-booked Celebrity Cruise through the Caribbean, we spent a day in Antigua (where neither of us had ever been before), and as hubs is a chef (and I'm his favorite foodie!), we were really lucky to be able to spend the day learning to cook Antiguan dishes with Chef Nicole Arthurton at Nicole's Table in St. Johns, Antigua! (Read her reviews on TripAdvisor and you'll see why I booked!) Nicole is truly delightful company as well as a top food pro, and her kitchen and her home are glorious, with a view from her patio that is "to die for", as they say! Chef Dan and I took her "Cooking with Rum" class, which included THE most excellent rum tasting I've Ever had- I got to taste rums I didn't even know existed!- and we learned to make (and then enjoy) dishes that were so good, and so uniquely Caribbean, that Chef Dan his put them on the menu at the Elkhorn Inn! Dishes we made (and now have on our menu) included Nicole's Rum-Marinated Grilled Steak, served with Onion Jam, a Sweet Potato Soup with Rum and Toasted Coconut Slivers (which are THE best munchie, ever!), Bacon-Wrapped Plantains, and Coconut Rice and Beans. In addition to cooking (and sampling Nicole's delish Rum Punch), we learned a lot about Antigua, as well as about Montserrat, where Nicole's family is from. Thanks to Nicole, we actually got off the beaten tourist path and experienced a little of the "real" Antigua, if only for a few, all-too-short, hours!

The day we had with Nicole is the kind of a day that makes you long to return for an extended stay- not just for 8 hours while on a cruise!  We started the day with a "liquid breakfast" at Hemmingway's Caribbean Café (photo below); hey- it was 5 o'clock somewhere! :-) The truly nice and helpful staff got us a cab out to Nicole's; the driver then came back to pick us up and take us back to our ship later in the day! So many cruisers are afraid to do things that aren't cruise-line sponsored for fear of missing the boat, and that's a shame, because most of the really interesting and unique things to do (such as this cooking day with Nicole, our spearfishing and jet-ski fishing excursions, etc.) aren't available through the cruise lines! 99% of the excursions we've done so far on our 4 cruises were booked independently, and all have been great. If a company has 5-star reviews on www.TripAdvisor.com & www.CruiseCritic.com they WILL see that you get back to the ship on time- if they don't they'll be out of business fast! Great places to look for unique excursions include the Forum boards for different ports on both www.CruiseCritic.com and www.TripAdvisor.com, and just "Googling" for the things you want to do in the places you want to do them! I found Nicole's Table by entering terms like "cooking classes Caribbean", and "cooking Antigua" in various search engines!

Bacon Jammmmmmmmmmmmm!



Skillet Bacon Jam



Chef Dan recently had the opportunity to try a new condiment at the Elkhorn Inn, and it turned out to be one that we like so much we're ordering it for the Elkhorn Inn! It's called Skillet Bacon Jam, and it's made by the  Skillet Street Food - a modern American diner  in Seattle, Washington, that Josh Henderson started out of a vintage Airstream Trailer in 2007! Seattleites loved his glorified diner "comfort" food, and now Skillet is opening a "brick-and-mortar" restaurant in Seattle's Capitol Hill! And based on our small experience with his Bacon Jam, rightfully so! As odd as it may sound, Bacon Jam (now being called Bacon Spread) is really yummy, savory condiment, and very versatile: Chef Dan used it on cast iron-skillet-fried potatoes the other night, and it was excellent! (He served them with his Chicken with Cherries in a Wine Demi Glace Sauce, and the combination worked SO well!)

Chef Dan's Chicken with Cherries & Wine Demi Glace,
served with Pan-Fried Potatoes and Skillet Bacon Jam





Bacon Jam is savory, salty, sweet, smoky- and lends itself to a LOT of uses! We need to get more, so he can try it on hamburgers, and in a vinaigrette on a spinach salad, saute some scallops with it (doesn't that sound good?!), use it as a topping on a baked potato, potato soup, grilled veggies, or a BLT, slather it on a croissant or a waffle, or serve it with biscuits & gravy... There are a LOT of ways it can be used, and they all sound so good! It's made, according to Skillet, by taking a "big bunch of really, really good bacon, rendering it down, adding spices, onions, etc., letting it simmer for about 6 hours, giving it a quick puree, & then a blast-chill." And we love it at the Elkhorn Inn! (And we're not the only ones- it was the NUMBER ONE Hot New Product at the 2011 Fancy Food Show, and there's even a YouTube video about it from the Today Show!)

