Warmth, Any Way I Can Get It!

The weather outside, in upstate New York, is truly frightful. The temperature, right now, is 15 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s minus 9 Celsius) and that’s the warmest we will see for days. On Friday, the high is expected to be 0 F or minus 18 C. I can’t even bring myself to think about what the wind chills will be!

This is our driveway, AKA the rink. That’s ice and it’s not going to go away.

But I found a way to combat the cold! No, not hot toddies and buttered rum—it’s not noon yet and even I can’t hit the hard stuff this early!

I finally decided to get back to washing and ironing some of my beloved vintage linens—it’s been months since I focused on them and I haven’t listed new ones on Etsy in a very long time.

I figured ironing would help keep me warm. So I put on some music and reached for the items on the top of the pile.

And serendipity kicked in. The music was Jimmy Buffett and the linens at the top were napkins that scream PICNIC! Then I found a set of vintage nesting camp cups that completed the scene.

So, I’ve been having a lovely little beachy interlude. The steam’s rising off the iron, Jimmy is singing about Margaritaville, and these linens, with their fresh colors and stripes, help me believe that it’s possible to be warm in spirit, even as Mother Nature pitches us into the deep freeze. And to believe that the weather will warm up, eventually.

This should hold me over until it’s a legitimate time for a hot adult beverage! Maybe I’ll put it in one of those nesting cups, sit in front of the fireplace and pretend it’s a campfire at the beach!

If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, I hope you’re staying warm!

Michigan Red Hots–Hot Dog!

 

Looking for a new recipe for a tailgate or fall party? Need to feed a lot of people at a Super Bowl gathering? Want a recipe that most people will never have heard of before and will have them clamoring for more?

You need to make Michigan Red Hots!

Michigans have something for everyone. Well, except vegetarians. And the gluten intolerant. And dieters. Almost everyone.

They have a history, dating back to the 1920s.

They are the subject of long-standing debates and rifts among family members.

They are homey and regional yet are on the verge of being discovered. You can be on the leading edge of the Michigan revolution.

Make these now and you’ll be able to say, “I was Michigan before Michigan was cool!”

Okay, okay—so what is a Michigan? It’s a hot dog in a bun with meat sauce on top.

Don’t you think that sounds special? Well, it is.

Michigan Red Hots have been a favorite in the North Country of upstate New York almost 90 years. This area is the northeast corner of New York State, closer to Montreal, Quebec, and Burlington, Vermont, than New York City.

It’s not quite the same as a chili dog or a Coney or a Texas Red Hot.

In this part of the world, people have been going to roadside stands since the 1920s, looking for Michigans.

No one really knows where the recipe came from or why the delicacy is called a Michigan. There are many tales about Coney Island hot dogs meeting sauce made by a woman from Nashville. The Nashville woman married someone from Detroit and then they moved to Plattsburgh, New York, and starting selling the hot dogs and called them Michigans.

I say, who cares? It’s not important where the name came from. What’s important is trying Michigans at as many stands and diners as possible, to find the uber-Michigan.

Everyone, everyone, has an opinion about the best Michigan. Once there was a stand called Nitzi’s that was definitely in the running but Nitzi retired and sold the business but, the lore says, he didn’t pass his sauce recipe along to the new owners.

Is Nitzi’s sauce lost? Or is it being used at another small shop? Was it best?

Many will say Clare and Carl’s is best. You could buy them here, as long as the building continues to stand! Others swear by Gus’s Red Hot’s as the quintessential Michigan. McSweeney’s is a relative newcomer, Ronnie’s has been around forever but is very different than all the others, and so on, and so on.

The differences among these are subtle but don’t try telling that to the fans of any of them. Husbands and wives can’t agree. Parents and children are split. Compromises abound—“I’ll go to Clare and Carl’s today but next time we go to Gus’s!

