Ed called us a few days ago wanting a recipe.

Ed loves to eat and appreciates fine food though he has a decided preference for what he calls ‘plain folk food’.

That’s probably one of the reasons that we get along so well with Ed, we too have a decided preference for what some of our extended family would call pedestrian food.

I’m talking food you eat with your hands and you gather the family around a big table and fight over before it’s all gone. Food that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to get ahold of or take two days to prepare (excepting perhaps a home-made corned beef or brining the Thanksgiving turkey).

Seems Ed couldn’t remember the name of the recipe but he did recall when he took his first bite of this dish at a barn party we hosted up in Kalispell a few years ago – he simply said “Hot damn that’s good”.

The dish has been known in our kitchen as Hot Damn Hominy since that very day.

Seems Ed is having a little party for something close to 70 folks; he’s doing an outdoor barbecue meal (brisket, sausage and all the trimmings) but wanted something ‘special’ to throw in the mix for a side. (Yep, the recipe scales nicely to feed a real crowd….).

What’s not to love? Bacon, cheese, spicy peppers and the southern / southwestern influence of hominy.

Quick, easy, cheap and damned tasty. Hot damn.

10 bacon slices, fried crisp, chopped, with drippings reserved
1 large sweet onion
1 tbs ancho chile powder
30-ounce can white hominy (drained, reserve liquid)
30-ounce can yellow hominy (drained, reserve liquid)
1/2 cup (maybe more) hominy liquid
3/4 pound cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup fresh poblano or anaheim green chiles, seeded, chopped, split
2 pickled jalapenos, chopped
2 tbs juice from pickled jalapenos

Let the bacon work it’s magic. Fry the bacon until crisp, drain well, chop and set aside. Sauté the chopped onion, 2/3’s of the fresh green chile and the ancho chile powder until the onions beings to soften. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 325.

Build on the hominy. In another large sauté pan, heat the hominy, stirring consistently. When hot, add the hominy liquid, the jalapeno juice; bring back to a high temp and add half the cheese.

When the cheese melts, stir in the onion and pepper sauté and half the bacon. Mix well.

Oven time. Pour into a 9×13 baking dish, sprinkle with the remaining bacon, peppers and cheese and bake at 325 for roughly 30 minutes until the cheese melts and things are nice and bubbly hot around the edges.

This recipe doubles easily – you’ll do it the next time you make it.

Enjoy.

Tags: Friday Feast

So I’m checking the weather back home this morning and lo and behold there’s snow in the forecast.

Ok, so it’s only in a tiny little pocket up near Glacier, only above 6500 feet, only 1 to 3 inches possible and it will be gone in a heartbeat.

There’s something about that first hint of snow in the forecast that makes one think fall really is coming and lots of good stuff is right around the corner.  Big browns, bowhunting and birds to name a few.  A friend’s even tagged his first antelope bowhunting.

There’s still lots of fishing to be done and given a choice I’d probably be on the Missouri the next few days.  Craig’s forecast looks nifty….

Hell, the weather’s even forecast to cool here in hell / Austin / central Texas.

(As of yesterday we’ve had a record 75 days above 100 in Austin bestowing the quite dubious honor of breaking the all time record for summer heat.  The Fat Guys may love that kind of weather over in Tucson, but generally we think it sucks.  We picked a hell of weather year to spend down here in exile.)

Had to run a couple of errands on Saturday and started my truck and found this reading on the temperature gauge.  Thankfully it cooled down to 115 after driving around a bit.  Frickin’ inhuman.  I’ll take snow in late August and long, cold winters any day.

Tags: Weather

Hollywood Rainbows from Ivan Orsic on Vimeo.

Tags: River - Clark Fork

Now and then you run across a story about fly fisher folk doing a great thing.

Not another big fish story, though big fish stories should be duly celebrated.  Not another dream trip story, though dream trip stories enthrall us almost every time.

Nope, this story has to do with getting deserving folks on great water to fly fish.

One of the Headhunter’s gang from Craig, Tracy Allen, and Adipose Boatworks from Helena designed a wheelchair mount for an Adipose boat.   The Headhunters guys work with Project Healing Waters and their local TU (Pat Barnes Chapter, Helena) every summer to take out a group of veterans and active duty guys and gals on the Missouri.

They had their first wheelchair angler has summer and rigged an ingenious ‘lazy susan’ platform to securely mount a chair in the boat.  The beauty is that the angler can swivel to be in optimal position at all times during the float.  These images (via Headhunters) were taken last summer during the first use of the platform.

Incredibly well done gentlemen.  May many, many guides and outfitters follow in your footsteps.

(Why not have donors wishing to support Project Healing Waters buy a platform for guides willing to participate in the program.  Hell, we’d round up a team to buy a platform……)

Now, the more sobering news.