You can order it here:  http://skilletstreetfood.com/shop.php

You can "tweet" with them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/skilletbaconjam

And you can "Facebook" with them here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/skillet-street-food/39513639587

Let us know what YOU decide to use it on!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. Tomoson Product review & giveaway Disclosure.

"Dueling Dining-Car Chefs" Weekend with James Porterfield!

This post should also be called "When Guests Become Friends", as it truly was that kind of a weekend at the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre!

James D. Porterfield, historian and author of "From The Dining Car" and "Dining By Rail", and "On The Menu" columnist for Railfan & Railroad Magazine, joined us at the Inn as Guest Chef for our May 28-30  "Dueling Dining-Car Chefs" Weekend, and instead of "dueling" (LOL), he and Chef Dan created two delicious, multi-course dinners for our guests from the finest of historic dining car recipes!

Gene Bowker's Photo of the Elkhorn Inn & "Pocahontas" Railroad

See Gene's therailroadblog.com  for a great slide show of the weekend, his photos on www.genebowker.com and his articles in the Train Travel Examiner

Chef Jim prepared his feast on Friday evening, centered around the Pennsylvania Railroad's "Deviled Slice of Roast Beef with Mustard Sauce", and Chef Dan created his dinner on Saturday, with "Coast Starlight Chicken Breast with Pinot Noir and Dried Cherries" from the Amtrak West SBU as the focal point. Our gourmet railfan guests enjoyed both dinners accompanied by wine, period music, Andrew Fletcher's great illustrated railroad magnets (NS, of course!) from CustomTrains.org as favors, Jim's excellent commentary on each course, and more Pocahontas railroad trains sailing past the Inn than I think we've Ever had! Our guests enjoyed touring the area, as well as "railfanning" on the Inn's track-view balcony and patio, and Elisse & several of the Inn's guests even wound up in in the Inn's "railfan hot tub" in the moonlight, and one even got to go ATVing with Dan!

James Porterfield's first article on the Inn, "Almost Heaven?" in Railfan & Railroad, with his famous quote about the Elkhorn Inn being "the best legal train-watching location in the USA", together with his friendship, enabled us to create with him what we believe is the "ultimate" Railfan Foodie weekend! The dinner weekend was such a success, in fact- and Jim enjoyed playing chef so much- that the Elkhorn Inn will host another "Dueling Dining-Car Chefs" Weekend, Sept. 3-5, 2010 over Labor Day Weekend, with a totally new menu! Only 4 guest rooms remain available for this special weekend, so call us at 1-800-708-2040 or 304-862-2031 as soon as possible, if you'd like to join us!

James Porterfield & Dan, Not dueling in the kitchen at the Elkhorn Inn!

Menus for the Elkhorn Inn's May Gourmand Events!

Here are the menus for the Elkhorn Inn's "West Virginia Wine Dinner Weekend" May 14-16, and our May 28-30 (Memorial Day Weekend) Gourmet Railfan Weekend: "Dueling Dining-Car Chefs" with historian, author, and Railfan & Railroad columnist James Porterfield! (And if these menus don't make you drool, there's just no hope!):
May 14-16 "WV Wine Dinner Weekend":
Friday, May 14:
Appetizer: Proscuitto & Melon, served with Martin's Mist Dry Creek Blueberry Wine
Entree: Roast Lamb marinated in Kirkwood Winery Ramp Wine, served with Watts Roost Vineyard 2008 Chambourcin
Desert: Jones Cabin Run Vineyard Port, served with Chili Chocolates & Caramels from Kakawa Chocolate House in New Mexico- the ultimate!- and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream! And Coffee! OMG!
Saturday, May 15:
Appetizer: Vietnamese "Claypot" Ginger Chicken, served with Kirkwood Winery Ginseng Wine
Entree: Salmon Poached on Herbs, served with WineTree Vineyards 2008 Traminette
Desert: Flan with Caramel Sauce, served with Kenko Farms Mead Honey Wine

May 28-30 "Railfan Gourmet Weekend" with James Porterfield, chef, historian, author of "From the Dining Car" and "Dining By Rail", and "On The Menu" columnist for Railfan & Railroad. James Porterfield will be preparing a "Dining Car Dinner" on Friday evening, and Chef Dan of the Elkhorn Inn will be preparing one on Saturday! Both chefs will be utilizing recipes from James Porterfield's books!