The keys for a Michigan seem to be:

• A thick meat sauce, slightly hot with spices, spiced with cumin and almost grainy in consistency
• A steamed hot dog, often a bright red hot dog made with a natural casing
• A big, sturdy, top-cut bun
• Rough-chopped raw onion, either on top or “buried” under the sauce
• A line of yellow mustard

If you order a Michigan in a restaurant and want to sound like a local, you say “Two Michigans with” if you want onions. My husband says, “Two Michigans with, buried” and I say, “One Michigan, without.” They are usually served with French fries and coleslaw, which is all really nice but the focus here is on the Michigan.

In the last couple of years, the secret has started to get out. Serious Eats made the Michigan one of their hot dogs of the week a couple of years ago and the reviewer said, “New York state’s Michigan “Red Hots” are one of the most fascinating hot dog varieties that I’ve come across so far.”

Rachael Ray did what I consider to be an evil thing—presented a recipe for basic Michigan sauce but then felt the need to add macaroni and cheese to it and put the whole con-glop-eration on top of a hot dog. The woman has no sense of a) tradition or b) moderation!

If you can’t make it to upstate New York but yearn for this special treat, the recipe that follows is one I’ve had for about 30 years. It is purported to be Clare and Carl’s recipe but tastes, to me, more like the Michigans from Gus’s. Whatever. This recipe makes a sauce that is very close to the typical Michigan you’d get at most places in the North Country.

Michigan Sauce

1 29-ounce can of tomato sauce

2 pounds hamburger

3-6 tsp. chili powder (I use 4 ½)

2 tsp. dried onion*

2 tsp. garlic powder*

3-4 Tablespoons Tabasco sauce (I use 3 Tbls. and use Frank’s Hot Sauce because I lived in Buffalo a long time and Frank’s is the primary ingredient in Buffalo wing sauce!)

2 tsp. black pepper

2 tsp. cumin

• Mix all ingredients together, except meat.

• Add meat raw and cook while stirring occasionally with a fork. The fork is important to get the consistency right! Michigan sauce doesn’t have chunks!

• Simmer 2-3 hours. You can do this all in a slow cooker but, if you leave the top on, the sauce will be very soupy. You want the sauce to be pretty thick when it’s done.

The recipe makes quite a lot of sauce. I freeze some of it in ice cube trays and, when the cubes are frozen, I pop them out and put them in the freezer in a freezer bag. Then, when I want a Michigan, I just grab two cubes and put them in the microwave for a little while!

If you’re not a fan of hot dogs, you can put Michigan sauce on a hamburger roll, for a Sloppy Joe kind of sandwich; up here that’s called a sauce burger!

* You can get fancy and use real onion and garlic—maybe it’ll taste good but it won’t be a Michigan any more!

Come Leaf Peeping With Me!

This gallery contains 29 photos.

The High Peaks region of the Adirondacks in New York is already past peak foliage–it came early this year! The colors were great, and still are in lower elevation parts of the North Country. If you love fall but missed … Continue reading →

Spectacular Sunset

When I was in college, I took an oil painting course. The professor told us that, when we painted a sky, we could paint it any crazy way we wanted to, because at some time, in some place, nature would make a sky that looked just like that.

I’m not sure I believed him then but, after years of paying attention and watching the sky, I believe him now. I don’t paint much any more but it is very easy to take a great photo, when nature does all the work!

A Break from Chocolate

I’ve been making candy pretty much non-stop for the last four days and, as appealing as that might sound, it also means I have been eating a LOT of sweets and was pretty hopped up on sugar.

I needed a break. Something healthy to eat, maybe some protein and fruit. A few minutes to sit down before I went back to the kitchen.

Ah, just the thing. An apple, some crunchy peanut butter, a beautiful lake, a crisp day.

I’m feeling better already!

By the way, the apple is a “Blondie.” I’d never heard of it before I bought it last week at an orchard here in upstate New York. I found only a little information about it, which compared it to a Gala but yellow. It’s a very nice apple—a beautiful color, quite crispy, good juicy flavor. It’s a little sweeter than I would normally choose but not super-sweet like a Golden Delicious. If you see them, they’re worth a try! Since they’re early apples, you should probably refrigerate them.