HB 309 was apparently scheduled to come up in the House for debate and vote today at 1300 – I’ve checked and it’s not on today’s House schedule (as of 0930).

You can track the bill here, and there’s still time to contact Montana House members and urge this bill be voted down and out.

Tags: Access

Returned from the dash to Colorado to find a most welcome surprise from Montana waiting on the front porch.

A bit of explanation is in order.

Montana is deservedly famous for many a feature.

You probably would never have visited Chi Wulff if it were not for some connection, visceral or otherwise, to the storied fly fishing waters of the state.  Montana’s waters, while not as ‘extreme’ as Kamchatka or Mongolia, are known and revered throughout the fly fishing world.

Montana is truly the land of the Big Sky under which sit two of the most glorious national parks anywhere – Glacier (shared with Canada as Waterton Lakes National Park) and of course Yellowstone (shared with our trusty neighbor Wyoming).

Montana boasts of the largest ski resort (in bounds, combined ticket) in the United States – Big Sky / Moonlight Basin, though our most lauded downhill skiing probably happens at Bridger Bowl.  Bridger continues to make the ‘must ski’ lists every year as one of the best.

Throw in thousands of acres of open land, quirky celebrity land-owners (a never ending source of entertainment and disdain for the local populace), grass fed beef that puts Texas to shame and sometimes brutal winters that nicely thin out the tourists and Montana sounds more like heaven every day.

For roughly eleven months and three weeks of the year, my favorite Montana hallmark is her people.  I figure most folks would consider the average Montanan to be what an insult intended brother-in-law labelled as ‘pedestrian’.

Montanans, as a whole, are probably the most unpretentious, roll up your sleeves and get ‘er done folks we’ve ever been neighbors with.  Houses and vehicles aren’t status markers here, though your drift boat or raft might be.

You’ll see a few high-fashion toting metrosexual types living in the ‘big university towns’ like Missoula and Bozeman, but you can go anywhere and everywhere in jeans and Carhartts with nary a disdaining glance.

Living a pedestrian life in the Treasure state deserves much more comment, but alas back to topic.

My favorite Montana hallmark this time of year?

Bequet Caramels. Hand made in their new facility right in Bozeman (actually just west of Bozeman on the way to Four Corners).  Full disclosure – this is not a paid advertisement – it’s  simply a testimonial from a damned satisfied customer.

Their story is a great one, but their caramels are without a doubt even better.  Creamy, smooth, rich and chewy with a variety of melt in your mouth flavors, these are probably the best candies known to man.   The company’s popularity has sky-rocketed and as you’d expect their workload during the holidays is crushing.

As we’re stuck in Texas for the holiday season, She Who Must Be Obeyed hinted relentlessly until our order was placed.  Knowing we had to parcel out caramels to a few select family members, the five pound bag was deemed barely sufficient.   She Who Must Be Obeyed in fact beseeched me to have the order shipped most expediently. The next day the following email arrived from Bequet’s headquarters, sent impressively by Robin Bequet, the big boss herself (emphasis mine):

Hi Mary Ellen,

Your order was scheduled to ship today but due to unprecedented order volume, we ran out of Butterscotch and Salt-Chocolate caramel before your order was filled.  We are wrapping more Butterscotch and Salt-chocolate caramel in the morning and your order will ship then (Thursday, December 16th).    Your order would have arrived to you on Monday, December 20th if it had shipped on Wednesday.  Now it will arrive on Tuesday, December 21st.  If this is too late for you, please call our office (toll-free 877-423-7838) and let us know.  If this is the case, we will ship your order a different method, at our expense so that it will arrive on Monday. Sorry for this inconvenience.  We are making all the caramel we can but orders are flowing in faster than we can keep up.  Thanks,

Robin

I sent a quick missive back to Robin thanking her for the personal note during their busiest time and said not to sweat it.  She fired back the following reply -

Hi Mark,

Your response made us all smile.  Thank you for being so gracious.  I am truly sorry you are stuck in Texas and hope you make it back here soon.

Robin

The story ends most happily.

The caramels were on our doorstep three days early AND the critically demanded Butterscotch and Salt-Chocolate caramels were in the mix.  They’re already hidden carefully away from thieving fingers.

Bring a little Montana home this Holiday Season and order some of these ‘sent straight from heaven’ caramels. (Their website is even pure Montana – simple and right to the point.)   You’ll be a hero for few days that your heap of caramel treasures last.

Tell ‘em the guys from Chi Wulff sent you.  (We’re working on a discount offer for our readers…..)

Tags: Friday Feast

She’s off the market boys.

The Fly Fish Chick got hitched yesterday.

The best to C and the Prof from the Chi Wulff Gang.

Tags: Events

Tags: Damn!