Friday (Chef James Porterfield):
Chicken Mulligatawny Soup - Atlantic Coast Line
Tossed Salad with Special Dressing - Great Northern Railway
Deviled Slice of Roast Beef with Mustard Sauce - Pennsylvania Railroad
Potatoes Romanoff - Illinois Central
Carrots in Mint Sauce - New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad
Hot Strawberry Sundae - Fred Harvey
Saturday (Chef Dan Clark):
Shrimp Gumbo New Orleans Style - Louisville & Nashville Railroad
Cucumber & Red Onion Salad with Mandarin Orange & Toasted Caraway Seeds - American Orient Express
Coast Starlight Chicken Breast Pinot Noir with Dried Cherries - Amtrak West SBU
Steamed Asparagus with sautéed Garlic Cherry Tomatoes - Royal Canadian Pacific
Red Potatoes with Rosemary - Amtrak West SBU
Bread Pudding With Bourbon Sauce - My Old Kentucky Dinner Train

Each special weekend package is only $499 + tax per couple ($380 + tax for single), and includes two nights at the Elkhorn Inn with Continental Breakfast each morning, the two special dinners (Friday and Saturday evenings), and a late check-out Sunday.
Call us at 304-862-2031 or 1-800-708-2040 to book as soon as possible if you wish to join us for these Very special events at the Inn!

Thanksgiving!

Today Chef Dan made his magnificent fresh-oregano-stuffed turkey, with an incredibly crispy herb-and-smoked-sea-salt rubbed skin, and we had it with "Saffire", a crisp, dry white wine from our trip to AmRhein Winery in Virginia earlier this year, and it was wonderful! With it we had our garden-grown potatoes, mashed with the skins on and topped w/Chef Dan's rich, creamy giblet gravy, and an herb-bread baked stuffing made with our fennel pesto, and cranberry sauce with grated orange peel... and it was truly a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at the Elkhorn Inn! I am deeply thankful for a great many things, but Numero Uno is that I'm married to the love of my life...

Last night Dan & got dressed up & went out for a 'night on the town'- and yes, you can actually do that now in the mountains of southern West Virginia! First we had a wonderful "pre-Thanksgiving" sushi-saki feast at Kimono in Princeton; they truly do have some of The best sushi I've Ever had in the USA, and last night they were Packed! Then we went to Gary Bowling's House of Art in Bluefield for their always-great Wednesday Night Open Mic, and had a great time! Gary Bowling's had The biggest crowd- standing room only- and it is a BIG place!- and it was really jumping! At the end of the evening Dan & I wound up dancing to "I Love You Just The Way You Are", sung by Dreama Denver (the voice of Little Buddy Radio and the personificaton of the Denver Foundation- she is the widow of Bob "Gilligan" Denver), and by the end of the song I was literally in tears- but really Good tears! :-)

Hope your Turkey Day was grand, too!

Vietnam & Thai in West Virginia!