Fall Fixations: I Have a Few

Like many of you, I find autumn exhilarating. I look forward to it all year for very particular reasons. I have four main autumn obsessions (well, five, but I’m not going to rhapsodize about college football here):

1)   Foliage—This is the most obvious and probably universally-shared of my obsessions. I’m lucky enough to live in leaf-peepers heaven—in what’s being called the “Adirondack Coast” of upstate New York. With the Adirondack Mountains on one side and the Green Mountains of Vermont on the other, and lovely, lovely Lake Champlain right in the middle, this may be one of the best places in the whole world to be obsessed with fall colors.

We take leaf-peeping seriously at my house. We check the foliage report to plan outings. When we drive around in other seasons, we take note of special vistas, to come back to in the fall. We have our go-to routes that we drive every year. We plan outings on weekdays, so as not to be disturbed by amateurs! And we would never, ever plan a trip away from home at this time of year! Miss foliage season? I don’t think so.

If you stay tuned you’ll be seeing my fall photos!

2)   Apples—My part of paradise is also home to many, many apple orchards so autumn becomes a chance to try new varieties and re-visit old favorites. When you’re surrounded by dozens of unusual apples you’ve never heard of, it’s easy to become a bit of an apple snob—don’t be talking to me about boring old Red Delicious.

Northern Spy, Autumn Crisp, Pristine, Spartan, Winesap—aren’t the names wonderful? And the taste! So far beyond what you’re going to find in the grocery store! One of our favorite orchards keeps an industrial-strength apple quarterer and corer on hand so we can taste any (or all!) of the apples before we buy! And they’ve been known to walk outside and pluck the apples directly off the trees for us so we get them extra fresh. Add to this the fresh-pressed cider, the hard cider, the apple cider donuts, the caramel sauce for dipping apples  . . . yes, I love fall.

If you stay tuned you’ll be hearing about apples!

3)   Snow geese—I know nothing about the migratory habits of snow geese except that they love the bay in front of our house. For a month, usually starting in mid-October, gazillions of gaggles of geese gather here and make a mighty sound! They are joined by Canada geese, who are very cool in their own right, but the white mass of the snow geese is particularly showy and astounding. To see a huge gathering of them take off all at once is like watching snow fall up!

The first time I saw them, after we moved here, I was taking a walk and could see a band of white on the far shore of the bay. It was a beautiful late autumn day—I could not figure out why there would be snow on the edge of the lake! I looked harder and listened and it finally dawned on me that those were geese! I ran home, we jumped in the car, and followed the lake shore until we found them.

Now I stalk them. And like any good paparazza, my camera is always clicking.

If you stay tuned you’ll be seeing snow geese in your dreams!

4)   Chocolate—This isn’t, perhaps, the normal person’s autumn obsession (although I know lots of people who would call it a four-season fixation!) But I make and sell chocolate candy. I can’t make it or sell it between May and mid-September because it is impossible to temper real chocolate if the temperature is warm (and never mind the difficulties of shipping it!)

So, for me, fall brings the added excitement of the beginning of candy season! All the high holidays of candy seem to fall between October and May, so those months find me tempering pounds of silky chocolate and stirring pots of burbling caramel. And beyond the making of chocolate, I obsess about new concoctions and combinations, packaging, pricing, photos—all chocolate, all the time. Not a bad way to live, huh?

If you stay tuned you’ll be hearing about chocolate! (I’m truly not trying to sell you anything—it’s just that chocolate is such a huge part of my world, I can’t imagine not writing about it here!)

Just writing about these things whips me into a frenzy of anticipation! The early-harvest apples are already available, the chocolate listings on my shop have begun to reappear, the leaves are just beginning to perk up with hits of red and orange, the snow geese will make me wait awhile. But it’s coming, fall is coming, and I can’t wait!

I look forward to sharing these autumn delights with you, as well as other “loving hands” meanderings. Is autumn a special season where you live? What do you like best about it? I hope you’ll be using your blog to tell us all about it, too!