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Show The Emery County Review, Tuesday, December 30, 2008 AT YOUR LEISURE Casey’s Pockets Swell Book Reviews Swell Recipes A5 Entertainment SWELL RECIPES Recipes with ‘Roots’ in Emery County Kathy Ockey LoriAnn Larsen grew up in Huntington surrounded by her family, grandparents and great-grandparents. She loves Huntington and said “My roots are too deep to dig up and move anywhere else.” Her parents are Lee and Lori McElprang and she said her mother is and always has been a wonderful cook. As a child she remembers waking up each morning to her mother making breakfast and singing. “It was a wonderful way to start a day.” She has wonderful memories of her childhood growing up on a farm. She said her family produced what they would eat and they would can and bottle everything. They grew a huge garden, produced their own meat, had fruit trees, honey bees, and even had a Christmas goose each year. “My dad still milks a cow every day and my mom is always making butter, cottage cheese, cheese, buttermilk, the best yogurt in the world, and everything else you can make from cow’s milk,” she said. LoriAnn said she built a chicken coop and had chickens so her own seven children would learn about work and the responsibility of taking care of animals. LoriAnn and some of her family members enjoy hunting deer and elk each year. She said she loves the sport but when it comes to killing an animal “I do feel bad. Don’t kill an animal if you don’t intend to use the meat. Be prudent and don’t waste it,” she said. She uses venison or elk to cook with but usually blends the wild meat with 20 pecent beef suet so there won’t be a gamey taste. She said you can also blend it 50/50 with pork and it makes a good breakfast sausage. LoriAnn also loves to make pies. She treasures the ceramic rolling pin she inherited from her Grandma Brown and said nothing compares with it to make a good pie crust. Following is a variety of recipes LoriAnn is contributing and said “I love the Review’s recipes because they are local. They don’t have weird ingredients and you have what you need in your home to prepare them.” Beef, Venison or Elk Stroganoff 1/4 cup butter 1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, washed and sliced 3/4cup finely chopped onion 1/4cup flour 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 2 pounds round steak or stew meat cut in strips the size of your little finger Cooking oil or butter as necessary 2 beef bouillon cubes 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1 cup sour cream Melt butter in a fry pan. Sauté mushrooms and remove to a plate. Sauté onions and remove to a plate. Combine flour, salt and pepper in a plastic bag. Add beef, venison or elk strips and shake to dredge. Brown meat in butter remaining in fry pan, adding oil or butter as necessary. Remove to a plate as soon as browned on all sides. Pour off excess oil. Return beef and onions to fry pan. Add two cups water, bouillon cubes and Worcestershire sauce. Cover and simmer gently about 45 minutes, until meat is tender, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Just before serving, add mushrooms and sour cream, adding more water if necessary, to make thick gravy. Serve over hot noodles. Apple Buttermilk Muffins 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup buttermilk 1/4 cup vegetable oil 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 egg 2 cups chopped apples 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon In a large bowl, mix first five ingredients. In a small bowl, beat buttermilk, vegetable oil, vanilla and egg with wire whisk until blended. Stir into flour mixture just until flour is moistened (batter will be lumpy). Fold in apples and walnuts. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Mix remaining sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over muffins. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean. Castle Valley All Over the World Have you ever gone to visit your Aunt Gertrude in the remote swamps of the east coast and been surprised to see someone you know from back home? Me either, I don’t have an Aunt Gertrude, but I have noticed that no matter where I go, whether just a one day trip up to Provo with my family, or a three week expedition to North Carolina for a family reunion, either me or one of my parents always see somebody from Castle Valley, or somebody who has family from the area. Now at first I wonder to my self, “Is this coincidence, or am I being stalked?” Then I realized that nobody would be stalking a 17 year old kid from Orangeville. Sometimes running into each other can be expected, like seeing someone shopping in Provo on the same day as you the month before school starts, but other times the coincidence is just eerie. The most unusual and unexpected time I’ve ever had such an experience was during my family vacation to North Carolina a couple of years ago. I was sure that I had left Emery County completely behind except for the few family members going with me, but I was wrong. My mother happened to go to a church meeting one of the Sundays we were there, and to our astonishment, she attended the All-American Apple