After our happy Railfan couple left the Elkhorn Inn on Saturday morning, Dan & I had a "foodie" weekend! My box of wonderful fresh produce arrived from www.TastePadThai.com (2 gorgeous green mangoes, fresh lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, & thai chilies, among other things!), & I cracked open Mai Pham's wonderful Vietnam cookbook & cooked for Chef Dan! www.TastePadThai.com sent us a special slicer as a gift with my order, and with it Dan (yes, I let him help!) was able to easily make the perfect julienne strips of crisp, green mango for my Green Mango Salad! Tossed with a spicy sauce, and topped with thin strips of marinated, grilled beef, Asian Basil, flat leaf parsley, and chopped peanuts, we managed to recreate a dish we'd had in Saigon last year and loved- right here in West Virginia! I also made us Thai Tom Yum Gai soup- with coconut milk, galangal, lemongrass & Thai peppers, sliced, fresh mushrooms & shrimp- a soup I've LOVED for years, but haven't had since I lived in NYC. It's Such an easy soup to make, but you can't make it without the special fresh herbs & spices... and the smell of it is literally intoxicating! With our Vietnamese-Tahi dinner we drank Ginseng Wine from Summerville, West Virginia's Kirkwood Winery http://www.kirkwood-wine.com/ It's So much like the Vietnamese snake wine that we both love, that we even use it to top up our souvenir bottle of snake-&-scorpion wine! I think Kirkwood's ginseng wine is truly my favorite wine now- it has a totally unique taste with a very slight bitterness that I LOVE... & it reminds me of our time in Vietnam...
Today we continued our culinary weekend & figured out how to make the Ultimate Condiment: the Vietnamese Chili-Lemongrass Salt we'd fallen in Total love with at the Dakbla Restaurant in KonTum, Vietnam! We browned finely chopped lemongrass & Thai chilies in chili oil in a cast iron skillet & tossed it with coarse kosher salt- making THE best condiment in the world! Gimmee a bowl of rice & some of that chili salt & I'm a happy camper! Looking back, I see how important food- really Good food!- has been to me throughout my life: I remember almost everything I've done in terms of what I ate, who I was with when I ate it, and what we were talking about while we ate! For me, this chili-lemongrass salt literally & physically brings back our wonderful honeymoon last year, especially the cooking classes Dan & did in Saigon & HoiAn, and the magic days we spent "trekking" (and eating & drinking...) through the Central Highlands with our guide/friend Huynh www.vietnamhighlands.com If you're interested in having a truly wonderful experience seeing & experiencing the REAL Central Highlands of Vietnam, Huynh is the person to see... (See my blog posts after April 2008 for photos of our time in Vietnam, as well as Korea & Japan). Yes, I put on 25 lbs. eating & drinking my way across Asia w/Chef Dan, & came waddling back with 2 chins, & have been on a diet ever since, but it was worth it! :-)
Tonight, after we topped the last of the green mango salad w/grilled chicken, Dan made us luscious Vietnamese Fried Bananas, and while he dusted his (appropriately) with confectioner's sugar, I sprinkled mine with that divine chili-lemongrass salt! I've always loved the sweet fruit/spicy combination, and the hot banana fritters with their gooey-sweet, molten centers were so yummy with just a bit of "zing" from the chili salt! :-) I tried the chili-salt on crisp slices of cucumber, too, and it was almost as good as on the green mango! (Reminded me of an amazingly juicy, sweet mango doused with chili sauce I got from a Latino food cart on W. 23rd Street in NYC in 10/2001...) I then put up a jar of Vietnamese Pickled Chilies with Garlic (and some lemongrass, just for kicks), so we'll have them to enjoy for awhile, too...
It's now Winter, & getting cold; leaf-peeping is behind us, & it's getting dark earlier and earlier... and yes, I may have SAD, but I find all this Incredibly depressing! So I decided Dan & I needed something fun to do to occupy us thru the slow, cold, winter... and cooking the authentic Vietnamese, Korean, & Japanese foods we love seemed to be a cool thing to do! But with only WalMart & Food City within an hour of us, what's a "foodie" girl to do?! So while Dan was hunting w/his buds in Virginia, I trolled the internet night after night for Asian cookbooks, recipes, and exotic food sources, and came up with some GREAT finds: www.TastepadThai.com, especially for their fresh herbs & produce (as well as pantry items, & the cayenne pepper stick-on heating pads that I haven't seen since I lived in Germany & which are Great for muscle & arthritis pain); www.hirts.com for seeds to grow things like lemongrass, red perilla, and green shiso for Vietnamese "table salad"; www.pacificrimgourmet.com and www.VeryAsia.com for my "sushi kit", dried exotic mushrooms, & all sort of cool spices and condiments; www.amazon.com (especially for (used) books & cookbooks); www.bestkimchi.com who will actually FedEx Korean BBQ, Kimchi, & scallion pancakes from NYC; and even good ol' www.eBay.com, where I found a Hawaiian supplier of Japanese foods! In addition to stocking our Asian Pantry, I treated myself to a batch of winter reading material: Korean, Vietnamese, & Japanese histories, fiction, and cookbooks- & now we're cookin'- literally! (I just hope I don't put on 40 lbs. in the process!)
Speaking of things "foodie": We've just added a fab gourmet sea salt sampler to the Elkhorn Inn's Gift Shop: samples of 16 different sea salts, just like Chef Dan presents to guests dining at the Elkhorn Inn- and it's only $19.99! (This is the Elkhorn Inn's corporate gift this year, too, and our supply is limited, so please order early if you need holiday delivery). Please check out the Elkhorn Inn's Gift Shop for a great selection of unique, fun and AFFORDABLE gifts for the holidays- including hand-crafted coal gifts and ornaments, quilts, books, stained glass, jewelry, and gourmet jams, jellies, and relishes, that are all made by real people, right here in WV and VA! We have new embroidered logo spa robes, shirts, & caps, too- and we can include them (or any of our other gift shop items) with gift certificates for stays at the Inn & Chef Dan Dinners! Have fun shopping for the holidays- and let us know what you think! :-)

Autumn in Landgraff...

Ah, autumn in Landgraff, WV... the air gets crisp, the leaves change colors, and people steal your political signs off your property...
I start this post with the unhappy news that our McCain-Palin sign was stolen from our side lawn the other day.


Either a desperate McCain supporter, unable to find ANY PLACE IN WEST VIRGINIA to buy such a sign, felt they had no choice but to swipe ours, or a disgruntled Obama supporter decided they had to personally "change" reality, but in any event it's gone- & I am NOT a happy camper. Here is photo of what it looked like Before it was stolen, and if anyone has a Great Big "Veterans for McCain-Palin" sign they can get us PDQ, Please send it to: Elisse Clark, P.O. Box 100, Eckman ,WV 24829.
No kidding- you really Can't buy one in WV.

































Dan & I went ATV leaf-peeping the other day, and had a great afternoon riding through the gorgeous mountains, thru Ashland and past the infamous "Stair-Steps", all the way to "ATV Paradise" for hamburgers and fries. We then got help fixing a flat on our ATV from a Great Guy at the Wagon Wheel, just down the road, where we got hot coffee to warm us up (3 layers is NOT enough once the sun goes behind the mountains!), and then rode home- Really Cold!
Yes, it's Fall... it may be 77 in the sunshine, but it's Damn Cold in the shade! The down quilts and our Korean "mink" blanket is back on the bed, the heaters are on, there's a fire burning in the fireplace almost All the time, and I'm layering... Ugh! I know this is "four seasons" country, but I could live nicely without 7 months of winter!
Other signs of fall: We just harvested the last of our watermelons, and have a pumpkin to go pick & corn stalks to cut down and do fall decorating with... Our "Grim Reaper" Halloween inflatable arch is up, and the dining room tables are decorated with Martha-esque centerpieces of mini-pumpkins, gourds, cider-scented potpourri, and out little pumpkin breakfast plates... And I'm watching the Weather Channel for frost warnings, lest we lose our herbs- I'm determined to "winter them over" inside on the windowsills, so I can harvest herbs all winter for Chef Dan!