Pie Pastry for double-crust pie 6 cups thinly sliced cooking apples (2 pounds) 1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional) 1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 tablespoon butter or margarine Sugar Prepare and roll out pastry. Line a 9-inch pie plate (preferably stoneware with half the pastry. Trim pastry to edge of pie plate. Place apples in separate bowl, if apples lack tartness, sprinkle with the 1 tablespoon lemon juice. In small bowl, combine sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toss apples with sugar mixture. Fill pastry-lined pie plate with apple mixture; dot with butter or margarine. Place top pastry over apples and trim pastry to edge of pie plate. Seal and flute edges of pastry. Cut slits in top crust for steam to escape, sprinkle sugar on top. Cover edges of pie with foil. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes; remove foil and bake an additional 20 to 25 minutes more or until crust is golden. Cool pie on rack. Serve with vanilla ice cream or light cream if desired. Pie Crust 2 1/2 cups flour 1 cup lard (Has to be lard, makes it flakier) 1 egg 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar 2 tablespoons cold water With pastry blender, cut lard into flour until mixture resembles cornmeal. In separate bowl, mix egg, salt, vinegar and water. Stir into flour mixture just until flour is moistened. If dough is too soft to roll out, place in refrigerator for a few minutes. SWELL BOOKS CASEY’S POCKETS Casey D. Wood LoriAnn Larsen “My husband’s favorite for breakfast” same meeting as an acquaintance she had from back home. An even more interesting example of this strange phenomenon occurred when my aunt and uncle, along with their youngest son, moved from Indiana to Montana. My cousin became friends with the only other kid of his same faith in his entire high school, and we were surprised to find out that my cousin’s friend has a grandfather who lives in Orangeville. It is strange to consider the probability of such an occurrence. There are roughly 30,000 people in the Castle Valley, and just over 300 million people in the United States. The likeliness of two people from the area running into each other is less than 0.001 percent, and yet it seems like it happens 100 percent of the time. So, if you think leaving the area and going on vacation is a perfect opportunity for you to have fun and cut loose, think again, because odds are pretty good that you are being watched by someone you know, and Castle Valley gossip travels fast. Book’s Message Stays on Reader’s Mind Kathy Ockey Deanna Hansen is a transplant to Emery County and said she really likes it here. She graduated from Granger High School and after marrying he husband the two moved to Elmo after he graduated from BYU. They have lived here for 13 years and her husband teaches at Emery High. “I’m a stay-at-home mom to my three boys and I love it. Also, I have always been an avid reader. In fact our whole family reads a lot. We have a television in the family room and most of the time it is never turned on unless my husband watches a ball game,” she said. Deanna remembers a family vacation when she was small and her family went camping. She said she checked 38 Nancy Drew books out of the library so she would have enough to read for one week. Deanna said she reads a lot of books with her children and they ask her why books are always better to read than to watch the movie of the story. She told them, “Nothing in a movie can beat your imagination.” “Books are magical. You can learn about things and places you will never see. I feel sorry for people who don’t read,” she said. A few of her favorite authors are Sue Grafton, Glen Beck, Janet Ivanovich, and also historical fiction writers, Jane Austen and the Bronte’s. She also said you can read a book and five years later read it again and get a different perspective of it. “I love the fact you can always get another book,” she said. Deanna recently read “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom. Deanna said it is a book that keeps coming back into her mind. She said the author wrote the book because of a story his uncle always told him. The uncle said he was in the hospital one night and his deceased relatives were in his room waiting for him to join them. He dedicated the book to his uncle. Eddie is the main character in the book and is an ordinary, typical person living in the same place doing the same job and never did anything signifi- Deanna Hansen cant in his life. On his 83rd birthday Eddie dies in an accident and awakens in the afterlife where he learns that heaven is not the Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. Deanna said, “You may expect that some of the people would have been in his life but some you would never guess would be involved. These five people show Eddie the importance his life.” Deanna recommends this book to everyone because when we read it we can learn that we all have some impact on the people around us. She also said we are ordinary people and we meet ordinary people but we don’t really know how we can impact or influence others. “This is the thought that keeps coming back into my mind,” she said. |