Our other Gourmet News is that Dan has started making real, crusty Italian bread (the likes of which you literally Can Not get here) in our Great Bargain Of the Year: the "$200 50-cent bread machine"! Dan came home a couple of months ago with one of his flea-market finds at which I rolled my eyes: a never-used West Bend bread machine- no box or instructions, of course- for 50 cents. While trying to find the instructions on the internet I found that it had been recalled, and duly called it in. West Bend, while rather surprised we had a new bread machine they hadn't made for 5 years, did send us the UPS return label, and we returned it. And last week we were rewarded with our brand new, AbFab digital bread machine- and this baby does Everything except sing "I'm a little muffin"! It is SO great to find another company that stands behind their products! It is such a great machine that even I can make bread with it! (I am determined to make Italian Herb Bread with rosemary and other fresh herbs from our garden, and to try my hand at the Prosciutto Bread I remember with great fondness from Balducci's in NYC...) Even the Easy Bread that comes out of it is totally wonderful: crusty on the outside, warm & soft on the inside... SO good, in fact, that I couldn't help myself: I ordered a selection of Italian cheeses (plus some truffles and anchovies and saffron...) from www.igourmet.com, and now we'll have THE bread for them!!!!! All we need is some of that Montefiorelle Chianti Classico...
This past Friday (Oct. 18) we went to an opening at Gary Bowling's House of Art in Bluefield, WV, and I was VERY impressed. Gary, his wife, and their artist friends, have done Amazing things with the space, and created a truly professional gallery and special event space in Bluefield! The opening, for Richard Shrewsbury, a West Virginia-born artist, was great, with an artsy, upscale crowd enjoying wine, yummy hors d'ouevres, and a band, and best of all, the work was selling, which bodes Really well for the future of art in our neck of the woods! The gallery has a cafe, as well, so you can have lunch or a snack, surrounded by some really fun artwork; I especially liked Gary's work, much of which is made with "found" items; I loved his hand-painted chairs, and the dragonfly (with fan-blade wings) hanging from the ceiling!
After the opening, Dan & I went to my Absolutely Favorite Restaurant in West Virginia, the excellent Kimono in Princeton, and had a bang-up sushi-saki feast! Oh, those luscious, buttery scallops!!! Dinner at Kimono always cheers me up!
On another happy note, the Sweepstakes Queen of Landgraff, WV just won another contest: the www.Brickfish.com "Shoe" contest, to which I submitted a photo of & story about the fur high-heels I bought in 1985 with an entire month of my IDF salary- and which I still have! I posted my entry on our www.facebook.com page in the hopes that friends would vote for it, and today found out I've won a Marshall's Shoe Shopping Gift Certificate! And I am WAY excited about that! We've got happy guests at the Elkhorn Inn tonight, including 2 journalists from Virginia; the puppies are curled up in their little beds and snoring, and the Inn is toasty warm and smells great from the logs burning in the fireplace... And so, to bed! :-)

On Dan's Demi-Glace & other wonderful (mostly edible) things...

This post is mostly about FOOD - in all it's summer glory!

For starters, my husband, Chef Dan, recently made the most amazing French demi-glace I have ever eaten in my life. A truly sublime thing of such delicious, rich intensity, it turned every mundane thing it touched into the most delectable gourmet dish imaginable- I kid you not! This was the Real Demi-Glace Deal- a two-day marathon of roasting & cooking down beef bones into a rich stock, making the "Espagnole Sauce", & then, finally, the demi-glace... and this stuff has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING you can buy in a bottle or a jar, even from a fancy "gourmet" store... It is truly & totally "essence of cow", & for a carnivore, an orgasmic revelation: this is what eating meat is supposed to be about!

Our Demi-Galce Days started with a gift I'd given Dan: the gourmet Cassoulet Kit from D'ARTAGNAN, which I found on a Father's Day gift website while searching for a suitable gift the puppies could get The Dogfather- a man who LOVES beans & stews made with beans- for Father's Day. The kit was totally excellent, & I will be ordering from them as often as I can afford to! The kit came with more than enough Coco Tarbais beans, ventreche, duck confit legs, Armagnac sausages, garlic sausages, & even a tub of duck & veal demi-glace, & created a Truly luscious stew that was positively THE best stew I've EVER eaten, bar none. I've never been terribly fond of beans (or slow-cooked stews, for that matter), I guess because I'd never had this! After eating it up (with me literally licking the pan), we realized the sad fact that none of the wonderful ingredients are available locally... and so I began pulling recipes off the internet & Dan started roasting bones! And the resulting Demi-Glace was, if you'll pardon my French, Ooh, la, la! Some foods are almost as sexy as, well, sex- and this is one of those foods!

As if things couldn't get better, Dan periodically comes home from Food City in Bluefield with sushi-quality tuna & scallops- my other sexy food- & we get to have a true Japanese feast, with sashimi, pickled ginger, soy sauce, and wasabi (yes, you can get these things (periodically) in southern WV!), and rice in our little Vietnamese lacquer rice bowls, eating with our Japanese lacquer chop sticks! I've been making my "garden tomato" sauce with our 5 different tomatoes (see below) and fresh herbs; the one culinary thing Dan will give me credit for, is that, as his designated "Pastas Queen", I do make really good pasta sauces!

Dan & I have been out ATVing in the mountains near the Elkhorn Inn to pick wild berries- which, for a "City Girl" is still one of the great joys of life! There is truly something magical about finding zillions of wild blackberries and raspberries free for the picking- so many that the birds, deer, & bears don't bother with them, and you can pick & eat berries until you're sick of 'em all July! We've come home with cans and bags of them, and made sauces & chutney & pie... My "point of reference" for raspberries was heretofore a $10 box of tasteless berries (some 15 years ago- heaven knows what they cost now...) at Balducci's in Manhattan, so Free Vine-Ripened Berries has a kind of magic allure! One of the first things Dan & I did when we were still playing "tourist" in WV, was pull over on the side of the highways so I could pick wild berries- and Dan could roll his eyes! We even have them growing on our property- down by the creek- and every time we get down there on that slope to pick them I get a terrific case of poison ivy!

It's August now, and we've been harvesting the bounty of our garden for awhile: white and (gorgeous, oh-so-sweet) red corn, hot peppers (which I planted throughout the flower gardens- along with broccoli & tomatoes!), squash, yellow "ball" cucumbers, okra, beans (which again, I planted all over the place- we really do have to come up with more bean recipes...), peas, broccoli, onions, garlic, eggplant, all sorts of herbs, & 5 different kinds of tomatoes! The grape tomatoes are the best- literally as sweet as candy! There is NOTHING like a vine-ripened tomato! I can't eat WalMart tomatoes any more- great, big, photo-perfect red spheres that have have a mealy texture and taste like sour cardboard! Dan has been making us wonderful batches of his rich, creamy fresh-from-the-garden broccoli bisque; it tastes so lusciously "green" that I call it "essence of summer"! I've been drying branches of oregano (which is one of the few things that does REALLY well here...), and freezing batches of basil in preparation for our annual fall "Pesto Processing Party"! The sunflowers are in bloom, their giant bright yellow faces waving happily in front of our patio & about the corn... I LOVE sunflowers,. and one of my dreams since we moved here has been to plant a whole field of sunflowers across from the Inn in that big, vacant weedy space, turning it into a mini Holland... It would be SO gorgeous! Maybe next spring we'll get some help tilling it up & we can do that...

On a non-edible note, our Swallow Family launched their babies from their front-porch nest, & have taken off, but Squeaky, our resident Front Porch Bat, & his kids, are still swooping around (no skeeters!), the doves & finches are still cleaning out our seed feeders, & masses of hummingbirds are cleaning out our 3 hummer feeders every day! We've got several duck families who return annually to our part of Elkhorn Creek, and Mommy White Duck came by with her darling ducklings the other day, while we were outside...

And then there's Snakey... who's now left (we hope), the Inn...

Yes, that is a snake - curled up on top of a box in the window, & oh, so small that I thought he was a piece of garden hose, & must have walked past him for weeks...

But then Dan realized it was a Snake, and poked at him with a broom, & Snakey unfurled himself... & we found that he could move pretty damn fast... After we chased him around the room, we finally managed to shoo him out the door, whereupon he scooted under the fence into the back "puppy" yard...

Bye bye, Snakey!

The last we saw of him, the dogs had barked at him so much that he slithered himself over the retaining wall & down into the creek...

And last, but not least, here are a couple of pix of Dan spoiling Tiger rotten (Tiger likes lemonade...), and "banging to fit & painting to match" the newest addition to the Elkhorn Inn's growing collection of eBay bargain vehicles: our "new" trailer, and, just out of camera-range, our "new" riding mower! So I can now mow the "farm"! I've always secretly wanted a riding mower- instead of a car, actually- because they looked like such Fun!- & because I took Roseanne's joke (that she'd start vacuuming when they make one you can ride on) to heart... if only it'd fit thru the door of the Inn, climb stairs, & do carpets...